“What I meant was, not that you’re not masculine, just that I can talk to you like a brother. We’ve had to put up with so much bullshit from the poets, with their Beatrices, their earth mothers, their gazelles, their tigresses, their sea gulls, their swans, and all that nonsense. Let me tell you, being a man strikes me as a thousand times more complicated than that. Or maybe it’s not complicated at all, all that lousy bargaining. You give me sex, I’ll give you a bit of tenderness. Or an impression of tenderness. Be a whore and a mother. A puppy by day and a kitten by night. Sometimes I have the feeling that men like sex but hate women. Don’t be offended, Efraim. I’m just generalizing. There must be exceptions. Like you, for instance. I feel good now, the way you’re listening to me quietly.”

Fima bent forward to light the cigarette she had taken out of her handbag. He was thinking: In the middle of the day, in broad daylight, in the middle of Jerusalem, they’re already walking around with guns in their belts. Was the sickness implicit in the Zionist idea from the outset? Is there no way for the Jews to get back onto the stage of history except by becoming scum? Does every battered child have to grow up into a violent adult? And weren’t we already scum before we got back onto the stage of history? Do we have to be either cripples or thugs? Is there no third alternative?

“At the age of twenty-five,” Annette continued, “after a couple of love affairs and one abortion and a B.A. in art history, I meet this young orthopedic surgeon. A quiet, shy man, not at all like an Israeli, if you know what I mean. A gentle person who courts me with sensitivity and even sends me a love letter every day but never tries to touch me. A hard-working, honest man. He likes to stir my coffee for me. He thinks of himself as an average, middle-of-the-road sort of fellow. As a junior doctor, he works like a madman, long hours on duty, on call, night duty. With a small group of close friends who are all very much like him, with refugee parents who are cultured and good-mannered like him. And after less than a year we get married. Without any upheavals, without any ups and downs. He handles me as though I’m made of glass, if you know what I mean.”

Fima almost interrupted her to say: But we’re all like that; that’s why we’ve lost the state. But he restrained himself and said nothing. He merely made a point of carefully putting out the cigarette stub that Annette had left smoldering on the edge of the ashtray. He finished off his sandwich and still felt hungry.