Avital met Elam the previous summer, right after her family moved to Jerusalem.
That spring, her father's elder brother had fallen gravely ill: the house and the land were left unattended. Eliashiv had buried his wife some ten years ago; The Most High did not give him a son, but three daughters. The two eldest had long been married and lived with their husbands. The youngest one, Khatifa, was two years older than Avital. She was the one taking care of her father and the household.
Shamai, Avital's father, a gentle and obliging man, having learned of his brother's illness, left his house in the suburbs to the care of his wife's relatives, and, to the undisguised joy of his spouse, moved to his brother's house in the capital. Here, awkwardly but willingly, he began to put his brother’s neglected affairs in order. Little by little, he became established in the community and soon enough was entrusted with reading the Torah on Shabbat in a local synagogue. It was there that Avital first saw Elam.
That Shabbat, she and her mother sat by the back wall of the female half of the synagogue. With curiosity, Avital began studying the congregation when her eyes involuntarily lingered on the girl sitting next to Hana: sharp, graceful profile, huge black eyes—what a beauty! A serious face with tightly pressed lips seemed somewhat arrogant. Avital couldn’t help but stare at the stranger. The black-eyed beauty sensed the stare, quickly turned, and gazed back. In her inquisitive glance Avital noticed wariness: women look so at possible rivals. Avital moved her eyes away in confusion: in her opinion, her own ordinary appearance could not withstand any rivalry with the amazing beauty of the stranger.
Not that Avital was dissatisfied with her wavy reddish hair, puffy lips, and narrow light brown eyes; however, she did not consider herself a beauty. She really couldn’t, looking sometimes in the mirror and putting it away with a sigh, see in it the charm that drew glances to her. Something contagiously mischievous trembled in the frisky light eyes, in a wide smile to which Avital was carelessly generous, in her swift flexible movements. She didn’t know all this about herself, only trustingly listened to her mother. Hana, a wise woman, assured her daughter of the latter’s attractiveness.
After the service, when people went out into the street, Avital noticed a tall young man approaching the beauty. This was Elam, but Avital didn’t know that yet. She breathed out with relief: if the black-eyed girl already has a fiancé, there wouldn’t be any obstacles for Avital if it suddenly turns out that she and the stranger girl pay attention to the same guy.
She didn’t even think to doubt that the tall guy was the Black-Eyed's fiancé: he looked at his companion with such gentle attention—only the blind wouldn’t have recognized love in that gaze.
The girls didn’t say a word to each other that day or after, but at the end of the month Avital twice saw the Black-Eyed next to Elam and another young man; a little later Khatifa was invited to the beauty’s wedding. Her cousin took Avital with her.
But to the great surprise of both sisters, it wasn’t Elam who was the bridegroom—instead, that other, short and colorless young man. Avital never would’ve guessed him to be an object of affection of such a beautiful girl. She was even more surprised to learn that the groom was from Jericho, yet the wedding against custom was held here, in Jerusalem, because the bride wanted it that way.
Elam sat far from the newlyweds, didn’t look at them, and slowly sipped wine out of a clay cup. The guests bustled about, sang and laughed, while he sat quietly, asking no one, answering no one, only turning redder from the wine he drank.
Avital most likely would not have noticed him at all, had she and Khatifa not been sitting so close to him. She barely knew any of the guests—they were new to the place—so she sat quietly and modestly. And because there was nothing to do, she amused herself by counting the cups of wine that slowly flowed from the pitcher into the throat of a sad tall guy. After three and a half, Elam noticed the curious gaze of an unfamiliar girl and held the unfinished cup before his lips. Avital rose and noiselessly moved to the bench across from him, while he kept holding a cup at his mouth, staring at the stranger with wide eyes. For several moments they looked at each other this way, then Avital timidly asked,
“It’s that bad for you, is it?”
Whether because of the wine or for some other reason, he stayed sitting motionless, looking at her with drunken yet intelligent eyes. When the meaning of the question was understood, he put down the cup and leaned toward her,
“How so?”
“I saw you near her at the synagogue a month ago. I thought you were her fiancé.”
“I thought so, too,” he sighed and reached for the cup again.
“Don’t drink any more, you're already all red,” she felt even sorrier for him. He put the wine on the table and raised his eyes at her.
“Who are you?”
“Avital. We moved here a month and a half ago.”
“Elam.” He put his hand on the table with his palm upward. Probably this signified a greeting, so the girl smiled and laid her palm over his. He squeezed it lightly, with a softness that felt almost feminine, although his figure did not resemble that of a woman's at all. Avital released her hand from his hot sticky palm and took both the cup and the jug away from him. She then raised her eyes at him again, and so they sat looking at each other.
His face, unremarkable from a distance and even, in her opinion, unattractive, turned out quite different nearby. Avital was especially startled by his skin—just like a girl’s, white and tender, although by appearance Elam was already in his twenties. Beneath dark eyebrows, large gray eyes glistened moistly, and his lips were almost as full as hers. The only "masculine" feature on this face was a hooked nose, aside from the sparse hairs on his upper lip and chin, noticeable only up close.
Avital was the first one to look away; Elam was still boring into her face with wine-reddened eyes. Suddenly a sharp and impudent female voice resounded near the girl's ear,
“Why are you so sad, Elam? Guests are supposed to be cheerful at weddings. We haven't solved any riddles yet! Elam, my first riddle is for you!”
This was her, someone else's bride with beautiful black eyes, walking among the guests arm in arm with her short fiancé.
“Spent the night in the cold in the evening, rushed off with the sun’s rays in the morning; go ahead and guess, Elam!”
She laughed and defiantly tilted her head to the side.
‘She’s already hurt him with her choice and—who knows what happened between them—betrayal, possibly. Why mock him further, especially in front of everyone?’ flashed through Avital’s head.
“I don’t know,” Elam snapped, and pulled the wine closer to him.
“Elam, it's a cloud! A little cloud, like the ones in the mountains in spring. Couldn’t you figure out such a simple one!” She burst out laughing, put her hand on his shoulder and leaned close to his ear: “Fine, go ahead and kiss this girl later for me!”—and she walked off, returning her attention to her chosen one and no longer looking at Elam.
‘Insolent, shameless... and terribly beautiful,’ thought Avital. ‘Why do all of them, of her kind, do this? Isn’t her beauty enough for her? Isn’t it enough that he thought only of her up to this wedding, and will keep thinking of her again and again? Her kind are not that easily forgotten... Why does she keep tormenting him with her antics up until the last minute?’
Then Avital recalled the beauty’s parting words about the kiss and realized whom they were spoken about. Avital blushed and looked around: there was no one near Elam but herself; that meant the Black-Eyed had "permitted" him to kiss her.
‘Or... What if she is so accustomed to being his only queen that, seeing another girl beside him, she said all the nasty things out of jealousy? After all, even then, at the synagogue, she looked so strangely at me...' However, Avital quickly brushed this thought away—jealousy over another man at her own wedding seemed absurd.
‘And yet, despite her insulting words to Elam, and her impudent voice... how brave and powerful she seems compared to me, a coward. I wonder if I will ever become like her...’
Avital turned to Elam. He was sullenly running his fingers over his forehead while staring intently into his unfinished cup as if asking himself whether he should drink more or not. His cheeks were flushing even deeper, and a crooked trickle of sweat ran down from his temple. Avital felt sorry for him, so unneeded here, absurdly drunk, but she stood up to return to her sister. Elam raised his eyes.
“Where do you live?”
She sat down once again and propped her face on her hand.
“Not far.”
“Not far from where?”
“From here.”
He resolutely pushed the cup away from him and smiled wryly at her short replies.
“I see,” the young man said, studying her face. “We are almost neighbors. It's about two hundred steps from my house to yours”—he pushed his palms against the table and smiled again—“which means we will be seeing each other often.”
Guests began to get up from the tables to go into the courtyard to dance; the musicians, fed to the rim, took their pipes, horns, and tambourines out from under the benches. Khatifa walked up to Avital and pulled her by the sleeve, dragging her toward the others. Avital stood up; Elam moved the jug closer to himself.
“Aren’t you going to dance?” she asked on the go.
“No,” he poured the contents into his mouth in one shot, setting the cup on the table, and giving her a final look with red drunken eyes.
"A-vi-tal," he spoke in syllables.
She turned away and went to dance, sensing his gaze on her back.