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shoulder.
                  At the back of the courtyard, in a nook meant for lovers, I found a cracked stone bench.  With my hand I brushed off a layer of dust and dry leaves and sat down.  Beyond the fence the man in the suit was calling out words and the children were responding.  They were of almost every age and fervently enthusiastic.  I wondered if Jonathan had ever stood on parade like that and responded to someone, shouting at the top of his voice without doubting.  For a moment I nearly memorized the details of the incident, to tell him or, better, to write.  Then something sane and sensible reminded me how difficult, almost impossible, it was for a father who had voluntarily missed his son's childhood years to gain his love when he becomes a young man.
                  I took an apple out of my pocket and bit into it.  The child nearest to me turned his head and squinted at me.  Then he detached himself from the row and came over to the fence.  One by one several others joined him, their little feet trampling over grass run wild.  The older ones waved and called out in Hebrew, "Shalom, shalom."  The younger ones were more practical and pointed at the apple.  The man in the suit stopped handing to open mouths whatever he was carrying in a small cardboard suitcase and also came over to the fence. 
                  "What's the matter with you?" he asked the children in a rural Arabic which did not fit his respectable appearance.  "Are you trying to run away from my vitamins?"
                  He persuaded the children to return to the row, stroking their heads affectionately, with the complicity of the helpless.  One by one they left the fence, their gazes fixed on my mouth, which was full of unchewed food.  Embarrassed, I felt the apples in my pocket.  How could I divide three and a half apples between twenty children?  I looked at the man.  Our glances met and lingered on one another for a long moment, in a flash of communication.
                  It was too early to draw conclusions.  I looked down.  My ears picked up the murmuring and background noises of children being put in line and responding unwillingly.  When I looked around once more they had all joined the long row again and, when the order was given, opened their mouths wide.  Now I could also see the big, round tablets the man was placing on their tongues.  He did it mechanically, his gaze fixed on some distant point above their heads.  Now I had no doubt: he was trying to catch my eye.
                  I got up and strode over to the fence.  The man approached too, walking along the row of pink tongues.  I allowed myself to smile.  Not really, not openly, just a miniscule relaxation of the face muscles.  His face remained impassive.
                  That could be expected, too. The relations between an agent and his operator are so delicate and problematic as to be nearly as fragile as those between homosexual lovers.  And just as in a partnership of that kind each can identify the other man's love beyond his distress, the agent and his operator have a sixth sense for one another which is nourished by the secret they share.  I bent a few barbs in the fence, the rusty wire breaking between my fingers.  The man's face bore a worried look although his hands continued doling out the pills at the usual rate.  I drew back.  He also retreated along the row of children.
                  From past experience I could imagine a note left in the dead of night in the guard's hut at the entrance; a phrase whispered in my ear as I walked along the street or an innocent messenger, perhaps a child, who would stand in the doorway of my room.  All further thought gave the incident additional dimensions of logic.  Something in the glances we had exchanged was proof of a connection, and ranging the children in a row near the fence had been intended to