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he left her slack-jawed and
went toward London Square. She yelled something that was drowned in
the noise of the sea. He expected her to be the daughter of the driver of
the car and would sue him. So he groped in the empty pocket where he
used to keep the gold teeth. Then he sat on a rock and looked at a bench
not far from him. The bench was surely more comfortable to sit on because
in the morning, when he went to the office, he saw that it was repainted.
The sea spread out before him. The girl was still yelling, or the yelling was
before and only the echo was heard now, the sea was locked because of the
dark. The moon shed a little light but it was thin and curved and a car that
might have broken down, parked with its lights on and illuminated the
wrong section of the sea. Boaz leaned over the rock and behind it were
white houses gleaming in the curved light, with eyes wide open he saw
nonexistent eagles darting, swooping and a bright path, and a man yelling,
they died, got to save the black. Boaz sat there terrified, shrouded in dread
from some unknown source, thought about the baby that could have been
born if the woman who got an indifferent kiss near Cafe Pilz was yelling
something. Maybe Boaz was a bastard who fell on his head, he thought;
maybe that's Minna, did I know her once, or not, Minna, and what does he
have to do with all those Minnas, he told the baby kicking inside him: Wait
a while, I'll give birth to you, pretty one, with two mothers, three fathers,
and two grandfathers. Then he went down to the boardwalk and bumped into wires not reached by the car's headlights. Maybe they were laid here
recently when the war was close to Tel Aviv, which always expected wars
on her border.

    Two young men stood at the door of a cafe that looked locked. They
knocked on the door, but nobody opened it. He could imagine the cafe
owner leaving, escaping in a boat, and not yet back. A girl in a short dress
was standing in a shaded niche next to the door. For a moment, she rolled
up her dress a little and the two young men laughed and approached her
as in a slow dance, she raised the dress as if her hands were the hands of
a doctor, but the touch was hesitant, wounded, and the lights of a passing car showed some profound contempt flickering deep in her eyes. The
lights of the car that might have broken down were extinguished now and
the sea was still silvered, calm, sealed in moon shadows. A cop passed by
on a bike now and shone a flashlight on the bench Boaz had almost sat on
before. Clouds of suspicions in the place were plastered but tangible. An
ancient smell of damp and phony chill came from the park. For a moment
he felt a secret bliss that he could feel a common fate with those two young
men and share the girl's contempt for their springy steps, but the girl
looked scared of the cop, turned around and lowered her dress with perhaps unexpected coarseness, they stood still again in front of the locked
door and one of them started weeping. Now Boaz could make out how big
they were, like wild bulls he used to see between Marar and the settlement. They were surely searching for a fille de joie with braids and a pinafore, their childhood love, he thought. But there was a war, and if two
fools like them didn't die, they were superfluous like me. The two strode
toward Hayarkon Street and from there to the Red House. In the Red
House, somebody was playing the "Internationale" on a mandolin. An unseen woman was singing in a whisper the words that moved toward the sea
and were mixed in it. Near the house was a barbed wire fence and two
women soldiers with Sten guns were guarding it. The fence was rusty and
behind it were only limestone hills and sea. The cannon that may really
have stood here once was moved. Inside the Red House a forehead was
seen and near it two crests of male hair. The overgrown young men stood
facing the women soldiers and spoke coarsely. The women soldiers enveloped