Yoni’s game will be to pretend he’s a brave sailor hunting for whales or for desert islands in the South Seas. Far away at home I have to wait for him and trust him. In the end he’ll come back with a bullet wound in his shoulder and be written up again in the paper. And he’ll want to make violent love right away. And I’ll say yes.

With Zaro it’s mother and child. And because he’s so shy, it will be up to me to help him without his knowing that I am. From the first caress to the last little yelp, I’ll teach him not to hurry like a sneak thief because he isn’t stealing a thing and there’s nothing to be afraid of.

What I did for Azariah today was to wash and press his shirt and his gabardine slacks that got all muddy from our hike. And what I did for Yoni was to take his torn boot to the shoe shop and have Yashek fix it. So that it won’t annoy him any more or laugh at him.

You can see the clearing in the jungle on the banks of a blue river just as it says in The Blue Nile. Efrat’s crawling on all fours, the golden sand around her warm and clean. And the moonlight swaddles her with silver webs. From the empty depths behind her comes soft music. And African women in the whitest of white clothes are singing songs without words to their children in a language they call Amharic. And plucking hollow reeds from a shallow spot in the waters of the blue, blue Nile. And among them, dressed in white too, is Yehoshafat the teacher, who was hit in the head by a bullet while playing a tom-tom with the most delicate touch.

Blue-blue, blue-blue goes the heart. Blue-blue, blue-blue, in Africa there lived a gnu. Hush, little baby, don’t you cry, lu lu lu lu lu, you’ll see your daddy by and by, lu lu lu lu lu. Gnus, leopards, giraffes, lions, ostriches, hush, go to sleep, don’t cry. Don’t be sad, says Mr. Yehoshafat, it’s wrong to expect new things all the time, new antelopes, new spears, new wanderings, new wars. Whoever is tired will rest. And whoever has rested will listen. And whoever has listened will know that it’s a rainy night out. And that beneath the rain the wet earth lies quietly. And that beneath the wet earth the strong rocks are sleeping, the rocks on which light never shines. And that up above the clouds, up above the air, all is quiet too, the quiet between the stars. And that beyond the last star is the last quiet of all. What do they want from us? Not to disturb, not to make noise because nothing untoward will happen if we keep still.