The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [119]
And what do you do, Avery had asked, when you reach the hill?
We climb, said the young man. But we can never see as far as our homeland.
Avery had placed his hand then on Jean's belly.
Now, in the car, the evening sky motionless above the fields, Jean remembered what Avery had said after their child had died. The wrong time, other words, meant to heal, futile. She remembered the thanksgiving with which his hand had touched their child that day, in the new settlement. Their daughter was still alive, in that place of banishment, in Khashm el Girba; in that place of helpless beginnings.
If there is true forgiveness possible in this world, thought Jean, it is not conferred out of mercy; nor is it conferred by one person to another, but to both by a third – a compassion between them. This compassion is the forgiveness.
We must not forget what it means to be in love with another human being, Lucjan had said. For this, once lost, can no longer even be imagined.
In the car, something settled between them. But it was not a peace. They both sensed it, the raw chance. If they spoke imprecisely, it would vanish.
Avery felt again that the dark weight of her next to him was a kind of earth. He felt the familiarity of her concentration, and now, the intensity of new experience in her, at which he could only, painfully, guess. He had missed this so completely: just being able to sit beside her, listening to her think.
It was dark now, east of Kingston. They had spoken very little, all the hours since Montreal.
The car heater was on, but Jean's feet were cold and wet in her boots. The mud of the cemetery had hardened into the knees of her tights.
– Avery, said Jean. Moving the temple was not a lie.
For some time, he did not reply.
– Moving the temple was not the lie, he said at last, but moving the river was.
– How long have you known this? asked Jean.
Again, silence.
– About a kilometre.
– You tried to tell me this before, said Avery. That I must think harder about my hand in things. For wanting to do good. Just by living, you said, we change the world, and no one lives without causing pain.
Sometimes, she thought, there is no line between one kind of love and another. Sometimes it takes more than two people to make a child. Sometimes the city is Leningrad, sometimes St. Petersburg; sometimes both at once; never now one without the other. We cannot separate the mistakes from our life; they are one and the same.
– I've known you for so long, said Avery, and still you surprise me. I remember feeling I knew the essence of you almost from the very first moment, and I think I did. But I wasn't listening to you, Jean, even though you were whispering right in my ear.
– When I saw the flowers, said Avery, I knew you'd been there.
– The flowers won't last, said Jean. It's too cold. But I planted something else. Seeds from the plants I collected on the riverbank, the day we met.
For a moment Avery thought he would have to pull over to the side of the highway. But he drove on.
– Very early this morning, said Avery, I stopped along the St. Lawrence, just past Morrisburg. I walked down to the river. In the sand, glinting in the moonlight, there was a baby's bottle. It had only been dropped and forgotten, yet the sense of violence was overwhelming. I knew there was nothing but innocence there, yet still I felt it. It was a scene my mother might have painted.
We want to leave something behind, thought Jean, a message on the kitchen table saying we'll be back soon. A suit jacket on a roof.
What does a child leave behind? Marina had asked, long ago. We cling to the children's paintings from Thieresenstadt, to a Dutch girl's diary, because we need them to speak for every war child's loss.
Some days are possible, Jean thought, only because of love.
In the long silence surrounding them, in the low noise of the car heater, Avery touched her cheek. Jean bent her head into his hand.
He had never truly believed he would feel this again, the response of her body to his touch. He dared not stop the car nor speak