Early that day the kindergarten children sent up a solitary kite. It climbed tenaciously to heavenly heights, at which it seemed to be a flying genie or sea monster. Don’t believe any of it, it’s a trap, thought Yonatan Lifshitz as he dressed, put water on for coffee, and went out to stand on the porch. They’re just decorating your death with the crepe-paper of love. If you don’t make tracks now like an animal, they’ll trick you into staying until you relax and forget that your life is your own. “He who forgets abets,” as that poor bastard would say. That must be one of his Russian proverbs.

Rimona was sleeping on her back, her hair spread over the pillow, on her forehead a spot of sunlight that had crept through the slats of the blinds. It was Yonatan who first heard the kettle whistle.

“Get up and see what a day we’ve got outside! It’s just what you promised, you sorceress! Get up! Let’s have coffee and go for a walk.”

Rimona sat up in bed like a baby, rubbing her eyes repeatedly with her tiny fists. “Yoni,” she said, as if surprised to find him there, “it’s you. I dreamed I found a turtle that could climb walls. I kept trying to convince it that it couldn’t until you came along and said that the two of us were being silly and that you’d show us something really new. And then you woke me. There’s a fresh hallah from yesterday in a plastic bag near the coffee.”

One by one each of Rimona’s promises came true. By nine o’clock every window on the kibbutz was open and quilts, blankets, and pillows had been hung out to air. The riverine light deepened all their colors but positively set fire to blue pillow cases and pink nightgowns.

How dazzlingly white were the little houses in that storm of blue light, their tile roofs redder than red, each smoking with a thin mist. Far off in the east, the mountains seemed to levitate in the brilliance, as if they were but their own shadows. “Just look at that!” said Azariah Gitlin to his neighbor, the hired metalworker with the torn ear. “Just look—and, oh, by the way, good morning—how spring has won the battle with a single knockout blow!”

Bolognesi, he who pondered all statements at length looking for a catch, stared hard at Azariah before answering humbly, “Praise God!”