There was a silence. Yonatan rose, tall and very lean. He collected the empty coffee mugs and took them to the sink. While he was out of the room, Azariah noticed that Rimona’s blond hair fell over her back and shoulders, more to the left than the right. He noticed the slender stem of her neck and the fine lines of her forehead and cheeks. She was, he thought, beautiful, and Yonatan was handsome, and he loved them both, even as he envied them. He winced to think of having pained them by mentioning children, and he felt shame and self-loathing to be almost glad to hear that they had none. I must make them happy now and always, he thought. I must get so close they’ll never be able to do without me. Her pale, Christian beauty is so painful. I’ll never let her know how vile I really am.

Azariah Gitlin vaguely began to hope that this girl might hurt him, do him some wrong, which she would have to make amends for. And yet he couldn’t imagine how this might come about.

When Yonatan returned to the room, Azariah looked down at the floor and did not see him shut the copy of Witches and Witch Medicine that was lying open at the end of the couch. As he put it back in its place on the middle shelf, Azariah politely asked if he might smoke.

Yonatan took from his shirt pocket the pack of expensive American cigarettes that Azariah had given him that afternoon as a present and handed it to him.

“Long ago,” said Azariah, “in ancient Greece, there was a philosopher who believed that the soul resides in the body like a sailor in a ship. As lovely as that image is, it must be rejected. Another Greek philosopher wrote that the soul dwells in the body like a spider in its web, which in my own humble opinion is much closer to the truth. Using the powers of observation that I developed during my long, unhappy years of wandering, I noticed a good quarter of an hour ago that someone here must like to play chess. If I may be permitted to hazard a guess, that someone is you, Yonatan, not your friend.”

As Yonatan opened the board and set up the pieces, Azariah delivered himself of a few boastful remarks, only to retract them at once and apologetically point out, “A great philosopher once observed that the winner of the Olympic medal was not necessarily the fastest man in Greece but simply the fastest man in the race.”