I didn't know this word. All that I could get out of Father was that the word "charlatan" was a gross insult that did not fit an openhearted lad like Ephraim.
On reconsideration, Mother withdrew what she had said, agreed that the word "charlatan" did not suit Ephraim, but implored Father to stop talking: didn't he know that her head always ached in the summer, why did he always have to contradict her and torment her all day long with his arguments?
In the workshop I found old newspapers, silence, and dust. No bleeps or whistles. No frequencies. Ephraim had disappeared once again on his wanderings. There was only the old poet, dipping his matchsticks in paste; suddenly he seized a nail file and started demolishing layer after layer of his Temple to remove some tower or other for which there was insufficient evidence in the sources.
The three Grill boys went out to the Tel Arza woods to hunt a leopard whose spoor they had come across some days earlier. It had probably come up at night from the ravines of the Judean Desert, and perhaps it was hiding even in the daytime in a cave in the woods. Or perhaps it was not a leopard but a hyena, which we called by its Arabic name, dhaba'. If the dhaba' finds you alone at night it comes out and blocks your path with its hunched back and bristles like an enormous hedgehog and starts laughing at you hideously to make you go mad with fright until in a panic you start running in the wrong direction toward the mountains and the wilderness and you go on running till you drop dead and then the hyena comes and rips you to shreds.
"Bat-Ammi," I said, "I've got a secret I can't tell you."
"Stop showing off. You haven't got any secret except the same as all the other boys that come and want me to touch them and feel it."
"No, not that. I meant something else."
"If you meant something else, why are you shivering like a rabbit? Calm down, little rabbit. You've got nothing to shiver about."
"I can kill the High Commissioner if I feel like it. I can destroy the whole of England with a single blow."
"Yes, and I can turn myself into a bat. Or into Shirley Temple."
"Do you want me to share my secret with you on condition that you let me give you a kiss just on the forehead just once and I can talk to you for a long time?" I asked without pausing to draw breath.
"I can pee standing up. Like a boy. But I'm not going to show you."
"Bat-Ammi, listen to me, cross my heart it's not because of that, you may think I'm one of those but I'm not, with me it's something different, cross my heart, just let me talk to you for a moment and give me a chance to explain."
"You're no different," said Bat-Ammi sadly, "you're just the same as the others. Just take a look at yourself, you're shaking like a leaf. You're a boy, Kolodny, and you're just the same as all the other boys and you want the same thing as them only you're too scared to say. Look, you've even got pimples on your face. What's the matter, why are you running away? What's wrong? What are you running away for, what have I said? You're nuts!"
Beyond the mountains. To be all alone there. To be a mountain boy.
A few days later, Ephraim came back from his wanderings. He was sun-tanned and withdrawn, and as usual his face wore an expression of contempt or disgust, as if in the course of his wanderings he had seen things that had filled him with despair. Mr. Nehamkin and I took up our positions in the garden so that he would be able to rest for a day or two at least. Every hour or so, we patrolled the broken-down fence together, toward the gate, and occasionally we permitted ourselves a sally into the lane. And we did manage to repel the young divorcee Esther, who taught crafts in the Lemel Girls' School.
We told her that Ephraim was far away, and she believed us, apologized, and promised to call again tomorrow.
"You must never use the word 'tomorrow' lightly," Mr. Nehamkin said to her reproachfully, in his velvet voice. "It is impossible to know what the day may bring forth. And particularly in days such as these."
I added maliciously:
"He doesn't need visitors. He's got enough to do."
But we did not succeed in stopping Ruhama, the lipless student from Mount Scopus. At the hottest time of the afternoon, when the shutters were all closed and the streets were deserted and the whole city was swept by gray fire from the desert, I came and found her sitting in a blue sarafan on the stone steps, which were covered with dead pine needles. Her hair was full of dust. She was twisting a piece of galvanized wire between her fingers. Perhaps she was passing the time by making some sort of model. She seemed to be immune to the heat, as if she herself were a heat wave.
"Hello," I said. "I'm his lieutenant. He doesn't need any visitors."
"You're just the neighbors' little boy at your games again. You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Ruhama said sadly.
"There's no reason for you to wait for him, any of you. He'll never marry any of you. You'd be better off forgetting him. He doesn't need all this."
"You're still little," her glasses laughed at me, "and you don't understand anything. He does need it. And how. Everybody does. You can sit here for a bit, if you like. You'll grow up yourself soon, and then you'll need it, too. You'll be dying for it. And then you won't be such a little hero. What are you staring at my knees for? Do you want me to give you a box on the ear?"
When Ruhama raised her voice and threatened to give me a box on the ear, she looked as though she was choking back a sob, and I, too, suddenly started shaking and I could feel the tears coming and I turned and ran as fast as my legs would carry me to the front yard into the blinding sunshine. The Grill boys were struggling sweatily among the thistles with a kitten they were trying to hang from a low bough of the mulberry tree. I started throwing stones at them from a distance. Then they caught me and hit me on the back, in the stomach, in the face, but the kitten managed to escape among the pitch barrels. I, too, hid behind the barrels so that they would not see me crying. From there I saw Mr. Nehamkin showing Ruhama out and shuffling after her to the gate and down the lane, trying to comfort her. I could not hear the words; I could only sense his gentleness and compassion, until she was comforted and went on her way.
When she was gone I emerged.
"What's going to happen, please, Mr. Nehamkin?"
"We shall continue to suffer and to wait, Uriel. I am very sorry for us all. Eyes have we but we see not. To outward appearances we are fearlessly made, but in truth we are consumed by our afflictions. From now on, my boy, we shall redouble our vigilance, you and I: the versifier and the youth shall hold the fort and guard the truth. Do not weep, young Uriel; surely we have shed tears enough already in our long years of exile."
Ephraim woke up toward evening. He thrust his curly head under the faucet and returned, dripping and silent, to his work. He lit a cigarette with wet hands. He did not utter a word. For an hour and a half or so, until Mother came out onto the balcony to call me home, I sat on the floor in my gym shorts and "Young Maccabeans" T-shirt, with my hands clasped around my knees, and watched him dismantle and reassemble a complicated switchboard full of knobs, switches, and buttons. Ephraim was doggedly silent. I did not interrupt him. Once he looked up, chuckled sourly at the sight of me, and said with surprise:
"You still here?"
I smiled at him. I wanted to be big and helpful, but at the same time I wanted to stay little so that he would go on loving me. I was afraid to tell Ephraim how we watched over him while he slept, and how we had driven Esther and Ruhama away from the house. I was ashamed at the thought of how Ruhama and I had made each other miserable to the point of tears, and how we had almost broken down and cried together.