Etan R. shrugged twice on his way to the cowshed. Did that guitar case really hold a guitar? This country, he reminded himself, is full of jerks. A guitar case can be for guitars, and it can be for other things too. It’s anyone’s guess. He felt a renewed uneasiness, perhaps because the stranger had seemed so ill-at-ease himself.

If that young man’s looking for someplace to hide, Etan thought, he couldn’t find a better place than a kibbutz. Everything’s aboveboard, no questions asked. The only place you can still find a little justice in the world is on the kibbutz. An oddball? Well, we’ve got a Bolognesi who sits around knitting dresses, why not someone who’s looking for justice. No skin off my back.

Just to be on the safe side, though, Etan decided that after he finished the night milking and took his shower, he would inquire about the newcomer. Maybe, he thought, I should have walked him to Yolek’s to make sure he wasn’t up to something.

By the time Etan had finished distributing the fodder to the feedstalls and was hooking up the rubber tubes of the milking machine, he had forgotten all about the stranger.

The last light had died away. It had grown colder. Carpets of fallen leaves turned black in front yards. Dead leaves, whispered to by the wind, gave off a wet, moldy odor that mingled with the smell of standing water. The lamps along the muddy path shone with a doubtful light, more like some sickly yellow substance than incorporeal waves. In the windows of the houses lights burned too. Looking at them from the outside, you saw only flapping curtains and human silhouettes because the panes had frosted over. You could hear a child shout; you could hear sounds of laughter and of scolding, and sometimes strains of music from a radio. As soon as they escaped through the windows and walls, the gayest of the sounds seemed to have a spell cast over them: once outside in the rain they turned woebegone. And yet in the midst of all this frost and darkness, which was not yet the darkness of night but a grayish, winter-sunset darkness, you could imagine, behind each fogged window, families laughing, straw mats piled high with babies’ toys, the smell of bathed children, heaters burning with blue flames, women in woolen bathrobes. There, within, life was flowing truly and unhurriedly such as you have never known it, such as you have longed with all your soul to touch, to be part of, so that you need no longer be the outsider in the dark, but, as if by magic, the neighbor, the friend, the equal and brother of those inside, accepted and loved by all until nothing could stand between you and them.