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If you said in class that you had something to say to everyone, even in the middle of a lesson, Teacher Zelda would immediately seat you on her own desk, while she sat down on your little bench. So she would promote you in a single wonderful bound to the role of teacher, on condition that the story you told made sense, or that you had an interesting argument to put forward. So long as you managed to hold her interest, or the class's, you could go on sitting in the saddle. If, on the other hand, you said something stupid or were just trying to attract attention, if you did not really have anything to say, then Teacher Zelda would cut in, in her coldest, quietest voice, a voice that brooked no levity:

"But that's very silly."

Or:

"That's enough of playing the fool."

Or even:

"Stop it: you're just lowering yourself in our estimation."

So you went back to your place covered with shame and confusion.

We quickly learned to be careful. Silence is golden. Best not to steal the show if you have nothing sensible to say. True, it was pleasant and could even go to your head, to be raised up above the others and sit on the teacher's desk, but the fall could be swift and painful. Poor taste or overcleverness could lead to humiliation. It was important to prepare before any public utterance. You should always think twice, and ask yourself if you would not be better off keeping quiet.

She was my first love. An unmarried woman in her thirties, Teacher Zelda, Miss Schneersohn. I was not quite eight, and she swept me away, she set in motion some kind of inner metronome that had not stirred before and has not stopped since.

When I woke up in the morning, I conjured up her image even before my eyes were open. I dressed and ate my breakfast in a flash, eager to finish, zip up, shut, pick up, run straight to her. My head melted with the effort to prepare something new and interesting for her every day so that I would get the light of her look and so that she would point to me and say, "Look, there's a boy among us this morning who's flooded with light."

I sat in her class each morning dizzy with love. Or sooty with jealousy. I was constantly trying to discover what charms of mine would draw her favors to me. I was always plotting how to frustrate the charms of the others and get between them and her.

At noon I would come home from school, lie down on my bed, and imagine how just she and I—

I loved the color of her voice and the smell of her smile and the rustle of her dresses (long-sleeved and usually brown or navy or gray, with a simple string of ivory-colored beads or occasionally a discreet silk scarf). At the end of the day I would close my eyes, pull the blanket up over my head, and take her with me. In my dreams I hugged her, and she kissed me on my forehead. An aura of light surrounded her and illuminated me too, to make me a boy who's flooded with light.

Of course, I already knew what love was. I had devoured so many books, books for children, books for teenagers, and even books that were considered unsuitable for me. Just as every child loves his mother and father, so everyone falls in love, when he is a little older, with someone from outside the family. Someone who was a stranger before, but suddenly, like finding a treasure in a cave in the Tel Arza woods, the lover's life is different. And I knew from the books that in love, as in sickness, you neither eat nor sleep. And I really did not eat much, although I slept very well at night, and during the day I waited for it to get dark so I could go to sleep. This sleep did not match the symptoms of love as described in the books, and I was not quite sure if I was in love the way grown-ups are, in which case I should have suffered from insomnia, or if my love was still a childish love.

And I knew from the books and from the films I had seen at the Edison Cinema and simply out of the air that beyond falling in love, like beyond the Mountains of Moab, which we could see from Mount Scopus, there