No more thunder and lightning, no more mea culpas, no more biblical rage. The doctor found his condition stable. He had become an obedient, tractable patient. When Rimona came to see him, always bearing a myrtle branch or oleander blossom, he would lay a broad, ugly hand on her head and say, “Thank you. Nice. You’re a saint.” More often than not, the flowers would remain in his lap until evening.

His hearing had grown worse, almost to the point of deafness. Even low-flying jet planes savagely crisscrossing the sky failed to make him look up. After consulting Hava, the doctor, and the nurse, Srulik ordered the latest-model hearing aid. Meanwhile he rested with Tia drowsing at his feet, no longer bothering to chase away flies.

Every weekend Amos came home on leave. One Saturday he turned up with a ladder, a can of paint, and a brush to paint his parents’ kitchenette. Hava presented him with a small transistor radio. Azariah brought a wheelbarrow full of concrete and patched all the cracks in the pavement and stairs so that Yolek wouldn’t stumble. On Saturday nights they all drank coffee together and listened to the sports roundup. Once, to the amazement of all, Amos picked up Azariah’s guitar and managed to play three simple tunes. Where could he have learned to do that?

And yet another little wonder: Bolognesi appeared one day with a blue woolen wrap that he had knit to protect Yolek’s knees from the evening chill. Hava gave him the two bottles of brandy that were left in the house, one full and one half empty. Since his return from the hospital, Yolek no longer drank. “Bless’a God Who wipe’a away the tears of the poor,” remarked Bolognesi.

Srulik, the secretary, had meanwhile been busily planning some innovations. After a number of feelers that amounted to a careful canvassing of the whole kibbutz, he succeeded in convincing the general meeting to approve funds for vacations abroad. Over the next fifteen years, it was calculated, each member would be awarded three weeks to see the world. Srulik also revived the youth committee, commissioned preliminary plans for adding a room to each of the family units, reactivated the singles committee. He also appointed a team to study the possibility of introducing a light industry. Young people, he felt, needed a challenge.

He still found time for his quintet. Having agreed to the group’s public debut in the dining hall of a neighboring kibbutz, he had begun to put it through a weekly rehearsal. Late at night, framed by the square of light in his window, he could be seen at his desk, writing. Some said he was working on an article. Others that he was composing a symphony. Still others speculated that he was writing a novel.