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skimming the length of his arm, until it seems that it was a mistake that they were ever summoned here, to this abode of pain and sickness, when they should be relaxing now in a manicured garden, white wine in their glasses, or packing a suitcase for a short and enjoyable break, and suddenly he feels that it’s his duty to warn them urgently, open their eyes and get them out of this place before it’s too late, you’ve found yourselves in a poisoned cottage, and the witch will turn you into soup, or plead on their behalf in the assizes that determine the fate of bodies, but when the doctor approaches them and he forces himself to eavesdrop on their conversation it becomes clear to him that he’s left it too late: for three days no morsel of food has touched those lips, pains in the stomach are intensifying, and a reverential fear takes hold of him when he realises that here, right beside him, a man is ebbing away, at an awesome rate, and this man, suddenly he feels a powerful and devastating empathy towards him; this man is loving and being loved in a real moment, even as he is consumed like newspaper thrown into a brazier to keep the fire going, while he himself, Avner Horowitz, has never loved or been loved, and yet no one pities him.
    Take me instead of him, he wants to say, because this man, this sick body, contains within him a living love, and his anticipated death, like the death of a pregnant woman, is the very embodiment of perversity, and already he’s ready to lie down on the lean body as if to protect him from the explosives of fate, but very soon his sorrow for this couple is tempered by sorrow for himself and for his sons, especially the youngest, who will not remember him at all, even for Shlomit, and he imagines her directing a petulant glance at him, why are you giving in so easily, why aren’t you fighting? And already he’s wondering whether sentences of life and of death are really entirely separate, perhaps it is specifically the one who has known love who is entitled to depart from this world peaceably, whereas the one who hasn’t is required to stay and complete his education, and perhaps that’s why the couple beside him are behaving with such serenity, as if there is no contradiction between love and death, as if they complement each other. But who will take pity on the woman, no longer young, whose beauty radiates to him through the curtain, and what will become of the love with which she is loved, where do they dwell, the loves that live on after the deaths of their practitioners, and it seems to him that if he prays and implores with all his might, perhaps this curtailed love will migrate to him, as his mother’s flesh was transferred to him. She’s lying motionless before him, with the arrogance of one who has reached a ripe old age and is fully entitled to be a burden, when all the efforts and the essence of life are directed towards clinging to life, and after struggling a little with the notion of sacrificing his body, he finds himself ready and willing to sacrifice her body, to cast her flesh into the fire blazing beside him and add a few years of life and love to this man, who is still smiling sweetly, almost apologetically, and still going up in flames.
    Don’t worry, you’ll soon be feeling better, he hears her whisper, and nods gratefully, as if the encouraging promise had been addressed to him, you’ll soon be feeling better, don’t worry, but how can he not worry when he has no way out. For years he’s been wrestling with the same questions, what am I doing with this wife, what am I doing in this job, what am I doing in this country. Until not so long ago he still believed that if you do what’s required of you, you make the world a better place, but recently it has seemed that a kind of legal principle has been lost, something which, even if never proved, was at least intelligible: false steps lead to disaster, the right steps may be your salvation. More and more he has