it up and started walking toward him, whistling softly until they met and embraced.
Avram looks at her questioningly. She whistles after the pack of dogs as they recede into the distance. She rounds her lips and whistles to the golden bitch, who grudgingly turns her head and slows down. Ora leans forward with her hands on her knees. “Come,” she whispers.
The other dogs sprint away, barking, chasing one another, engaging in momentary fights, galloping across the field with floppy or perked-up ears, re-forming themselves into a pack. The golden one looks at them and back at Ora. Then, hesitantly, with a trembling paw, she starts to walk in Ora’s direction. Without moving, Ora whistles softly, almost imperceptibly, guiding the bitch. Avram lets the branch drop. The bitch walks through a patch of stubbly growth that clings to her broad chest.
Ora slowly crouches down on one knee. The bitch stops abruptly, one paw suspended, her black nostrils open wide. Ora finds a slice of bread on their cloth, and carefully tosses it near the dog. She pulls back and growls.
“Eat it, it’s good.”
The bitch cocks her head. Her eyes are large and dirty. Ora talks to her: “You lived in a house once, you had a home, people took care of you and loved you. You had a bowl for food and a bowl for water.”
With cautious, hunched steps, the bitch walks over to the bread. Growling, her brows arched, she does not take her eyes off Avram and Ora.
“Don’t look at her,” Ora whispers.
“I was looking at you,” Avram says awkwardly, and turns away.
The bitch grabs the bread and devours it. Ora throws her a piece of cheese. She sniffs it and eats. Then a few pieces of salami. Some biscuits. “Come here, you’re a good dog, good, good dog.” The dog sits down and licks her chops. Ora pours water from a bottle into a plastic dish and sets it down on the ground between her and the dog, then goes back to her place. The dog sniffs at it from a distance. Reluctant to approach, attracted yet repelled. A slight whimper escapes her lips. “Drink, you’re thirsty.” The bitch approaches the dish without taking her eyes off Ora and Avram. Her leg muscles shake and she looks as though she might collapse. She laps up the water quickly and retreats. Ora moves closer and the bitch bares her teeth and her fur stands on end. Ora talks to her and pours some more water. She does this two more times, until the bottle is empty. The bitch sits next to the dish. Then she sprawls out and starts gnawing at a ball of fur and thistles stuck to her paw.
And now they can no longer avoid looking at each other.
Ora and Avram stand there, spent, their sweat heavy with the stench of fear, ashamed. A flicker of embarrassment crosses their faces. They have not yet had time to robe themselves in their former skins. Avram stares at her and shakes his head slowly, wonderingly, gratefully, and his blue eyes fill with an undulating stir, and her body suddenly remembers his embrace, and for a moment she wonders stupidly if she should whistle for him to come. But he comes anyway, a mere three steps, and hugs her, grasps her tightly, as he used to, and whispers, “Ora, Ora’leh.” The bitch looks up at them.
A moment later Ora pulls away and stands staring at him as though she has not seen him for years. Then she falls on him again and starts to pound him with both hands and hit his face and scratch it, without saying anything, panting drily. Taken aback, he shields his face, then tries to hold her, to encircle her in his arms so that she cannot hurt him or harm herself, because she has started to scratch herself too and hit her own face with her hands. “Ora, stop, stop,” he shouts, he begs, until he is able to trap her in his arms and hold her tightly to his body to stop her wildness. She struggles and grunts and kicks him, and every time she feels a space of nothing between them she tries to fill it with a punch or a kick or an angry breath, and the wilder she gets, the closer he has to hold her, until they are practically molded into one, intertwined, and she grits her teeth and yells, “You piece of shit, all these years … punishing