By the second week, some of the drivers recognized her. But since there was nothing suspicious about her, they filtered her out of their minds so they could focus on more important things. She began to identify a few regular pa.s.sengers and knew where they got on and where they got off. If they talked on their cell phones, or with their fellow travelers, she also knew something about their ailments and their families, and what they thought about the government. An elderly couple drew her attention in particular. The man was tall and thin, the woman very small, shriveled, and almost translucent. When she sat down, her feet swung without reaching the floor of the bus. She always had a bad, phlegmy cough, and the man would worriedly examine her used tissues and replace them with fresh ones. Ora woke up a little every time the couple got on, at the market. They took the bus to the last stop, the way she did, and to her surprise they almost always switched with her to the bus going back and got off at the same station where they had originally boarded, on the other side of the street. She couldn't understand the meaning of their route.

Day after day, for three or four weeks, Ora took the 18 18 bus and spent at least an hour traveling around the city. She discovered that the bad thoughts loosened their grip on her while she was on the bus. Most of the time she did not have a single complete thought, merely transposing her body from one stop to the next. She grew accustomed to the jolting, the screeching brakes, the potholes, and the religious radio stations blasting their admonitions at full volume. And she realized that Ilan never asked her what she did for long stretches of the day, and she could keep her activities from him. Sometimes, when they sat down for dinner, she would stare at him and silently scream with her eyes: How can you not sense where I am and what I'm doing? How can you let me go on like this? bus and spent at least an hour traveling around the city. She discovered that the bad thoughts loosened their grip on her while she was on the bus. Most of the time she did not have a single complete thought, merely transposing her body from one stop to the next. She grew accustomed to the jolting, the screeching brakes, the potholes, and the religious radio stations blasting their admonitions at full volume. And she realized that Ilan never asked her what she did for long stretches of the day, and she could keep her activities from him. Sometimes, when they sat down for dinner, she would stare at him and silently scream with her eyes: How can you not sense where I am and what I'm doing? How can you let me go on like this?

"Just then, the thing with Ofer happened," she says cryptically to Avram, who has been quiet for a long time. "We had a crazy month, with the constant questionings in the battalion and the brigade, and the inquiries and investigations. Don't ask." She sighs and swallows her saliva. Here comes the moment when I have to tell him. He has to hear it, to know, to judge for himself.

In those days it seemed to Ora that every word she uttered, every look she gave, and even every silence were perceived by Ofer, Ilan, and Adam as a provocation, the premise for a fight. On these bus journeys, she felt a slight reprieve from them, and from herself too, from her strange insistence on bickering with them over and over again, and from her petty, circuitous questions, which were honestly starting to drive her mad. They burst out of her like acidic hiccups every time she so much as thought about what had happened there, when she merely heard the beeps signaling the hourly radio news, or even when she just thought about Ofer. "It's like I couldn't think of him without going through the incident first."

"But what happened?" Avram asks.

She listens inside herself, as though the answer will come, finally, from there. Avram holds his backpack straps with both hands-grips them.

One day Ora left the clinic, apologized distractedly to a couple in the waiting room, and hopped on the 18 18 bus for a quick ride. When they were near the Mekasher bus depot, she heard a very loud explosion. Then there was a moment of bottomless silence. The pa.s.sengers' faces slowly foundered and turned to pulp. A powerful stench of excrement spread through the air, and Ora was flushed with cold sweat. People started to shout, curse, and cry, and begged the driver to let them out. The driver stopped in the middle of the street and opened the doors, and the pa.s.sengers streamed out, fighting one another, kicking and punching to get out first. The driver looked in the mirror and asked, "Are you all staying?" Ora turned back to see who else he was talking to, and there was her elderly couple, huddled against each other, the woman's tiny, almost bald head buried in the man's body as he leaned over her and caressed her shoulder. Their expressions were difficult to describe: a mixture of shock and fear and also terrible disappointment. The radio immediately switched to emergency broadcast format-"First of all, allow me to express my condolences, to wish a speedy recovery to the injured, and to grieve with the families," said ministers and security experts one after the other. The explosion had occurred on a bus going the opposite way, near Davidka Square, which Ora's bus had driven past only moments before. The ambulances were already roaring to Shaare Zedek and Hada.s.sah hospitals. bus for a quick ride. When they were near the Mekasher bus depot, she heard a very loud explosion. Then there was a moment of bottomless silence. The pa.s.sengers' faces slowly foundered and turned to pulp. A powerful stench of excrement spread through the air, and Ora was flushed with cold sweat. People started to shout, curse, and cry, and begged the driver to let them out. The driver stopped in the middle of the street and opened the doors, and the pa.s.sengers streamed out, fighting one another, kicking and punching to get out first. The driver looked in the mirror and asked, "Are you all staying?" Ora turned back to see who else he was talking to, and there was her elderly couple, huddled against each other, the woman's tiny, almost bald head buried in the man's body as he leaned over her and caressed her shoulder. Their expressions were difficult to describe: a mixture of shock and fear and also terrible disappointment. The radio immediately switched to emergency broadcast format-"First of all, allow me to express my condolences, to wish a speedy recovery to the injured, and to grieve with the families," said ministers and security experts one after the other. The explosion had occurred on a bus going the opposite way, near Davidka Square, which Ora's bus had driven past only moments before. The ambulances were already roaring to Shaare Zedek and Hada.s.sah hospitals.

The next morning, soldiers and policemen manned all the bus stops, and the few pa.s.sengers were even more nervous, irritable, and suspicious than usual. There were outbursts of anger at anyone who pushed in line, trod on a toe, or b.u.mped into someone. People talked loudly on their cell phones. Ora felt they were using the phones as breathing tubes to the outside world. When the bus pa.s.sed the site of the attack, there was a silence. Through the window she saw a bearded Orthodox man, a volunteer from the victim-identification unit, standing in a treetop and using a cloth and tweezers to peel something gently off a branch and place it in a plastic bag. A group of kindergarten children got on the bus in Beit HaKerem, and a few of them were holding colorful balloons. They laughed and chattered and ran around, and everyone stared at the balloons. When one inevitably popped, although everyone could see it was just a balloon, a bitter screech of panic pierced the bus, and a few of the children burst into tears. The pa.s.sengers, ashamed and exhausted, avoided one another's eyes.

More than once on those circular journeys, Ora realized that if she happened to see someone she knew, she wouldn't know how to tell that person what she was doing there or where she was going. Sometimes she thought to herself: What is this ridiculous behavior? Just think how Ilan and the boys would feel if something happened to you, or if Ofer thought, G.o.d forbid, that it was because of him. Or that because of him you wanted something to happen to you. Yet still, for three or four weeks, every single day, a moment would come when she could not stop herself from leaving home or work and walking in a shamefaced, defeated sort of daydream state to the nearest bus stop, where she stood at some distance from the other people-all of whom also made a point of keeping a little distance between themselves-and got on a bus. She would walk into the middle, look dimly at an empty seat waiting for her, and search for her elderly couple, who seemed to expect her by now and who would nod with the forlorn partnership of co-conspirators. She would sit down, lean her head on the window, sometimes doze, and travel for a few stops or a whole route. She never knew in advance how much time she would have to spend on the bus, nor was she capable of picking herself up and getting off until the moment arrived when-without any apparent reason-she sensed relief, release, as though the effect of an injected substance had diminished, and only then could she get off the bus and go on with her day.

As the weeks went by, she was more and more able to summon up the image of the strange old man who had danced and laughed and frolicked, naked as the day he was born, in front of the soldiers who had finally freed him from the meat locker in the cellar in Hebron. "The building's owner was a wealthy butcher," she explains to Avram, who still does not understand, but he is breathing faster and his eyes dart. And the soldiers, she remembers, were so embarra.s.sed when they talked about it, about his nude dance, as though that was the hardest thing about the whole incident. He made a total idiot out of himself, one soldier told her when he slept over at their house the night before one of the inquiries. His name was Dvir, a kibbutznik from Kfar Szold. Six-five, lanky, stammering, and slightly juvenile. Ora drove him and Ofer to the brigade HQ- "Wait, Ora," Avram says with a pale face. "I can't follow, who is this old man?"

"The army actually took the case seriously," she says after a few moments of silence, during which they plunge to the ground, suddenly exhausted, and sit on the edge of a pool glistening with large yellow water lilies. The dog keeps jumping into the water, spraying everything around her, urging them to join in. But they do not see her. They sit side by side, hunched over.

Even though Ofer had begged her several times to stop talking about it, at least in public, Ora had to ask Dvir: "But how could you forget he was there?"

Dvir shrugged his broad shoulders. "I don't know, maybe everyone in the platoon thought someone else had let him out."

Ofer sniffed angrily and Ora vowed to keep quiet, not to say another word. She drove on with her brow furrowed and her shoulders hunched up almost to her ears. "But how could you forget a human being?" The words escaped her lips again after a few moments. "Just explain to me how you can forget a human being in a meat locker for two whole days!"

Avram lets out an uncontrolled grunt of pain and surprise. The sound of a body dropped from up high hitting the ground.

Dvir looked at Ofer pleadingly. Ofer said nothing, but his eyes darkened. Ora saw, but she could not stop herself.

"What can I tell you, Ora? It really wasn't right, there's no question about that. We're all eating our hearts out now, but you have to take into account that everyone was busy with their a.s.signments, we're pulling eight-by-eight roadblock shifts that suck your brain dry, and the fact that all of a sudden they took us on an a.s.signment we didn't even know how to do, and we had to keep some families with us in that apartment for two days, in one room, with one bathroom, and kids and old people and all their crying and yelling and whining, and just that is enough to make you lose your s.h.i.t, and at the same time you have to do lookouts onto the street and the killing zone, and cover for the prima donna snipers, and make sure the Hamasniks don't b.o.o.by-trap our downstairs doors, so it ended up falling between the cracks."

Ora bit her lip. Mustering up all the restraint she could find within herself, she said, "Still, Dvir, I can't understand how a bunch of guys-"

"Mom!" Ofer yelled. A single yell that cut like a knife. They drove the rest of the way in silence. When they got to HQ, Ofer wouldn't let her wait for him to hear the results of the preliminary inquiry, as she had intended to do. "You're going home now," he announced.

Ora looked at him, at her strong child with the shaved head and the pure gaze, and her eyes brimmed with tears. The question almost burst out again, and Ofer said in a terrifyingly quiet voice, "Mom, listen closely. This is the last time I'm going to tell you. Get off my case. Get off my case!" Get off my case!"

His eyes were gray steel, his lips iron wire, and his shaved skull a ball of cold fire. Ora shrank back from his power, his hardness, and above all his foreignness, and he turned his back on her and left without letting her kiss him.

She drove off, wild with sorrow, hardly able to see the road. A pelting, dusty rain began to fall, and one of the Fiat Punto's windshield wipers didn't work, and Ilan phoned and she couldn't say more than a few words without shouting the question, and of course he lost his patience too-it's a wonder he kept it for so long-and said he was getting sick and tired of her sanctimonious self-righteousness and that she should really keep in mind that Ofer needed her now, needed her full support.

Ora bellowed, "Support for what? Support for what?" even though she wanted to yell, Support for whom? Because she really wasn't sure anymore.

Ilan softened his voice. "Support for your son. Listen, you're his mother, right? You're the only mother he has, and he needs you unconditionally now, do you understand? You're his mother, you're not some Mother for Peace, okay?"

Ora was dumbfounded: Where had he come up with that? What did she have to do with Mothers for Peace? What did she have to do with those leftist women and their supposedly neutral checkpoint observations? She didn't even like them! There was something defiant and annoying and unfair about them and the whole idea, coming to hara.s.s soldiers while they worked. How could you blame those kids, who'd been stuck there to man those checkpoints for three years? Instead of doing that, why didn't they go and demonstrate at the military compound, or go and shout outside the Knesset? She'd always sensed a slightly grumbling weakness about them, with their excessive self-confidence and their total lack of reverence when they faced officers at the checkpoints or debated senior commanders on television panels. If not reverence, she thought, at least they should show a little grat.i.tude, just a tiny bit, for the people who were doing our dirty work and eating all the Occupation s.h.i.t for us, to keep us safe. As she conducted this confused dialogue with herself, Ilan kept talking softly: "Yes, there was a screwup. It really is awful, I agree with you. But Ofer isn't to blame, get that into your head. There were twenty soldiers in that building and in the periphery. Twenty Twenty. You can't saddle this whole case on him. He wasn't the commander there, he isn't even an officer. Why do you think he has to be more righteous than everyone else?"

"You're right," Ora murmured. "You're a hundred percent right, but"-and again the question dislodged itself against her will. It had been like that for weeks, she had no control over it, as though her body was independently producing the toxic compound that hiccupped out of her at regular intervals. Ilan was still in control of himself. It was amazing how all the people around her controlled themselves while she was falling apart. Sometimes she even suspected that the three of them were able to control themselves precisely because because she was crumbling and that in some strange way, upholding some hidden and complicated home economics, she was even conducting her embarra.s.sing, shameful collapse she was crumbling and that in some strange way, upholding some hidden and complicated home economics, she was even conducting her embarra.s.sing, shameful collapse instead instead of them, and perhaps for their sake. Ilan reminded her for the thousandth time that as early as Thursday morning, roughly at four-thirty a.m., nine hours after the old man was put in the room-"was put," he said; she noticed that the three of them had started using the pa.s.sive voice: "was put," "was left," "had been forgotten"-Ofer had actually asked his commander what about the guy in the room downstairs, and he was told that Nir, the company commander, must have sent someone to take him out by now. At six that evening he'd asked Tom, the operations sergeant, and they'd told him over the walkie-talkie that there was no way someone hadn't let the man out by now. of them, and perhaps for their sake. Ilan reminded her for the thousandth time that as early as Thursday morning, roughly at four-thirty a.m., nine hours after the old man was put in the room-"was put," he said; she noticed that the three of them had started using the pa.s.sive voice: "was put," "was left," "had been forgotten"-Ofer had actually asked his commander what about the guy in the room downstairs, and he was told that Nir, the company commander, must have sent someone to take him out by now. At six that evening he'd asked Tom, the operations sergeant, and they'd told him over the walkie-talkie that there was no way someone hadn't let the man out by now.

And then he didn't ask anymore, Ora thought. And Ilan said nothing. Ofer himself had told them he'd somehow forgotten, he had other fish to fry, and Ora realized that perhaps there comes a moment when you can no longer ask that kind of question, because you begin to fear the answer.

Avram listens and thrusts his head lower and lower between his shoulders. She cannot see his eyes at all.

Ilan took a deep breath and said, "What do you want, Ora? Up to now, in all the investigations, the army has even cleared Nir and Tom, because of all the chaos going on around them."

"I don't want anything, and I hope they really do clear all the guys. But still, just explain to me how for two whole days Ofer didn't think to go down and check for himself-"

They'd had this argument many times during the last month, reciting their lines over and over again with growing desperation, and now Ilan yelled, "Enough with this already! Listen to yourself, what's gotten into you? You've become a crazy woman!" And he hung up on her. After a few minutes he called to apologize. They never hung up on each other, and he'd never burst out at her like that before. "But you're really getting on my nerves with this," he said in a weary voice, and she could hear his desire for reconciliation and knew he was right and that they had to unite to get through this together. If matters were not handled sensibly and calmly, the case could deteriorate into a court-martial, rather than just the comprehensive inquiry being held in the battalion and the brigade. And if that happened, it was only a matter of time before it got into the news, as Ilan often reminded her, and those a.s.sholes were just looking for an excuse to dig up some dirt. You also had to remember, Ora recited to herself, that ultimately no one had died in that meat locker, and no one had been wounded or even starved, because there were cows and sheep and goats hanging on the meat hooks, and the old Palestinian man had managed to remove the gag they'd tied on his mouth so he wouldn't shout. And thanks to the frequent power cuts mandated by the army in the killing zone, the man didn't even freeze, and in fact at times he was kind of cooking down there-they boiled him and then froze him, then thawed him out again, as she had gradually understood from Ofer's fellow soldiers with whom she was able to talk. Naked and reeking and covered with animal blood, he had rolled around on the floor when they'd finally opened the meat locker's door-Ofer was home by then. "That Friday, at six p.m., he'd been sent home," she murmurs to Avram. "Do you understand? He wasn't even there." And after they opened the door, he started to twitch and convulse on the sidewalk, and it was as if he performed a strange dance for the soldiers as he lay there, banging his head on the sidewalk. He pointed at the soldiers and at himself and cackled horribly, as though for the two days he was locked up he had kept hearing a tremendous joke, and soon he would get his act together and tell it to them. They ordered him to get up and he refused, or maybe he could not stand up. He just stumbled and squirmed at their feet and kept banging his head on the sidewalk and crowing his crazy laugh. Ora resisted telling Ofer's friends, or Ilan and Adam, and Ofer himself, what was on the tip of her tongue: that perhaps going out of his mind was the only way a Palestinian could get through all the checkpoints and the permits and the physical examinations. But that thought was foreign to her too, and it seemed to have been created by her brain against her own will, and for a moment she wondered what would happen if she started having more and more of these outbursts, left-wing Tourette's attacks, and she quickly pulled herself together. After all, she reasoned, you should be grateful to Ilan for being so supportive of Ofer. He had studied the details of the case and reconstructed with Ofer every single minute of those two days, and prepped him carefully before each interrogation and questioning. He'd also talked to a couple of people he knew in the army and elsewhere and had gently pulled a few strings to bring the matter to a quick conclusion, by limiting it to the internal inquiry in the brigade. Ora swore that from now on she would try to control her big mouth. All was not yet lost, and now that she'd had her say, she could finally resume her natural place in the family and once again be mama bear protecting her cub. It was so clear, after all, that she could not keep enflaming this fight for even one more day. Cracks and slits were widening and appearing everywhere, and whenever she looked at Ilan she knew he felt the same way, that he was just as alarmed and no less paralyzed by what was happening to them.

Avram listens and wraps his arms tightly around himself. He feels a frost descend on him in the midst of the blinding light-blue shades of the Tzippori River-the frost of a dark confinement cell, a forehead slammed against stone. Ora, her lips drained of blood, tells him how she and Ilan used to wake up and lie silently next to each other during those nights. They felt that their family was coming apart with remarkable speed; a trampling force that seemed to have been lurking all those years had now burst out and lunged at them with incomprehensible fervor, even with an oddly gleeful vengefulness. Avram contorts his face with intolerable pain and shakes his head, No, no.

With just a little restraint and coolheadedness, she could still stop the deterioration, she thought as she drove and listened to Ilan softly try to placate her. It depended only on her now, on one kind word from her, on her giving up this poison that was bubbling inside her and killing her, too. But suddenly she pounded the steering wheel with both hands and shouted at the phone from the depths of her heart: "How could he not remember? A man in a meat locker!"-she slammed the wheel to the rhythm of her words, and Avram pulled back as though he were the one being hit-"A night and a day, and another night and day-how could he not remember? He remembers every single thing that has to be done, doesn't he? Every leaky faucet, every door handle. He's the most responsible kid in the world, yet he can forget a human being for a whole night and day and night-"

"But why are you picking on him him?" Ilan had groaned painfully, and she felt that she had finally managed to penetrate a shield. Ilan muttered, as if to himself, "Did he he initiate it? Did initiate it? Did he he want something like this to happen? Did want something like this to happen? Did he he decide to put that man in there?" Only now did Ora notice that two police cars were flashing their lights behind her and to her left, and the policemen were signaling for her to drive onto the shoulder. Suddenly frightened, she sped up. G.o.d knows what she'd done now; she'd only gotten her license back two months ago, after a six-month revocation. "And do I have to remind you again that there was a big operation going on there?" Ilan went on. "There were wanted men, and shooting, and Ofer hadn't slept for forty-eight hours, and only by chance his guys were sent to do a job they weren't even supposed to do and weren't trained for, so what are we even arguing about?" decide to put that man in there?" Only now did Ora notice that two police cars were flashing their lights behind her and to her left, and the policemen were signaling for her to drive onto the shoulder. Suddenly frightened, she sped up. G.o.d knows what she'd done now; she'd only gotten her license back two months ago, after a six-month revocation. "And do I have to remind you again that there was a big operation going on there?" Ilan went on. "There were wanted men, and shooting, and Ofer hadn't slept for forty-eight hours, and only by chance his guys were sent to do a job they weren't even supposed to do and weren't trained for, so what are we even arguing about?"

"But he was there in the building, three floors up, and he ate and drank there and went up and down the stairs." She slid onto the muddy shoulder and drove quickly, hoping somehow to outrun the police. She finally stopped when they closed in on her. "And he talked over the radio at least twenty times with Chen and with Tom, and he had twenty opportunities to ask if they'd let the old man out already, and what did he do?" Ilan did not answer. "Tell me, Ilan, what did he do, our child?" Ora roared hoa.r.s.ely. She heard Ilan straining to hold his breath and not explode again. Three policemen got out of the two cars and approached. One of them was talking on his walkie-talkie. Ilan said, "You know he meant to go down there and see." She scoffed-an alien, loathsome scoff. "Meant to, yeah, sure. For two whole days he kept meaning to go down, but just when he was most meaning to, they came to tell him there was a ride leaving for Jerusalem, right? And then we all went out to the restaurant, right? And he forgot, right?" She let out an amazed guffaw and held her head in both hands, as though she was only now, for the first time, finding out the true story. "And that whole evening in the restaurant, he didn't remember! Oops, sorry, slipped my mind! Doesn't that incense you?" Ora roared and the veins on her neck swelled. "Tell me, Ilan, doesn't that make you crazy?" "Ora, you're losing your mind," Ilan said, retreating into his sobering tone, the one that observed her with amused wonder, the one he used when they fought, when he let her wallow alone in her bitterness, in the filth that burst out of her. "Just please be careful and keep your eye on the road," he added with that same tone of lawyerly advice. Ora locked the Punto's doors from inside and ignored the cops rapping on the windows, their faces pressed up against the gla.s.s. One of them ran a scolding finger over the half of the front windshield that was caked with drops of muddy rain, and Ora laid her head on the steering wheel and murmured, "But it's Ofer, do you understand that, Ilan? It happened to us us. It's our Ofer. How could Ofer, how could could he?" he?"

AT FIVE-THIRTY in the morning, at the point where Mount Carmel begins to rise, Ora and Avram disentangle from each other. He folds the tents and the sleeping bags and packs up their two backpacks, and Ora goes to buy some food at a nearby grocery store. in the morning, at the point where Mount Carmel begins to rise, Ora and Avram disentangle from each other. He folds the tents and the sleeping bags and packs up their two backpacks, and Ora goes to buy some food at a nearby grocery store.

"We haven't been apart for a long time," she says, coming back to wrap herself around him.

"Should I come with you?"

"No, stay here with the stuff. I'll only be a few minutes."

"I'll wait."

"And I'll be back," she adds, sounding uncertain. "I don't know what I'm suddenly afraid of," she murmurs into his embrace.

"Maybe that you'll see what civilization is like and you'll want to stay."

She is uneasy. An obstinate embolus moves inside her body like the undigested remnants of a dream. She stretches her arms and holds Avram back to look at him, engraving him in her memory. "Now I can see that I didn't give you a good haircut. I'll snip that straggler off today."

He fingers the stray lock.

"And maybe you'll let me shave you, too?"

"Yes?"

"I don't know, it's annoying to see you with a beard."

"Oh, that."

"Yes, that."

"Okay."

"Maybe just a trim. We'll see. We'll just take a little off."

"Don't you think I'm off enough as it is?"

They look at each other. The spark of a smile in their pupils.

"Buy some salt and pepper. And we're almost out of oil."

"And we need batteries for the flashlight, right?"

"And bring some chocolate, I could go for something sweet."

"Anything else, my dear?"

A soft hand travels inside them on its fingertips. Avram shrugs. "I've gotten used to you."

"Watch out, you'll get addicted."

"What's going to happen, Ora?"

She puts a finger to his lips. "First let's finish the trail, and then we'll see what works for us." She kisses him on each eye and turns to leave. The dog looks from Ora to Avram, unsure whether to join her or stay with him.

"Wait, Ora, hold up."

She stops.

"It's good for me to be with you," he says quickly and lowers his gaze to his hands. "I want you to know that."

"Then say it. I need to be told."

"The way you let me be with you like this, and with Ofer, and with all of you." His eyes redden. "You don't know what you're giving me, Ora."

"Well, I'm just giving you back what belongs to you."

They cling to each other again-since she's taller than he, she has to hold her feet slightly apart; it's always been that way-and for some reason she remembers how every time she was about to go and see him in Tel Aviv, during those years when he agreed to meet, Ofer always sensed it. He used to grow restless and gloomy and sometimes run a high fever, as though trying to sabotage their meeting. When she got back he would sniff her out like an animal, demanding to know exactly what she'd been doing. And he always asked, with transparent slyness, whether Ilan knew where she'd been.

Avram holds her to his body, cups her b.u.t.tocks with both hands, and mumbles that there's nothing like her gluteus maximus and her gluteus medius. "Take care of yourself there, in the store," he says into her hair, and they both hear what he has not said: Don't talk with anyone too much. If the radio is on, ask them to turn it off. Do not under any circ.u.mstances look at the papers. Avoid the headlines.

She walks away and pauses a few times to turn around and give him a movie star's long, lingering wave and blow him a kiss. He smiles, his hands on his waist, the white sharwals sharwals flapping around his body, and the dog sits erect beside him. He looks good, Ora thinks. The new haircut and Ofer's clothes are good for him, and there's something refreshing in the open way he stands and in his smile. "He's coming back to life," she tells herself out loud. This walk is bringing him back to life. What does that say about me? What place will I have in his life when the journey is over, if I have any place at all? flapping around his body, and the dog sits erect beside him. He looks good, Ora thinks. The new haircut and Ofer's clothes are good for him, and there's something refreshing in the open way he stands and in his smile. "He's coming back to life," she tells herself out loud. This walk is bringing him back to life. What does that say about me? What place will I have in his life when the journey is over, if I have any place at all?

Wait, she thinks, suddenly troubled-why isn't the dog coming with me? But even before she can finish the thought, Avram leans down and pats the dog on her b.u.t.t, urging her to run along.

An hour later Ora silently unloads her purchases from the Kfar Hasidim supermarket's plastic bags-labeled "Strictly Glatt Kosher"-and divvies them up between the two backpacks: biscuits, crackers, canned goods, packets of bouillon. Her movements are quick and sharp.

"Did something happen, Ora'leh?"

"No, what happened?"

"I don't know. You seem ..."

"I'm fine."

Avram licks his upper lip. "Okay, okay." And after a moment, "Ora-"

"What is it?"

"Did you hear the radio down there? Did you see a newspaper?"

"There's no radio there, and I didn't look at the paper. Come on, let's go. I'm sick of this place."

They hoist up their backpacks, pa.s.s the playground at Kibbutz Yagur, and choose a path with red markers. They soon replace it with a blue one that leads to the Snake River, recently renamed Ma'apilim River, and start climbing up the mountain. The day is still swathed in morning mist, indulging itself and lazily putting off its brightening. The climb soon grows steep, and the two of them and the dog are all breathing heavily.

"Wait a minute," he calls after her, "did someone tell you something there?"

"No one told me anything."

She practically runs up the incline. Stones spark from her heels. Avram gives in and stops to wipe the sweat off. At the same moment, without looking at him, Ora also stops and stands like an angular exclamation point one rocky step above him. Through oak trees and the milky morning vapors, they can see the Zevulun Valley, the suburbs of Haifa, and the Yagur Junction as it comes to life. The pair of towers at the oil refinery in the bay emit plumes of white steam that slowly curl and mingle with the mist. Avram wants to give her something, to quell the sudden irritation bristling around her. If only he knew what to give. Glimmering cars fly by on the roads leading to the junction. A distant train sends out rhythmic sparks of metal and light. But here on the mountain the silence is broken only by the occasional truck horn or the stubborn wail of an ambulance.

"Here, this is how I live," he finally says quietly, perhaps honestly, perhaps as a modest bribe of candor.

"How?" Her voice above him is grating, scratching.

"Like this. I watch."

"Then maybe it's time you went in," she hisses and starts walking again.

"What? Wait-"

"Listen, Ofer's fine," she cuts him off, and Avram rushes after her excitedly. "What? How do you know?"

"I called home from the grocery store to pick up my messages."

"You can do that?"

"Of course you can." Then she mutters to herself, "You can do a lot more than that."

"And? Did he leave a message?"

"Twelve."

She lurches forward again, cutting like a razor. Fine strands of a morning spiderweb graze her face, and she brushes them away angrily. The ghost of an adolescent, grumbling girl flashes in her movements.

"At least until last night he was fine," she reports. "The last message was from eleven-fifteen." She glances at her watch. Avram looks to see how high the sun is. They both know: eleven-fifteen is good, but meaningless now, like yesterday's newspaper. As soon as he was finished leaving the message, an hourgla.s.s turned over somewhere, and the timer started from zero again, with no advantage to hope over fear.

"Wait, why didn't you just call him on his cell phone?"