One evening, at the end of that winter, after endless complications, letters, threatened suicides, hysterical cries behind the hayloft, group discussions, efforts to find a reasonable solution—after a nervous breakdown and a discreet medical treatment—it came this Trotsky’s turn to stand guard duty. Armed with the kibbutz’s antique revolver, he had faithfully watched over us until the break of dawn, when, stricken by ultimate despair, he lay in wait for her in the bushes by the laundry room. Leaping out he fired at her at close range. Then, with the piercing howl of a shot dog, he ran blindly to the cowshed, where he fired twice at Yolek, who was finishing the night milking, and once at Stakhanov, our only bull. With startled kibbutzniks, roused from their beds by the shots, now hot on his heels, the wretched man dived behind a pile of manure and aimed the last bullet into his own brain.

All those shots had missed their targets, and not a single drop of blood had been shed, yet the lovesick youth fled the kibbutz, and even the country. He ended up a hotel tycoon in Miami Beach, a holiday resort in East America. Once he sent us a large donation for the construction of a music room. At another time he wrote us a letter in a strange Hebrew. In this he aspired, or threatened, or simply volunteered, to be Yonatan Lifshitz’s real father.

On the bookshelf in his parents’ home, hidden among the pages of an old Hebrew novel, Yonatan had once found a biblical-sounding love poem on a yellowing sheet of paper, apparently composed by this same Benyamin Trotsky. The lover in the poem though was called Eleazar of Maresha and his beloved Azuva daughter of Shilhi. It was entitled “But Their Hearts Were Not True.” At the bottom of the page a few words were penciled in a round, untroubled handwriting. But Yonatan could not decipher those words because the letters were Cyrillic.

Never in all the years had his parents so much as mentioned the B. T. affair in his presence. Except once, during a fierce quarrel, Yolek had said to Hava in Polish, “Twój komediant,” and she had hissed at him:

“Ty zboju. Ty morderco.” (“You crook. You murderer.”)

The whole thing was incredible, the old-timers on the kibbutz sometimes recalled. From a range of just two or three feet, that joker, he managed to miss a bull!

Yonatan was trying to imagine some different place, a place suitable for him, some way of working and resting just as he pleased, away from ever being encircled again.