He bent over to shoulder his knapsack and gun, adjusted the straps, then spoke to Tia again, this time almost gently, “All right, we’re really off this time. Not you, Tia. Just me.”

Goodbye, Azuva daughter of Shilhi. Goodbye, baby fink. Yonatan’s finally picked up and gone. His life is about to begin. What he needs most now is to be serious. From now on that’s what he’s going to be.

There was a first glimmer in the sky, a misty light from the horizon beyond the eastern hills. The little cottages, the gardens, the winter-stricken lawns, the bare trees, the tile roofs, the chrysanthemum beds, the rock gardens, the porches, the laundry lines, the bushes—all were coated more brightly each passing minute with a fine, merciful radiance that was as pure as a wish. A cold wave of delicious night air rinsed Yonatan’s lungs. He gulped deeply and cut across the kibbutz with long, gangling strides, slightly bent beneath his load, hunching his right shoulder, which carried his bulging knapsack and his rifle from a frayed strap.

On reaching his parents’ house, he paused, ran his free hand through his mop of hair, and started to scratch. A bird chirped briefly, its song melting the darkness. A dog growled from its refuge beneath a porch, began to bark, then thought better of it. From the direction of the cowshed came the faint plaint of the cows and the rattle of the milking machine.

Father. Mother. Goodbye. Forever. I’ll never forget that you meant well. From the time I was an infant you were so good and so horrible to me. You dressed yourselves in rags, and ate dry bread with olives, and worked like coolies all day long, and sang yourselves hoarse every night, and lived in an ecstatic trance, and gave me a white, white room with a housemother in a white, white apron who fed me white, white cream to make me a clean, honest, hard-working Jewish boy with a soul of forged steel.