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writers don't understand at all! And he looked at his flock, who
had no idea who the modern writers were and what they meant and here,
thinks Boaz, stands a young man, maybe I'm standing there, and thinking
about spots on the trousers of Hebrew teachers. A garden of nails caught in
a pale light and the smell of geraniums intoxicates and the crumbling stone
fence and the tree inventing the house and everything here is longing.
    And we're all of us acting in a Jewish Western, somebody will say later
on, and then this moment will be remembered. The young man who may
be he averts his face, Boaz knows it's impossible. The geranium, the longings, everything is mixed up here in a restrained essence. He didn't come
to Tel Aviv to seek a new war, especially not against himself. But the
enemy, it seemed to him, is shrouded in a smell of mothballs, I and not I,
thought Boaz. When the young man turned to him, something forgotten flickered in Boaz's mind. He recalled that once he was in the battle the
man in the cafe told him about, but he knew he didn't remember it, he
thought then that the Boaz who went into the battle hadn't come out of it
at all. Thirty-two killed. Menahem Henkin was killed there, too. But I
didn't come out of it, somebody else came out of it, disguised as me. Now
it was clear to him. The dark was such that as soon as the young man's face
turned aside from the balcony and turned to him, he was blinded for a
moment by the harsh light cast from the window when the light now came
on. Out of a vague fear, he knew he had to choose, so there was a struggle
between Boaz and the very tall mute young man. The light in the window
went out and another light came on and a fire engine siren was heard wailing, racing in the next street, the young man was a cruel fighter, nobody
could come out a winner in such a battle, thought Boaz. The nails stuck in
his feet, the broken glass tore chunks out of his body, the geranium bush
was abandoned. Its smell was forgotten in the smell of the cruel battle,
blood flowed, and he didn't know if it was his blood or the young man's
blood, the young man didn't talk, just groaned and roared, and Boaz tried
to talk but no words were heard. Only afterward the young man groaned:
You're all shit, what do you know. But now Boaz wasn't sure if he had
really heard those words, he was just as struck as his enemy, the flight of
the two of them was the most ridiculous thing Boaz could think of later on.
How the two of us fled at the same time. He tramped on nails and glass
shards and fled and saw another back fleeing from there and groaning and
he groaned too, but now he couldn't know who was who, and Boaz imagined that that was all he wanted to know, who he wasn't, the bird with the
gold beak flew off, the robe hanging on a peg before disappeared in a panic,
a woman's hand was seen tugging the robe and maybe tore it, lights went
on and off. Voices burst out of apartments where maybe they were trying
to listen to a funny program at the end of the war, Hasidic music was heard
in the distance, but what was clear to Boaz was that only one of them came
from there and again he vaguely recalled that battle and he thought, Only
one came out of that too even though maybe two of us were in it, who came
out? Me or him, who comes out now: me or him, and he didn't know. And
so, for a moment, when he stood in the street and people started appearing before his eyes, he could take pity on himself. But he was immediately
disgusted with himself and stopped. Cleaned his wounds, but he recalled that he had gotten a tetanus shot some time ago and was protected from
that harm; he wanted to be sure he wouldn't get rabies but that only embittered him even more.

    The cats who were seen hiding between the fence and the house, where
a tree was sprouting, were searching for a bend of the stones in the auto
cemetery and suddenly they also fled all at once. The house couldn't be
seen now. Who