— I mean… that he could have soothed that deep sense of loss that maybe I really do go around with all the time…
— Yes, like a kind of father… but it was only for a minute, no more than that, believe me…
— But he didn’t. That was the confusing part, Mother. Because all this time I had the feeling that he too was sending these hidden distress signals, as though he were whispering to me, Yes, you’re right, what you saw last night was no mistake but something that almost happened, don’t leave me, while at the same time I had the feeling that he wanted to get rid of me. Anyway, he offered to drive me to the bus station again — it was as if he wanted to make sure that this time I really left Jerusalem. He walked me under his umbrella to his car and opened the door for me like a gentleman to make up for jilting me and even stopped in some little street in the marketplace and took me to a tiny joint where he ordered this special Jerusalem hummus for me with a hard-boiled egg diced into it and behaved really sweetly, even if he did fade out from time to time as though the lights had gone out inside him and there was a power failure there. But each time they came on again and he asked some new question, whose answer didn’t really interest him, about Efi, who he seemed to think I knew more about than he did. There was a point in all that noise and winter weather when I had an urge to tell him what was in store for him in this little stomach of mine that he was stuffing with hummus, but I controlled myself and didn’t. And when we left the restaurant, he not only drove me to the station, he went out of his way to buy me a ticket and bring me to the platform and stand me in line as if I were a retarded child — and even then he didn’t say good-bye but waited patiently until I got on the bus and it began to pull out, which was actually very nice — I mean, all that being taken care of and being chaperoned, especially since I really did want to get home and out of the cold and the rain, even if it was also a little humiliating to see how he was manipulating me back to Tel Aviv, as though I were a mental case that had walked into his life instead of a perfectly innocent messenger on a mission of good will…
— Wait.
— No, just a minute, Mother, wait…
— Yes, it was two days ago, on Wednesday afternoon. I actually did leave Jerusalem…
— I really did leave it. It was storming outside, and everyone in the bus kept talking about how it was going to snow… about how it just had to snow… and I thought, well, that’s it, it’s over with, what do I care, maybe I really did just imagine it, and anyway, I have to go home, I can’t spend the rest of my life chasing after him. The bus was already speeding down the mountains toward the coast, there was nothing but fog all around, and right outside the city we drove into such a thick cloud of it that you couldn’t see a thing… at which point, the bus suddenly turned off the highway into a side road. Mr. Mani, it seemed, had been so eager to get rid of me that he had put me on the local instead of the express! We started winding through the fog, in and out of all kinds of villages. Everything was dripping wet outside, it was all so green and damp, and every now and then some hillside popped out of the fog into the window. It was sleeting too, and I thought, if it’s like this halfway to the coast, there must be snow in Jerusalem — the same snow Mr. Mani warned me about but was also looking forward to, maybe because then he could lock himself up in that railroad flat, and switch off all the lights, and turn up the heat, and take off his clothes, and open the blinds box in Grandmother’s room, and take the belt off the pulley, and knot one end of it, and kick away the stool, and bye-bye Mr. Mani…
— Yes, Mother. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The more we drove in and out on those roads outside of Jerusalem, the more it haunted me, so that when the bus finally rejoined the main highway and picked up speed again on the soft curves of those woodsy hills near the bottom of the mountains, and I knew that in another minute we would be flying over the coastal plain, something rebelled inside me, Mother, and I stood up in my seat…
— Yes. What rebelled was my desperation at having been made to leave Jerusalem against my will. I stood up all at once, and something propelled me to the front of the bus, and I said to the driver, “I’m very sorry, sir, but I’ll have to ask you to stop and let me out, because I’m pregnant and all this speed is bad for me and the baby…”
— Yes, the baby too. Don’t ask me what made me say it…
— I’m telling you, I did. What’s wrong with it?
— But what did I say?
— No, he was very nice about it. He slowed down a little and suggested that I move to the front of the bus, because it’s not as bouncy there, but when he saw that I was determined to get off, he didn’t argue. He stopped right at the bottom of the mountains, near that gas station there, and opened the door and said “Watch your step” and drove off into all that rain and fog. There was this total silence all around, and without thinking twice about it, Mother, or knowing what made me do it, I crossed to the other, the contrary side of the road, and headed for that old ruined building there, you know, the one where the road starts climbing back into the mountains…
— Yes. Someone once told me it was an old Arab khan where travelers to Jerusalem stopped to rest their horses. Anyway, there they were, waiting for me in the stillness… I mean that author or that director with his big black camera. Apparently, I had forgotten that we had arranged to meet there, and they were sitting on a stone terrace next to some dripping-wet trees, their heads in their hands just like yours is — don’t look at me that way, Mother, I promise you I’m not going crazy… Shhh… shhh… someone is knocking… don’t move…
— No. Don’t move. Who can it be?
— It doesn’t matter. Never mind. So you won’t answer for once in your life… so what?
— No, don’t get up…
— Would you rather I stopped?
— But what’s the matter?
— No… no… don’t be so worried… it’s just that I keep trying to explain this new feeling to you that I’ve never had before, which is that I’m not so alone anymore but part of a much bigger story that I don’t know anything about yet because it’s only beginning, although if I’m patient, I’ll find out. It was simply a way of calming myself, Mother, and I was even beginning to enjoy that old ruin, which everyone sees from the highway but no one ever bothers to explore. There was a sound of running water all around me, and I began to imagine all the travelers who must have stopped there on their way from Jaffa to Jerusalem, because a hundred years ago it was the place in which they all spent the night — and all at once, Mother, I had this feeling of great peace inside me…
— Yes. Of a lull in all the running around and studying for exams and other headaches. I could have gone on sitting there, hidden in that old ruin while watching the cars fly by in both directions and looking out over the valley, where the sun was fighting for its life with a black sky, only just then I thought to myself, even if you only imagined it, why don’t you put your mind to rest by making absolutely sure, this Mr. Mani-Depressive can be a grandfather soon if he doesn’t do anything rash, and so I left the khan and tried hitching a ride back into the mountains, and half an hour later I was in Jerusalem again, the streets of which were whitened by real snow…