Mutual care between Alexander Gideon and Boaz after his return

The relationship between Alexander Gideon and Boaz Brandstetter moves from distance and unresolved fatherhood toward a difficult, largely wordless mutual care. For years, Alexander’s absence and Boaz’s rejection of the family around him make their connection an uncertainty to be managed; after Alexander returns to Israel gravely ill, their bond takes shape in the work of living together. A raft remembered from Boaz’s childhood, a handmade walking stick, a table built from packing materials, and lessons in Hebrew become more telling than declarations of affection.

Fatherhood under strain

Alexander’s relationship with Boaz is formed against a history of separation. Alexander later recounts that he married Ilana Sommo in 1959, did not consider himself suited to fatherhood, and delayed the couple’s separation until 1968. Their divorce was bitter, after which he left the country and cut off contact. In the years that followed, Boaz used his mother’s maiden name, Brandstetter, even on official documents. He treated the boarding school he had asked to attend as a place of confinement and stood apart from the household that was trying to keep him there.

When Boaz faced expulsion from school and the prospect of being left on the street, Ilana appealed to Alexander for help. She offered to attest before a notary that Boaz was the son of anyone Alexander wished her to name, in exchange for what she called first aid for a child who was a stranger to him. The offer exposes the contradiction at the heart of their relationship: biological paternity is asserted as a plain truth, while emotional kinship is presented as something Alexander might refuse. Ilana’s appeal also makes clear that Boaz’s safety, rather than recognition or reconciliation, is the immediate stake.

Alexander’s assistance helps create a route back into contact. In a later letter, Ilana reports that Alexander’s money and Michel-Henri Sommo’s judgment helped extricate Boaz from trouble, and that family friends had his police record closed. Michel-Henri also managed to bring Boaz to visit the family in Jerusalem. The visit offered a small, concrete change: Boaz and his stepfather competed to amuse Ilana’s little daughter, and the family shared a meal after the Sabbath. Alexander’s financial intervention thus had consequences beyond the immediate crisis, though the growing connection between Boaz and Michel-Henri complicated any simple account of Alexander’s place in the family.

Return to the childhood home

Alexander returned to Israel after learning that his kidney cancer had spread and further surgery was not considered worthwhile. He came without advance notice to see Boaz and stay in the house where he had grown up. Although the property was still registered in Alexander’s name, he acknowledged that it belonged to Boaz. His return was tied to regrets about the past, but it did not produce an easy reunion: Boaz generally kept conversation to greetings and practical questions, and Alexander often observed him at work rather than approaching him directly.

Even so, the two share a history that precedes their estrangement. Alexander remembers teaching Boaz as a child to make a small raft from balsa wood and string. Years later, Boaz carries a nail-free raft on his back to the coast, a distance of three miles, and Alexander recognizes that the childhood lesson has endured. This remembered skill gives their connection a material continuity: what Alexander once taught has become part of Boaz’s independent life, even while the son remains guarded toward the father.

Alexander is drawn toward the life Boaz has established at the restored property. He listens to the commune’s songs and watches its work, and he longs to join Boaz at the telescope on the roof, though a rope ladder and his worsening dizziness are beyond his strength. When Alexander asks for a table for his typewriter, Boaz makes one from packing boxes and eucalyptus branches and also obtains an electric fan without being asked. The care arrives without an accompanying conversation or demand for gratitude. Alexander notices it precisely because the relationship has so few spoken terms.

Care expressed through practical acts

As Alexander’s illness advances, Boaz’s attention becomes more sustained and specific. He fits shutters, replaces a broken windowpane, puts a lambskin rug in the toilet, buys medicines in Zikhron Yaakov, and brings fresh mint each day. These improvements adapt the old house to Alexander’s changing needs. They do not erase the distance between them: Boaz continues to avoid conversation beyond brief greetings. The contrast between his silence and the care embedded in the house makes practical work their clearest form of communication.

Boaz also provides equipment that helps Alexander move and rest. He makes him a walking stick and arranges a rope beside the bed; pulling it rings tin mugs tied near Ilana’s bed downstairs. When Alexander is too weak to manage the stairs, Boaz has fashioned a resting place from eucalyptus branches and later carries him carefully upstairs to the attic room. At night, Boaz’s help is direct but restrained: he lays his father on the bed, leaves the room, and closes the door. The action is neither a reconciliation speech nor a display of easy intimacy. It is a measured response to dependence.

The house’s restoration gives this care a communal setting. Boaz and the young people clear the overgrown grounds, dig vegetable beds, and repair the property. In the room where Alexander stays, the old gardens and family house are no longer simply remnants of his past; they are spaces being rebuilt around Boaz’s life and Alexander’s frailty. Alexander is both a returning owner by legal title and a guest in a place that now belongs in practice to his son.

A changed bond without easy reconciliation

Care also passes from father to son through teaching. During his lucid hours, Alexander teaches Boaz spelling and basic syntax, using the Hebrew dictionary and grammar left open on his table. The lessons are a modest exchange: Boaz has made the room usable and attends to his father’s needs; Alexander offers knowledge in the limited time and strength available to him. Their roles are not simply reversed, since each retains something the other needs.

The relationship remains unresolved in speech. Alexander wants greater closeness, including the chance to join Boaz on the roof and look through the telescope, but his physical limitations and Boaz’s reticence keep that wish at a distance. Boaz’s attentiveness does not make him suddenly talkative, and Alexander’s return cannot undo the years of absence. Yet the small acts accumulate: the old raft-making lesson persists, the room is adapted, medicines arrive, and the father teaches his son. Their renewed relationship is therefore neither a complete reconciliation nor a return to the past. It is a fragile present built through practical care, in which affection is legible chiefly in what each does for the other.