— Just a minute. Listen…
— Will you wait one minute!
— Not at all, Mother. He’s only your age, maybe even a little younger, somewhere in his middle forties. He could look pretty good if he wanted to. But when he opened the door that evening he was scary-looking, like some kind of depressed animal coming out from deep in its burrow, with this month-old mourner’s beard and a raggedy old bathrobe, all red-eyed and wild-haired. He was in his socks, and the apartment behind him was dark but heated like a furnace, and he seemed so surprised and upset by my having gotten him to open the door that all he could do was stand there blocking it and looking hostile. I could see there was no point in reminding him who I was, or in telling him I had been in his apartment a month ago on a condolence call, because he was so into himself that a month might have seemed to him like a hundred years or more. And so I just mentioned Efi again and gave him the message as quickly as I could before the door was shut in my face, and he stood there listening without a word, just shaking his head absentmindedly while beginning to close the door. But as luck would have it, Mother, just then the telephone rang — you would have thought that part of myself had stayed behind in Tel Aviv to keep on dialing. He looked around as if pretending not to notice it, or at least hoping I would go away so he could answer, but when he saw I had no intention of doing that and that the telephone wasn’t stopping, he went to pick it up in the living room — and then, Mother, perhaps because of the book I was in now, or because I knew I’d be protected by the photographer and the director and the whole camera team that was following my every movement, I decided not to take that head shake of his for an answer and I slipped inside uninvited, because I knew I had to find out what was going on in there…
— Because there must have been something if he was that determined to keep me out when I had come all the way from Tel Aviv with a message from his son and was standing there on the landing, soaking wet and half-frozen…
— You don’t say! I was waiting for that, Mother.
— I was waiting for it. I was wondering when you’d get around to that, so why don’t you just spill it all now… I’ve been expecting it for the last quarter of an hour, so if you must say it, this is the time…
— Yes, yes, why don’t you say it, go right ahead. There goes our Hagar looking for a father figure again… as usual, she’s latched onto some older man… I know that routine by heart… every time I would tell you when I was in the army about some officer a little older than me whom I happened to like, you’d get that pitying smile of yours right away…
— Yes, I know you didn’t, but it’s what you wanted to say, why not admit it, goddamn it? It follows logically from all those trite, pathetically shallow clichés you’ve been taught about the psychology of orphans…
— You mean there’s no special field of Orphan Psychology?
— How come?
— Well, you can be sure they’ll invent it soon…
— No, I already know all that…
— Just a minute. Listen…
— But that’s what you want to say, I know you do, so say it…
— Say it… what’s stopping you?
— I’m not angry.
— Because the truth may be very different. So why don’t you try, Mother, for once in your life, to think differently too. Did it ever occur to you, say, that what I’m looking for is not a father for me but a husband for you?
— Yes, a man for you… an honest-to-goodness man who could rescue you from this sterile life you’ve chosen to live, which is drying you up without your knowing it, so that even your best friends, as kind and sweet to you as they are… yes, they too… for all they admire you… are a little… what’s the word… tired of you, and worried about your growing old on them here in the desert — where, as long as you insist on working out in the fields, there’s not the ghost of a chance of meeting anyone, anyone, with some life in him whom you might feel close to and love… because one day I won’t be here anymore, either… so that maybe it’s not just for my sake that I sometimes, let’s say, suppose we just say, latch onto older men, if that’s really what I do, but also for…
— Yes. I’m finished.
— Exactly. To marry you off…
— You find that funny? I’ll bet you do! What’s wrong with it? It’s time you stopped being so stubborn and…
— What’s the same thing?
— How is it the same?
— Maybe…
— It’s possible…
— It’s possible… but so what? It may end up having the same result, but it’s not the same thing…
— No, don’t turn on any more lights. There’s enough light.
— Maybe, but so what? And this time in Jerusalem I didn’t thrust myself on anyone, Mother, because I had a perfect right to barge in…
— The right of the formula inside me, Mother, even if you don’t take it seriously… of the little tadpole that’s swimming inside me and nibbling away at my cells to create someone new… of this teensy little bloodball, which, say what you will, is going to burst out of me screaming at all of you next summer whether Efi owns up to being its father or not. And that, Mother, is why it was not only my right to enter that apartment without permission, it was my duty to the future Mr. Mani, who was curious to meet his ancestors on their own turf, because for the time being, until he’s old enough to represent himself, I’m his only representative, do you hear me?
— As a matter of fact, I understood in a flash what drew me to that apartment — and don’t tell me it was my imagination, because I know better, Mother, and it was not. It was absolutely, definitely not my imagination! I’m telling you right now that I don’t agree with a word you’re going to say, because I saw at a glance, Mother, the true horror of what was lurking there, which fully explained his strange behavior, and Efi’s anxiety, and the errand he had sent me on, and all my determined telephone calls, and there not being any answer, and most of all, the unfriendly way he blocked the door and tried forcing me back out into the foggy cold even though I had come on a mission of good will, because I, Mother, listen carefully, I literally stopped that man, Efi’s father, this Mr. Mani, from taking his own life…
— No, I’m not imagining it.
— Yes, I mean it. Listen to me, because it’s the truth, and it can happen in life too and not only in books, and by the simple act of going to Jerusalem on Tuesday, and not budging from the door, I kept that man from killing himself… yes, killing himself… because that’s exactly what he was going to do, it was clear to me then and it’s clear to me now. It all adds up… and if I hadn’t come along just then… when I think of it… and… and…
— No…
— No.
— I’m all right.
— I’m all right…