The Journey to Eternity · A serialized book by Nurit Rozenblat
↑ Book index · עברית · ← Chapter Twenty-Seven — The Price of Truth
Chapter Twenty-Eight — What Remains of Eternity
The last time I entered the passage room, Ila stood by the window.
She no longer looked like the frightened point of light we had met beyond the door. Her form was clearer, her movements confident, and on one of her fingers there still appeared the blue ring she remembered from her previous life.
Tama was speaking to her from the disconnected space.
I could not hear the words, but I saw Ila smile.
That smile surprised me. For so long we had been so occupied with what she had lost that we had almost forgotten to notice what had begun to be created.
Adara stood beside me.
"She asked to stay here for now," she said.
"And what about her memories?"
"Some of them are still separated from her. We keep them, but we will not return them unless she chooses so."
"And Tama?"
"They talk every day. Sometimes about the past, and sometimes about things that were never between them before."
I looked at Ila.
She raised her hand to the window, as if trying to touch the light streaming from it.
"She no longer asks to leave?"
"She asks to see what is outside. That is not exactly the same thing."
I smiled.
I thought of the woman I had first met inside the darkness, the one who remembered the wind on her face and was not willing to give up the possibility of feeling it again.
She was still there.
But other desires had been added to her.
"And Nura?" I asked.
Adara handed me a small tablet.
On it appeared branching lines, and between them many points of light.
"She has begun helping us identify the connections inside the disconnected space. She knows parts of it that we cannot see from outside."
"She agreed?"
"She demanded it."
I laughed quietly.
"That sounds like her."
Adara looked at me.
"She also asked that you know something."
"What?"
"She is still angry at you."
The smile vanished from my face.
"I know."
"But she wants you to go on with your life."
I looked at Adara.
"She said that?"
"In other words. She said she is not willing to be the reason you stay here and try to atone for the past for thousands of years."
I was silent.
Adara continued:
"She wants the gate to open. She wants to know what happened to her. And she wants to be a partner in the decisions. But she does not want you to turn her life into your punishment."
I looked at the tablet in my hand.
It held so many lines, so many connections we still did not understand.
"The work is still far from finished," I said.
"True."
"Will you continue?"
Adara looked at me with an almost offended expression.
"Of course."
"Even if I am not here?"
"Especially then."
She placed her hand on my shoulder.
"It was never supposed to depend on you in the first place."
I felt a relief I had not expected.
For a long time I had carried the past as if I were the only one capable of fixing it. Now, with others standing around me who were willing to continue, I understood how much of that responsibility I had taken upon myself without anyone asking me to.
I did not want to abandon those who remained behind.
But I also did not want to keep believing that everything would collapse the moment I left.
I approached Ila.
She noticed me and turned around.
"Are you traveling?" she asked.
"For a while."
"Where to?"
"To the place I came from."
She looked at me with curiosity.
"Is there wind there?"
I smiled.
"Yes. A lot."
"And you can feel it?"
I looked at the window.
"Not the way I once felt it."
She thought for a moment.
"Then why are you going back?"
The question was simple, and I had no simple answer to give her.
"Because there are people there whom I love."
"Are they waiting for you?"
I felt the familiar pain.
"Not exactly."
Ila asked no more.
She looked at the window again.
"I hope you find what you are looking for."
"So do I."
When I turned to go, she called me.
"You know, I still do not remember Tama."
I turned around.
"I know."
"But yesterday she told me something funny."
"Really?"
"Yes. And I laughed."
She smiled.
"So maybe one day we will have new memories, that we will not need to search for anywhere."
I looked at her for a long time.
"I think you have already begun creating them."
Eliya was waiting for me outside the room.
She did not ask where I was going. I had told her of my wish to return to the human world earlier.
"Do you want me to come with you?" she asked.
I looked at her.
For a moment I wanted to say yes.
I wanted her to stand beside me when I saw the house, to understand why I was still so bound to a place where I could no longer live.
But there was something in this journey that I had to do alone.
"Not this time," I said.
She nodded.
I saw no disappointment on her face, but I knew her well enough to know she did not always show everything she felt.
"I will come back," I added.
She smiled sadly.
"You do not have to promise me."
"I want to."
She came a little closer.
"Then I will wait to hear from you. But I will not stand still until you return."
I looked at her.
I remembered the silver leaf I had left with her in the distant past, and the promise bound up with it.
This time I understood the difference.
She was not asking me to return so that she could go on living.
She was already living.
And I wanted to be part of her life, not the only reason for it.
"Good," I said.
She smiled.
"Good."
The way to the human world was shorter than I remembered.
Perhaps because I already knew it.
And perhaps because this time I did not try to cling to every place I passed through.
When I arrived, the sun was about to set.
The street looked familiar.
The same trees.
The same sidewalks.
The same house.
And yet, something had changed.
I did not know whether it was the years that had passed, or me.
I stood before the entrance for a long time before I went in.
I could have passed through the wall.
I could have entered without anyone seeing me.
But I did not want to do that right away.
Once I would open this door without thinking.
I would come in with bags, call the children, set things on the table and continue to the kitchen.
Now I stood outside, as if I were a guest who had not been invited.
In the end I crossed the threshold.
I heard voices from the kitchen.
Someone laughed.
Then came the sound of a dish that had fallen.
"That wasn't me," said a young voice.
"Of course it wasn't," another voice replied.
I smiled without meaning to.
I knew those voices.
Even after everything I had been through, I would have recognized them anywhere.
I entered the kitchen.
The children sat around the table.
One of them was arguing about something I could not make out. The other listened with half an ear, occupied with what was before him.
My daughter was telling about a place she had been, about people she had met and a decision she was deliberating over.
And then I saw her.
The woman who lives in my body.
She stood by the counter, her hair gathered carelessly, wearing a shirt I knew well.
She looked like me.
Not exactly as I remembered myself, but as I appeared in the eyes of others.
The same hands.
The same way of standing.
The same small movements I used to make without noticing.
But there was something different about her.
She listened to my daughter without interrupting her.
Waited until she finished speaking.
And then she asked:
"What do you really want to do?"
My daughter shrugged.
"I don't know."
"Then don't decide tonight."
I looked at her.
I would have said something else.
I would probably have begun explaining what I thought she should do. I would have told of my life experience, of what I had learned, of mistakes worth avoiding.
I would have done it out of love.
But perhaps also out of my own difficulty in seeing my children stand before decisions I could not make in their place.
The woman before me did not try to fill the silence.
She simply stayed there.
My husband entered the kitchen.
He looked a little tired.
He placed his hand on the woman's back as he passed by her, and she turned to him with a brief smile.
That gesture was so small that there was almost nothing to it.
But I felt it deep inside me.
He did not know I was there.
He did not know there was someone watching him and remembering whole years they had lived together.
He saw his wife.
And she saw him.
I thought I would be jealous.
And indeed I was jealous.
I did not want to admit it, even to myself.
The jealousy was not only about the touch.
It was about the simplicity.
About the possibility of standing in a kitchen, reaching out a hand, feeling the warmth of a loved one's body.
About the possibility of taking part in life without thinking at every moment about its meaning.
I wanted to be there.
Not as an observer.
Not as an ancient consciousness.
I wanted to lift the cup from the table, remark to the child sitting too far away, taste the food and ask whether it needed salt.
Small things.
So small.
And yet, at that moment I was ready to give up a large part of what I had discovered in order to experience them again.
One of the children told something that had happened to him.
He tried to sound indifferent, but I saw on his face that something was troubling him.
The woman sat down beside him.
"Do you want to tell me what really happened?" she asked.
He was silent.
She did not press.
After a while he began to speak.
He told of someone who had hurt him, of something that had been said, and of how he had not known how to respond.
I listened.
There was in me a strong desire to come close to him.
To lay my hand on his head.
To tell him that I understood.
But I could not.
And the woman sitting beside him did exactly what I had wanted to do.
She listened.
She did not solve it at once.
She did not promise that everything would be all right.
She only stayed with him until he finished.
And then he leaned on her.
She embraced him.
I felt such a sharp pain that I had to move away from the table.
Not because she had done something wrong.
On the contrary.
Because she had done something good.
And because I was so glad for my child, and at the same time it hurt me that I was not the one holding him.
I stood by the window and tried to understand how it is possible to feel love and jealousy at the same moment, without one of them canceling the other.
The evening continued.
The children rose from the table.
Someone asked for more food.
Someone else disappeared into his room.
My husband began clearing the dishes.
The woman remained alone in the kitchen for a moment.
She leaned on the counter and closed her eyes.
I came a little closer.
I did not know why.
Perhaps I wanted to see whether there was something of me in her.
Not in the memories.
Not in the movements.
Something deeper.
She opened her eyes and looked toward the window.
For a moment it seemed she was looking straight at me.
I did not move.
She kept looking.
And then she said quietly:
"Strange."
My husband, who stood behind her, raised his head.
"What is strange?"
She smiled in embarrassment.
"I don't know. Sometimes I have a feeling that someone misses us."
He looked at her.
"Someone?"
"Yes."
She shook her head.
"It sounds foolish when I say it out loud."
"Maybe you are simply tired."
"Maybe."
He came to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
She leaned on him for a moment.
And I stood on the other side of the window, though there was nothing between us but a distance I did not know how to measure.
I did not know whether she had sensed me.
Perhaps something of the connection between us remained.
Perhaps it was only a passing thought of hers, which had nothing to do with me.
I did not want to turn that moment into proof.
I had already learned how easy it is to cling to something we want to be true.
But her words touched me.
Someone misses us.
Yes.
Someone did miss them.
Very much.
I wanted to thank her.
For going on.
For being there for the children.
For not trying to be exactly who I had been.
But she owed me nothing.
This was her life now.
And the children were not the property of either of us.
They were people in their own right, who would go on changing, loving, being hurt, choosing and growing.
Even if I would not be there to see it all.
I stayed in the house until the lights went out.
I passed through the rooms.
I saw objects I knew.
Pictures.
Books.
Clothes.
Some things were no longer in their places.
Others had been added.
In one room I found a new family photograph.
I stood before it for a long time.
Everyone smiled.
Even the woman who looked like me.
For a moment I tried to imagine myself inside the picture.
But I could not.
Not because I had no place in their hearts.
But because the picture had been taken after I left.
It belonged to a life I had not lived.
And that was the hardest thing to accept.
Life goes on creating memories even when we are no longer part of it.
Before I left, I returned to the kitchen.
A cup of water remained on the table.
I looked at it.
I remembered how many times I had drunk water without thinking.
How many times I had felt thirst, heat, tiredness, hunger.
How many times I had complained about a small pain or a busy day.
Now I was able to move between worlds, to see places no human had seen and to hear consciousnesses that had lived tens of thousands of years.
But I could not lift the cup.
I could not feel the cold water on my lips.
I suddenly understood that my longing was not only for people.
I missed the body too.
Its limits.
The tiredness at the end of a day.
The hunger that reminds us to eat.
The touch of a cold floor beneath the soles of the feet.
The fact that there is morning and there is evening, and that one cannot be everywhere at once.
Once I thought those limits were part of the problem of life.
Now I was beginning to understand that they are also part of its experience.
I left the house without saying goodbye.
I did not want to create a sign.
I did not want to wake anyone.
I only stood another moment by the door.
I thought of the woman inside.
That one day she might discover who I am.
And perhaps not.
I thought of the possibility that we might meet.
Not as two who struggle over the same life, but as two women who carry within them a shared beginning and continued in different ways.
I did not know whether that meeting was possible.
But for the first time I did not feel that I had to make it happen.
I continued walking.
I did not return to the city at once.
Something drew me to the place where it all began.
The orchard.
I remembered the way.
The light that was in the sky that evening.
The smell of the earth.
The trees.
And the silver bird.
When I arrived, the sun was again about to set.
I did not know whether it was a coincidence or whether that place always existed at the hour between day and night.
The orchard looked almost as I remembered it.
The branches of the trees moved in the wind.
The earth was dark.
And at the end of the path stood the ancient tree.
The tree from which I had eaten the fruit.
I stopped before it.
For a moment I felt again as if I were the woman I had been then.
A grown woman, who had lived a life full of questions.
Who had read, learned, loved, lost people dear to her and tried to understand why we are here.
A woman who was not satisfied with answers given to her only because they were accepted.
A woman who wanted to know whether there is something beyond what the eyes are able to see.
I remembered myself walking in the orchard after sunset.
I remembered the first voice I had heard.
And then I heard it again.
"You came back."
The silver bird stood on one of the low branches.
Its wings were folded.
Its eyes looked at me quietly.
I smiled.
"Yes."
"A long time has passed."
"I no longer know how much."
It tilted its head slightly.
"Does time matter to you now?"
I thought of the house I had left.
"More than I thought it would."
The bird spread its wings a little.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
I looked at the tree.
"I found many things I did not know I was looking for."
"But?"
"I did not find the answer to the question for which I set out."
"Which question?"
"Why we exist."
The bird was silent.
I looked at the sky.
"I saw worlds being born. I met consciousnesses that existed before my birth. I learned that time may not be what I thought, and that even what we call a beginning was not necessarily the beginning of everything."
I moved closer to the tree.
"But I still do not know why there is something rather than nothing."
"And do you still think you must know?"
I thought for a long time.
"I still want to know."
"That was not the question."
I smiled.
"No. I no longer think I must."
The bird descended from the branch and stood on a nearby stone.
"And what did you learn about eternity?"
I looked at it.
"That it is not as I imagined."
"What did you imagine?"
"I thought that if I had enough time, I could understand everything. That I could reach every place, read every book, meet every consciousness and find answers to all the questions."
"And now?"
"Now I understand that even endless time does not guarantee endless understanding."
The bird was silent.
"And even if I understand one thing, it will lead me to new questions."
"Does that disappoint you?"
"Sometimes."
"And sometimes?"
I looked at the branches.
"Sometimes I am glad there is more to discover."
The bird moved its head.
"So eternity still draws you."
"Yes. But not only it."
"What else?"
"The life I left behind."
I told it about the house.
About the children.
About the woman who lives in my body.
About the moment when I saw one of my children lean on her.
About the jealousy I felt.
And about the love.
I did not try to hide anything.
The bird listened.
When I finished, it asked:
"Do you want to return to them?"
"Yes."
"Then why do you not return?"
I looked at it.
"Because their lives are no longer waiting for me in the same place."
"But they still exist."
"True."
"And you still love them."
"Very much."
It came a little closer.
"So what prevents you?"
I thought of the woman who had stood in the kitchen.
Of her smile.
Of the hand that had been laid on her shoulder.
"I do not want to take her life from her."
"Even if it was once yours?"
"Yes."
The bird was silent.
"That is an answer you would not have given when we first met," it said at last.
"I know."
We stood together before the tree.
The leaves moved in the wind, and the sun's last light passed between them.
The bird looked at me for a long time.
And then it asked:
"After everything you have seen, if you could return to the moment when you ate the fruit, would you choose eternal life again?"
The question remained hanging between us.
I thought of that moment.
Of the golden fruit in my palm.
Of the curiosity.
Of the fear.
Of the feeling that I stood before something so great that if I gave it up I would never forgive myself.
I thought of everything that had happened since.
Of the body I had left.
Of the children.
Of my mother.
Of my brother.
Of people I had loved and lost.
Of Eliya.
Of Liara, Adara and Sahar.
Of Nera, Ila, Tama and Nura.
Of all the consciousnesses I had met.
Of the places I had seen.
Of the new questions born in me.
I did not want to give up all of those.
But neither could I say that I would choose again with the same ease.
"I do not know," I answered.
The bird did not seem surprised.
"Once you were certain."
"Once I did not know what I was leaving behind."
"And now?"
"Now I know that even a life without end has things that cannot be restored."
The bird gazed at me.
"Do you regret it?"
I thought.
"There are things I regret."
"And the choice itself?"
I looked at a small fruit that had begun to grow on one of the branches.
"I cannot separate the choice from everything that came after it."
"Why?"
"Because if I had not eaten the fruit, I would not have met everyone I met. I would not have discovered what I discovered. And perhaps I would not have understood how precious the life I already had was."
I was silent a moment.
"But if I had known the price in advance, perhaps I would have chosen differently."
The bird did not answer.
"And I think that is what is hardest for me," I continued. "That I will never know what my life would have looked like had I chosen differently."
The bird folded its wings.
"No one knows."
"Not even one who lives forever?"
"Not even."
I sat on the stone beside it.
I had a strange feeling.
Not tiredness.
Not pain.
Something that resembled acceptance, but not entirely.
I had not made peace with everything I had lost.
I had not stopped missing.
I had not given up the desire to know.
But I no longer felt that I had to reach one answer that would justify everything I had been through.
Perhaps because I understood that no single answer could do that.
"You know," I said to the bird, "for years I thought that long life was one of the greatest gifts one could receive."
"And you no longer think so?"
"I still think life is a gift. But now I understand that its length is not the only thing that determines its value."
I looked at the orchard.
"There are people who live a short time and leave behind a great love. And there are those who live many years without feeling that they truly took part in their lives."
The bird listened.
"I do not want to spend eternity only watching what happens."
"So what do you want?"
I thought about the question.
"To go on being part of something."
"Of what?"
"Of connections. Of learning. Of creation. Of love. Even if it changes. Even if it involves loss."
The sun went down a little more.
The light grew softer.
The bird hopped onto the root of the tree.
"And what will you do now?"
"I will return to the city."
"To whom?"
"To those who are waiting for me. And to those who are not waiting, but might wish to meet me."
The bird tilted its head.
"And will you go on searching for the secret of creation?"
I smiled.
"Of course."
"Even though you are not sure you will find it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
I thought a moment.
"Because the search itself changes me."
The bird was silent.
"But this time I do not want to forget to live while I search."
I rose from the stone.
I looked at the tree once more.
It looked older than anything I had seen, and yet it bore young leaves.
There was something beautiful in that sight.
I did not know whether the tree was created before time, whether it grew out of laws of reality I did not know, or whether it was part of an even greater system.
Perhaps one day I would discover.
And perhaps not.
I turned to go.
And then I heard the bird calling me.
"There is one thing you did not ask me."
I stopped.
"What?"
"Why you, of all, succeeded in finding the tree."
I looked at it.
"I thought I had come to it by chance."
"So you thought."
Something in its voice changed.
There was no longer in it the soft tone with which it had spoken to me before.
It sounded older.
"So who brought me here?" I asked.
The bird looked at me.
"You."
I waited for it to continue.
But it was silent.
"I do not understand."
"I know."
"I do not remember coming here before."
"Not in this life."
I felt something stir within me.
Not a clear memory.
More like the feeling that sometimes accompanies us when we enter a new place and feel we have already been there.
I looked at the tree.
For a moment it seemed I was seeing it differently.
Not as a tree I had met for the first time.
But as something that had waited for me.
"Are you saying I was here before I was born?"
"Yes."
"As the consciousness I was then?"
"Yes."
"Then why did I not remember?"
The bird did not answer.
I came closer to it.
"What happened here?"
It looked at me for a long time.
"Do you remember what I told you when we first met?"
I thought.
"That not everyone who finds the tree is ready for what it grants."
"True."
"And that I needed to understand that the choice is not simple."
"True."
"But you did not tell me I had already been here."
"No."
I felt tension.
"Why?"
The bird turned to the tree.
"Because that was part of the condition."
"Which condition?"
It did not answer at once.
The wind grew a little stronger.
The leaves moved, and between them appeared a light that did not come from the sun.
"Before you were born as a human woman, you came here and asked something of me," it said.
"What did I ask?"
"To live a life in which you would not remember what you were before."
I felt the words.
"Why would I ask for such a thing?"
"Because you wanted to know something you had failed to understand for a very long time."
"What?"
The bird looked at me.
"What the meaning of a life that has an end is."
I did not move.
I thought of my human life.
Of childhood.
Of adolescence.
Of the loves.
Of the children who were born.
Of the people I had lost.
Of the fear of death.
Of the desire to prolong life.
"So I chose to be human?" I asked.
"Yes."
"I chose to forget eternity?"
"Yes."
"And why did I return to the tree?"
The bird was silent.
"Because I wanted to remember again?"
"Partially."
I felt the heart I do not have trying to beat.
"What do you mean, partially?"
The bird came closer to me.
"The fruit you ate did not grant you eternal life."
I looked at it.
"Then what did it do?"
"It returned to you what was already yours."
I stood before the tree.
Suddenly all the things I had been through looked to me like part of a greater story.
The memories from before birth.
Eliya's ancient love.
The decision to close the door.
The failed experiment.
Human life.
The choice of the fruit.
Was everything connected?
Did I choose to be born a woman in order to flee the past?
In order to forget the guilt?
Or did I truly want to understand something about life, and the past simply waited for me for when I returned?
"Why did I choose to forget?" I asked.
The bird looked at me.
"That answer I cannot give you."
"Why?"
"Because you asked me not to tell it to you."
I was silent.
The wind passed between the branches.
I heard the leaves moving.
For the first time since I ate the fruit, I felt a fear that did not stem from the possibility of losing something.
Fear of what I might discover about myself.
"Then how will I know?" I asked at last.
The bird looked at me.
"When you are ready to remember."
"And who will decide when I am ready?"
It spread its wings.
"That is the question for which you returned."
Before I could answer, it rose from the stone.
Its silver wings caught the last light of the sunset.
For a moment it hovered above the tree.
And then vanished between the branches.
I remained alone in the orchard.
The sun had already set.
The tree stood before me, silent.
I laid my hand where I remembered I had once held the fruit.
I did not feel its rind.
Nor its weight.
But I remembered well the moment I decided to bite into it.
Then I thought I was choosing a future.
Now it became clear to me that perhaps I had chosen to return to a past I did not know existed.
I looked at the path that led out of the orchard.
I knew I would return to the city.
To Eliya.
To those who went on searching for a way to open the door.
I knew I would go on learning, asking and trying to understand.
But something had changed.
Until that evening I believed I was searching for the secret of eternity.
Now I understood that perhaps the greatest secret is not found at the edge of time, but within the choice I made before my human life began.
A choice I do not remember.
A choice that brought me to the world where I learned to love, to lose and to miss.
I thought of my children.
Of the woman who lives in my body.
Of Eliya.
Of Nura.
Of everyone who had been part of the way.
I did not want the new search to erase what I had learned on this journey.
I did not want to become again someone willing to give up the life before her in order to reach a distant answer.
I raised my gaze to the sky.
I did not know why the world was created.
I did not know what was before the beginning.
And I did not know what would happen to me after thousands more years.
But I knew that the human life I had lived was not merely a stop on the way to eternity.
They were a complete life.
With a love that did not need infinity in order to be real.
With a pain that did not grow smaller only because time continued.
And with simple moments, that no one promised me would return.
I stood there a while longer.
And then I turned to the path.
Behind me a soft rustle sounded among the leaves.
I did not turn around.
For the first time I did not feel that I had to chase every answer the moment it appeared.
I had whole lifetimes yet to discover it.
And perhaps, I thought as I left the orchard, eternity too has things it is unable to teach us.
Things that can be understood only when we know our time is limited.
I set out to seek the secret of eternity, and along the way I discovered the value of life.
But before I can understand why I chose to forget eternity, I will have to discover one more thing:
Who was I at the moment I decided to become human — and what did I ask to distance myself from?
End of Chapter Twenty-Eight
End of the First Book
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