He had never before made love like this. Not humiliatingly, not resentfully, but fiercely and tenderly, and with a fine, delicate precision, again and again all night long until dawn. As if he had found a twin whose body had been cast in the matching mold of his own.

After the Spam, the cold french fries, and the sooty, disgustingly sweet coffee, the two of them went arm-in-arm to her room near a wireless shack. There they found a highly superfluous Yvonne. Michal, without batting an eyelash, sent Yvonne off to sleep with Yoram, “because what’s about to happen in this room is going to be strictly X-rated.”

The bed was a hard, narrow military cot. A freakish desert moon shone in the curtainless window. There was a baying of dogs, and Yonatan suddenly felt choked by an ancient rage. Whatever happened to that poor bastard Shiko, who ran out into the wadi just when the flash flood hit? But the rage gave way at once to a feverish tenderness. In my whole goddamn life I’ve never been so goddamn alive. And with a woman in my hands.

The room was so shiveringly cold they didn’t bother to undress. Fully clothed and laughing, they slipped between her prickly woolen blankets. Yonatan propped himself on an elbow to study her face in the moonlight. He kissed her wide-open eyes and raised himself on his palms to get a still better look. “You’re so handsome and sad-looking,” she said, “and such a terrible liar too.” With a fingertip he traced her lips and the fine line of her jaw until she took both his hands in her own and placed a breast in each. He felt no urge to make haste. Step by silent step he caressed her body, as if trying to find his way across unfamiliar terrain in darkness, until, burrowing into his uniform, Michal found his sex and took it out. She kissed it in the moonlight and laughingly addressed it with his very own words. “You wandering philosopher, you, let me know when you’ve found signs of life in the wilderness.” His fingers worked their way to the treasurehouse of hers at once, where slowly, almost thoughtfully, they picked out a tune so compelling that she arched roundly against him. With a mock guffaw, he blurted, “Hey! What’s the big rush?” Her answer was bites and nips and scratches. “Your name is Woman,” he said to her, in his basso profundo, “and mine is Man.”