The winter began to take hold. Yolek came down with the flu and suffered cruel pains in his back. One evening Yonatan dropped by, and Yolek berated him for not visiting more often, for refusing to take over the shed, for the nihilism of Israeli youth in general. Hava interrupted, “You look sad and tired, Yonatan. Maybe you should take a day or two off. Rimona deserves some rest too. Why don’t you two go to Haifa? You can sleep at Uncle Pesach’s and go to a movie.”

“And get a haircut,” added Yolek. “Look at you.”

Whatever you leave behind will stay behind. All those personal effects that you won’t be needing where you’re going. As strange as your room will be without you, as strange and empty as the shelves that you made above your bed, as strange and dusty as the chessboard that you carved all last winter from the trunk of an olive tree, as strange as the garden with its iron poles on which you meant to trellis a grape vine and never did. Fear not. Time will pass. The curtains will fade in the assault of the sun. The magazines at the bottom of the bookcase will turn yellow. The crabgrass and the nettles and the weeds that you fought against all these years will again raise their heads in your backyard. Mildew will flower once more around the sink that you fixed. Plaster will peel. The railings on the porch will rust. Rimona will wait for you until she understands that it’s senseless to wait any longer. Your parents will stubbornly blame her, each other, you, the times, the latest fads, but they too will finally make their peace. “Mea culpa,” your father will exclaim in his Polish Latin. Your pajamas, your battle jacket, your work clothes, your paratrooper boots will be given away to someone your own size. Not to Udi! Maybe to that hired-hand Italian murderer who works in the metal shop. Other personal belongings will be packed in a suitcase and stored in that little closet above the shower. New routines will strike roots. Rimona will be sent to one of those kibbutz courses in applied art and soon be decorating the dining hall for parties and holidays. Your brother Amos will be discharged from the army and marry his girlfriend Rachel. Maybe he’ll even make the national swimming team. Fear not. Meanwhile you will get to where you are going and see how different, and right, and fresh it all is. And what if ever on some distant day a memory comes to you of an old familiar whiff or the sound of dogs barking far off or a driving hailstorm at dawn and you suddenly fail to grasp what it is you have done, what madness might have possessed you, what devil lured you from your home to the end of the world?