He waited. Ora swallowed. A new layer of sweat erupted from her body at once. She pulled the blanket up higher over her face so that only her eyes glimmered in the dark. She didn’t kick this time either, Avram noted, which must mean she’s letting me tell her, for example—he hesitated, it was suddenly too close; let’s see you, coward, sissy—for example, I can tell her that she’s so beautiful, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, even here in the hospital, with the fever and the illness. And from the moment I saw her, even though it was dark, I felt the whole time that she was light, something bright, pure … And she showed me herself with the match, and then she closed her eyes and her eyelashes trembled … The more he spoke, the more excited Avram grew. He was burning and erect from his boldness. Ora’s heart beat so hard she thought she would pass out. If any of her friends, boys or girls, didn’t matter, saw her like this, listening silently to all this talk, they wouldn’t believe it. This is cynical Ora? This is bullheaded Ora?
And she shouldn’t go thinking I’m such a big hero, Avram added hoarsely. I’ve never talked to a girl like this, only in my imagination. He held two fists up to his cheeks and focused on the burning embers glowing in his gut. I’ve never had the chance to be so close to someone so beautiful. I’m just noting that for the minutes, because she’s probably thinking, Oh, here’s another one of those lookers who has all the girls falling at his feet. Ora stuck out her chin and pursed her lips, but a dimple of laughter was twitching in her cheek. What a strange person, she thought. You can never tell if he’s serious or joking, or if he’s very smart or a total idiot. He keeps changing. She wiped the sweat off her brow with the blanket and thought that the most annoying thing about him, the truly insufferable thing, which could really drive a person mad, was that he seemed to be constantly stuck under your skin and you couldn’t get a second’s break from him, because from the moment he had come and sat down next to her two days ago, or whenever it was, she had known exactly when he was excited and when he was happy or sad, and above all she had known when he wanted her. He had such a nerve, he was a pickpocket, a spy—and a tiny eel slithered inside her like a little tongue, supple and flushed, not hers at all, where had it come from? And Ora jumped up in fright: Come here! Stand here for a minute!
What … what happened?
Get up!
But what did I do?
Shut up. Turn around!
They felt their way through the darkness until they were standing back to back. They shivered from the fever and other ardors, and their bodies twitched and danced against each other. Ilan sighed, and Avram thought, What lousy timing, please don’t wake up on me now. He felt her muscular calves against his own, her springy rear end touching his. After that things got off track: his shoulders were somewhere down there against her back. His head rested against the back of her neck. You’re a head taller than me, he noted lightly, himself amazed at such a cruel realization of his fears. But we’re still at that age, she said softly, and turned to face him. Despite the darkness, she could see his face and his huge, exaggerated eyes, which showered her with sad, yearning looks, and she quickly looked for Ada to hand her a trace of mockery to hold on to, to unravel his image and his entirety, and generally this whole place, along with the guy drilling a hole in her head from the other side of the room. But her heart was tensing in anticipation of bad news.
Hey, she whispered weakly, can you see me? Yes, he murmured. How come we can see now? she wondered, afraid she might be hallucinating again. He laughed. She examined him suspiciously. What’s funny? That you won’t let me say bad things about myself. It was when he laughed that his face changed. He had nice teeth, bright and evenly spaced, and nice lips. The whole mouth area, Ora thought feebly, is like someone else’s. If a girl ever kisses him, she’ll probably shut her eyes, and then she’ll just have his mouth. Can you make do with just a mouth? Stupid thought. Her knees felt a little shaky. She was going to fall. This illness was doing her in. Making a rag out of her. She grabbed on to his pajama sleeve and almost fell on him. Her face was close to his, and had he tried to kiss her she would not have had the strength to pull away.
And I want to tell her about her voice, Avram said, because the voice is the most important thing for me, always, even before a girl’s appearance. She has a voice that no one I know has, an orange voice, I swear, don’t laugh, with a little bit of lemon-yellow around the edges, and it has a spring, it has a pounce. And if she wants me to, I can describe to her right now on the spot something I’d love to write for her one day, and interestingly she isn’t saying no …
Yes, Ora whispered.
Avram swallowed and shivered. I think it will be a piece for voices, he said. Just voices. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days, since we started talking, and here’s how it will start: there are fourteen notes, you see. Single notes, one after the other, human voices. Human voices are my favorite. There is no lovelier sound in the world, is there?
Yeah? So do you, do you make … music?
No, not exactly music, it’s more a combination of … never mind. Voices, that’s what interests me now, in these years.
Oh, said Ora.
But why fourteen? he asked in a whisper, deliberating with himself as if Ora were not in the room. There are fourteen voices when I hear it, but why? He mumbled to himself: I don’t know. That’s how I feel it. It will start with one long note, you see? A kind of “Ah …,” for six beats, and only after it disappears the other voice will start: “Ah …” Like ships sailing in the fog, blowing their horns at one another. Have you ever heard that?
No … Yes, I’m from Haifa.
And it will be sad. He inhaled through his teeth, and she felt it: all of him, in the blink of an eye, immersed in that sadness, and the whole world was the sadness now, and she too, involuntarily, felt a bitter, heart-sucking sorrow lapping inside her.
She said, Maybe it’s because of Ada?
What is?
Because she was, I told you, she was fourteen when—
What?
The notes, like you said, how there are fourteen notes.
Oh, wait—one for each year?
Could be.
You mean—a farewell to each one of her years?
Something like that.
That’s nice. That’s really … I hadn’t thought of that. One for each year.
But you came up with it, she laughed, it’s funny how impressed you are with it.
But you’re the one, Avram smiled, you’re the one who showed me what I came up with.
YOU INSPIRE ME, Ada used to say with her childish gravity. And Ora would laugh: Me? I inspire you? I’m just a bear of very little brain! And Ada—she was thirteen then, Ora remembers, one year from her death, and how horrifying it is to realize how ignorant she was of that, how she went about her business and did everything as usual and never guessed, but still, deep inside she seemed to be growing more profound, more mature, and more solid that year—Ada took hold of Ora’s hand and swung it back and forth with enthusiasm and gratitude and said, You, yes, you. It’s like you just sit there quietly, but then you throw out a single word or ask one small question, like it’s nothing, and bang! Everything falls into place in my mind and all of a sudden I know exactly what I wanted to say. Oh, Ora, what would I do without you? How could I live without you?
She remembers: they looked into each other’s eyes. One year, dear God.
Alive and sharp, this memory was almost intolerable now: Ada reading to her from her notebook stories and poems that she had written, using voices and gestures, and sometimes costumes, with hats and scarves, acting out the different characters, and crying with them and laughing. Her rosy, freckled face is flushed as if flames are leaping inside her head and peeking through her eyes. Ora sits opposite her with her legs crossed, watching wide-eyed.
When Ada finished reading, she was often exhausted and lost and gaping, and Ora would quickly pull herself together. Now it was her turn: to hug, to encircle, to bandage Ada,
not to leave her for even a moment without Ora’s hand.
And I keep asking myself whether she has a boyfriend, Avram said to himself from somewhere in the distance, in his throaty, daydreaming voice. I know she said she didn’t, but how could that be? A girl like that wouldn’t be alone for a minute, the guys in Haifa aren’t stupid. He paused and waited for her answer. She said nothing. Doesn’t she want to tell me about her boyfriend? Or does she really not have one? She doesn’t have one, Ora said quietly. How come? Avram whispered. She doesn’t know, Ora said after a long pause, unwillingly seduced by his style and finding that it was actually more comfortable to talk about herself this way. She didn’t even want a boyfriend at all for a long time, she said, inadvertently playing her words to the slow, tense beat of the pulsations coming from the edge of the room. And then there just wasn’t anyone right, I mean, really right for her.
And hasn’t she ever loved anyone? Avram asked. Ora did not answer, and in the dark he thought she was sinking deeper into herself, her long neck bending painfully down toward her shoulder, toward the distant side of the room, as if she too were now seized by a tyrannical power like the one gripping his own body. So she did love someone, said Avram, and Ora shook her head. No, no, she just thought she did, but now she knows she didn’t. It was nothing, she mumbled despairingly, just a waste. She felt that as soon as she started to tell him about Asher, the truth would rush out in a huge, roiling torrent, the truth of those two years of nothingness, and nothing could be turned back anymore, and she was frightened by how much she wanted to, burned to tell him.
Wait a minute, he whispered suddenly from the doorway, I’ll be back in a minute. What? Where are you? Ora was distraught. What are you doing leaving me now? Just for a minute, he said, I’ll be right back.
With his last remaining strength he pulled himself away and left the room. Leaning on the corridor walls, he dragged himself on, far away from her, and every few steps he stopped and shook his head and said to himself, Go back, go back now, but he kept uprooting himself until he got to his room, and he sat down on his bed.
She called out to him a few times, first shouting, then softly, but he did not come back. The nurse came and stood in the doorway, demanding to know what Ora was shouting about. A bitter coil wound through her voice. When she was gone, Ora lay terrified and tried to fall asleep, to dive under reason and thoughts, but the illness was playing tricks on her mind. Tendrils of wild dreams climbed up and grabbed hold of her. The air filled again with the thundering metallic voices and military music. I’m dreaming, Ora mumbled, it’s just a dream. She covered her ears and the voice that spoke Hebrew in a thick Arab accent echoed inside her head, orating about the glorious Syrian army’s tanks that were trampling the Zionist Galilee and the criminal Zionist kibbutzim, and they were on their way to liberate Haifa and obliterate the shame of the ’48 expulsion. Ora knew she had to escape, to save herself, but she could not find the strength. Suddenly she was completely awake and sat upright in bed, holding the matchbox like a shield against her face, because she thought someone at the end of the room was moving and calling weakly, Ora, Ora, talking to her in his sleep in an unfamiliar boy’s voice.
LATER, who knows how much later, Avram came back with his and Ilan’s blankets. He came into her room without a word, covered Ilan, swaddled him on all sides, and tucked the blankets under him. Then he sat down and covered himself and waited for Ora to say it.
She said: I don’t ever want to talk to you again. You’re messed up. Get out of my life.
He said nothing.
She was furious. I swear, you’re such a loser!
What did I do?
“What did I do?” Where did you disappear to?
I just popped over to my room.
“Popped over to my room”! Speedy Gonzales! Leaving me here alone and disappearing for hours—
What are you talking about, hours? Maybe half an hour, tops, and anyway you’re not alone.
Shut up. You’d better just shut up!
He shut up. She touched her lips. She thought they were on fire.
Just tell me one thing.
What?
What did you say his name was?
Ilan. Why? Was there … did something happen here while I was gone?
What could happen? You left and came right back, what—
I left and came right back? Now it’s “You left and came right back”?
Stop it, get off my case.
Wait, did he talk? Did he say something in his sleep?
Look, what are you, the Shabak?
Did you turn the light on?
None of your business.
I knew it, I just knew it!
So you knew, you’re a genius. So if you knew, why did you leave just when I—
And you saw him.
Okay, I saw him, I saw him! So what?
So nothing.
Avram?
What—
Is he really very sick?
Yes.
I think he’s sicker than both of us.
Yes.
Do you think he’s … I don’t know, in danger?
What do I know?
Ahh, Ora sighed from the depths of her heart, I wish I could fall asleep now for a month, a year, ach!
Ora?
What?
He’s good-looking, isn’t he?
I don’t know, I didn’t look.
Admit that he’s good-looking.
Not exactly my taste.
He’s like an angel.
Yeah, all right, I get the point.
The girls at school are crazy about him.
Tell it to someone who cares.
Did you talk to him?
He was asleep, like I said! He can’t hear a thing.
I meant—did you talk to him? Did you tell him anything?
Leave me alone, won’t you just leave me alone!
Ora?
What?
Did he open his eyes? Did he see you?
I can’t hear you, I’m not hearing anything, la-la-la-la—
But did he say anything? Did he talk to you?
“ … On a wagon bound for market, there’s a calf with a mournful eye …”
Just tell me if he spoke.
“ … High above him there’s a swallow, winging swiftly through the sky …”
Wait, isn’t that the song?
What?
That’s the song, I swear. From when you woke me up.
Are you sure?
Except then you were screaming it so loudly I couldn’t even make out—
That’s the song …
A calf with a mournful eye, yes, “Dona Dona.” But you were shouting it, like you were fighting with someone, arguing.
Ora could feel herself lift up out of her own body and float to a distant place that was not a place, where she and Ada walked together and sang Ada’s favorite song, and it was Ada’s mother’s favorite song too, and sometimes, when she washed the dishes, she would sing it to herself in Yiddish. The song about a calf being led to the slaughter, and a swallow that flies up in the sky and mocks him, then flutters away with lighthearted joy.
Avram, Ora said suddenly in horror, leave now, leave!
What did I do now?
Go! And take him with you! I have to sleep now, quick. I want to—
What?
I have to dream her …
Later, just before dawn, she suddenly appeared in the doorway of Room Three and called to him in a whisper. He jumped awake: What are you doing here? She said sadly, I’ve never met anyone like you, and then corrected herself: Any boy like you. He was hunched over, extinguished, and he murmured, So, did you dream about her? Ora mumbled, No, I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to so badly that I couldn’t. And he asked, But why did you want to? What was so …? She said, I have to tell her something important.
Ora, said Avram tiredly and without any pleasure, Do you want to see him again? She said, Do you have a screw loose or something? I’m ta
lking about you, and all you keep doing is showing me him. Why are you, like, purposely—Honestly, I don’t know, he said. I’m always like that, it just comes out. And she said desperately, I don’t understand anything anymore, I don’t understand anything.
They sat hunched in the dark, suddenly very ill. From one moment to the next the burden of bad tidings swelled inside him. What a mistake he had made, what a terrible, destructive complication he had caused by leaving her alone with Ilan.
There’s something else I wanted to tell you, he said hopelessly, but you’re probably not interested, are you? She asked carefully, something like what? But even before he spoke she knew what he would say, and her body locked up against him. No one knows that I write, he said. I write all the time.
But what, what do you write? Her voice sounded oddly piercing to her own ears. Essays? Limericks? Tall tales? What?
I write all kinds of things, Avram said with slight arrogance. Once, when I was little, I used to make up stories, all the time. Now I write totally different things … I don’t understand, she hissed, you just sit there and write, for yourself? A desolate revulsion enveloped him. He wanted her to leave. To come back. To be who she was before. The thing that had been woven between them the last few nights, the wonder, the delicate secret cooled and faded away at once. And perhaps it had never existed at all, perhaps it had only been in his head, along with everything else.
Just explain to me, she urged him, suddenly eager for battle, what you mean by “I write totally different things”? But Avram sank into himself, amazed at the sting of betrayal. Ora mumbled stubbornly, And limericks are fun! Let me tell you, they are the ultimate entertainment! She recalled the way he had said earlier that in these years he was interested in voices—“in these years”! From which she was apparently supposed to conclude that in previous years he had been interested in other things, that snob, as if he already knew that in “the next years”—ha!—he would have yet other interests. Smart aleck. But she, she, where had she been “in these years”? What had she wasted herself on? All she’d done was cheat everyone and sleep with her eyes open. That was her big accomplishment. A cheating pro, sleepwalking champion of the world. She slept when she ran and did high jumps and played volleyball, and most of all when she swam, because it was a lot less painful in water than on land. She slept when she went with the team to the stadium in Ein Iron on Saturdays, and sometimes they went to the Maccabi courts in Tel Aviv, and in the back of the truck she roared cheers at the passersby along with everyone else.