The Lover [antikvár]

ADAM And in the last war we lost a lover. We used to have a lover, and since the war he is gone. Just disappeared. He and his grandmother's old Morris. And more than six months have passed and there has been no sign from him. We are always saying it's a small, intimate country, if you try hard enough you'll discover links between the most distant people—and now it's as if the man has been swallowed up by the earth, disappeared without trace, and all the searches have been fruitless. If I was sure he had been killed, I would give up the search. What right have we to be stubborn about a dead lover, there are some people who have lost all that is dear—sons, fathers and husbands. But, how can I put it, still I'm convinced that he hasn't been killed. Not him. I'm sure that he never even reached the front. And even if he was killed, where is the car, where has that disappeared to? You can't just hide a car in the sand. There was a war. That's right. It came upon us a complete surprise. Again and again I read the confused accounts of what happened, trying to get to the bottom of the chaos that ruled then. After all, he wasn't the only one who disappeared. To this day there is before us a list of so many missing, so many mysteries. And next of kin are still gathering last remnants—scraps of clothing, bits of charred documents, twisted pens, bullet-ridden wallets, melted wedding rings. Chasing after elusive eyewitnesses, after the shadow of a man who heard a rumor, trying in the mist to piece together a picture of their loved one. But even they are giving up the search. So what right have we to persist. After all, he's a stranger to us. A doubtful Israeli, a deserter in fact, who returned to the country for a short visit to sort out some inheritance and stayed, perhaps also on our account. I don't know, I can't be sure. But I repeat, he hasn't been killed. Of that I'm convinced. And that is the cause of the unease that has been eating at me these last months, that gives me no rest, that sends me out on the road in search of him. More than that: strange ideas occur to me on his account, that in the thick of the battle, in the confusion and disorder of units disbanding and regrouping, there were some—let's say two or three—who took advantage of this confusion to break off and disappear. I mean, they simply decided not to return home, to abandon their old ties and go elsewhere. It may seem a crazy idea, but not to me. You could say I've become an expert on this subject of missing persons.