Once I read that Bach had ten or twenty children and that they all lived in a little red-brick house in Germany. Don’t be sad, Mrs. Bach may have said to him, you’ll see it will all be all right. And he said, yes, yes, though he hardly ever believed her, and helped fetch the coal and tend the fire and wash the dirty diapers and sing the sick baby to sleep. But sometimes when he was up late at night with a German rain falling outside, the spear and the antelope got to him too. He wanted a hug. Or a touch. Or a word. None of which Mrs. Bach could have given him even if she tried. His mother, he wanted his mother to come. To take him down from the cross. To wash the blood from his wounds. And what came instead? The usual. Another war. More bloodshed.

The water is boiling again. I’ll make them tea with lemon and honey in the big thermos. And fill the little one too. They’ll have it to drink tonight when their throats hurt. How dark that rain is in that dark window!

When I was little we planted trees on Arbor Day. Once I even planted a little black rubber ball in our garden. It didn’t take root and neither did the trees.

I am Rimona Lifshitz. I am Rimona Fogel. This is my daughter Efrat. This is my husband Yoni. This is my friend Zaro.

I left work early today to take care of my two sick men. Lipa fixed the boiler in the laundry that was broken when he was sick. Now he’s all better. He told me a joke in Yiddish. After I showered, I put my hair up so they could see my long neck. But then I thought, it’s nicer when it’s loose and tumbling down.

No, they’re not waking up. One’s curled up like a fetus in Healthy Pregnancy, and the other just turned over and groaned. He’s on his back like the crucified Bach in the jacket picture on the St. Matthew Passion, his arms spread wide and his hands balled into fists. Who gave me a cyclamen pressed between the pages of his pass book. Who wants to go to the tundra, to the taiga, to hunt for the whales that the newspaper said will soon be extinct. And to leave me with Efrat and Azariah. And with Tia. While we all wait for him.

That’s why I’ll change from this bathrobe. To look my best.

Whoever wakes can have juice and cake or else bread and sour cream. And have his temperature taken. And an aspirin. Zaro will play his guitar. Or else the three of us will play a game if we want.