“That’s all right. You’re excused. I put the kettle on. Anyway, it’ll take her a while to come around and stand up. You’re excused from cleaning up too. I’ll do it if you just see to the sterilizer and the washing machine. How come you can remember everything by heart? Alterman and Bikini and everything? On the one hand, you’re so absent-minded you can’t even button your shirt right; on the other hand you turn the world upside down for a clue in a crossword puzzle. And you organize everyone’s life for them. Just look at your sweater: half in and half out of your trousers. And your shirt collar’s half in and half out too. Like a baby.”

At this she fell silent, though her warm smile continued to haunt her broad, open face as though it had been forgotten there. After being absorbed in thought for a while, she added sadly, without explaining the connection:

“My father hanged himself in the Metropole Hotel in Alexandria. It was in ’forty-six. They didn’t find any letter. I was five and a half. I hardly remember him. I remember that he smoked cigarettes called Simon Arzt. And I remember his wristwatch: yellow, square, with phosphorescent hands that glowed in the dark like a ghost’s eyes. I have a picture of him in British army uniform, but he doesn’t look much like a soldier. He looks so sloppy. And tired. In the picture he actually looks fair-haired, smiling, with beautiful white teeth and lots of lovely little lines at the corners of his eyes. Not sad, just tired. And he’s holding a cat. I wonder if he suffered from unrequited love too. My mother would never talk to me about him. The only thing she said was: He didn’t think about us either. Then she’d change the subject. She had a lover, a tall Australian captain with a wooden arm and a Russian name, Serafim. They explained to me once that it comes from the Hebrew word ‘seraphim.’ Then she had a weepy banker who took her to Canada and dropped her. In the end she wrote to me from Toronto in Polish. I had to have the letter translated; she never managed to learn to write Hebrew. She said she wanted to come back to Nes Tsiyona to start a new life. But she never made it. She died of cancer of the liver. I was brought up in an institution run by the Working Women’s Council. About Alterman: tell me, Fima, is it true what they say—that he has two wives?”

“He died,” Fima replied, “about twenty years ago.” He was on the point of launching into a crash course on Alterman when Dr. Eitan’s door opened, a pungent hygienic odor wafted out, and the doctor poked his head out and said to Tamar: