Part 13 (1/2)

He dropped his arms to his sides.

Ora distractedly took off her gla.s.ses, folded them, and stuck them in a backpack pocket. She ran both hands firmly over her temples and kept them there for a moment, listening to a distant sound. Then suddenly she lunged at the ground and started to dig with her hands, pulling out clods of earth and stones, uprooting plants. Avram, with surprising quickness, jumped up and stood watching her tensely. She did not seem to notice him. She got up and started kicking the ground with her heel. Clods of earth flew, some of them hitting him. He did not move. His lips were pursed and his gaze was focused and stern. She knelt down, dislodged a sharp stone, and hit the ground with it. She pounded rapidly, biting her lower lip. Her thin-skinned face turned instantly red. Avram leaned over, knelt on one knee opposite her, and did not take his eyes off her. His hand rested on the earth with fingers spread, like someone about to run a race.

The pit grew deeper and wider. The white arm holding the stone rose and fell without pause. Avram c.o.c.ked his head to one side in bemus.e.m.e.nt and looked somewhat canine. Ora stopped. She leaned on her arms and stared at the broken, unraveled earth as though not comprehending what she saw, then stormed at it again with the stone. She moaned from the effort, from the fury. The back of her neck was flushed and sweaty, her thin s.h.i.+rt clung to her flesh.

”Ora,” Avram whispered cautiously, ”what are you doing?”

She stopped digging and looked around for a larger stone. She pushed a short tuft of hair off her forehead and wiped away the sweat. The pit she had dug was small and egg-shaped. She sat on her knees, grasped the stone with both hands, and struck down hard. Her head jerked forward with every strike, and each time she let out a groan. The skin on her hands began to tear. Avram watched, terrified, unable to look away from her scratched fingers. She did not seem to be weakening. On the contrary: she picked up her pace, pounded and groaned, and after a moment she tossed the stone away and started to burrow with her hands. She dug up little stones and large ones and flung them away, and handfuls of damp earth flew through her legs and over her head. His face stretched and lengthened and his eyes bulged. She did not see. She seemed to have forgotten he was there. Dirt clung to her forehead and cheeks. Her beautiful eyebrows were covered with arches of earth, and sticky channels plowed their way around her mouth. With an outstretched hand she measured the little crater before her. She cleaned it out, smoothed the bottom with a gentle motion as though she were rolling dough into a baking pan. ”Ora, no,” Avram whispered into his palm, and even though he knew what she was about to do, he pulled back in fear. With three quick movements Ora lay down and buried her face in the gaping earth.

She spoke, but he could not make out her words. Her hands were palm-down on the sides of her head like gra.s.shopper feet. Her short-cropped hair, speckled with earth and dust, trembled on the back of her neck. Her voice was a dim, crushed lament, like a person pleading before a judge. But it was a cruel and coldhearted judge, Avram thought, a cowardly judge, like me. From time to time she raised her head and opened her mouth wide for air, without looking at him, without seeing anything, then buried her face back in the ground. The morning flies were drawn to her sweat. Her legs, in dirty walking pants, moved and twitched every so often, and her entire body was tensed and bound up, and Avram, on the earth's surface, began to dart back and forth.

The Hula Valley turned golden at their feet, flooded with sunlight. The fish hatcheries glistened and the peach groves blossomed pink. Ora lay facedown and told a story to the belly of the earth and tasted the clods of soil and knew they would not sweeten, would be forever bland and gritty. Dirt ground between her teeth, dirt stuck to her tongue, to the roof of her mouth, and turned to mud. Snot ran from her nose, her eyes watered, and she choked and gargled dirt, and she beat her hands on the ground at either side of her head, and a thought drove like a nail, deeper and deeper into her mind-she had to, she had to know what it was like. Even when he was a baby she used to taste everything she made for him to make sure it wasn't too hot or too salty. Avram, above her, breathed rapidly, twitching, and absentmindedly bit the knuckles of his tightly clenched fists. He wanted to take hold of Ora and pull her out, but he did not dare touch her. He knew the taste of dirt in his eyes and suffocation in his nose and the sting of clods thrown from above-one of them, the bearded black man, had had a shovel, and the other one had used his hands to rake piles of earth dug from the pit. Avram himself had dug it, his hands covered with blisters. He had asked them to let him wear his socks on his hands. They'd laughed and said no. He'd been digging for over an hour and still couldn't believe they were going to do it. Three times already they'd made him dig his own grave, and at the last minute they'd laughed and sent him back to the cell. And this time, even when they tied his hands behind his back and shackled his feet and pushed him inside and told him to lie there without moving, he refused to believe it, perhaps because they were just two lowly soldiers, fellahin, and the dhabet dhabet, the officer, wasn't even there this time, and Avram still hoped they wouldn't go through with something like this on their own. He did not believe it even when they started throwing in handfuls of loose earth. First they covered his legs, very slowly and with strange carefulness, then they piled earth on his thighs and stomach and chest, and Avram squirmed and jerked his head back, searching for the dhabet dhabet who would order them to stop, and only when the first handful of dirt hit his face, on his forehead and eyelids-he can still remember the shocking slap of a clump landing straight on his face, the sting in his eyes, specks trickling quickly down behind his ears-only then did he realize that this time it might not be another show, another stage in the torture, but that they were actually doing it, burying him alive, and a ring of cold terror tightened around his heart, injecting paralyzing venom: time is running out, you're running out, one moment from now you'll be gone, you won't be anymore. Blood burst from his eyes and from his nose, and his body convulsed under layers of earth, heavy, heavy earth, who knew it was so heavy and burdensome on the chest, and his mouth shut to keep out the dirt, and his mouth ripped open to breathe in the dirt, and the throat is dirt and the lungs are dirt, and the toes stretch to inhale, and the eyes pop out of their sockets, and suddenly inside all this like a slowly crawling translucent worm, a sad little worm of thought about the fact that strangers, in a strange land, are pouring earth on his face, burying him alive, throwing dirt into his eyes and mouth and killing him, and it's wrong, he wants to yell, it's a mistake, you don't even know me, and he grunts and struggles to open his eyes to devour one more sight, light, sky, concrete wall, even cruelly mocking faces, but human faces-and then, above his head to the side, someone takes a photograph, a man stands with a camera, it's the who would order them to stop, and only when the first handful of dirt hit his face, on his forehead and eyelids-he can still remember the shocking slap of a clump landing straight on his face, the sting in his eyes, specks trickling quickly down behind his ears-only then did he realize that this time it might not be another show, another stage in the torture, but that they were actually doing it, burying him alive, and a ring of cold terror tightened around his heart, injecting paralyzing venom: time is running out, you're running out, one moment from now you'll be gone, you won't be anymore. Blood burst from his eyes and from his nose, and his body convulsed under layers of earth, heavy, heavy earth, who knew it was so heavy and burdensome on the chest, and his mouth shut to keep out the dirt, and his mouth ripped open to breathe in the dirt, and the throat is dirt and the lungs are dirt, and the toes stretch to inhale, and the eyes pop out of their sockets, and suddenly inside all this like a slowly crawling translucent worm, a sad little worm of thought about the fact that strangers, in a strange land, are pouring earth on his face, burying him alive, throwing dirt into his eyes and mouth and killing him, and it's wrong, he wants to yell, it's a mistake, you don't even know me, and he grunts and struggles to open his eyes to devour one more sight, light, sky, concrete wall, even cruelly mocking faces, but human faces-and then, above his head to the side, someone takes a photograph, a man stands with a camera, it's the dhabet dhabet, a short, thin Egyptian officer with a large black camera, and he takes meticulous pictures of Avram's death, perhaps as a souvenir, to show the wife and kids at home, and that is when Avram lets go of his life, right at that moment he truly lets go. He had never let go when he was left in the stronghold alone for three days and three nights, nor when the Egyptian soldier pulled him out of his hiding place, nor when the soldiers put him on a truck and beat him within an inch of his life with fists and boots and rifle b.u.t.ts, nor when Egyptian fellahin stormed the truck on the way and wanted to attack him, nor in all the days and nights of interrogations and torture, when they denied him food and water and withheld sleep and made him stand for hours in the sun and held him for days and nights in a cell just large enough to stand in, and one by one they pulled out his fingernails and toenails, and hung him by his hands from the ceiling and whipped the soles of his feet with rubber clubs, and hooked electrical wires to his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and nipples and tongue, and raped him-throughout all this he always had something to hold on to, half a potato that a merciful warden once snuck into his soup, or a bird's chirping he heard or imagined every day at dawn, or the cheerful voices of two little children, perhaps the prison commander's children, who once came to visit their father and chattered and played in the prison yard all morning; and above all, he had the sketch he wrote while he was on duty in Sinai, until the war started, with its complex plots and multiple characters, and he kept returning to a secondary plot that had never preoccupied him before he was taken hostage, but this was what saved him over and over again. It was the story of two neglected children who find an abandoned baby, and to his surprise Avram found that the imaginary characters did not fade while he was a prisoner the way the real people did, even Ora and Ilan, perhaps because the thought of the living people was intolerable, and quite simply crushed his remaining will to live, whereas thinking about his story almost always pumped a little more blood through his veins. But there, in the ugly yard next to the prison's concrete wall, with its hedges of barbed wire, and now, with the gaunt officer who took another step closer and leaned right over Avram to capture the last moment before all of Avram was covered with earth and swallowed up in it, Avram no longer wanted to live in a world where such a thing was possible, where a person stood photographing someone being buried alive, and Avram let go of his life and died.

Back and forth he walked wildly by Ora's body, grunting and shouting and tugging at his face and beard with both hands, yet at the same time a thin voice whispered inside him: Look at her, look, she can go all the way into the earth, she isn't afraid.

Ora had, in fact, quieted a little, as though she had learned how to breathe in the belly of the earth. She had stopped slamming her head and beating her hands. She lay still, and very quietly told the earth things that came to her, nonsense, little bits of it, things you'd tell a girlfriend or a good neighbor. ”Even when he was little, a year or younger, I tried to make sure that everything I gave him to eat, every dish I made for him, looked pretty, because I wanted things to be nice for him. I always tried to think not only of the flavors but also the colors, the color combinations, so it would be cheerful for him to look at.” She stopped. What am I doing, she thought. I'm telling the earth about him. And she realized with horror: Maybe I'm preparing her for him, so she'll know how to take care of him. A great weakness filled her. She was on the verge of fainting, and she sighed into the belly of the earth and for a moment she was a tiny, miserable puppy snuggling into a large, warm lap. She thought she could feel the earth softening a little, because her scent grew sweeter, her deep exhalation came back to Ora. She took her in and told her how he liked to make figures out of his mashed potatoes and schnitzel, little people and animals, and then of course he would refuse to eat them because how could he, he would ask sweetly, eat a puppy or a goat? Or a person?

Suddenly two hands took hold of her, grasped her waist, rocked her, and pulled her out. She was in Avram's arms. It was good that he'd come with her, she knew. One minute longer and she would have been entirely swallowed up in the ground. Something nameless had pulled her down and she was willing to crumble into dirt. It was good that he'd come, and he was so strong, with one yank he uprooted her from the earth and charged away from the pit with her on his shoulder.

He stood there, confused, and let her slide off his body so she stood opposite him, face-to-face, until she collapsed in exhaustion. She sat cross-legged, her face covered with dirt. He brought a bottle of water and sat down in front of her, and she filled her mouth and spat out doughy globs of earth, and coughed, and her eyes streamed. She wet her mouth and spat again. ”I don't know what happened to me,” she mumbled, ”it just came over me.” Then she turned to look at him. ”Avram? Avram? Did I scare you?” She poured water into her hand and wiped his forehead, and he did not pull back. Then she ran her wet hand over her own forehead and felt the cuts. ”It's okay, it's okay,” she blathered. ”We're all right, everything will be all right.”

Once in a while she checked his eyes and sensed a shadow slip away into a thicket of darkness, and she did not understand. She could not understand. He had never told her anything about that place. She kept smoothing over his forehead for several more minutes, rea.s.suring, offering tenderness and promises of goodness, and he sat there accepting and absorbing and did not move, only his thumbs flicked back and forth over his fingertips.

”Stop, enough, don't torture yourself. We'll come to a road soon, we'll put you on a bus and you'll go home. I should never have brought you here.”

But the softness in her voice-Avram felt it and the blood ran out of his heart-the softness and the compa.s.sion told him that something he had deeply feared, for years, had happened: Ora had despaired of him. Ora was giving up on him. Ora had accepted the failure that he was. He let out a bitter, toxic laugh.

”What is it, Avram?”

”Ora.” He turned away from her and spoke in a dim, throaty voice, as if his own mouth were full of earth. ”Do you remember what I told you when I got back?”

She shook her head firmly. ”Don't say it. Don't even think it.”

She took his hand and pressed it between her bleeding palms. It amazed her that for the last few minutes she had been touching him so often, with such ease, and that he had not resisted, and that he had grabbed her waist and lifted her out of the ground and run with her across the field. It amazed her that their bodies were acting like flesh and blood. ”Don't say anything. I don't have the energy for anything now.”

When he'd come back from captivity, she had managed to get on the ambulance that took him from the airport to the hospital. He lay on the stretcher, bleeding, his open wounds running with pus. Suddenly his eyes opened and, upon seeing her, appeared to focus. He recognized her. He signaled with his eyes for her to lean down. With his last remaining strength he whispered, ”I wish they'd killed me.”

From around the bend in the path came the sound of singing. A man was singing at the top of his lungs, and other voices dragged behind him without any charm or coordination. ”Maybe we should duck between these trees until they pa.s.s,” Avram grumbled. Only a few moments ago they had awoken from a slumber of total exhaustion, on the side of the path and in full daylight. But the walkers had already revealed themselves. Avram wanted to get up, but she put a hand on his knee: ”Don't run away, they'll just walk by, we won't look at them and they won't look at us.” He sat with his back to the path and hid his face.

At the head of the small procession walked a tall, skinny, bearded young man. Locks of black hair hung in his face, and a large colorful yarmulke covered his head. He danced and flung his limbs around in excitement as he sang and cheered, and ten or so men and women straggled behind him, hand in hand, zigzagging and daydreaming, mumbling his song or some feeble melody. Every so often they waved a tired foot, collapsed, b.u.mped into one another. Wide-eyed, they stared at the couple sitting by the path, and the leader pulled his procession around the two and joined it in a loop and did not stop singing and hopping around. When he waved his arms up high, the others' arms were drawn up in spasmodic surprise, and the whole circle collapsed and then tied itself back up, and the man grinned, and as he sang and danced he leaned over to Ora and asked in a quiet and utterly businesslike tone if everything was all right. Ora shook her head, nothing was all right, and he examined her injured, dirty face, and looked to Avram and a crease deepened between his eyes. Then he looked back and forth as if searching for something-as if he knew exactly what he was looking for, Ora felt-and saw the pit in the earth, and Ora unwittingly tightened her legs together.

He quickly went back to his enthusiastic rocking. ”A great trouble has befallen you, my friends,” he said, and Ora replied in a small voice, ”You could certainly say so.” The man inquired: ”Trouble from man or from the heavens?” Then he added quietly, ”Or from the earth?” Ora replied, ”I don't really believe in the heavens,” and the man smiled and said, ”And in man, you do?” Ora, slightly won over by his smile, said, ”Less and less every day.” The man straightened up and led the fumbling circle around them, and Ora tented her eyes from the sun to turn the dancing silhouettes into people. She noticed that one of them had odd-sized legs, another's head was strangely tilted to the sky and she thought he might be blind, and one woman's body was bent almost to the ground. Another woman's mouth was wide open and drooling, and she held the hand of a gaunt albino boy, who giggled with vacant eyes. The circle turned heavily on its axis, and the energetic young man leaned over again and said smilingly, ”Guys, why don't you come with me for an hour or so?”

Ora looked at Avram, who sat with his head bowed and seemed not to see or hear anything, and she said to the man, ”No thanks.”

”Why not? Just an hour, what do you have to lose?”

”Avram?”

He shrugged as if to say, Your call, and Ora turned sharply to the man and said, ”But don't talk to me about the news, you hear me? I don't want to hear a single word!”

The man seemed to lose his equilibrium for the first time. He was about to give a witty reply, but then he peered into her eyes and said nothing.

”And no proselytizing either,” Ora added.

The man laughed. ”I'll try, but don't come crying if you leave with a smile.”

”I won't complain about a smile.”

He held his hand out to Avram, but Avram got up without touching the hand, and the man, still dancing around her, helped Ora hoist her backpack up and announced that he was Akiva. He stood Avram in the middle of the line and Ora at the end and went back to shepherd his confused herd.

Avram held the hand of the hunchbacked old lady, and with his other he grabbed hold of the albino boy, and Ora took the hand of a bald woman with thick blue veins snaking up her legs. She kept asking Ora what was for lunch and demanded that she give her back the cholent cholent pot. They all climbed up a little hill, and Avram kept turning his head back to check on Ora, and she would give him a shoulder-shrugging look: Beats me, I have no idea. Akiva looked back encouragingly, and sang a grating tune very loudly. They continued this way, up and down, and both Ora and Avram delved into themselves, blind to the abundant beauty around them, yellow beds of spurge, purple orchids, and terebinths blossoming in red. Nor did they notice the intoxicating nectar that the spiny-broom flowers had begun to emit in the heat of the day. But Ora knew that it was good and restorative for her to be led this way, led by the hand, without having to think about where to put down her foot for the next step. Avram knew he wouldn't mind going on like this all day, as long as he did not have to see Ora suffering because of him. Maybe later, when they were alone, he would tell her that he might be willing, perhaps, for her to tell him a little about Ofer, if she had to. But he would ask her not to start talking about him directly, not about Ofer himself, and that she talk about him carefully and slowly, so that he could gradually get used to the torture. pot. They all climbed up a little hill, and Avram kept turning his head back to check on Ora, and she would give him a shoulder-shrugging look: Beats me, I have no idea. Akiva looked back encouragingly, and sang a grating tune very loudly. They continued this way, up and down, and both Ora and Avram delved into themselves, blind to the abundant beauty around them, yellow beds of spurge, purple orchids, and terebinths blossoming in red. Nor did they notice the intoxicating nectar that the spiny-broom flowers had begun to emit in the heat of the day. But Ora knew that it was good and restorative for her to be led this way, led by the hand, without having to think about where to put down her foot for the next step. Avram knew he wouldn't mind going on like this all day, as long as he did not have to see Ora suffering because of him. Maybe later, when they were alone, he would tell her that he might be willing, perhaps, for her to tell him a little about Ofer, if she had to. But he would ask her not to start talking about him directly, not about Ofer himself, and that she talk about him carefully and slowly, so that he could gradually get used to the torture.

Ora looked up and a strange happiness began to gurgle inside her, perhaps because of how she had spoken into the earth-she could still taste it on her tongue-or perhaps because always, even at home, after she had these outbursts, when enough was enough, when her guys had really crossed the line, a physical sweetness always spread through her body. Ilan and the boys would still be looking at her in shock, frightened, full of peculiar awe and so eager to appease her, and she would spend several long minutes floating on a pall of satisfaction and deep pleasure. Or perhaps she was so happy because of the people in the procession, who imbued her with a dreamlike tranquillity despite their strangeness and forlornness and their broken bodies. From dust we were taken From dust we were taken. She suddenly felt it down to the roots of her flesh. Just like that, from pure mud. She could hear the pat-pat pat-pat sound of her own self being scooped out by the handful, back at the dawn of time, out of the muddy earth, to be sculpted-too bad they were stingy and did such a poor job with the b.o.o.bs, and they made her thighs too thick, completely disproportionate, to say nothing of her a.s.s, which this year, with all her desperate binge-eating, had really flourished. When she had finished denigrating her body-which was, incidentally, delightfully attractive to Akiva, judging by the glimmer in his eye, and this was not lost on her-Ora smiled to think of how Ilan had been sculpted: thin, strong, upright, and stretched out like a tendon. She longed for Ilan here and now, without thinking, without remembering or resenting, just his flesh boring into hers. She felt a sudden yearning in the sting. She roused herself quickly and thought of how Adam was sculpted, how delicately and meticulously they had worked on his face, his heavy eyes, his mouth with all its expressions. Her hand ran longingly over his thin body with the slightly hunched back that seemed almost defiant, and the cloudy shadows on his sunken cheeks, and the prominent Adam's apple that somehow gave him a scholarly look. She also thought about her Ada, making room for her, as always, and imagined what she would look like today if she were alive. Sometimes she saw women who resembled her on the street, and she had a patient who looked like her, a woman with a herniated disc whom she treated for a whole year, working miracles on her. And only then did Ora dare to think about Ofer: strong, solid, and tall he had emerged from the lump of mud-not immediately, not in his first years, when he was small and meager, little more than a huge pair of eyes and bony ribs and matchstick limbs, but later, when he grew up, how beautifully he had risen from the mud, with his thick neck and broad shoulders, and the surprisingly feminine ankles, such a delightful finish to the oversized, powerful limbs. She smiled to herself and looked quickly at Avram, ran her eyes over his body, examined, compared-similarities, dissimilarities-and was overcome with joy in the depths of her gut. It occurred to her, incidentally, that Avram fit in with this crowd quite well, and it seemed to her that he was also finding unexpected relief, because a new smile, the first smile, was spreading on his lips, almost a smile of exaltation. But then a shock wave ran through the hobbling procession, hands pulled back and disconnected, and Ora watched with alarm as Avram's mouth opened wide, his smile broadened, ripped open, and his eyes glimmered and his hands waved wildly, and he kicked and jumped like a horse and grunted. sound of her own self being scooped out by the handful, back at the dawn of time, out of the muddy earth, to be sculpted-too bad they were stingy and did such a poor job with the b.o.o.bs, and they made her thighs too thick, completely disproportionate, to say nothing of her a.s.s, which this year, with all her desperate binge-eating, had really flourished. When she had finished denigrating her body-which was, incidentally, delightfully attractive to Akiva, judging by the glimmer in his eye, and this was not lost on her-Ora smiled to think of how Ilan had been sculpted: thin, strong, upright, and stretched out like a tendon. She longed for Ilan here and now, without thinking, without remembering or resenting, just his flesh boring into hers. She felt a sudden yearning in the sting. She roused herself quickly and thought of how Adam was sculpted, how delicately and meticulously they had worked on his face, his heavy eyes, his mouth with all its expressions. Her hand ran longingly over his thin body with the slightly hunched back that seemed almost defiant, and the cloudy shadows on his sunken cheeks, and the prominent Adam's apple that somehow gave him a scholarly look. She also thought about her Ada, making room for her, as always, and imagined what she would look like today if she were alive. Sometimes she saw women who resembled her on the street, and she had a patient who looked like her, a woman with a herniated disc whom she treated for a whole year, working miracles on her. And only then did Ora dare to think about Ofer: strong, solid, and tall he had emerged from the lump of mud-not immediately, not in his first years, when he was small and meager, little more than a huge pair of eyes and bony ribs and matchstick limbs, but later, when he grew up, how beautifully he had risen from the mud, with his thick neck and broad shoulders, and the surprisingly feminine ankles, such a delightful finish to the oversized, powerful limbs. She smiled to herself and looked quickly at Avram, ran her eyes over his body, examined, compared-similarities, dissimilarities-and was overcome with joy in the depths of her gut. It occurred to her, incidentally, that Avram fit in with this crowd quite well, and it seemed to her that he was also finding unexpected relief, because a new smile, the first smile, was spreading on his lips, almost a smile of exaltation. But then a shock wave ran through the hobbling procession, hands pulled back and disconnected, and Ora watched with alarm as Avram's mouth opened wide, his smile broadened, ripped open, and his eyes glimmered and his hands waved wildly, and he kicked and jumped like a horse and grunted.

After a moment he stopped himself, buried his head back down between his shoulders, and walked on, dragging his feet and swaying from side to side. Akiva looked at Ora questioningly, and she motioned for him to keep going. Then she forced herself to walk on too, shocked by what she had seen in Avram, by the sliver of secret revealed to her from inside him, as though for an instant he had allowed himself to try out a different possibility, a redemptive one. He had looked so distorted, she thought, like a boy playing with pieces of himself.

After a while they reached a small moshav hidden behind a hill and a few groves. Two rows of houses, most with tacked-on balconies and flimsy storehouses, were ab.u.t.ted by chicken coops and feed silos and separated by yards piled with crates, iron pipes, old fridges, and all sorts of junk. Avram's eyes lit up as he scanned the options. Concrete bomb shelters jutted out of the ground like snouts, covered with lettering in chalk and paint, and here and there a rusty tractor or a pickup truck with no wheels was propped up on blocks. Among the patchworked houses, the occasional sparkling new building stood out, towering castles of stone with turrets and gables and signs announcing luxurious guest rooms in a charming Galilee atmosphere, including Jacuzzis and s.h.i.+atsu ma.s.sage. Adults and children started to pour out of the houses as they arrived, shouting, ”Akiva's here! Akiva's here!” Akiva's face lit up, and he stopped at various houses to deliver a member of the gang to a woman or a child. At every house they asked him to come in just for a moment, for something to drink or nibble, and lunch would be ready soon, but he refused: ”The day is short and there is much work to be done.” ”The day is short and there is much work to be done.” He walked the length of the main street-it was the only street-in this fas.h.i.+on, until he had dispersed his flock and was left only with Avram and Ora, whom no one came to claim. Children and young boys walked beside them and asked who they were and where they came from, and whether they were tourists or Jews. They agreed among themselves that they were Jews, albeit Ashken.a.z.im, and wondered about their backpacks and sleeping bags and about Ora's scratched, dirty face. Mangy, malcontented dogs ran after them and barked. They both longed to get back to their path and their solitude, and Ora could barely hold back the talk about Ofer, but Akiva was somehow unwilling to let them go. As he talked and jumped around he seemed to be searching for a place where he could help them, and between waving to an old man and giving a quick blessing to a baby, he told them that for him this was both a mitzvah and a living. The local council had arranged a special job for him as ”gladdener of the dejected”-that was what his pay stub actually stated-and he did this every day, six days a week. Even when they cut his salary in half this year, he did not cut down on his work; on the contrary, he added two hours a day, He walked the length of the main street-it was the only street-in this fas.h.i.+on, until he had dispersed his flock and was left only with Avram and Ora, whom no one came to claim. Children and young boys walked beside them and asked who they were and where they came from, and whether they were tourists or Jews. They agreed among themselves that they were Jews, albeit Ashken.a.z.im, and wondered about their backpacks and sleeping bags and about Ora's scratched, dirty face. Mangy, malcontented dogs ran after them and barked. They both longed to get back to their path and their solitude, and Ora could barely hold back the talk about Ofer, but Akiva was somehow unwilling to let them go. As he talked and jumped around he seemed to be searching for a place where he could help them, and between waving to an old man and giving a quick blessing to a baby, he told them that for him this was both a mitzvah and a living. The local council had arranged a special job for him as ”gladdener of the dejected”-that was what his pay stub actually stated-and he did this every day, six days a week. Even when they cut his salary in half this year, he did not cut down on his work; on the contrary, he added two hours a day, ”For one must multiply acts of holiness, not diminish them.” ”For one must multiply acts of holiness, not diminish them.” Besides, he said, he remembered Avram from the pub on HaYarkon Street. Back then, neither of them had a beard, and Akiva's name was Aviv, and Avram sometimes used to belt out ”Otchi Tchorniya” and Paul Robeson songs from behind the bar. If he remembered correctly, Avram had developed a fairly interesting theory about the memories that old objects had, whereby if you put together all sorts of junk, you could make them play out their memories. ”Did I remember correctly?” ”You did,” Avram grunted, and glanced at Ora evasively. Ora p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, and Akiva walked quickly and told them that he had found religion five years ago. Before that, he was getting his doctorate in philosophy in Jerusalem. Schopenhauer was half G.o.d for him, the love of his life-or actually, the hatred of his life. He let out a green-eyed laugh. ”Do you know Schopenhauer? Such a masking of the divine face! Such total blackness! And you, what about you guys? What's with the gloom and doom?” Besides, he said, he remembered Avram from the pub on HaYarkon Street. Back then, neither of them had a beard, and Akiva's name was Aviv, and Avram sometimes used to belt out ”Otchi Tchorniya” and Paul Robeson songs from behind the bar. If he remembered correctly, Avram had developed a fairly interesting theory about the memories that old objects had, whereby if you put together all sorts of junk, you could make them play out their memories. ”Did I remember correctly?” ”You did,” Avram grunted, and glanced at Ora evasively. Ora p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, and Akiva walked quickly and told them that he had found religion five years ago. Before that, he was getting his doctorate in philosophy in Jerusalem. Schopenhauer was half G.o.d for him, the love of his life-or actually, the hatred of his life. He let out a green-eyed laugh. ”Do you know Schopenhauer? Such a masking of the divine face! Such total blackness! And you, what about you guys? What's with the gloom and doom?”

”Forget it,” Ora laughed. ”You won't cheer us up with a blessing or a dance, we're a really complicated case.”

Akiva stopped in the middle of the street and turned to face her with his vivacious eyes and his strong high cheekbones, and Ora thought, What a waste.

”Don't be condescending,” he said. ”Everything here is really complicated too, what did you think? These are things that can break the strongest faith. In this place you'll hear stories that only the most misanthropic author could write, maybe Bukowski on a really bad day, or Burroughs jonesing for a fix. And if you're a believer, where does that leave you, hey?” There was no jocularity on his face. His lips trembled for a brief moment, in anger, or from heartbreak. Then he said quietly, ”Once, when I was like you, maybe even a lot more cynical than you-a Schopenhauer freak, you know?-once I would say about these kinds of things: G.o.d is cracking up with laughter.”

Ora pursed her lips and did not reply. She thought to herself, Shut up and listen, what harm could it do to gain a little strength, even with his help? Do you have such reserves of strength that you can pa.s.s up even a drop of reinforcement? For a moment she considered offhandedly pulling out her s.h.i.+viti s.h.i.+viti from her blouse, so he'd see that she too had an elated Jewish soul. Oh, you miserable woman, she rebuked herself. You beggar. Or maybe it was just that this Akiva was arousing something in her, despite his tzitzit and all his jumping around and his religious nonsense. from her blouse, so he'd see that she too had an elated Jewish soul. Oh, you miserable woman, she rebuked herself. You beggar. Or maybe it was just that this Akiva was arousing something in her, despite his tzitzit and all his jumping around and his religious nonsense.

Akiva wiped the anger off his face with both hands, smiled at her, and said, ”Now, ladies and gentlemen, we shall go to Ya'ish and Yakut's house to cheer them up, and maybe we'll cheer ourselves up as well.”