And now all is over but the silence, brooding, as if in the presence of an unspoken illness, over a planet that bristles like a crouching beast to which nothing matters any more, not ourselves, not our homes, not our women, not our children, not our thoughts, not our words, not our never-ending wars of life-and-death. All is the same to the immense indifferent earth beast, the sleeping soundless earth corpse, devoid of hate, devoid of love, forever estranged from human suffering and from man’s own estrangement. And over it a sky that is just as indifferent, without one living, sensate thing as far as the farthest galaxy in the lockers of space. One would have to be worse than a fool to go looking in all this cold nothingness for some sign of intimacy or warmth, much less for the magic of Chad. It will all be in vain. For even if there are other worlds, how will they differ from the one that starts at this porch? In them, too, death will skulk, like a sleeping mastiff.

“Well, that’s the end of this one, Tia. Let’s go inside. It’s time to hit the road.” Yonatan threw the burning butt into the bushes, muttered an Arabic curse, spun wildly around as if caught in a crossfire, and stepped back into the house.

Carefully climbing on a stool so as not to wake the sleepers, he took down a pair of battered paratrooper boots with thick rubber soles from the closet above the shower, then clumsily began stuffing his army knapsack with underwear, handkerchiefs, socks, and a leather folder with 1:20,000 maps. Two army shirts, a large flashlight, his army dogtag, and a compass were next. And last, a sealed, sterile army bandage left over from a stint of reserve duty.

He went to the bathroom and gathered up his toilet articles and allergy pills, taking care not to disturb Azariah’s shaving gear or Rimona’s almond soap and lemon shampoo. The face that stared out at him from the mirror gave him a start—a thin, dark, unshaven visage with gray bags beneath squinty red eyes, in which flickered a glint of pent-up violence, above them a wild shock of hair springing forward like the horn of a charging animal.