One Saturday, while walking in the ruins of Sheikh Dahr, Anat suddenly noticed, and quickly pointed out, five gazelles outlined against the sky. No sooner had Rimona, Zaro, and Udi seen them too than they were gone. In the courtyards of the Arab village the bougainvillea blazed through the stones, wild grape vines inched their tendrils up the smashed archways, acacia trees spread a fragrance thick as thieves. In a wagon hitched to a tractor, Udi hauled away from the ruins a large grindstone, a stone lintel, and a blackened threshing sled, all of which he displayed prominently in his garden. Forgotten, perhaps, was his plan to dig up a skeleton from the Arab graveyard and turn it into a scarecrow to shock the old-timers. Perhaps he had only been joking. Azariah brought back for Rimona a large, cracked pottery jar. He planted a red geranium in it and placed it in front of their home. “Yoni will like that a lot,” she said. In her voice he heard neither joy nor sadness.

Every morning at four Little Shimon took the sheep out to pasture on the hills to the east. And once a day Etan R. cut a wagonload of alfalfa to scatter among the feedstalls in the cowshed. In the afternoon, their communal chores finished, the members of the kibbutz once again began to tend their little gardens, hoeing, pruning, and mowing. The news on the radio continued to report tension on the northern border, infiltrators, the imminent danger of war, the vigorous protests and warnings lodged by Prime Minister Eshkol with the ambassadors of the Four Powers. Sometimes, between one news bulletin and the next, an old Hebrew song tugged at the heartstrings.

Life went on. Except that in mid-April Stutchnik suddenly died.

One morning, on his way back from the night milking, he had entered Srulik’s office in his boots, trailing a barnyard smell, and shyly asked for permission to send a telegram. To his only daughter in Kiryat Gat to come at once and to bring her husband and children with her. When asked what the happy occasion was, Stutchnik turned pale and leaned on Srulik’s desk. No more could be got out of him than a vague reference to something personal. Srulik wondered at the meekness in Stutchnik’s voice. Gone were the days when he quickly lost his temper, argued with anyone in sight, attacked everything under the sun by dismissing it as a muktse, forever righteous and angry.

Once, he refused to speak to Srulik for six months because Srulik had proved to him that Denmark was not, after all, a Benelux country. Eventually he forgave, but not without insisting that Srulik’s source was “badly out-of-date.”

He declined a glass of tea, then extended his hand, which Srulik shook, not without surprise. Stutchnik turned around and trudged out of the office.

Srulik decided not to send the telegram before speaking with Stutchnik’s wife Rachel.