“I’m asking you what’s left now. And I’ll thank you not to repeat all my questions but make a little effort to answer what you’ve been asked.”

“But you know what now. Why ask? You and I have been husband and wife for years. Why are you asking me?”

“I don’t know why. I just am. I want to hear an answer for a change. Look here, are you purposely trying to drive me up the wall? How long are you going to go on talking to me like a little moron?”

She glanced up from her embroidery and her eyes once again appeared to be tracing the music in the air. Indeed, at just that moment the fugue seemed about to overflow its banks, surging upward, beating against mighty walls. And right after that, a gentling took place. The melody relented, as though despairing of cresting the dam, and, surrendering at last, dove deep to burble beneath the foundations. The powerful current of the theme forked into several thin eddies, each flowing its own way, each oblivious of the others, but swirling about one another with bashful desire, and slowly overcoming their forlornness to build up passionately to yet another floodtide.

“Yoni, listen.”

“Yes,” said Yonatan, feeling his heart grow limp with the sudden evaporation of his anger. “What.”

“Listen, Yoni. It’s like this. You and I are together. By ourselves. Close to each other, as you said we’d be. You’re good, and I try to be beautiful for you, and not to copy others, but still to be the first. We almost always get along. And if sometimes something goes wrong or annoys you, like a minute ago when I told you not to cry and you got angry, it’s still all right. I know you’ll calm down in the end and we’ll feel good with each other again. Maybe you think new things should happen all the time, but that isn’t so. I’m not telling you to look at other people, but if you do look at them anyway, you’ll see that new things don’t happen to them every day either. What should happen, Yoni? You’re a grown man. I’m your wife. This is home. All this is us. And it’s the middle of the winter.”

“It’s not that, Rimona,” said Yonatan, almost in a whisper.

“I know. You suddenly got sad,” said Rimona, running one finger along the table. Then, with an uncharacteristically rebellious movement, she rose and stood before him.

“Have you gone completely out of your mind? What are you undressing for?”

The rebellion ended. She blanched and dropped both arms.

“I just thought that maybe,” she said, trembling.

“Put your sweater back on. No one told you to undress. I don’t need you with your clothes off.”

“I just thought,” she whispered.