“Listen here, young fellow. Secrecy, shmecrecy, that’s all very well, but there’s a limit. Back in the days of the underground, there used to be a joke about Sha’ul Avigur, who was a big shot in the Haganah and a great stickler for security. Once, when his driver came to pick him up—would you mind wiping the windshield a little? That’s the ticket, thank you—Avigur said to him, ‘Step on it, I’m in a hurry!’ ‘Where to?’ asked the driver. ‘Sorry, that’s confidential,’ answered Avigur and wouldn’t say another word. Maybe you’ve already heard this one. Never mind. As long as the bastards get it in the balls, and then some, and you all come home safe and sound. I don’t mind telling you we get a big bang out of you boys today when we compare you with what we were then. What we paraded around and sounded off about at the top of our lungs, you do with your little pinky and no fuss. Moshe Dayan couldn’t have put it any better when he said that all our operations in the underground didn’t amount to what one squad in the regular army can do today. God bless you all! Maybe you’ll at least agree to tell me where you want to be let off?”

“The farther south, the better.”

“Eilat? Ethiopia? Capetown? Don’t mind me. I’m only joking. Couldn’t you whisper into just one of my ears where you’re going to let them have it tonight? I promise to forget it instantly.”

Yonatan smiled and said nothing. The blue of the sky that grew deeper by the minute, the low hills about to turn verdant, the soft light of the wheat fields with their promised ears of grain, the secretive light of the citrus groves, the bare light of the orchards, the flocks of sheep with their shepherds in khaki and visored caps—peaceful and lovely the country lay before him, sprinkled with white villages, crisscrossed by footpaths through the fields, embraced by the shadows of mountains, cooled by the chill sea breeze—lovely and yearning for his feet to tread on. We have to love and to forgive, thought Yonatan. We have to be good. And if I leave all this, let it be without forgetting and without the fear of the nets of longing. Only where to, goddamn it? Where am I running to?

“You dozing off there, young fellow?”

“Not at all. I’m awake as hell.”

“Are you from Kibbutz Granot?”

“You bet.”

“How are things there?”

“Terrific. Fantastic. The magic of Chad.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. It’s not important. Just some verse I happened to remember from the Bible.”

“Take a look on the seat between us. Have some coffee from my thermos and go on reciting the rest of the Bible for me. You’re not by any chance a wilderness buff, are you?”