“I already told you, Yoni. It’s a book of Spinoza’s letters. With his ideas. All sorts of theories and hypotheses. The kind of stuff you can’t stand. About God, for instance, and the nature of His being, and the errors made by human beings because of their affections. By that he means feelings and passions. Things like that.”

“Just like Bolognesi. He also starts up with his God-bless’a-God-who-wipes’a-da-tears-a-da-poor. And my father, too, keeps lecturing me about the purpose of life and all that. And Udi Shneour says that all that counts is who’s holding the gun. You want to know something? I listen to it all like a good little boy and don’t understand a thing. Not one fucking thing. Just listen to that turtle scratching in his box. Not a thing. I don’t even understand a simple fuel block any more. It takes an undernourished-looking runt like you to come and explain it to me, because I’m getting dumber day by day. Freaking out, as they call it now. So pour us some of that whisky and let’s drink a toast—to the fink and the freak! Cheers! How about reading me from that book so I’ll know what it’s all about.”

“But it’s in English, Yoni.”

“Then translate it.”

“I’m in the middle of a passage. It’s in a letter that’s part of a debate between Spinoza and a scholar, and it’s very difficult to understand what he’s getting at unless you know what he means by axioms and lemmas and—”

“Knock off the bullshit and just read.”

“All right. Just—”

“I said read!”

“Right. All right. Here. ‘To the Right Honorable Hugo Buxhall. How hard it is for two people who adhere to different principles to agree and find common ground in a matter so bound up with other things.’

“You can skip the introduction. Get to the point.”

“I will, Yoni. It takes time to translate. Listen. ‘Your view that the world was created by accident—’

“I don’t understand. What’s he getting at?”

‘That there is a necessary and predetermined order to the world, and that this order—’