He had known all along that the meeting would end without any dramatic decisions, merely with a vote to appoint yet another committee to examine the issues raised. Nevertheless, he had made two decisions of his own. The first was not to return home until the seven o’clock bus, and until then, barring rain, to stroll around the city a bit to breathe its sea air. The second was to investigate the story of the young mechanic, who had been taken on without a sufficient check. An army discharge, after all, could be forged.

Yolek walked slowly in a northwesterly direction toward the sea, into an unfamiliar neighborhood. A year ago, in the winter of ’64, a new development had gone up here. Its residents had taken all their savings, borrowed more money, obtained mortgages, and otherwise swung things financially to be able to live in these blindingly white high-rise buildings, in luxury apartments that would have made the local moneybags in the shtetl they had come from—the moneybags who had laughed at their starry-eyed idealism when they set out empty-handed for Palestine thirty years ago—turn green with envy in his unmarked grave.

In vain, Yolek realized, had been the whole arduous attempt to rebuild Jewish life on a new foundation; in vain, the pioneers’ tents and co-op restaurants; in vain, the creed of physical labor and life in the sun; in vain, the going barefoot, the peasant clothes, the shepherds’ songs; in vain, the long nights of argument and debate. All these ex-pioneers who had skimped, saved, and borrowed to build homes, in each of them a living room; in each living room, a glass-paneled cabinet; in each glass-paneled cabinet, a fancy dinner service for twelve. “Keeping up with the Cohens,” Eshkol had called it today.

Here and there, in earth trucked in from afar to cover the shifting dunes, a few pale saplings had been planted. No doubt the mayor had cut a ribbon and spoken glowingly of the future. Look at that little boy riding his bicycle down that lane. The wind is bringing him the same smell of fresh paint and whitewash that it is bringing me.

By four, the long evening had begun to set in, granting a kind of reprieve to the city of Tel Aviv. Alongside the new power station, where the Yarkon emptied into the sea, three fishermen were spreading a net. An old woman in charge of a kiosk near the last stop on the bus line looked suspiciously around and, seeing that no one was watching, treated herself to a soda from the tap. Between clouds the color of blood and clouds the color of fire, the sun was entering its last western lap. Far out on the horizon, more clouds shaped like dragons, crocodiles, whales, monstrous serpents were beginning to form. Perhaps, if his time had not run out, he should head west.