Renewed closeness between Alexander Gideon and Ilana after his return home

The renewed closeness between Alexander A. Gideon and Ilana Sommo grows out of a marriage that ended in mutual hostility, years of silence, and a late return shaped by illness. When Alexander comes back to Israel and the house where he grew up, Ilana is there; as his health deteriorates, she becomes his caregiver. Their intimacy is real but not a restoration of married life: it takes shape in small acts of care and restrained companionship, while the past and their separate attachments remain present.

Marriage, Rupture, and Renewed Contact

Alexander and Ilana married in September 1959. After a few months, Ilana became pregnant and chose to have Boaz Brandstetter. Alexander later acknowledged that he had not considered himself suited to fatherhood and had told her so from the beginning. Their life together became difficult, and he recognized that he was causing her suffering. He delayed their separation until September 1968, attributing the delay to weakness of character; he described the divorce as vicious on both sides and his own conduct as petty, hateful, and vindictive. Afterward he left the country and severed all contact.

That estrangement did not prevent a later channel of communication from reopening. At the beginning of the year in which he returned, Alexander received a request for help from Ilana, or perhaps from both her and Michel Sommo. For reasons he could not clearly explain, and which he thought might be connected with his illness, he agreed to help. In a letter written secretly to him, Ilana describes doing so behind Michel’s back. With the immediate trouble surrounding Boaz resolved through Alexander’s money and Michel’s judgment, she has no need to use their son as a pretext for writing. Instead, she tells Alexander about Michel and Boaz gradually finding their way toward friendship, and about ordinary family moments in Jerusalem. The confidential letter preserves a direct intimacy between the former spouses even as Ilana’s present household life is increasingly shared with Michel.

Return and the Terms of Reunion

Alexander returned to Israel without advance notice, intending to see Boaz and stay in his childhood home. By then, he had undergone two operations for kidney cancer, which had spread through his abdomen; doctors in New York saw no point in another operation. His earlier plan to enter Mount Sinai Hospital in New York for radiotherapy gave way to a stay at Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem. He described his condition as miserable and his remaining time as short. Ilana was at the house when he arrived and chose to treat him more or less as a nurse. He says he had not asked her to stay, but saw no reason to send her away.

The circumstances fuel Michel’s suspicion that the former spouses have resumed a conventional romantic relationship. Alexander’s reply is both a defense of Ilana and an acknowledgment of their history: he denies that she has been deceiving her husband, explains that she stayed by her own choice, and urges Michel to treat her kindly. He even offers to provide an affidavit attesting to her innocence. His explanation sets a boundary around the reunion. The relationship between him and Ilana, he insists, is not that of husband and wife in any conventional sense; her presence is freely chosen care, not proof that their former marriage has begun again.

Companionship in the Garden

The renewed relationship appears less in declarations than in modest shared routines. In the garden, Alexander and Ilana sit in wicker chairs beside the restored marble pool, with the house behind them and the sea before them. She brings him mint infusion and herself coffee. They exchange only necessary words. He notices her dress and her long hair, and reflects that such compliments had never occurred to him during their marriage. The moment makes the change between then and now visible: attention has arrived late, after the authority and assumptions of married life have fallen away.

Their surroundings also belong to a new household rather than to their old couplehood. Boaz and the young people staying at the house have cleared weeds, spread goat dung, and replaced the former rose beds with vegetables. Ilana has offered to make scarecrows, while Yifat waters the beds. Alexander’s illness and limited strength leave him watching more than directing. The garden becomes a place where he and Ilana can remain together without pretending that their old conflicts have been settled or that they have returned to a shared domestic role.

Care, Dependency, and Changing Power

As Alexander grows weaker, closeness becomes practical and bodily, though the narrative presents it through the repeated work of care rather than as a romantic reconciliation. He moves about with a walking stick, uses painkillers, and spends much of his time lying down, sitting at a window, or sorting seeds until his strength fails. His possessions remain packed in suitcases. The once commanding figure is now quiet and careful not to become a burden, while Ilana takes on tasks that make his dependence unmistakable.

She moves a mattress into his room so she can attend to him at night. When he wakes in panic and mumbles orders from a continuing nightmare, she gets up, gives him an herbal drink and pills, and holds his hand until he settles again. In the morning she shaves him with a battery-operated razor, combs and dresses him, ties his shoes, and helps him to the table. She feeds him soft food by the spoon and wipes his mouth. When he needs help reaching the toilet, she assists him with everything. The change in their relation is stark: the man who once admitted to looking down on others now depends on the attentiveness he had not known how to offer her during their marriage.

Their care is not hers alone. Boaz makes Alexander a walking stick, arranges a chair for him on the veranda, and carries him upstairs at night. Ilana joins him there with a thermos and his medicines, prepares the room, wraps him in blankets, and sings him lullabies. In this shared routine, her care is neither an isolated return to the old marriage nor a substitute for the family around them; it is part of a household effort in which Boaz also acts directly for his father.

Change Without Reconciliation

Alexander connects his altered manner toward those around him with the approach of death. He says that his former habit of looking down on people was a mistake and describes his present relations as more attentive and hesitant. He expresses esteem for Michel despite their differences and recognizes that his time has run out. This late self-assessment does not erase his admitted vindictiveness toward Ilana or the years in which he cut off contact. Instead, illness makes dependence and regret impossible to keep at a distance.

The relationship’s ending remains open rather than neatly resolved. Ilana stays and tends Alexander, but their shared silences, his late compliments, and her nightly care do not undo the divorce or establish a renewed marriage. Their closeness is a limited, consequential form of repair: former spouses meet again in a house marked by Alexander’s childhood, his approaching death, and the family life that has grown there without him. The narrative gives the reconciliation weight precisely by keeping it partial, expressed through attention and responsibility rather than a promise that the past can be recovered.