Yours with comradely greetings,
Yisra’el Yolek Lifshitz

He rose from his chair with a groan, shuffled over to the bookcase, and opened a small panel between two shelves. With an unsteady hand he slipped the first draft of his letter into a bulging brown envelope that bore the heading “Personal/To Be Opened Posthumously” and shut the panel. Then he folded the second draft and put it in a plain envelope, which he addressed to Prime Minister and Defense Minister Levi Eshkol, The Government Compound, Jerusalem.

He extinguished the dying lamp, returned to bed, and lay there aching. The rain kept falling.

8

Now they’re both fast asleep, and it’s funny, because one fell asleep on the couch in the living room, burrowing beneath the pillow with his head to make himself a cave, and the other did just the opposite, sprawling on the bed in the bedroom without even taking off the cover, spreadeagled on his stomach. Watching anybody sleep makes you pity him. When you sleep, you look like the child you once were. In that book on human sacrifice in the Congo, it said that sleep is sent to us from the place where we were before we were born and will go back to after we die.

Both doors are open. The house is quiet. And so are we three. From where I am, I can see them both, one long and thin, one short and thin. Both absorbed in the same quiet. Not winning or losing any more. Not even at chess. This quiet comes from me. I have put Efrat to sleep, too, and now I am all alone. It is pitch dark through the window, but not so dark as in the two rooms where they are sleeping. Without jealousy. Without lies. Without moving. The one weak light comes from the kitchen, from me. Because that is where I am now, juicing grapefruit by the sink. Some of my light trickles over them through the open doors. They are both weak and good. That is how you are when you sleep.

I have my flannel bathrobe on. The brown one. It’s winter outside. On the jacket of The Magic of Chad is a picture of a black warrior spearing an antelope. But a warrior spears only himself. A dead antelope will run like the wind at night, run to the meadow, to the forest, run all the way home. Because all of us do have a home.

I showered and shampooed to look my best for them. My hair is wet and loose. When they wake, I will give them juice to drink because they have both been down since yesterday with a fever, headache, and cough. All winter Etan has been living with two girls in his room by the swimming pool. Since the day before yesterday I have been living with Yoni and the boy.