In our little cottages amid their frost-stricken yards the alarm clocks go off at seven. Reluctantly, we rise grumbling from beneath our warm blankets to don our work clothes and battered old coats and jackets that are no longer good for anything else. Running irritably through curtains of rain, we arrive out-of-breath in the dining hall to eat our thick slices of bread spread with jam or cheese and drink our cups of greasy coffee before trudging off to work. The dining-room crew removes the remains from the sticky tables, cleans each table first with a wet rag and then a dry one, and stands the chairs upon it with their legs in the air, to mop the floor. And ye shall redeem the land, proclaims a cardboard sign on the wall, left over from Arbor Day.

On winter mornings like this, conversation is kept to a minimum. Come here. What is it. Where did you put it. I don’t know. Then go look. You’re in my way.

Once, long ago, there was a time when all things done here were done with devotion, even with a kind of ecstasy, sometimes with enormous self-sacrifice. But then the bold dreams came true.

Dead silence and a sleepy sadness everywhere on the kibbutz. Except for the birds screaming in the cold. Except for the forlorn barks of the dogs. Every man an island.

At eventide, beneath a drippy chinaberry tree on his way to the Jewish philosophy group in the recreation hall, Stutchnik sorrowfully unburdened his thoughts to Srulik.

“Things are going to the dogs, my friend. Why don’t you open your eyes? If you’re going to be our new secretary, you’ll have to do something about it. For all his big talk, Yolek never got off his butt to do a damn thing around here. Everything in sight is falling apart. The kibbutz. The country. The youth. I don’t want to stoop to gossip—I’ve avoided it all my life like the plague—but just take a look at what’s going on with a certain Very Important Person’s son. For the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, one woman shall compass two men.

“Total anarchy! Look at what’s happening with the schoolteachers or with our own steering committee. Look at the government. Were all the foundations rotten to begin with, Srulik, or is it only now, after the fact, that the dialectical contradictions we kept swept under the rug all these years have begun to emerge? You’re not answering, my friend. Naturally. That’s the easy way out. Soon I’ll stop talking myself. One heart attack is enough for me. Not to mention my rheumatism and this whole depressing winter in general. I swear to God, Srulik, you can’t look anywhere these days without getting sick to your stomach.”