Then in the middle of August, a fortnight before Netta started her final year at the local high school, there was a little surprise: Arik Krantz, the real-estate agent, dropped in one Saturday morning. He was just looking in to make sure everything was in order. He lived only five minutes away. And in fact his acquaintances, the Kramers, the owners, had asked him to stop by and take a look.
He looked around, chuckled, and said: "I can see you've had a soft landing. Looks as though everything's shipshape here already." Yoel, economical as usual, said only: "Yes. Fine." The agent wanted to know if all the systems in the house were functioning properly. "After all, you fell in love with this property at first sight, so to speak, and love like that often cools down the next morning."
"Everything's fine," said Yoel, who was dressed in an undershirt and running shorts and sandals. Looking like this, he fascinated the agent even more than on their first meeting, in June, when he had rented the house. Yoel struck him as secretive and strong. His face suggested salt, winds, strange women, loneliness, and sun. The prematurely graying hair was cut military fashion, short and well trimmed, without sideburns, with a metallic gray forelock curling up on his forehead, not flopping forward over it. Like a coil of steel wool. The wrinkles at the corners of the eyes suggested a mocking sneer that the lips did not share in. The eyes themselves were sunk, reddened, slightly closed, as though the light were too strong or because of dust and wind. In the jawline an inner power was concentrated, as though the man kept his teeth clenched. Apart from the ironic wrinkles around his eyes, the face was young and smooth, in contrast with the graying hair. The expression hardly varied whether he was speaking or silent.
"I'm not disturbing you? Can I sit down for a minute?"
And Yoel, who was holding the electric drill with its extension lead plugged into the socket in the kitchen, on the other side of the wall, said:
"Please. Sit down."
"This isn't a business call," the agent stressed. "I just dropped in to see if I could be of any help. To contribute to establishing the settlement, as they say. Call me Arik, by the way. It's like this: the landlord asked me to tell you that you can link the two air conditioners together and run them to all the bedrooms. Feel free to fix it at his expense. He was planning to do it anyway this summer and didn't manage to get it done. He also asked me to tell you that the lawn needs a lot of watering—the topsoil is thin here—but that the shrubs at the front need to be watered sparingly."
The agent's efforts to please and to establish contact with him, and perhaps the word "sparingly," brought a faint smile to Yoel's lips. He was not aware of it himself, but Krantz received it enthusiastically, exposing his gums, and reassuring Yoel emphatically:
"I truly didn't come here to bother you, Mr. Ravid. I was just passing on my way to the sea. That is, I wasn't exactly passing; the truth is I made a little detour to come and see you. It's a fantastic day today for sailing and I happen to be on my way to the sea. Well, I'm off now."
"Would you like a cup of coffee," Yoel said without a question mark. He put the drill down, as if it were a tray of refreshments, on the coffee table in front of his visitor. Who sat down gingerly in a corner of the sofa. The agent was wearing a sports shirt with the emblem of the Brazilian soccer team above his swimming trunks and gleaming white tennis shoes. Keeping his hairy legs pressed firmly together like a coy girl, he chuckled again and asked:
"How's the family? Do they feel comfortable here? Settled in OK?"
"The grannies have gone to Metullah. Milk and sugar?"
"Don't bother," said the agent. After a moment he added, daringly: "Well, all right then. Just one spoonful and a tiny drop of milk. Just enough to change the color. Call me Arik."
Yoel went to the kitchen. The agent, from where he was sitting, rapidly checked out the living room with his eyes as though searching for a vital clue. It seemed to him that nothing had changed except for three cardboard boxes standing one on top of the other in a corner near the giant philodendron. And the three photographs of ruins over the sofa, which Krantz guessed must be souvenirs from Africa or somewhere. Interesting to know how he makes his living, this government employee who, according to what they say in the neighborhood, dóesn't work at all. He gives the impression of being pretty senior. Perhaps he's been suspended from his duties pending an investigation. He looks like a section head in the Ministry of Agriculture or Development, probably with an impressive history in the regular army. Something like a brigadier in the Armored Corps.
"What did you do in the army, if you don't mind my asking? You look, um, sort of familiar. Have you been in the papers ever? Or on television by any chance?" He turned toward Yoel, who entered the room at that moment, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee, sugar bowl and milk pitcher, and a plate of crackers. He placed the cups on the table. All the other things remained on the tray, which he set down between them. And he sat down in an armchair.
"Lieutenant with the army advocate general," he said.
"And afterward?"
"I left the army in '63."
Almost at the last minute Krantz swallowed an additional question that was on the tip of his tongue. Instead he said, as he put milk and sugar in his coffee:
"I was just asking. Hope you don't mind. Personally I hate busybodies. No problems with the oven?"
Yoel shrugged. A shadow crossed the doorway and vanished.
"Your wife?" asked Krantz, and immediately remembered and, apologizing profusely, cautiously expressed the assumption that it must surely have been the daughter. Cute but shy? And once again he saw fit to mention his two boys, both of them soldiers in combat units, both of them were in Lebanon, barely eighteen months between them. Quite a problem. Maybe we should arrange for them to meet your daughter sometime, and see if anything develops? Suddenly he sensed that the person sitting opposite him was eying him with cold, amused curiosity, so he dropped the subject quickly and chose instead to tell Yoel that he had worked for two years when he was young as a qualified TV technician, so if the television gives you any trouble just give me a ring even in the middle of the night and I'll hurry over and put it right for you for nothing; no problem. And if you feel like joining me for a couple of hours' sailing on my boat that's moored in the fishing port in Jaffa, just let me know. Have you got my phone number? Give me a ring whenever the fancy takes you. Well, I'm off.
"Thank you," Yoel said. "I'll be less than five minutes, if you can wait."
It took the agent a few seconds to realize that Yoel was accepting his invitation. At once he was seized with enthusiasm and began to talk about the delights of sailing on a fantastic day like this. Maybe you feel like making a serious expedition? We could go and take a look at Abie Nathan's heap of junk.
Yoel attracted him and aroused a powerful desire to get closer, to make friends, to serve him devotedly, to prove to Yoel how much he could do for him, to demonstrate loyalty, and even to touch him. But the agent contained himself, stopped the pat on the shoulder that was making his fingertips itch, and said:
"Take your time. There's no hurry. The sea won't run away." And he jumped up, agile and happy, to anticipate Yoel and take the tray with the coffee things back to the kitchen himself. If Yoel had not stopped him he would have washed them.
From then on Yoel started going to sea with Arik Krantz on Saturdays. He had known how to row from his childhood; now he learned to hoist a sail and to tack. But only rarely did he break his silence. This did not cause the agent disappointment or offense but, on the contrary, provoked an emotion resembling the infatuation that sometimes takes hold of an adolescent who falls under the spell of an older boy and longs to serve him. Unconsciously he began to imitate Yoel's habit of putting a finger between his neck and his shirt collar, and his way of taking a deep breath of sea air and holding it in his lungs before releasing it slowly through a thin crack between his lips. When they were out at sea Arik Krantz of his own accord told Yoel everything. Even about being slightly unfaithful to his wife and his methods of cheating on his income tax and postponing his reserve army service. If he sensed he was tiring Yoel, he would stop talking and play him some classical music: he had taken to bringing with him, on those days when his new friend joined him, a sophisticated battery cassette player. After a quarter of an hour or so, finding it difficult to put up with their silence and Mozart, he would set about explaining to Yoel how he could maintain the value of his money in times like these or about the classified methods by which the navy was able now to seal the coast hermetically against terrorists infiltrating by boat. The unexpected friendship excited the agent to the point that sometimes, unable to contain himself, he telephoned Yoel during the week to talk about the coming weekend.
Yoel for his part thought about the words "the sea won't run away." He found no error in them. As was his wont, he kept his side of the bargain: he enjoyed giving the agent what he wanted precisely by giving him nothing. Except his silent presence. Once as a surprise, he taught Krantz how to say to a girl "I want you" in Burmese. They would return to Jaffa harbor at three or four in the afternoon, even though Krantz secretly prayed that time would stand still or that the dry land would disappear. Then they would go home in the agent's car, and have coffee together. Yoel would say "Thanks a lot. See you." But once he said as they were parting, "Take care, Arik, on the way." Krantz treasured these words joyfully in his heart because he saw them as a small step forward. Meanwhile, of the thousand questions that aroused his curiosity he had managed to put only two or three. And he had received simple answers. He was terrified of spoiling things, of going too far, of being a nuisance, of breaking the magic spell. In this way several weeks passed, Netta started her last year at school, and the pat on the back that Krantz swore to himself every time that he would finally give his friend as they parted did not happen. It was postponed to the next meeting.