The Journey to Eternity — Chapter Forty-Seven: The Face She Did Not Know

Chapter Forty-Seven of my book, The Journey to Eternity, shared here chapter by chapter as I write it. Earlier chapters: Chapter One · Chapter Two · Chapter Three · Chapter Four · Chapter Five · Chapter Six · Chapter Seven · Chapter Eight · Chapter Nine · Chapter Ten · Chapter Eleven · Chapter Twelve · Chapter Thirteen · Chapter Fourteen · Chapter Fifteen · Chapter Sixteen · Chapter Seventeen · Chapter Eighteen · Chapter Nineteen · Chapter Twenty · Chapter Twenty-One · Chapter Twenty-Two · Chapter Twenty-Three · Chapter Twenty-Four · Chapter Twenty-Five · Chapter Twenty-Six · Chapter Twenty-Seven · Chapter Twenty-Eight · Chapter Twenty-Nine · Chapter Thirty · Chapter Thirty-One · Chapter Thirty-Two · Chapter Thirty-Three · Chapter Thirty-Four · Chapter Thirty-Five · Chapter Thirty-Six · Chapter Thirty-Seven · Chapter Thirty-Eight · Chapter Thirty-Nine · Chapter Forty · Chapter Forty-One · Chapter Forty-Two · Chapter Forty-Three · Chapter Forty-Four · Chapter Forty-Five · Chapter Forty-Six.

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Face She Did Not Know

My daughter asked that we meet the next day, at four in the afternoon.

She chose a small café, not far from the place where we once lived.

When I read the message, I understood that she did not want me to come to her home. Perhaps she was afraid of me, perhaps she did not believe me, or perhaps she simply wanted to be in a place from which she could get up and leave at any moment.

I did not ask.

I wrote that I would come.

Afterward I stayed sitting in front of the small device, until the light in the room changed and I understood that a long time had already passed.

Liara came in and found me in the same place.

"Did she answer?"

"We set it for tomorrow."

She smiled.

"Are you happy?"

"Very."

"And you are afraid."

I nodded.

"I do not know how she will look at me."

"She will see a woman she did not know."

"I know."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"As far as the place. Not to the meeting itself."

"All right."

She rose, and when she reached the door she turned around.

"Do not try to be the woman you were just so that she will recognize you."

I remained alone with that sentence.

I did not know if I would manage.

That night I hardly slept.

I tried to imagine my daughter entering the café.

Was her hair still the same length? Had her voice changed? Did she look more tired?

Three years are not such a long time, and yet at a young age they can change whole lives.

I tried to think of the last time I had seen her.

There had been no special parting.

I had not hugged her for long, and I had not said things to her that were meant to remain.

Perhaps I asked if she had eaten. Perhaps I asked her to call me. Perhaps I left the house while she was busy with something else.

It was precisely the fact that I could not point to the moment of parting that hurt me.

If I had known that I would not see her for three years, I would have stopped.

I would have looked at her.

I would have told her that I love her.

But I did not know.

And now I was about to meet her with a face that was not the face she remembered, in a body that no longer bore the marks of the years in which I had raised her.

I looked at my hands.

These were not the hands that had held her when she was a baby. Not the hands that bandaged her knees when she fell, or stroked her forehead when she was ill.

That body still existed in the world, but I was no longer inside it.

Another woman now carried the face my daughter knew as her mother.

I did not know whether my daughter had seen her since I disappeared. I did not know what she had been told, if anything, and how I could explain the existence of that body without undermining even further the little trust that might remain between us.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my unfamiliar hands.

For the first time since I had left my human body, I did not feel in them only the freedom I had received.

I also felt what I had lost.

Naama opened the passage a little before noon.

I asked to come out near the grove.

I wanted to walk on foot the way to the café.

Liara looked at me when I said this, but did not object.

"We have a few hours," she said.

We crossed together.

The light in the human world was strong. The wind carried the smell of warm earth, and the distant road hummed with the movement of cars.

We walked in silence.

On the way we passed a woman pushing a baby stroller. The child in it held a colorful toy and banged it against the railing.

I looked at him.

I remembered how many hours I once spent walking with a stroller, hoping the movement would put my daughter to sleep.

Sometimes she would fall asleep at once.

Sometimes I would come home exhausted, and she was still awake, smiling at me as if the day had only just begun.

Liara noticed my gaze, but said nothing.

When we reached the main street, I stopped beside a shop window.

In the reflection in the glass I saw two women standing side by side.

Liara, with her bandaged arm.

And me.

My face was familiar to me now. I had learned to recognize myself in it, my expressions, the way my eyes change when I think.

But my daughter had not learned to know it.

She was waiting for her mother.

And I did not know what she would see when she looked at me.

We reached the café half an hour early.

I chose a table outside, under a canopy.

Liara stood beside me.

"Do you want me to wait here?"

"No. There is a small garden around the corner. Could you wait there?"

"Of course."

She placed her healthy hand on my shoulder.

"I will be close."

I hugged her carefully.

"Thank you."

She moved away.

I remained alone.

I ordered water.

The waiter placed the glass on the table and asked if I wanted something to eat as well.

I said no.

I looked at the clock.

Twenty-seven more minutes.

At three minutes to four I saw her.

She appeared across the road, dressed in dark trousers and a light blouse.

I recognized her at once.

I did not need to see her face.

I knew the shape of her walk, the way she held her shoulders, the small movement with which she pushed her hair behind her ear.

I stood up.

She stopped before the crosswalk and looked at the phone in her hand.

Then she raised her head and searched with her eyes for the café.

I saw her coming closer.

I wanted to run to her.

To hug her.

To tell her how much I had missed her.

But I stayed beside the table.

She entered the plaza and looked around.

Her gaze passed over my face.

Continued onward.

And then came back.

I saw her examining me.

She approached slowly.

"Excuse me," she said. "Are you…"

Her voice broke a little.

"Yes, my beloved."

She froze.

The words were familiar to her.

The voice not entirely.

The face not.

She looked at me for a long time.

"This cannot be you."

I felt my throat tighten.

"I know how it looks."

"No."

She stepped back.

"My mother does not look like this."

"I know."

"So who are you?"

People passed in the street. Glasses were placed on tables. Someone laughed behind us.

"I am your mother," I said. "But I understand why you do not believe me."

"You do not understand anything."

She looked around, as if searching for someone following us.

"Did someone send you?"

"No."

"You know things about me. I saw the message. But that does not mean you are my mother."

"You are right."

She looked surprised.

"So why do you keep saying it?"

"Because it is the truth. But I do not expect you to accept it only because I said it."

She was silent.

"May we sit?" I asked.

She looked at the chair opposite me.

After a hesitation she sat down.

I sat down too.

Between us stood a small table, and on it two glasses of water.

"Where is my mother?" she asked.

The question nearly overwhelmed me.

"I am here."

"Stop it."

Her voice was sharp.

"I do not know who you are, but stop saying that."

I felt tears rising in my eyes.

I wanted to reach out my hand to her.

I did not do it.

"I can tell you things about us," I said. "But you are right that even that will not prove everything."

She folded her arms.

"So what will?"

I thought for a moment.

"It can be checked."

"How?"

"There are things from our lives that can be verified. Documents, details that other people know, things we could not invent after the fact. And there is also a way to show you what happened to me, if you want to see."

She looked at me with suspicion.

"What way?"

"I can show you the place I reached. Not today, and not unless you want to."

She shook her head.

"I am not going anywhere with a woman I do not know."

"I am not asking you to do that."

She breathed deeply.

"So right now you have no proof."

"Not proof that you could accept here, at this moment."

She lowered her gaze to the glass of water.

Her fingers trembled slightly.

"Do you understand how insane this is?" she asked.

I did not answer at once.

She raised her eyes.

"I am sitting here in front of a strange woman, and she is telling me she is my mother. And I do not even know whether my mother is alive."

Her voice broke.

"You do not know what it was like here."

I said nothing.

"At first we thought something had happened to you," she said. "Then the questions began. All the time they asked whether we had heard anything, whether there was news."

She wiped her cheek quickly.

"I was sure you would come back. Every time I heard a car stop beside the house I would look out the window."

I felt my heart contract.

"And then I stopped," she continued. "Not because I did not want you to come back. I simply could not go on like that."

She looked at me.

"Do you know how many times I dreamed that I saw you?"

I could not answer.

"And every time I woke up."

She tried to laugh, but could not.

"And now a woman I do not know arrives, with a different face, and tells me she is my mother."

"I am sorry," I said.

"For what exactly?"

I looked at her.

"For not being there. For not finding a way to return sooner."

"So why did you not come back?"

There it was — the question.

Not about my face.

Not about eternity.

About my absence.

I took a deep breath.

"On the day I left, I went out for a walk."

She looked at me.

"In the grove?"

"Yes."

"And what happened?"

I told her about the path that opened before me.

About the fruit I ate.

About the change that took place in me.

About the worlds I reached.

I tried to speak simply, but the further I went, the more I saw her face harden.

At last she shook her head.

"This is not real."

"I know it is hard to believe."

"You are telling me that my mother ate a fruit that made her immortal, left her body and moved to other worlds."

"Yes."

She leaned back.

"And what happened to her body?"

I was silent for a moment.

I knew the question would come.

"It still exists."

She stared at me.

"What does that mean?"

"I no longer live inside it. Another consciousness lives in it now."

My daughter rose all at once.

The chair scraped backward.

"No."

She put a hand to her forehead.

"This is too much."

I rose too, but stayed where I was.

"I am sorry."

"Stop apologizing."

She turned away from me and looked at the street.

Her breathing was fast.

I did not come closer.

After a while she returned to the table, but did not sit down.

"So if I see my mother's face, you are telling me it is not her at all?"

"Yes."

She closed her eyes.

"And you want me to believe that the woman standing in front of me is my mother?"

"I want you to know what I am telling you. If you believe me, that will be your decision."

She looked at me for a long time.

"I do not know what to think."

This time I did not try to answer in her place.

She sat back down.

The waiter approached and asked if everything was all right.

My daughter ordered coffee.

I asked for more water.

When he moved away, she looked at me.

"If all this is true, will you really not grow old?"

"Not as I once grew old."

"And I will."

I looked at her.

"Yes."

She was silent.

"So you will stay like this, and I will be old."

"Yes."

She lowered her eyes.

"It is not fair."

I did not try to comfort her.

"You chose this," she said. "I did not."

The words remained between us.

I thought of all the times I had spoken of the freedom to choose.

Of the way I left the life I knew, of the possibilities that opened before me, of the worlds I could reach.

I had never asked my daughter whether she was willing to pay the price.

She was younger than I, her life was still before her, and I had assumed that time would suffice for me and for her as well.

But my time had widened, and her time had gone on passing.

At that moment I understood that my eternal life had not given me only additional years.

It had allowed me to go on while people I loved were left to cope with my absence.

"That is true," I said at last.

She looked at me.

"And if you could choose again?"

I wanted to say that I would choose differently.

I wanted to give her an answer that would ease her pain.

But I could not lie.

"I do not know," I said.

She looked at me in astonishment.

"You do not know?"

"I love the life I received. There are things I would not want to give up. But I would not choose to disappear from your life as I disappeared."

"That is not the same thing."

"No."

She leaned back.

"I do not know what is harder for me to hear. This story, or that you are not sure you would return to the life you had with us."

I felt my eyes fill.

"I do not want you to think I was less happy with you."

"So why did you go?"

I looked at her.

"Because I wanted to know what there is beyond the life I knew. I did not know I would lose the possibility of returning to it as it was."

She looked at me.

"But you did lose it."

"Yes."

Her coffee arrived.

She added a little sugar and stirred.

The spoon touched the side of the glass again and again.

I watched the familiar movement.

She always stirred her drink long after the sugar had dissolved.

Without meaning to, I smiled.

She noticed.

"What?"

"You still stir your coffee much more than you need to."

She stopped.

The spoon remained inside the glass.

"Mother always laughed at me about that," she said.

"I know."

She lowered her gaze.

After a moment she took the spoon out and placed it on the saucer.

She did not smile.

But she also did not ask me to leave.

We sat together for almost two hours.

She asked questions.

Some concerned the world I now came from, others the life we had before I left.

She asked to know whether there was someone who could confirm my words.

I said yes, but explained that I would not try to bring people to a meeting or show her things she had not asked to see.

"I want to check myself," she said.

"Of course."

"And if I discover you are lying?"

"Then I will not ask you to go on speaking with me."

She looked at me.

"And if you are not lying?"

I had no simple answer.

"Then we will have to understand what can be done from here."

She lowered her eyes.

For the first time since she sat down opposite me, she did not hurry to respond.

When the sun began to go down, she looked at the clock.

"I need to go."

I felt a sudden fear.

"All right."

She rose.

I rose too.

We stood facing each other.

I wanted to hug her.

My hands almost rose on their own, but I stopped.

She noticed.

She looked at me.

"I cannot," she said quietly.

"I understand."

She lowered her eyes.

"I still do not know who you are."

I nodded.

"But there are moments when you speak exactly like her."

I felt tears in my eyes.

"I know that is not enough," she said.

"I am not asking it to be enough."

She breathed deeply.

"I need time."

"You will have as much time as you need."

She looked at me.

"Do not disappear again."

The words were spoken quietly.

But they were harder than anything I had heard from her that day.

"I will not do that," I said.

She hesitated.

"Write to me tomorrow."

"I will write."

She nodded.

And then she turned and walked away.

I stood beside the table and watched her move away.

She crossed the road, stopped for a moment beside a shop window and continued.

I wanted to call her name.

I wanted her to turn around.

But I did not call.

She had asked one thing of me.

To write to her tomorrow.

That was a promise I could keep.

I found Liara in the small garden around the corner.

She sat on a bench in the shade of a tree, her bandaged arm resting on her knees.

When she saw me, she rose.

She looked at my face.

"How was it?"

I opened my mouth.

I could not speak.

Liara came closer and hugged me carefully.

I laid my head on her shoulder and cried.

I did not cry as I had cried before the old house.

There I had cried for what was lost.

Now I cried because I had seen my daughter.

Because I had heard her voice.

Because she had stood before me and had not known my face.

And because despite everything, she had asked me to write to her tomorrow.

Liara held me until I calmed down.

Afterward we sat down on the bench.

"Does she believe you?" she asked.

"I do not know."

"Does she want to see you again?"

"She asked me to write to her."

Liara nodded.

"Then write."

We returned to the grove as evening fell.

On the way we passed again beside the street where I once lived.

This time I did not stop in front of the house.

I kept walking.

My thoughts were with my daughter, in the place she had gone to after we parted.

I wondered whether she had called someone.

Whether she had told anyone about the meeting.

Whether she was sitting alone now, trying to understand the things she had heard.

I wanted to know.

But I did not send her another message.

When we returned to the station, I found Naama beside the connection room.

"Did everything pass safely?" she asked.

"Yes."

She looked at me.

"Do you want me to leave the communication channel open?"

"Yes."

"I will see to it."

I thanked her.

When I entered my room, I found the small device lying on the table.

I picked it up.

There was no new message.

I opened the conversation with my daughter.

I read again the last words she had sent before the meeting.

I want to see you.

I thought of her face when she stood before me.

Of the hand that trembled around the glass of water.

Of the moment when she almost smiled.

And of the request that I not disappear again.

I placed the device beside the bed.

Tomorrow I will write to her.

Not to persuade her.

Not to ask her to forgive me.

Only to keep what I had promised.

I turned off the light.

End of Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight — What Remains of Eternity →

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