The bottom of the blind banged against the window sill, spattering water across the pane. I, thought Yonatan Lifshitz, could have been on the road by now. I could already have been on the Bay of Biscay, where storms are really storms. And then it occurred to him: The dog stays with them.

The rain refused to stop, and the three of them had to eat supper inside—a meal of yogurt, omelets, and a salad. Through the streaming windows they could see people with raincoats pulled over their heads, running like hunchbacks with bundles of children in their arms. Of all the morning’s birds only one could still be heard, its high, steady chirp like an automatic transmitter signaling from the site of an accident. Now Azariah regretted the lie he had told them: he must confess it right away, even if they laughed at him. Even if they asked him to leave. And they would have every right to. He would just go back to his tumbledown shack next door to Bolognesi where he belonged.

Yes, he had lied to them that morning. That is, about the cat.

What cat?

Why, the cat that Vassily the convert had cooked and they had all eaten on that Russian winter night in the abandoned farmhouse when he was a child. It was all a fraud. Not that it wasn’t true that he had cried as he had never cried in his life; not that Vassily hadn’t threatened to kill him, or that everyone, himself too, wasn’t so hungry that they had taken to peeling the moss from the cellar walls and gorged on it until they gagged. Still, what he had told them that morning was a contemptible lie because he had eaten that cat just like the rest of them.

“But you didn’t,” said Rimona. “You never told us about any cat.”

“Maybe I just wanted to and was afraid,” said Azariah, taken aback. “That makes it even worse.”

“He’s crying,” said Yonatan. After a moment’s silence, he added, “Don’t cry, Azariah. Why don’t we play a game of chess.”

With a quick, precise movement, Rimona lightly brushed her chill lips against the middle of Azariah’s forehead. Azariah grabbed for his plate and raced with it out into the rain, stumbled, righted himself, splashed through puddles, trampled bushes, sank into mud, and fought his way out of it again until he reached Bolognesi’s shack, where he found the Tripolitanian snoring loudly beneath his rough army blankets. He set down the plate at his side, tiptoed out again, ran all the way back to the Lifshitzes’ door, pausing only to remove his dirty shoes, and announced triumphantly, “I’ve brought my guitar. We can have some music and sing if you’d like.”