I only missed three days of rehearsals, and I wasn’t needed in those scenes. I am covered from head to toe with mosquito bites, by the way! Kostya fared better: his tent had a net.

  My love, I am drifting off … good night, sweet prince.

  SONYA

  My brain was quite empty, for a change. It was about five past one, but I wasn’t in the least bit hungry. Kostya always tried to come home for lunch, but on most days he was too busy at the hospital and he phoned me instead. I wondered whether he’d show up today. “If he does,” I said out loud, addressing the ladybug, “he’ll have to eat alone.”

  I decided to shower, though a part of me didn’t want to wash off the man’s sperm, which had leaked out of me. There was no connection at all between what had happened today and the drugged assault in the classroom; a wall composed of several galaxies separated the two events. After the twins had left, all I could think of was washing. You’d think I’d be worried about other things, like whether my bones were broken, whether I’d ever walk again, whether I was about to die from a brain concussion. You’d think that what I would want most would be drugs for pain. But all I wanted was to wash. And when the janitor heard me moaning and found me, I said, “I need a shower.” The ambulance arrived and I told the medics the same thing: “I need a shower.” They tried to move me and I passed out. When I woke up in the hospital, the first thing I asked the nurse was: “Did you wash me?” “Of course,” she spelled. I said, “Don’t tell anyone what happened,” because I didn’t want people who knew me, especially my brother and Noah, to be upset, but it was too late by then. The whole country already knew; I was surrounded by flowers from well-wishers, and the police were waiting in the hallway to talk to me. An hour later the twins were arrested: how many identical twins are there in this country, with shaven heads and dragon tattoos on their arms? They were easy to track down.

  What had taken place today was the exact opposite. I stepped into the shower a little wistfully; I was sorry to be removing all traces of my lover. Even though the episode had perhaps borne a closer resemblance to Bottom’s version of Pyramus and Thisbe than to anything in Ovid, it was something I had wanted, something I had decided on. A man had never come inside me before; I had never felt a body shivering on top of me. The twins had come on my face.

  When I stepped out of the shower I realized that I was no longer sleepy; instead, I was in the mood for a swim. Kostya and I both love to swim, and our biggest extravagance was the oval pool we had built on the east side of the house. I changed into my bathing suit and jumped into the pool with the imperiousness of an Olympic diver. I let my body fall down, down, to the bottom of the deep end. Then the water pushed me back up like seaweed or driftwood, unwaking, undrowning, impervious to human voices. I caught my breath, turned on my back, and propelled myself with my arms. I heard the rhythm of my body, the trickles and spurts and ripples of water caressing my body as it surged from one end of the pool to the other.

  My brother appeared suddenly in my field of vision; he was standing by the edge of the pool. I smiled at him, or rather at his tanned feet, partly visible through brown leather sandal straps. I swam to the edge of the pool and lifted myself out. During the summer months my brother wears a navy baseball cap. With his short gray beard, blue jeans, and the baseball cap shading his eyes, he looks more like a fisherman or a bartender than a doctor. Fisherman by day, bartender by night.

  He smiled at me.

  “Am I getting too fat?” I asked, slightly self-conscious in my bathing suit.

  “You’re exactly the same, beautiful as always.”

  I went to my bedroom and put on a black skirt and burgundy top, which suited my slightly more sober mood. In the meantime my brother had poured himself a glass of wine, put on a CD, and settled himself on our living-room sofa, a rather outlandish but irresistible four-seater with a birds-of-paradise print, which I’d bought on impulse. Amidst these extravagant birds my brother looked wise and reliable, like a slender Buddha.

  “I’m not at all hungry,” I said. “I’ll just keep you company.”

  “Unusual for you,” Kostya said.

  “Maybe because I had sex today,” I told him, somewhat smugly.

  He was taken aback, and immediately a wave of concern swept over his body. I said, “I met a man, a very nice man—polite, shy. I invited him in for coffee. He drank, he ate, he thanked me. I asked him to have sex with me and he agreed, but then he ran away in a panic.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. A taxi driver.”

  “Someone you didn’t know?”

  “He drove me home from the university. He was nice, so I invited him in.”

  My brother looked exasperated. “Did you at least use a condom?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He was very upset by that. “That’s extremely stupid.”

  “What are the odds?” I asked.

  “What do odds matter when you’re dead?” he said. “Now you need to get a test. Several tests. We had four new cases of hepatitis at the hospital just today.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

  “You didn’t use any contraceptive at all? What if you get pregnant?”

  “Well, as it happens, just by luck, I’m two days away from my period.”

  He shook his head but didn’t say anything.

  “And by the way,” I added, “that pill you gave me was soporific! I could hardly keep my eyes open during class and I fell asleep in the taxi.”

  “Sorry. It specifically says ‘non-soporific’ on the box.”

  “That’s why I took a taxi. The driver didn’t talk at all. He never said anything, so he didn’t know I couldn’t hear. I fell asleep in the taxi because of that crazy antihistamine, and I forgot my briefcase in the car. He ran after me and he was sweet, so I invited him in and after he ate I took him to my room.”

  “What made you decide, suddenly?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My brother could not conceal his dismay—not at my failure to protect myself from disease but at the cultural mores that had dictated my behavior. It was a subject that had often come up in our conversations. My brother found attitudes to sex in our country depressing. And it was getting worse all the time, he would say: male and female prostitutes invited to parties, sex in public bathrooms, meaningless mating between strangers. A carnality that bordered on pathology, he said, though in his more generous moments he attributed it to stress and constant contact with death: those things made people dispense with caution; it made them angry and their anger made them hungry and cynical. Monogamy used to mean something, he would say with a sigh. Some sort of … consideration, investment, respect. Now it had become an archaic concept. He found it astounding that not one of his friends or colleagues had a monogamous marriage. Either the husband was cheating and his wife knew but pretended she didn’t, or the wife was cheating and the husband didn’t know, or else they were both cheating. He was convinced this was a sign of a society in decline.

  I didn’t agree with Kostya; I teased him and told him, unfairly, that he was a prude. There was nothing wrong with sex, I said, nothing wrong with inviting a young attractive person to a party to satisfy the desires of the hostess. And if more people would learn to sign, I’d join in the fun. That’s what I said, but my brother didn’t believe me. He thought my situation was complicated, and he wanted me to see a therapist. I felt insulted by the suggestion. I was well adjusted, I told him, and far happier than almost everyone I knew.

  “Maybe this was a sort of necessary first step,” he said, supposedly to reassure me but really to reassure himself. “A first step to meeting someone, dating, getting to know them.” The Valley of Death look I’d come to know so well crossed his face; he was thinking about the twins. I was reminded of the menacing shadow that falls dramatically on vulnerable protagonists in animated Disney cartoons, and the image of a cartoon Kostya peering up at the shadow made me laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I just thought of you in a Disney movie. For heaven’s sake, Kostya, stop dwelling on that. It’s been fourteen years—I don’t even remember what happened anymore. The only thing that bothers me at the moment is that my lover got scared and ran away.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “He thought I was mad. I told him he was my first lover, and then I told him I was deaf. He mumbled something and ran off.”

  “I’m so sorry, Sonya.”

  “But I’m sure if I could just find him and explain, he would give me a second chance. I should have spoken to him first but I was too impatient.”

  “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does to me. I think I love him.”

  “How can you possibly love someone you know absolutely nothing about?”

  “You can know a lot about someone by spending some time with them.”

  “Not enough for love.”

  “Everyone knows there’s such a thing as love at first sight.”

  “There’s sexual attraction at first sight, that’s all. Whether or not it develops into love, or whether we persuade ourselves that it’s love, is a different matter. Besides, Sonya, he might be married.”

  “No, I don’t think so. You know I’m good at sensing things like that.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I’m really sorry,” he repeated. “I was hoping your first experience would be more meaningful.”

  “It was meaningful. I love him. And I’m going to find him and explain.”

  “How will you find him?”

  “His license number … It’s odd, but I also kissed one of my students today.”

  My brother smiled. “Downpour after drought.”

  “It was just a coincidence. The student with the eyes—it turns out he has a crush on me. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe that kiss brought me to my senses.”

  “Yes, very sensible to invite a stranger into your house and take him to bed.”

  “He probably lives in Jaffa.”

  “Jaffa?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  Kostya looked confused. “He’s an Arab?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think so.”

  He dropped his chin and folded his arms, the way he used to do when I was a child and didn’t want to help with chores. In Kostya-language that meant, “Fine, do what you want, I’m not going to bother arguing with you when you yourself know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  “What?” I insisted.

  “Nothing.”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Think how he must have felt!” Kostya blurted out uncharacteristically.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m sure I can get his address if I have his license number. Maybe I can go to the police, they’ll be able to tell me who he is.”

  “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. They’ll assume he’s done something wrong and arrest him, after questioning you.”

  “I’ll make up a story.”

  “What story?”

  “I’ll say he dropped something. And that I have to return it.”

  “Just how stupid do you think the police are?”

  “Okay, I’ll say I’m in love and I have to find him.”

  “An even better idea.”

  “You’re not being a jealous brother, are you?”

  “No, I’m a worried brother.”

  “Stop worrying about me. I’m thirty-two. I’m a university professor. I know what I’m doing.”

  My brother pondered for a few moments. Finally he said, “All right, I’ll use my pull. I’ll call the police and say he’s a patient, I have his test results but we’ve lost his file—we only have his license number.”

  I jumped up happily and brought him the phone. “Do it now,” I ordered him.

  Kostya made several calls before he found the right department. He took his pen out of his shirt pocket and scribbled something down in the margin of a medical magazine that was lying on the side table.

  “That was easy,” he said when he was off the phone. “They believed me immediately. Doctors are holy in this country—a doctor couldn’t possibly be making up a story in order to track down and harass some hapless stranger for his sister.”

  “What did they say?”

  “His name is Nazim Sharif, and you’re right, he lives in Jaffa. I have his address.”

  “Oh, what would I do without you, sweetheart!” I gave him a hug and kissed his cheek, or rather his beard.

  Then I gathered my things, not forgetting to take my makeup. I wanted to look my best.

  NOAH’S DIARY, NOVEMBER 12, 1984.

  In the news: Spiegler got fired as coach because Hapoel Tel Aviv lost again. A fan threw a rock at his car window. Last season he got fired by Maccabi Netanya after eight games. Soccer is a heartless profession.

  Sonya is extremely lucky I didn’t strangle her today. Finally, finally, Ilanit and I organized a place and a time. We did it by skipping on the same morning, which took a lot of planning and ingenuity on both our parts. For two weeks that’s all we’ve been thinking about and finally we managed it—we found a time when her whole family was away. She couldn’t come here because of all the neighbors—everyone minds everyone else’s business in this stupid place. Whereas in her building if anyone sees me they can’t know which apartment I’m going to, and in any case no one’s around during the day except the Fireman, who’s about 100 years old. He’s not really a fireman, people just call him that because he once set off the fire alarm when someone in the building burned their toast.

  All I can say is, it’s a good thing Oren gave me all that information, or I would have been a goner. It’s so complicated. How come it’s so simple for other mammals and so complicated for us? Well, everything’s more complicated with us, obviously: we have brains. Without Oren’s information I’m sure we wouldn’t have managed to get anywhere. She wasn’t wet at all, that still worries me, but Oren says it’s nerves, on account of it being the first time. All I can say is, I can’t wait for that next time. I will die waiting. It’s impossible for there to be something this good that is also this hard to get. Probably like heroin. I came three times but the first two didn’t count. The first time I wasn’t even in yet, and frankly, I had no idea how to get in, but luckily the second time, after a lot of complications, I made it. But I was only in for one second. The third was normal, I guess.

  And then we heard loud footsteps out in the hallway and someone turning the lock. We were on the floor, on a sheet I brought from home, and we froze. I have never been so scared in my life. Even if I’m in a war and I have to run through enemy fire I won’t be this scared. If Ilanit’s father or one of her brothers finds out, I can’t begin to imagine what would happen. They’re extremely regressive. I grabbed the sheet and my clothes and ran to her room and hid under the bed. I was sweating like crazy. Ilanit ran to the bathroom. I was trying to get dressed under the bed when I hear Sonya screeching at the top of her lungs, “Anyone home?” She had figured out what was going on and followed me, and she pretended to be unlocking the door in order to scare us. Ilanit wasn’t at all amused. “You have to do something about your sister,” she said after Sonya escaped. Everyone thinks Sonya’s my sister, they keep forgetting she’s my aunt.

  I tortured her in the garden to find out if she’d told anyone but she swore she hadn’t. Can I trust her? I’m so stressed out I can’t even think, and there’s a huge chemistry exam tomorrow. I keep expecting one of Ilanit’s brothers to climb in through the window (or just give the damned porch door a kick, it’s practically falling off its hinges, like everything else in this dump) and stick a knife in me. I can’t sleep. Sonya thinks it’s a big joke. She has no perspective at all. I don’t know exactly what she knows, actually. She’s only eleven (twelve next week), and I don’t think she knows anything about sex, though she does seem to be very interested in insect reproduction. She knows how all sorts of bugs and snails reproduce and keeps looking at eggs and things under her microscope. Once she forced me to look, there was just this yellow powder on the glass, but when I looked through the lens I saw a million little eggs. It was gross but I have to admit amazing.

  LETTER TO ANDREI, MARCH 10, 1957

  Dearest, today was such a hard day! At the restaurant a man was very rude and I lost my temper with him. As you know, that almost never happens to me, but we’ve been having a bit of a heat wave, and perhaps this made me more irritable than usual. This man was rather distinguished looking, with gray hair and a scholarly air about him. First he complained about the flies—it certainly wasn’t my fault that there were flies everywhere! Then he complained about the food, even though our food is not bad at all—but he seemed to be expecting a gourmet feast at Buckingham Palace.

  Then he complained about the service, though I did my absolute best for him. And finally he complained about his heartburn! Even his heartburn was my fault! I had just about had enough, so I said, “Maybe you should eat at home next time, then you will be spared all these trials.” I was quite angry by then. He left in a huff—I hope he will not be back.

  The owners were very nice about it. They told me the man is a well-known journalist and that he’s always acting superior to everyone. There isn’t much tolerance in this country for people behaving as if they deserve more admiration than everyone else, and do you know, even really famous people wear sandals and are addressed by their first name. The owners told me not to worry about him, because in any case he lives in Jerusalem and only came to our restaurant by chance.

  But I am not very happy with myself. I don’t want to become the sort of person who fights with everyone. Many people here are continually arguing and having conflicts, and I can see how they are only making their own lives harder. I had no satisfaction at all, being so rude to that man. I must not let myself be affected by the atmosphere here!