They come across a tiny lake, and after some hesitation they take a dip, Ora in her underwear-a compromise between several convoluted, conflicting wishes and fears-and Avram fully clothed, then after a few minutes, wearing only his pants. And there is his body, glisteningly pale, dotted with scars and wounds, fleshier than she remembered, but also more solid than she imagined, and it is when he is nude that he emits a surprisingly brawny power. And he of course, as always, chooses to see only the "fleshy" that pa.s.ses before her eyes, and apologetically pinches a fold of flesh, presenting it for her to study, and shrugs his shoulders with a this-is-all-I've-got sort of grief. But what she remembers is how he used to whisper when he saw her naked body, "Oh G.o.d, Ora'leh, such resplendence." Apart from Ada, no one she knew had ever used that word, which had existed only in poetry. Or he would swing his heavy head over her and neigh like a horse, or roar like a lion, or, like old Captain Cat in Under Milk Wood Under Milk Wood, bellow: "Let me shipwreck in your thighs!" "Let me shipwreck in your thighs!"

She goes under the shallow water and can dimly sees his froggish body faltering nearby, and an old pain resurfaces, the memory of the moments when that thick, creased, careless body would light up and stretch into a blazing thread, and she would hold his face with both hands and force him to look in her eyes, to stay as open as he could, and she would study his eyes and see a gaze with a distant edge that was entirely open, endless, and she would know that there was one place where she was entirely, unconditionally loved, where all of her was gratefully, happily accepted.

Ora was the center, the focal point, and this too was something new he gave her. Ora-not Avram, and not Ora-Avram-was the place where their lovemaking occurred. Her body, far more than his, was the intersection of their pa.s.sion, and her pleasure was always more desired by him than his own. This astonished her and sometimes troubled her-"Let me do it to you you now," she would urge, "I want you to enjoy it, too." And he'd laugh: "But when you enjoy it, that's when I enjoy it most, can't you feel that? Can't you see that?" And she did feel it, and she did see it, but could not truly understand it. "What's with the altruism?" she would ask angrily. "What altruism?" he'd say with a sly grin. "It's pure egoism." And she would smile, as if at an incomprehensible joke, and would once again respond to his caresses and licks and feel that she was picking up on something complicated and warped about him, something she might have to work harder to understand if she really wanted to know Avram. But the kisses were sweet, and the licking shook the earth, and she gave in every time, and the moment was never right, and eventually that thing remained unspoken. now," she would urge, "I want you to enjoy it, too." And he'd laugh: "But when you enjoy it, that's when I enjoy it most, can't you feel that? Can't you see that?" And she did feel it, and she did see it, but could not truly understand it. "What's with the altruism?" she would ask angrily. "What altruism?" he'd say with a sly grin. "It's pure egoism." And she would smile, as if at an incomprehensible joke, and would once again respond to his caresses and licks and feel that she was picking up on something complicated and warped about him, something she might have to work harder to understand if she really wanted to know Avram. But the kisses were sweet, and the licking shook the earth, and she gave in every time, and the moment was never right, and eventually that thing remained unspoken.

But if it had been the other way around, she knew-she hears Avram step out of the water with a splash, which is a pity, she wanted to play around with him a little (but he didn't seem interested), and now she'll have to walk out naked in front of him-if it had been the other way around he would not have given in, he would have investigated and wondered at every answer she gave, and remembered and treasured it and turned it over again and again. She hurries out of the water, hopping from one foot to the other and covering her cold b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which are even more shriveled now of course-where's the towel, d.a.m.n it, why didn't she lay it out before?

Avram throws her a towel, almost without looking, and her teeth chatter a thanks. She turns her back to him and dries herself and remembers what he told her when she was nineteen: that they were perfect because they fit right in his palms. He insisted on referring to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the feminine, even though the Hebrew word was puzzlingly masculine. "How could it be any other way?" he claimed, and she gladly adopted his view. And how he marveled at them, and never had his fill of them. "Your resplendencies," resplendencies," he called them, and "Your he called them, and "Your res-plenties," res-plenties," which confirmed to her again that he honestly did not see her as she was, that he was blind to her shortcomings, that he apparently loved her. And she loved him so much for giving her b.r.e.a.s.t.s a place in the world, even before anyone had noticed them, and for believing so pa.s.sionately that she was a woman, when she herself still doubted it. In the years that followed, when she breast-fed the boys, she often wished Avram could enjoy her too, wished he could know her when she was large and milky and abundant. "Your cup runneth over," he used to delight in telling her when they were together. which confirmed to her again that he honestly did not see her as she was, that he was blind to her shortcomings, that he apparently loved her. And she loved him so much for giving her b.r.e.a.s.t.s a place in the world, even before anyone had noticed them, and for believing so pa.s.sionately that she was a woman, when she herself still doubted it. In the years that followed, when she breast-fed the boys, she often wished Avram could enjoy her too, wished he could know her when she was large and milky and abundant. "Your cup runneth over," he used to delight in telling her when they were together.

She dries herself vigorously, as she always does, scrubbing her skin until it turns pink and steamy, amusing herself with her thoughts, and she stares at Avram with a strange, eager look. He gives her a sideways glance and says, "What?" She pulls herself together and straightens up and flutters her eyelids as if to clean up quickly after the unruly, damp gaze that had slipped out.

When Avram stands up to put his shirt on, Ora announces that enough is enough. "This shirt has to be washed right here, and we'll dry it on the backpack while you walk. And please, open up your backpack right now and find something clean to wear."

They walk past a string of natural springs: Ein Garger, Ein Pu'ah, and Ein Khalav. Pale orange lichen upholsters the branches of almond trees alongside the path. Tadpoles dart away when the shadow of Avram's head falls on the springs. Ora talks. At times she glances at Avram and sees his lips moving, as though he is trying to engrave her words inside him. She talks about long nights sitting with Ofer in the rocking chair when he was burning with fever, sweaty, occasionally shaking and whimpering. She used to fall in and out of sleep with him, talk to him softly, and wipe the sweat off his tortured face. "I never knew you could feel someone else's pain like that," she says, and throws Avram a quick glance, because who more than he had once had the capacity to overflow with another person's pain?

She talks about breast-feeding. How for months Ofer consumed nothing but her milk, and how he held entire conversations with her just by gurgling and looking. "A whole language, so rich that no words can describe it."

She wants him to see her there too, not just Ofer. With her stained nursing bra and her wild hair. With her potbelly that refused for months to deflate, and her desperate helplessness when faced with Ofer's mysterious pains, as he cried and screamed. With her mother's stinging advice, and the far more experienced neighbors', and the nurses' at the lactation clinic. With the joy of knowing that she herself, with her own body, was sustaining a living creature.

And the moments-the chasms-between Ofer's cries of hunger and the second her nipple disappeared into his lips. When he screamed, his body seemed to utterly collapse, like a body that knows it will die. The fear of death flowed into him quickly, and she filled the s.p.a.ces that were void of food. He screamed and wailed until the rhythmic stream of her life stuff slowly filled him up, and a glow of relief illuminated his little face: he was saved, she had saved him, she had the power to.

She, who every single time she shifted from fourth to third gear had a morbid fear that she was shifting into reverse-she was giving life to a person!

Sometimes, when he was in her arms, she would run her hand quickly over his face and body, and when she did so, she always thought of the transparent threads, a web that tied Ofer to Avram, wherever he was. She knew it made no sense, but she could not stop her hand from making that motion.

Nighttime. The two of them alone in the world, darkness all around, and warm milk gurgles secretly from her innards to his. His tiny hand on her breast, the pinky finger extended like an antenna, the others moving rhythmically with his sucking, and his other hand crushing the fabric of her robe, or a tuft of his hair, or his ear. He opens his eyes and looks at her, and she dives in, imprinted in his gaze. That is how she feels: her face is now being imprinted on his tender, still foggy brain. She experiences a thrilling moment of eternity. In his eyes she sees her own image, and she is more beautiful than she has ever been. She vows to make him a good person, at least better than she is. She will repair everything her own mother ruined in her. Her zeal gushes into a milky spurt that spills on Ofer's mouth and nose: surprised, he chokes and bursts into tears.

As she walks now, she hugs her body while a storm washes over it in waves. Forgotten sensations: fullness and hardness, dribbles that leaked through her shirt in the middle of the street, at work, or in a cafe, at the mere thought of Ofer-"Just thinking of him made me drip," she laughs, and Avram, his face bathed in her light, wonders if she let Ilan taste her milk.

A shadow falls on them at midday. They are walking through the Tsivon streambed, a deep, strange channel that silences them. The path meanders among large, broken rocks, and they must climb and take calculated steps. The oak trees around them are forced to grow tall, stretch higher and higher to reach the sunlight. Pale ivy and long ferns cascade down from the treetops. They walk over a bed of crumbling dry leaves among bloodless cyclamens and albino fungi. It's almost dark here. Touch, she says, and puts his hand on a rock covered with green moss. It feels soft and furry. They are surrounded by silence. Not a single bird chirps. "Like a fairy-tale forest," Ora whispers. Avram looks around him. His shoulders are slightly hunched. His fingers dart, counting each other constantly. "Don't worry," she says, "I'll find the way out." Avram points: "Look over there." A single ray of light has penetrated the foliage and shines on a rock.

When we get back, he thinks, I'm going to read a book about the Galilee, or even just look at a map. I want to see where I've been. What would it be like for her to be hiking here with Ofer instead of me? he wonders. What would she talk about with him? What is it like to be completely alone with your child in a place like this? Must be terribly awkward. Then again, Ora wouldn't let him keep quiet. He smiles. They wouldn't stop talking and laughing at the people they met on the way. Maybe they'd laugh at me if they happened to run into me.

They climb up a narrow path where thick tree roots crawl all over the earth. The backpacks weigh them down. She thinks: What would it be like if Avram and Ofer were walking here in the forest, alone? A journey of men.

Suddenly, as if a hand has pa.s.sed in front of their faces, they walk out of the shade into the sunlight. Another few moments and a meadow is revealed, and a hillside, and orchards blossoming in white. "So beautiful," she whispers so as not to shock the silence.

The path flows softly. A broad, well-trodden walking path, with an avenue of weeds down the center. Like a horse's mane, Avram thinks.

She tells him about Ofer's journeys of discovery through the house, his insistent examinations of every single book on the bottom shelves, the plant leaves, the pots and lids in the lower kitchen drawers. She gives him every memory chip of his babyhood that pops into her mind. When he fell off a chair and had to get seven st.i.tches in his chin at Magen David; when a cat scratched his face at the playground-"there's no scar," she says rea.s.suringly, and Avram s.n.a.t.c.hes a fluttering touch of some of his own scars, on his arms, shoulder, chest, and back, and a surprising ripple of joy runs through him because Ofer is whole; his body is whole.

Avram seems to be growing more and more awake: he wants to know when Ofer started talking and what his first word was. "Abba," "Abba," Ora says. Daddy. But Avram mishears and responds incredulously: Ora says. Daddy. But Avram mishears and responds incredulously: "Avram?" "Avram?" Then he realizes his error, and they both laugh. And of course he asks immediately what Adam's first word was. Then he realizes his error, and they both laugh. And of course he asks immediately what Adam's first word was. ("Or," ("Or," she replies. Light. She feels him swallow back the obvious question: Not she replies. Light. She feels him swallow back the obvious question: Not ima ima? But instead Avram says, "Or is almost 'Ora,'" and she hadn't even thought of that; she remembers that Ofer always claimed his first words were: "Take me to your leader.") She reminds Avram of his mother's heavy bureau, which became a changing table for the boys, and the black bookshelf, which held all their childhood books. She manages to remember quite a lot from the books she used to read to them and recites by heart: "Pluto was a dog from Kibbutz Megiddo ..." Then she explains to the ignorant Avram about the charms of every child's favorite rabbit, Mitz Petel, and his animal friends. She smiles to herself: the two of us are a bit like the giraffe and the lion in the book.

She tries to imagine little Ofer, bathed and clean and ready for bed, resting his head on Avram's shoulder while he tells a story. Ofer is wearing his green pajamas with the half-moons, but she can't see what Avram is wearing. She can't even see Avram himself, but she feels his broad physical presence and the way Ofer leans on it. She thinks Avram would have probably made up a new story for Ofer every night and put on plays and shows for him. She has no doubt he would have been bored reading the same story every evening for weeks, as Ofer used to insist. She can hear the special, mysterious, soft, stomach-trembling voice that Ilan used when he read bedtime stories to the boys. She does not tell Avram, but remembers for herself and for Ofer how much Ilan loved bedtime. Even when the office was terribly busy, he would come home to help put the boys to bed, and she loved to cuddle with them in bed, and listen to him read.

The path is easy and fluid. Avram spreads his arms out, surprised at how comfortable the sharwals sharwals feel on his body-Ora had folded the cuffs up three times until they fit his "peanut stature," as he'd joked. She tells him about Ofer's day care and his first friend, Yoel, who moved to the States with his parents and broke Ofer's heart. "Such little stories," she apologizes, but from one story to the next, from one word to the next, baby Ofer becomes clearer in her own mind, slowly sculpted into a boy: the tiny baby draws out into the toddler, his clothes change, his toys, his haircut, his eyes. She shows him Ofer playing alone, concentrating, absorbed in a game. She tells him about Ofer's affection for minuscule toys with lots of detailed accessories. She was amazed at his ability to collect them with infinite patience, match them up, put them together, and take them apart again. feel on his body-Ora had folded the cuffs up three times until they fit his "peanut stature," as he'd joked. She tells him about Ofer's day care and his first friend, Yoel, who moved to the States with his parents and broke Ofer's heart. "Such little stories," she apologizes, but from one story to the next, from one word to the next, baby Ofer becomes clearer in her own mind, slowly sculpted into a boy: the tiny baby draws out into the toddler, his clothes change, his toys, his haircut, his eyes. She shows him Ofer playing alone, concentrating, absorbed in a game. She tells him about Ofer's affection for minuscule toys with lots of detailed accessories. She was amazed at his ability to collect them with infinite patience, match them up, put them together, and take them apart again.

"That's not something he got from me me." Avram laughs, and Ora is moved: In what he negates, she hears what he is affirming.

When he was eighteen months old, they went on vacation to Dor Beach. Early in the morning he woke up while Ora, Ilan, and Adam were still asleep, climbed down from his bed, and walked out of the cabin alone. Barefoot, wearing a T-shirt and a diaper, he padded onto the big lawn adjacent to the beach and saw, probably for the first time in his life, a huge sprinkler spraying water. He stood watching in amazement, giggling and murmuring to himself, and then he started playing with the sprinkler. He crept up to the giant spurts of water and ran away before they could lick his feet. Ora, now awake and watching from behind the cabin wall, could see his happiness right before her eyes: she could see happiness itself, sunny and golden, refracted in the sprays of water.

Then the sprinkler caught Ofer and doused his body and head. Shocked, he stood paralyzed in the stream, trembling all over, his face scrunched up and turned to the sky, shaking his tight fists. She shows him to Avram, standing with her eyes closed and her lips in a trembling pout. A tiny, lonely human among the lashes of water that spun all around him, accepting a sentence he did not understand. She hurried over to rescue him, but something stopped her and sent her back to her hiding place. Perhaps, she tells Avram, it was a desire to see Ofer all alone like that just once. To see him as a person out in the world.

Ofer finally uprooted his feet and went to stand at a safe distance from the sprinkler, which he now watched with wounded pride, soundlessly whimpering and trembling through all his limbs. But he quickly forgot his insult when he spotted a wonderful new creature: a limping old horse with a straw hat on its head and its ears sticking through holes torn out of the hat. The horse was drawing a cart on which sat a man, also elderly, also wearing a straw hat. The old man came every day at dawn to pick up the garbage from the beach, and now he was taking it to the dump. Ofer stood in a state of excitement, still dripping with water, and a circular sense of wonder lit up his eyes. As the horse and cart drove by, the man noticed the baby, gave him a toothless smile, and charmingly removed his fraying straw hat with a flourish that stretched from his old age to Ofer's childhood.

Ora was afraid Ofer would be scared of the man, but he only patted his little stomach, laughed a rolling laugh, and slapped his head a few times with both hands, perhaps mimicking the doff of the hat.

Then he followed the horse.

He walked without looking back, and Ora followed him. "He was full of power and without a hint of fear. Just a little thing of eighteen months."

A tiny leaf ripples inside Avram's soul and floats on ahead of him. Behind his tightly shut eyelids, a small boy walks on an empty beach, his body leaning forward, wearing nothing but a diaper and a T-shirt, all of him moving toward and onward and ahead.

The cart bore piles of garbage, cardboard boxes, torn fishing nets, and large trash bags. Flies hovered above it, and a trail of stench lingered behind it. Every so often the old man wearily yelled at the horse and waved a long whip. Ofer walked behind them, along the water's edge, and Ora behind him, seeing through his eyes the wonder of the large, emaciated beast, and perhaps-she is guessing now, as she recounts the story for Avram-perhaps he even thought that everything moving up there in front of him was one single wonderfully complex creature, with two heads and four legs, large wheels, leather harnesses and straw hats, and a buzzing cloud above. As she talks, she distractedly quickens her pace, pulled along by the living memory-Ofer on the beach, a bold puppy bristling with the future, she behind him, hiding at times, although there was no need because he never turned to look back. She wondered how far he would go, and he answered her with his steps: forever. She saw-and this she does not have to say, even Avram understands-how the day would come when he would leave her, just get up and go, as they always do, and she guessed a little of what she would feel on that day, a little of what now, without any warning, digs its predatory teeth into her.

When he could no longer keep up with the horse and the old man, Ofer stopped, waved at them for a moment longer, his fist opening and closing, then turned around with a sweet, mischievous smile, and spread his arms out to her happily, as if he'd known all along that she was there, as if anything else were not possible. He ran to her arms shouting: "Nommy, Nommy, bunny!"

"You see, in his books, in the pictures, a creature with a long head and long ears was a bunny."

"That's a horse," she told him and hugged him tightly to her chest. "Say 'horse.'"

"That was one of Ilan's things," she tells him on their next coffee break, in a purple field of clover dotted with the occasional unruly stalk of yellow asphodel humming with honeybees. "Every time he taught Ofer or Adam a new word, he would ask them to repeat it out loud. To tell you the truth, it got on my nerves sometimes, because I thought, Why does he have to do it that way-he's not their trainer. But now I think he was right, and I even envy him, retroactively, because that way he was always the first one to hear every new word they said."

"That is is from me," Avram says with awkward hesitation. "You know that, right? That's me." from me," Avram says with awkward hesitation. "You know that, right? That's me."

"What is?"

He stammers, blushing. "I was the one who told Ilan in the army that if I ever had a kid, I would hand him every new word, present it to him, and it would be like, you know, like a covenant between us."

"So it's from you?"

"He...he didn't tell you?"

"Not that I remember."

"He probably forgot."

"Yeah, maybe. Or maybe he didn't want to tell me, not to pour salt on your wound with me. I don't know. We both had all sorts of rituals about you, and moments to be with you, but it was mainly the words, and the way they spoke, the boys." She sighs, and her droopy upper lip seems to droop a little more. "Well, you know, I mean he had that whole thing with you-"

"With me?" Avram sounds alarmed.

"Come on, it's obvious. The two of you were so verbal verbal, such chatterboxes, I swear, and with Ilan...Hey, what's that sound?"

Something disturbs the thistles nearby. They hear short, rapid thrashings coming from several directions, and then the rustle of a living creature, something that runs and stops, with panting breaths. Avram jumps up and pokes around, and then comes the barking, in different voices, and Avram shouts at her to get up, and she spills her coffee and tries to stand up and trips on something and falls, and Avram stands over her, frozen, his eyes and mouth gaping in a transparent shout, and dogs-dogs come from all around them.

When Ora finally manages to get up, she counts three, four, five. He jerks his head to the left, and there are at least four more there, of different breeds, large and small, dirty and wild, standing there barking furiously at them. Avram pulls Ora to him, grabs her wrist, but she still doesn't get it. How painfully slowly her brain processes the joints and connectors of every new situation, always. And on top of that, instead of kicking into self-defense mode, she has a foolish tendency-a completely un-survivor-like tendency, as Ilan once pointed out-to linger on the minor details (beads of sweat are spreading quickly under Avram's armpits; one of the dog's legs is broken and folded beneath its body; Ilan's eyelid had jerked wildly when he told her, nine months ago, that he was leaving her; the man they met at the Kedesh River had been wearing, on top of everything else, two identical wedding rings on two fingers).

The dogs crowd into a sort of triangle, with a large, black, broad-chested hound at its vertex, and slightly behind him, a strapping golden mutt. The black one barks wildly, almost without stopping for breath, and the golden one makes a deep, prolonged, ominous rumble.

Avram spins around and breathes asthmatically. "You here, me there!" he says quickly. "Kick, and yell!"

She tries to shout but finds she cannot. Some kind of shame in front of Avram, idiotic embarra.s.sment, and perhaps in front of the dogs, too. And herself? When has she really shouted? When has she yelled throat-rending howls? And when will she?

The dogs bark madly, their bodies rocking, their snarls and wailing charged with stubborn, raw fury. She stares at them. She is fascinated by the gaping mouths, the strands of saliva between the teeth. The dogs slowly approach, closing in on them. Avram hisses at her to find a stick, a branch, something, and Ora tries to remember things she's picked up here and there from Adam, or in chance conversations with his friends. There was one sweet boy, Idan, a gifted musician, who had joined the army's K-9 special forces unit. Once, when she drove him and Adam to a concert in Caesarea, he told them how they train dogs to attack the "dominant part" of a wanted suspect, a hand or a foot, which the suspect might use to try to protect himself from the dog. He explained to Ora that a regular dog will "click" its teeth when it bites someone's arm, but a dog in their unit-Idan himself had a Belgian shepherd, which he said had the strongest instincts: you could condition them any way you wanted-could lock in on an arm or a leg or a face. Amazing how she can pull out this useful information. But Idan was the one who sicced dogs on people, and now she was on the receiving end.

"The black one," Avram exhorts, "keep looking for him." The large male, undoubtedly the leader, stands nearby, watching her with bloodshot eyes. A huge, dense lump that seems to be shedding its canine sh.e.l.l and reincarnating itself as a primeval beast. And right then another dog, a smaller, bolder one, cuts through the bushes in Avram's direction, and Ora jumps up and grabs hold of Avram, almost pulling him down with her. He turns to her furiously and his own face is like an animal's for a second-a peace-loving, vegetarian, and generally fearful animal. A gnu or a llama or a camel that has suddenly found itself in the midst of a ma.s.sacre. Then he hurls one sharp kick at the dog, who sails through the air with terrifying silence, spread out like a rag, with its head bent backward unnaturally, and he is closely followed by one of Avram's sneakers.

"I killed him," Avram whispers in astonishment.

Silence hangs in the air. The dogs sniff nervously. It occurs to Ora that if she and Avram don't attack, the dogs will settle down. She thinks about her own dog, Nicotine, and tries to draw his softness to this place, coaxing his domestic scent to waft out of her toward them. She looks around. The whole field is dotted with dogs. Almost all of them look like pets gone feral. Here and there a colorful collar peeks out, submerged in thick, filthy fur. A few glorious tails still wag, hinting at pampering and devotion. All their eyes are infected, covered with layers of yellow crud, and flies hover around them. Nicotine, who was her gift to Ilan when he stopped smoking, was as plain to her as a sister soul, but what is happening here is almost outside the realm of nature. It is rebellion. Betrayal. The big black one stands quietly, examining the situation, and the others-including Ora and Avram-tensely await his expressions. Slightly behind him stands the golden dog. When Ora looks at it closely, it turns away in embarra.s.sment and runs its tongue over its upper lip, and Ora knows it's a b.i.t.c.h.

"Stones, pick up stones," Avram whispers out of the corner of his mouth. "We'll throw them."

"No, wait." She touches his arm.

"Just don't show them we're afraid-"

"Wait, don't do anything, they'll leave."

The dogs c.o.c.k their heads as though following the conversation.

"And don't look them in the eye, not in the eye."

Avram looks down.

He and Ora face each other silently. A pair of falcons hovers above in a mating dance, cackling with laughter.

A shudder runs through the big black dog's chest. He takes a few steps and circles them broadly. The other dogs stand tense, their fur on end.

"f.u.c.kit," Avram whispers, "we've lost our chance."

The black one keeps pacing slowly, drawing an invisible line around them, without taking his eyes off them. The dogs follow along, completing a circle. Ora seeks out the golden b.i.t.c.h, who looks wild and bold as she stands beside the black dog. A handsome couple, Ora thinks with a strange twinge of jealousy-the forgotten longing, to be a handsome couple.

Suddenly it all sparks up again, as though the circular motion has fanned a primordial urge in the dogs. At once their faces and bodies sharpen. Wolves and hyenas and jackals now encircle Ora and Avram, and they too turn around in a circle. Avram's back touches hers. He is wet. They move together, forward, backward, to either side. They are one body. She can dimly hear a deep, hoa.r.s.e growl. But perhaps it's hers.

The dogs break into a slow trot around them. Ora feverishly searches for the golden one. She must find her. She scans dog after dog like beads on a necklace. There she is, running with them. Ora's spirits fall: the b.i.t.c.h's face is also sharp and gaping now, and her cheeks are drawn up in a grimace that exposes her canines.

Gray lightning flashes, something seizes Ora's pants from behind, at her calf, and she jumps in horror and kicks out without seeing. She hits something, her foot almost dismantled by the powerful pain, and a dirty, bedraggled mutt screeches, runs away, and sits licking its wound at some distance. Avram emits twisted, high-pitched sounds, not words but crushed syllables. She can almost feel the shaky scaffolding of his soul, which he has worked so hard to erect, collapsing because of this foolishness. Right at that moment he thrashes a stick, very close to her thigh, and a gaping hole opens up in the circle. Then comes another whistling blow, followed by a nauseating sound: something broken escapes with a whimper, pulling its rear body with its two front legs, and again she sees Nicotine, old and sick, dragging himself to his basket with a befuddled look in his eyes.

She starts to whistle. Not a tune. Something meaningless and monotonous and mechanical that sounds like the hum of a broken appliance. Her lips are pursed and she whistles. The dogs p.r.i.c.k up their ears. Avram throws her a suspicious glance. His beard is wild, his face alarmingly sharp.

She keeps on. Sensitive ears vibrate as they decipher a signal broadcast from another world. Her eyes dart in every direction. She tries to produce a low, soft whistle, as full and rich as her lungs can muster, then sticks with the loose whistle, guarding it like an ancient fire.

An emaciated brown mutt stops moving, sits on its hind legs, and scratches behind its ears. In so doing, it breaks the circle. The other dogs spread out a little. The golden b.i.t.c.h walks hesitantly to one side, panting heavily. A large Canaan with an ugly open wound on its thigh limps away, then stops in the middle of the field and looks up at the sky as though he's forgotten what he meant to do. Ora thinks she sees him yawn.

The black dog shakes his head a few times and tediously scans the other dogs. Now Ora whistles her Nicotine whistle, the first few notes of "My Beloved with Her Pure White Neck," a song she and Ilan used to whistle to each other, too. The black dog barks vacantly at the sky and walks away. The others straggle behind him. He p.r.i.c.ks up his tail and starts to run, and they follow. The golden b.i.t.c.h trails behind them. The pack looks smaller to Ora now. She gives Avram a sideways glance. His stick-now she sees it's a branch, from a eucalyptus or a pine tree-is still held high in his hand. His chest rises and falls like a bellows.

She whistles. Ilan always distractedly whistled their song in the shower, and she, lying in bed, would put down her book to listen. Once he whistled it in a low key, standing at one end of the bustling lobby of the Jerusalem Theater. She, at the other end, picked it up and started walking toward him, whistling softly until they met and embraced.

Avram looks at her questioningly. She whistles after the pack of dogs as they recede into the distance. She rounds her lips and whistles to the golden b.i.t.c.h, who grudgingly turns her head and slows down. Ora leans forward with her hands on her knees. "Come," she whispers.

The other dogs sprint away, barking, chasing one another, engaging in momentary fights, galloping across the field with floppy or perked-up ears, re-forming themselves into a pack. The golden one looks at them and back at Ora. Then, hesitantly, with a trembling paw, she starts to walk in Ora's direction. Without moving, Ora whistles softly, almost imperceptibly, guiding the b.i.t.c.h. Avram lets the branch drop. The b.i.t.c.h walks through a patch of stubbly growth that clings to her broad chest.

Ora slowly crouches down on one knee. The b.i.t.c.h stops abruptly, one paw suspended, her black nostrils open wide. Ora finds a slice of bread on their cloth, and carefully tosses it near the dog. She pulls back and growls.

"Eat it, it's good."

The b.i.t.c.h c.o.c.ks her head. Her eyes are large and dirty. Ora talks to her: "You lived in a house once, you had a home, people took care of you and loved you. You had a bowl for food and a bowl for water."

With cautious, hunched steps, the b.i.t.c.h walks over to the bread. Growling, her brows arched, she does not take her eyes off Avram and Ora.

"Don't look at her," Ora whispers.

"I was looking at you," you," Avram says awkwardly, and turns away. Avram says awkwardly, and turns away.

The b.i.t.c.h grabs the bread and devours it. Ora throws her a piece of cheese. She sniffs it and eats. Then a few pieces of salami. Some biscuits. "Come here, you're a good dog, good, good dog." The dog sits down and licks her chops. Ora pours water from a bottle into a plastic dish and sets it down on the ground between her and the dog, then goes back to her place. The dog sniffs at it from a distance. Reluctant to approach, attracted yet repelled. A slight whimper escapes her lips. "Drink, you're thirsty." The b.i.t.c.h approaches the dish without taking her eyes off Ora and Avram. Her leg muscles shake and she looks as though she might collapse. She laps up the water quickly and retreats. Ora moves closer and the b.i.t.c.h bares her teeth and her fur stands on end. Ora talks to her and pours some more water. She does this two more times, until the bottle is empty. The b.i.t.c.h sits next to the dish. Then she sprawls out and starts gnawing at a ball of fur and thistles stuck to her paw.

And now they can no longer avoid looking at each other.

Ora and Avram stand there, spent, their sweat heavy with the stench of fear, ashamed. A flicker of embarra.s.sment crosses their faces. They have not yet had time to robe themselves in their former skins. Avram stares at her and shakes his head slowly, wonderingly, gratefully, and his blue eyes fill with an undulating stir, and her body suddenly remembers his embrace, and for a moment she wonders stupidly if she should whistle for him him to come. But he comes anyway, a mere three steps, and hugs her, grasps her tightly, as he used to, and whispers, "Ora, Ora'leh." The b.i.t.c.h looks up at them. to come. But he comes anyway, a mere three steps, and hugs her, grasps her tightly, as he used to, and whispers, "Ora, Ora'leh." The b.i.t.c.h looks up at them.

A moment later Ora pulls away and stands staring at him as though she has not seen him for years. Then she falls on him again and starts to pound him with both hands and hit his face and scratch it, without saying anything, panting drily. Taken aback, he shields his face, then tries to hold her, to encircle her in his arms so that she cannot hurt him or harm herself, because she has started to scratch herself too and hit her own face with her hands. "Ora, stop, stop," he shouts, he begs, until he is able to trap her in his arms and hold her tightly to his body to stop her wildness. She struggles and grunts and kicks him, and every time she feels a s.p.a.ce of nothing between them she tries to fill it with a punch or a kick or an angry breath, and the wilder she gets, the closer he has to hold her, until they are practically molded into one, intertwined, and she grits her teeth and yells, "You piece of s.h.i.t, all these years...punishing us...who is to blame here ..." Her voice grows weaker and weaker until she flops against his chest, her head in the round of his shoulder, amazed at herself, at what came out of her-why now, why, this was not at all what she wanted to say to him. He does not move, only holds her to him and runs his hand up and down her back, over her sweat-soaked shirt, and she breathes deeply and whispers into his body just as she spoke a few days earlier into the pit she dug in the earth. Avram somehow senses that she is praying, but not to him, rather to someone inside him, asking him to open up and let her in. His hands and body constantly knead her body, and she kneads his, fingers tightening over limbs, wondering, remembering. For one moment-no more-there is a sudden abandonment, like a fleeting moment of disorderly conduct, and Ora's legs almost fail her, but she remains standing with the last of her strength. What is this? she wonders. What's happening here? She holds her head back, wanting to look in his eyes and ask, but he pulls her to him with new-old fervor, imprinting himself on her again. That's exactly how he used to be, and she suddenly remembers how the whole time they were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g-nut-and-bolting, he called it-it was as though he were hallucinating inside her, growing intermittently harder and softer, moving in a slow somnambulism, a sort of continuous sleepwalking in which his mind and body were unshackled, so different from his usual rhythm when he was outside of her, different from his huntsman-like alertness. He once told her that from the moment he entered her, it was though a circle closed inside him and he immediately sank into a dream. "It's like an underwater maze," he said, when she asked him to try to describe it. "No, no, forget that. It's like a dream that you can't tell anyone or re-create when you wake up. That's what's fun about it: that I can't find the words. That I I can't find the words." can't find the words."

Of course she felt, in those distant years, the other women and girls he saw through the canopy of his closed eyelids. She felt the rhythmic, salacious alternating of his pa.s.sions and fantasies as he made love to her. And every time she felt a twinge of jealousy, she told herself that you could not love Avram without loving his imagination, his parallel dimensions, his thousands of hallucinatory women. But she would quickly search for his mouth so that she could give it her her kiss-deep, demanding, vigorous-or even just touch the tip of his tongue with hers, to bring him back to the source that gave rise to all that in him, and he would instantly realize what she was doing and smile with his swollen eyelids and make a movement with his body that said: Here, I'm back. kiss-deep, demanding, vigorous-or even just touch the tip of his tongue with hers, to bring him back to the source that gave rise to all that in him, and he would instantly realize what she was doing and smile with his swollen eyelids and make a movement with his body that said: Here, I'm back.

All that time, in all those years, with all the talk and the chatter, intrigues lodged between his foot and her ankle, between his eyelashes and her navel. And she was so young, she didn't even know you were allowed to laugh like that in the midst of lovemaking. She hadn't realized that her body was so lighthearted and mischievous and cheerful. And it all somehow comes back to her now, barely able to stand, almost falling into his body. It's been years since she's allowed herself to remember how interwoven they used to be, and how all of his limbs climbed over all of her limbs-"Is that why they call it clim climaxing?" he joked once. "We mustn't waste even one-thousandth of a touch," he would murmur, "not a finger or a hip or an eyelid, certainly not two thighs or an earlobe." And when she was with him she was inexhaustible, climaxing and laughing, laughing and climaxing in short, quick spurts, while he held back like a Tibetan yogi, gathering it in from all the corners of himself, as he explained with a conspiratorial smile. From the farthest regions, from the tips of his toes, his elbows, eyelashes, neck, starting from a distance starting from a distance, until she felt his signals, and she would smile in her heart, here it is, here, the sharpening of all his flesh, the filling up, the high tide, and the quick departure of humor from his body-suddenly serious, determined, fateful, with his muscles weaving around her, and the grasping, like a giant clamp, and then his essence, the beat of his imprint deep inside her. She remembers.

Then, with his head heavy on her chest, she would feel him resurface to his senses. Slow, suspended, with fetal movements, he would moan, "Ora'leh, did I hurt you?"

Here too, in the open field, he hugs her, steadies her, then gently holds her away. A pity. She was ready, if he'd only wanted to. They may have struggled that way for a minute, no longer, yet she crossed an ocean of time. And where is he? What does he want? What does she know? Only that he is grasping her, holding her in his arms, softly caressing her hair, asking, "Did I hurt you?"

Then he lets go, pushes himself away from her as though he has realized what almost happened, the ghost that was almost conjured up. Ora rocks dizzily and takes hold of his arm again. "Wait, don't run away, why are you running away from me?" She looks at him weakly, touches a long b.l.o.o.d.y scratch on his nose, which she has given him, and says quietly, "Avram, do you remember us?"

"ILAN CAME HOME. After he ran away from me and Adam and tried out houses all over Jerusalem, he came back to us, to the house in Tzur Hada.s.sah. As soon as he did, he was shocked at Adam, I mean at me, at the way I'd neglected Adam and his education and his speech, and any order and discipline, and he started improving him." Ora laughs. "Do you understand? For almost three years, Adam and I were more or less on our own, two wild beasts in the jungle, no laws, no commandments, and then the missionary landed. And we suddenly discovered that nothing we did was right, that we didn't have an agenda or a routine, we ate when we were hungry and slept when we were tired, and the house was pretty much a dump.

"Wait," she says, holding up a finger, "there's more. That Adam walked around the neighborhood naked and scarfed down ma.s.sive amounts of chocolate and watched TV indiscriminately and got to day care at eleven a.m. And at his advanced age he still didn't know how to go potty properly. And he called me Ora, not Mom!

"Ilan, being Ilan, took matters into his own hands right then and there. He did everything very nicely of course, with lots of smiles-he knew he was on probation with me-but all of a sudden, for example, clocks turned up around the house. One in the kitchen, a little one in the living room, and a Mickey Mouse clock in Adam's room. And there were cleaning days, and we had to clear out the mess and get rid of the junk. The fun was over! 'This Sat.u.r.day we're sorting through Adam's toys, next Sat.u.r.day your paperwork, and what about that pharmacy spilling out of the bathroom cabinet?'"

She laughs joylessly.

"I liked it, don't get me wrong. It was nice to have a man in the house and to feel that someone was starting to eliminate the chaos. A sort of purification. The rescue forces had arrived. And don't forget that I was pregnant with Ofer, so I didn't have a lot of strength to resist, and all his enthusiasm signaled that he was pretty serious about his nesting and that maybe this time he would stay."