Where is he taking me? Straight to the police? Why do I keep attracting such crackpots? My father. My mother. Trotsky. Azariah. Rimona. Myself. From no more than a pace-and-a-half, what a dunce! How can you miss a bull from a pace-and-a-half? I could have killed him with my eyes closed. He must have missed on purpose because death stinks. Crawl and live! Suffer and live! But for what? At least I didn’t crack. Didn’t even tell him my name. Although maybe he’s just mad enough to have guessed that too. In a minute he’ll probably roll this jeep over and kill us both. What time is it? It’s getting dark. By sunrise tomorrow I’ll be dead anyway. My last night, this one. And a good thing too. Khhhhrrr! … Even a broken watch is right twice a day. And there I’m being waited for. Not forever, though. But I’m coming.

“Do you have the time?”

“Son,” said Tlallim, “you’ve got plenty of time. The Atallah will be more than happy to wait. It so happens I was in Petra myself eight years ago. It’s just another ruin. A pile of stones. Like all ruins. No Peterburg, Petra. Just one big hole.”

“How come they didn’t do you in?”

“Silly boy!” laughed the old man. “The Atallah don’t take me for a Jew at all. And by now I’m really not one. I’m sort of a, nu, a holy man to them, a dervish, a yurodivy. And that’s what I am around here too. You just ask about Sasha, how he rode to Petra on a camel like Father Abraham, with the Atallah wining and dining him all the way and their daughters dancing for his delight. I, O dearly beloved, am not a Jew any longer. I’m not even a man. I’m the Devil’s own, a desert rat. Of life he could not get his fill. Women he adored. Vodka he did swill. The reprobates to trap him sought, the fools to lay him low. But he never said die. Nikagda! Come on now, zolotoy mine, please don’t go to hell. Why don’t the two of us take off and have a blast?”

“Sorry,” said Yonatan, “Drop me at Bir-Meliha, and forget you ever met me, please. I don’t owe anybody any explanation. My life’s my own.”