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shoes. But his hands started hitting in rage, the little girl dropped
from the balcony, that tranquility.

    Minna wants him to remember her, the rage stunned him, a rage that
brought a ring down on Minna, I'm sorry, he said, and when he jumped into
the car, he yelled: My name is Boaz, but he should have said: I'm Boaz, he
started the car and began driving. The stunned driver stood there next to
the person with the notebook and pencil, his face crushed from the blow,
and the man with the notebook searched for the pencil that might have
fallen and clenched his arm that had been hit and Boaz drove fast down the
slope of Dizengoff toward the huts on Nordau. He saw people huddled at
the coffee shop where a news announcer's voice was coming, and he went
on, he stopped at a breached bridge with a few bushes still burgeoning
between its tatters and an iron skeleton was seen peeping out of what had
apparently once been a complete structure. He parked the car, turned off
the lights, took the kitbag, and went. He walked along the street and could
smell the blood of the sea. The smell was calming and the crash of the
waves was pleasant and demonstrated devotion and obstinacy.
    When he lay on a cot in a tent on the seashore, in the small camp for
soldiers who returned and didn't know where, or why they stayed there, he
thought he didn't remember who Minna was and in fact he did remember,
but it wasn't important to him. And then he realized that he was protecting somebody.
    In the morning, he passed by a small hotel with a sign on its wall saying:
"For Soldiers, Discount and Free Wash." He didn't know what was free
and what was discounted and he went in. The clerk was snoozing and upstairs in the rooms, people were groaning. Maybe the clerk recorded
their made-up names in his notebook. Boaz asked for what was free and
found himself in a bathroom whose walls were filthy and whose mirrors
were broken. He asked the man for toothpaste; the clerk was too tired to
refuse. Boaz spread toothpaste on a fountain pen he took out of the kitbag
and brushed his teeth. Then he wet his face and hair and combed his hair
back with his fingers, and the broken mirror didn't give him any idea of
how he looked. When he came out, the clerk said something about the war
and hope and Boaz asked him if he was interested in buying gold teeth of
Arabs. The clerk felt the toothpaste that Boaz returned to him and said:
Enough already, everybody's got those jokes. Boaz didn't correct him, but
went out, pounded his fist, and saw damp crumbling plaster, his hand was
white from the blow and he walked along Hayarkon Street where the sea
was seen flickering between the houses. A woman was hanging laundry out
to dry and he wanted the sun to burn her men's clothes. When he came to
the office, he saw a sign: "Office to Direct Soldiers Who Were Cut Off from
Their Units." He climbed the stinking stairs and saw soldiers standing in
a line. One of them said, There's a Romanian girl on Third Street, twenty
cents a fuck. Boaz waited quietly and chewed imaginary gum. The soldiers
wanted gum and he showed them a mouth with no gum. In the office sat
a well-groomed officer wearing a handsome uniform, and his eyes were
veiled in a panic that became beautiful in a properly functioning smile.
Boaz appreciated that national authority. He answered the officer's questions calmly, pulled out the papers, and showed them to the officer. The
officer said to him: Oh, you were there too, you deserve more, where's the
weapon, they spoke a few minutes and a female soldier came in looking
furious and wrote something on a small thin pink paper form. After he
signed, he wanted to understand how far the female soldier's gigantic
breasts reached, but she turned her back to him and said: Everybody,
everybody, and he understood her, maybe in his heart he pitied her, with
breasts like those to meet those dark schemes. When he went outside, he
remembered dully