Dimi’s idea was to pick some greenery and flowers and decorate the altar. He even arranged a little wreath for Winston’s head, as they do in nursery school when it’s somebody’s birthday. They tied his arms and legs together firmly, and even so he didn’t stop fawning and being glad and wagging his tail all the time, as though he was happy to be the center of attention. Anyone who wasn’t careful got a lick. Then they drew lots: Ninja Marmelstein had to chant the prayers, Ronen had to dig the grave, and he, Dimi, got the job of killing him. At first he tried to get out of it—he had the excuse that his sight wasn’t too good—but they made fun of him, and got angry, and said a draw is a draw, stop being such a bleeding heart. So he had no choice. Only it wouldn’t work. The knife was shaking in his hand and the dog kept moving all the time. Instead of cutting the throat, he cut off half an ear. The dog went mad and started to cry like a baby and bit the air. Dimi had to cut again, quickly, to stop the howling. But this time instead of the throat the knife went into something soft near the belly, because Winston wriggled and squealed and bled a lot. Yaniv said, So what? It’s not so terrible; its only a smelly old Arab dog. And Ninja said, And he’s got edema; he’s going to die anyway. The third time Dimi struck with all his might, but he hit a rock and the knife broke in half. He was left holding just the handle. Ninja and Yaniv grabbed Winston’s head and said Come on, hurry up, you dummy. Pick up the blade and cut real fast. But there wasn’t enough of the blade left, and it was impossible to saw the throat; it was all slippery with the blood. And each time it cut in the wrong place. In the end everyone was covered with blood. How can it be that a dog has so much blood? Maybe it was because of the edema. Yaniv and Ninja and Ronen started running away, and the dog bit through the rope and got free, but only the front legs; the back ones stayed tied, and with shrieks, not dog shrieks, more like a woman shrieking, he dragged himself away on his belly and disappeared into the bushes, and when Dimi realized the others weren’t there, he ran after them in a panic. He found them at last hiding in the garage underneath the block of flats. There was a tap there and they had managed to wash the blood off, but they didn’t let him wash and they blamed him. It was all his fault Winston was not alive and not dead, cruelty to dumb animals, his fault Ronen’s knife from home got broken, and they blamed him because he would tell on them, they knew him, and they started kicking him and they got some more rope, and Ninja said, Now there’s an intifada going on here. Let’s hang Dimi. Only Ronen was relatively fair and said to them, First just let me put his glasses somewhere so they don’t get broken. That was why he didn’t see who tied him and who, after they beat him, stood and peed on him. So they left him tied up down there in the car park and ran away, shouting that he had it coming to him, why did he kill Winston. He didn’t tell the neighbor who was supposed to be looking after him. He just said he got dirty from the pond. If his parents found out, it would be the end of him.