One of the two officers—a kibbutznik, Yonatan guessed—had a beautiful baby face, with ruddy brown cheeks, a classical nose, and cherubic blue eyes. He was wearing a patched army jacket and sneakers without socks. Smiling with milk-white teeth as if all too aware of his good looks, he was addressing his companion. “They just slay me, the two of them. That Shiko and his Avigayil. The minute she said she was leaving him and told him the whole truth about me and her. It must have been at least two in the morning, because she had just come back from my place, and it was cold as hell out, with a fog you couldn’t see the tip of your nose in, but right away he jumps up and runs straight out into the wadi.…”

“We’ve heard it, Ron, we’ve already heard all of it a hundred times,” interrupted the other officer, laying a hairy, freckled hand on Ron’s shoulder.

What was Shiko doing in the wadi in the middle of the night when he found out that Avigayil had decided to leave him? And why had she? And what had Ron’s friend already heard a hundred times? Yonatan was too tired to pursue it. Besides, it was too noisy to try to pick up the rest of the conversation because a many-wheeled truck that looked more like a freight train was struggling to maneuver its way into the narrow side street.

The turn was too sharp for it. Its gigantic wheels had chewed up the curb, and now one of its sides was crushing a municipal garbage receptacle hanging from a green metal post. The air brakes let out still another whoosh. A crowd began to form and to shout their advice, censure, and ridicule, all of which the driver, high in his cab, chose to ignore. Furiously the vehicle sought to fight its way into the street, uprooting a traffic sign and scraping a wall like a bull in heat. The sandstone of the damaged building poured down in a granular cascade. At this point, or so it seemed, the driver began to consider a retreat. He struggled with the gears and pulled as hard as he could on the wheel, as if tugging at the bridle of a recalcitrant animal. All of a sudden the monster lurched backward, and the crowd let out a gasp—less than a hair’s breadth now separated the back of the truck from the window of a pastry shop across the street. Once more the driver grasped the wheel and, breathing hard, wrested it all the way in the opposite direction. Gripping it tightly to prevent it from getting away, he battled the shift stick until he finally got the truck into gear, and the beast lurched forward only to become stuck, with either end smack up against a wall.