"Oh, him."

"Yes, him."

Her finger runs back along the path until it hits the border. "Oops." She stops and folds in her finger. "Lebanon."

"If you ask me, that's more or less where we started."

"Maybe it was here? Because that's right where we waded into the stream, remember?"

"Could I forget?"

"And we followed it along here in a zigzag, like this." She leads her finger down the winding path. Avram's finger is next to hers, just behind. "This is where we climbed up, and here there was a wooden bridge, and here we saw the flour mill, and maybe this is where we slept the first night? No? Maybe here, next to Kfar Yuval? How can anyone remember? What did we even see those first few days? Who could see anything at all?"

He laughs. "I was a total zombie."

"Here's the Kfar Giladi quarry, and here's the Tel Chai Forest, and the sculpture path, and here's where we ate, at Ein Ro'im."

"I wasn't seeing anything back then."

"No, you weren't. You just walked and cursed me for dragging you along."

"And 'round about here, I think, we met Akiva, and then we went down into the wadi."

"This whole stretch was a real hike, see?"

"Yes, and that must be the Arab village."

"What's left of it."

"I wanted to see it, but you ran on."

"I've had enough ruins in my life."

"And that's the Kedesh River."

"So here's where we slept."

"And then we walked up the riverbed and met that guy of yours."

"Since when is he mine?" Her fingers press into the map, leaving a brief indentation in the plastic. "And here's Yesha Fortress, and that's the Sheik's tomb, Nebi Yusha."

"And here, you see, here's where we walked up all the way to Keren Naphtali, and then down again because you left the notebook at the Kedesh River."

"And here was another stream, Dishon."

"It looks so innocent on the map. And look here, it's those turbines we couldn't figure out. Apparently that was the Ein Aviv Regional Pumping Station. So we've learned something."

"And I think this is the pool where we bathed."

"And here we walked along that big pipe to cross the water."

"I was shaking."

"Seriously? I didn't know, you didn't say anything."

"That's me."

"And here, look, it's your fairy-tale forest, Tsivon Stream."

"And here's the meadow we walked through earlier. Definitely."

"And here's the road we crossed."

"Yes, it said 'Highway 89.'"

"So if we crossed here," Avram says musically, "then now we must be-"

"On Meron," she determines.

"Mount Meron?" Meron?"

"See for yourself."

Their fingers point reverently.

"Avram," she whispers, "look how far we've walked."

He gets up, hugs his chest, and paces among the trees.

They fold up the map, hoist their backpacks, and start making their way up the steep incline again through the thistles. Avram leads now, and Ora has a hard time keeping up. These shoes are really good for me, he decides. Excellent socks, too. He finds a long, supple branch of an arbutus tree, breaks it into the right size with one stomp, and uses it to help with the climb. He suggests that Ora use one, too. He comments on the excellent path markings in this section. "Frequent and consecutive, just like they should be," he p.r.o.nounces. She thinks she can hear him humming a tune to himself.

It's a good thing the path is so long, she thinks, watching him from behind. This way, there's time to get accustomed to all the changes.

"Black-Maned Horse. That was one of Ilan's nicknames for Adam, when he was maybe three and a half. There was also Giant-Trunked Elephant. Get it?"

Avram mumbles the words, hearing them in Ilan's voice.

"Or Lovely-Braying Donkey. Or Angry-Browed Cat. That kind of thing."

"Angry-Browed Cat?"

"I'm telling you, it was like he was conducting human experiments."

She saw Adam changing in front of her very eyes, twisting and turning himself to adapt to Ilan's desires. He painted an orange cat: "I oranged it," he told her, "and now I'm trickling some yellow with my paintbrush." She smiled crookedly. Of course she was proud of him, but with every accomplishment she felt him grow farther away from her. She looked at him as he wagged his tail for Ilan and was alarmed at what she felt toward him. She could not understand how all that time he had hidden from her the eagerness that now overflowed, bursting from every pore in his skin. The exposed-and so masculine-fervor with which he turned his back on the years he had spent with her, in their little paradise for two. Bambi and his mother, RIP.

"My stomach is b.u.t.terflying!" he'd shout joyously after Ilan spun him over his head. "Yes," she'd say, straining to smile, "lucky you."

It seems to her that shortly after he mastered speech, speech mastered him. He started to voice his thoughts out loud. She didn't notice it immediately, but at some point she realized that another channel had been added to the already bustling soundtrack of their domestic life. He vocalized all his thoughts, wishes, and fears. And since he still talked about himself in the third person, it made for entertainment sometimes: "Adam is hungry, hungry, hungry! Just wait a bit! No, he's sick of waiting for Mom to come out of the bathroom. Adam is going into the kitchen now, and he's going to make himself a snack. What should he put in his sandwich? And which should he put in his sand-what?"

He would lie in his bed after the bedtime rituals and mumble his thoughts. Ora and Ilan would stand behind the door eavesdropping halfheartedly. "Adam has to go to sleep. Maybe a dream will come? Teddy, here's what we have to do now. You have to go to sleep, and if a dream comes, shout 'Adam!' Dreams aren't real, it's just a drawing in your brain, Teddy."

"It was strange," Ora says now, "and a little embarra.s.sing, as though his subconscious was completely exposed to us." She looks away from Avram so as not to remind him of his own narcotic-induced ramblings the night she kidnapped him. She wonders if she should tell him what he said about her that night: "She's totally nuts, she's gone off her rocker."

Adam knew all the letters and vowel marks by the time he was four. He picked them up with incredible ease, and you just couldn't stop him. He read, he wrote. He saw characters in the cracks of a soap bar, in a crust of bread, in the whitewash on the walls. He insisted on reading words in the folds in his sheet and the lines of his palm.

"Remind me what kind of pie you are?" Ilan said, tickling Adam while he bathed him.

"I'm a pi pirate," Adam answered, laughing.

"And what else?"

"A pied piper!"

"And?"

"A grieving magpie!"

"Thieving," Ilan corrected him with a smile. "And what else?" Ilan corrected him with a smile. "And what else?"

"A pile of cow pie!"

Bubbles of rolling laughter foamed up in the bathroom and burst in front of her as she lay in bed.

But now, walking up Mount Meron, she tries to remember why she was so angry at the time. What I wouldn't give to lie in that bed again, pregnant, with the aching back and the exhaustion, with Ofer in my belly, hearing that laughter of theirs. "Let's sit down for a minute. This is no mountain; this is a ladder."

She plunges to the ground. The incline, and the longings-her old heart can't take it. Adam is here with her, four years old at most, running around in the field. His childish movements, his curious, fragile, slightly suspicious looks. And the light that shines when he allows himself to be happy, when he excels at something, when Ilan praises him. "I keep talking about Adam, but Ofer is never Ofer alone. You understand that, don't you? Ofer is always also Adam, and Ilan, and me. That's the way it is. That's a family." She giggles. "You have no choice, you'll have to get to know us all."

Pictures and more pictures: Adam and baby Ofer napping together in a sleeping bag on the living-room rug-an Indian camp-naked, cuddling, their sweaty hair clinging to their foreheads, and Adam's right arm hugs Ofer's belly with its protruding navel. Adam and Ofer, five and a half and two, setting up house in an empty cardboard box, their two faces peeking from a little round window she'd cut out for them. Ofer and Adam, one and four and a half, very early in the morning, sleeping naked in Adam's bed; while they slept, Ofer had p.o.o.ped and smeared Adam thoroughly, diligently, and undoubtedly with generosity and love. Ofer puffing his cheeks to blow out three candles on his birthday cake, and Adam running up from behind to finish them off with one breath. Ofer reaching up on his matchstick legs after Adam has s.n.a.t.c.hed his beloved stuffed elephant, and shrieking: "Ofer e'phant! Ofer e'phant!" He stands his ground so firmly that Adam panics and gives it back to him, then stares at him with a new tinge of reverence, as Ora watches from the kitchen.

A big family picnic. The scene is as vivid as though it is happening right here on the mountain. Adults and children sit in a circle watching Ofer, who stands in the middle. A fair, thin, tiny child with huge light-blue laughing eyes and a golden ma.s.s of hair. He is about to tell the funniest joke in the world, which Mom-he a.s.sures his audience-has already heard seven times and rolled around with laughter every time. Then he launches into a long, incomprehensible yarn about two friends, one called Whaddayacare, the other named Whatsupwithyou. He gets it all wrong and forgets things, then remembers, and sparks of laughter dart around his eyes. The audience flutters with delight, and Ofer keeps stopping to remind his listeners: "Soon comes the end of the joke, and that's when you laugh!"

All that time, Adam-Eight years old? Seven?-looking thin, secretive, and shadowy, slinks from one person to the next, following a hidden code known only to him. He never lingers, never allows anyone to hug or caress him, only watches ravenously as they all focus on Ofer. He loots them, a little predator, preyed upon.

Avram listens to Ora and a t.i.tmouse chirps joyously in the thicket. Nearby on the mountainside, in a patch that must have recently burned, mustard plants are starting to bloom again in a wild, joyous rabble of fauna. Ora laughs. The flowers have clearly decided to just get on with it, and the scorched spot now buzzes with mustard plants and bees.

"And Ofer kept quiet until he was almost three. Well, not quiet, but he didn't make much of an effort to learn how to talk."

Avram asks hesitantly, "And that...that's old, three, right?"

"It's pretty late to start talking."

Avram furrows his brow, considering the new information.

"I mean, he had a few basic words, and some very short phrases, and lots of fragments. A syllable here, a syllable there. Other than that he simply refused to learn how to talk. But he got by very well with his smiles and his charm, and those eyes of his. Which you gave him," she adds, unable to resist.

To Ora's surprise, Ofer had even convinced Ilan that you could live a full life without saying almost a single word correctly. "And this is Ilan, you know?" she notes with a raised eyebrow. "Ilan who told me, even before Adam was born, that he already knew he wouldn't be capable of loving a baby-not even his own son-until the baby started talking. And then comes Ofer, and he went on like that for almost three years, quiet as a monk, and look how it turned out."

Ilan and Ofer dug beds in the garden together and planted vegetables and flowers. They built a fancy ant farm and cared for it meticulously, and they built multisectioned LEGO castles, and spent hours making things out of plasticine and Play-Doh, and they played with Ofer's huge eraser collection, and baked cakes together. "Ilan!" She laughs. "Imagine! And Ofer, just so you know, was crazy about taking things apart. As soon as he could do anything, he liked to take things apart and put them back together, over and over again, a thousand times. The automatic sprinkler in the garden, an old tape recorder, a transistor, a fan, and of course watches. Ilan taught him some basic technical skills, and carpentry, and electrical engineering, and all that happened almost without words. You should have heard the gargles and squeaks that came out of those two. You should have seen Ilan. It was like he took a vacation from himself."

Avram smiles. Near happiness distorts his unaccustomed face for a moment. He really wants to hear, Ora observes once again, and her heart replies simply what she has always known about Avram: that he may never be able to or dare to connect himself to Ofer, but he certainly can and will connect to the story of Ofer.

A lighthearted, laughing Ilan emerged in Ofer's life. An Ilan whom she loved very much. He rolled around and wrestled on the floor with him, and played soccer and tag in the living room and in the yard, and ran around the house with Ofer on his shoulders, shouting and yelling, and walked Ofer up and down the hallway perched on his own feet, and sang silly songs with him.

They stood at the mirror and made funny or scary faces. Ilan would hold his face close to Ofer's, nose almost touching nose, and whoever laughed first lost. Then he'd disappear into the kitchen and emerge with his face covered in flour and ketchup. And the way those two horsed around in the bathtub, water fights and splashing. "You should have seen the bathroom when they were done. It looked like the scene of a water terrorist attack."

"And what about Adam?"

"Adam, yes"-she thinks of how he keeps coming back to Adam-"of course Adam was also welcome in these games, it's not that he wasn't." She tightens her arms over her chest. "It's just so complicated ..."

Because when Adam was with them, she always had the feeling that Ofer and Ilan held back a little, toned down their wildness and cheerfulness to tolerate Adam's incessant chatter, his flood of speech, which often turned into a frightening display of physical rowdiness, a tempest of hitting and kicking, aimed at them both, over some silly little excuse or an imaginary insult. Sometimes he would throw himself down in a tantrum and pound the floor with his hands and feet, and even his head-Ora remembers the thuds with horror-and then Ilan and Ofer would try as hard as they could to calm him, to appease him, to flatter him. "It was really touching to see Ofer, all of two years old, caressing Adam, sitting next to him, leaning over him and making wordless murmurs of comfort.

"It was such a difficult period, because Adam couldn't understand what was going on, and the more he tried to get close to them, the more they seemed to pull back. And then he'd get even more anxious and turn up his volume, because what could he do? He only had one tool to express everything he wanted, he only had what Ilan had taught him." She shakes her head angrily. Why hadn't she intervened more? She'd been so weak, so green. "In fact, now I think he was simply begging Ilan to come back to him, to reaffirm their covenant. I also think about Ilan, about how he just let Ofer be himself and loved everything about him. He even gave up his d.a.m.ned judgmentalism, just so he could absolutely love everything Ofer was, without any inhibitions."

And when he did that-she knows this, though she cannot say it out loud-he turned his back on Adam. There's no other way to describe it. She knows that Avram also understands exactly what happened. That Avram can hear the half sounds and the silences.

Ilan didn't do it on purpose. She knows that. He probably never wanted it to happen. He loved Adam very much. But that's what happened. That's what he did. Ora felt it, Adam felt it, maybe even tiny Ofer felt something. It had no name, this act of Ilan's, the surrept.i.tious, subtle, terrible shift, but during that period, the air in their home was thick with it-with a breach of trust so profound, so convoluted, that even now, twenty years later, when she tells Avram about it, she cannot call it by its explicit name.

One morning when Adam was about five, Ilan was feeding him eggs and toast, and Adam licked his lips in between bites and said, "Toast is what I like most."

This had been their favorite game for a while, before Ofer was born, and Ilan responded immediately: "Better than pot roast."

Adam laughed gleefully, thought for a minute, and said, "Scarier than a ghost!"

They both laughed. Ilan said, "You're good at this, but now you have to get dressed so we won't be late."

"For a very important date."

As Ilan was dressing him in a shirt, Adam said, "Into the sleeves, like green leaves."

Ilan smiled. "You're the greatest, Adamon."

When Ilan tied his shoes, Adam said, "Put my shoes on my feet, like a blanket on a sheet."

"I see you're full of rhymes."

"Go eat some limes."

On their way to kindergarten, they pa.s.sed the Tzur Hada.s.sah playground, and Adam observed that there was a bride on the slide and a king on the swing. Ilan, whose mind was preoccupied with other matters, mumbled something about how Adam was becoming a poet, and Adam replied, "You know it."

When Ora came to pick Adam up later that day, the teacher grinned and told her that Adam was having a very special day: he was talking to the cla.s.s and the teacher only in rhymes, and had even infected a few of the other children, although not all of them were as good at rhyming as Adam was. "The kindergarten was full of rhymes today! We had a school full of little poets today, didn't we, children?"

Adam furrowed his smooth brow and said in a slightly angry voice, "Girls and boys, make some noise. And play with toys."

As they rode home on Ora's bike, he squeezed her waist tightly with an unfamiliar strength and answered all her questions in rhyme. Her patience for these games of his and Ilan's was limited to begin with, so she asked him to stop. He said: "With a skip and a hop." Ora decided he was just doing it to aggravate her, so she said nothing.

He kept it up at home. Ora threatened that she'd stop talking to him until he could behave, and he shouted, "Brave, save, wave!" He sat watching Pretty b.u.t.terfly Pretty b.u.t.terfly on TV, and when Ora looked, she found him hunched forward, his hands in fists on his lap, and his lips moving after each sentence uttered by the characters on the show. She realized he was answering them in rhyme. on TV, and when Ora looked, she found him hunched forward, his hands in fists on his lap, and his lips moving after each sentence uttered by the characters on the show. She realized he was answering them in rhyme.