He left the bathroom to rummage through the closet, gritting his teeth until he found the old windbreaker that was coming apart at the sleeves and tore it savagely from its hanger. Into its pockets he stuffed a pair of leather gloves, an odd-looking woolen hat, a switchblade, a roll of flannel strips for cleaning his rifle, and a wad of toilet paper. From a small drawer he took an imitation-leather wallet that Rimona had given him the year before and took it to the bathroom to check its contents by the light. His identity pass, its pages slipping from their tattered binding. His reserve officer’s passbook. A photograph of himself and his brother Amos as small boys, their hair slicked back, and dressed in their day-in-the-big-city outfits of pressed white shirts and shorts with suspenders. A faded snapshot of himself in army uniform, clipped from a yellowing page of the army magazine. In the money pocket he found some small change and sixty-odd pounds. He jammed the wallet into his back pocket.

His last foray was to open a locked metal chest at the bottom of the closet. From this he took a captured Russian Kalashnikov rifle, three bullet clips, and a bayonet and stacked them on his knapsack. Feeling tired and out-of-breath, he stirred some raspberry squash into a glass of water, gulped it down, and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve.

One last glance at the two sleepers. The young man on the rug at the woman’s feet, her blond halo of hair like a ripple of gold in the pale light on her pillow. The little mechanic curled up in a ball like a wet puppy, his head out of sight.

Yonatan winced. His flesh crawled and he shuddered, trying to fight down the memory of the free-for-all in the big double bed a few hours ago. The sweat, the sordidness, the anger, the relentless sperm, the shout torn from his chest, the boyish sobs, the soft beating of fists, the silent submission of the woman, like earth giving way to the plow.

A wave of burning revulsion. A biblical abhorrence of uncleanliness. The voice of his father Yolek welling up to stick in his throat. And the voices of all his dead forebears, coming to barrage him with a storm of stones.

All it takes to blow the two of them to pieces, and myself, and this whole stinking cesspool, is one little burst from the Klash. Tak-tak-tak-tak-tak.

“Get set,” he said to Tia in a whisper. “We’re off.”

He bent over and petted her roughly, against the lay of her fur, then slapped her twice on the back. If I’m not going to get rid of them, I might at least leave them a note.

But what could it possibly say? Never mind. Let’s just say I was suddenly killed.