How does she do it? Scratching out words and numbers and talking to him at the same time?
Eliyahu bends down to examine the ewe; he holds her face still and looks at her eyes, then opens her mouth to examine her teeth. He frowns; it is as he thought. A slight froth foams around the mouth and is it the light, or are the ewe’s eyes dull?
He releases the sheep, and it wanders away. He watches. It pulls at a few stalks of grass, but does not graze fully as it should. Another animal approaches, and the ewe ducks her head and raises it again, warning: Do not come close. He does not know what is wrong, but there is something, he feels it in his bones.
He leaves the sheep with the boy who helps during the day, and returns to the town, where he walks down the narrow alleyway where the physician lives. The doctor is a man from Italy, with a nervous twitch and a stammer. No one uses him for big cases: the doctor from Damascus comes all the way once every month or two, paid for by rich Jews of Alexandria. But a doctor knows about blood and the body and muscles and the heart. Maybe he can advise him about the sheep.
He raps sharply at the front door, and the doctor’s wife answers, a paper in hand.
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