Haifa, March 1971

My dear, unforgettable Dorothea,

It's been so long since I've seen you, who knows whether I would know you now. Maybe you don't know me any more either and don't think of me in those rooms where the door handles catch at your sleeve. I remember the Polish woods and image you running through yesterday's rain, whose drops ring louder from the branches above than the branches below. I remember you as a little girl and see how quickly you grow, faster than your nails and your hair; growing with you, but faster than you and inside you, is hate for your mother. Did we have to hate her so much? The sand here arouses my desire, but I have been feeling strange with Isaac for some time now. This feeling has nothing to do with him or with our love. It has to do with something else. With his injury. He reads in bed; I lie next to him in the tent and turn out the light when I desire him. He lies still for a few moments, peering at the book in the dark, and I can hear his thoughts gallop across the invisible lines. And then he turns to me. But as soon as we touch I feel the terrible scar of his wound. After we've made love, we lie there, staring into our own separate darkness.

The other evening I asked him, "Did it happen at night?"

"What?" he replied, although he knew what I meant.

"When you were wounded."

"It happened at night."

"And did you know what it was?"

"No, but I think it was a bayonet."

Perhaps you don't understand all this, Dotty, young and inexperienced as you are. A bird foraging for food in the swamps and marshes sinks rapidly if it doesn't move. It has to keep pulling it's feel out of the mire to move on, regardless of whether it has caught something or not. And the same applies to us and our love. We have to move on, we can't stay where we are, because we'll sink.