Rabbi Elbaz Alley is the passage through which Shmuel Ash moves between the house where he is staying and the city beyond. In the moonlit walk with Atalia, its empty, wind-brushed stones make the alley a place of intimacy and withheld speech; on later nights, its entrance becomes the threshold Shmuel crosses back into solitary routines of eating, drinking, and sleep.

Setting and Appearance

The alley is deserted during Shmuel and Atalia’s nighttime walk. A British Mandate-era streetlamp, made with small panes of glass, swings from a wire stretched across the passage. Its shifting shadows ripple over the paving stones like nervous little waves. A mild west wind moves through the street, its softness set against the darkness and the restless motion of the lamp.

The alley’s historical streetlight and stone paving give this intimate encounter a distinctly old-Jerusalem setting. The scene’s movement is slight—the lamp sways, shadows shift, and the wind passes—while the space itself remains empty. This quiet, wavering backdrop suits a conversation in which Shmuel wants more closeness than Atalia permits.

The Walk with Atalia

Shmuel and Atalia leave the house and walk out through the dim courtyard, past the water well and along a path paved with Jerusalem stone. Atalia takes him by the elbow and guides him down the steps. He feels the warmth of her hand through his worn coat and longs to place his own hand on hers, but fears being mocked; instead, he reaches for his inhaler when he becomes short of breath.

Once they reach the deserted alley, Shmuel asks Atalia to tell him what kind of man her father was. The route therefore carries them into a conversation about her father, while also giving Shmuel an occasion to approach Atalia without overcoming his hesitation. On their return, he follows her through different lanes. They speak only to warn each other about a step or laundry dripping overhead, a silence Atalia likes and Shmuel is too agitated to challenge.

Threshold to the House

Atalia thanks Shmuel for the evening and says she has enjoyed it, especially when he does not talk. She declines food, tells him he may prepare something from the refrigerator, and leaves him to speak to himself if he wants. As she goes, her orange dress briefly glows in the doorway; Shmuel breathes in the violet perfume she leaves behind. The walk has brought him close to her, but the parting leaves him alone in the house, consumed by desire and unease.

The alley is also the route by which Shmuel returns to the house in the early morning after spending a night out. At seven-thirty he arrives hungry, thirsty, and frozen, eats four thick slices of bread with cheese, drinks two glasses of hot tea, and sleeps until noon. He later goes to his Hungarian restaurant, where his usual table is occupied; exhausted from a night without sleep, he dozes after eating. The walk’s remembered sunrise over Mount Zion seems to him like a dream, as do the preceding weeks.

Night Returns and Narrative Significance

On another night, Shmuel comes back a little after two, cold, wet, and tired. He enters quietly, thinking of the sick old man asleep in his room before the photograph of his murdered son. In the kitchen he looks for his cockroach, eats bread with jam and olives, and drinks water rather than make tea. He then goes up to the attic, lights the heater, drinks vodka, and stands in his flannel long underwear before the stove.

The alley’s repeated role as a passage between the city and the house gives shape to Shmuel’s unsettled life there: he leaves, wanders, and returns to meals, exhaustion, and the responsibilities he sometimes fails to meet. In the attic he tells himself that this will bring him no good, takes two inhalations from his inhaler despite breathing comfortably, and falls asleep without turning off the light or heater or closing the vodka bottle. The alley itself remains a brief threshold, but its returns connect the charged moonlit walk with the more depleted, solitary rhythms that follow.