Later they dressed and went for a walk in one of the verdant valleys on the side of Mount Carmel. They strolled until nightfall among the luxuriant vegetation without talking or touching, until a night bird sang to them a short, poignant phrase which Fima imitated to perfection, and Yael, with a warm low laugh, said, Do you have any plausible explanation, good sir, why I suddenly love you, even though we’re not blood relations or anything like that?

He opened his eyes and saw his ex-wife, shrunken, almost shriveled, an aging Giulietta Masina, in gray trousers and a dark red sweater, still standing with her back to him and folding towels. It’s not possible, he thought, that she has so many towels that she can go on folding them forever. Unless she’s refolding them because she wasn’t satisfied with the way she did it the first time. So he stood up like a man who knows exactly what to do, and embraced her from behind, putting one hand over her mouth and the other over her eyes, and kissed the nape of her neck, the roots of her hair, her back. The smell of toilet soap and the hint of tobacco from Ted’s pipe reached his nostrils, dizzying him with a vague desire, along with a sadness that snuffed it out. He picked up her thin little girl’s body in his arms, and just as he had carried her son two nights before, he carried Yael now and laid her on the same bed in her bedroom, and just as he had stroked Dimi, he now stroked her cheek. But he did not remove the counterpane, nor did he try to take off his clothes or hers, but instead pressed himself against her along the whole length of their bodies and buried her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Instead of saying I’ve missed you, he was so tired that he whispered I’ve messed you. They lay side by side, close but not embracing, motionless, speechless, his body’s warmth radiating into hers and hers into his. Until she whispered to him: Right. Now be good and go.