She quickly pushes her way into the crack of his laughter. "Oferiko, listen, I think I might go away for a few days after all, up north."

"Hang on, the reception here's lousy. Wait-what's that?"

"I'm thinking of going up north."

"You mean, to the Galilee?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"Alone, yes."

"But why go alone? Don't you have anyone who ..." He immediately realizes his unfortunate phrasing. "Maybe you could go with a girlfriend or someone."

She chokes down his so-accurate tactlessness. "I don't have anyone who, and I don't feel like going with girlfriends or anything, and I don't feel like being at home now, either."

His voice wrinkles. "Wait, Mom, I'm not following. You're really going away alone?"

Suddenly the lid flips off her mouth. "Who have I got to go with, in your opinion? My partner bailed on me at the last minute, decided to volunteer for the Jewish brigades-"

He interrupts impatiently. "So you're going to go to our places, the ones we planned?"

She bravely overcomes the pilfered our our. "I don't know, I only just now thought of it."

"Well, at least you have a backpack ready to go," he snickers.

"Two."

"Honestly, though, I really don't get it."

"What is there to get? I just can't be here now. I'm suffocating."

A huge engine turns on somewhere behind him. Someone shouts to hurry up. She hears his thoughts. He needs her at home now, that's the thing, and he's right, and she almost gives in, at that very moment, but she realizes just as quickly and urgently that she has no choice this time.

A gluey silence. Ora fights to make herself turn her back on him, and the map of memory with its countless little marks of blame spreads out inside her: Ofer at age three, undergoing complicated dental surgery. When the anesthesiologist placed the mask on his nose and mouth, she was told to leave the room. Ofer's terrified eyes pleaded, but she turned her back and left. When he was four, she left him screaming for her, clinging with all ten fingers to the preschool fence, and his shouts stayed with her for the rest of the day. There were many more of these little abandonments, escapes, eye-shuttings, face-hidings, and today, undoubtedly, is the hardest of them all. But every moment she spends at home is dangerous for her, she knows it, and dangerous for him too, and he can't understand that and there's no point hoping he will. He's too young. His desires are simple and crude: he needs her to wait for him at home without changing anything about home or about herself, preferably without moving at all for all these days-the way he pulled back from her and flailed in anger, she recalls, when he was five and she had her curls straightened!-so that if he comes home on leave, he will hug her and defrost her and he'll be able to use her, to impress her with the splinters of horror that he'll scatter around with affected indifference, revealing secrets he should not divulge. Ora hears his breath. She breathes with him. They both feel the unbearable stretching of tendons-the tendons of her back-turning.

"So how long d'you think you'll be gone for?" he asks in a voice touched by anger and weakness and a shred of defeat.

"Ofer, don't talk like that. You know how much I wanted this trip with you, you know how much I looked forward to it."

"Mom, it's not my fault there's an emergency call-up."

She heroically refrains from reminding him that he had volunteered. "I'm not blaming you, and you'll see, we'll take our trip when you're finished, I promise. I won't give up on that. But right now I have to get out of here, I can't stay here alone."

"Sure, no, sure, I'm not saying, but"-he hesitates-"you're not going to sleep in the field, like, alone?"

She laughs. "No, are you crazy? I won't sleep alone 'in the field.'"

"You'll have your phone, right?"

"I don't know, I haven't thought about it."

"But listen, Mom, what was I going to ask you...Does Dad know you're-"

"What about Dad? What does this have to do with Dad? D'you think he tells me where he is?"

Ofer retreats. "Okay, okay, Mom, I didn't say anything."

A thin sigh inadvertently leaves his lips, the sigh of a little boy whose parents have suddenly lost their minds and decided to separate. Ora can hear it, and she feels his battle spirit dissipate, and she thinks with alarm: What am I doing? How can I send him to battle when he's confused and dejected? A sourness fills her throat: Where did phrases like "sending him to battle" even come from? What do they have to do with her? She is not one of those mothers who sends her sons to battle, not part of one of those military dynasties like the communities of Um Juni or Beit Alpha or Negba, or Beit Has.h.i.ta or Kfar Giladi. Yet she is now surprised to discover that that is exactly what she is: she escorted him to the battalion "meetery" and stood there hugging him with measured restraint, so as not to embarra.s.s him in front of his friends, and she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as required, with a proud grin of helplessness at the other parents who were making all the same moves-where did we learn this ch.o.r.eography? And how do I obey it all, obey them, those people who send him there? She was poisoned by the words Ofer whispered to her when the TV camera caught them. His final request. Her mouth had gaped in terrible pain, not only because of what he said but also because he had said it with a sort of matter-of-factness, completely lucid, as though he had rehea.r.s.ed every word ahead of time, and as soon as he said it he hugged her again, but this time it was to hide her from the camera. She'd already embarra.s.sed him once before, at the ceremony when he finished his training course, when she sat in the quad at Latrun and wept as the parade walked past the long wall inscribed with thousands of names of fallen soldiers. She had wept loudly, and the parents and commanders and soldiers looked at her, and the corps officer leaned over and whispered something to the division commander. But this time, well trained, Ofer threw himself on her like a blanket on a fire, almost strangling her with his arm, and probably glanced awkwardly over her head in all directions. "Stop, Mom, you're making a scene."

"Okay," he sighs now. "What's the story, Mom?"

He sounds defeated, and it shows and it pinches, and she says, "No story, there's no story."

"To tell you the truth, it's weird for me to hear you like this."

"What's weird? What is so weird? What is so weird? Going on a hike in the Galilee is weird, but going into the kasbah in Nablus you think is normal?!" Going on a hike in the Galilee is weird, but going into the kasbah in Nablus you think is normal?!"

"But when I get home will you be there?"

"I don't know yet."

"What d'you mean you don't know?" He snorts. "You're not going to, like, disappear or something?" And now it's his familiar, worrying, almost fatherly voice, aimed squarely at her deepest thirst.

"Don't worry, Ofer'ke, I'm not going to do anything dumb. I just won't be here for a few days. I can't sit on my own and wait."

"Wait for what?"

She cannot say, of course, but he finally understands, and there is a long silence, and Ora makes up her mind with irrefutable simplicity: twenty-eight days exactly. Until his emergency call-up is over.

"But what if everything's over in a couple of days and I come home?" he asks with renewed annoyance. "Or let's say I get injured or something-where do they find you?"

She doesn't answer. They don't, she thinks, that's exactly the point. And something else flickers in her: if they don't find her, if they can't find her, he won't get hurt. She can't understand it herself. She tries to. She knows it makes no sense, but what does?

"And if there's a funeral?" Ofer inquires agreeably, changing tactics and unconsciously imitating Ilan, who uses death and its derivatives as punctuation in his sentences. She's never been immune to these remarks, least of all now, and his joke, if it can be called that, seems to shock them both, because she can hear him swallow.

The stray thought from this afternoon comes back to her: Why do I collaborate with all this instead of being loyal to- His voice resurfaces. "Mom, I'm not joking. Maybe you should take a phone, so you can be contacted."

"No, no." From one moment to the next she feels a greater comprehension of her plan. "Just not that."

"Why not? You can leave it turned off, just use it for messages, for SMS."

In fact she has become a skilled text-messager, an expertise acquired recently thanks to her new friend, her maybe lover, the Character with a capital C, because that's her only way to communicate with him. She considers for a moment and shakes her head: "No, not even that." Then she gets carried away on a stray thought: "Ofer, d'you have any idea what SMS stands for?"

He stares at her through the phone. "What? What'd you ask?"

"Could it be 'Save my Soul'?"

Ofer sighs. "Honestly, Mom, I have no clue."

She quickly returns from her contemplations. "I'm not taking my cell. I don't want to be found."

"Not even by me?" he asks in a suddenly thin, stripped voice.

"Not even you. No one," Ora replies sadly. The vague notion gains clarity inside her. The whole time he's there, she cannot be found. That's the thing. That's the law. All or nothing, like a kid's oath, a crazy gamble on life itself.

"But what if something really does happen to me?" he yells, protesting this incomprehensible, shocking disruption of order.

"No, no, nothing will happen to you, I'm telling you, I know it. I just have to disappear for a while, please understand. Actually, you know what? I don't expect you to understand. Just pretend I took a trip abroad"-like Dad did, she manages not to say.

"Now? Now you're going abroad? At a time like this? At war?"

He is almost begging, and she moans, and her body and soul are transfixed on one point, on his mouth finding its way to her nipple.

She wrenches her gaze away from that mouth. It's for his own good. She's leaving him for his own good. But he won't understand. "I have to go." She repeats the words again and again like an oath, with a furrowed brow. She is denying him, she is doing this for him, she doesn't fully understand it either, but she's feels it strongly- And how is it that I'm loyal to them them, to the ones sending him there-she finally extricates something from the fog in her brain-more than to my motherhood?

"Listen, Ofer, listen to me, don't shout at me. Listen!" She cuts him off, and something in her voice must frighten him, introducing an unfamiliar coolness of authority. "Don't fight with me now. I have to leave for a while. I'll explain it, but not now. I'm doing this for you."

"For me? How is it for me?"

She almost says, When you're older you'll understand When you're older you'll understand, but in fact she knows it's the opposite: When you're younger you'll understand, when you're a little boy again, making ridiculous bargains with frightening shadows and nightmares, then maybe you'll understand.

And now it's decided. She has to obey this thing that instructs her to get up and leave home, immediately, without waiting even one minute. She cannot stay here. And in some strange and confusing way, this thing seems to be her maternal instinct, which she thought had dulled, and upon which so many doubts had lately been cast.

"Promise me you'll take care of yourself," she says softly, trying to hide the rigid decisiveness emerging behind her eyes. "And don't do anything stupid, d'you hear me? Be careful, Ofer, don't hurt anyone there, and don't get hurt, and know that I'm doing this for you."

"Doing what for me?" He's exhausted by her capriciousness. He's never seen anything like this in her. Since when does she have whims? But then he has a small revelation: "What is this, some kind of vow you're making?"

Ora is happy that he has understood, has come very close. Who, if not he, could understand her? "Yes, you could say it's a vow, yes. And remember that we'll meet when your thing is over, your emergency call-up."

He sighs. "Whatever you say."

She feels him take one step back from the place where they just met-there are still moments, here and there, so rare, when his insides are exposed and revealed to her. And perhaps, she thinks, they are the reason that he prefers the kasbahs and the mukataas mukataas to a week in the Galilee with her. She guesses that what scares him is not her vow but the fact that she- to a week in the Galilee with her. She guesses that what scares him is not her vow but the fact that she-she-is suddenly starting to flip out with all kinds of magical thinking.

Ofer is already pulling his voice together and taking another little step away from her. "Okay, Mom," he sums up, and now he is the grown-up shrugging at her girlish whims. "If that's what you need right now, then cool, go for it. I'm with you. Okay, gotta go now."

"See you soon, Oferiko. I love you."

"Just don't do anything stupid up there, Mom, promise me."

"You know I won't."

"No, promise me." He smiles, and the warmth seeps back into his voice, melting her away.

"I promise, don't worry, I'll be fine."

"Me, too."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

"I love you."

"Awesome."

"Take care of yourself there."

"You too, and don't worry, it'll be fine. Bye."

"Bye, Ofer, my sweet-"

She stands with the phone in her hand, spent and sweaty, and thinks with perfect lucidity: That might have been the last time I hear his voice. She is afraid she may forget it. And another thought: Who knows how many more times I will replay that trivial conversation of meaningless phrases? I told him to take care of himself, and he said don't worry it'll be fine. Perhaps in two or three days the campaign will end and that conversation will join with hundreds of others and settle down and be forgotten. But never before has she had such a clear feeling. All day, freezing cold shards have been digging into her lower abdomen, making every movement painful. Now she sucks the remainder of his voice out of the phone and remembers how, when he was a boy, they built up their goodbye kisses into a long and complicated ritual-but wait, was that with him or with Adam?-a ritual that began with hugs and loud, fervent kisses, growing subtler and gentler, until they finished with a b.u.t.terfly kiss on his cheek, then on hers, on his forehead and hers, on his lips and hers, the tip of his nose and hers, until only the lightest echo of a touch remained, a fluttering breeze of flesh that was almost unreal.

The phone rings again. A gravelly, hesitant male voice asks if it's Ora. She sits down, short-winded, and listens to his heavy breathing. "It's me," he says, and she replies, "I know it's you." His breath keeps coming through in thin whistles and she thinks she can hear his heart beating. He must have seen Ofer on TV, she thinks, and something jolts her: Now he knows what Ofer looks like.

"Ora, it's over, isn't it?"

"What's over?" She is confused, and horrified by the shadow of the word.

"His army service," he whispers. "When we spoke before he enlisted, you said it would be over today, right?"

She realizes that in the general chaos of the day she has neglected to think about this, about him. She has managed to erase his part in the complication, this man who needs protection today even more than she does.

"Listen," she begins-again that tight-lipped, teacher's listen listen-and his tension reaches her like an electrical current, and she has to concentrate very hard to choose her words; she cannot make a mistake. "Yes, Ofer was supposed to be done today"-she speaks slowly, cautiously, but she can hear the panic in his soul, can almost see him shielding his head with his hands like a beaten child-"but you must know there's an emergency situation, I'm sure you heard it on the news, and there's that campaign, so they took Ofer. In fact they just showed him on TV." As she talks she remembers that he has no television, and she finally grasps the enormity of the shock she is giving him, the reversal from what he expected to what he is now finding out. "Avram, I'll explain everything and you'll see that it's not that bad, not the end of the world."

She tells him again that they took Ofer for the military campaign, and he listens to her, or doesn't, and when she finishes he says lifelessly, "But that's not good."

She sighs. "You're right, it's not good."

"No, I really mean it. It's not good. It's not a good time."

The phone is damp in Ora's hand and her whole arm aches from the effort of holding it, as if the man's entire weight has been poured into the receiver. "What's going on with you?" she whispers. "We haven't talked for ages."

"But you said he was getting out today. You said so!"

"You're right, today is his discharge date."

"Then why aren't they letting him out?!" He is yelling at her now. "You said today was his date! That's what you said!"

A breath of fire seems to come at her from the receiver. She holds the phone away from her face. She wants to scream with him: He was supposed to get out today! He was supposed to get out today!

They both fall silent. For a moment he seems to have calmed a little, and she whispers, "But how are you, tell me? You disappeared for three years."

He doesn't hear her, just repeats to himself, "This is not good. Keeping him on longer at the last minute is the worst."

Ora, who has rationed all her oaths and talismans to last exactly three years, to the second, and has now exhausted them and herself, feels that beyond Avram's words is a knowledge even keener than her own.