Outside, by the hospital gate, the dusty, decrepit old jeep that belonged to the field hands was waiting for him. Completely forgetting that they would need it for work by four or four-thirty, he started it up and headed southward until he ran out of gas some thirty kilometers past Beersheba. A hot, sandstormy morning was breaking beneath a grimy sky. The desert was gray and shabby, its hills like garbage dumps, and beyond its huge mountain peaks like scrap metal running the length of the horizon. Yonatan left the jeep, walked a short distance, relieved himself, lay down, and fell fast asleep in the sand. Three paratroopers passing by in a command car woke him. Get up, you crazy nut, they said, we thought you’d killed yourself or been slaughtered by the Bedouin. Yonatan looked around him at the filthy, shifting sand dunes polluting the air with dust and at the hideous mountains in the distance.

Yonatan turned on the radio, but the station was off the air. He took a sheet and blankets from the linen chest, and went to the bathroom to wash up and brush his teeth. When he emerged, Rimona had already made their bed and was setting the clock by the twelve o’clock news from the army broadcasting service. The announcer expressed grave concern over the possible results of the conference of Arab military chiefs scheduled for the next day in Cairo. The situation gave signs of rapid deterioration. Yonatan said he was going out to the porch for a last cigarette and then forgot to do so. Rimona undressed in the shower as usual, reappearing in the heavy brown flannel nightgown that resembled a winter coat. When they woke Tia from her snooze at the foot of the table, she arched her back, shook herself, let out a yawn that turned to a thin whine, padded to the front door, and waited to be let out. A few minutes later she was let back in, and the lights were turned out.

4

That night, in the darkness of the barber’s half of the shack near the farm sheds, Azariah Gitlin lay with open eyes, listening to the groans of the old, wind-tossed eucalyptus trees and to the tiny fists of rain on the tin roof while his mind whirred with musings about himself, his secret mission, and the love of the members of Kibbutz Granot that should and would be his as soon as they realized who he really was.