Each and Every Child
Published in Issue #24 Translated from Hebrew by Galia Vurgan(Excerpt from a Novel)
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This baby, where is he buried, where have I left him,
where have I forgotten the baby, without any water or air?
– Nurit Zarchi
But to love a child
is sometimes to fail at love
while the dead look on
with their abstract sorrow.
– William Matthews
It was through three mists and three mistakes that Alex saw Eli for the first time.
Through the haze of the heavy heat lying like a beast’s hoof on the breast of the city for over a week; through the heat vapors rising from the bottom of the building and gathered under its roof, in the little hallway between their apartments on the third floor; and through the thinnest yet most misleading mist of them all: the fog covering his glasses – the one that made him think this was the new neighbor, Eli Dayan, whose name had appeared on the mailbox a few days earlier. He had actually imagined this Eli to be a rather older man, of solid build, even thuggish. Surely heavier than this slender guy with the spiny haircut. And it was only when the guy, about to enter his apartment, turned to face him that he found out: neither a guy nor Mr. Dayan, but a pale, short-haired young woman. At that same moment he noticed the kid clinging to her, about three and a half or four years old, wrapping his hand around her jeansed thigh the way kids do. Alex knew a thing or two about teenagers, but young children puzzled him.
Well, Eli Dayan has a wife with a delicate face...
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