Atalía and Shmuel began a romantic relationship

Atalia Abravanel and Shmuel Ash begin a sexual relationship in the bedroom of Atalia’s dead father, while Shmuel is injured and dependent on her care. Its beginning is deliberately uneven: Atalia takes the initiative and sets the terms, while Shmuel is left struggling to understand what has happened and what he might say. A second encounter later that night changes the balance, as Atalia patiently teaches him how to return the pleasure she has given him. By morning, however, intimacy has not become a declaration or promise; she helps him dress, kisses him briefly, and leaves the night unspoken.

Care and the First Encounter

The first encounter grows out of a scene of practical assistance. Shmuel has got jam all over himself. Atalia goes up to his attic room and returns with clean underwear, a long-sleeved shirt, loose trousers, and an old gray sweater. Because his leg is in a cast, she takes large scissors from the desk drawer and cuts one trouser leg from top to bottom so he can pull the garment over it. She undresses him, as she had done days earlier when she came to wash him, and brusquely removes his hand when he tries to cover himself, telling him not to bother her.

Shmuel shuts his eyes as he used to as a child when his mother washed him in the bath and he feared soap getting into them. But Atalia does not wash him. She strokes his chest several times, touches his lips with a finger, and tells him not to speak. She places a cushion over the photograph of her father, Shaltiel Abravanel, which faces the bed from the desk; then she takes off her blue flannel dressing gown and approaches Shmuel. He feels her warm body cover his and her fingers guide him into her. The encounter is over almost as soon as it begins: Shmuel has gone months without touching a woman, and his body responds with a speed that leaves him embarrassed and unable to return her pleasure.

The scene’s shift from dressing and washing to sexual intimacy is carried by gestures more than explanation. The same room contains the desk, the bed, and the father’s photograph; Atalia covers the image before the encounter and uncovers it afterward. Shmuel closes his eyes, first in an old reflex associated with childhood washing and then as Atalia directs him not to speak. He has little time to interpret the change as it happens. His first response afterward is not a confident declaration but an urgent wish to hold her again and somehow repay the good she has done him.

Silence, Care, and the Father’s Photograph

After remaining beside him for a few minutes, Atalia gathers her dressing gown, covers herself from neck to ankles, and ties its belt. She then returns with a basin, sponge, and towel, washes and dresses Shmuel briskly, and tucks the blanket around his shoulders and feet. Finally, she removes the cushion from her father’s photograph. Shaltiel Abravanel appears thoughtful and calm; Atalia does not look at the picture. She draws the curtains, switches off the light, and leaves, shutting the door behind her.

Shmuel gets up on his crutches and follows her to the kitchen, wanting to break the violent silence between them but unable to find words. Atalia is cleaning the floor with a squeegee, cloth, and dustpan. She washes her hands in cold water and pours coffee for them both. When she looks at Shmuel, her expression is one of surprise, as though he were a stranger’s young son left in her care. He takes her fingers and brings them to his lips, still unsure whether the encounter in Shaltiel’s room has really happened. His embarrassment includes the speed of his own response and the sense that he had no time even to try to satisfy her. The domestic routine resumes around them, but neither the coffee nor the cleaning resolves what has passed between them.

A Second Encounter

That night, at half past eleven, Shmuel is reading in bed and nearly asleep when Atalia approaches barefoot. In the weak light from the streetlamp, she first turns her father’s photograph face down on the desk. Without speaking, she removes Shmuel’s blanket, sits beside him, and touches his chest, stomach, and legs. When he tries to murmur, she covers his mouth with her palm. She places his hands on her breasts, kisses his forehead rather than his lips, and moves her tongue over his face and closed eyelids.

This time, Atalia does not leave as soon as she has relaxed. She stays beside him and guides him patiently, like a guest in an unfamiliar country, teaching his fingers how to touch her. After lying still for a while, she tells him not to fall asleep, mounts him again, and leads him through things he had known only from dreams. Shmuel, at last, succeeds in giving her pleasure. The contrast with their first encounter is distinct: he is still guided by Atalia, but this time she remains with him, and the encounter becomes mutual rather than ending in his hurried response and immediate shame.

At one in the morning, Atalia says goodbye by ruffling his curls and gently touching his lips with a finger. She tells him that, of everyone, he is probably the only one she will remember. Then she sets her father’s photograph upright again and slips out in her nightdress without making a sound. The repeated handling of the photograph frames both encounters: it is turned away before intimacy and restored afterward, an unobtrusive marker of how the private moment is made and then closed off.

Morning After and Unequal Expectations

At eight-thirty the next morning, Atalia returns dressed in a black skirt and a close-fitting red turtleneck sweater with a thin silver chain. She helps Shmuel get dressed and supports him by the shoulders as he limps to the bathroom. She waits outside while he urinates, brushes his teeth, wets his beard, and applies baby powder. When he comes out, she gives him a quick, superficial kiss on the mouth. She says nothing about the night and leaves, carrying only the faint trace of violet perfume.

Shmuel stands for a while, perhaps waiting for an explanation or regretting that he had not kissed her in the deep cleft between her nose and upper lip. He eventually smiles without realizing it. Still limping, he goes to the library to wait for Gershom Wald, takes a deep breath from his inhaler, and reads for more than half an hour from The Thousand and One Nights in Yosef Yoel Rivlin’s Hebrew translation. He compares the book with the Song of Songs and both with Abelard and Héloïse, wondering whether he might someday write Atalia even a beautiful love letter. The tears rising in his throat register the distance between the night’s physical intimacy and the words of love he cannot yet write.

The two encounters establish a relationship without defining its future. Atalia initiates both, controls when Shmuel may speak, and leaves the second time after telling him he may be the one she remembers. Shmuel’s response is more openly yearning: he wants to repeat the intimacy, return the good she has given him, and imagine a love letter. Yet the morning restores their familiar arrangement of assistance and silence. What has begun is real in the bodily detail of their meetings, but it remains unresolved in speech: Atalia does not explain or name it, and Shmuel is left turning the experience over through books, comparison, and an imagined letter.