— No, Efi didn’t leave me a clue where else to look for him. I knew vaguely that he worked in the court system as a judge or a prosecutor, but I had no idea where or for what court, and when on a whim I tried calling the Supreme Court, the switchboard operator had never heard of him. All morning long I went on dialing like an uncontrollable madwoman — it was as if Efi’s sperm inside me was transmitting its anxiety around the clock. I couldn’t stop thinking of that apartment in Jerusalem with its three rooms connected by a long hallway like an old railroad flat. I kept imagining the telephone ringing away there, drilling down the hallway from room to room, and by two o’clock I was so beside myself that I decided to cut English and go to Jerusalem to see what was happening. After all, what is it to Jerusalem from the coast these days, barely an hour in each direction. And so I went home to return my books and change clothes, and it was a lucky thing that I took this heavy sweater with me at the last minute, because even in Tel Aviv I could feel a cold wave coming on. And Mother, I really did mean to call and tell you I was going, so that you wouldn’t worry if I got back late at night, but I knew the kibbutz office was closed and that no one but the cats would be by the dining-hall telephone at that time of the afternoon, and so I didn’t bother trying. I was halfway out the door when something told me to take my toothbrush and a spare pair of panties, and so I put them in my bag and started out for Jerusalem…
— I don’t know… I just did… I mean…
— Yes, yes, I know you’ve been taught that no one “just” does anything. Don’t get carried away, though. I’ve kept a spare pair of panties in my bag for the last two weeks just in case I got my period, although that still doesn’t explain the toothbrush. What did that mean? Well, I’ll leave that to you, you’ve learned all about psychological symbols in those courses of yours. Just don’t tell me that subconsciously I meant to stay in Jerusalem, because in that case I should have taken along some pajamas too, and I didn’t… unless my subconscious is dumber than I think… or maybe it has a subconscious of its own and that’s what made it screw up…
— Don’t take me so seriously.
— No, but it’s starting to annoy me, because you’re turning it into a religion.
— All right, all right, never mind… it’s not important. The point is, Mother, that I upped and went to Jerusalem that Tuesday, and that while I left Tel Aviv in broad daylight, it was pitch black when I arrived. It was foggy and raining with this thin, sleety sort of rain, and I was so confused by the darkness that I got off the bus a stop too soon and ended up in this neighborhood called Talbiah. Not that I regretted it, because it was like being in some city in Europe. I was in this big plaza surrounded by beautiful stone houses that looked absolutely splendid and magical in the light of the street lamps with their arcades and columned porticoes and courtyards full of cypress trees… it was just fantastic…
— Yes, exactly, how did you know? But it’s not just the President, Mother. It’s the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister too, they all live near that big, beautiful plaza, although I could have walked right by it without knowing if not for this policeman sitting in a little hut who I asked for directions. I also asked him what he was guarding, and he showed me the President’s house and even let me peek past the gate, and I had this most wonderful feeling, Mother, of having entered the true heart of the city…
— No, you’re wrong. I was never there. As far back as I can remember, I was always brought to Jerusalem in groups of schoolchildren or soldiers, always for some ceremony or field trip that took place in some museum or archaeological site, or else on the walls of the Old City, which we had to ran around on in this sweltering heat after some nuisance of a tour guide. And if we spent the night there, it was always in some youth hostel on the outskirts of town, either next to the military cemetery on Mount Herzl or in that frightening forest near the Holocaust Museum, never in the city itself, in the true inner heart of it. And so with the help of that policeman who was guarding the President, I didn’t have to get back on the bus but took a shortcut to this neighborhood called Ghost Valley through an empty field and a little woods that led me straight to Efi’s father’s street, which I entered contrariwise…
— I mean from the wrong end.
— You don’t know it. It’s called The Twenty-ninth of November Street. You have to walk down a hill behind the old leper hospital. It’s a long, narrow street you’ve never been on.
— The German Colony?
— I don’t think that’s its name, Mother. On the map it clearly said Ghost Valley. When I first looked up the address I had been given at the university, I thought that only a Jerusalemite could live in a place with such a scary name, because no Tel-Avivian would ever stand for it — and now this fog was drifting all around and it took me forever to find the building because I was coming from the wrong end of the street, and when I did I was so wet and cold from the rain, and my shoes were so full of mud, that I just stood there in a corner of the entrance, pulling myself together. And then, Mother, right there in that dark stairwell, it suddenly began, do you hear me? Do you?
— This strange feeling, which I kept having all the time I was in Jerusalem… as if, Mother, I wasn’t there just by myself but… how can I put it… as if someone had put me on the opening page of a book…
— A book. Some novel or story, or even a movie, for that matter. Mostly it was the feeling of eyes being on me all the time, even my own eyes, which kept watching me from the side as though tracking me. I don’t mean in reality, but in a book… as if I were being written about on the first page of some story, where it said… something like… something like… an old book that began like this: “One winter afternoon a fatherless student left her grandmother’s apartment in the coastal metropolis on an errand for her boyfriend, who had asked her to find out what had happened to his father in the inland capital, all contact with whom had been lost…” Something simple- and innocent-sounding that was about to become very complicated. Next you see her step into the entrance of a plain but respectable apartment house on a cold winter evening — where, after a few seconds, the light goes out, so that the camera shooting her from outside has to grope its way in after her and finds her standing before a greenish door on which is the single word: Mani. That’s how it starts, this story or movie or whatever you call it, Mother, with & light knock and a quick ring, and then a second ring and a third. But the man inside doesn’t want to open up, even though our heroine, the young lady from the metropolis, will make him do it in the end, and by forcing her way into his apartment, Mother, will save his life…
— Just a minute… listen…
— Just a minute…
— One minute.
— One minute. No, there was no answer. And maybe, Mother, it was that feeling I had on the stairs that I was in a story and not in real life that kept me from giving up, because I was sure that he was hiding there inside the apartment and not coming to the door for the same reason he hadn’t answered the telephone. In the end, after ringing and knocking in every possible way for a good ten minutes, I pretended to leave by walking back down the stairs, and then I tiptoed up again as quietly as I could and stood pressed against the door in the darkness, almost hugging it while holding my breath, just like in one of those thrillers, until I heard faint steps and realized that he was coming to the door, that he was standing right on the other side of it. And then, in this soft, friendly voice that wouldn’t scare him, I said, “It’s me, Mr. Mani, I’ve brought you an important message from your son Efi”—at which point he had to open up…