Since settling on the kibbutz, he had taken up in his free time the art of knitting he had learned in prison and made marvelous sweaters for the kibbutz children, and sometimes, for the young ladies, stylish outfits copied from knitwear magazines bought with his own money and studied carefully. He spoke little in his feminine voice and always with extreme caution, as if whatever he said might implicate him or embarrass you. Once, during their coffee break, Yonatan, without looking up from his newspaper, asked, “Say, Bolognesi, why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“Look your shoe,” said the Italian with extraordinary delicacy, barely parting his lips. “Your shoe she’s open and the water she gets inside. I fix’a your shoe right away?”

“Don’t bother,” said Yonatan. “Thanks anyway.” He went right back to the debate between two sports columnists over the upset in yesterday’s League Cup semifinals. Then he turned the page and started to read about a Jewish orthopedist from South America, also a football star, who had come to live in Israel and signed up with a Jerusalem team.

“I no fix’a, you no thank’a,” insisted Bolognesi with melancholy logic. “Why you thank’a me like that? Wha’ for?”

“For the coffee,” said Yonatan.

“You want I should pour’a ’nother?”

“No thanks.”

“Look. ’Scuse’a me, what you call’a this? Again you thank’a me for nothing? Wha’ for? No fix’a, no thank’a. And no get’a mad neither.”

“All right,” said Yonatan. “No one’s getting mad. But why don’t you pipe down, Bolognesi, and let me read my paper in peace?”

And to himself he said: No giving in this time. Tonight. You’ll do it tonight. Or, at the very latest, tomorrow night.