The colonel’s head was smooth and shiny. Not a baldness that one let happen, but which instead was shaved into being. Nor was there a hint of a paunch under his olive-green bungee cord belt, revealed as he rose like a Doric column from behind his desk when Ezra walked in. It was two weeks into the war, and Ezra had been summoned this morning from his home in Jerusalem.
“Thank you for coming,” the colonel said, reaching for Ezra’s hand. “I returned to work just a few days ago, hence the last-minute notice. David”—here he gestured to Ezra’s old student, who’d come out to greet him at the front desk; he’d pumped Ezra’s hand heartily before breaking into a sheepish grin—“says you’re an excellent writer. Also, that you’re very good at helping young men write.”
Ezra tipped his head noncommittally. Well, wasn’t it true? He had thirty or so boys in each of four classes, plus a fifth class after lunch with the handful who spoke English as their native tongue. That made more than one thousand students over Ezra’s teaching career, all of whose souls he’d labored to touch by means of other people’s words. Sometimes he even succeeded, usually to his own surprise. There was Yossi, a junior who’d lost—so Ezra learned from the school secretary, leaning her ample bosom onto the desk to explain in sotto voce—an older brother in a terror attack. He’d barely uttered a word all year, then suddenly spoke at length about The House on Mango Street. “I felt so bad for...
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