A few weeks later, when Boaz reached his first birthday, Dana went out to look for Ebenezer, who hadn't returned from the citrus grove for three days. He sat in his hut and tried to discover his father's real face in a tree. Suddenly, the sky darkened and a heavy rain poured down. The drops fell savagely on the ground and looked gigantic, a wind blew and the sky turned black, a haze filled the air, the foliage looked purple, the sun that flickered for a moment between the clouds was almost green and a thick dust from the desert grew turgid in the eddy. Lightning flashes struck the ground and cut the air with a loud whistle. Two Arabs driving a load of spices on a donkey on their way from the desert to the village of Marar saw Dana lit in the light of the flashes. She was wet and her dress clung to her body. One of them attacked her. Her wet hair fell on her face and his old friend grabbed it and her when she tried to defend herself from the rain. The first one grabbed her with his hands, stretched over her and tried to rape her. She fought him with all her might, bit and kicked, but the mud was moldy and she couldn't see a thing. When she fainted from swallowing mud the old man said to the young one: Come on, let's get out, we've killed her. He tried to give her artificial respiration but her body was cold. Out of dread he took out an aluminum cup and started digging a pit. They buried Dana, but she was still alive. She tried to get up but the earth crushed her and broke her clavicle. She tried to move, and her head bumped into a rock. Ebenezer heard the roars, put on the old raincoat hanging in the hut, and went out. He walked in the rain, soaked to the skin. And then he saw, he didn't yet understand what he saw, he thought of going on, and turned around. He tried to listen to Dana's heart, but her heart wasn't beating. He sat next to her, looked at her trampled body and didn't shed a tear. He picked up her body, cleaned her face and body, straightened her dress, and carried her in his arms. He came to the settlement where all the inhabitants were sequestered in their houses and looking out the windows at the rainstorm and the windswept street. They saw Ebenezer carrying his wife's body. People came out of their houses and started following him. Old Horowitz came outside and bowed his head, tears gushed in his eyes. Ebenezer didn't say a word. He took Dana to the threshold of his mother's house, put her body on the doorsill, and called out: Here you are! You wanted her dead and you got it.
He took a knife from the hiding place in the cowshed and went to the nearby village. An old man for whom he had once carved the dead faces of his daughters told him: Go to Marar, you'll see a donkey with a damaged saddle at the house of Abu-Hassein, and you'll know. Ebenezer climbed up to the village. The inhabitants were hiding from the storm. His smell was blended with the downpour and the dogs didn't smell him and didn't bark. He came to Abu-Hassein's house, saw the donkey at the next house, examined the saddle and called the Arabs to come outside. They came out, the old man started trembling, but Ebenezer whose hands were strong, grabbed the young one, smelled Dana's odor on his clothes, and killed him with two stabs. The old man started running away, men from the settlement ran up, and dragged Ebenezer back to the settlement. In the yard, they washed the blood off Ebenezer. All night Ebenezer sat on the doorsill of Rebecca's house next to Dana's body and watched it. Rebecca looked outside and saw her son and his dead wife and wanted to go to them, but Ebenezer warned her not to come. The rain stopped, the sky cleared up, and a fragrance of spring filled the air. There was no trace of the storm except for the lightning damage, split tree trunks, and a lot of sand piled up wet and sticky. The next day, the funeral was held, Rebecca stood on the side, between the Captain and Mr. Klomin. Mr. Klomin, gazing, tried to understand the meaning of the empty space that filled him. With his great expertise in the charter and the illegality of the British Mandate, he had never noticed how much he loved his daughter. Now when he felt love, he didn't know what to do with it. At the open grave, Ebenezer told his wife: You were a gift given to me and taken from me, this morning I looked in the mirror, there was nobody there. And then the cantor recited the prayer for the dead and they filled the grave with dirt and Roots grew by one more corpse. He returned from Roots alone. He sat a long time and looked at his son. He wanted to touch him, but he didn't. The child's eyes were wide open. For a moment Ebenezer thought the child was smiling. His eyes were mocking, and Ebenezer got up and slammed the door. He stood next to his house, looked at the path where Dana had planted roses and geraniums and at the pepper tree he had planted for her and at her herb garden, and he yelled: Rebecca, I'm going to find who cursed us. Rebecca approached the child and looked at him. Her son's bowed figure was seen from the myrtle tree on the path. He was twenty-seven years old. The year was nineteen twenty-seven. The month was April. The air was drenched with the intoxicating smells of spring. The Captain moved to Ebenezer's house. The paths and flowers went on blooming every year. The dried flowers in the books and the sweet smells in the jars and bottles stayed where they were.
Forty years, Ebenezer Schneerson didn't see his mother.
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Your blood Dana. Your Dana blood. Blood blood. Your blood Dana. Dana Dana your blood. The blood of Dana. Dana. Blood blood blood Dana. Blood of Dana, blood. Blood your blood Dana Dana. Your blood Dana. Your Dana blood. Dana blood. Dana Dana. Your blood Dana. Blood.
They said I went to Marar to kill an Arab. I don't remember. I tell how I went to kill an Arab in Marar and I don't remember. An empty space I am. Stories of others or of others about me. Who am I? Forty years searching and don't know.
After forty years I came and saw him, and I said to him: Samuel! I was so happy that Samuel was here. But that was Boaz. He was offended. What do I know about Boaz?
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Teacher Henkin met Boaz years after Menahem was killed. When he retired, there was nobody to say good-bye to. The teachers had changed. Damausz sat in his house and embroidered his old dreams over and over again. Old Teacher Sarakh with her swollen legs didn't even bother to come say good-bye to him. She grows silkworms and gazes at the sea getting blocked across from her house. Teacher Henkin bought a new overcoat and a broad-brimmed hat and every morning as usual, he went on walking from his house on Deliverance Street to Mugrabi Square, which had meanwhile been destroyed, and then back home again. "Grief of the world," Teacher Obadiah Henkin would say to himself at the new hotels, crushing the handsome hills at the seashore, the new houses, the discotheques, the banks popping up like mushrooms. Here and there, a few veteran teachers still live, Histadrut members, who now add a second story to their little houses and will soon sell the houses for accelerated development. Only the corner of Henkin's street remained lost between the new building sites closing in on it. They're wiping out the sea, dammit, said the baker's wife to Mr. Henkin, and he said, Yes, yes, too bad about Noga, thought Henkin, what's she doing? She lived with us, Hasha Masha and she, like two conspirators. A bare bulb over my wife, the garden hasn't yet been renewed, the paint is peeling. Unlike Hasha Masha, Teacher Henkin doesn't know that relations between Noga and Menahem-what he privately called their engagement-ended a few weeks before Menahem fell.
How many years does Teacher Henkin walk in that set route? He stopped counting. Ten, fifteen years? He's not sure anymore. The years are accompanied by demonstrations of hesitation, partial juggling of retreat, attempts to understand death from a new, unusual angle, getting to know the bereaved parents, the Committee of Bereaved Parents, the Shimonis, all that happened while he walked every single day, at the same time, on Ben-Yehuda Street to Mugrabi Square and back. Later on, after he'd meet Boaz, it became clear to Teacher Henkin that his son didn't fall in the battle of Mount Radar, but in a battle that would stir heroic feelings in him at first, that battle for the Old City. Teacher Henkin, who had had many illusions shattered in his life, was angry about the battle in the Old City, which might have been won if not for the order of Ben-Gurion, whom he had once thought great. But he wouldn't get his son back in either case, Hasha Masha will then say, and he'll stare at her, but then he won't be angry anymore at her hostility.