I did not, however, enter the last shack. Some inner discomfort held me back. Through the curtainless window, by the light of a bare yellow bulb, I did see Bolognesi, however, his head wrapped in a cloth that hid his rotten ear, a woolen blanket around him, sitting erect on his bed, his knitting needles clicking away, rocking rhythmically back and forth, his lips moving.

We stood there for a few minutes, the dog and I, sniffing the night breeze. Had not Rimona promised that winter was over and spring was on its way?

Some day, when all this is only a memory, I’ll ask Hava to have Bolognesi over to my place for tea. No good can come of such total solitude. No good has come from my thousands of lonely nights of flute playing and journal keeping. Twenty-five years of them. How old would my oldest child be now if I had fought for P.? How old might my grandchildren be?

I purposely took a roundabout route to pass by her home. Darkness. The privet-and-myrtle hedge. Her underwear hanging on the laundry line. Shush, whispered the horsetail tree. Why haven’t I given her so much as a single hint that I love her? Supposing I wrote her a letter? Supposing I brought her, one by one and without any warning, all forty-eight volumes of this journal? Should I? What better time than now, when Hava is installed in my apartment and I am the new secretary of the kibbutz?

Just then I saw the headlights of a car in the square in front of the dining hall. I hurried, almost ran, there, Tia loping in front of me. An army vehicle. The slam of a door. A rifle. A uniform. My heart skipped a beat. But no, it wasn’t Yonatan; it was his younger brother Amos, sweaty and frazzled-looking. I sat him down on a bench beneath a light at one end of the square. Amos had been on a routine patrol along the Syrian border when a special car manned by the brigadier’s driver picked him up and brought him straight home without explanation. Did I have any idea, he demanded to know, what exactly was going on and what all the fuss was about?

I explained it all to him as succinctly as I could. About his brother, his father, his mother. After asking him if he wanted anything to eat or drink, I considered for a moment bringing him back with me and waking Hava, but in the end decided against it. It could wait, and I’d already had enough melodrama for one day. If he wasn’t hungry or thirsty, then, I wished him a good night’s sleep.

And so I went home, giving Tia a long goodbye pat at the door and smiling at myself in sheer amazement. Since when have I become a dog-petter?