And he undid the buttons of their bulky uniforms and cupped first one breast and then the other with such tender angry choking passionate fierce gentle precise persuasion that she begged him to come to her. Come you crazy I can’t take it any more. Shut up he said what’s the rush while his sex beat about like the cane of a furious blind man, crawling and slithering among the layers of her clothing, coiling and lunging at her belly at her mons veneris until all of a sudden the cane slipped into place and slid home. Honeystruck, it paused and there was a lull. And a trembling. And a movement beneath him like a sea.

And she bit his ear and raked his back with her nails inside his clothes and groaned come quick I’m dying and her match made Yonatan catch fire and drive home again and again, hammering away inside her, snorting and thrashing and lashing and butting as though battering impregnable walls and so overwhelming her that it tore a sharp cry from her gut, and then another, and suddenly, like a dog shot in the dark, let out a cry himself and burst into a flood of tears and sperm as if every wound in his life had opened at once and the very blood of that life was pouring out. Never had he opened up like this to anything, nor anything to him. The ineffable ecstasy jarred the root of his sex and ran from there to his gut to his back up his spine to the scruff of his neck to the roots of his hair sending a shiver through the soles of his feet so that she said you’re crying real tears look you have goose-pimples your hair is even standing on end and kissed him on the mouth and all over his face while he gasped I’m not done I have more. You’re crazy she said you’re stark raving mad but he silenced her at once with his lips and came within her a second and a third time. You madman I have no more strength for you.

Woman he said woman I never knew that a woman could be like this. And then they lay in each other’s arms and watched the moon wander from their window.

“Are you rejoining your unit tomorrow, Udi?”

“I have no unit. And my name isn’t Udi. But I do have to go somewhere.”

“And then you’ll come back to me?”

“Look, Woman. That’s a question I happen to hate.”

“But you must have a home, or at least an address somewhere.”

“I did. Not any more. The Himalayas, maybe. Bangkok? Bali? Who knows?”

“I’d go with you. Would you take me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Why not. Michal?”

“What, child?”

“Don’t call me child. Because my name once was Yoni and now I have no name.”