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  “Why?” she asked.

  “I’m going through a very difficult period with myself,” she heard him say. “I’m over forty, and I haven’t achieved anything in my life. I haven’t even got a house of my own. Or a profession. The world’s getting harder and harder. I can’t adjust to it and I ask myself why.”

  “And because the world’s getting harder and harder you want to separate from me?” asked Lirit.

  “Yes, Lirit. It doesn’t suit me to be with you when I don’t value myself. You deserve better. Tell me, what am I to you? An aging loser who hates what he has become. I have to take it in spite of the wound to my ego, and to think about what to do next.”

  “You’re not a loser,” said Lirit in a raised voice, but it didn’t help her to suppress the thought that he actually was. Shlomi was a loser according to plenty of criteria, except perhaps for those related to Buddhism or Zen-Buddhism.

  “I thought that with you far away in the north, it was an excellent opportunity to tell you what I’m going through,” he said.

  “Don’t you love me anymore?” Lirit asked him glumly, since neither Shlomi’s career nor his satisfaction with himself interested her, but only how he felt about her.

  “I don’t know what love is. I only know that you can’t swim in the same river twice and that what’s past is past. If our relationship is to continue it has to be something new, and only after I know more about myself.”

  “And isn’t it possible,” the girl from Telba-North made bold to ask, “for me to be at your side while you think? I’m quite quiet,” she said suddenly. “I won’t disturb you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “No-no-no,” pronounced Shlomi. “I’m not making it easy on myself. If I wanted to, I could go and stay with my mother in Sefad. I intend to stay here on my own and to break my head alone.”

  “Hey, that’s a rhyme.”

  “It came out by accident,” he said wearily.

  There was an oppressive silence.

  “Good,” said Shlomi.

  “Good,” repeated Lirit.

  “That’s it”’ said Shlomi.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s how it is.”

  “Okay.”

  She hung up quickly because she didn’t want him to hear her cry. True enough, the guy was broken down and boring. But if she lost him—what would she do then?

  Loss suddenly broke into Lirit’s life. Her mother had taught her that in situations that were impossible to bear, simply impossible, because the nightmare was larger than life, there was no alternative: you anesthetized yourself. At the moment it was clear to the former NCO-Casualties that she was stuck in a busy junction, without any traffic lights, not even blinking ones, and the situation was really scary. And so she detached herself from it.

  She went to the medicine cabinet and found her mother’s kits arranged in little bags of cocktails: a bag with five Clonex zero-point-fives and two Vabens of ten milligrams and a Bondormin or two. Another bag contained one Clonex of two milligrams and six Bondormins, without Vaben, and so on, about twenty little bags with cocktails for anesthetizing sensation, consciousness, personality, and the body that contained all the above.

  She chose a cocktail that was more or less pure Clonex, with just one Bondormin, and calculated that when she woke up, she would be able to cope with the sudden emptiness in her life where being part of a couple used to be, but in the meantime she went to the handsome kitchen, filled a disposable glass with too-cold water from the mineral water container, and swallowed the cocktail with its help.

  Afterward she closed all the electric blinds in the house, not God forbid in anger, but with the decisiveness of a woman doing something that had to be done, and returned to her parents’ suite, which was as clean and tidy as a hotel suite because the Columbian cleaner had been there in the morning. First of all, she switched off her cell phone. Disconnected it completely, rather than putting it on mute, so that whoever called would get it in his face that the subscriber was not available and he should try again later. By this blunt treatment of the instrument she also denied herself the desire to look at the little screen and see how many calls—or, God forbid, what if none at all, which was also possible—had gone unanswered.

  The young woman was well aware that the reality of her life was undergoing a process of change and that she had to get ready to deal with it differently. If Shlomi broke her heart—something she was no longer so sure would happen—she would cry only after she had taken care of her mother, and after her father had returned to Israel, and after Dael had survived the army, when life got more or less back on track, or found a different track.

  She got into her parents’ beautiful comfortable bed, and the pills she had taken put her to sleep in five minutes.

  4

  RITA, THE INTENSIVE CARE NURSE IN ICHILOV HOSPITAL, tried every possible means of contacting the family of the patient Amanda Gruber, who had arrived straight from Medical Frontline in critical condition.

  She got the phone numbers from Amanda herself, but there was no answer from the patient’s home, her daughter’s cell phone announced immediately that the subscriber was not available, and her son’s cell phone rang and rang to no effect.

  Dael didn’t answer because he didn’t answer unidentified numbers on principle. His father, Irad Gruber, had instilled an aversion to unidentified numbers in him because all the numbers at WIDA were unidentified, apart from his own. Gruber preferred to remain identified, and thus to know if he was being screened.

  While Rita was desperately calling him and his sister by turn, the outstanding sniper was busy on his base somewhere in the country, surfing the Internet by means of an upgraded cell phone belonging to a friend. He was searching for schools for paparazzi in the United States.

  He found one in Santa Monica, one in Santa Barbara, one in Santa Fe, and one in Santa Cruz, and in another six places without Santas. He copied the addresses into a notebook where he wrote down sentences from important books. Only after repeated rings, when he could no longer overcome his curiosity to discover the identity of the insistent anonymous caller, he answered the phone.

  And then—go wasn’t the word. He shot like a missile to his CO, who commanded him to make for his mother pronto, and volunteered to drive him to the station in time to get the last train to Tel Aviv. From the CO’s car he tried to get his sister at his parents’ home, but there was no answer, and her cell phone was silent too.

  He couldn’t take the news that his mother was in critical condition single-handed, and he felt as if he was collapsing into himself.

  While he was waiting for the train, he remembered his sister’s number at Shlomi’s, and when he called it, Shlomi answered, and Dael asked him if he had heard anything.

  Shlomi had always been cool to him, because he thought that Dael had blood on his hands, that he was nothing short of a murderer, and that he should have refused to obey orders. This time Shlomi was really nasty, and only after Dael explained how grave the situation was, Shlomi volunteered the information that he had spoken to Lirit a few hours before, and added that since Dael was suddenly so worried about Lirit, he was beginning to feel worried too and asked Dael to keep him informed of further developments.

  DAEL HAD NO INTENTION of keeping this schmuck informed about any developments. The loathing between them was mutual. It had come to a head one Friday night the previous winter when Shlomi had done them the favor of showing up at the apartment in Telba-North, after Lirit had pressured him into it. Mandy had prepared a relatively festive meal. Usually she bought takeout from selected delis, but this time she surpassed herself and made a quiche and salads—all organic, without pesticides, chemicals, and genetic modifications.

  Around the table they talked about Dael’s ambition to study to become a paparazzo abroad, and to photograph celebrities on the local scene in poses that up to now had never graced a camera. Shlomi argued that this was an invasion of privacy and Dael insisted that the minu
te someone was a celeb—his life was no longer his own business.

  Lirit tried to change the subject, and asked those present if they had seen that a Michal Negrin boutique had been opened in Mikado. Mandy couldn’t stand the jewelry they sold at those shops and shut her daughter up, without any sensitivity to the diversionary tactics her offspring was attempting to put into play, with the result that Shlomi launched into an inflammatory speech against Tel Baruch North and its inhabitants.

  Dael remarked that with all due respect to the saying that fresh eyes see every flaw, Shlomi didn’t know enough to form an opinion about any neighborhood North of the Yarkon River. But Shlomi insisted that it was enough to check out a few streets here in order to know what you were up against, and Dael replied (apparently in order to impress Aya Ben-Yaish, who was also present at the table, but who kept quiet, except for occasionally giggling shyly, or spitefully, who knows) that for someone who couldn’t stand the place or the people who lived there, he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off one of them, meaning Lirit.

  Lirit and Mandy exchanged shocked looks. Irad Gruber didn’t bat an eye, and only when Mandy whispered to him that his autism was off the charts, he intervened and said, “Okay-okay, enough-enough-enough, everybody shut up.”

  Later that evening, when they were putting the dishes in the dishwasher, one rinsing in the sink and the other arranging, the mother and daughter decided to refrain in future from inviting Shlomi and Dael to sit at the same table because there was an ideological chasm yawning between them. That same week Dael was sent on a mission to eliminate someone heavy, and he imagined Shlomi and hit right in the center of the wanted man’s body mass.

  ON THE TRAIN to Tel Aviv Dael tried his father’s cell phone a few times too, but in the end he understood that perhaps he hadn’t taken it with him to America at all.

  The person sitting opposite him was sucking air through his teeth, as if an obstinate crumb was stuck there and he was trying to suck it out. The noise he was making with his teeth got on Dael’s nerves, and he asked himself how he could approach him without insulting him. Every formulation that occurred to him was disqualified as soon as he imagined what he himself would feel if someone had addressed him in such a way in the middle of the train. He had a talent for stepping momentarily into somebody else’s shoes, which ostensibly seemed completely in contradiction to the fact that he was also an outstanding shot. But he never stepped into the shoes of the people he shot.

  He moved to another seat and rang home again and met again and again with the answering machine, which said in Mandy’s voice, “You have reached the Gruber family: Amanda Gruber,” (yes, she jumped to the head of the queue), “Irad Gruber, Lirit Gruber and Dael Gruber. You may leave a message for any of these.”

  Dael thought about the word “these.” She could have said “them,” or simply said nothing after the word “message,” but Mandy, who had arrived in Israel at the age of eight, still had a complex about not being a sabra, and took every opportunity to display her mastery of the Hebrew language.

  He couldn’t understand what was happening to his sister. “Troubles never come singly,” his mother liked to say, and added “God forbid.” The possibility of his sister being in trouble horrified him, and he tried to remember the name of their neighbors, something like Rotterdam, but not actually Rotterdam . . . He recalled his mother saying that she had doubts about their Jewishness because of their Flemish appearance, and he remembered that their name was Amsterdam.

  He called information and wrote down their number on the beautiful bookmark he took out of The Red and the Black. The doubtful neighbors were diligent but not at all efficient. They rang and rang, knocked and knocked, called, “Lirit, Lirit,” but got no reply. They told Dael that they could hear the phone ringing in the triplex. Mr. Amsterdam suggested calling someone to break in, but Dael thanked him politely.

  He put his gun down on the seat on his right, passed the strap over his head to his left shoulder, and buried his head in his hands.

  He had never felt so guilty. If he hadn’t been doing this job in the army, his mother wouldn’t have gone in for plastic surgery and Lirit wouldn’t have had to come up north in order to take charge of the factory.

  He raised his head and looked at the approaching lights of Lydda and decided to prioritize. His mother was in certain danger, and he would therefore concentrate on her and set the mystery of Lirit aside for the time being.

  AMANDA GRUBER PASSED AWAY at five fifty in the morning, Israel time. An hour before Dr. Yagoda left his home in Dresden in order to spend the following days and nights recuperating on the banks of some lake or other. In any case, there was nothing he could have done. A virulent germ had attacked the area of the operation. Usually this germ was friendly, but in rare cases it became virulent and consumed the bones rapidly.

  Dr. Atzmon Lidani, the intensive care doctor, didn’t tell Dael and Lirit (who, after she woke up, was located safe and sound at home) in so many words that their mother was turning into a boneless mollusk. They understood for themselves. Dr. Lidani only told the horrified children that the bacteria had attacked their mother at five different points, and that the stronger it became from devouring the bones the faster it worked. Dr. Lidani did all he could. The minute he admitted the patient to intensive care, he had drawn up a protocol of liquids for her and given her pulses of steroids and huge quantities of antibiotics. In the meantime he had located an international expert on the bacteria in question on the Internet, in the state of Virginia. He had found him on vacation in Miami, and proceeded according to his instructions.

  “He’s number one in the world, and I hold him in very high esteem,” said Dr. Lidani to Mandy’s children, “Let’s pray that something takes.”

  “We’ll cross our fingers,” said Lirit.

  Mandy was no stammerer, and even though she disliked the Hebrew language, she knew how to speak it fluently and very well. But now she had great difficulty in speaking since the bacteria had attacked the bones of her face and jaw.

  “Nothing left,” she said. “Not worth it. The elbows. The head. It’s in the skull. Enough. No towels in the Sheraton. All finished.”

  Lirit couldn’t bear to hear her mother talking like this, in sober despair and at the same time not to the point. The combination made her uncomfortable. She wanted to remember her at her best, and she told Dael that she was going to the vending machine to fetch hot chocolate for him and coffee for herself.

  On her way back with the two brown plastic glasses, she heard her mother shouting, “Ohhhhhhh,” threw both glasses out of the window in a panic, and ran into the room.

  Mandy had succeeded in raising herself on her stomach (the condition of her spine gave her an unnatural flexibility) and she was pleading with Dael to tell the nurse to turn her onto her back.

  “Morphine. Lots. And head up.”

  The nurses didn’t dare turn her over on their own initiative and went to look for the doctor. Dr. Lidani gave his permission, on the grounds of human dignity. He gave instructions for her to be given a heavy dose of an extreme painkiller, to wait for it to take maximum effect, and then to turn her over with her face to the ceiling.

  Dael and two nurses turned her over and fixed the pillows, and Mandy whispered:

  “To die on my back. Not my stomach. At least.”

  It was apparent that she was gathering her strength. “Children. Body to science. The funeral later. For what’s left. No to organic cotton.” She looked at her horrified daughter. “No nonsense. My line to continue. Like my mother. From generation to generation.” After it seemed that she had fallen silent, she added with a unique effort, “I’ll haunt you from above.”

  “Yes, yes, mother,” mumbled Lirit without believing her. She wondered if she would really haunt her, and remembered how her mother would say that death was the unraveling of a thread from the fabric of life, and from the point of view of the dead, death was a final exit. It seemed to Lirit that she had discovered a c
ontradiction in her mother’s words, because if death was a final exit, the unraveling of a thread, how would she be able to haunt her from above?

  “Only the ultra-Orthodox market. Only them. No tricks,” Mandy mumbled, and then she began to rattle, and the rest followed as usual, until death, the road to which was padded with generous amounts of morphine, because why let them suffer?

  THE DOOR TO the Intensive Care Unit opened again to the brother and sister Gruber, this time on their way out.

  “What time is it in the United States?” asked Lirit.

  “Seven hours back.”

  “Back? Not forward?”

  “Back.”

  “But there are a few time zones there. At least four.”

  Dael didn’t answer because his world had collapsed. What did he care what time it was, even in Israel?

  They walked silently down the vale of tears of the Ichilov corridors, until they reached the elevator.

  The stock of the M24 got stuck between the two closing doors, and Dael groaned and pulled the gun toward him. He was still in uniform.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said, “I don’t understand this situation.”

  Lirit led her brother in the direction of their mother’s car, in which she had arrived. While she was racing into the Ichilov Hospital underground parking, she had muttered to herself, “What a terrible thing to happen . . . what a terrible thing to happen.” And now, as she wandered round with her brother looking helplessly for the way out, she thought that it really was a catastrophe. She asked Dael:

  “What’s going to happen now?”

  Dael didn’t answer again, because his thoughts were a mess. When they arrived at the parking lot and it turned out that Lirit didn’t actually remember where she had parked, because of course she was very upset, he said, “Find the car already. I’m dying to get out of here. There isn’t enough oxygen here. They should hand out oxygen masks at the entrance to the parking garage, not a ticket. Did you pay?”