Someone to Run With

Adog runs through the streets, a boy runs after it. A long rope connects the two and gets tangled in the legs of the passersby, who grumble and gripe, and the boy mutters "Sorry, sorry" again and again. In between mumbled sorries he yells "Stop! Halt!"--and to his shame a "Whoa-ah!" escapes from his lips. And the dog keeps running.

It flies on, crossing busy streets, running red lights. Its golden coat disappears before the boy's very eyes and reappears between people's legs, like a secret code. "Slower!" the boy yells, and thinks that if only he knew the dog's name, he could call it and perhaps the dog would stop, or at least slow down. But deep in his heart he knows the dog would keep running, even then. Even if the rope chokes its neck, it'll run until it gets where it's galloping to--and don't I wish we were already there and I was rid of him!

All this is happening at a bad time. Assaf, the boy, continues to run ahead while his thoughts remain tangled far behind him. He doesn't want to think them, he needs to concentrate completely on his race after the dog, but he feels them clanging behind him like tin cans. His parents' trip--that's one can. They're flying over the ocean right now, flying for the first time in their lives--why, why did they have to leave so suddenly, anyway? His older sister--there's another can--and he's simply afraid to think about that one, only trouble can come of it. More cans,little ones and big ones, are clanging, they bang against each other in his mind--and at the end of the string drags one that's been following him for two weeks now, and the tinny noise is driving him out of his mind, insisting, shrilly, that he has to fall madly in love with Dafi now--because how long are you going to try to put it off? And Assaf knows he has to stop for a minute, has to call these maddening tin followers to order, but the dog has other plans.

Assaf sighs--"Hell!"--because only a minute before the door opened and he was called in to see the dog, he was so close to identifying the part of himself in which he could fall in love with her, with Dafi. He could actually, finally, feel that spot in himself; he could feel himself suppressing it, refusing it in the depths of his stomach, where a slow, silent voice kept whispering. She's not for you, Dafi, she spends all her time looking for ways to sting and mock everyone, especially you: why do you need to keep up this stupid show, night after night? Then, when he had almost succeeded in silencing that quarrelsome voice, the door of the room in which he had been sitting every day for the last week, from eight to four, opened. There stood Avraham Danokh, skinny and dark and bitter, the assistant manager of the City Sanitation Department. (He was sort of a friend of his father's and got Assaf the job for August.) Danokh told him to get off his ass and come down to the kennels with him, now, because there was finally work for him to do.

Danokh paced the room and started explaining something about a dog. Assaf didn't listen. It usually took him a few seconds to transfer his attention from one situation to another. Now he was dragging after Danokh along the corridors of City Hall, past people who came to pay their bills or their taxes or snitch on the neighbors who built a porch without a license. Following Danokh down the fire stairs, then into the courtyard in back, he tried to decide whether he had already managed to defeat his own last stand against Dafi, whether he knew yet how he would respond today when Roi told him to quit stalling and start acting like a man. Already, in the distance, Assaf heard one strong, persistent bark and wondered why it sounded like that: usually the dogs all barked together--sometimes their chorus would disturb his daydreams on the third floor--and now only one was barking. Danokh opened a chain-link gate and, turning to tell Assaf something he couldn't make out overthe barks, opened the other gate, and, with a flick of his hand, motioned Assaf down the narrow walkway between the cages.

The sound was unmistakable. It was impossible to think that Danokh had brought Assaf down here for just one dog; eight or nine were penned in separate cages. But only one dog was animated; it was as if it had absorbed the others into its own body, leaving them silent and a bit stunned. The dog wasn't very big, but it was full of strength and savagery and, mainly, despair. Assaf had never seen such despair in a dog; it threw itself against the chain links of its cage again and again, making the entire row shake and rattle--then it would produce a horrifying high wail, a strange cross between a whine and a roar. The other dogs stood, or lay down, watching in silence, in amazement, even respect. Assaf had the strange feeling that if he ever saw a human being behave that way, he would feel compelled to rush up and offer his help--or else leave, so the person could be alone with his sorrow.

In the pauses between barks and slams against the cage, Danokh spoke quietly and quickly: one of the inspectors had found the dog the day before yesterday, running through the center of town near Tziyyon Square. At first the vet thought it was in the early stage of rabies, but there were no further signs of disease: apart from the dirt and a few minor injuries, the dog was in perfect health. Assaf noticed that Danokh spoke out of the corner of his mouth, as if he were trying to keep the dog from knowing it was being talked about. "He's been like that for forty-eight hours now," Danokh whispered, "and still not out of batteries. Some animal, huh?" he added, stretching nervously as the dog stared at him. "It's not just a street dog." "But whose is it?" Assaf asked, stepping back as the dog threw itself against the metal mesh, rocking the cage. "That's it, exactly," Danokh responded nasally, scratching his head, "that's whatyouhave to find out." "Me? How me?" Assaf quavered. "Where will I find him?" Danokh said that as soon as thiskalb--he called it akalb, using Arabic--calms down a little, we'll ask him. Assaf looked at him, puzzled, and Danokh said, "We'll simply do what we always do in such cases: we tie a rope to the dog and let it walk for a while, an hour or two, and it will lead you itself, straight and steady, to its owner."

Assaf thought he was joking--who had ever heard of such a thing?But Danokh took a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and said it was very important, before he gave the dog back, for the owners to sign the form. Form 76. Put it in your pocket--and don't lose it (because, to tell the truth, you seem a little out to lunch). And most important, you have to explain to the esteemed master of this dog that a fine is included. A settlement of one hundred and fifty shekels or a trial--and he'd better pay up. First of all, he neglected to watch his dog, and maybe that will teach him a lesson to be more careful next time, and second, as aminimal compensation (Danokh enjoyed sucking, mockingly, on every syllable) for the headache and hassle he had caused City Hall, not to mention the waste of time of such superbhuman resources! With that, he tapped Assaf on the shoulder a little too hard and said that after he found the dog's owners, he could return to his room in the Water Department and continue to scratch his head at the taxpayers' expense until the end of his summer vacation.

"But how am I ..." Assaf objected. "Look at it ... It's like, crazy ..."

But then it happened: the dog heard Assaf's voice and stood still. It stopped running back and forth in the cage, approached the wire mesh, and looked at Assaf. Its ribs were still heaving, but it moved more slowly. Its eyes were dark and seemed to focus intensely on him. It cocked its head to the side, as if to get a better look at him, and Assaf thought that the dog was about to open its mouth right then and say in a completely human voice, Oh yeah? You're not exactly a model of sanity yourself.

It lay on its stomach, the dog; it lowered its head, and its front legs slipped under the metal grid, begging with a digging motion, and out of its throat a new voice emerged, thin-and delicate like the cry of a puppy, or a little boy.

Assaf bent in front of it, from the other side of the cage. He didn't notice what he was doing--even Danokh, a hard man, who had arranged the job for Assaf without much enthusiasm, smiled a thin smile when he saw the way Assaf got down on his knees at the blink of an eye. Assaf looked at the dog and spoke quietly to it. "Who do you belong to?" he asked. "What happened to you? Why are you going so crazy?" He spoke slowly, leaving room for answers, not embarrassing the dog by looking into its eyes for too long. He knew--his sister Reli's boyfriend had taught him--the difference between talking at a dog and talkingwith a dog. The dog was breathing fast, lying down. Now, for the first time, it seemed tired, exhausted, and it looked a lot smaller than before. The kennels finally fell silent, and the other dogs began moving again, as if coming back to life. Assaf put his finger through one of the holes and touched the dog's head. It didn't move. Assaf scratched its head, the matted, dirty fur. The dog began to whine, frightened, persistent, as if it had to unburden itself to someone right away, as if it could no longer keep silent. Its red tongue trembled. Its eyes grew large and expressive.

Assaf didn't argue with Danokh after that. Danokh took advantage of the dog's momentary calm: he entered the cage and tied a long rope to the orange collar hidden in its thick fur.

"Go on, take it," Danokh ordered. "Now it'll go with you like a doll." Danokh jumped back when the dog leaped up and out of the cage, instantly shaking off its fatigue and silent surrender. It looked right and left with fresh nervousness and sniffed the air as if it were listening for a distant voice. "See? You guys already get along great," Danokh said, trying to convince Assaf and himself. "You just watch out for yourself in the city--I promised your dad." The last words were thick in his throat.

The dog was now focused and tense. Its face sharpened, for a moment it was almost wolflike. "Listen," Danokh mumbled with misgiving, "is it okay to send you out like this?" Assaf didn't answer, only stared in astonishment at the change in the dog once it was free. Danokh tapped his shoulder again. "You're a strong kid. Look at you. You're taller than me and your father. You can control it, right?" Assaf wanted to ask what he should do if the dog refused to lead him to its owners, how long he should walk after it (the three lunchtime sandwiches were waiting for him in his desk drawer). What if, for instance, the dog had had a fight with the owners and had no intention of going back to its home--

Assaf did not ask those questions at the time, or at any other time. He did not return to meet Danokh that day, nor would he return over the next few days. Sometimes it is so easy to determine the exact moment when something--Assaf's life, for instance--starts to change, irreversibly, forever.

The moment Assaf's hand clutched the rope, the dog uprooted itself with an amplified leap and pulled Assaf with it. Danokh raised his hand in fright, managed to take a step or two after his hijacked employee, evenstarted running after him. It was useless. Assaf was already being tugged outside City Hall, forced to stumble down the stairs. He broke into the streets, later smashed into a parked car, a garbage can, the people passing by. He ran ...

The big hairy tail wags energetically before his eyes, sweeping aside people and cars, and Assaf follows after it, hypnotized. Sometimes the dog stops for a minute, raises its head, sniffing, then turns down a side street, sweeping along its way, running. It looks as if it knows exactly where it's going, in which case this race will end very soon. The dog will find its home and Assaf will turn it over to its owners, and good riddance. But while it runs, Assaf starts to think about what he will do if the dog's owner doesn't agree to pay the fine. Assaf will say, "Mister, my job doesn't allow me any flexibility in this matter. Either you pay or you go to court!" The man will start to argue, and Assaf is already answering him with convincing responses, running and mumbling in his heart, pursing his lips decisively, and knowing all too well it will never work. Arguing has never been his strong suit. Eventually, it always becomes more convenient for him to give in and not make a fuss. This is exactly why he gives in to Roi, night after night, in the matter of Dafi Kaplan--just to keep from making a fuss. He thinks about it and sees Dafi in front of him, long and lean, and hates himself for his weakness, and notices that a tall man with bushy eyebrows and a white chef's hat is asking him a question.

Assaf appears confused--Dafi's face, very pale, with a permanent mocking gaze and transparent lizard eyelids, is morphing into a different face, fat and grumpy. Assaf quickly focuses his eyes and sees a narrow room in front of him, dug into the wall, a searing oven in its depths. Apparently the dog has decided, for some reason, to make a stop at a small pizzeria, and the pizza man bends over the counter and asks Assaf again, for the second, or perhaps the third, time, about a young lady. "Where is she?" he asks. "She disappeared on us--we haven't seen her for a month now." Assaf glances around, perhaps the pizza man is talking to someone standing behind him--but no, the pizza man is talking to him, inquiring as to whether she is his sister or his girlfriend, and Assaf nods in embarrassment.From his first week of working at City Hall, he's already learned that people who work in the center of town sometimes have their own habits and manner of speaking--and a weird sense of humor, too. Perhaps it was because they worked for odd customers and tourists from faraway countries; they got used to speaking as if they were in a sort of theater--as if there were always an invisible crowd watching the dialogue. He wants to get away and keep racing after the dog, but the dog decides to sit and looks at the pizza man hopefully, wagging its tail. The man gives it a friendly whistle, as if they're old acquaintances, and with one quick flick, like a basketball player--his hand behind his back and around his waist--throws a thick slice of cheese, and the dog catches it in the air and swallows it.

And the slice that follows it. And another one. And more.

The pizza man has pearly white eyebrows that look like two wild bushes, and they make Assaf feel scolded and uneasy. The man says he never saw her so hungry. Her? Assaf asks silently, baffled. It never occurred to him until now that the dog was a bitch. He only thought of it as a dog with a dog's speed and strength and decisiveness of motion. Why, in the midst of all this crazy running, in his anger and confusion, there were moments when Assaf liked to imagine that they were a team, him and his dog, sharing between them a silent, manly oath. It all seems even stranger to him to know he was running like this after a bitch.

The pizza man knits the bushes of his eyebrows and stares at Assaf intently, even suspiciously, and asks, "So what, then? She decided to send you instead?" And he begins to spin a flying saucer of dough in the air, throwing and catching expertly, and Assaf nods diagonally, on the border between yes and no. He doesn't want to lie, and the pizza man continues by spreading tomato sauce over the dough, although Assaf doesn't see any other customers there but him. Every once in a while, without looking, the man throws a small piece of cheese over his shoulder, and the bitch who was, until a moment ago, a dog, catches it in the air, as if she had anticipated his movement.

Assaf stands, looking at these two in wonder, at their synchronized dance, trying to understand what, exactly, he is doing there, and what, exactly, he is waiting for. Some question he has to ask the pizza man is floating through his head ... probably something about the young ladywho apparently comes here with this dog. But every question that comes to mind seems ridiculous and inextricably tangled with complicated explanations about methods for returning lost dogs, about summer jobs in City Halls. Assaf finally starts to grasp the immense complications of this mission he has been assigned. Because, what--you can't start asking every person in the street if he knows the owner of the dog. Was that even part of his job? How had he allowed Danokh to send him on such an errand without even trying to object? Quickly Assaf's mind runs through everything he should have told Danokh back in the kennels. Like a cunning, seasoned lawyer, and even with a certain arrogance, he unfolds brilliant arguments against this impossible operation, and simultaneously, as always in such situations, his body shrinks a little--he plants his head between his wide shoulders and waits.

Inwardly, he feels all mixed up--feels all the irritations, large and small, that had been bottled up inside him explode like tiny sparks of lava. He feels them transformed--on his chin--into one little burning pimple of anger at Roi, who had succeeded in convincing him to go out tonight, just the four of them, again, for the umpteenth time; who had even taken pains to explain that Assaf would soon realize Dafi was his type exactly, if you consider the inner being and all that. This is what he said, Roi did, giving Assaf a long, concentrated look, a conquering look. Assaf looked at the halo in his eyes, the thin golden halo of mockery that surrounded his pupils, and thought, sadly, that over the years their friendship had become something else. But what would you call it now? Seized by a sudden fear, Assaf had promised he would come, again, tonight, and Roi had patted him on his shoulder again and said, "That's my man." Assaf wished he had the guts to turn around and throw that "inner being" crap back in Roi's face, because all Roi really needs is for Assaf and Dafi to be there as a mirror opposite, to make his and his Maytal's glamour and ease even more apparent as they walk together, kissing every two steps, while Assaf and Dafi drag after them in silent, mutual contempt.

"What's the matter with you?" The pizza man is getting angry. "Somebody's talking to you!"

Assaf sees that the pizza, cut into eight slices, had been packed up in a white cardboard box, and the pizza man says, with special emphasis, as ifhe is sick of repeating his words, "Look, you got the usual in here: two mushroom-and-onion, one anchovy, one corn, two plain, and two olive. Ride fast so it will get there hot. Forty shekels."

"Ride where?" Assaf asks, in a whisper.

"Don't you have a bike?" The pizza man is surprised. "Your sister, she puts it on her basket. How will you carry it like that? Give me the money first." He reaches a long, hairy arm out to Assaf. Assaf is dumbfounded. He puts his hand in his pocket, and anger rises out of him, boiling through him: his parents left him enough money before they went, but he had planned his expenses to the last detail. Every day he skipped the lunch in the City Hall cafeteria so there would be enough money left to buy another lens for the Canon his parents had promised to bring from America. This unlooked-for expense he is now mixed up in really makes him boil, but he has no choice: the man quite clearly prepared the pizza for him especially, that is, for whoever came here with this dog. If Assaf hadn't been so angry, he probably would have just asked who this dog's girl was; but, probably because of this anger, absorbed by the feeling that someone always determines his actions for him, he pays the man and turns away sharply, in a manner that's supposed to express his indifference toward the money that had been taken from him unjustly. And the dog--she doesn't even wait for the exact emotion to bloom on his face. She starts running again, immediately stretching the rope to its full length, and Assaf sails after her with a silent shout, his face twitching from the effort to balance the large cardboard box in one hand and hang on to the rope with the other. Only a miracle keeps him from getting hurt as he passes through the people on the street. With the box waving high in his outstretched hand, he knows--and has no illusions about it--that right now he looks exactly like a caricature of a waiter. On top of everything, the smell of the pizza is starting to leak out of the box; Assaf has eaten only one sandwich since the morning. Of course, he has the complete and legal right to eat the pizza he is now holding above his head--he paid for every olive and mushroom on it. And yet he feels as if it's not completely his, that, in some way, someone else bought it, and it's for yet another person as well--and he doesn't know either of them.

And so that morning, pizza in hand, Assaf crossed through more alleysand streets and ran more red lights. He had never run like this, never broken so many rules at once--people honked at him from every direction, stumbled into him, cursed and screamed; but after a few moments this ceased to bother him, and step by step his anger at himself washed away. Because, in some unexpected way, he became completely free out there, out of that stuffy, boring office: free from all the small and large troubles that had burdened him in the past few days, wild like a star that had broken free of its orbit, crossing the sky and leaving a trail of sparks behind. After that, he stopped thinking, stopped hearing the roar of the world around him; he was only his feet pounding on the pavement, his heart beating, his rhythmic breath. And even though he wasn't an adventurer by nature--the opposite, if anything--he was filled with a new, mysterious feeling. The pleasure of running toward the unknown. And deep inside him, a thought started bouncing like a good ball, supple and full of air, the happy thought--I hope it doesn't ever end.

A month before Assaf and the dog met--thirty-one days before, to be precise--on a curving side road above one of the valleys surrounding Jerusalem, a girl stepped off a bus, a small, delicate girl. Her face could hardly be seen under the mane of her curly black hair. She went down the steps, stumbling under the weight of a huge backpack hanging from her shoulders. The driver asked, hesitantly, if she needed help, and she, recoiling at his voice, shrank a little, bit her lips, and shook her head: no.

Afterward, she waited in the empty station until the bus was far away. She continued to wait, even after it had already disappeared behind the bend in the road. She stood, almost without moving, glanced left, glanced right, looking again and again, a ring of light flashing every time the afternoon sun hit the blue earring in her ear.

Next to the station sat a rusty gasoline drum, pierced with holes; an old cardboard sign was attached to an electric pole: TO SIGI AND MOTI'S WEDDING, with an arrow pointing to the sky. The girl looked both ways one last time and saw that she was alone. There weren't even any cars passing along the narrow road. She turned around slowly, passing the shade of the bus stop, now watching the valley at her feet. She made sure her head didn't move, but her eyes swept back and forth, scanning the view.

At a glance, anyone would have thought she was a girl going on a little hike. This is exactly what she wanted to look like. But if a car had passed by, the driver might have wondered, for just a second, why a girl was going into this valley by herself; or perhaps another disturbing thought might have occurred to him--why it was that a girl going for a little afternoon outing in a valley so close to the city was carrying such a heavy backpack, as if she were ready to sail away on a long journey. But no driver passed by, and there was no one else in the valley. She went down through the yellow mustard flowers, between rocks warm to the touch, and disappeared into terebinth and great burnet bushes. She walked quickly, on the verge of falling at every moment because of the weight of the bag, which tipped and made her teeter back and forth. Her wild hair waved around her face, her mouth still tight with the same decisive, hard tension she had used in refusing the bus driver's help. She was panting hard after a little while, her heart pounding quickly. The bad thoughts were spinning out of control; this was the last time she'd be coming here by herself, she thought. The next time, the next time--

If there was a next time.

Now she had reached the creek bed at the bottom of the valley, glancing at the slopes as if enjoying the view. She followed the flight of a jay, bewitched, scanning, with its help, the whole arc of the horizon. Here, for example, was a part of the path where she was completely exposed--somebody standing up on the road by the station would now be able to see her.

Perhaps he had noticed that she had come down here yesterday, and the day before as well.

At least ten times in the past month.

And could trap her here the next time she came back--

There will be, there will be a next time, she repeated with effort, and tried not to think about what would happen to her between now and then.

When, stopping for the last time, she squatted down, as if to fasten the buckle of her sandals, she didn't move for two whole minutes. She checked every rock, every tree and bush.

And then she was no more, she simply vanished, like magic. Even if somebody had been following her, he wouldn't have understood whathappened: a moment ago, she was sitting there, had finally taken the bag off her shoulders, leaned back on it, inhaled--and now the wind moved through the bushes and the valley was empty.

She ran through the lower basin, the hidden one, trying to get the rolling bag in front of her, moving like a soft rock, smashing oats and thornbushes. It was stopped only by the trunk of the terebinth tree; the tree moved and dry gallnuts dropped from it, crumbling into fragments of reddish brown.

Out of the side pocket of the bag she took a flashlight and, with a practiced motion, pushed a few dry, uprooted bushes aside, exposing a low opening like the door to a dwarf's house. Two or three steps in a crouch, ears pricked and eyes wide to hear and to see every motion and shadow. She sniffed like an animal. Every cell in her skin wide open so she could read the darkness: Had anyone visited here since yesterday? Would one of the shadows suddenly detach itself and attack her?

The cave unexpectedly widened, became tall and roomy. You could stand, even walk a few steps from wall to wall. A faint light was leaking in from an opening somewhere in the ceiling of the cave, covered by thick bushes.

Quickly she poured the contents of the bag out onto a rag. Cans, a pack of candles, plastic cups, plates, matches, batteries, another pair of pants and another shirt she had decided to add at the last minute, a foam water cooler, rolls of toilet paper, crossword puzzle booklets, packs of chocolate, Winston cigarettes ... the bag was growing emptier and emptier. She had bought the cans of food this afternoon. She went all the way to Ramat Eshkol so she wouldn't see anyone she knew. Still, she ran into a woman who used to work with her mother in the jewelry store at the King David Hotel; the woman spoke kindly to her, and when she asked why Tamar was buying so many cans of food, Tamar said, without blushing, that she was going on a trip tomorrow.

Moving quickly, she arranged and organized what she had brought, counted the bottles of mineral water--the most important thing was water. She had over fifty liters there already. That would do. It had to be enough for the whole time, the days and nights. The nights would be the hardest, and she would need a lot of water. She swept the place again, for the last time swept the sand from the stone floor, tried to imagine herselfat home here. Once, a million years ago--until about a month ago, at least--this was her most beloved hiding place. Now the thought of what was waiting for her here was twisting her guts.

She laid a thick mattress by the wall and lay down on it to see whether it was comfortable. Even when she was lying down, she didn't allow herself to relax--her brain buzzed constantly. What would it be like when she brought him here, to her six-hundred-square-foot forest, to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? What would become of her in this place, with him, alone?

On the wall above her, the players of Manchester United shone with happiness after winning the Cup. A little surprise she'd prepared to make him happy, if he noticed at all. She smiled to herself unconsciously, and with the smile, the bad thoughts returned, and fear again shrank into a fist, clenched in her stomach.

What if I'm making a terrible mistake? she thought.

She got up and paced from wall to wall, clutching her hands forcibly against her chest. He will lie here, on this mattress, and here, on the folding plastic chair, she will sit. She prepared a thin mattress for herself as well, but she had no illusions: she wouldn't be able to shut her eyes for even a moment during all those days. Three, four, five days like that--that's what the toothless man in Independence Park had warned her about. "Take your eyes off him for one minute and he'll run on you." She had stared, depressed, into the empty mouth that sniggered at her, into the eyes that ogled her body and especially the twenty-shekel bill she held in front of him. "Explain," she demanded, trying to hide the trembling in her voice, "just what you mean by 'run on me.' Why should he run?" And he, in his filthy striped gown, cradling himself in a matted fur blanket in spite of the heat, laughed at her innocence. "You ever hear about that magician, sister? The one who could escape, no matter how they locked him up? That's exactly how it's going to be with him. Put him in a box with a hundred locks, in a bank safe, in his mother's belly, and he has to run. Guaranteed. Can't control it. Even the law can't help."

She had no clue how she would be able to stand that. Maybe, when she was here with him, strange new powers would awaken in her. She could count only on that now, on such faint hopes. It didn't matter, everything was faint and hopeless anyway; if she started thinking abouther chances, she'd collapse in despair. The fear swept over her, shook her in the little cave--don't think, just don't think logically, she was going to have to be a little crazy now, like a soldier on a suicide mission who doesn't think about what might happen to him. She checked the food supplies again, for the tenth time maybe, calculated once more whether the food would do for all the days and nights. Sat on the folding chair in front of the mattress and tried to imagine what it would be like, what he would tell her, how he would hate her more and more from hour to hour, what he would try to do to her. The thought made her jumpy again. She ran to the hole in the back of the cave and checked over the bandages, the iodine, the dressings. She couldn't calm down, moved a big stone aside, exposing a flat wooden board. Under it, in a little hole dug in the ground, were placed, side by side, a little electric cattle prod and handcuffs.

I'm completely insane, she thought.

Before she left, she stopped and cast another glance over the place she had been preparing and equipping for a whole month. At one time, perhaps hundreds of years ago, people had lived here. She'd found signs of it. Animals lived here, too. And now it was going to be home to him and her, and an asylum, and a hospital, she thought. And, especially, a jail. Enough. She had to go.

And a month later a boy and a dog ran through the streets of Jerusalem, strangers tied to each other by one rope, as if refusing to admit they were reallytogether.Still, as if casually, they were starting to learn little things about each other. How ears prick up in moments of excitement--the power of shoes pounding against asphalt--the smell of sweat--all the emotions a tail can express--how much strength there was in the hand holding the rope, and how much yearning in the body pulling it forward ... They had already escaped the busy thoroughfare, going deeper into narrow, curving alleyways, and the dog still didn't slow down. Assaf imagined that a huge magnet was pulling her, and a strange notion passed through him, that if only he could stop thinking, completely negate his own willpower, he, too, might be sucked toward that place with her. A moment or two later, he was jolted awake, because the doghad stopped in front of a green gate set into a high stone wall, and in a graceful motion, she stood on her hind legs, pushed the metal handle with her paws, and opened it. Assaf looked right and left. The street was empty. The dog breathed and pushed forward. He entered after her and was at once wrapped in a profound silence, the silence of the bottom of the sea.

Big yard.

Covered with snow-white pebbles.

Fruit trees planted in rows.

A round stone house, big and squat.

Assaf walked slowly, cautiously. His steps squeaked against the pebbles. He was surprised by how such a beautiful, wide space could be hidden so close to the center of the city. He passed a round well; a shiny bucket was tied to the well by a rope, a few big clay mugs sat on a nearby tree stump, as if waiting for someone to drink from them. Assaf peeped into the well, threw a small stone, and only after a long moment heard the little hiccup of the water. Not far from the well, smothered in thick grapevines, was a shelter, and under it, five rows of benches. Five large stones stood in front of every bench, each chiseled into a kind of pillow on which to rest tired feet.

He stopped and looked at the stone house. A plant with purple flowers crisscrossed the walls, covering them, climbing all the way up the tall tower that rose above the house, and cascading at the feet of a cross at its top.

It's a church, he thought, surprised. The dog apparently belonged to the church. That's it, she's probably a church dog here, he thought, trying to convince himself, and, for a moment, he managed to picture the streets of Jerusalem filled with lots of agitated church dogs.

The dog picked up her pace, pulling him to the back of the house without hesitating, as if this really were her home. A little arched window was set into the top of the tower, like an open eye in the heart of the bougainvillea. The dog lifted her head to the sky and produced a few short, strong barks.

At first nothing happened. Then Assaf heard the squeak of a chair from above, from the top of the tower. Someone up there moved--the little window opened--and an excited shout escaped, a woman's voice--or a man's, it was hard to tell. The voice creaked as if it hadn't been used in a long time--one word escaped, perhaps the dog's name. The dog barked and barked, and the voice from above called her again, sharp and amazed, as if not believing its good fortune. Assaf thought that his little journey with the dog was about to come to an end, she would be going back home to the tenant at the top of the tower. It was over so quickly. He waited for someone to peep out from the window and tell him to come up, but instead of a face, a hand emerged, dark and slender--for a moment he thought it was a child's hand--then a little wooden basket appeared, tied to a rope, and the rope descended. The basket swayed at its end, a little airborne bulrush basket, all the way down, until it stopped right in front of his face.

The dog was nearly out of her mind with excitement--the entire time the basket descended, she barked and pawed at the ground, and rushed to the door of the church and back to Assaf. In the basket Assaf found a big, heavy metal key. He hesitated for a moment. A key meant a door. What was waiting for him beyond? (From one viewpoint, he was just the right person to handle this job. He had, behind him, hundreds of hours of training, preparing him for exactly this kind of situation: big metal key, tall tower, mysterious fortress ... also, a magic sword, a bewitched ring, a treasure chest, and a greedy dragon watching over it. And almost always three doors, and you have to choose which one you'll enter--behind two of them lie a variety of deaths and torments.) But here there was only one key and one door, so Assaf followed the dog to the door and opened it.

He stood on the edge of a large, dark hall; he was hoping that the proprietor would come down to him from the tower, but no one came, and no steps were heard. He entered. The door closed slowly behind him. He waited. The outlines of the hall began to paint themselves out of the darkness: a few high cupboards, chests and tables, and books, thousands of books, covering the full width of the walls, on shelves, on top of the cupboards, on the tables, and piled up on the floor. Huge bundles of newspapers were stacked next to them, tied with twine, each labeled with a little slip of paper--1955, 1957, 1960 ... The dog started pulling again, and he was dragged after her. He spotted children's books on one shelf, and was confused and even alarmed--what were children'sbooks doing here? Since when do priests and monks read children's books?

He swerved around a big square box in the center of the hall--per--haps an ancient sarcophagus. Perhaps an altar. He could imagine hearing the sound of motion from above, soft and quick steps, even the clink of forks and knives. Paintings of men in robes hung on the walls, halos of light shining above their heads; their eyes, full of chastisements, fixed on Assaf as he passed.

The big space of the hall echoed around him and the dog, doubling their every motion, each breath, each scratch of nails on the floor. She pulled him toward a wooden door at the end of the hall. He tried to pull her back--he had some sharp intuition that this was his last chance to escape, and possibly to be saved from something. The dog had no more patience for his fear; she smelled someone she loved. The smell was about to become a body, a touch, and she yearned for it in all the depths of her doghood--the rope stretched and trembled, she reached the door, stood and scratched at it with her nails and whined. When she stood this way, on her hind legs, she was almost as tall as he was, and under the dirt and matted fur, he noticed again how beautiful and supple she was. His heart contracted--he hadn't had time to get to know her. All his life he'd wanted a dog and begged his parents to let him have one, knowing that there was no chance because of his mother's asthma. Now it was as if he had a dog--but so briefly, and only while running.

What am I doing here? he asked himself, and turned the knob. The door opened. He was standing in a corridor that curved around and probably encircled the entire church. I shouldn't be here, he thought, and started running after the dog as it leaped forward, passing three more closed doors, blowing like the wind between thick, white-painted walls. He reached a tall flight of stone stairs. If anything happens to me, he thought--and in his mind he saw the captain gloomily leaving the cockpit, going to his parents and whispering something in their ears--no one in the world would ever think of looking for me here.

Above him, at the top of the stairs, another door. Small and blue. The dog barked and whined, almosttalked, and sniffed and scratched under the crack. Behind the door rose noises of joy and delight that sounded to him a bit like a chicken clucking, and someone inside, in astrange, old-fashioned dialect, "Wait, my darling! The gate shall open soon, my heart's delight, there, there."

A key turned in the lock, and the moment the door had opened a crack, the dog shot in, storming whoever was inside, leaving Assaf outside, behind the closing door. He felt disappointed--it always ended this way, somehow. In the end, he was always the one left behind a closed door. And just because of that, this time he dared--pushed the door a little and peeped inside. He saw a back bending over and a long braid emerging from a round black knit cap. For a split second he thought it was a child with a braid, a girl, tiny and skinny, in a gray robe. But then he saw it was a woman, a little old woman, laughing and burying her face in the dog's neck, petting her with slender hands, speaking to her in an unknown language. Because he didn't want to interrupt, Assaf waited, until the woman pushed the dog away, laughing, and cried out, "Well, myscandalyarisa, enough, enough! You must allow me to receive Tamar as well!" and turned back, and the wide smile on her face suddenly froze.

"But who--?" She was taken aback. "Who are you?" she groaned, and her hands hovered at the collar of her robe, her face twisted in a mixture of disappointment and fear. "And what are you doing here?"

Assaf thought for a moment. "I don't know," he said.

The nun was further taken aback and pressed up against the wall of bookshelves. The dog stood between her and Assaf, looking back and forth at them, licking her mouth in embarrassed misery. Assaf could imagine the dog was disappointed as well, that she hadn't brought him here expecting this meeting.

"Excuse me, uh--I really don't know what I'm doing here," Assaf repeated, and felt that instead of explaining himself, he was, as usual, only making things more complicated, the way he always did when he had to untangle something with words. He didn't know what to do, to calm the nun down so she wouldn't breathe like that, too quickly, so the wrinkles on her forehead wouldn't quiver so much. "This is pizza," he said gently, signaling, with his eyes, to the box in his hand. He hoped at least this would calm her down, because pizza is simple and has only one meaning. But she pressed herself against the books even more, and Assaf felthis body, big and manly and threatening, and every move he made was the wrong one, and the nun looked so pitiful standing by the shelves, like a tiny, terrified bird, puffing up her feathers to threaten a predator.

Now he noticed the table was set. Two plates and two cups, big iron forks. The nun was expecting a visitor. But he didn't know what could explain such tremendous fear, and such disappointment, really that of a broken heart.

"So ... I'll go," he said cautiously ... but there was also that matter of the form and the fine. He had no idea what to do--how do you say such a thing--how do you ask somebody to pay a fine?

"Go? What do you mean?" the woman wailed. "Where is Tamar? Why hasn't she come?"

"Who?"

"Tamar, Tamar, my Tamar,herTamar!"

With impatience she pointed at the dog three times, who was watching the conversation with wide eyes, glancing back and forth like a spectator in a Ping-Pong match.

"I don't know her," Assaf mumbled, carefully not committing to anything. "I don't know her, honest."

There was a long silence. Assaf and the nun stared at each other, like two strangers desperately in need of a translator. The dog barked. Both of them blinked as if they had awakened from an enchantment. Assaf pondered, slowly, the thought crawling through his mind: Tamar is probably the same young lady the pizza man was talking about, the one with the bicycle ... maybe she's making deliveries to churches? Well, now everything is clear, he thought, knowing nothing was clear but that it was really no longer his concern.

"Look, I only brought"--he put the white cardboard box on the table and immediately stepped back, so she wouldn't think, God forbid, that he intended to eat here as well--"the pizza--"

"The pizza, the pizza!" the nun exploded in anger. "Say no more about the pizza! I ask about Tamar and he speaks of pizzas! Where did you meet? Speak! Now!"

He stood, lowering his head between his shoulders. Her fear of him quickly evaporated as her questions hit him one after the other. It was as if she were pounding him with her tiny hands. "How can you say thatyou 'don't know her'? Are you not her friend? Or an acquaintance, or a relative of hers? Won't you look me in the eyes?" He lifted his eyes to her, feeling, for some reason, a little bit like a liar under her piercing gaze. "You mean she didn't send you to me, to make me glad, to put me out of this misery? Wait--a letter! Of course, I am a fool--there must be a letter!" She grabbed the cardboard box and began to dig through it, lifting the pizza and looking under it, reading the advertisement for the pizza place on the box with strange delight, her little face screwing up as if looking for some clue between the lines.

"Not even a little letter?" she whispered, and nervously fixed her silver hair, which had escaped from under the black knit cap and become disorderly. "At least some message by heart? Something she asked you to remember? Please try, I beg you, it is very important to me--she told you to come and tell me something, didn't she?" Her eyes hung on his mouth, trying to pull the longed-for words from his lips with only the will of her wish. "Perhaps she wished to send word that things went according to plan? That the danger has passed? Is this what she told you? Yes?"

Assaf knew: when he stood like that, he was wearing the expression that once made Reli, his sister, say, "You got lucky with one thing, Assafi--with a face like that, you can only surprise people for the better."

"Just one moment!" The nun's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps you are one of them, God forbid, one of the villains! Speak! Are you one of them? You should know, young man, I am not afraid of you!" She practically stamped her little feet at him, and Assaf was stunned. "What! Now you've swallowed your tongue? Have you hurt her? With these two hands, I will tear you apart if you have touched the child!"

Now the dog broke into a cry, and Assaf, bewildered, knelt beside her, petting her with both his hands; but she continued to whimper, her body trembling with sobs, looking a bit like a child who is trapped in a fight between her parents and can't take it any longer. Assaf actually lay down beside her, lay right down and hugged her, and petted and stroked her, and spoke into her ear, as if he had entirely forgotten where he was, forgotten the place and the nun; only tenderness for the depressed, frightened dog poured out from him. The nun fell silent, looking inwonder at the grown boy, concentrating in that moment, with his serious child's face, the black hair falling over his forehead, the acne on his cheeks--and she was moved by what she felt flowing endlessly from his body to the dog.

But at that moment Assaf remembered something. He lifted his head and asked, "Is she a girl?"

"What? Who? Yes, a girl--no, a young woman your own age ..." She was searching for her lost voice, freshening her face with light pats of her fingers, watching the way he comforted and appeased the dog, gently, smoothing over the waves of her sobs until he quieted them completely, until the spark of light returned to her brown eyes.

"There, there, you see? Everything is fine," Assaf said to the dog, and stood up, and again retreated into himself a bit when he saw once more where he was and in what kind of trouble he was trapped.

"At the very least, you can explain one thing to me," said the nun, in a voice now full of more than disappointment and sorrow. "If you do not know her, how, then, did you know to bring the Sunday pizza? How did the dog surrender herself to you and let you walk her on a leash? Why, she will not allow such treatment at the hands of anyone in the world, besides Tamar, of course. Or are you, perhaps, a sort of infant Solomon and know the language of the beasts?"

She raised her little sharp chin in front of him, her face demanding an answer, and Assaf, hesitating, told her it wasn't the language of the animals, it was ... how to explain? The truth was, he didn't quite understand everything she was saying, she spoke so energetically and in such odd Hebrew. She especially stressed her consonants and the ends of the syllables, the way old Jerusalemites speak, emphasizing letters Assaf didn't even know should be emphasized. Most of the time, she hardly even waited for his answers, just throwing more and more questions at him.

"But will you finally open your mouth?" she burst out. "Panaghia mou!How long can you remain silent?"

At last he pulled himself together and told her, tersely and succinctly, as he always did, that he was working at City Hall, and this morning--

"One moment!" she interrupted him. "You are speaking too quickly now! I do not understand--why, you are too young to be employed."

Assaf smiled inwardly and told her it was only a summer job, over his vacation, and she responded, "Vacation? To where are you traveling? Tell me quickly, where is this wonderful place?"

So Assaf explained that he meant his summer break. Now it was her turn to smile. "Aaah, you meant your summerrecess. Well, well, then, continue, from just before that; please tell me how you managed to obtain such an interesting job."

Assaf was surprised by the question--what did that have to do with the dog he brought for her? Why was she so fascinated by the history of what had happened before he came here? But it did seem to interest her. She pulled up a little rocking chair and sat on it, rocking herself gently, her legs slightly parted, hands resting between her knees, and asked him whether he was enjoying his work there. And Assaf said, Not really; he was there to write down residents' complaints about explosions of water pipes in roads and public areas, but most of the time he just sat and dreamed--

"Dream?" The nun brightened, as if she had recognized a friend in a place where everyone was a stranger. "Simply sitting, dreaming dreams? For a salary? Aha! Who said you cannot speak? And tell me, what do you dream about?" She knocked her knees against each other in joy. Assaf was very embarrassed and explained to her he wasn't really dreaming, he was just, like, daydreaming, thinking about all kinds of things ... "But what things--that is the question!" The nun opened her narrow eyes, now sparkling with something essentially elfish, her face expressing such seriousness and profound interest that it completely confused Assaf, silencing him, because what would he tell her--that he was dreaming about that Dafi, whether he could finally manage to break things off with her and still avoid a quarrel with Roi? He looked at her. Her dark eyes were fixed on his lips, waiting for his words, and for one crazy moment he really thought he would tell her a little. Why not? he thought. Just for the hell of it. She won't be able to understand any of it anyway, thousands of light-years separate my world from hers. Then the nun said, "Yes? Have you gone silent again, my dear? Have your powers of speech suddenly disappeared? God forbid, you should silence a story at its first breath!"

Assaf muttered that it was nothing really, just a silly story. "No, no,no." The little woman clapped her hands. "No such thing as a silly story exists, you should know that. Every story is connected, somewhere, in the depths, to some greater meaning. Even if it is not revealed to us." But this is really a silly story, Assaf insisted seriously, then broke into a smile at the childish, sly way her lips pouted. "Fine," she said, pretending to sigh, and crossed her hands on her chest. "Tell me your silly story, then. But why on earth are you standing? Whoever heard of such a thing?"--she looked in amazement around her--"the host sitting and the guest standing up!" Quickly she jumped out of her seat and pulled from the shadows a tall chair with a stern, straight back. "Do have a seat, and I will bring out a jar of water and some refreshments--shall I cut some fresh cucumber and tomato for both of us?"--And her tomahto, with the longah--"Why, it isn't every day that we receive such an important guest here, from City Hall! Sit quietly, Dinka, you know you will have some as well."

"Dinka?" asked Assaf. "Is that her name?"

"Yes. Dinka. Tamar calls her Dinkush. And I"--she bent to the dog and rubbed noses with her--"I call her shrew, and rebel, and dear heart, and my golden fair one, andscandalyarisa, and ever so many more, don't I, my eyes?"

The dog looked at her lovingly, her ears moving every time her name was mentioned. Something unfamiliar, like a light, distant tickle, fluttered inside Assaf as well. Dinka and Tamar, he thought. Tamar's Dinka, and Dinka's Tamar. For the blink of an eye, he saw the two in front of him, cuddling with each other in soft, round completeness. But that really wasn't any of his business, he remembered, forcibly erasing the vision.

"And you?--What?"

"What, what me?"

"What is your name?"

"Assaf."

"Assaf, Assaf, a psalm for Assaf ..." she hummed to herself, and hurried to the little kitchen with quick steps, almost skipping. He heard her chopping and humming behind a flowery curtain; she then returned and placed a large glass jar on the table, in which slices of lemon and mint leaves were swimming, and a plate with sliced cucumber and tomato,and also olives and slices of onion and squares of cheese, everything dipped in thick oil. She then sat in front of him, wiped her hands on the apron tied around her robe, and stretched her hand out to him: "Theodora, a native of the isle of Lyxos in Greece. The last citizen of that miserable island now sits to dine with you. Please eat, my son."

Tamar stood for a long moment in front of the little barbershop door in the neighborhood of Rekhavia and didn't dare go in. It was twilight at the end of a relaxed day in July. She had been pacing the sidewalk, back and forth in front of the barbershop, for maybe a whole hour now. She saw her reflection in the glass of the big window and the old barber trimming the hair of three men as old as he was, one after the other. An old man's barbershop, Tamar thought. Suits me. Nobody's going to know me here. Two were now left, waiting their turn: one, reading a newspaper; the other, almost completely bald--what was he doing here anyway?--with watery, bulging eyes, chattered incessantly with the barber. Her hair clung to her back, as if begging for its soul. It had been six years since she had cut her hair, when she was ten. Even during the years when she wanted to forget altogether that she was a girl, she wasn't capable of giving that up. It was a convenient screen for her, and sometimes a little tent to hide in, and sometimes, when it spun around her, wild, full of air, it was her shout of freedom. Every few months, in a rare attack of self-adornment, she would braid it into thick ropes and coil it on top of her head, feeling mature and feminine and restrained, and almost beautiful. Finally, she pushed the door open and entered. The smells of the soap and shampoo and disinfectant greeted her, and the stares of all the people sitting there. A heavy silence fell in the room--she sat down, bravely ignoring them, and laid the big backpack by her legs. She put the huge black tape recorder on a chair next to her.

"So are you listening"--the man with the bug eyes tried, unsuccessfully, to pick up his conversation with the barber--"to what she's telling me, my daughter? That they've decided to call my granddaughter, who's just been born, they're going to call her Beverly, and why? Just because. That's what her older sisters want, and--"

But his words hung empty in the room, condensing like vaportouching the cold. He went mute with embarrassment, suddenly conscious of his own baldness, as if something were dripping onto it. The men glanced at the girl, and then at one another, their glances quickly weaving strings of agreement. She's not okay, this girl, their looks said, she's not in the right place, and she herself isn't right. The barber worked silently, and once in a while looked in the mirror. He saw her gray-blue eyes, and the knuckles of his fingers went weak.

"Enough, Shimek," he said, in a strangely tired voice, to the man who had gone silent long before. "Tell me later."

Tamar pulled her hair together and brought it in front of her nose and mouth, tasted it, smelled it, and kissed it goodbye, missed it already, its warm touch, the times it had tickled her neck, the weight it had when she pulled it up, the feeling that her hair made her bigger, enlarged her existence and her physical reality in the world.

"Take it all off," she told the barber, when her turn arrived.

"Everything?" His thin voice curled up at its edges in amazement.

"Everything."

"Wouldn't that be a shame?"

"I asked you to take it all off."

The men sitting in the barbershop straightened up. The one called Shimek burst into a choking cough.

"Sweetie," the barber sighed, and a slight vapor misted over his glasses, "maybe it's better for you to go home first and ask your mother and father."

"Tell me," she retorted, all of her being tensed to fight him, "are you a barber or a school counselor?" Their eyes dueled with each other in the mirror. This toughness was new to her as well. She didn't enjoy it, but it was tremendously useful in the places she'd been hanging around lately. "I'm paying for this, aren't I? I asked you to take it all off. End of story."

The barber tried to object: "But this is a man's barbershop."

"Thenshavemy head," she said irritably. She folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes.

The barber looked helplessly at the men sitting in the chairs behind her. His eyes said, You're witnesses--I tried to persuade her not to cut her hair. From this point on, she is solely responsible for whatever happens! and the men's eyes agreed. He passed his hands over his thin hairand pulled his shoulders back. He then held his big scissors, snipped at the air once or twice; he felt that something in the clacking sound was a little off, it sounded hollow and weak, so he snipped and snapped until it hit the correct pitch, the sound of the joy of his profession--then took one thick curl of hair, wavy and black as coal, sighed, and started cutting.

She didn't open her eyes, not even when he moved to the more delicate scissors, nor later, when he used the electric razor, and not even after that, when he made the last remaining hairs on her neck disappear with a sharp blade. She didn't see the men, focused on her, as one after another they put their newspapers down and leaned forward a little, looking, alternately attracted to and appalled by the too-pink naked skull, like a chick's, becoming exposed. On the floor lay the severed locks, and the barber watched carefully so as not to step on them. The room was pretty warm and stuffy, but she felt the air around her head become cool. Maybe this won't be so bad, she thought, and for a moment a smile passed over her lips. She heard Halina, her old voice teacher, who sometimes scolded her for neglecting herself: "Hair needs attention, too, Tamileh! Treat it well and you are already happier, yes? Why not? You can do it--a little conditioner, some cream--it's not so terrible to be pretty ..."

"That's it," the barber whispered, and went to clean the blade with cotton balls soaked in alcohol, and messed around with his scissors case. Anything, anything so he could stand with his back to her when she opened her eyes.

She opened them abruptly and saw an ugly, scared little girl. It was almost horrifying. She saw a girl from an institution, a street girl, a crazy girl. The girl's ears were too pointy, her nose too long, and she had huge eyes strangely set at a distance from each other. She'd never noticed how odd her eyes looked, and now the exposed, provocative gaze frightened her. Her first thought was of the sudden resemblance to her father, especially his features as he had aged in the past few years. Her second thought was that with the addition of some suitable clothes, further blurring her appearance like this, there was a chance that even her parents wouldn't recognize her if they accidentally passed her in the street.

In the barbershop, nobody was moving yet. She looked at herself fora long time with no mercy. Her naked head looked like an exposed stump to her. She had the feeling that now everyone could read her thoughts.

"You'll get used to it," she heard the barber murmur, with compassion, from afar. "At your age, it grows quickly."

"Don't worry about me," she said immediately, alert, refusing any tenderness that could crumple her; even her voice sounded different to her without her hair, higher, as if it had split into a few different tones that were coming to her from a new place.

When she paid the barber, he took the money with the tips of his fingers. She thought he was afraid she'd touch him. She strode slowly, very erect, as if balancing a vase on her head. New feelings arose from every move she made, and she actually liked it; the world's air moved in a strange dance around her head, as if coming closer to see who she was, retreating and then returning to touch.

She lifted the backpack onto her shoulders, took the tape player, and began to leave. She stopped for a moment at the door; an experienced stage animal of her kind knew that, in addition to everything else, she was in the middle of a performance. She was a spectacle, frightening perhaps, but mesmerizing as well. She couldn't resist the temptation--she stood up tall, threw her head as if shaking back a grand mane of hair, a diva, and, with a gesture of grandeur of a soul in storm, of Tosca in the final act before she jumps off the battlement, she lifted her arm above her head, let it linger in the air, and then, and only then, did she walk out, slamming the door.

"Mushrooms or olives?"

He didn't know exactly when it had happened. When had Theodora stopped being suspicious of him, and how had he now come to be sitting in front of her, big fork in hand, preparing to eat the pizza? He was only vaguely aware of that moment--something had happened in the room a few minutes ago, a different look passed over her eyes, and then a little door in her was open to him.

"Dreaming again?"

Assaf said, "Mushroom-and-onion," and she laughed to herself."Tamar likes olives, and you, mushrooms. She, cheese, and you, onions. She is little, and you are Og, King of Bashan. She speaks, and you are silent."

He blushed.

"But now, tell, tell me everything! You were sitting there and dreaming--"

"Where?"

"In City Hall! Where! You never told me of whom you were dreaming."

He stared at her: he was fascinated by the way her wrinkles were painted on her face; her forehead was covered with them like tree bark, her chin, too, and wrinkle marks stretched around her lips, the lower lip slightly pushed out. But her cheeks were completely smooth, rounded, untouched, and now, because of his attention, a slight blush reddened them.

Her blush confused him. He straightened up and quickly turned the conversation to business affairs. "So, can I leave the dog here, and you'll give her to Tamar?"

It was clear to him that she was waiting for him to say something very different, about reveries, maybe--She shook her head and announced decisively, "But no, no! That's impossible!" "Why?" he asked, surprised. And she responded quickly, slightly annoyed, "No, no. I wish I could, but--do not inquire into matters beyond your comprehension. Listen here"--her voice softened at the sight of his disappointment--"I would gladly keep my dear Dinka here with me, but she must go outside every once in a while, must she not? One must take her for little walks in the yard, and in the streets as well, yes? And in addition, she will likely want to escape to the streets once again to search for Tamar. What would I do? I do not leave this place."

"Why?"

"Why?" She tilted her head slowly, back and forth, as if considering a problem between her and herself. "Do you truly want to know?"

Assaf nodded. Maybe she has the flu, he thought. Maybe she's sensitive to the sun.

"And if the pilgrims of Lyxos suddenly arrive? What do you think will happen if I am not here to receive them?"

The well, Assaf remembered, and the wooden benches, and the clay mugs, and the stones to rest your feet on.

"Did you see the dormitory on your way in?"

"No," because Dinka had run and pulled him up the stairs so quickly.

Now the nun, Theodora, stood and held his hand--she had a slender, strong hand--and pulled him to follow her, and called Dinka as well. As the three of them quickly descended the stairs, Assaf noticed a big scar, yellow as wax, on her wrist.

She stopped in front of a tall, wide door. "Stay a moment and close your eyes." He closed them, and wondered who had taught her Hebrew, and in what century. He heard the door open. "Now open them."

He saw a narrow, rounded hall in front of him, and in it, dozens of high iron beds lined up in two rows, facing each other. A thick mattress lay naked on each bed; a sheet, a blanket, and a pillow were folded carefully on each mattress; and on top of everything, like a period at the end of a sentence, rested a little black book.

"Everything is in utmost preparedness for their arrival," Theodora whispered.

Assaf allowed himself to be pulled into the hall, gazing around him; he paced between the beds. At every step, a slight cloud of dust rose. Light leaked in from high windows. He opened one of the books and saw letters of an unfamiliar language. He tried to picture the hall full of excited pilgrims, but here the air was even cooler and more moist than in the nun's room, as if it had a hand and could touch. For some reason, Assaf became uneasy.

He saw Theodora when he glanced up, and, for a split second, the strange feeling passed through him that even if he walked toward her, he would never reach her--he was trapped there, in clotted, motionless time. He almost ran back to her with one urgent question: "And they--the pilgrims"--he saw the expression on her face and knew he would have to choose his words carefully--"when are they supposed to actually come? I mean, when do you expect them? Today? This week?"

She turned from him sharply, coldly, like the point of a compass. "Come, my dear, let us return, the pizza is becoming cold."

He walked behind, confused and disturbed. "And my Tamar," shesaid, as they climbed the stairs, her rope sandals tapping in front of his eyes, "she cleans the dormitory; once a week she comes to scour and sweep. But now, as you saw--only dust."

Again, they sat at the table, but something between them had changed, become murky, and Assaf didn't know what it was. He felt agitated by something left unsaid, hovering there between them. The nun, too, was lost in her thoughts and wouldn't look at him. When she delved into herself in this way, her cheekbones were more pronounced, along with the long narrowness of her eyes, and she looked to him like an old Chinese woman. For some time, they ate in silence, or pretended to eat. Occasionally Assaf looked around: a small bed, piled with mountains of books. A table in the corner, holding an ancient black telephone, with a round dial. Another glance, and Assaf's eyes snagged on an object--it looked like a figurine of a donkey, made of bent, rusty iron wires.

"No, no, no!" the nun suddenly protested, slamming the table with two hands. Assaf stopped chewing. "How is it possible to eat without talking? To ruminate like cows? With no conversation regarding matters of the heart? What flavor is there in your pizza, young man, without conversation!" And she abruptly pushed her plate away.

He swallowed whatever was in his mouth quickly, and didn't know how to get out of it. "And you and Tamar ..." He choked a little when he said her name. "You and she talk, right?" His voice sounded too loud to him, artificial.

Naturally she sensed his miserable attempt to avoid talking about himself and stared at him scornfully; but he had already started something and didn't know how to retreat from it respectably. In general, he wasn't well versed in the art of small talk (sometimes, when he was with Roi and Maytal and Dafi, when banter, or at least cheerful everyday chatter, was demanded, he felt like someone who had to turn a tank around inside a room).

"So she ... Tamar ... she comes to you every week, right?"

He could see she wasn't thrilled to have to answer him, but still, after he mentioned Tamar, a spark returned to her eyes. "She has been coming here, to me, for one year and two months now," she said, stroking her braid, with a touch of pride. "And she works a little, because she needs money; lately, quite a bit of money. She does not take any from her parents,of course." Assaf noted the slightest twitch of her nose when she mentioned Tamar's parents, but he didn't ask--what business was it of his? "There is plenty of work here with me, as you have seen: cleaning the dormitory, dusting the beds, and, of course, polishing the big pots in the kitchen every week--"

"But what for?" he said abruptly. "All these beds, and the pots, too--when are they coming here anyway, the pilgrims? When--" And very wisely, he shut his mouth. He felt now that he had to wait. A familiar feeling was fluttering inside him: the moment he loved, in the darkroom, when a photo slowly rises out of the solution and the lines start to appear. Here, too, the things he heard, and what he could only guess, started to come together in some shape ... Another moment or two and he would understand.

"And after we work, we remove our aprons, wash our hands, sit, and eat the pizza--" She giggled. "The pizza! Why, it is only because of Tamar that I have learned to enjoy pizza ... Then, of course, we talk about all manner of things--my little one speaks to me of the entire world." Again he thought he heard a light sound of pride in her voice and wondered what this Tamar must have that Theodora was so proud to be her friend. "And sometimes we argue, as well--fire and brimstone, but all in the most friendly manner." For a moment, she seemed girlish to him as well. "In the manner of very dose friends."

"But what do you talk about so much?" The question escaped from him with a kind of embarrassed urgency; his heart was crushed with an inexplicable envy. Perhaps because he remembered what Dafi had said to him just two days before, that whenever he was about to start a story she had a strange urge to look at her watch. "About God?" he asked, and hoped, because if they were talking just about God, that would be reasonable, bearable.

"God?" Theodora was flabbergasted. "Why ... but it goes without saying ... most certainly ... God appears in our conversations now and again as well. How could He not?" She crossed her arms over her bosom and looked at Assaf wonderingly, considering, to herself, whether she hadn't made a big mistake with this one--and he recognized that look only too well, wanted to jump out of his skin to stop its rays. "But, my dear, let me tell you the truth: I do not like to speak of God. We nolonger associate with each other as we once did, God and I. He and I lead separate lives. But do we lack for human beings to speak of in this world of ours? And what of the soul? And love? Is love no longer significant, in your opinion, my dear? Or perhaps you have already solved all its riddles for yourself?" (Assaf blushed, and shook his head vigorously to say no.) "And then we argue to high heaven--until the tower shakes! What about, you ask." (Assaf understood that he had to ask, and nodded energetically.) "About what do we not speak? We speak of good and evil, and whether we truly possess free will"--she flashed a gentle, teasing smile at him--"the great freedom to choose our own path--or is it already determined for us in advance? And we speak of Yehudah Poliker, Tamar brings me his every recording, every new song! Everything here is taped! And then, suppose there is a very nice film at the Cinematheque, I say immediately, 'Tamar! You must go for me! There, take some money; bring a friend with you, perhaps, and then return to me quickly and tell me everything, scene by scene!' And this way, she can enjoy herself and entertain me as well."

A new thought occurred to him: "And you--have you ever seen a movie?"

"No. Nor this new thing, the television."

The pieces started fitting together. "And you--you said you don't go out, didn't you?"

She nodded her head, looking at him, smiling, following as the nascent thought dawned slowly upon him.

"You mean ... you never leave here?" he said again, with amazement.

"Since the first day I arrived in the Holy Land," she confirmed again, with that slight pride. "I was a little lamb of twelve years when I was brought here. Fifty years have passed since then."

"And you've been here for fifty years?" His voice sounded small to him, like a child's. "And you never went--? Wait a minute, not even out to the yard?"

She nodded again. It suddenly became unbearable for him to be there. He wanted to get up, open a big window, and jump out and run off into the noisy street. He looked at the nun, shocked, and thought that she actually wasn't that old, not even that much older than his father--onlybecause of her isolated life does she look like this, like a little girl who aged, instantly, without passing through life.

She waited patiently, allowing him to think all his thoughts about her, and then quietly said, "Tamar discovered a very nice sentence in one of the books: 'The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.' According to this, I am a happy person." Her lips pouted a bit. "Very happy."

Assaf squirmed in his chair. His eyes were searching for the door, his feet tingling. It wasn't that he was unable to be alone in a room, even for long hours at a time, but only with the latest computer, a new quest game, and no one else there to give him the tips so he could solve the problems too quickly. Yes, that could hold him in a room for four or five hours easily, even without food. But to always live this way? All your life? Day and night, week after week? Year after year? Forfiftyyears?

"Thank you for not saying anything," the nun said. "Silence is a sign of wisdom ..."

Assaf didn't know whether he would be allowed to ask a question now, or whether he would have to be considered wise until the end of his visit.

"And now," she said, filling her lungs with air, "now it is your turn. A story for a story. But do not halt at every turn--throw your caution to the winds.Panaghia mou!Why won't you say a single word about yourself? Are you so important?"

"But what should I say?" he asked, distressed, because he didn't want to talk about God, and he didn't know much about Yehudah Poliker, and his life was so regular, and he didn't like to talk about himself anyway--what could he tell her?

"Tell me a story from your heart," she sighed. "And then I will tell you a story from mine." This is what she said. And smiled a slightly pained smile. Suddenly it was possible.

Twenty-eight days before Assaf met Theodora, before he started working for City Hall, before he even knew a Theodora existed in this world and hadn't dreamed of a Tamar, Tamar left for the streets. Assaf, as he alwaysdid on his vacations, slept until noon, then got up and prepared a light breakfast for himself--three or four sandwiches, a two-egg omelet--and read the newspaper. He sent an e-mail to a Houston Rockets fan in Holland, and for one long, exciting hour participated in an online Quest for Glory game forum. In the middle of it, Roi called him, or some other boy from class (he himself almost never called others). Together they tried to come up with a plan for that evening, despaired, and concluded that they would just talk later.

His mother also called from work, to remind him to take out the laundry and empty the dishwasher, and to pick Muki up from her summer camp at two. In between, he watched a little of the National Geographic channel while doing his daily exercises, and went back to the computer, and the hours passed lazily, and nothing happened.

During these very same hours, Tamar shut herself into a tiny stall, covered with graffiti and obscene drawings, in the public bathrooms of the Egged bus station. She slipped off her clothes while she took off her sandals and stood on them--Levi's jeans and the thin Indian shirt her parents had bought in London, all but her bra and panties--disgusted by the murky, thin air of the stall that hurried to cling to her flesh. She took a smaller bag out of her big backpack, and from that removed a T-shirt and some big blue overalls, stained and torn beyond mending, which felt rough against her skin. Get used to it, she thought, and fastened herself into them. She hesitated for a moment and removed the thin silver bracelet she had received for her bat mitzvah. This, too, was dangerous--her full name was etched on it. She took out a pair of sneakers and laced them up. She preferred her sandals, but she could tell she would need these shoes very badly in the next weeks, to give her the feeling of something holding her, keeping her shape together, but also so she'd be able to run faster if she was chased.

Then there was the matter of her diary, six hardcover notebooks sealed into an airtight plastic bag. The first one, from when she was twelve, was thinner than the others, still decorated with colorful drawings of orchids and Bambi and birds and broken hearts. The later ones, their covers smooth, were much thicker, the writing more cramped. They made the bag very heavy, and were a burden to her, but she had had to remove them from her house because she knew her parents wouldquickly get hold of them. Now she buried them deep into the big bag, but after a moment couldn't hold herself back. She dug out the first one and flipped through the pages, covered in childish handwriting. She smiled, unconsciously, as she sat on the toilet seat--there she is, in the seventh grade, the first time she sneaked out of her house when she went with two girl friends to Tzemah to the Tipex concert. What a crazy night that had been. She flipped forward:Liat came to the party in a shiny black dress and was gorgeous!! Liat danced with Gili Papushado and was so pretty I wanted to cry!!How old wounds never really scabbed over--they were ready to open again at any moment. (But now she really had to get out of here, to go.) She pulled out another notebook, from two and a half years ago:It freaks her out, the way she is growing up, "developing."(Hatethat word!!!Theirwords!) Who needs this?She stopped and tried to remember just why she was writing about herself in the third person. She smiled, sorrowfully: it came back to her, the insane training she had forced herself to endure back then, to toughen herself up, give her thicker skin; she taught herself to withstand tickling, and on the coldest days would take off her sweater and coat, and her shirt, too, or would go barefoot outside, in the streets, in the fields--writing in the third person was a part of it.

Love's tiny narrow places. Like that space between the closet and the wall in her room that she could still fit into until a month ago, fold herself up in there for hours--and it is driving her crazy that she will never be able to go back!!!

And on the next page--it was unclear what actions inspired this school punishment: she wrote out, exactly a hundred times,I am an empty, shallow girl. I am an empty, shallow girl.

God, she thought, resting her head on the back of the toilet, I can't believe I was so screwed up.

But immediately after that, she discovered her first encounter with Yehuda Amichai's bookEven a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers,and was filled with comfort by that child who wrote:Little fish are born surrounded by a little protein sac, and I know this book will be my little protein sac, for the rest of my life. A week later, decisively, conclusively:In orderto have W.E., I vow, from this day forward and for the rest of my life, to look at the world with constant wonder.

She smiled a bitter smile. For months the world had forced her into wonder, and then rage, and, finally, complete despair. And the only thing that had given her Wide Eyes lately was the haircut.

She flipped through the book, forward, backward, laughing a little, sighing a little. It was lucky that she had decided to read her diary before she went on her way. She saw herself spread out and exposed, as if someone had screened a complete movie for her, made up of all the separate shots of her daily life. She had to leave. Leah was waiting for her at the restaurant for their farewell meal. But she couldn't. Couldn't go back out on the streets again, couldn't face those looks they'd given her since she'd shaved her head. At least here she was protected, alone, surrounded by walls; and there, she was fourteen. She had already started writing things backward that she particularly wanted to hide:

Poor Mom. She wanted to have a girl so badly, so she could share everything with her. Tell her secrets, reveal to her the mysteries of femininity, how wonderful it is to be a woman, a gift of God, really. And what did she get? Me.

Mom. Dad. She shut her eyes, pushing them away from her--and they shoved themselves right back against her. "In every person's life are situations in which he alone is responsible for saving his own soul," her father had said to her during their last fight. Enough, enough--get out of here--when everything was over she could think about this. "As far as I'm concerned," he had said, "the matter is closed. I do not intend to lift a finger." He looked at her with false indifference. But his right eyebrow trembled uncontrollably, as if it had a life of its own. Slowly, forcibly, concentrating with effort, she erased them from her thoughts. She mustn't think about her parents now--they would only weaken her, make her lose heart. They did not exist for her now--and feverishly she drew out a different notebook, one from about a year and a half ago. Idan and Adi had already become part of her life by that point, and everything started changing for the better--or at least she had thought so at the time. She read it, and couldn't believe that she was so occupiedwith such things until a few months ago. Idan said this and did that. He went to get a Franz Josef haircut and took her, and not Adi, to check out the hairdresser, "because you are so much more practical," he said. She didn't know if, coming from his mouth, that was a compliment or an insult--and she was amazed that anyone thought her practical. And the trip to the Arad Festival--someone stole the bag that held their three wallets, and they were left with a total of ten shekels. Idan took control--he bought a coupon book in an office supply store for nine shekels and sent both of them to collect contributions for the Association Against the Hole in the Ozone Layer.

The dizziness of the joy she felt, to pull off such a scam, such a crime, in order to bring him the money they made--and what a decadent meal they ate, and still had enough left over to buy some weed. She smoked it and didn't feel a thing, but Idan and Adi wouldn't stop running around, reporting on their wild high. On the way back, on the bus, Adi sat with Idan two seats in front of her, both of them laughing hysterically the entire way.

Little asides were scattered through the nonsense, brief reports on events she didn't think seemed important then, which were like tiny whispers gathering to become a scream: Mom and Dad discovered that the Afghani wool carpet hung behind the door had disappeared. They fired the cleaning lady, who had been working for them for seven years, immediately. After that, a few hundred dollars vanished from her father's drawer--and there went the Arab gardener. After that, that thing with the car, the odometer showing evidence of a long trip while her parents were abroad on vacation. More shadows were sleeping beside the walls of the house, and no one dared to shine any light on them that might be too strong.

Someone pounded on the door. It was the washroom attendant, who shouted that she'd been sitting in there for an hour. Tamar shouted back that she would be there as long as she liked. She panted, startled by the rude disturbance.

When she started reading the last notebook, she was amazed--it was all there, completely in the open, in such detail: the plan, the cave, the grocery lists, the dangers possible and unlikely. She knew that she would have to destroy this notebook, make it disappear. It was too dangerouseven to hide. She flipped through the pages until her eyes found the exact moment when she had allowed herself to feel something--the brief encounter, that night by the Riffraff Club, with the curly-haired boy. He had a soft gaze and showed her his broken fingers, then ran away from her, as if she, too, might do something similar to him. From that point on, she armored herself, became stingy with words, and wrote like the clerk of a secret army unit, about operations, and problems, and dangers--what was accomplished that day, what needed to be achieved.

She closed the notebook. Her eyes glazed over in front of an obscene drawing on the door. She wished she could take the diary with her,there. She couldn't. But what would she do without it? How would she understand herself without writing in it? Her fingers numb, she tore the first page out and threw it into the toilet, between her legs, and after it another page, and another. One minute, what's that there?I used to cry a lot and was full of hope. These days I laugh a lot, in despair.Into the water--I will probably always fall in love with someone who is already in love with someone else. Why? Just because. Because I'm very good at getting myself into hopeless situations. Everyone has something he's good at.She ripped--My art? What, don't you know?--not to live for the moment but todestroythe moment itself. She tore, she tore aggressively; all at once she stood up, dizzy. All that was left were the pages from the most recent days--the endless arguments with her parents, her screams, her begging, and the terrible knowledge unstitching her heart, her understanding that they really couldn't do anything; they couldn't help her, nor could they prevent her from going. They simply grew hollow, paralyzed by the disaster that had hit them like a magic spell, emptied them out. Only the shells of her parents were left, and now it was she alone who could do something, if she dared.

But when she gets to that place she's trying to find, she will very likely be searched. She will be searched, certainly, and someone will go through her stuff and try to discover who she is. Who am I? What is left of me? She flushed, and gazed at the torn pages, spinning, getting sucked in, disappearing: nothing.

Her spirits were low without her diary, and without Dinka.

She disappeared into the throng that streamed through the station. She saw her reflection in the windows of the restaurants, and in the glassof the hot-dog stands, and in people's eyes. She saw how her lips were pursed in front of her. They had looked at her completely differently until yesterday. And until then, she also encouraged those looks a little, because of the wink, the light, tempting invitation of what she wore, and of how she looked in what she wore. Tamar knew it as the exaggerated courage of the super-shy, the frightened daring that exploded from her, uncontrollably, like a hiccup out of her body: like the see-through shirt she wore to the ninth-grade graduation party. Or the shocking red shoes, the no-place-like-home shoes, she wore to the big recital at the academy. There were other similar incidents--and also the endless, agitated transitions between her days of neglect and abandonment in such matters (Halina once yelled that from now on she was forbidden to dress like some Orthodox girl in those B'nai Brak clothes), to her periods of glossy, well-groomed glamour and style, her purple period, the yellow period, the black ...

She deposited her big backpack at the baggage check counter and clutched the smaller bag to her chest. From now on, this would hold her home. The guy working at the counter took one look at her and, like the barber, was careful that his fingers not touch hers; she picked up the little numbered metal tag from the counter.

She hadn't planned this in advance: and now, where will you put this tag? She almost laughed at herself--she now understood that she hadn't succeeded in foreseeing and planning everything: and if they find it on you, what will you say? And if one ofthemgoes and gets the backpack from the baggage check, and looks in your wallet, and reads your diary, what then, you stupid, self-absorbed loser. She left, enjoying the self-flagellation, making herself tougher, so she could withstand whatever was waiting for her. But who knew what else would happen there, what unimaginable possibility hadn't occurred to her--what this new life would bring her way--or how reality would surprise her and betray her--as usual.

So he told her, Assaf told her the whole story again, from the beginning, from the job at City Hall arranged through his father's connections with Danokh, because Danokh owed his father some money for some electricalwork at his house, but--Theodora stopped him again with a wave of her commanding little hand. She wanted to hear about his father and mother first. So Assaf had to stop, and he told her that his parents and little sister may have already landed in Arizona, in the United States, and mentioned that they had left on the spur of the moment because Reli, his older sister, had asked them to come right away. The nun was interested in hearing more about Reli, why she was so far away from home--so, to his surprise, Assaf had to talk about Reli as well. He described her in broad strokes--how special she was, how beautiful, how she crafted jewelry, she was an artist, and she designed a very special line of silver jewelry that was starting to become really successful abroad. He recited Reli's words and phrases, feeling how strange they were to him, perhaps because all this new success of hers was strange to him, perhaps because something there, in all her traveling, scared him. So he added, with slight resentment, that she could certainly be unbearable as well, Reli could, and hinted at her self-righteousness in everything, from the food she ate--or rather,didn'teat--to her ideas about Arab-Jewish relations, and how the country in general should look and behave; and so it came to pass that he talked about Reli quite a lot, about how she practically ran away from Israel a year ago, because she needed herspace. He hated this word of hers, so he hurried to replace it, explaining that Reli felt she was simplysuffocatinghere. Theodora smiled to herself, a deep smile, and Assaf immediately understood it; a breeze of understanding passed wordlessly between them, because there are some people for whom even fifty years in one room are not suffocating--and for some, a whole country is not enoughspace. Then she wanted to hear about Muki, too, who had gone on the trip with his parents, because she really couldn't be left here, and Assaf talked about her as well, and grinned; his cheeks went redder than usual, swallowing up even his acne, because the moment he said "Muki," the smell of her hair, just washed, wafted into his nostrils. He laughed and said that it always drove him crazy how since she was three, she had insisted on using one specific shampoo, and was careful to use a certain conditioner with it--really, since she was three--with her hair as soft as fog between your fingers, her blond hair. He laughed, and Theodora smiled again--and she'll stand in front of the mirror for hours, that little one, and admire herself, certain that thewhole world loves her. Whenever he or Reli would get annoyed by this ritual of self-adoration, their mother would tell them not to dare spoil it for her, to let the little one enjoy herself, so there could be at least one person in this household who loved herself boundlessly. Assaf suddenly realized he had been talking, uninterrupted, for quite a while. He got uncomfortable and said, "That's it, a normal family. Really nothing special." And Theodora said, "Your family is exemplary; you should be very, very happy." And he saw her delving deep into herself again. A light had gone off inside her. He didn't understand how he had chatted so freely with her. He told himself, Well, it's because she's so lonely here, maybe she hasn't talked to anyone for a long time, had a real heart-to-heart conversation. And then he thought, Oh yeah? And when was the last timeyouhad one?

Then, of course, he remembered what was awaiting him tonight, with Roi and Dafi, and she leaned toward him a little and asked, "Quickly, quickly--what did you think just now, at this moment? Your face, my dear--pou pou--a cloud passed over it." "Doesn't matter," he muttered. "Doesn'tmatter?" she retorted. She had a tremendous curiosity for his silly stories; perhaps they weren't so silly, if someone could be so interested in them. "Nothing ..." He laughed, and squirmed in his chair, embarrassed. He really didn't want to start talking about such things--it never would have crossed his mind to talk about them before he entered this convent. Why, they hardly knew each other--it was as if some demon had entered him here, was changing him. But the nun threw her head back with fresh laughter, and he felt that even though she looked old, in some ways she was as young as a girl. Perhaps because she had never used up her youthful parts in living. Then it occurred to him: Why should I mind telling her about it, anyway? She's nice, and she's lonely, and I feel like talking a little.

And so, just as he was, he told her about Dafi Kaplan, and Roi and Maytal, and the nun listened carefully, watching his mouth, her lips soundlessly repeating the words he said. After five sentences, she grasped that Dafi wasn't the main story. Assaf was amazed at how readily she understood what had been bothering him the most. "But please, let us put that poor girl aside for a moment"--she waved impatiently--"she is a flower without scent. I must learn of the heart of the matter: speak of theboy, your Roi, who no longer is yours, if I am not mistaken." Assaf's eyes closed for a moment, because she'd touched the exact place that hurt. He took a deep breath and plunged in. He told her about his friendship with Roi, how they'd been like brothers since the age of four, how they would sleep one night at his house, one night at Roi's, or in the tree house. Of the two, Roi was then smaller and weaker, and Assaf protected him from the bigger kids--the teachers said he was practically Roi's bodyguard. It continued in this way until about seventh grade, Assaf said quickly, skipping over eight years in one leap, and being brought back, gently but firmly. "Andhowdid it continue?" she wanted to know. So he told her about their elementary school days, when Roi clung to him, wouldn't let him befriend any other boy and invented an array of punishments any time he suspected Assaf of attempting to betray their friendship. The worst was the silent treatment: weeks would pass in which he refused to say a word to Assaf, yet still wouldn't move an inch away from him. Then there were Roi's horrible attacks of rage, like the time Assaf wanted to join the Scouts; Assaf eventually gave them up, with an aching heart. Even then, though, he was flattered that someone needed him and loved him so much. He fell silent, swallowed, and brooded for a moment. And this is how it had continued until junior high, then everything changed. The details didn't matter--"Theydomatter," the nun said. He knew she would say that. He even gave her a teasing smile. It was already a game between them. She went into the tiny kitchen to put water on for coffee, and called for him to continue. Assaf told her how in the seventh grade, about five years ago, girls started to notice that Roi was good-looking. Because Roi really jumped in height, became tall and handsome, and then all the girls started falling in love with him. He loved them, too, all of them, and really toyed with them, Assaf said, trying not to sound too pious. The nun smiled at the red-and-blue wallpaper in her little kitchen. But the girls never tried to get him back for it, said Assaf, in wonder, elbows on the table, chin in his hand, almost talking to himself--if anything, the opposite! Imagine! Theycompetedfor his attention! During break, they would sit and talk about how he looked, and what clothes suited him, and how he should cut his hair, how his body moved when he played basketball. Once, by accident, Assaf sat behind the girls' tree in the schoolyard, and hecouldn't believe what he heard. They spoke of Roi as if he were some kind of god, or at least a movie star. One girl described how she was plotting, in cold blood, to drop down one level in math, just to be in his class; another said that sometimes she prayed Roi would get sick, so she could go to the clinic and lie on the same examination table!

Assaf looked at Theodora and waited for her to laugh with him about that girl's stupidity--but the nun didn't laugh. She only asked him to continue telling his story, and on he went, wishing that he could just shut up already, but it was out of his control. It kept rolling out of him, like a big ball of yarn unraveling--he hadn't spoken of this, in this way, for years, neither with a stranger nor with anyone close to him. It's probably this convent, he thought dimly, or the little room, which was something like the confessional he once saw in a church in Ein Karem. After this he would be himself again, and forget that day he ever sat in a room at the top of a tower and spoke of such nonsense to a strange nun. And Theodora said, "Assaf, I'm waiting!" He talked about how, because of the girls, Roi became, in eighth grade, something like--how can I explain it to you--like the King of the Class, let's say. Assaf meant to explain to her what it meant, but she waved her hand and said impatiently, "Yes, yes, King of the Class, of course I know, do continue, please." And Assaf guessed in a flash that she had heard such stories from Tamar, about boys and girls, and thought maybe she enjoyed listening to him because it recalled her time with Tamar. When that occurred to him, the warm, new tickling moved within him again, and he imagined Tamar, somehow present in the room, unseen but seeing--sitting on the floor by Dinka's sleeping body, slowly stroking her head; perhaps he, himself, was also talking to her now, telling her how Roi became Rotem's boyfriend, the Royal Couple of the Eighth Grade. It was years, Assaf muttered, since Rotem--Roi had been through four or five other girlfriends since her, and these days it's Maytal. Because of her, because Maytal wants it, Roi has been demanding that Assaf fall in love with Dafi, even hinted that it was a condition of their continued friendship. Enough. Assaf shook himself. It didn't matter, it's nothing, nonsense, small details. Again he felt embarrassed, and terribly confused, for spilling his guts this way. "Very, very important," Theodora said tenderly. "You still do not understand,agori mou? How shall I come to know you without the small details?How, then, will I tell you a story from my own heart?" When she saw that he wasn't convinced, she searched out his eyes and forced him to raise them to meet hers. "For Tamar did not want to speak at all of herself either, in the beginning--she, too, said, 'Why does this matter?' and 'Why is this interesting?' I labored to teach her that we have nothing more important than these small things, these trifles of ours. And, you should know, she is far more stubborn than even you!" Once Assaf heard that, he immediately stopped disagreeing with her. It was as if his constricted throat came untied; even his voice changed, loosened up, and he spoke about Dafi, and about how she measured and calculated everyone by money or respect or success--as he spoke, he finally realized why being with her held no pleasure for him. She was always competing with everyone, anyone, checking the balance of success versus failure, profit against loss; listening to her, you got the feeling that all the people in the world were waiting at every moment for the chance to conspire against someone, to leap and devour someone the moment he weakened ... "There are such people in the world," the nun said, the moment she felt him faltering in front of her, "yet there are others as well, yes? Is it not true that for those others, life is worth living?" Assaf smiled and straightened up happily, as if with her little aphorism she had solved a very complicated problem that had been bothering him for a long time. He added later that even if Dafi were a completely different person, he still wouldn't fall in love with her; that he thought he would probably never fall in love. At least, not until after the army. He spoke, and was surprised by his own courage; he would say such things to only one person in the world, to Rhino, Reli's boyfriend--and even then, only rarely. And to this nun he's known for less than half an hour--what was the matter with him today?

He fell silent; the two looked at each other as if they had awakened from some mutual hallucination. Theodora smoothed her hands against her head, as if trying to hold something inside; the big yellow burn shone on her wrist. For one moment the room was completely silent. Only Dinka's breath, as she lay sleeping, was heard.

"Now," Theodora whispered, with a tired smile, "after all this, why don't you tell me, finally, how you managed to come to me?"

Only then did he tell her the essential details of the story, efficientlyoutlining how Danokh had come to his office that morning and called him to the kennels, plus Form 76 and the pizza; it seemed funny to him all of a sudden, how he had run crazily through the city without knowing where he was going. He started to smile. Theodora's face stretched into a smile in front of him. They both peered at each other and burst out laughing; the dog woke up, lifted her head, and started wagging her tail.

"But this is astonishing," Theodora sighed when she calmed down. "The dog brought you to me ..." She gazed at him for a long time, as if he was bathed in a new light. "And you? You were the innocent deliveryman, an unconscious messenger ..." And her eyes really sparkled at him. "Who else would have been willing to walk in this manner, after a naughty dog, to buy the pizza and foot the bill, to completely negate his own will to hers? What a heart,agori mou! What a warm and innocent heart you possess ..."

Assaf fidgeted in embarrassment. The truth was, he had felt like quite an idiot running after the dog that way, and was surprised by this new interpretation of his actions.

The nun hugged her small self and shivered in pleasure. "Now do you understand why I asked you to tell me the whole story? Now I am reassured, because my heart is telling me that if anyone could find my heart's delight, it is you."

Assaf said that was exactly what he had been trying to do since the morning, and if she could now give him Tamar's address, he would find her at once.

"No," she said, and got up quickly. "I am so very sorry, but I cannot do that."

"No? Why?"

"Because Tamar made me swear."

And as much as he tried to understand, and as much as he asked, she refused to answer. She walked through the room tensely, mumbling her excitedpou pous, shaking her head no no no, and spreading her arms helplessly. "Believe me, my dear, if I could, I would even hope for you to--No! Quiet!" She slapped at her own hand angrily. "Silence, old woman! You shall not speak!" Another disturbed circuit around the room with more angry breathing and a little tornado of emotions, andshe again stood before him. "Because Tamar asked me directly; you must not take offense, but I can tell you only that the last time she was here she asked me, made me swear, that if anyone should come in the next days and ask where she lives, or, perhaps, what her family name is, or who her parents are, or in any way inquire after her, even if he is the sweetest, the kindest--she didn't say that, I say that--well, I am forbidden to respond."

"But why,why?" Assaf exploded, and he stood up. "Why would she even say such a thing? What could have happened to her--" The nun kept on shaking her head to say no, as if she was afraid he would pull the words out of her. They both raised their voices and moved in front of each other for one brief moment, long enough for her to raise a commanding finger to his lips.

"Now be silent."

Assaf was amazed and sat down.

"Listen to me. I am not allowed to speak of her. I have made a vow; my hands are tied. But let me tell you a tale; perhaps, from this tale, you will come to understand something of the matter."

He sat and tapped his hand against his knee. Perhaps he should go at once and waste no more time. But the word "tale" worked on him like a magic wand, as it always did. The thought that he would hear a story fromher mouth,with her facial expressions and the sparks of light from her eyes--

"Oh ho! You smiled, my dear! You cannot deceive me, this old woman knows how to read such a smile! You are a stories-child--I knew it from the first glance, just exactly like my Tamar! Well, then, I will tell you my story, as a gift, in return for the story you told."

"So what'll we drink to?" Leah asked, forcing a smile. Tamar looked at her wine; she knew if she said her wish aloud, the words would scare her.

Leah said it for her: "Let's drink to your success, and you'll both come back in peace." They clinked their glasses and drank, looking into each other's eyes. The ceiling fans whirred, attempting uselessly to spread cool against the new heat wave pushing in.

"I'm dying to start already," Tamar said. "Because, these last fewdays"--she took a deep breath, and her eyes grew for a moment in her exposed face--"I haven't been able to sleep for a week; can't concentrate on anything. The tension is killing me."

Leah stretched her two strong arms across the table, and they linked fingers.

"Tami-mami, you can change your mind, you know. No one'll blame you--I'd never say a word about this crazy idea of yours."

Tamar shook her head, pushing away every thought of giving up.

Samir came over and whispered something into Leah's ear. "Serve it in the big bowls," she ordered, "and recommend the Chablis. And for us now, bring the chicken with thyme." Samir smiled broadly at Tamar and returned to the kitchen.

"What did you tell them?" Tamar asked. "The guys in the kitchen, what did you tell them?"

"That we're having a party for you. Wait--what did I say? Oh, that you're going on a big trip. Check out what they've got for you."

"I'm going to miss it here so much." Tamar sighed.

"You won't have food like this out there."

"Now, look"--Tamar's face became hard again--"I'm leaving the letters with you, in this envelope. They are already stamped and addressed." Leah's mouth twisted, insulted. "Look, Leah, it's no big deal, and it's not the money, I just wanted everything to be ready so you wouldn't have to go out to buy stuff."

"And because you wanted to do everything yourself, as usual," Leah corrected her, shaking her head as if to say, "What will we do with this child?"

Tamar said, "Enough, Leah. Leave it alone. You remember what to do with the letters, right?"

Leah rolled her eyes like a pupil forced to repeat some loathed material over and over. "Every Tuesday and Friday. Did you put the numbers on them?"

"Here, on the side, on the round sticker, and before you send it--"

"Take the sticker off," Leah recited. "What, do you think I'm stupid? Some dumb broad off the street? Is that it?" She let out a slightly exaggerated laugh. "That's exactly what I am."

Tamar ignored Leah's usual self-deprecation. "It is very importantthat you send them in order, because I really made up a story for them, with little jokes about all the kinds of people I'm meeting. It's pretty moronic, but it will keep them as calm as possible so they'll leave me alone." Her lips narrowed mockingly. "A story, with plot development and everything."

"I don't believe it. You kept all that straight in your head, too?" and when she said "head," Leah's eyes slipped over the exposed skull that seemed so horrible to her.

"Anyway," Tamar continued, thanking Leah in her heart for staying silent, "it should put them to sleep for a month. That's around the amount of time I need, until the middle of August, and they'll be abroad for two weeks of it, anyway. The sacred vacation." She smiled crookedly. "This year, the excuse is that 'life must go on, in spite of everything.'" She and Leah looked into each other's eyes, sighed, and shrugged their shoulders, amazed, completely disbelieving the possibility of such a thing. "The most important thing is that they'll leave me alone. They won't start looking for me."

"It doesn't seem to me like they're rushing to do anything, anyway," muttered Leah. She inspected the envelopes, reading Tamar's parents' names above the address out loud with her thick lips. "Talma and Avner ... nice names they've got." She chuckled. "Straight off public TV." "More like a soap opera, lately."

Leah said, "It reminds me of something I saw written on a wall once: 'I will kill my mother if she ever gives birth to me again.'"

"Something like that." Tamar laughed.

From the kitchen, Samir and Aviva carried in the main course. When she lifted the silver cover off her plate, Tamar saw, around the stuffed grape leaves, her name written with purple cherries.

"This is from all of us in the kitchen, with our love," said Aviva, flushed from the heat of the pots. "So you won't forget us wherever you're going."

They ate silently, both pretending to enjoy it, neither of them with any appetite.

"What was I thinking?" Leah finally said, and pushed her plate away. "You know I have that little storage pantry two doors down from here." Tamar knew. "I'm going to put a mattress on the floor there for you--don't tell me no!" Tamar didn't say anything. "The key will be under the second flowerpot. So if you get sick of sleeping in Independence Park, or whatever you do, if the room service isn't fancy enough, come to my pantry and sleep like a human being for a night. What do you think?"

Tamar thought through each of the possible dangers. Someone could see her entering the storeroom and inquire into who owned it--Leah wouldn't give her away, of course, but one of the kitchen workers might say something by mistake, and they'd discover who she was and her plan would be exposed. Leah watched sadly at the wrinkles scrunching over Tamar's white forehead and choked back a sigh. What's been going on with this one lately?

But, actually, the mattress in the pantry was a good idea, Tamar thought. Even a very good idea. She would only have to make sure no one was following her when she entered; no harm would come to her if she slept there for one night, to restore herself to a little humanity. She smiled--her sharp, intense, zealous face defrosted; all the sweetness of the world was in her for just one moment, and Leah melted. "Come on, Mami, crash there--there's a tap, and a little sink; you could wash up. There's no toilet, though."

"I'll manage."

"Ah, it makes me feel good that I can help a little." Leah was excited, and already knew that every morning she would hurry over to the pantry to see if Tamar had slept there the night before; she would leave little encouraging notes for her.

"Just promise me," said Tamar, when she saw Leah's eyes grow moist, "if you see me on the street--it doesn't matter if I'm working, or just sitting and resting on some corner--don't come up to me. Even if you are sure I'm alone, don't act like you know me, okay?"

"You're tough. Hard-hearted," Leah said. "But if that's what you want, that's what you get. Just tell me how I'll pass by you without giving you a hug or bringing you food. And what if Noa is with me? You think she won't jump on you?"

"She won't recognize me."

"You're right," Leah said quietly. "She won't recognize you like that."

Tamar searched for comfort in her eyes. "Is it that terrible?"

"You ..." You're so naked this way that it breaks my heart, Leahwanted to say. "You're always pretty to me," she finally said. "My mother used to say that a beautiful person is always beautiful--even if he puts a shoe on his face, it will suit him." Tamar smiled gratefully at her, covered Leah's big paw with her hand, and pressed it lovingly, because now the little sail of sorrow that had been stretched between them the whole lunch long billowed in Leah's direction for a moment; when her mother said that sentence, she certainly didn't mean her.

Tamar said, "I don't know how I'd hold myself back if you ever passed by with Noiku. You know what I've been thinking about? This is the longest separation I've ever had from her."

"I brought you her picture," Leah said. "Do you want it for the road?"

"Leah ... I can't take anything there." She held the photo hungrily, and her face became rounder, softer, wider, like a watercolor painting bleeding a bit, diffusing past the contour lines. "What a little hummingbird ... I wish I could take it. I would sniff her a hundred times a day. You know."

Samir cleared the plates away and scolded both of them for not eating everything. He flashed a disturbed glance at Tamar's shaven head. They hardly noticed him: they looked at the photo and rejoiced, a mutual happiness.

"They talked about brothers and sisters in nursery school," Leah told her. "When they asked her if she had a brother or sister, what do you think she said?"

"That I am her sister?" Tamar smiled with pride, swirling inside that word like wine in a glass. They looked at the tiny girl, ivory and almond-eyed, for another long moment. Tamar remembered, word for word, what Leah had told her when they first started becoming close: that in the world of her former incarnation, the one she lived in until she was about thirty, she was hardly a woman. "They treated me with respect there," Leah said. "But they treated me like a guy, not like a woman. I didn't feel like a woman then, never. And when I was a kid, I wasn't really a little girl, and I didn't grow up into a big girl, and not a woman, and not a mother. There was no woman in me until now. Now, at the age of forty-five, because of Noa."

A thick man with silver hair and a red face started raising a fuss at one of the tables in the center room. He was angry with Samir for serving wine that was not sufficiently chilled; he yelled that Samir was ignorant and stupid, and Leah immediately leaped up like a lioness protecting her cub.

"And who are you?" the man said. "I demand to speak with the owner!"

Leah crossed her strong arms across her chest. "That would be me. What's the trouble, buddy?"

"You? Are you kidding?"

Tamar felt her guts freeze from the insult to Leah.

"You got a problem with that?" said Leah with deadly calm--but her lips became pale, and the long scars on her cheeks suddenly popped out. "You think you can order the owner of the restaurant from the menu, too?"

The man became even redder, and the undersides of his eyes muddied. The woman at the table with him, buxom and bedecked with gold necklaces, laid a reassuring hand on his arm. Leah, with powers Tamar never had, immediately pulled herself together, sent Samir to the kitchen to replace the wine, and said the new bottle would be on the house. The stout man grumbled a little longer, but under his breath.

"What a pig," Tamar said when Leah sat down again.

"I know him," Leah said. "Some high-ranking military official, used to be a general or something. Thinks he has the whole country in his pocket, always getting into trouble and winning his fights with cash." She poured herself more wine, and Tamar saw her hand was shaking.

"You never get used to it," Leah admitted with a sigh.

"Don't you dare listen to him!" Tamar rushed to comfort her, as usual. "Just think of what you've done with your life, what you went through and how you got there. You went to France, alone, and studied at that restaurant for three years--" Leah listened to her with a strange mixture of hunger and despair; the long scars on her cheeks pulsed as if blood was passing through them. "And how you created this place, all of it, all by yourself; and the way you raise Noiku--come on! There is noother mother like you in the world! What do you care about what a loser like that says?"

"Sometimes I think, if only I had a man," Leah mumbled. "Someone who'd take trash like that by the collar and throw him to hell. Like Bruce Willis--"

"Or Nick Nolte." Tamar laughed.

"But he should be soft on the inside!" Leah lifted a finger. "He should be sweet."

"Hugh Grant, then." Tamar giggled. "Who will love you and spoil you."

"Not him, I don't believe in pretty faces. You watch out for them--I've noticed you have a weakness for that! Now I"--Leah laughed, and Tamar's heart expanded, flooding with the knowledge that she had again pulled Leah out of despair--"I need a Stallone. But inside, he should be like Harvey Keitel, in that movie we saw,Smoke."

"No one in the world exists who's like that," sighed Tamar.

"Someone must," Leah said. "You need one, too."

"Me? I'm not into that right now." She didn't even have the energy to start that conversation. Any thoughts of love or intimacy seemed dangerous to her now. Leah looked at her and thought, Why is she doing this to herself? Why is she destroying herself this way, so young? Suddenly Leah almost jumped out of her seat--oh, God, Tamar would be turning sixteen this week! Right? Am I wrong? Leah raced through the calculations quickly in her head--sure, it's this week. And she's not saying a word about it. And she'll be alone on the streets--how can you? How ... and Leah almost said something, but then Zion brought dessert to the table from the kitchen, and she said instead, "What's with all of you today? You're coming out one by one."

Zion laughed. "It's only for Tamar."

Tamar savored the honey-and-lavender ice cream and regretted that she couldn't store it in her body to eat from, slowly, for the next month. She licked the last of it off her spoon, and Leah unconsciously mimicked her lip motions.

"Let's see if I got it all," Leah said. "When do you leave for the streets?"

"Now, I think. After lunch," Tamar said, and shivered a little. "I'm starting right away."

"Are you serious?" Leah couldn't hold back a heavy sigh. "And when will you call me?"

"First of all, I'm not calling anyone for about a month," Tamar said. She knotted her fingers together and squeezed, hard. "Then, after about a month, around mid-August, depending on my situation there, if everything goes well, I'll call and tell you to show up in your VW."

"And then where am I taking you?"

Tamar smiled tightly. "I'll tell you then."

"You're something, you." Leah shook her head and wished everything was over already and theotherTamar would return.

They got up and went to the kitchen. Tamar thanked everyone for the special lunch, and hugged and kissed the cooks and their assistants and the waiters. Leah proposed a toast to Tamar and success on the long journey awaiting her. They drank. Everyone looked at her with concern; she didn't look as if she was going on a journey. She looked like someone going in for surgery.

Tamar, a little dizzy from the wine, looked around the crowded, steamy kitchen, at the loving faces surrounding her. She thought of the many hours she'd spent here, her hands sunk to the elbow in a pile of chopped parsley, or stuffing grape leaves with rice, pine nuts, and meat. Two years ago, when she was fourteen, she had decided to drop out of school and become a sous-chef for Leah. Leah agreed to it, and Tamar worked there for a few weeks until her father found out she hadn't been going to school. He showed up and yelled and threatened to bring in inspectors from the Labor Office if Tamar stepped into the restaurant ever again. Now Tamar almost longed for that shameful scene, to see her father so assertive and decisive, fighting for her. She had returned to her despised studies, and met Leah only at Leah's house, where she would go to baby-sit Noa, the love of her life. But she still didn't give up the idea of cooking, because anyhow, she now thought, it's not as if I have a chance at my other career.

Leah escorted her outside. A thin trace of jasmine hovered in the alley. A couple passed by them, arms around each other, weaving a little,laughing with each other. They watched, looked at each other, and shrugged. Leah had taught her once that every couple has a secret that only the two of them know; if there is no secret, the couple isn't a couple.

"Listen, Tami-mami," Leah said, "I don't know how to say this, but just don't get mad, okay?"

"Let's hear it," Tamar said.

Leah crossed her hands over her chest. "If you want, I can save you from this whole mess--one minute, let me finish--"

Tamar raised her eyebrows in silence but already knew.

"Listen, I just have to make one phone call--to someone who still remembers me from those days."

Tamar lifted her hand to silence her. She knew what it had taken Leah to pull herself away from her previous life, the difficulty of the withdrawal from everything she was addicted to, both substances and people. She also remembered well what Leah had told her once, that any contact with that world could screw it all up again.

"No thank you," she said, moved by Leah's offer.

"I just have to pick up the phone," Leah continued, trying to sound enthusiastic. "I'm sure the guy I have in mind knows about these scumbags. In one hour he'll go down there with twenty guys, surprise the hell out of them, and get him out of there for you."

"Thank you, Leah." She shouldn't even think about it. The temptation was too great.

"Some of those guys are just waiting for me to ask them a favor," Leah said dejectedly, to the floor.

Tamar hugged her, reaching up to her and snuggling in her chest. "What a huge heart you have," she murmured quietly.

"Really?" Leah asked, her voice slightly choked. "Too bad there are hardly any tits." She wrapped her arms around Tamar, touching, with compassion, the shoulder blades sticking out of her skinny little body. They stood, hugging each other, for a long moment. Tamar thought that this was going to be the last hug she got before going on her way; Leah felt that, or guessed it, and tried very hard to give her the best hug, motherly and fatherly, that she could. "Just take care of yourself." She mouthed the words above Tamar's head. "Because out there, nobody's going to take care of you. I should know."

Tamar stopped one step before reaching the thoroughfare. Around the corner of the last house in the alley, she sent a frightened, challenging look at the street, scanning her zone of action. She couldn't find the strength to enter it--like an actor or singer, peeking, terrified, through a hole in the curtain before a premiere, trying to guess what would be waiting for her tonight. Out there.In front of them.

She was overwhelmed by the loneliness, fear, and self-pity she had been suppressing, in opposition to everything she had planned, with harsh care, for months; with that, and even a kind of masochism, she got on a bus. She went home, as she was, with her shaved head, in rags, in the middle of the day, and went to her yard. She prayed none of the neighbors would see her, and that the gardener wasn't working that day; she also knew that even if someone saw her, no one would recognize her.

As soon as she opened the gate, she felt the air around her warm up a bit and spiral awake; a big clump of the joy in life and love, covered with golden fur, leaped onto her; a big warm, rough tongue passed again and again over her face. She felt a moment of amazement, of slight embarrassment--but what a relief, and a true feeling of salvation: the dog recognized her scent, her essence, without hesitation.

"Come on, Dinkush. I can't go through with this alone."

"Once upon a time," Theodora began, "a long, long time ago ..." and laughed at Assaf's surprised reaction to her storytelling voice. She settled herself in her chair, sucked on a piece of lemon to moisten her throat, and then, in a rush of speech, with eager gestures and shining eyes, she told him the tale of her heart. The tale about herself and the island of Lyxos and Tamar.

...One Sunday, about a year ago, Theodora was enjoying her siesta when her entire body was shocked by the explosion of a huge voice outside her window. It sounded like a whine or a whistle, until it became clear that it was the warm voice of a girl calling to her, demanding that she come to the window.

The voice was not calling to her exactly but to "His Holiness, the Monk Who Is Living in the Tower!"

She quickly got up and opened her bougainvillea-framed window, and saw, right over the fence of the convent, a barrel in the schoolyard next door. A slight young woman stood on the barrel; she had black, wildly curly hair and held a megaphone in her hand and was speaking into it.

"Dear Reverend Monk," the girl said politely, and was briefly silenced when she realized that the wrinkled face in the window was a woman's. "Dear Reverend Nun," she corrected herself, hesitatingly, "I would like to tell you a fairy tale that you might know."

Theodora remembered: it was the same girl she'd seen about a week ago, high up in her magnificent fig tree, straddling one of the big branches, writing something in a thick notebook, unconsciously munching fig after fig. Theodora was prepared--she had aimed her slingshot, which she used to scare off thieving birds, at the fig-devouring girl and shot a sanded apricot pit at her.

She hit her mark. She allowed herself a moment of pride at once again discovering that she hadn't forgotten the art of aiming and firing from her childhood days on the island, when she was sent with her sisters to ambush the greedy crows in the vineyards. Theodora heard a yelp of pain and surprise from the girl when the pit hit her neck. The girl clapped her hand over the burning spot, lost her balance, and fell branch after branch until she hit the ground. Theodora experienced a moment of deep regret then. She wanted to run and help her up, to apologize from the bottom of her heart for the shot, and to beg the girl and her friends to stop stealing her fruit. But because she was a prisoner for life in her home, she didn't move; she only served herself the small, painful punishment of making herself watch the girl spring up off the ground and send her a scathing look. The girl turned her back to her and promptly pulled her pants down, mooning her in a way that sent a shock through her heart.

"Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a small village; and near it lived a giant," the girl began, speaking into the megaphone one weekafter that bitter incident. The nun listened, amazed, her heart fluttering with a strange joy, for the girl had come back.

"The giant had a big garden; and in it, a lot of fruit trees. There were apricot trees, and pear and peach and guava, fig, cherry, and lemon."

Theodora passed a glance over her trees. She found the girl's voice pleasant. It held no resentment; on the contrary, her voice contained an invitation to talk; Theodora felt it right away. Not only was there this note of invitation; the girl spoke as if she were telling a fairy tale to a small child; the soft, soothing voice leaked into the depths of the nun's memory and rippled outward.

"The children of the village loved to play in the giant's garden," the girl continued. "Climbing the trees, bathing in the little stream, running through the meadows ... Excuse me, Nun, I didn't even ask you--do you understand Hebrew?"

Theodora woke up from her sweet reverie, took a piece of paper from her desk, and rolled it into a little megaphone, and, with her slightly clucking voice, a voice that hadn't spoken loudly in years, informed the girl that she spoke, wrote, and read in perfect Hebrew; she learned in her youth, from Mr. Eliasaf, a teacher at Takhkemoni High School, who used to tutor private students in order to supplement his income. When she finished her short, detailed speech, she thought she saw a glimmer of a smile in the girl's eyes.

"You haven't seen her when she smiles," Theodora whispered to Assaf. "With a little dimple here," and she touched his cheek. He trembled as if he could feel the warmth of this girl, Tamar, on his cheek--this girl with whom he had no business at all--he had nothing to do with her dimple! In her heart, Theodora thought, You blushed, my dear! Aloud, she said, "Your heart flies up when she smiles--no, do not laugh, I never exaggerate--your heart leaves your body and flaps its wings!"

"But the giant didn't want the children to play in his garden," the girl on the barrel continued. "Didn't want them to enjoy the fruit of his trees--didn't allow them to pick his flowers or bathe in his little stream. So hebuilt a wall around his garden, a high, thick wall." She looked straight into the nun's eyes. Her look was piercing and intense, a lot more mature than her age. Theodora felt tender yearnings slowly spiral inside her.

Assaf was listening, too, hypnotized, smiling unconsciously. He saw the picture in front of him: the little nun peeking out of her window, the wide, fertile garden ... and over the fence, standing on a barrel, the girl. To be honest, he was a little scared of girls who were capable of getting up on barrels, of doing those kinds of things. (What kinds of things? Deliberate, special, provocative--originalthings.) He could always spot them from a distance and cautiously avoid them: opinionated girls, decisive and self-confident. Girls who felt that the whole world belonged to them, for whom everything is just fun and games; who probably also feel that boys like him are clumsy, and a bit slow, and kind of boring.

Theodora looked at the girl on the barrel, however, and different thoughts arose inside her. She tumbled a pile of books from a chair to the bed and pulled the chair to the window; it was a carved wooden chair, unused for years: the lookout chair for pilgrims. She sat upon it, stiffly, alertly; but in only a few moments her body melted, curved, and bent toward the window, until only her eyes peeked above the sill, her chin pillowed on her palms.

Theodora's garden was surrounded by a stone wall on the side facing the street; but only a high, ugly, chain-link fence separated it from the neighboring school. The fence didn't prevent the invasion of gluttonous students, driven to distraction by the scent of ripe fruit. In the morning, the pupils from the school; in the afternoon, the kids in the chorus that practiced there. Nasrian, her Armenian gardener--also her housepainter, carpenter, blacksmith, messenger, and mail carrier for her many letters--patched over the holes in the fence again and again, only to discover new ones each morning. The garden that had given Theodora great pleasure in the past now cost her a tormented soul, to the point that, more than once, in times of despair, she seriously considered cutting down all the trees--If I cannot have them, then they shall not have them!

Now, as the girl spoke to her, her exasperation was forgotten. She didn't know the fairy tale the girl was telling, but at the sound of her clear voice, a strange thought occurred to her: a thought about, of all things, her mother, who was always busy and tired, who always had a new baby tied to her back and never had the time to be alone with Theodora, just the two of them together. Then, perhaps for the first time in her life, she realized that her mother had never told her stories, or sang her songs ... and with that, her mind drifted gently to her little village on the island of Lyxos, to the white-painted houses and fishing nets, and the seven windmills, the tiny little wooden birdhouses with diamond openings, built especially for the doves of the island, and the dark octopuses, hanging on ropes to dry ... She hadn't seen that village so clearly in years, the gardens in front of the houses, the narrow streets ... They were paved with round stones, which the people of the island called monkey-heads--she hadn't thought of that nickname for almost fifty years. For almost fifty years, she had forbidden herself to return there for even one moment. She had built a fortress around that region, walled it in, because she knew the yearning and mourning would batter her heart unbearably.

"Take grapes," she said to Assaf, almost soundlessly. "Sweet sultana grapes, because now the story takes a bitter turn."

About sixty-five years before Theodora was born, Panorios, the head of the village, a very rich and educated man, also an experienced traveler, decided to donate a huge sum of money for the building of a house in Holy Jerusalem for the people of his island. Panorios himself made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the Year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, and found himself on a boat, rolling around with hundreds of Russian peasants, in the filthy bunks Russia had built for her pilgrims. He passed hard weeks in the company of people who did not understand his language, whose habits and behavior seemed repulsive to him, even obscene. He fell prey to the hard-hearted tour guides, who tormented the innocent pilgrims and robbed them of whatlittle money they'd brought; when he grew sick, he couldn't find any doctor to treat him who could understand his descriptions of what ailed him. When he finally returned to the island, delirious and dying of typhus, he dictated a last request to his secretary on his deathbed: that in the Holy City a place be built where pilgrims from the island of Lyxos could stay in the Holy Land; a home where they could rest their tired heads, wash their feet after the long journey; a home where they would be spoken to in their own language, and even in the special dialect of the people of the Cyclades. He insisted on one final condition: that in this house should reside, forever, only one, a nun: a girl of the island, whose name would be chosen by lot. She would spend all her pure life in that house and never leave it, not even for a brief hour. Her life would be devoted to waiting for the arrival of the pilgrims of Lyxos, and then seeing to their care.

The girl on the barrel continued her tale, but Theodora had already been swept away by a silent flood of memory. She remembered that day when the old men had gathered in the home of Panorios's grandson, for a third time since the house in Jerusalem was built, to draw a name. Since Panorios's death, two girls from the island had already been sent there: the first lost her mind after forty-five years; Amaryllia, the girl with golden braids, was sent to replace her. Now came an urgent need to replace the sick Amaryllia; rumor said she had fallen ill not only in body. At that hour, twelve-year-old Theodora lay naked and tanned as a plum on a cliff over her secret bay. Eyes closed, she thought of one particular boy who had lately started bothering her wherever she went. He made jokes about her triangular face and her legs, which were always scratched; he called her a scaredy-cat and a little girl. Yesterday, when she returned from the sea alone, he blocked her way and demanded that she bow to him if she wanted him to allow her to pass. She jumped on him and they fought for long minutes in silence; only their panting and gasping could be heard. She scratched and beat at him and spit like a cat, and swore in her heart that she would fight him to death. He almost overpowered her--and then, at the sound of approaching wagon wheels, he got up and ran away. But when she picked herself off the ground, shefound he had left something for her: a baby donkey he had sculpted from a long piece of iron wire.

So she was lying on the warm cliff, wondering what he would bring her today when she came back from the sea, remembering the strange and pungent smell of his body sweat as they fought, when she heard loud voices from afar. She sat up and saw a tiny figure running, yelling with all its power from the top of the mountain. She didn't understand the yelling at first; then she thought she heard something familiar. She pushed herself up on her knees. The tiny figure must have come out of Panorios's grandson's house. Theodora watched it, and discerned that it was a boy, a half-naked little boy, running across the length of the horizon, waving his arms and wildly yelling out her name.

She was sent away three days later. It was impossible to protest or object; even now the insult rose and bubbled in her--her father and mother were as miserable as she about it, but it never crossed their minds to dispute the decision made by the old men of the island. Theodora remembered the farewell party they threw her; the white she-ass decorated with flowers and caramel candies in the shape of a tower in Jerusalem; also, the oath she swore: that never, ever, would she desert the guest home, whose window looked west, toward the sea.

She could no longer remember the exact wording of the oath, but she saw now, again, as in a nightmare, the black-bearded face of the village elder and the fleshy lips of the priest who held her hand and branded her with a red-hot iron in front of the whole village. She knew she'd be able to buy her freedom by allowing a single cry of pain to escape her mouth, even a light moan--but when she glanced up, she saw, on a distant rock, the burning eyes of that boy, and her pride did not allow it.

The strange girl was on the barrel, still talking. Theodora took a deep breath, possessed by a shiver--she could almost smell the sea again, sailing on the first and last journey of her life, to the miserable port of Jaffa--she saw the long ride to Jerusalem, in an old bus that groaned like a human being--and she remembered the physical shock of amazement that filled her when, for the first time in her life, she was on land that was not an island.

It was late at night when a Bukharani street merchant dropped her off with her bundle in front of the convent gate, and she knew her lifehad ended. Sister Amaryllia opened the gate for her, and Theodora looked, horrified, into her glassy eyes, her face reduced to nothing: the face of someone buried alive.

In the two years she lived with Sister Amaryllia, not even one pilgrim came to the house in Jerusalem. Theodora grew into a lovely young woman, but Amaryllia reflected back at her, feature by feature and line by line, what was waiting for her when she became old. Almost every hour of the day, Amaryllia would sit on the high chair in front of the window facing west, presumably in the direction of the port of Jaffa, and wait. During the decades she was imprisoned there, she forgot even her family members, the letters of the alphabet, and the people of the island of Lyxos who had sent her there. She gradually eroded away into one narrow line, the scar of a white gaze.

And then, one month after she passed away and was buried in the convent yard, the horrible news came: an earthquake in the Aegean Sea, the Great Earthquake of '51. The island split in two--a great tidal wave rose up and, in a few moments, took all its residents down to the depths of the sea.

But no, this is not what she wants to think about now, when outside, beyond the fruit trees, a clear, daring voice is dancing, walking her back to her childhood buried under fifty years and so much water. She didn't know why she was so willing to give herself over to the temptations of a voice that sounded like a song as it spoke. She pressed her fists to her eyes, hard, as if to escape the sight of the girl on the barrel; through the sparkles, she saw herself, the sharp, daring, feisty Theodora leaping and embracing her two best girl friends, and now--Where are you, laughing Alexandra, light mountain goat? Where are you, Katarina, who knew all my secrets? The people of the village floated up and rose to greet her, knocking on her closed eyelids, begging to be remembered: her sisters, her big brothers, the twin brothers, infants, struck blind one day when they looked into the sun during an eclipse. They, too, are gone, and also that stupid, beautiful boy.

She wiped her wet eyes on her sleeve and looked at the girl on the barrel, and over her fruit trees, and thought that, actually, she was behavinglike a fool, even a villain. The trees bowed under the weight of the fruit, and no one but she ate from them; even after the pupils' daily plundering, masses of fruit were left rotting on the branches. She attacked the children because they stole from her, and she couldn't bear that; but if, perhaps, she allowed them to pick some, perhaps this ugly war could stop immediately ...

A silence snapped her out of her thoughts. The girl had finished her story and was probably waiting for an answer.

Now, when the clumsy megaphone wasn't hiding half her face, Theodora saw how sweet she was; her eyes, revealed in that exposed, beautiful face, shone and teased at the same time, bold, honorable eyes that sliced through all the layers coating Theodora, her age and time and loneliness. Then she raised her paper megaphone and announced, her voice trying to sound serious, that she would be willing to begin negotiations with the girl.

"And this is how it began." Theodora laughed silently, and Assaf stretched his arms, as if waking from a strange dream. "The following day, they came here and sat in my room--Tamar, with another boy and girl, her soul mates--and presented me with an exemplary, organized plan."

In it, they listed each tree and every member of the chorus who wished to join in the arrangement; a schedule gave everyone a turn and said which weeks they were allowed to pick which fruit ...

"And the war was over," Theodora said, laughing, "in a single day."

Here it comes, Tamar thinks. After this moment, you won't be able to escape. She's dragging her legs and can't find a place to stand; the asphalt burns under her heels wherever she stops. To try and calm herself down, she recalls how she's actually been through many such moments in the past few months: the first time she dared approach someone in one of the dark market corners, asking him if he recognized the person in the photo she was holding. The first time she bought from one of the dealers in Tziyyon Square, a dwarf with thick hips and a colorful wool hat--for a moment, you could almost picture him onstage, playing the role of a friendly troll from Fairyland--her negotiation with him was short and to the point, and nobody would have guessed how her heart was beating like a drum. Money and merchandise switched hands, and she kept it in a bag, rolled up in a sock, knowing she now had enough for the first days of the operation--

But right now is still the hardest moment. To suddenly stand in the middle of the city, in the middle of traffic, in the pedestrian walkway of Ben Yehuda Street, which she'd walked through a million times like a normal, free person--

--walking with Idan and Adi, licking Magnum ice creams after chorus rehearsal, or as they sat and drank cappuccinos, laughing at the new tenor, that Russian boy who shamelessly dared to compete with Idan for the solos. "Another mouth-breathing peasant from the Ural Mountains," Idan muttered into his cup, flaring his nostrils lightly in the flutter that signaled both of them to burst into rollicking laughter until they cried. Tamar laughed along, even more loudly than Adi, perhaps so as not to hear what she was thinking about herself in that moment, and she kept laughing like that, for that entire period, because she couldn't get over the wonder that, for the first time in her life, she belonged to those who mocked, a small, united group that had been together already for a year, two months, one week, and a day. Three young artists, a rare oath of fraternity, whose members were loyal to one another, or so, at least, she believed.

And now she has to walk here all by herself, to find a location at an appropriate distance from the old Russian playing his accordion; to stop, within the normal flow of the street, to stand in a certain spot. Someone is already looking at her, slightly disturbed, circling her, with a disagreeable expression on his face. She feels like a little leaf that has decided to take a different direction from the current of the whole river--but she mustn't hesitate now, she mustn't think. Mustn't entertain the faintest notion that someone will recognize her and come over and ask, Are you crazy? How naive she was--or stupid--to think that shaving her head and changing her costume would succeed in transforming her so completely ... and, more than that, if someone were to debate for a moment whether or not it was actually her, why, then he would see Dinka andknow. How foolish it was to take Dinka! All of a sudden all her mistakes spread out before her, a chain of foolishness and negligent planning. How had it happened? Look what you've done! Who did you think you were--you're just a little girl trying to play James Bond. She pulls up short, she stands and winces, as if absorbing a blow--but within herself: How couldn't you guess that this is exactly what would happen, and that in the moment of truth, all the stitches and holes would be exposed? You always do this, don't you? The moment always comes when your fantasies finally touch reality, and then the balloon that you are explodes in your face ... People are milling around her on both sides, grumbling and jostling one another. Dinka barks softly, waking her up. Tamar straightens, bites her lip: Enough, stop feeling sorry for yourself, there's no time to hesitate now, and it's too late to turn back. Get out of your head and obey orders. You will put the big tape player on the stone flowerpot, push the play button, turn the volume up, more, louder--this isn't a room, it's a street, this is Ben Yehuda Street, forget about yourself for once, from here on out you're only an instrument by which to accomplish your mission, nothing more. Listen to the sounds, the beloved sounds, the sounds of his guitar, Shai's guitar, see his long golden hair falling on his cheek when he used to play for you in his room; let him wrap you up, melt your fears away, and at that right moment, that precise--"Suzanne takes you down ..."

For long days, she had been trying to decide what song she should use to open her career on the streets. She had to plan that as well, of course. In the same way she planned and calculated the amount of drinking water in the cave, the number of candles and rolls of toilet paper. At first she thought she would sing something in Hebrew, something familiar, Yehudit Ravits or Nurit Galron, something warm and rhythmic and personal, something that wouldn't make her tense, that would mingle and mix with the street. At the same time, she was tickled by her constant temptation to dazzle them right at the start with something unexpected: Cherubino's second aria from Mozart'sMarriage of Figaro, maybe; to announce, in that way, right at the first moment, a strong, clear declaration about who she was, and what her intentions on this street were, so that everyone would know at once how different and separate she was from everyone else here ...

Because, in her imagination, she had limitless courage; in her imagination, she sent her voice out to the full length and width of the street, filled every gap and pothole there, immersing all the people in a softening, purifying solution; in her imagination, she chose to sing high, so ridiculously high as to blow them away right at the start with her high pitch, to abandon herself shamelessly to the floating exultation that made her feel a little light-headed when she sang like that, drunk from the pleasure of the unbroken takeoff, from her darkest depths to the dizzying altitudes. And eventually, she chose "Suzanne," of all things, because she liked the song, and she liked the warm, sad, defeated voice of Leonard Cohen, and more than anything, she thought it would be easier for her, at least at the beginning, to sing in a foreign language.

But after a second or two of singing, something goes wrong: she already knows that she has started too softly, too hesitantly. No charisma, Idan decides from inside her head, chaining her down--what's wrong with her? She wishes it wouldn't spoil her singing, the one and only thing about herself she trusts in her whole complex plan. Now it seems much harder than she had thought--singing here really means opening herself up, exposing her innermost self to the eyes of the street. She struggles with herself, and sounds a little better--but it's so far from what she dared to dream about--that the whole street would hold its breath from the first sound, and be swept up by the whirlwind of her voice. Why, she had fantasized, in detail, how the window cleaner's gloomy, circular motions on the second floor of the Burger King would freeze; how the juice vendor would stop the juicer in the middle of a carrot's bitter cry ...

But wait, one moment; don't despair so quickly; there is one man over there, by the shoe store, stopping and looking at you, still standing at a sufficient distance, careful not to commit, but still, he's listening to you. She pulls her shoulders back, making her voice full: " ...She gets you on her wavelength ..."

And just as it happens in a river, or on a street--when one branch gets stuck, others immediately cluster around it; that's the law, it's the physics of motion within a flow; another man stops next to the man listening noncommittally by the shoe store, and another, and more. Six or seven of them are already gathered there, and now it's eight. She tunesher breath, restraining the slight hysteria at the edges of her voice, and dares to raise her eyes and take a brief peek at the little audience, the ten people who are already gathered around her: " ...You want to travel blind..."

"Easy, easy, don't push, breathe from below, from your toes, the breath!" She hears the spirit of her tyrannical and adored Halina in her ears. "God forbid you sing like that, from the throat--Cchh! Ccchh! You're like that one, Cecilia Bartoli ..." Tamar smiles in her heart. She misses her teacher. For her, she climbs the imaginary steps, from her throat up to the secret bird in the middle of her forehead; Halina, then, who actually has the look of a bird, quickly jumps up from her piano, her too-tight skirt rustling--one hand still playing, the other pressing on Tamar's forehead. "There you go! Bravo! Now you hear it! Perhaps they will hear it in the audition as well."

But Halina prepared her to sing in concert halls and elegant recitals, or in master classes with famous conductors or genius opera directors dropping in for a quick visit from abroad. Or for end-of-the-year chorus performances in front of an invited and prejudiced audience, with her mother's proud look (her father used to drive there unwillingly, and once she spotted him reading something that he held on his knees while she sang), and sometimes, a couple of her parents' friends would come, too, their faces soft and shining as she sang, listening to the girl they had known from birth, the one who was born screaming--even the midwife said, "That one will be an opera singer, for sure!" And there was that photo of her at age three, holding the plug from the iron and singing into it ...

And now this. Her fall. What else? It's a pity, it came too fast; but wasn't it clear that this is what would happen to her here? Because we shouldn't forget, dear friends and parents, that this is she who is standing here; nothing about her is reliable, she has to betray herself just when she needs herself the most. That's the way it is, my sweet child, my poor, fucked child; you really have no one to count on, not even yourself. Especially not yourself.

The panic sobers her up--a little sobering rat running into the hollow of her stomach and biting into the lining. She is still singing, it's unclear how, but the bad thoughts quickly clutter into different words fromthe ones she's singing, into her familiar black hymns--the worst thing that could happen would be for her to sing them by mistake.

Don't stop, don't stop! she yells at herself, frightened when her voice starts shaking because of the quick, relentless heartbeats; her whole body is shrinking, her muscles clenching tightly; they can probably already hear on the outside what is happening to her inside. They can probably see her frightened, tremulous expression. It will all collapse in a few seconds, she knows--not only this miserable performance here but everything that preceded it, all of it loose and flimsy and hanging on by a thread. Good for you, dummy. You deserve it. You're finally starting to grasp what you've invented for yourself in your deranged mind--do you get it? Do you see where you've brought yourself? You're lost, lost. Now pack your things up nicely and quietly, quietly, go back home. No, no, keep on singing, she begs herself, please, please keep singing; she beseeches herself, as if she were a stranger, as if she were kidnapped; if she only had an instrument in her hand, a guitar, even a drum would help, or a handkerchief, like Pavarotti's, something to hold on to to make her body vanish. Her heartbeats become a straight line of internal drumming. Something inside her is, with Satanic efficiency, recruiting everything that can negate her from the inside, all the bad looks ever thrown at her, every whisper, the humiliations, the sins, and the long insults, a procession of rats marching by. Look how quickly the street exposed the lie that you are. No: how quicklyrealityexposed you. Not your imagination, the hallucinations that you usually inhabit, because this islife, honey, real life, concrete, the existence you are trying to be accepted into, again and again, as a member with equal rights; and it rejects you again and again, like a body rejecting an organ transplant. "Again, you're breathing from chest and not from diaphragm," Halina determines dryly, and with a tug of her zipper closes up her black handbag and turns to go. "Your voice falls completely into your throat. I told you a thousand times: don't force the throat! I don't want you like Mussolini on the balcony!" What would Idan say if he passed by here now? "Don't call us, we'll call you." Let it go; he won't pass by here, and do you remember why? That's right, because our Idan is now in Italy--oh, don't think aboutthatnow, please, please--Idan and Adi and the whole chorus, a month of performances all over the Boot. Today they will sing in thePergola, and at this very moment, by the way, at this hour--they are rehearsing with the Florence Symphony Orchestra. Let go of it now, concentrate; remember, for example, that this is how you will have to survive, and that without this money you won't be able to eat tonight. Until yesterday, they were in Venice, at La Fenice. I wonder how the performance went, and whether they went later to see the Bridge of Sighs and have some fruit gelato in the Piazza San Marco. They had worked for this trip for almost half a year, the three of them; she still couldn't have imagined then how the world would turn on its head. Forget Venice now, be with "Suzanne," give your whole self to the song. But what if Idan and Adi managed to arrange to sleep together in Venice--I mean, with the same host, I mean, in neighboring rooms?

The thought chokes her. She falls silent in the middle of a word and simply stands mute. The guitar on the tape recorder continues alone, accompanying "Suzanne" without Suzanne. Tamar shuts down the st