"Oh. So what's wrong with going up to her place?"

"I can't," he says emphatically, and Ora quickly switches to an onion, to have an excuse for the tears that will come.

"Ever since I got back I'm this way. Can't do it." He snickers: "A broken reed."

She feels chilly and hollow in her stomach. As if only now, after several years of delay, has the final and terrible shock wave of his tragedy settled over him. "Have you even tried?" she whispers, and thinks, How did I not know about this? How did it not occur to me to find out about this? I took care of his whole body, and I forgot about that? About that that, with him him, I forgot?

"I tried four times. Four times is a representative sample, isn't it?"

"With who?" she asks, amazed. "Who did you try with?"

He doesn't seem embarra.s.sed. "Once with the cousin of a soldier who was in the bed next to mine, and once with a Dutch volunteer who works there. Once with a soldier from rehab, once with someone I met on the beach a while ago." He sees the expression on her face. "What are you looking at me like that for? I didn't even initiate it! It's them ..." Then he adds helplessly, "Turns out the prisoner fantasy works with POWs too, otherwise I can't explain it."

"Has it occurred to you that they like you?" she bursts out, upset by the tinge of jealousy that jabs her. "Maybe your charm wasn't damaged? Maybe even the Egyptians couldn't hurt the ..."

"I can't get it up, Ora. The minute I go to bed with them, each one of them. I'm actually not bad at jerking off, but how long can I spend stuck with myself? And anyway, lately I'm having problems masturbating, too. When I'm on Largactyl, I can't come."

"But did you really want them?" she asks, and something in her voice seems to split into several directions. "Maybe you didn't really want it?"

"I wanted it, I wanted it," he grunts angrily. "I wanted to f.u.c.k, what's the big deal? I'm not talking about immortal love here, I wanted a f.u.c.k, Ora, why are you so-"

"But maybe they weren't right for you," she whispers and thinks painfully that a woman who is going to be with Avram has to be just right for him, for his subtleties.

"They were fine, don't look for excuses, they were just right for what ..."

"And with me?" she asks with a glazed look. "Could you sleep with me?"

There is a long pause.

"With you?"

She swallows. "Yes, with me."

"I don't know," he mumbles. "Wait, are you serious?"

"It's not something to joke about." Her voice trembles.

"But how-"

"We were so good together."

"I don't know, I don't think I'll ever, with you-"

"Why not?" She jumps into her pain immediately. "Because of the lots we cast? Because I drew you?"

"No, no."

"Then because of Ilan?"

"No."

She grabs another tomato and dices it in tiny pieces. "Then why not?"

"No. I can't do it with you anymore."

"You're so sure."

They stand by the sink without touching, looking at the wall. Their temples throb.

"And Adam?" Avram asks now.

"What about him?"

Avram hesitates. He isn't sure what he meant to ask.

"Adam? You want to know about Adam now?" she says.

"Yes, is there something wrong with that, too?"

"There's nothing wrong with it," she says, laughing. "Ask anything you want. That's what we're here for."

"Well, just if he was also a kid who...You know what? Tell me whatever you want."

Here we go, she thinks and stretches her limbs.

They are walking through a thicket of p.r.i.c.kly burnet and sage. The oaks are as low as bushes here. Lizards dart under their feet in a panic. Side by side they walk, looking for the path, which has been swallowed up in the abundant growth, and Ora steals a glance at their elastic shadows that hover on the shrubbery. When Avram waves his arms as he walks, it briefly looks as though he is placing his hand on her shoulder, and when she plays with her body in the sun a little, she can make the shadow of his arm hug the shadow of her waist.

"Adam was also a thin boy, just like Ofer, but he stayed thin. A beanpole."

"Oh." Avram looks around as if randomly, indifferently, but Ora, as it turns out, still knows all the cards in his deck.

"As a child, he was always taller than Ofer-well, don't forget he's three years older. But when Ofer started getting older and growing, it changed and the order was reversed."

"So now-"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Ofer is taller. Much."

Avram is amazed. "Really? Much taller?"

"I told you, he had a growth spurt and just overtook him all at once, almost by a whole head."

"You don't say ..."

"Yes."

"So in fact," Avram says, speeding up and thoughtfully sucking on his cheek, "he's taller than Ilan, too?"

"Yes, he's taller than Ilan."

Silence. It almost embarra.s.ses her to witness this.

"But how tall is Ilan? One meter eighty?"

"Even taller."

"You don't say ..." The flash of a well-played ploy glimmers in his eye. He mumbles wonderingly, "I never thought he'd be like that one day."

"What did you think?"

"I didn't think anything," he repeats, this time so feebly that his voice is barely audible. "I hardly thought, Ora. Every time I tried ..." He spreads both hands out in a gesture that might indicate a wish, or perhaps an explosion cracking open.

She resists asking, Then what were you so afraid of, if you didn't think anything? Who were you protecting from afar, just so long as you didn't know anything about him?

"And how old is Adam now?"

"Twenty-four and a bit."

"Wow, a big boy."

"Almost my age," she says, attempting one of Ilan's jokes. Avram looks at her, finally gets it, and smiles politely.

"And what's going on with him?"

"Adam? I told you."

"I didn't...I must not have been paying attention."

"Adam is with Ilan now, touring the world. South America. Ilan took a year off. They're having the time of their life, those two, it seems. They don't want to come home."

"But Adam," Avram probes, and Ora thinks his tongue is straining to learn the music of the questions. "What does he do normally? I mean, does he work? Is he studying?"

"He's still searching, you know. These days they spend a lot of time searching. And he has a band, did I tell you?"

"I don't remember. Maybe." He shrugs helplessly. "I don't know where I was, Ora. Tell me again, from the beginning."

"He's an artist. Adam is really an artist in his soul." Ora's face brightens as she talks.

A silence thickens, rustles, and one question goes unasked. Ora feels that if she could tell Avram that Ofer was also an artist, an artist in his soul, things might be a little easier.

"A band? What band?"

"Some kind of hip-hop thing, don't ask me too many questions." She waves her hand. "They've been together for ages, he and his guys. They're working on their first CD. They even have a company that wants to produce them. It's a kind of hip-hop opera, I really don't understand it, it's very long, three and a half hours, something about exile, a kind of voyage of exiles, lots of exiles."

"Oh."

"Yes."

Ora and Avram's shoes scratch through the bushes as they walk.

Ora remembers something that caught her ear by chance, when Adam was on the phone with a friend. "And there's a woman in it. She walks along with a length of string, unraveling it behind her."

"A string?"

"Yes, a red one. She unravels it behind her on the ground."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"What an idea," he murmurs, and the skin around his eyes reddens.

"Adam and his ideas," she giggles, somewhat repelled by Avram's sudden excitement.

"You mean, it's like the land was ripped apart? Unraveled?"

"Maybe."

"And this woman is giving the earth a string ..." Avram latches on to the idea.

"Yes, something symbolic like that."

"That's powerful. But exiles from where?"

"They're a very serious bunch, his band. They did their research, read about places around Israel, about early Zionism, dug through kibbutz archives, and on the web, and they asked people what they would take with them if they had to flee suddenly." This is the sum of what she knows about the topic, but she doesn't feel comfortable with Avram knowing that, at least not yet, and so she chatters on. "It's him and a group of guys, and they write everything together, lyrics and music, and they do gigs all over the place." She smiles with visible effort. "By the way, Ofer played music once, too. Drums, bongos. But he stopped pretty quickly, and at the end of the tenth grade, for his final project-this is actually interesting-he made a movie."

"Who are the exiles?"

"And Ofer was in a little band too, when he was eleven."

"Exiled from where, Ora?"

"From here." She gestures with a suddenly feeble hand over the brown mountain cliffs that encircle them, the oak, carob, and olive trees, the thickets of shrubbery that curl around their feet. "From here," she repeats quietly. In her ears she can hear the words Ofer whispered to her in front of the TV cameras.

"Exiled from Israel?" Avram seems upset.

Ora takes a deep breath, straightens up, and puts on a weary smile. "You know how they are at that age. They want to astound people at any cost, to shock them."

"Have you heard it?"

"The opera? No, I haven't had the chance."

Avram gives her a questioning look.

"He hasn't played it for me," she says, giving in, emptying out. "Look, Adam and I-forget it, he doesn't tell me anything."