The image of her searching for him behind the green dumpsters has been haunting me for years; resurfacing intermittently at random moments in my life. A few years ago I even hired a private investigator to try to find out what happened to him. I was hoping the attempt alone would grant me some peace of mind. The only revelation was a fine from a small library in one of the kibbutzim up north. Six overdue books, all by South American authors. I tried reading some of them in the hope of finding a clue—but there was none. And still, oddly enough, this discovery offered some kind of comfort. It reinforced my secret and irrational thought that maybe Korczak had existed as a kind of transcendental man, in the physical sense, and that the outburst of violence on that night had frightened him out of his lanky, awkward body and returned him to his original form—a consciousness that lived only between the lines of books that he read.

The Girl Who Lived Near the Sun

1.

IN THE MIDDLE of Neptune’s central bus station, Grandma called me for the third time in a row. In a moment of weakness, I decided to answer, and within seconds a wrinkled and scowling six-foot-three hologram appeared before me. Before I could utter a single word and without any pleasantries to speak of, she got straight to the point. “What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you coming back to Earth?” she scolded me. The people around me turned their gazes toward the small holographic woman. I quickly turned down the volume.

“Honey, this is no laughing matter,” she proceeded. “It’s been a year and a half now that you’ve been traveling all over the solar system, without popping by to visit your old grandma even once. You know I won’t be around much longer.”

“I promise this is the last planet. A few weeks and I’ll be eating your matzo ball soup,” I replied. She snickered.

“A few weeks? What’s wrong with you? You’re starting college in ten days for heaven’s sake. Your friends are already into their third year and you don’t even have a schoolbag yet,” she said, and fell silent, knowing that one more sentence like that and I’d hang up.

“So how’s the weather?” she asked, trying to change tactics. I replied that all in all it was fine. Gas storms every now and then, but nothing serious.

“And tell me, have you decided what you’re going to study?”

“IR.”

“What’s that? Speak louder.”

“IR. Intergalactic relations.”

“Why would you choose that?”

“I met a few guys here who studied it. Sounds like an interesting field.”

“Hmm. Interesting, I’m sure,” she said. “That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?” I asked, immediately regretting it.