“And we need batteries for the flashlight, right?”
“And bring some chocolate, I could go for something sweet.”
“Anything else, my dear?”
A soft hand travels inside them on its fingertips. Avram shrugs. “I’ve gotten used to you.”
“Watch out, you’ll get addicted.”
“What’s going to happen, Ora?”
She puts a finger to his lips. “First let’s finish the trail, and then we’ll see what works for us.” She kisses him on each eye and turns to leave. The dog looks from Ora to Avram, unsure whether to join her or stay with him.
“Wait, Ora, hold up.”
She stops.
“It’s good for me to be with you,” he says quickly and lowers his gaze to his hands. “I want you to know that.”
“Then say it. I need to be told.”
“The way you let me be with you like this, and with Ofer, and with all of you.” His eyes redden. “You don’t know what you’re giving me, Ora.”
“Well, I’m just giving you back what belongs to you.”
They cling to each other again — since she’s taller than he, she has to hold her feet slightly apart; it’s always been that way — and for some reason she remembers how every time she was about to go and see him in Tel Aviv, during those years when he agreed to meet, Ofer always sensed it. He used to grow restless and gloomy and sometimes run a high fever, as though trying to sabotage their meeting. When she got back he would sniff her out like an animal, demanding to know exactly what she’d been doing. And he always asked, with transparent slyness, whether Ilan knew where she’d been.
Avram holds her to his body, cups her buttocks with both hands, and mumbles that there’s nothing like her gluteus maximus and her gluteus medius. “Take care of yourself there, in the store,” he says into her hair, and they both hear what he has not said: Don’t talk with anyone too much. If the radio is on, ask them to turn it off. Do not under any circumstances look at the papers. Avoid the headlines.
She walks away and pauses a few times to turn around and give him a movie star’s long, lingering wave and blow him a kiss. He smiles, his hands on his waist, the white sharwals flapping around his body, and the dog sits erect beside him. He looks good, Ora thinks. The new haircut and Ofer’s clothes are good for him, and there’s something refreshing in the open way he stands and in his smile. “He’s coming back to life,” she tells herself out loud. This walk is bringing him back to life. What does that say about me? What place will I have in his life when the journey is over, if I have any place at all?
Wait, she thinks, suddenly troubled — why isn’t the dog coming with me? But even before she can finish the thought, Avram leans down and pats the dog on her butt, urging her to run along.
An hour later Ora silently unloads her purchases from the Kfar Hasidim supermarket’s plastic bags — labeled “Strictly Glatt Kosher”—and divvies them up between the two backpacks: biscuits, crackers, canned goods, packets of bouillon. Her movements are quick and sharp.
“Did something happen, Ora’leh?”
“No, what happened?”
“I don’t know. You seem …”
“I’m fine.”
Avram licks his upper lip. “Okay, okay.” And after a moment, “Ora—”
“What is it?”
“Did you hear the radio down there? Did you see a newspaper?”
“There’s no radio there, and I didn’t look at the paper. Come on, let’s go. I’m sick of this place.”
They hoist up their backpacks, pass the playground at Kibbutz Yagur, and choose a path with red markers. They soon replace it with a blue one that leads to the Snake River, recently renamed Ma’apilim River, and start climbing up the mountain. The day is still swathed in morning mist, indulging itself and lazily putting off its brightening. The climb soon grows steep, and the two of them and the dog are all breathing heavily.
“Wait a minute,” he calls after her, “did someone tell you something there?”
“No one told me anything.”
She practically runs up the incline. Stones spark from her heels. Avram gives in and stops to wipe the sweat off. At the same moment, without looking at him, Ora also stops and stands like an angular exclamation point one rocky step above him. Through oak trees and the milky morning vapors, they can see the Zevulun Valley, the suburbs of Haifa, and the Yagur Junction as it comes to life. The pair of towers at the oil refinery in the bay emit plumes of white steam that slowly curl and mingle with the mist. Avram wants to give her something, to quell the sudden irritation bristling around her. If only he knew what to give. Glimmering cars fly by on the roads leading to the junction. A distant train sends out rhythmic sparks of metal and light. But here on the mountain the silence is broken only by the occasional truck horn or the stubborn wail of an ambulance.
“Here, this is how I live,” he finally says quietly, perhaps honestly, perhaps as a modest bribe of candor.
“How?” Her voice above him is grating, scratching.
“Like this. I watch.”
“Then maybe it’s time you went in,” she hisses and starts walking again.
“What? Wait—”
“Listen, Ofer’s fine,” she cuts him off, and Avram rushes after her excitedly. “What? How do you know?”
“I called home from the grocery store to pick up my messages.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course you can.” Then she mutters to herself, “You can do a lot more than that.”
“And? Did he leave a message?”
“Twelve.”
She lurches forward again, cutting like a razor. Fine strands of a morning spiderweb graze her face, and she brushes them away angrily. The ghost of an adolescent, grumbling girl flashes in her movements.
“At least until last night he was fine,” she reports. “The last message was from eleven-fifteen.” She glances at her watch. Avram looks to see how high the sun is. They both know: eleven-fifteen is good, but meaningless now, like yesterday’s newspaper. As soon as he was finished leaving the message, an hourglass turned over somewhere, and the timer started from zero again, with no advantage to hope over fear.
“Wait, why didn’t you just call him on his cell phone?”
“Him?” She shakes her head, giggles nervously. “No, no way.” She half turns her head to him, like a doe to a hunter, and asks wordlessly, with her desperate eyes: Do you really not understand? Do you still not get it, that I can’t, I absolutely can’t, until he’s home?
The path grows difficult and stubborn, and Avram is anxious. Ofer is suddenly so close, his voice still echoing in Ora’s ears. Even his clothes, which swathe Avram, rustle as though Ofer’s spirit blows through them.
“But what did he say?”
“He said all kinds of things. Joking around. Ofer, you know.”
“Yes,” Avram says, smiling to himself.
“What do you mean ‘yes’?” she spits. “What do you even know about him?”
“Whatever you tell me,” Avram replies in bewilderment.
“Yes, stories. Stories we have plenty.”
He sinks into himself as he walks. Something happened, that’s obvious. Something bad.
As far as the eye can see, stalks of sage soar in purple and white, campions glow in a rosy hue, and buttercups take over the red shift from aged, shedding poppies. Pine needles are dotted with beads of dew. The sound of bells tinkling: a herd passes nearby, lambs tremble on spindly legs, the bellies of pregnant sheep dangle, almost touching the ground. Ora glares at Avram as he gazes at the udders and bellies, and for a moment he is embarrassed, as though caught red-handed at something.
They walk on, panting and groaning up the vertical path. Avram is restless, almost frightened. They’d shared a night of total love, and it seemed their bodies had finally been able to trust again and to believe they would not be separated for many years to come. All night they’d made love and slept and talked and dozed and made love and laughed and made love. Neta had come and gone, leaned in and faded away, and with his body he had told Ora about her. A rare tranquillity had engulfed him, and as if in a dream he had imagined them swinging him between them, very slowly, from one to the other. When he lay by her side afterward he felt happiness return to him with slow steps, like blood to a deadened limb.