Ilana’s depression and suicidal tendencies

Ilana Sommo’s depression and suicidal tendencies are presented through repeated suicide attempts, a later declaration that she would not mind dying, and letters that make the possibility of another attempt part of her fraught communication with Alexander Gideon. The episodes are bound to the violence and collapse of their marriage, but the narrative also shows a moment when Boaz Brandstetter answers her despair with blunt attention to the life still around her.

Marriage, coercion, and the onset of the suicides

In her account of the marriage, Ilana traces its deterioration to a cycle of jealousy, interrogation, sexual coercion, and hatred that continued to masquerade as love. She recalls that when Boaz was two, Alexander discovered a lighter in the bathroom and responded with furious questioning and violence. He would disappear for days, then return without warning, lock Boaz in his room, and demand a detailed confession from her. Ilana places the beginning of her suicide attempts after this pattern had taken hold, naming tablets and gas as the means.

Her account does not isolate the attempts from the conditions surrounding them. She describes Alexander’s repeated interrogations and sexual demands, his absences, and the wider conflict involving his alliance with Zakheim and his war against his father and the house in Yefe Nof. The marriage ultimately ended in divorce. Ilana kept a note in Alexander’s handwriting, passed to her by Zakheim on the day of the decree, which stated that they had no further claims on each other. The note’s poetic image of a voice remaining in the walls and floors sharply contrasts with the legal effort to sever their obligations.

Despair and Boaz’s response

In a later conversation with Boaz, after he explains that he has accepted a house and argues that money from Alexander or Michel might as well be put to use, Ilana says that she is superfluous and would not mind dying. She imagines that everyone would be better off without her, then explains that everything she has touched has gone horribly wrong. The disclosure arrives abruptly in an ordinary exchange about money and coffee, making her despair feel both immediate and difficult for her to contain.

Boaz rejects the idea that death is an answer. He points to Yifat, who is barely three years and a month old, and suggests practical ways Ilana might occupy herself, including voluntary work and knitting hats for the troops. His reply is brusque rather than consoling, but it counters her claim of being unnecessary with a concrete responsibility and a child’s presence. Ilana does not retract what she has said; she asks whether Boaz can understand how thoroughly she feels that she has failed.

Letters, threat, and uncertainty

In a letter signed by Ilana, she warns Alexander not to expect another suicide attempt like those that previously ended with what she calls the stomach-pump drill. She promises instead to answer surprise with surprise, then stops writing and leaves him uncertain about what she intends to do. The letter turns the history of her attempts into a threat of possible repetition while withholding its outcome; her expressed belief in grace stands against the despair she invokes to unsettle him.

This uncertainty is part of how Ilana’s condition is conveyed. Her account of past attempts names specific methods, while the later letter explicitly refuses to confirm whether another attempt will follow. Rather than presenting recovery or resolution, the episodes show suicidal despair recurring in the wake of a broken marriage and persisting as both personal crisis and a charged form of communication with Alexander.