SEKURIANY, 1930; JERUSALEM, 1990 1. From childhood she bathed him, wrapped him up in the towel, kissed him and tucked him into bed. He grew until it was hard for her to carry him in her arms. When he was thirteen Mother led him to his bedroom by the hand. Fours years later, Father, the respected mill owner, passed away. Returning from the burial to the gloomy home, with the beds overturned and the mirrors cloaked, barefoot, in accordance with tradition, she went into the kitchen to heat the water. So it started or continued, who can say? Rabbi Schraga Mendlowitz said, "Impurity often comes from purity." 2. That morning, when they broke their incestuous embrace, he went to the window and saw his young wife in a long white nightshirt, translucent, dissolved in the sun's rising rays, going down the road. He didn't try to catch her and fetch her back. He didn't even consider staying on in this damned little town. It took them less than a week to pack. They, carriers of plague, fled as if from plague. 3. No one knows what moved them to settle in the Holy Land. Neither he nor his late father were Zionists. Mother and son--so recently wealthy, almost spoiled--got used to poverty, danger and toil. In concert with the rest, they raised a wall around their settlement. They rose from the dust along with the nation. His mother lived eighteen years more and died one month after the declaration of independence during the first war. He buried her alone, inviting none of his few friends or his many colleagues. Did he ever visit to her grave? A year after her death, he, a forty-year-old, married (a first marriage, all presumed), wedding a 20-year-old beauty. They lived in harmony despite the difference in age. By the end of the eighties, the family numbered eighteen: prospering children, growing grandchildren, even a baby great-grandchild, named after him, contrary to tradition, while he was still living. But little life was left in him. His walk was mincing; his face a mask, eyes front, the fingers of his right hand traced monotonous circles. The nation remembered his distinguished service in small arms manufacturing, but he himself remembered nothing and understood little. She would have looked younger but for the grey in her hair, the facial pallor. She never used makeup or hair dye. But in motion she was youthful, supple, although a little abrupt. Only these three: her older daughter, her doctor and she herself knew how soon her own end would be. © 1996 Boris Khersonsky. All rights reserved. Translation by Ruth Kreuzer and Dale Hobson.