Look, little girl, said Rebecca, and glanced in amazement at the other room where the quiet voices of Boaz, Ebenezer, and the great-grandson of Ahbed were heard, she smelled people and they walked around in her head, she used to say, and Ahbed came in for a moment, served Rebecca a glass of red wine, and Rebecca pushed Noga away from her, but stroked her face one more moment, as if she wanted to be sure that pure softness had indeed touched her. Ebenezer won't be alive in ten years, she said, and when he died in the Holocaust, I stood at his grave, from the second grave, he won't return. Somebody derides us, destroys us out of rage, doesn't hesitate, on the verge of a great degradation, and you come from a beautiful and sweet death of a boy who didn't burn in any fire. What have you got to do with us?
I want Boaz, said Noga, that's all, not all of you. I don't believe in circles with no exit-
And the Yemenite girl?
Noga looked at her and was silent. Then she lit a cigarette and asked Rebecca if she wanted to smoke. Rebecca said: Yes, give me something good. And Noga lit her an American cigarette, stuck it in the old woman's mouth, and the old woman inhaled smoke into her lungs, and laughed: Great like that…
Jordana doesn't matter, said Noga, they'll come and go, but Boaz will stay.
Maybe not?
He'll stay, said Noga.
I don't want him to, said the old woman.
I know, said Noga. Look, Rebecca, I know what you want from me.
What do I want, little girl?
I'm not a little girl anymore, and you sit here like a splendid and shattered palace and want Boaz to live in it with you, until the fire. Do we bother you?
Who's we? asked Rebecca, and a cherished panic blew from Noga. Who's we? Ebenezer and I.
Right, said the old woman and crushed the cigarette and now she was alert and vigorous. She wanted to get up, but remained sitting, deeply right, as that fool Horowitz used to say, deeply right I want you to move, clear out, leave me Boaz, what is ten years in your life?
Noga smiled a thin smile that now popped up on her open lips, and the concave line between the nose and the mouth sharpened became more severe as the smile tried to invent a subsistence area. She looked at the splendid old woman and said: That's not simple, Rebecca. We're not together because we want to be together.
No grandchildren, said Rebecca. That's forbidden! No great-grandchildren, look at the great-grandson of Ahbed, he comes to stare at his grandfather's land, so there won't be forgiveness. I need him, said the old woman. I didn't have anybody, the Captain died, Nehemiah died.
You've got Ebenezer, said Noga.
No I don't, said Rebecca. Then Rebecca contemplated and suddenly saw herself in a ridiculous light she had never been in, and because she didn't know how to behave in moments of weakness, she started shaking, and because the weakness was strange to her, she also wanted to bark, but the growls and the barks stayed inside her, deep inside her, and she looked at Noga, and saw how beautiful the young woman was and for a moment, she even thought: If I've lost Boaz, I've gained a wife, why should I ask, since when do I ask, how do I know what I really want, how do people know what they want, why do I want to be dependent when I wasn't dependent on anybody, and she stretched out her hand and started stroking Noga's face, and asked her: Where are you from, who do you belong to, where did you come from before the death that brought you to Teacher Henkin?
Noga was alert to rapid changes. For some reason that pain touched her heart, the effort to win a position that was completely unnecessary. She loved Rebecca's face. That woman bows her head before death, doesn't want crumbs, but the whole, can kill Boaz to hold onto him. Her heart was stirred to pity, and Noga who knew only one love envied Rebecca, who could ask of her what people ask in old, unreliable stories. She almost said: Take him, but she knew that both Rebecca and she depended on Boaz more than he depended on them.
Late at night, everybody was tipsy. Even Rebecca tried to dance and fell into Boaz's open arms, and he hugged her as somebody who knew he had lost her that day to a girl his foster mother saw as a reflection of purity in the features of a murderer.
Tape / -
When Jordana disappeared, they phoned from the Ministry of Defense. Then Noga sat down, and Boaz, holding a narghila to plant a pinch of cannabis in it, put the mouth of the narghila he had brought from Mount Sinai to Noga's mouth, and Noga looked like an old Indian sunk in meditation, and Boaz went to drizzle water on the cannabis bush, which had meanwhile grown solitary in a brown flowerpot, where a fragrant jasmine bush had previously grown. The roof was crammed with flowerpots and smells, Noga brought spices she had cultivated and pruned and watered, and Boaz, who tried to check whether airplanes were continuing to fly low toward the airport, felt a pleasant giddiness, he landed next to Noga and stroked her back. Noga said, Jordana disappeared!
When? asked Boaz.
They haven't heard from her in months, and only now did they call, the bastards.
Boaz took off the cotton shirt, smelled his own odor, and tossed the shirt into the corner of the room. Then he stood up, his torso naked, and tried to let the thoughts run around in his brain. He said: If you hadn't given her Menahem, she wouldn't have run away!
Noga didn't answer, and pondered quietly. Her face was furrowed with new lines that would disappear later. Her eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. He saw her body harden and wanted to ask her to stop thinking about Jordana, but Noga thought of what he said and suddenly a distant pain condensed in her that tormented her again, and she said: Why when you want to pity do you attack?
He stood still and didn't know what to do with himself, Noga clasped the narghila, thrust her hands in it and tossed it to Boaz. He ducked and the narghila hit the pile of sheets Noga was about to put into the linen closet. Then she dropped her eyes, and said: Where did she disappear?
Boaz said: Why is that so important? Maybe she just couldn't take it anymore?
Noga got up and went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, looked at the row of eggs in their niches and picked up a carton of milk, opened it, tried to pour the milk into an empty space with no cup, changed her mind, put the milk in the refrigerator, and sat down in front of the old grandfather clock. The milk flowed on the countertop, and Boaz, who tried not to see Noga, pushed the pinch of cannabis into the narghila that wasn't broken. She searched for music, but on all the stations there was only talk. She turned off the radio and opened the chest, took out papers, and read aloud the numbers she had written at night after they returned from the unveiling of the memorial at the Dead Sea, when Boaz asked her to prepare the income tax report: the mileage doesn't fit the gas receipts, she said, and Boaz said: I can't calculate everything exactly. He saw Jordana's lost face among the memorial books, Obadiah Henkin strolling in the mountains and showing her where her beloved fought, tried to pity himself and Noga.
On the way to Henkin's house, they stopped at a cafe. Next to the wall, four men sat and talked. Around each one of them you could see the aura of foreignness. The old men yelled to one another in order to be scared less and to be present. Boaz could understand Jordana's not-being in the space between those men and themselves. He didn't know who they were, but they looked as if they were still expecting something that would never happen. And Boaz knew that wound, knew how to smell it in the distance, and Noga, who knew how much the pain costs afterward, asked Boaz to leave. He understood her fear and left. Henkin's house suddenly looked like a frontier. One window in Ebenezer's house was painted a new color. Why does he paint at night? he asked Noga, and Noga said: How do I know what your father does?
Obadiah Henkin sat at his table and looked at Boaz and at the door at the same time. Through the open door, Hasha could be seen carefully drawing Noga's wild hair off her forehead, and gave her a small round mirror. After they combed their hair and each looked in the little mirror, Hasha gave Noga a glass of cold lemonade, and Henkin said to Boaz: The story about Jordana has been worrying me a long time now. I didn't know what happened, the Shimonis said they saw her in Kiryat Haim. They went to the Galilee on their memorial day, on the way back they stopped for a cup of coffee, and in the distance they saw what Mrs. Shimoni described as a familiar back and then they made out her profile, but by the time Mrs. Shimoni stood up and found her coat hanging under three coats, she disappeared in the direction of what she described as a boulevard facing the highway. I really don't know what she's doing there…