Should we leave him here?
Yes, come on, come on …
Careful, otherwise we’ll both fall.
Walk slowly, my head is spinning.
Lean on me.
Can you hear her?
She can go on like that for hours.
I dreamed about her before. Something really frightening, I was terrified of her.
Such sobbing—
Listen, it’s like she’s singing to herself.
Mourning.
Tell me, she said later, when they were in her bed.
What?
Will you write one of your …
My limericks? My tall tales?
Ha-ha. Your stories. Do you think you’ll write about this hospital?
Maybe, I don’t know. I actually had one idea, but it’s already—
About what? Tell me …
Avram sat up with effort and leaned on the wall. He had given up trying to understand her and her reversals, but like a kitten with a ball of yarn, he could not resist a “tell me.”
It’s about a boy lying in a hospital, in the middle of a war, and he goes up onto the rooftop and he has a box of matches—
Like me—
Yes, not exactly. Because this boy, with the matches, in the middle of the blackout he starts signaling enemy planes.
What is he, crazy?
No. He wants them to come and bomb him, personally.
But why?
I don’t know that yet. That’s as far as I’ve thought.
Is he really that miserable?
Yes.
Ora thought Avram had gotten the idea from what Ilan had told him. She didn’t dare ask. Instead she said, It’s a little scary.
Really? Say more.
She thought about it and felt the rusty wheels start to turn in her brain. Avram seemed to sense them too, and waited silently.
She said, I’m thinking about him. He’s on the roof. He lights match after match, right?
Yes, he said, and stretched out.
And he looks at the sky, in all directions, waiting for them to come, the airplanes. He doesn’t know where they’ll come from. Right?
Right, right.
Maybe these are the last moments of his life. He’s terribly frightened, but he has to keep waiting for them. That’s how he is, stubborn and brave, right?
Yeah?
Yes, and to me he looks like the loneliest person in the world at that moment.
I didn’t think about that, Avram said with an awkward giggle. I didn’t think about his loneliness at all.
If he had even one friend, he wouldn’t do it, would he?
Yeah, he wouldn’t—
Maybe you could make someone for him?
Why?
So he’ll have … I don’t know, a friend, someone who can be with him.
They sat quietly. She could hear him thinking. A rustling, rapid trickle. She liked the sound.
And Avram?
What?
Do you think you’ll ever write about me?
I don’t know.
I’m afraid to talk, so you don’t go writing down all my nonsense.
Like what?
Just remember that if I talk nonsense here it’s because of the fever, okay?
But I don’t write things exactly the way they happen.
Of course, you make things up too, that’s the whole fun, right? What will you make up about me?
Wait a minute, do you write, too?
Me? No way! I don’t, no. But tell me straight—
What?
Weren’t you planning to call me Ada in the story?
How did you know?
I knew, she said, and hugged herself. And I agree. Call me Ada.
No.
What do you mean no?
I’ll call you Ora.
Really?
Ora, said Avram, tasting the name, and the sweetness poured through his mouth and his whole body. O-ra.
Something was flowing inside her, some ancient, measured knowledge: He is an artist. That’s it, he was an artist. And she knew what it was like with artists. She had experience with them. She hadn’t used it for a long time, but now it was filling her up again. And she’d get better, she’d beat the illness, she suddenly knew for sure, she had female intuition.
She closed her eyes and a slight shock of pleasure hit her as she wondered how, in a moment’s urge, she had been emboldened to lean over a strange boy and kiss him on his lips for a long time. She had kissed and kissed and kissed. And now, when she finally dared to remember without holding back, she felt the kiss itself, her first kiss, seeping into her, awakening her, trickling into each of her cells, churning her blood. What will happen now? she wondered. Which of the two will I … But her heart was surprisingly light and cheerful.
The truth is, I also write a little, she confessed to her complete surprise.
You do?
Not seriously, nothing like you, never mind, I just said that. She tried to shut up but could not. They’re not really songs, never mind, honestly, just hiking songs, for trips and camps, nonsense, you know, of the limerick family.
Oh, that. He smiled with odd sadness, retreating into a sort of politeness that pinched at her. You should sing me something.
She shook her head vigorously. No way, are you mad? Never.
Because even though she knew him so little, she could already tell exactly how she would feel when her rhymes echoed inside his head, with all his twisted, snobbish ideas. But it was that thought that made her want to sing — what did she have to be embarrassed about?
So you want to penetrate the profound hidden meaning of the lyrics? She flashed him a deliberate smile. This is something I wrote ages ago, she said. We wrote it together, Ada and I, for the last day of camp at Machanayim. We had a treasure hunt, everyone got lost, don’t ask.
I won’t, he smiled.
Then do.
What did you tell Ilan?
You’ll never know.
Did you kiss him?
What? What did you say? She was horrified.
You heard me.
Maybe he kissed me? She raised her eyebrows and wiggled them mischievously, a shameless Ursula Andress. Now be quiet and listen. It’s to the tune of “Tadarissa Boom,” d’you know it?
Of course I do, said Avram, suspicious and enchanted, squirming with unforeseen delight.
Ora sang, drumming the beat on her thigh: We set off on a treasure hunt, Tadarissa Boom,
Our counselor was a real hunk, Tadarissa Boom,
He said he’d help us find the way, Tadarissa Boom,
And not get lost or go astray—
Tadarissa Boom, Avram hummed quietly, and Ora gave him a look, and a new smile, soft and budding, lit her up inside and her face glowed in the dark, and he thought she was a pure and innocent person, incapable of pretending, unlike him. “The most innocent of its creatures,” he recalled. I am happy, he thought with wonder. I want her, I want her to be mine, always, forever. His thoughts skipped, as usual, to the brink of possibilities, a lovesick dreamer: She’ll be my wife, the love of my life—
Second verse, she announced:
We solved the clues and found the prize—
Tadarissa Boom, Avram sang in a thick voice and drummed on his own thigh, and sometimes, distractedly, on hers.
But no one cared except the guys—
Tadarissa Boom.
’Cause when the counselor looked at us—
Tadarissa Boom!
He made us swoon and blinded us!
Wait. Avram put his hand on her arm. Quiet, someone’s coming.
I can’t hear it. It’s him.
Coming here? Is he coming here from the room?
I can’t understand it. He’s barely alive.
What should we do, Avram?
He’s crawling! Listen, he’s dragging himself along with his arms.
Take him away from here, take him back!
What’s the big deal, Ora, let him sit with us for a while.