In fact, maybe I should go back right now, wake up Azariah, and shout out, hey, pal, I’ve got the answer to the question your Spinoza and his Right Honorable Hugo Buxhall and all your head-in-the-cloud philosophers have been asking forever—the one about is there any justice in the world and where can you find it? Top of the morning, Azariah, get up! And you too, Rimona, put the kettle on! Because I’ve been up and around, and, lo and behold, I’ve found justice. It’s all in our dreams. Justice for everybody, more than enough to go around, to each according to his abilities and needs, the land of the true kibbutz. Not even a general can tell me what to do in my sleep because he can’t tell himself what to do in his. He sleeps like a pussycat, without bars, without stripes, without medals, blanketed in his private justice. So go to sleep, comrades, if you want justice, because that’s the only way you’ll ever get it.

As for me, I intend to stay up all by myself and have fun. Because I’m not looking for justice. I’m looking for life—which is the exact opposite. I’ve slept my fill, and now I stay awake. I’m through with crazy old men, with their looniness, with their dreams. I’m through with their wacky utopias and their creeping justice. Let them sleep all they want, bless their souls. I’m awake as I can be and about to get on board a vessel of my own.

It was only then that Yonatan turned to take one last look at the place he had once called home. The perimeter lights had gone out. The kibbutz seemed to float on a cushion of milky gray mist—the water tower twined with green ivy, the hayrack, the cowshed, the teenagers’ and children’s houses, the spires of the cypress trees around the white dining hall, the little red-roofed cottages with their blinds still shut, the hillside above the swimming pool, the basketball court, the sheep pen, the old guardhouse, the auxiliary shacks.