“A couple of months ago—I suppose you’ve already forgotten—I woke up before dawn and I said, Effy, I’ve had enough, I’m leaving. You didn’t ask why, you didn’t ask where I was going, you asked: How? On a jet broomstick? And this brings me to your crude jealousy of my work. Which expresses itself in wisecracks. It’s true I’m not allowed to divulge details about the project. But you see this secrecy as a betrayal. As if I’ve got a lover. And not just any lover, but somebody inferior, somebody despicable. How come the woman who had the rare honor of becoming your wife isn’t satisfied with that? How can she have some other interest apart from you? And such a shady business? Not that you’d understand the project even if I were allowed to tell you about it. You wouldn’t even show interest. On the contrary, your attention would start wandering after two minutes, or you’d fall asleep, or change the subject. After all, you can’t even understand how an electric fan works. Right. Now we’re getting to the point.

“Six weeks ago, when I got the invitation from Seattle, and those two air force colonels arrived on Saturday evening to talk to you, to explain that it was actually on their initiative that the invitation had been issued, and that my work with the Americans for the next couple of years was of national importance, you just made fun of them and of me. You started to lecture us about the perpetual lunacy associated with the phrase ‘national importance.’ You behaved like a Saudi sheik. You ended up more or less telling them to keep their hands off your property and throwing them out of the flat. Up to that evening there was still a part of me at least that wanted to convince you to come along. They say the scenery around Seattle is like a dream. Fjords, snow-covered mountains. You’d be able to attend some lectures at the university. Maybe the change of air and scenery and being cut off from the Israeli papers and news broadcasts would unblock the spring. Maybe away from your father and your friends and Jerusalem you’d be able to get back to some real writing at last. Instead of petty polemics punctuated with jibes and taunts.