The National Guard showed the EYE a bionic launcher, but the EYE reacted with disdain and continued with its defiance. The  operator of an unmanned aircraft filled its tanks with powdered acid. The  children were removed from the square and were not permitted to cross the line  of purple light that surrounded it. 

The EYE  continued to float above, examining the noise and chaos beneath it, never  batting an eyelid. It seemed as if it was enjoying the tension and worry we  could not hide from it. 
 
The new mayor, who did not know it very well, SMSed the  EYE to get lost before it suffered a death blow, but it did not  give a hint that it meant to disappear. On the contrary, it improved its  position, stretched its edges, quickly grew a few long lashes with sharp points  and started to descend, leisurely and without worry, as if it knew it had the  upper hand, ignoring the unmanned aircraft that kept circling it, and the bionic  launcher that kept watching its movement without a moment  break.
 
Before we understood what was about to happen, the  EYE started dripping a slow shower of acidic, greenish rain of  tears, making burning noises as soon as they touched the asphalt pavement. The  liquid seeped in, invading the protective surface of the road circling the  square and the marble sidewalk as they made the clicking sound of bullets shot  from an automatic weapon. 
While we were still watching the spectacle, hypnotized, the  EYE started to increase its outlines and now covered the entire sky  over the square; in a minute it would spread beyond it and cover the streets  around it, and who knew how far it would reach.
 
At this moment the launcher shot the first laser beam, but the  EYE managed to evade it easily, changing its shape like an amoeba.  The beam passed by it and broke in the water of the large lake in the park. The  unmanned aircraft that was circling the air with the intent of emptying its tank
over the EYE, blew  up and was digested in a second as the liquid dripped from it, and only greenish  dust that hurt the eyes remained, dispersing the scared and hypnotized crowd. 
 
The old people watching the spectacle escaped in terror  into nearby yards, searching for hiding places inside the houses and behind  closed shutters. People holding small children in their arms protected them with  their bodies in fear and horrible anxiety and ran to cars that were parked not
very far, to run to the nearby mountains and save themselves, but they were too  late.
 
The EYE grew and  spread like a plague, until it covered the entire sky, and in a few minutes the
acidic rain of tears it shed digested the trees, the stones, and the cars with  the people inside them, as if they never existed. 
 
Dead silence spread over the world. Only the EYE  continued to hover, checking if any living cell remained, until it traveled  beyond the high mountains, leaving a greenish trail that disintegrated until  only thin dust remained.
 
The Energy Department placed warning signs around the  affected area, and surrounded the region with electric fences and security  systems. The Mapping Authority erased the area from all newspapers, documents,  and official maps, and also from the media and popular photographs, and the  Defense Ministry blocked any entry with reinforced concrete ramparts and loyal  mercenaries. 
 
The place remained desolate for many years. 
 
The next generations could not read about it or see it  because it was erased, invisible, and any hint about its existence was  categorically denied.
The few citizens who suspected something about its  existence and the way it disappeared, and dared to investigate, were immediately  arrested and put in Reeducation Camps and most of them
disappeared.
 
After about a hundred years, a single cell which had escaped the  EYE succeeded in dividing and replicating until a one-eyed  creature was created, its color green and its  shape like an insect with forty legs. 
 
It breathed filthy oxygen and its hearing was good, but  it had difficulty finding food because of the single eye, glassy and bulging in  the middle of its face. Its sense of smell was only partially  developed.
It had both male and female sex organs and when it  reached puberty it copulated with itself. 
Of the eggs, which hatched after sixty days, only ten  creatures  survived, and like their parent, did not live  long.
 
In 2104 ecologists convinced the government to open the  area and begin a process of decontaminating the earth, water, and air, lasting  two years.
 
Ten years later a glorious green city with a center for  cancer research stood there, receiving gigantic grants from real estate  companies and international corporations. The citizens called the city by the  name “Renaissance” and it became a symbol of coping with disaster, and a place  of pilgrimage.
 
The loyal population, brought to the city from a  distance, accepted with understanding and with large compensation the fact that  all male newborns had one eye. 
 
I will tell this story to my own grandson, just born, when the  time comes, so he would know why our ancestors in the history books have two  identical, strange eyes, instead of one big and beautiful EYE, like  ours, in the middle of the face.


 

My mother and I  stand by the mirror that hangs on the wall in the long corridor. We must hurry,
every minute counts, because the corridor is now empty and no one disturbs us. 
Mother furls her  forehead, relaxes it and inspects it again, studies herself as if looking for something she cannot find.
 
I know this ceremony  well. Many years later I would be reminded of it when I stand next to the easel,  looking at my pictures, trying to sketch her with charcoal. 
 
“I am going to draw  myself a face, Nunin’ka; wait and you’ll see how beautiful I am going to be  soon.”
 
I stand next to her,  barely reaching the pocket in her housecoat; I glance from her face to the  mirror and back – two mothers.
 
Other noises come  from the kitchen and from behind closed  doors.
Three families live  her in this apartment that contains three rooms, along the corridor that serves  as a highway for this tribal labyrinth. Everyone meets on this highway,  sometimes ignoring and slinking away from each other. Seven souls, parents and  children, long standing citizens and new immigrants, a small urban commune that  came together through lack of choice or shortage of partments. Eventually I  would understand that mostly it was lack of  money.
 
Light enters the  corridor through a single window that faces the backyard. Pale morning rays hit  the mirror; dust particles dart inside them like tiny butterflies. 
 
Our room is at the  end of the corridor. A table with chairs, a buffet and a couch that converts  into a bed at night, an old wardrobe with three doors. On the central door a  long mirror, cracked and discolored with rust stains, covered with black and  white family pictures from Mother’s childhood in Vilna. Grandfather and  grandmother, a brother and a sister; all gone, but they watch over us seriously,  anxiously. 
 
Behind one of the  doors a child is crying, refusing to eat. Another voice, grown-up, scolds him  and I want to go and help him, but Mother motions me in the mirror not to  interfere. 
 
Mother lights the  yellow bulb that hangs above the mirror and immediately turns it off.  
She puts on her  makeup in the half darkness. The laugh lines disappear all at once. Also the  dark spots and new freckles on her fair skin, despite the layers of cream she  puts on her face whenever we go to bathe in the sea, on the Opera  beach.
 
I follow the new  development as if it were a show. I am familiar with the “play” and I know the
ending. In the last scene she will be young and beautiful. 
 
New down grew above  her upper lip and three hairs are discovered at the bottom of the chin. She
quickly picks out silver tweezers from a tattered makeup bag, and expertly  removes the superfluous hair. This is how the first scene begins in the  “play.”
 
In the second scene  she applies to her face a light-colored face powder which makes it look like a
mask, like a picture from a Japanese theater I would see in years to come. The  color is white or vory; there is no mouth, no eyes, no eyebrows, just a white  surface. She adds a second layer of powder that clogs her pores and remains  faceless.
 
In the third scene,  the drawing starts. 
From the makeup bag  she quickly pulls out a black pencil, as if she is worried that her face would
disappear if she would not draw them before that. 
It’s just a stub of  a pencil with a blunt point, and she struggles to draw two thin eyebrows, rounded and amazingly precise above the eyes that she soon would expose and  carefully circle. 
 
The children of the  Schorr family burst into the corridor, stare at her, and run away, confused, back into their room. We both  laugh.
 
“Thank God it’s  possible to continue,” she emits from her mouth which has no lips, and replaces the black pencil with another –a new brown one, well sharpened, her sister from  America had sent. 
My aunt sends us as  gifts things that do not exist in Israel, like this handy, self-sharpening  pencil and a nylon blouse for me, made from synthetic fabric that is easy to  launder, and a transistor adio with batteries that works without electricity,  and a special tool for grooming the lashes which Mother lends her neighbors.  America of the miracles and  wonders.
“America, such wise  guys…” she says in Yiddish, rolling her eyes to the sky with hopes that some day  she would be privileged to go  there…
Ten years would pass  before she would meet her sister again and discover America with all its  wonders.
 
With the brown  pencil, the fourth scene begins. Mother designs two eyes for herself. With rounded lines she carefully draws thin, brown lines, stretching like speeding  trains under the eyelids and over the  lashes.
Two new black,  shining eyes look at me from the mirror, and Mother immediately curves them  upwards and emphasizes them with the lashes’ grooming tool and now I think she  resembles Jane Russell from my movie stars’ scrap book, where I paste them after  cutting the pictures from the pages of the magazine, Film World. 
 
Mrs. Schorr comes  out of the kitchen and asks Mother to lend her the soup  pot.
When Father comes  for vacation from the army, he prepares a cooking corner for her in the terrace,  with a primus, a bench, a working surface, and a line of hooks to hang the  cooking pots, and she does not have to cook in the communal kitchen  anymore.
 
I love the next  steps.
 Now she scatters  with very light touches a bit of blush which she calls rouge as diagonal  spots, and a little on the forehead near the hairline and under the  chin.
She looks at herself  and adds a small spot on the tip of the nose (“it shortens it”), the way she learned in the cosmetic training course, one of the courses she finds as she  searches for ways to make a living and have financial independence. 
 
“You see, Nunin’ka,  you must spread the rouge over the face, equally, not too much like a  clown…”
Of course I see and  learn every detail, and I would do exactly the same years later, when she buys  me my first makeup bag.
 
The last scene of  the play, the grand finale. 
Mother takes out a  lipstick and applies the shiniest red on her lips, careful not to pass over the
lips’ outline.
 
Mother has a  beautiful face, like Carmen Miranda, or a gypsy. Her hair is black, her skin  fair, her eyes are bright and her lips red. On her head she wears a  broad-brimmed hat, decorated with a pair of cherries, and sometimes she wraps  her hair with a floral yellow scarf; she always puts on a pair of gloves to  protect her hands from Tel Aviv’s burning sun to which she would not become  accustomed until her dying day.
 
“So that I would not  have dark spots, you know Nunin’ka, the hands are the mirror of the  soul.”
 
No, I did not know,  I was sure her mirror was the one hanging in the corridor. 
  
With the lace gloves  on her hands and a polka dotted cotton dress, fitting her body tightly, she conquers the stalls in Carmel Market and the hearts of the admiring tradesmen.  Youth is behind her, but she is careful to maintain a fresh, light-hearted,  mischievous appearance, even when she is carrying heavy baskets on a hot  day.
 
She has almost  finished the job, and the one last thing is to remove with her fingers the  residue of the lipstick left on her white teeth. She puts on her sunglasses,  passes a comb in her raven-black hair, fixes a few curls on her forehead, and  now she is almost ready to leave –
  
Not to the Champs  Elise or Fifth Avenue, but into the busy Allenby Street, and from there to the  Carmel Market, where she would instruct me where to shop and how to save, and  she would not forget to find a meter or two of white lace fabric – a remainder  that is a good deal, to sew a dress for me for the holiday of “The First Fruits  Festival” in school.

During the lonely  nights (when Father is officer on duty at the Base), she would embroider a line  of blue geese, like the parasol in the poem of “Ayelet the Girl with the  Blue Parasol” in the book of the children’s author Kadya Molodovsky, which I  knew by heart.
 
“What do you say,  Nunin’ka?” she asks as she turns her face and bends over so I could see her face  clearly.
 
“Mother is the most  beautiful,” I answer. “And now  me.”
 
She applies a little  lipstick on my lips, laughs and hugs me, and we go out into the wide world beautiful and strong.
 
I am looking at my  face, in the mirror that covers the wall in the bathroom. My mother is there for
a second, then vanishes. If she were by my side, she would pull out her lipstick  and request, 
“Look how pale you  are… why not apply a little  lipstick…”
 
But I put on a  little light pink lipstick, careful, like her, not to go over the lips’ outline
and I go out. One must know how to say goodbye. 
 

The dream  repeated itself, dozens of times, with horrifying exactitude. She is lying on  her back in the operating room, always the same cold operating room, gleaming  white. The clock shows "almost midnight,” always the same hour, “almost  midnight…” Faces covered by masks exposing only pairs of eyes approach and  surround her. She cannot identify them, except for two eyes, which are her  mother’s eyes. Black, piercing, topped with penciled brows.
She is  certain that her mother has decided to operate and she requests,
“Mom, don’t  start before I fall asleep.”
She asks  again,
“Wait until I  fall asleep.”
The pairs of  eyes around are smiling mockingly, except for the mother’s eyes. The anesthetic  liquid drips from the vein in her hand onto the sheet and does not penetrate her  body. She wants to fall asleep but doesn’t succeed
“Do you hear,  Mom, don’t cut, wait until I fall asleep… I can’t manage to  sleep.”
She begs  again, but it is obvious to her that the mother is in a hurry, her time is short  and her intentions are not clear…
The clock  rings“midnight.” She notices, through the mask, a satisfied smile on the  mother’s face, and then she feels the knife’s blade on her skin and the horrible  pain of the cut that is slicing her open through her abdomen… and she wakes  up.
Over the  years, she taught herself to identify the dream and not fear it. She let her  mother come near her in the dream and would mock her in her  heart.
“You will not  succeed in killing me because it’s only a dream and I will wake up  shortly.”
Eventually,  when she solved the meaning of the dream, she hoped to get rid of it, but it did  not let go. Later she married and it sank into her subconscious and  disappeared.
During the  ninth month of her pregnancy, in the middle of the night, she was brought,  bleeding, to the operation room. 
A cold,  white, gleaming room. She knew it well. A huge round lamp with many blubs  blinded her from above. The clock in front of her showed five o’clock. Unknown  faces surrounded her. She grew weaker, her consciousness faded and the  tranquilizers given to her brought the forgotten dream from the depth of her  memory.
She is in the  operating room, her husband by her side, promising her that the baby is alive  and breathing. Kind nurses smile at her and try to calm her  down.
“Listen to  his pulse, it’s strong and rhythmical.”
She feels  loved and confident and soon she would be a mother. 
“Is this a  dream or reality?”
She did not  know. A familiar voice enters the room and demands to have a space cleared for  it. The voice whispers something in her ear and she opens her eyes and discovers  a familiar face. Her mother’s small, black eyes pierce her as they look. She  screams in terror.
“Wait until I  fall asleep. Mom, don’t start before I sleep.”
But with the  cold touch of the knife on her stomach she faints and sinks into a deep  sleep.
When she woke  up after about an hour, she found her husband by her side, kissing her and  thanking her with tears in his eyes for the birth of their first son. The mother  was not visible in the room, and the anesthetist, who did not know her, told her  that she never stopped asking, while sleeping, not to cut until she fell asleep  and he added
“Who had hurt you so much ?? 
She was  silent and in her heart thanked her husband who did not push her to answer.  About seven o’clock in the evening, her parents arrived, the mother elegantly  dressed, all happiness and tears, asking about her grandson and wishing to see  him. When she left for the baby nursery, the father confessed that he did not  know a thing until he came back from work in the evening, and the husband did  not tell her that he had telephoned the mother at eight o’clock in the morning  to congratulate her for being the grandmother of a healthy baby boy, and asked  her to hurry up there.

Like life,  the dreams faded. The mother became older and weaker. She followed the birth of  her other grandchildren in the mother’s dreams, in the operating rooms, under  the blinding lights and the clock in front, but she did not hold the knife, only  looked from the side, as if she had relinquished her place. 
She returned  to visit her in the dream on the night before a trip to London, when they took  their younger daughter for a medical consultation. She was her favorite  grandchild. When she fell asleep during the flight, the mother reappeared in the  dream, standing in front of the operating room but not coming in. 
She woke up  when the plane started to land and wondered about her mother’s  health.
They came  back encouraged by what the doctors said, left the children with their  grandmother and traveled abroad to celebrate their twentieth anniversary.  
In the  mornings, waking up in strange rooms, she did not remember her dreams, even  though she knew she had been dreaming.
The trip  passed without anxiety or fear of the future, only peace and quiet and  acceptance of what is and a bit of joy and comfort given by the  vacation.
On the last  night before returning home, she telephoned home but no one answered. At her  parents’ house she left a message on the answering machine requesting that they  return her call, but she did not hear from them before she fell  asleep.
 
In her dream,  she is in an operating room, wearing something white. The clock shows “almost  midnight.”Two nurses enter the room, then her husband, supporting her father.  The children stand near the monitor, looking at the lifeless flat line, crying.  She approaches the bed. The mother lies lifeless; her small black eyes wide  open. The clock rings “midnight.”
“It’s time to  begin,” 
She is  holding the knife and then she hears her father’s whisper
“No need  anymore, she is dead.”
And he closes  the mother’s eyes.
She woke up and awakened her husband.
Early, before dawn, she heard her father’s voice on the  telephone, announcing that her mother died in her sleep.  
 


 
 

The sand hill dominated the street with its height, and  inside it we dug tunnels, like those on the beach but much deeper. Three  underground passages, like train tunnels, each from a different direction,  which we aimed carefully so we should meet exactly in the middle. We fumbled  inside the dark sand until our fingers touched and grasped each other with  indescribable joy and refused to part.
Three hands, fifteen happy fingers, one undefeated  fist.

Nili’s mother always left Enshel’s Grocery at the same  time, with the challahs and fish for the Sabbath, and it was a sign for Nili to  get up and help her, but that day she was delayed and Nili stayed with us on the  sand hill. Before the war, when her father was still alive, she used to go with
him to the synagogue on Friday; those days her mother said that there was no  God and only fools and weaklings went. 
 
Koby continued digging and waited for his father. He did  not go to war because he was handicapped by “Hitler’s Sanatorium,” Mother said  in Yiddish. When talking about Hitler they always turned to Yiddish so the  children would not understand. 

Koby helped his father carry the slowly dripping block of  ice which he dragged with great difficulty from the ice factory at the end of  the street. We also had an icebox but most of the time it had water and only a  little ice, and Mother said: 
“If my mother, rest her soul, would have seen how I drag  ice in Israel she would have turned in her grave.” 
Friday’s ice block was large and heavy, since it had to  last until Sunday. Ordinary people did not have refrigerators like in America,  except perhaps the rich Kaufman family, who had everything, 
but Koby’s father did not come with the ice block and Koby stayed with us  on the sand hill and continued to excavate his tunnel. 
I also went on digging, waiting for Mother to appear in  the window the way she did every Friday, and lower a little wicker basket tied  to a clothes line, containing the list of groceries I was supposed to bring from  the store. 
 
Enshel agreed to sell on credit to everyone, including  Mother. He wrote what I bought in a black notebook that he kept in the pocket  of his dirty smock, and sometimes he would add a little, and Mother whispered  to the neighbor in Yiddish, 
“איר איז אביסלה גענב (He is a thief)” 
I understood because no matter how she tried to speak  Yiddish so I would not understand, in the end I did understand everything and  no secret could be hidden from me. 
I knew what would be written in the list because I could  already read for myself. 
“Half a rye bread, half a herring, half a kilo of sugar,  three eggs…”
And a few more “halves” except the butter, of which she  wanted only a quarter of a package. 
 
Koby got up, brushed the sand off his clothes and wanted  to go home. He was a fat boy and did not participate in the school races which  took place at Rothschild Boulevards, the most beautiful boulevard in Tel-Aviv.  His mother said to my mother,
“Some day when Koby grows up he will be thin, but in the  meantime he must eat because you never know when another Hitler would come and  finish everyone off.”
They always talked in Yiddish about this Hitler, and even  though he died a long time ago they continued to be afraid of him and to bury  him in the ground a thousand times over, and curse his mother, and all sort of  things I could not understand. 
 
I told Koby that he should not go home, that he was my  best friend, other than Nili, and I suggested we have a competition and see who  would enlarge the tunnel and put both hands inside it. I knew Koby could dig  easily, and I wanted to cheer him up. 
 
A military jeep stopped with a screech.  I raised my head and saw a tall soldier wearing khaki clothes get out of  the car and start whispering with Mrs. Levin who had just stepped out of the  grocery store with her baby carriage. 
Mrs. Levin always had a baby on her hands and a huge  belly with another baby and more children at home and besides she was a teacher  in the Beit Yaakov School and still found time to volunteer at the orphanage  near the Great Synagogue on Allenby Street. 
Mother spoke only Yiddish to her because Hebrew was the  Holy Tongue and she said 
“Everyone’s way of thinking must be respected, and Mrs.  Levin lost her first family at Hitler’s, curse his soul, sanatorium.”  
 
Koby was the first to finish the enlargement of his  tunnel and I and Nili declared him the winner and Koby was  overjoyed.
Suddenly a squeaking sound burst out of the jeep like  radio but not exactly.
I thought perhaps my father was in the jeep and maybe he  came home for the Sabbath, but Nili said that surely it was not him, because  the war was not over yet and maybe he would die in the end like her father, but  my father did not die during that war; it only took a very long time for him to  get back home.
 
Mrs. Levin hurried away with the baby carriage. 
The man in khaki returned to the jeep and we saw that he  was talking with the driver. Then he pointed in the direction of the grocery  store and the driver got out of the jeep and shut the door.
Mrs. Levin saw her husband arriving from a distance and  hurried toward him.
This was Rabbi Levin, who always wore a black coat and a  fur trimmed black hat; on his chin he had a long white beard, and he always  greeted me in Yiddish “שולם עליכם” which meant “Peace be with you” in Hebrew.
I saw that he and Mrs. Levin where whispering to each  other and he hurried up and managed to stop the two soldiers in khaki a second  before they entered the grocery store, and then he entered alone. 
 
I felt something terribly important was happening there  and I stood high up on the sand hill.
Koby and Nili began to dig new tunnels, and I did not  stop staring at the entrance to the grocery store and every so often I glanced  toward our terrace to see if the basket was being lowered.
 
Someone came running out of the grocery store, stopped in  confusion in the middle of the sidewalk, and not knowing where to go, turned  around and returned inside. I straightened up and called my mother, as loudly  as I could,
 “Mother…  Mother…” 
I called her one more time, but she did not hear me.  A few other people came running out of  the grocery store.
 
Koby and Nili were busy digging and did not notice that  something important was happening immediately in front of us.
I shook off the sand, descended the hill, and headed  toward the grocery store.
I saw Mrs. Feldman from house no. 10 whispering with Mrs.  Levin, then grabbing her own head, raising her hands to the sky, and running  into the darkness of the grocery store.
I crossed the street. Nili and Koby noticed and cried out  that they were cross with me, since I left them abruptly. 
The soldiers from the jeep began to march toward the  grocery store.
I then heard my mother’s voice, calling  me.
 “Nurit…”
I raised my eyes to the window. The wicker basket was  lowered and I heard her saying to come immediately and take it. I wanted to  tell her that I was coming but that something was happening, but I did not have  the chance…
And then
A horrible shriek unlike anything I have ever heard in my  life. It was not my mother’s voice, and it was not Koby’s or Nili’s or anyone’s  I knew.
People started running into the grocery store and some  did not dare enter and just stood outside. Mrs. Luria’s twins began to cry, and  then Mr. Enshel appeared at the entrance of the grocery store and said, 
“Someone must go right away and get Dr.  Kuris.”
 Mother shouted at me again,
“Nurit… why don’t you do what you are  asked?!”
 Everyone heard her, and I could not explain that  something important was happening at the grocery store which may be much more  important than what she put in the basket, and that she must come downstairs,  but I could not move and she yelled, 
“Who is this howling like an animal?”
And immediately, she did not forget to  add,
“Nurit… I am going right down and I will give you  something you will not forget…” 
Everyone heard that too, but I did not get “something”  from her, that Friday. Not a thing. 
 
Dr. Kuris came running with his black bag and entered the  grocery store. The two soldiers in khaki came out of the store and lit a  cigarette. Suddenly dead silence fell over everything. 
Mrs. Carlotta Kaufman appeared at the store’s entrance,  leaning on Dr. Kuris on one side and on Mrs. Feldman on the other  side.

I thought she was about to faint, like our teacher  Zipora, when they told her at school that her brother was killed in the war, but  at that moment my mother arrived with the basket in her hand and the clothes  line dragging on the ground and asked, 
“Who shouted like a Cossack?”
And only when she  saw Mrs. Carlotta Kaufman from house no. 14 being dragged, hanging on Dr. Kuris  on one side, and on Mrs. Feldman’s on the others, did she became  quiet.
 Someone whispered in Yiddish,
“אר הוט גהרגט גווערן (He was killed).” 
Because he thought I  didn’t understand Yiddish, but I understood perfectly and whispered to
myself,
“He is  dead…”
Later Mother told me  that she knew Alex, Mrs. Kaufman’s soldier son, very well. She said he was as  handsome as a prince… 
“אף אלע יידישע קינדר (May all Jewish children look like him).”
Also that they were  the richest people on the street and their home was surrounded by a high wall,  and the stories went that it was a veritable palace inside, everything from  America, with Persian rugs and servants and what not… Mrs. Feldman told my  mother, who would not stop crying even on the Sabbath, 
“Who would have  believed that the Kaufmans’son could die in the war like everyone else,” 
And Mother cried  even harder and I knew it was because of Father who had not come back yet and  surely also she remembered her entire family that died at Hitler’s Sanatorium  and also because we were hungry since we did not have the chance to buy food for  the Sabbath. 
 
Koby, Nili and I  continued to dig tunnels in our hill for a long time; after the residents  emptied the sand it turned into such a tiny hill that we gave it up, and went to  Rothschild Boulevards to look for
beetles.
Koby  became ill and would breathe so heavily he could hardly go down the stairs. Nili  and her mother left the street and moved elsewhere. Father returned home after  the war, taught me to play chess and a year later my brother Raffi was born, and  Mother forced me to stay home and play with him. 

As their "madrich" I ran with those kids across the  English countryside, wove legends with them about new-born Israel and dreamt  dreams of the kibbutz and its ultimate in social perfection. As I ran and grew  with them, I learnt two important things about myself and about  the  teacher bud bursting within me; these ideas that have not changed though age has  snowed white hair on me. One is that if   he wishes to touch their soul at some point, a teacher must in some  profound way really love those brats in front of him ; the second thing I  came to understand was that there is  little in life that is quite equal to the sheer intoxication of ten, twenty or  fifty sets of eyes lifted up to see and to hear what you have to say to  them.
 
It is, perhaps, the combination of these two elements:  the love of one's students and an unashamed, mildly narcissistic love of  yourself that determines one’s basic attitude towards teaching. Teaching is  about  affection, empathy, feeling  and listening but it is also powered by the  ridiculously romantic conviction that  you possess  the magical power to  persuade that little monster in Grade 6 that a knowledge of the Present  Progressive in  English studies,  or,  later on, the intricacies of  the Shakespearian sonnet – that this  learning will be as an Aladdin’s lamp in their hands opening   sesame to all the doors of life. This need to give, this need to excite,  this need to attract is what has given me an insatiable desire to know more and  still more about the discipline I teach. I must be new, I must be fresh, I must  surprise, if  I am to continue  winning the attention of my students.
 
So, teacher, and would-be teacher, unless you love the  classroom with a passion (there were many years in which, when the summer  months kept me away from teaching, that a mild depression took hold of me);  unless a surge of adrenalin courses along your veins as your hand touches the  classroom door you  must get out  of the profession. No long summer vacations, no pension rights or your long  investment in training should keep you teaching. Get thee to a bank, where the  pay is more than the shirt buttons offered to the teacher and the work there  has, no doubt, its ratiocinated satisfactions.

For the last ten years he rejected Yael’s attempts to  solidify their friendship using strange and absurd excuses. An aging, unmarried  woman, only a few years younger than him, she taught yoga and lived in Paris.  During her sorties to Israel, once a year, she tried to establish a future with  him while he kept escaping into his troubles. At first he clarified to her the  heavy responsibilities he undertook, taking care of his mother after his  father’s death. Then he explained in detail his protected saving accounts which  he could not withdraw from, and added other substantial reasons, all of which  he would end by stuttering a promise that “When the day comes, perhaps… if  circumstances changed… it would be possible to reexamine all the  possibilities…” Deep in his heart Yuda’le knew what he really aspired to, but  the knowledge had not yet surface to full consciousness. 

On that day, it was impossible to know if the horrible  confusion that had assaulted him in the morning was caused by the Home’s  difficult announcement regarding his aging mother, or because of fear of the  meeting with Yael who was sure to hurry from Paris to cash in on his  promises.
 
First thing would be to travel to the Healing Home for  the Elderly,  and then he would  call Yael and explain the situation. “Best to see how things really are, perhaps  it’s just a false alarm?” But as he was about to leave, he changed his mind. “If  she died already and they only wanted to soften the bad news.” He suddenly  sensed his definitely orphaned state and decided to get in touch with Yael. On  the other hand, he thought, “It could be interpreted as an irreversible step…  she would rush to the funeral and would be by his side during the days of the  Shiva… then she would choose a gravestone for him and would visit the grave and  come back to his apartment and then?   He would have to decide…” “No,” he thought, “better wait…” and he opened  the door to get out. 
 
The telephone ring was heard from his room and he did not  know if it came from the Home or from Paris. Judging by the hour he suspected  it was Yael’s habitual call and while he was hesitating, cold perspiration  covering his face and his heart beating forcefully, he picked up the receiver  and heard Yael’s voice. “What’s new Yuda?” she asked belligerently and without  waiting for an answer accused him that he never bothered to call and he was  wasting both his and her time and why won’t he ever come to visit her in Paris,  at least once a year, and leave the care of the old woman to the nurses? Then  she noticed he was not answering or apologizing as he usually did. “I am  rushing over to ‘Healing,’ her condition has deteriorated and perhaps she is  already dead and they are hiding it from me, I was just about to call and tell  you that you should not come because… because… you most likely won’t be in time  for the fune…” he stopped, unable to say “funeral” and became quiet, choking  back tears. 
 
“Solitary and lonely, sixty-six years old, no father or  mother…” he thought to himself, and only Yael is left to him in faraway Paris,  and he did not dare to ask her to come, openly… that he needed her… lost  without her… and he slammed down the receiver.
 
In the car he relaxed and began to consider the  situation. Until the old woman died he took care of her devotedly, never  skipping one day of staying by her side. Even on Yom Kippur, he  mounted his rusty bicycle and arrived in time to feed her and drive her  wheelchair in the yard, telling her about his shopping for himself in  Rozenzveig’s grocery store and how much he saved and how expensive everything  was… she would not answer and he would go on, even when wondering if her mind  was lucid. 
 
By her bed he met Dr. Stein and the nurses, who had  plenty of experience with such situations. “I am sorry, Yehuda,” the doctor said  abruptly, as was his custom. “She died peacefully and I know how important it  was to you that she would not suffer.” Yuda’le sat in his accustomed chair and  gazed at the sheet. The others left the room; it was her room, and his, for a  few years and he could not even remember how many. He did not feel the need to  look at her face, so he got up and stepped over to the window. Outside, two  boys played ball. “The old woman no longer needs me, in a short while they will  remove her, and I… what am I waiting for?” he went outside, crossed the long  corridor and went into the yard. On the bench, the one that was their own, he  met Chasia. 

“Yuda’le, where is Mother?”

“She died, Chasia, this morning.” He heard himself say it  and did not feel any pain.

“And when is the funeral, Yuda’le?”

Yuda’le did not answer and thought about Yael, suddenly  wanting her to come. She was so efficient and organized and at night, in bed,  she would kiss and caress and forgive him for not being able to satisfy her.   He got up and went to the kitchen  to prepare a cup of tea for himself and was glad to meet David, the cook, and  his assistant Simcha, with whom he used to spend long hours. They would suggest  beautiful women to make a match with, and reminded him that life is short and  one must enjoy it. And they would ask when Yael was coming back and how kind she  was and why doesn’t he marry her? But they did not try to harass him and  everything was said with love. They were pleased to see him every morning,  taking breakfast to his mother, and getting a cookie and a cup of coffee for  himself. 
 
Two male nurses took his mother from the room and asked  him to sign some documents. He asked Rachel, the secretary, to help him collect  his mother’s few belongings and asked about the arrangements for tomorrow.  Suddenly he remembered the card he got from a representative of “Burial with  Dignity” so he called to find out how and when and what should be written on the  death announcements and was pleased that all was going properly, without pain.  He determined that it would be a small funeral, and he was not going to tell his  friends; they would thank him for it. After the funeral he would call Yael and  tell her that everything was over and there was no need for her to come. 
 
He felt relief, a sense of freedom, and he raised his  eyes to the sky and it was blue, like the sea which he loved. And had he not  noticed Srulik, limping heavily toward him, he would have begun to whistle a  happy tune.
 
“Yuda’le, so Mother is gone, what is going to happen to you  now?” Srulik asked. Yuda’le did not know how to answer and thought to himself  that not much was going to happen, just the empty apartment and a radio set  which he did not have a chance to repair, and Yael, who would surely say “So  what is happening now? We must decide this way or the other!?”
 
“Yuda’le, let’s play one game of domino, because anyway  you won’t leave before supper,” said Srulik.
 
Yuda’le naturally agreed and they went to the patients’ lounge and played dominoes. In the shower Yuda’le helped Srulik so he would not  slip and fall, and at nine o’clock they went to Srulik’s room and watched the  news. 
 
At exactly ten o’clock Sonia, the night nurse, entered to  turn off the light and found Srulik sleeping in his bed. On the tattered  armchair next to him, Yuda’le was sleeping deeply, and seeing his profoundly  peaceful expression, Sonia decided not to wake him up.