Now I could have fun with my real son, not the Menahem Jordana is in love with, not my son that Boaz Schneerson created for me, but the one my wife shaped in her heart, impetuous, loving the sea, and I got up, my head spinning, the teacher Henkin who placed thirty-four generations of students walks like a drunkard, my son is smoking in the shelter, I approached the Shimonis who separated me from the wall opposite, the wall where my features were still stuck between the Bedouin ruin and the etching of Goethe. Gallantly, I took Mrs. Shimoni's pure, wrinkled hand, kissed it, and said to Jordana: Eat a plastic tomato, Jordana, and Mrs. Shimoni looked at me with measured, chilly defiance, she wasn't used to seeing me lose my poise and here I am a fool in her eyes, mischievous, and she tries to formulate something against me, something her son will transmit to my son, that's what we always do, bring our sons not only for the sake of closeness but also for the sake of conflict, listing virtues in our sons they didn't have, blazing up toward the dark death where our sons are cut up for a new fabric, and they're exaggerated there immeasurably and Mrs. Shimoni smiles at me, we're too sad to be vindictive, guardians of sin or judges, only wondering sometimes, and she smiles as if she understood at long last, everybody has his own apostasy, even Obadiah Henkin, and Jordana looks at me, knows me here and knows me in my house, half and halved, smiles an overly professional smile, and Mrs. Shimoni softens, forgives me, that awful need to remain loyal, Jordana glances at her, her hand held out in that same gallantry in which I kissed it, and I go to the wall, maybe, I don't see exactly… Contradictory thoughts in my mind and then the German's handsome wife appeared, introduced herself, a few words of parting were said, hands were shaken with exaggerated fervor, and the writer pressed on me with his outsized body and the wife said, My name's Renate, and I said Obadiah Henkin, he hugged my arm hard but gently and pulled me outside, Jordana tried to get to me, to catch my eye, maybe I saw a laugh on the lips of 'sixty-seven, but it was hard for me to create contact, and we left, Renate walked behind us, the door slammed.
My legs were heavy, I felt my body pulling me down and yet my head seemed weightless, in the staircase it was dark and I looked for the switch. And the German, even though he was such a well-known writer, didn't know how you illuminate Israeli staircases. With light legs, maybe too light, I searched for the switch with my hand stroking the walls. My hand came upon the doorbell of the neighbors' apartment, hit a bracket where a lamp or a mailbox may once have hung and then suddenly the light came on, and my hands on the wall were white with plaster, even my nose was white and the German lady was wiping the plaster with her finger. We went down the stairs and stood in the entrance hall, facing the gray-white brick wall that remained as a shelter from the days of World War II. I saw clearly-sharpened by my drunkenness-the soot of a cigarette crushed in a slot between two bricks. Renate also looked at the spot of soot illuminated by the dim light from the staircase so that those bricks, two bricks and between them was a spot, those bricks were lighted more brightly than the other bricks and when Renate stared at the spot next to the wall of darkened stones I saw how proper and handsome her clothes were: she wore a light gray Indian silk blouse, a faded scarlet skirt, a necklace of small delicate pearls, while she attached a restrained dark black comb in her hair. We walked slowly toward the car parked not far from there. The German opened the doors and for some reason I was glad it was an Escort assembled in Israel, and I, mocked by my son for knowing every article by Ahad Ha-Am and not knowing the difference between a tile roof and a DeSoto, I now know the names of cars, their virtues, from my incessant rambles I learned to know the capacity of a motor, what is a gearshift, whether the car is automatic or front-wheel drive and it was terrific of me to know for him not only yearnnnnings, as he'd say, or what difference does it make but what are Ford and Fiat and Escort. The German asked where we were going and I wanted to tell him: Ebenezer lives on Deliverance Street but I said: Go north here, and on Nordau Boulevard you turn left and…
The newly painted gate was gleaming in the silvery moonlight, I wanted to point to the rose and geranium bushes, my lightness was beginning to dissolve, the sea peeped through the two trees in front of our houses and somebody had already started grooming and pruning them, in that epidemic of resurrecting the gardens that had broken out in the neighborhood. I saw the shutters shift a moment, the flash of my wife in the cleft of the shutter, and when we went inside Hasha Masha was sitting under the sheaf of her light, forlorn, torn from the world, the light flattered her, I could see her beauty in the eyes of strangers too. Germanwriter and Renate his wife were bracketed in the door, next to the white spot I hadn't repainted, where I had once torn off the mezuzah in rage. The dull gleam in Renate's eyes grew even duller, I glanced at her, from where she stood, in the presence of the gloomy room she fished up the face of my wife and I saw how she was seduced by the beauty of Hasha Masha, how she warmed to her, maybe the wine sharpened my senses that I hadn't known before, and the light, more than flattering her emphasized her powerlessness, her clinging to a certain moment in her life. She looked at the opened door, at the two strangers, captured by Renate's eyes and suddenly she got up as if all those long hours she had been waiting only for them, slammed the door behind them, and was stirred to life. She held out her hand to the writer and his wife, and I wondered what had made my wife suddenly so calm, so domesticated, there wasn't a trace of the contempt or anger in her I'd usually see when I'd bring strangers home. She was glad, really glad to hold out her hand to Renate. She looked at her a long time and when Renate wanted to kiss her cheek she refused but with a friendly evasion, without challenge, as if it was a delaying tactic, the kiss grazed Hasha Masha's hair, and in her eyes a smile of sisters in sin ignited, which I couldn't understand except as a joke, since Renate looked at her and smiled too.