The Journey to Eternity · A serialized book by Nurit Rozenblat
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Chapter Twenty-One — The Love That Never Ended
I remained before the record for a long time after Adara stopped activating it.
The small light that had crossed the gate had already vanished, but I kept seeing it in my mind. It was not especially large or strong. There was nothing about it that attested to an extraordinary ability. And yet it had succeeded in doing what thousands of other consciousnesses had not succeeded in doing.
Coming out.
Not because someone pulled it out, but because it succeeded in keeping itself even as it passed from one place to another.
I thought of all the times in my life when I tried to help someone. Of the advice I gave, of the decisions I wanted to make for others, of the difficulty of watching a loved one make a choice that seemed wrong to me.
There was a great difference between the desire to help and the ability to stand aside and allow another to choose.
I did not always know how to distinguish between them.
Adara came closer to me.
"Are you tired?" she asked.
I smiled.
"I no longer know if that word suits me."
"Even without a body one can reach a state in which it is hard to bear any more thoughts."
"Then perhaps yes."
She looked at the darkened record.
"We can continue tomorrow."
"Is there a tomorrow here?"
"Not exactly. But one can decide there will be a break."
I gazed at her. For so long she had carried responsibility for other consciousnesses that it seemed she had forgotten she too was permitted to set it down for a moment.
"I want to meet Eliya," I said.
Adara nodded.
"I thought you would ask."
"Do you know where she is?"
"Yes. She returned to the place where she used to wait for you."
"By the Tree?"
"No. To the place where you parted for the last time, before your human life."
I looked at her.
"The room with the two windows?"
"Yes."
I left the library alone.
Liara offered to accompany me, but I asked her to stay. Not because I wanted to hide anything, but because I understood there are conversations that cannot be held when another person stands beside us.
Throughout the whole journey, Eliya had appeared again and again in my memories.
Sometimes as a red figure waiting beyond the space.
Sometimes as a voice asking me not to go.
Sometimes as a woman who had loved someone I no longer know whether she was me.
I knew she had waited for me for a very long time.
But until now I had not seriously asked myself what had happened to her during that time.
I had grown used to thinking of her waiting as part of my story.
As if all the years in which she waited existed only so that one day I would arrive and discover who I had been.
Now I understood how little I knew about her.
She was not only the one who had waited for me.
She had a life of her own, memories of her own, and perhaps also choices that had nothing to do with me.
The closer I came to the room, the more I felt an apprehension I had not known before.
I was not afraid of what Eliya would tell me about the past.
I was afraid she would ask me to be again someone I cannot be.
The room stood at the end of a narrow passage.
It had no guard.
No entry through an ancient gate was required.
The door stood slightly open, and through it a faint light could be seen.
I stopped before entering.
I heard movement.
Then Eliya's voice.
"You may come in."
I pushed the door.
The room looked almost exactly as I had seen it in the records.
A narrow table stood at its center. Beyond one window a black sea moved, in which no waves could be seen, only slow movements of deep light. The second window was transparent now, and through it bright skies with no sun in them could be seen.
Eliya stood by the table.
The reddish light around her was fainter than I remembered.
She looked at me, and did not hurry to come closer.
"Hello," she said.
"Hello."
For a moment I did not know what to say.
I thought of all the questions I had prepared on the way, but now they suddenly seemed remote.
Eliya smiled faintly.
"You look different."
I looked at myself.
"I don't even have fixed features."
"I did not mean your form."
She moved closer to the chair, but did not sit down.
"When I met you by the Tree, you wanted to know who you had been. Now it seems to me you are asking who you want to be."
I gazed at her.
"Perhaps."
She nodded.
"That is a harder question."
We sat down on either side of the table.
There was no contact between us.
Eliya placed a silver leaf before her.
I recognized it at once.
The thin line that split it in two was still there.
"I thought the leaf was with Adara," I said.
"There is more than one."
I looked at her.
"What does it really symbolize?"
Eliya passed her finger along the line.
"Once it was a sign of a promise."
"What promise?"
"That we would not demand of each other to give up what separates us."
I was silent.
She smiled sadly.
"Strange, isn't it? After everything that happened, that is the thing we promised."
"Why did we need to promise such a thing?"
Eliya looked at the black window.
"Because in those days almost everyone we knew believed that deep closeness required total sharing. If you loved someone, you wanted to know everything he felt. If he was in pain, you wanted to carry the pain with him. If he was afraid, you wanted to enter his fear and stay there until he calmed."
"That sounds like love."
"Sometimes it really was love."
She turned to me.
"But sometimes it was also our way of not bearing the fact that there are things we cannot fix for those we love."
I thought of Echada.
Of her sister Adara.
Of the attempt to divide the pain among many consciousnesses.
"And you?" I asked.
"What about me?"
"Did you too want to know everything I felt?"
Eliya smiled.
"At first, yes."
"And what changed?"
"You."
She rose and went to the bright window.
"When we met, you were very quiet. Not because you had no thoughts, but because you did not like to speak before you understood what you thought."
I smiled.
The description sounded familiar.
"I am still like that sometimes."
"I know."
Eliya looked at me.
"I was different. I was sure almost any problem could be solved if we thought about it enough. I did not like partial answers. I did not like waiting."
"It sounds as if in that, too, you haven't changed much."
She laughed quietly.
It was the first laughter I had heard from her.
Not a great laugh.
Only a brief moment in which the heaviness that wrapped her softened.
"Perhaps," she said.
She returned to the table.
"Once I asked you to share a memory with me. A memory that was very hard for you. I wanted to understand you."
"And what did I do?"
"You said no."
I looked at her.
"Were you angry?"
"Very."
"Why?"
"Because I thought that if you loved me, there should be nothing between us that you hide."
She lowered her gaze.
"And you told me I was confusing trust with free access to everything inside you."
I remained quiet.
Eliya continued:
"It took me time to understand that you did not refuse because you did not trust me. You refused because there was a place in you that you were not yet ready to open, even to yourself."
"And what happened afterward?"
"I stayed."
She smiled.
"I did not receive the memory. I did not receive an explanation. I simply stayed beside you."
I felt something soften within me.
"And that was enough?"
"Not always. There were days when I wanted to ask again. But gradually I learned that there is a way to know someone without entering all the places within him."
I gazed at Eliya.
Until now I had seen her as a figure from the past.
Now, for the first time, I began to see the path she herself had traveled.
"What were we to each other?" I asked.
She leaned back.
"What answer are you looking for?"
"The truth."
"The truth is not simple."
"I am ready to hear it."
Eliya thought for a while.
"We were very close. We shared long periods of searching, work and wandering. There were moments of joy between us, arguments, long silences. We knew each other's fears, but not all of them."
She paused.
"I loved you."
I felt the words.
I did not know how to reply.
"As human beings love?" I asked.
"I do not know exactly how human beings love."
She smiled.
"But if you are asking whether I wanted to be close to you, whether I missed you when you moved away, whether I was glad when you returned and whether it hurt me when you left — yes."
"And were we a couple?"
Eliya looked at me seriously.
"There were periods in which we chose to be beside each other more than any other consciousness. There were also periods in which we grew distant. We had no body, no shared home and no human life as you know them. But there was a commitment between us."
"What commitment?"
"To tell the truth even when we are afraid of losing each other."
She lowered her gaze.
"And we did not always succeed."
"Do you still love me?" I asked.
The question left me before I had time to think about it.
Eliya did not look surprised.
"I love the one I remember," she said. "And I feel closeness to the one sitting before me now. But I do not yet know whether it is the same love."
I looked at her.
The answer hurt a little.
Perhaps because part of me wanted to hear that love can remain unchanged for thousands of years.
But I knew that precisely her honest answer gives me room to be who I am.
"I too do not know what I feel toward you," I said.
Eliya nodded.
"I know."
"There is a feeling in me that I know you. Sometimes I feel longing, but I do not know if it is mine or that of someone I once was."
"There is no need for you to decide now."
"You waited so long."
She looked at me.
"That was my choice."
"But perhaps you wasted your time."
Eliya smiled sadly.
"Time is not wasted only because we did not receive what we hoped for."
She paused.
"And yet, there are years I regret."
I looked at her.
"Truly?"
"Yes. There were periods in which I could have known other consciousnesses, learned new things, reached places I had not seen. And I chose to stay close to the Tree, because I was afraid that if I moved away, you would return and I would not find you."
"Why didn't you ask someone to notify you?"
"I asked. But I did not trust that the message would arrive."
She looked at the silver leaf.
"Slowly the waiting became part of me. Sometimes I no longer knew whether I was waiting for you, or guarding the person I was when you were still here."
Her words accompanied me for a long time.
I thought of the woman who had returned to my home.
Of the fact that she too carried my memories, but had already begun living a life that is not mine.
I thought of Aran, who did not want to erase his memories of his wife.
And of Mira, who kept the image of her son in the kitchen.
Each of them tried to preserve something he loved.
But can love be preserved without trying to stop time?
"I want to ask you something," I said.
Eliya nodded.
"If I had returned as I was before my human life, would you have been happier?"
She thought.
"Perhaps in the first moment."
"And afterward?"
"Afterward I would have discovered that I too had changed."
She smiled.
"There really is no way to return to the place where we were. Even if the memories remain, those who carry them keep changing."
I looked at her.
"So what remains of love?"
Eliya looked at the bright window.
"Perhaps the desire to know again."
I was silent.
She continued:
"Not only to remember who you were, but to take interest in who you are now. Not to demand that you feel as you felt in the past. Not to hold you in the place where I remember you."
I felt that the words touched me too.
Not only in my relation to Eliya.
Also in my relation to my children.
To the woman who returned home.
To everyone I knew in the human world.
How many times do we love a person, and yet find it hard to accept that he is changing?
We miss the child he was, the person we knew, the relationship we had.
And sometimes, out of longing, we stop seeing the one standing before us.
"I want you to tell me about your life," I said.
Eliya looked at me in surprise.
"About which life?"
"About the time when I was not here."
She was silent.
"Not only about the waiting. What did you do? Whom did you meet? What did you learn?"
She gazed at me for a long time.
Then she smiled.
"You never asked me that."
I felt embarrassment.
"I know."
"Even before you left, you did not always ask."
I looked at her.
She did not say it as an accusation.
But the words struck me.
"Was I too busy with the search?"
"Sometimes."
She smiled.
"You were capable of sitting for hours before one question. If you found a hint of an answer, everything else became less important."
I thought of my journey.
Of the way I passed from figure to figure, from secret to secret, almost without stopping.
"I still do that."
"I noticed."
This time we both smiled.
Then Eliya began to tell.
She told me of a period in which she left the City of Consciousnesses and wandered among young worlds.
In one of them she met creatures who lived a very short time compared to the time she knew.
They did not have bodies like ours, but they could sense one another through vibrations of light and heat.
"At first I pitied them," she said. "Their lives were so short. They were born, learned to know their surroundings, formed connections, and already began to weaken."
"And what changed?"
"One day I saw two of them meet after a long parting. They did not know if they would see each other again. And when they met, all the light around them changed."
She paused.
"There was nothing eternal in it. On the contrary. They knew the meeting would end. But their joy was full."
I thought of the embrace I had seen in the house.
Of my children running to the woman.
"And what did you learn from them?"
"That one does not always need to prolong a thing in order to give it value."
She looked at me.
"That was a hard thought for me. For a long time I believed that the longer a bond lasts, the deeper it is."
"And you no longer believe that?"
"I think the length of time is only part of the story."
She smiled sadly.
"One can be close to someone for thousands of years without really knowing him. And one can meet someone for a short time and leave the meeting different from what one was."
She also told me of a young consciousness she met in the city.
That consciousness asked her to learn how to preserve memories.
"She was afraid of forgetting," Eliya told. "Everything she saw she wanted to preserve. Every conversation, every thought, every sensation."
"That sounds familiar."
"Yes. I too was like that."
Eliya continued:
"One day she asked me how one can know what is important to remember. I did not know what to answer. Then I understood that I myself had preserved so many memories that some of them had stopped being meaningful to me."
"What did you do?"
"I began to choose."
"To erase?"
"Not necessarily. Sometimes only to stop returning to them."
I thought of my human life.
Of photographs I kept.
Of objects I did not want to throw away.
Of old messages I went back to reading.
Sometimes it seemed to me that if I kept everything, I would lose nothing.
But in the human world, too, it was impossible to live inside all the memories at once.
In order to experience the present, we had to let part of the past remain behind.
"And what was the most important thing you learned?" I asked.
Eliya was silent.
She looked at the silver leaf on the table.
"I learned that I cannot turn my waiting into your obligation."
I felt the words deep within me.
"I do not want you to think you owe me love because I waited," she continued. "Or because we were once close."
"But your waiting was real."
"Yes. And it belongs to me."
She looked at me.
"If we want to be close now, we will have to choose it anew."
I was silent.
For a moment I wanted to come closer to her.
Not out of memory.
Not out of obligation.
Simply because I felt she understood something I was beginning to learn.
But I did not know how closeness is expressed when there is no body.
Eliya noticed my hesitation.
She extended her hand, but stopped before touching me.
"May I?" she asked.
I nodded.
Her palm drew near to mine.
I felt no skin.
No warmth.
I felt a clear presence of another consciousness, very close, but not inside me.
The sensation was delicate.
It did not resemble the connection that nearly erased the boundaries between me and the woman.
It was quieter.
I could move away at any moment.
And so could Eliya.
We remained thus for a while.
Then we moved apart.
"There is something I need to tell you," I said.
Eliya looked at me.
"About the woman who returned to the body?"
I was surprised.
"You know?"
"Liara told me she returned to the human world."
"She is at home. With the children."
Eliya nodded.
"I am glad."
I looked at her.
"Truly?"
"Yes."
"I thought you might think she took my life from me."
Eliya shook her head.
"She took nothing. She woke into a life she too remembers."
I felt relief.
"I miss them," I said.
"I know."
"Sometimes I think I made a mistake when I ate the fruit."
Eliya did not hurry to answer.
"And sometimes?"
"Sometimes I feel I would not give up everything I saw."
She nodded.
"Both feelings can be true."
I looked at her.
"That is hard."
"Yes."
"In my human life I grew used to thinking that every great decision needs a clear answer. If I chose rightly, I should be at peace with the choice."
Eliya smiled sadly.
"And you no longer think so?"
"I am beginning to understand that even a choice I believe in can involve loss."
She looked at me quietly.
"That is an important understanding."
I rose from the chair and moved closer to the black window.
The sea beyond it moved slowly.
"Do you remember the moment when I left?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Can you tell me how you felt? Not what we said. What you truly felt."
Eliya remained by the table.
"I was afraid."
"Of what?"
"That you would not return."
"And what else?"
She was silent.
"I was angry."
I turned to her.
"At me?"
"Yes."
She lowered her gaze.
"Part of me felt that you were choosing the search again instead of staying with me."
I felt pain.
"But I wanted to find a way to open the door."
"I know."
"Then why were you angry?"
"Because the knowledge did not cancel the feeling."
I was silent.
Eliya continued:
"I was proud of you for not giving up. And at the same time I wanted you to stay. I wanted you to tell me the search could wait."
"And why didn't you ask?"
"I asked. Not in those words, but I asked."
I remembered the record.
Do not go.
I looked at her.
"And I went."
"Yes."
Silence fell.
"Are you still angry?" I asked.
Eliya thought for a long time.
"Not as I was angry then. But there is pain in me that did not vanish only because time passed."
I looked at her.
"I am sorry."
She nodded.
"I know."
I did not ask her to forgive me.
I did not try to explain again why I left.
I stood before her and gave her pain room.
After a while Eliya rose and came to me.
We both stood before the black sea.
"There is something you need to know," she said.
I felt tension.
"Another secret?"
She smiled.
"No. This time it is only a thought."
I looked at her.
"When I waited for you, I imagined many times the moment when you would return. I thought of what I would say to you, how you would look, what you would remember. Sometimes I was sure we would continue exactly from the place where we parted."
She paused.
"But when I met you by the Tree, I understood that would not happen."
"Were you disappointed?"
"At first."
"And now?"
She looked at me.
"Now I am curious."
I smiled.
"About me?"
"Yes."
She smiled back.
"I want to know who you became during your human life."
I felt a quiet excitement.
Until now almost everyone I met had asked to tell me who I was before I was born.
Eliya was the first who asked to hear who I was as a human woman.
I told her about my life.
Not all of it.
It is impossible to tell an entire life in one conversation, even when there is no limit of time.
I told of the home.
Of the children.
Of the moments in which I felt full of love, and of the moments in which I felt no one understood me.
I told of mornings in which I was busy with such small things that no time remained for me to think of great questions.
Of shopping.
Of food.
Of laundry.
Of conversations I did not manage to finish.
Of worries.
Of joys I had not planned.
Eliya listened.
She did not interrupt me.
She did not try to compare every experience to an ancient memory.
When I told her about my children, she asked simple questions.
What do they love?
What are they afraid of?
How do they laugh?
What do I love doing with them?
The questions surprised me.
I had thought she would be interested in the meaning of motherhood, in the bond between consciousnesses born one out of another, or in the way love changes when it is tied to a body.
But she wanted to know about them.
About the children themselves.
I told her of the way each of them is different from the others.
Of how even when they grew up in the same house, with the same parents, each saw the world differently.
"And that didn't trouble you?" she asked.
"Sometimes it was hard."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted to protect them. And when I did not understand their choices, I was afraid."
Eliya nodded.
"But you loved them even when they were different from you."
"Of course."
She smiled.
"Then perhaps you knew about boundaries between consciousnesses more than you thought."
We continued talking.
I did not know how much time passed.
For the first time since I left my body, I felt no need to reach another place.
I did not look for a gate.
I did not ask to see a record.
I did not try to understand what preceded creation.
I sat before another consciousness and told her about my life.
She listened.
Sometimes she asked.
Sometimes she was silent.
And the silence was not empty.
It was part of the conversation.
At a certain point Eliya rose.
"I want to show you something."
She went to a small cabinet at the edge of the room.
From it she took out a round object, almost entirely transparent.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A memory I kept."
I felt apprehension.
"Ours?"
"No. Mine."
She placed it on the table.
"You do not have to look."
I looked at her.
"I want to."
She opened the memory.
I saw Eliya in a place I did not know.
She stood at the edge of a wide space, full of small lights that moved like a flock of birds.
Beside her stood a young consciousness.
She was not familiar to me.
The young consciousness looked at the lights.
"Are you still waiting for her?" she asked.
Eliya nodded.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I promised."
The young consciousness thought a moment.
"And if she does not return?"
Eliya did not answer.
"And if she returns but does not remember you?"
Eliya looked at the lights.
"Then I will have to know her anew."
"And if she does not want to?"
Silence fell.
At last Eliya said:
"Then I will have to learn to go on without her."
The young consciousness came closer to her.
"Are you afraid of that?"
"Very."
"Then why do you wait?"
Eliya smiled sadly.
"Because I still want to know whether she will return."
The young consciousness was silent.
Then she said:
"I hope that in the meantime you do not forget to live."
The memory ended.
Eliya stood before me.
"Who was that consciousness?" I asked.
"Someone who taught me a great deal."
"Where is she now?"
"In another world. She chose to live an embodied life."
I looked at her.
"Do you miss her?"
"Yes."
"Then she is important to you too."
"Very."
For a moment I felt something I had not expected.
Jealousy.
Not strong.
But clear.
It surprised me.
I had no right to expect Eliya to wait for me for ages without forming other bonds.
And yet, the knowledge that someone else had been close to her stirred a strange feeling in me.
Eliya noticed the change.
"What happened?"
I hesitated.
Then I decided to tell the truth.
"I think I was jealous for a moment."
She looked at me in surprise.
Then she smiled.
"Truly?"
"Yes. And it is not logical."
"Feelings do not always ask logic's permission."
I smiled.
"You sound very human."
"Perhaps I learned something while I waited for you."
We both laughed quietly.
But afterward I became serious.
"I do not want you to think you need to choose between me and other bonds."
Eliya nodded.
"I know."
"And I do not want you to wait for me again in one place."
She looked at me.
"Neither do I."
Toward the end of the conversation we returned to the silver leaf.
It still lay on the table.
Eliya picked it up.
"Once I thought this leaf reminded me of your promise to return."
"And now?"
She looked at the line that crossed it.
"Now it reminds me that even if two consciousnesses are bound to each other, each of them has a path of her own."
She extended the leaf to me.
I did not take it at once.
"Do you want to give it to me?"
"Yes."
"But it is yours."
"I have the memory. I do not need to hold the symbol as well."
I looked at it.
Then I said:
"Perhaps we will leave it here."
Eliya looked surprised.
"Why?"
"Because I do not want to take with me another thing that will remind me what I owe the past."
She smiled.
"And what do you want it to remind you of?"
"That we can return here if we want to talk."
Eliya placed the leaf on the table.
"I like that."
When I rose to go, she accompanied me to the door.
For a moment we stood facing each other.
"Are you returning to Adara?" she asked.
"Yes. We are trying to understand how to open a safe passage for the disconnected consciousnesses."
"I want to help."
I looked at her.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I was there when the door closed. I know some of the records, and I remember things Adara may no longer remember."
She paused.
"But I do not want to join only because you are there."
I smiled.
"Then why?"
"Because I too was part of the decision. And because I want to know what happened to those who were left behind."
I nodded.
"Then come."
Eliya looked at the room.
At the black window.
At the bright window.
At the table on which the silver leaf rested.
"You know," she said, "for a long time I thought that if I left this place, I would lose the possibility of meeting you again."
"And now?"
She smiled.
"Now I think it is possible to meet in another place too."
She came out after me.
We walked together to the city.
We did not hold hands.
We did not share thoughts.
We spoke from time to time, and between the conversations we remained in silence.
I felt a closeness I had not known before.
Not a closeness born of the knowledge that we were bound in the past.
A closeness created by the conversation we had now.
I thought of my human life.
Of all the people I loved.
Of how no bond remains exactly as it was.
Children grow up.
Friends change.
Spouses learn new things about each other.
People move away, sometimes come close again.
And we go on loving, not because time stands still, but because we choose to know the person changing before us.
I looked at Eliya.
She noticed my gaze.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing."
She smiled.
"Are you thinking about something big again?"
"Not this time."
"Then about what?"
I thought a moment.
"About how pleasant it is for me to walk with you."
She looked at me.
Then she said:
"For me too."
We continued on our way.
As we approached the city, I saw its lights from afar.
Thousands of consciousnesses moved among the buildings.
Some alone.
Others in pairs or in small groups.
For the first time I did not see in them only beings thousands of years old holding immense knowledge.
I saw life.
Life that continued in different ways.
Life in which one can love, err, long, choose anew.
I thought of the fruit I had eaten.
Of the moment in which I believed that eternal life would allow me to free myself of the limitations of human existence.
Now I began to understand that the body was not the only source of my limitations.
Even without a body I could still fear.
Be jealous.
Regret.
Want someone to stay.
Find it hard to let go.
Eternity did not make me free of all these.
It only granted me much more time to learn how to live with them.
Eliya walked beside me.
I did not know whether the love that was once between us would return.
I did not know whether it needed to return.
But for the first time I felt there was no need to decide that in order to go on.
One can begin from the place where we are.
Know each other.
Listen.
And see where the path leads.
At the entrance to the city we stopped.
Eliya looked at me.
"I want to ask you something."
"Yes?"
"If you could return to the moment when you ate the fruit, knowing everything you know now, would you eat it again?"
I looked at the city's lights.
I thought of my home.
Of my children.
Of the woman who returned to them.
Of everything I had seen since I left my body.
I had no answer.
Once I would have been ashamed to admit that.
Now I was not.
"I do not know," I said.
Eliya nodded.
"That is a good answer."
I smiled.
"Why?"
"Because it leaves room for what you have not yet learned."
We continued walking.
For the first time since the journey began, I felt no need to know how it would end.
I knew there were still consciousnesses waiting for help.
More promises that needed to be examined.
More questions that remained unanswered.
But I also knew there are things that should not be postponed until we understand everything.
A conversation.
A meeting.
Closeness.
The possibility of telling someone it is pleasant for us to be beside him.
There was no need to reach the edge of the universe to discover their value.
Sometimes it was enough to sit before someone we once knew, to listen to what she had been through, and to understand that love is not only what we remember from the past.
Love can also be the willingness to meet anew the one standing before us, without demanding that he remain who he was.
And as we entered the city together, I understood that perhaps this was one of the greatest gifts eternity can grant.
Not a love that never changes.
But the possibility of continuing to choose it, even after we have changed.
End of Chapter Twenty-One
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