“Try to understand, Effy. I know the way you’ve always thought of me. Yael Levin, the little girl from Yavne’el. A bit foolish, even if she is rather sweet. Nice, but limited. Yet our experts, as well as the Americans, believe that my project may develop into something. I matter to them. That’s why I’ve decided to go. I don’t matter to you, even if you are in love with me. Or in love with being in love with me. Or so absorbed in your own things that you can’t spare the time or effort to stop loving me.

“If you like, you can come over. I’ll send you a ticket. Or your father can pay. And if you don’t like, we’ll see what time will tell. I deliberately haven’t mentioned my deepest pain. The thing that you think can be put right in a moment. I’m not saying anything about that, nor are you. Maybe it’s just as well we’ll be apart. Sometime I think that only a real blow, a disaster, could bring you back out of your fog: your newspapers, your arguments, your news bulletins. Once you were deep, now you seem to be living superficially most of the time. Don’t be offended, Effy. And don’t start looking for ways of contradicting everything I’ve written, of producing counterclaims, of dismantling it brick by brick, of defeating me. I’m not your enemy. Defeating me won’t help you. Maybe my trip to America will be the shock that will bring you back to yourself. Okay, that’s a cliché. I knew you’d say that. Once I’ve gone, you’ll be free to fall in love. Or you can go on being in love with me without having to put up with my laundry drying in front of the radiator in the bedroom in the winter. And something else: Try to concentrate. Try not to babble on all day long, fussing and correcting everyone and everything. Don’t become just a sore throat. Anyway, there’s nobody out there listening. Maybe you should go and look for Liat or Ilia? Go back to Greece? Sometimes when I happen to stay at work for a couple of days, working alone all night, grabbing a snack to save time, suddenly I have . . .”