Photograph by QUENTIN BERTOUX / AGENCE VU/AURORA

The first story Maya wrote was about a world in which people split themselves in two instead of reproducing. In that world, every person could, at any given moment, turn into two beings, each one half his/her age. Some chose to do this when they were young; for instance, an eighteen-year-old might split into two nine-year-olds. Others would wait until they’d established themselves professionally and financially and go for it only in middle age. The heroine of Maya’s story was splitless. She had reached the age of eighty and, despite constant social pressure, insisted on not splitting. At the end of the story, she died.

It was a good story, except for the ending. There was something depressing about that part, Aviad thought. Depressing and predictable. But Maya, in the writing workshop she had signed up for, actually got a lot of compliments on the ending. The instructor, who was supposed to be this well-known writer, even though Aviad had never heard of him, told her that there was something soul-piercing about the banality of the ending, or some other piece of crap. Aviad saw how happy that compliment made Maya. She was very excited when she told him about it. She recited what the writer had said to her the way people recite a verse from the Bible. And Aviad, who had originally tried to suggest a different ending, backpedalled and said that it was all a matter of taste and that he really didn’t understand much about it.

It had been her mother’s idea that she should go to a creative-writing workshop. She’d said that a friend’s daughter had attended one and enjoyed it very much. Aviad also thought that it would be good for Maya to get out more, to do something with herself. He could always bury himself in work, but, since the miscarriage, she never left the house. Whenever he came home, he found her in the living room, sitting up straight on the couch. Not reading, not watching TV, not even crying. When Maya hesitated about the course, Aviad knew how to persuade her. “Go once, give it a try,” he said, “the way a kid goes to day camp.” Later, he realized that it had been a little insensitive of him to use a child as an example, after what they’d been through two months before. But Maya actually smiled and said that day camp might be just what she needed.

The second story she wrote was about a world in which you could see only the people you loved. The protagonist was a married man in love with his wife. One day, his wife walked right into him in the hallway and the glass he was holding fell and shattered on the floor. A few days later, she sat down on him as he was dozing in an armchair. Both times, she wriggled out of it with an excuse: she’d had something else on her mind; she hadn’t been looking when she sat down. But the husband started to suspect that she didn’t love him anymore. To test his theory, he decided to do something drastic: he shaved off the left side of his mustache. He came home with half a mustache, clutching a bouquet of anemones. His wife thanked him for the flowers and smiled. He could sense her groping the air as she tried to give him a kiss. Maya called the story “Half a Mustache,” and told Aviad that when she’d read it aloud in the workshop some people had cried. Aviad said, “Wow,” and kissed her on the forehead. That night, they fought about some stupid little thing. She’d forgotten to pass on a message or something like that, and he yelled at her. He was to blame, and in the end he apologized. “I had a hellish day at work,” he said and stroked her leg, trying to make up for his outburst. “Do you forgive me?” She forgave him.

The workshop instructor had published a novel and a collection of short stories. Neither had been much of a success, but they’d had a few good reviews. At least, that’s what the saleswoman at a bookstore near Aviad’s office told him. The novel was very thick, six hundred and twenty-four pages. Aviad bought the book of short stories. He kept it in his desk and tried to read a little during lunch breaks. Each story in the collection took place in a different foreign country. It was a kind of gimmick. The blurb on the back cover said that the writer had worked for years as a tour guide in Cuba and Africa and that his travels had influenced his writing. There was also a small black-and-white photograph of him. In it, he had the kind of smug smile of someone who feels lucky to be who he is. The writer had told Maya, she said to Aviad, that when the workshop was over he’d send her stories to his editor. And, although she shouldn’t get her hopes up, publishers these days were desperate for new talent.

Her third story started out funny. It was about a woman who gave birth to a cat. The hero of the story was the husband, who suspected that the cat wasn’t his. A fat ginger tomcat that slept on the lid of the dumpster right below the window of the couple’s bedroom gave the husband a condescending look every time he went downstairs to throw out the garbage. In the end, there was a violent clash between the husband and the cat. The husband threw a stone at the cat, which countered with bites and scratches. The injured husband, his wife, and the kitten she was breastfeeding went to the clinic for him to get a rabies shot. He was humiliated and in pain but tried not to cry while they were waiting. The kitten, sensing his suffering, uncurled itself from its mother’s embrace, went over to him, and licked his face tenderly, offering a consoling “Meow.” “Did you hear that?” the mother asked emotionally. “He said ‘Daddy.’ ” At that point, the husband could no longer hold back his tears. And, when Aviad read that passage, he had to try hard not to cry, too. Maya said that she’d started writing the story even before she knew she was pregnant again. “Isn’t it weird,” she asked, “how my brain didn’t know yet, but my subconscious did?”

The next Tuesday, when Aviad was supposed to pick her up after the workshop, he arrived half an hour early, parked his car in the lot, and went to find her. Maya was surprised to see him in the classroom, and he insisted that she introduce him to the writer. The writer reeked of body lotion. He shook Aviad’s hand limply and told him that if Maya had chosen him for a husband he must be a very special person.

Three weeks later, Aviad signed up for a beginners’ creative-writing class. He didn’t say anything about it to Maya, and, to be on the safe side, he told his secretary that if he had any calls from home she should say that he was in an important meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. The other members of the class were mostly elderly women, who gave him dirty looks. The thin young instructor wore a head scarf, and the women in the class gossiped about her, saying that she lived in a settlement in the occupied territories and had cancer. She asked everyone to do an exercise in automatic writing. “Write whatever comes into your head,” she said. “Don’t think, just write.” Aviad tried to stop thinking. It was very hard. The old women around him wrote with nervous speed, like students racing to finish an exam before the teacher tells them to put their pens down, and after a few minutes he began writing, too.