That afternoon, when Yonatan returned home, he lit the kerosene heater, washed his hands and face, and sat down to wait for Rimona in one of the twin armchairs, his legs wrapped in a brown woolen blanket against the cold. Spread before him was the morning paper, in which from time to time his eye would pick out some item that struck him with amazement. In one, the President of Syria, Dr. Nur-ad-Din el-Atassi, a former gynecologist, and the Foreign Minister, Dr. Yussuf Zu’ein, a former ophthalmologist, had both spoken before a large, frenzied rally in Palmyra to call for the extermination of the state of Israel, the ophthalmologist swearing in the name of all those gathered not to spare one drop of its blood, since blood alone could expunge its affront to the Arabs and rivers of blood had to be crossed if their own holy road were to lead to the sunrise of justice. In another, an Arab youth, on trial in Haifa for peeping through a window in a Jewish neighborhood at a woman getting undressed, defended himself in fluent Hebrew by citing the precedent of King David and Bathsheba. Judge Nakdimon Zlelichin, the newspaper related, was so tickled by this novel plea that he let the youngster off with a stern rebuke and a warning. In the corner of an inside page was an account of an experiment performed in the Zurich zoo, in the course of which unseasonable light and heat were admitted into the bears’ house to test the depth of their hibernation: finally one bear awoke only to go mad.

Lulled by the steady, monotonous drip of the rain in the drainpipe, Yonatan soon dozed off and let the paper drop. It was a light, troubled sleep of groggy reveries that turned into nightmares. Dr. Schillinger from Haifa, the gynecologist with the stammer who had treated Rimona and advised her against trying again, became a cunning Syrian agent. On behalf of the secret service, Yolek urged Udi, Yonatan, and Etan R. to undertake a dangerous journey to some northern land and lay the serpent low in its lair with an ax stroke from behind. Unfortunately, since they were all made of wet absorbent cotton, none of the six bullets in Yonatan’s revolver was able to penetrate his target’s skin. The man simply grinned with rotten teeth and hissed, “Ty zboju!” Yonatan opened his eyes and before him stood Rimona. “It’s a quarter after four,” she said, “and getting dark. Why don’t you sleep a little more while I shower and make us coffee?”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” he replied, “I was just thinking. Did you know that the dictator of Syria is also a gynecologist?”

“You were sleeping when I came in,” said Rimona. “And I woke you. But we’ll have coffee soon.”