“And another thing,” Chupka went on, “do you have anyone there who knows anything about maps? You maybe? Or somebody younger?”

“We might,” I said. “Why?”

“I want you to go to Yoni’s room and look very carefully for a box of maps. Last autumn he walked off with a whole set of 1:20,000 of mine and never returned them. Check it out. Or shall I send someone to do it?”

“What exactly do you want us to check?”

“See if there’s a map missing. Because he took a complete set.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you really need the whole set right now? Is it that urgent?”

“You don’t get me, my friend,” drawled Chupka. “If there’s a particular map missing, that means Yoni probably took it with him. That could give us a clue where to start looking for him.”

“How extraordinary,” I said. “But of course. We’ll check right now. That’s a brilliant idea.”

“Come off it, man,” said Chupka, clearly appalled by my praises. “Just make sure you get in touch with me tonight to let me know, okay?”

“Agreed,” I said. And added, swallowing my pride, “Right. Okay.”

“And don’t go making any waves.”

“Waves?”

“I mean the press and all that. He may still be alive, and we don’t want to make him look bad.”

What a strange breed these young people are. Like a foreign people almost, as if in them our race were disguising itself so that even our worst enemies will no longer be able to recognize us. What worlds apart they and I. And yet I would give everything I have right now not just to have a son of my own, but for him to be just like them. Anything! Only what do I have to give? My old flute? Six shirts? Two pairs of shoes? Or the dozens of notebooks in this journal? In short, nothing, not a thing. And this leads me to another, in a certain sense, theological observation. Does not this inner urge to give our all for what we can never have bear a mysterious resemblance to the inner workings of the universe itself, to the orbits of the stars, the procession of the seasons, the migrations of the birds that I have been reading about in Griffin? Perhaps the correct word is not urge but yearning.