The men faced each other as Avram blocked the path. The stranger cleared his throat, said a cautious good morning, and Ora answered feebly, “Good morning.” “You’re coming from down there?” asked the man redundantly, and Ora nodded. She didn’t look at him, either. She felt that she did not have the strength to make even the slightest trivial connection. She only wanted to keep walking with Avram and talking with Avram about Ofer, and anything else was a distraction and a waste of energy. “So long,” she said, and waited for Avram to keep going. But he did not move, and the man cleared his throat again and said, “When you get to the top, you’ll see some lovely flowers. Carpets of spiny broom, and the redbuds are in bloom, too.” Ora glanced at him wearily: What was he talking about? All this nonsense about blossoms. She noticed that he was around her age, a little older, fifty-something, bronzed and solid and relaxed. In his eyes she saw herself and Avram. They gave off a forlorn whiff of the persecuted, and disaster hovered over them. The man grasped the straps on his backpack with two remarkably long, arched thumbs, and seemed to be considering taking the bag off.
“So you’re hiking the trail?”
“What?” she murmured. “What trail?”
“The Israel Trail.” He pointed to an orange-blue-and-white marker on one of the rocks.
“What’s that,” she said. She did not have the strength to round her voice into a question mark.
“Oh,” the man said, smiling, “I thought you were—”
“Where does the trail go?” Ora asked urgently. Too many things were suddenly demanding her comprehension at once. The smile that cleaved his long, serious face into two. And the warm olive tone of his skin. And the way Avram was still standing between them, a lump, a human wall. And maybe also the Yedioth newspaper rolled up in the pocket of the stranger’s backpack, and a pair of large feminine glasses, like hers, but blue—hers were red—that hung on a string around his neck and looked completely wrong for him, and somehow also indescribably annoying. And on top of all that, now he was saying that this modest, intimate path that she and Avram had been walking for a week, had a name. Someone had given it a name. All at once, she had been robbed of something.
“It goes all the way to Eilat. All the way to Taba. Goes down the entire country.”
“From where?”
“From the north. Around Tel-Dan. I’ve been hiking it for a week. I hike a bit, then I go back a bit. Around in circles. It’s hard for me to leave this area, with the blossoms and everything, but you have to keep going, right?” He smiled at her again. She had the feeling that his face was gradually revealing itself to her, being painted in front of her eyes to adapt to her pace of perception, which was suddenly very slow.
“Did you sleep down there?”
He wouldn’t give up. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? Just let her keep walking. She smiled helplessly, unsure whether to lose her temper at him—those affected glasses, like some private, irritating joke that he waved around for all to see—or to respond to a certain natural, comfortable softness that she felt in him.
“Yes, down there, but we’re only … How far does it go, you said?”
“Eilat.” Thick eyebrows and short, solid, silver hair were now added to his face.
“What about Jerusalem?”
“That’s more or less on the way, but you still have a long way to go.” He smiled again, as he did after every sentence. Bright white teeth, she saw, and full, dark lips, with a deep crack in the middle of the lower one. She sensed a hushed anger from Avram’s body. The man threw him a cautious glance. “Do you need anything?” he asked, and Ora realized he was worried about her, that he suspected she was in some sort of trouble, maybe even taken captive by Avram.
“No.” She straightened up and smiled as charmingly as she could. “We’re fine. The truth is, we’re still waking up.”
And she started smoothing down her wild hair with both hands—she hadn’t even combed it that morning before leaving; there was a tinge of remorse at her principled decision this past year not to dye her hair. She quickly wiped the corners of her eyes and made sure there were no crumbs on the edge of her lip.
“Listen, I’m making some coffee. Will you join me?”
Avram grunted no. Ora did not say anything. She could have used some coffee. She had a feeling he made good coffee.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“What?”
“What is this place?”
“Here? It’s the Kedesh River.” He smiled again. “Don’t you know where you are?”
“The Kedesh River,” she murmured, as though there were magic encoded in the words.
“It’s good to be in nature,” he said encouragingly.
“Yes, it is.” She gave up on her hair. What difference did it make anyway? She’d never see him again.
“And it’s good to get away from the news a bit,” he added, “especially after yesterday.”
Avram let out something that sounded like a warning bark. The man took a step back and his eyes darkened.
Ora put a hand on Avram’s back, calming him with her touch.
“No news,” Avram pronounced.
“Okay,” said the man carefully, “you’re right. There’s no need for news here.”
“We have to get going,” Ora said without looking at him.
“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” His eyes moved across her face. Ora could feel how one of his fingers, the one still holding the backpack strap, was drawn to glide over her lip.
“We’re absolutely fine,” she repeated. It was all she could do to resist asking what was on the news yesterday. And if they’d released the names yet.
“Anyway,” the man said.
Avram uprooted himself and walked past the man. Ora passed him too, with her head bowed.
“I’m a doctor,” the man said quietly, for her ears only. “If you need anything.”
“A doctor?” She lingered. She thought he was trying to give her a secret message. Maybe he was hinting that Ofer needed a medic?
“A pediatrician,” he said. He had a soft, pleasant baritone voice. His eyes were focused and dark when he looked at her. She felt that he was concerned for her, and her skin responded. She had to tear herself away from this tenderness immediately.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “it’s just not the right time.”
They kept going up the riverbed, Avram at the head and she behind, feeling the man’s gaze plowing through her back. She kept trying to guess what was on the news and how bad it was. At least it was clear now that things weren’t over there yet, that it was probably going to be a long affair this time, which only confirmed what she’d sensed all along, that things were getting worse and worse, things were deteriorating. In the same breath she thought how annoying it was that he’d been looking at her all this time from behind—not exactly her strong side, the behind, and no one could convince her otherwise. She was even more annoyed that she was capable of being annoyed by such stupid things while the situation over there was probably intensifying. She marched angrily up the riverbed, replaying the short meeting in her mind, and she felt as though something of Avram’s obtuse lumpiness was sticking to her, in her movements and her appearance, and it was encumbering her natural talent for coquettish small talk with friendly strangers. Before the next bend in the path she could not resist turning around, with a hint of reproach, with pride in her remote self. She saw him standing just where they had left him, looking attentive and grave. He seemed so worried that her stern face broke into a soft, surprised smile, and she thought she could see him nod at her once.
After leaving the shaded riverbed, they found themselves suddenly on a path flooded with strong morning light and walked along it silently. Ora is constantly amazed to think of Avram’s lightning jump in front of the man, as though he had sworn to protect her at any cost from the outside world and its representatives, from any sliver of information about what was happening there. She considers that he migh
t also be protecting himself, but cannot entirely understand that. She thinks again of his vegetarianism, the dates he crossed off on the wall above his bed, and the hope in his voice when he called her on Ofer’s scheduled release date: “Is it over?” he asked. “Is his army over?” At that moment she hadn’t had the capacity to comprehend how much he must have been waiting for the release and how he had anxiously anticipated it for the three years preceding the date, day after day, crossing out line after line.
She quickens her steps. The path narrows, and bushes of spiny broom—she remembers the name; that’s what that guy was talking about—as tall as she is blossom in yellow on either side, giving off a delicate perfume. And there are those little flowers, yellow and white chamomile blossoms that look like they were drawn by children, and cistus shrubs, and hyacinths, and pale blue stork’s bill, and the beloved Judean viper’s bugloss, which she had barely noticed all these days—but what had she noticed? “And look,” she says, pointing happily, expanding her lungs and her eyes: “That pink over there is gorgeous—a flowering redbud tree.”
The mountain is padded with round yellow cushions of flowering spurge and pink blankets of Egyptian honesty. Ora snaps off a branch of spiny broom, crushes the flowers, and holds it out for Avram to smell. With his face almost in the palm of her hand—his large, lost face—she remembers him yelling at Ilan that he didn’t want anything to do with it, anything to do with life. It occurs to her that perhaps it was during these past years, with Ofer in the army, and even more so now, with Ofer being there, that Avram suddenly realizes that if, God forbid, this one thread of connection he has with them is torn, he will find himself suddenly tied to life with the thickest of ropes, with a bond of affliction that can be ended only by ending life. Avram, in a confirmation of sorts, sneezes loudly on her.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, and wipes slivers of saliva and flower stamen off her forehead and the tip of her nose.
She grasps his wrist and says into his face, “You’re practiced at this, aren’t you?”
“At what?” he grumbles and scans her face suspiciously.
“At running away from bad news. You’re a thousand times more practiced at it than I am, right? You’ve spent your whole life running from bad news.” She looks straight into his eyes and knows without a doubt that she is right. She clutches his hand and rhythmically folds in finger after finger: “Running away from the bad news that is life itself, one. Running from the bad news that is Ofer, two. Running from the bad news that is me, three.”
He sucks awkwardly on his lip. “This is bull, Ora. What’s with the roadside psychology?”
But she has a newfound strength now. “Just remember that sometimes bad news is actually good news that you didn’t understand. Remember that what might have been bad news can turn into good news over time, perhaps the best news you need.” She gives him back his hand and folds it over the branch of sunny yellow buds. “Come on, Avram, let’s go.”
To the right of the path is a tall antenna, and a long chain-link fence in front of an ugly fortress. It looks like a police stronghold from the British Mandate, with gloomy concrete structures, guard towers, and narrow viewing slits. “Yesha Fortress,” Ora reads from a small sign. “Let’s get out of here, I’m not in the mood for fortresses.”
Avram hesitates. “But the path … Look, the path goes through here.”
“Isn’t there another one?”
They look this way and that, and there isn’t another. Except for one marked with red, but the man at the river said if they followed the orange-blue-and-white markers, they’d get to Jerusalem, home. Momentarily confused, she checks in with herself: You wanted to run away from home, didn’t you? So why are you now—
She turns to Avram and puts a finger on his chest and decrees, “We’ll go through, but quickly, no stopping, and tell me something on the way.”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter, talk to me, tell me, I don’t know, tell me about your restaurant.”
And so, as they walk quickly, she learns that for the past two years, since being fired from the pub, he’s been working in an Indian restaurant in South Tel Aviv. They were looking for a dishwasher. He wouldn’t wash dishes because that left too much time to think, but he was willing to wash the floors and do general cleaning work. He and dirt have been like this for years—he presses two fingers together and smiles, trying unsuccessfully to distract her from the sparse grove of cypress trees—twenty-eight of them, each with a wooden name plaque, a cypress for each of the men killed here in April and May of 1948 while trying to capture the fortress from the Arab fighters.
“Vacuuming is also okay for me,” Avram prattles on, “and small hauling jobs, why not? I’m an odd-job man, and it’s good there.”
“Good?” She glances at him from the side. She hasn’t heard that word from him for a long time.
“Young people. Shanti.”
“Go on, go on,” she murmurs, heroically passing a plaque with a poem by Moshe Tabenkin, where a moustached tour guide stands reading it out loud to a group of tourists. They must all be deaf, Ora thinks angrily and speeds up; he’s practically yelling. The mountains echo back to her:
Our boy was—like a pine in the woodlands.
Was—a fig tree putting forth its figs.
Our boy was—a myrtle of dense roots.
Was the most fiery of poppies—
“Well, go on,” she gripes. “Why did you stop?”
Avram, rapidly: “The whole restaurant is really one big room, like a very wide hall, with no interior walls, just support pillars. It’s a pretty run-down building.” He describes the place with a furrowed brow, like someone delivering extremely important testimony that has to be exhaustive and precise. She is grateful for the meticulous details, which take her away from here—from the marble square. The twenty-eight names are carved in stone, she remembers, and there’s a mass grave, too. She was on a school trip here once, when she was thirteen. The teacher stood facing them, wearing shorts, and read with a booming voice from a page: “Nebi Yusha was but a fortress on the road, and now it is a symbol for all times!” Ora had surreptitiously peeled a clementine on the marble square, and a teacher had yelled at her: “Show some respect for the fallen soldiers!” If only she could be that stupid and ignorant of sorrow today, to stand eating a clementine on the marble square. It’s good to get away from the news a bit, that man had said. Especially after yesterday. A scream kicks around inside her body, searching for a way out, and Avram, continuing his mission, takes her to a district of auto-repair shops, trucking companies, and massage parlors in South Tel Aviv. He walks her up a crooked, dirty staircase. Starting on the second floor, there are rugs on the stairs and pictures on the walls, and the smell of incense. “And you walk in,” he says, and she suddenly remembers: Dudu was killed here. Dudu from the song: In the Palmach, none could outdo / Our hero, our lost soldier, Dudu. She racks her brain for a word that rhymes with Ofer.
“And inside”—Avram’s voice hovers somewhere out there in his little India—“the whole big room is covered with rugs, and there are lots of low tables, and you sit on big cushions. As soon as you walk in, at the far end opposite you, you see gas ranges with huge, charred pots. Mighty pots.”
They leave the fortress and Ora lets her breath out. She looks at Avram gratefully, and he shrugs his shoulders.
The words, she thinks dimly, they’re coming back to him.
“You’ll laugh, but I’m the oldest one there,” he says.
“No kidding,” she mumbles, stealing a look back at the fortress. “Come on, let’s cross the road here.”
“I swear,” he chuckles, shrugging one shoulder as if apologizing for some trick played on him long ago, in the years when she was absent from his life. “The owner is all of twenty-nine, and the cook is maybe twenty-five. All the others, too. Sweet kids.”
Ora feels somehow robbed—why is he so excited about a few kids he barely knows?
“They’re all
graduates of India. I’m the only one who hasn’t been. But I already know everything as if I’ve been there. And they don’t fire anyone at this place. There’s no such thing as firing.”
They walk among hedgerows of fleshy prickly pears, past a large tomb with domes on its roof and trees growing out of its walls. Blankets and mats are scattered around the large chambers that look out onto the Hula Valley, and there are a few empty dishes, left from offerings brought by the faithful to Nebi Yusha—Yehoshua Ben Nun.
“Some of the people who work there couldn’t get a job anywhere else.”
People like him, she thinks. She tries to picture him there. The oldest one, he’d said with real surprise, as if that were utterly improbable. As though they were still twenty-two years old, and everything else was a mistake. She sees him among those sweet young people, with his heaviness and his bulky slowness, with his big head and long, thinning hair hanging down on either side. Like some exiled, downfallen professor, forlorn and ridiculous at the same time. But the fact that they never fire anyone reassures her.
“And they don’t give you a check at the end of your meal.”
“So how do you know how much to pay?”
“You go up to the register and tell them what you ate.”
“And they believe you?”
“Yes.”
“What if I cheated?”
“Then you probably had no choice.”
“Are you serious?” A little light goes on inside her. “Is there really such a place?”
“I’m telling you.”
“Take me there, now!”
He laughs. She laughs.
“The walls are covered with big photos that someone took in India or Nepal. They change them every so often. And on the side, near the bathroom, there are three washing machines running constantly. Free, for whoever needs them. While people eat, some guys and girls go around offering treatments, Reiki and acupressure and shiatsu and reflexology. And soon, when the renovations are done, I’ll start working in the sweets.”
“Working in the sweets …” she echoes.