“Let me think,” he replied in a hoarse, fatigued voice. After a brief silence he declared, “Why ask me? Anybody is liable to do something rash.” (Incidentally, he couldn’t be more right.) In the end we agreed to keep in touch.

All the while I was playing detective on the phone, Udi Shneour and Etan R. were, at my request, combing those surroundings of the kibbutz that were too muddy to be negotiable by jeep. With no results. Then, once more at my prompting, Etan took Tia around on a leash to try to pick up a scent. Also without results.

I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was necessary or desirable to call in the police at this point. The reasons for doing so were obvious. The reason against it was that if the whole affair turned out to be nothing but a lark, Yonatan would most likely be angry that we had involved the law.

By five o’clock I had finally decided I would talk to Yolek after all. Earlier in the day I had suggested to Hava that she call any friends or relations with whom Yonatan might be staying. She took this task upon herself with a look of genteel revulsion, leaving me with the feeling that, even though nothing else could be expected from an incompetent like me, any measures I had taken so far were perfectly brainless. Her only insistent request was that I place a transatlantic call to Benya Trotsky in Miami. This seemed to me rather pointless, but I agreed without disclosing my true feelings.

Thirty-nine years have gone by since my first encounter with Yolek Lifshitz. There was something offhandedly domineering about him that made me feel like an underling. He was a cautious, keen-witted man with not a youthful bone in his body even then, when we were all very young—as if he had come into this world as a fully formed adult. To this day I feel intimidated by his presence. It was he, incidentally, who first taught me how to harness a horse.

Frankly, I had expected him to go straight into his mea culpa routine, but he didn’t. Assertively absorbed in his cigarette and staring at the ceiling, he thanked me for what I had done, the expression of his face reminding me of the times I had seen him faced with a critical political decision, his nostrils flaring, his huge, profligate nose eloquent with a profound contempt. He talked sparingly and unemotionally, as if his mind were made up to take some dramatic, irrevocable step. Like a general or head of state who has just pronounced the secret code word for crossing some fatal Rubicon still undisclosed to his entourage and who now sits waiting, exuding something that might be called serenity were it not for the chain smoking.

“Yolek,” I said. “I want you to know that we’re all behind you. The whole kibbutz.”