“Nu, chudak. It’s no business of mine. You want to mislead me? So tell me lies. They say a lie has clay feet. Idiots! It has wings! And I can see, zolotoy partsufchik, that you had a gay old time last night, no? It’s written all over your face. Never mind. You want to deny it? Deny! To lie? Lie to your heart’s content! Who was it? Little Yvonne? Michal? Rafa’ella? Well, it’s no business of mine. Between their legs they’ve all, heh, heh, got the same honeypot. Come in, please. We have tea, we have dates, and we have vodka. I’m strictly a vegetarian. A vegetarian cannibal, that is. You are my guest now. Sit! We’ll talk. Eat. Drink. And then—chort evo znayet. God be with you! Or the Devil. Come on now. Let Burlak and me drop you off near Bir-Meliha, and from there you can go straight to hell, if that’s where you’re bound for.”

Yonatan followed the old man into a dilapidated trailer at one end of the camp, near the perimeter fence. Its tires had gone flat long ago, leaving the rubber to fall apart and the metal hubs sunk halfway into the sand. The cool, dimly lit interior had a faintly disagreeable smell. It was furnished with two mattresses—one of them stuffed with rags, the other spilling wisps of dirty straw through a hole in its lining—and a peeling table on which stood a great many empty beer bottles, half-empty wine bottles, and a mélange of tin plates and cups, canned foods, piles of books, bread crusts, and eggs in a cardboard box. On a shelf tied by ropes to the ceiling, among numerous colorful rock samples, Yonatan made out a kerosene stove, a heater, a tin of tea, a broken accordion, an oil lamp, a blackened frying pan, a sooted-over Turkish-coffee beaker and an ancient Parabellum revolver.