Tsvi, Nina, and Uri tried to draw him into a conversation to distract him, a light exchange about subjects dear to his heart, the situation in the Territories, the way it was presented on Italian television, which Uri had been watching in Rome, the significance of the American overtures. Fima refused to be drawn. He contented himself with keeping the absent-minded smile on his face. For a moment he thought of Baruch lying in a refrigerated compartment in the basement of Hadassah Hospital, in a sort of honeycomb of freezer drawers, populated, in part or in whole, by the fresh Jerusalem dead. He tried to feel in his own bones the frost, the darkness of the drawer, the dark northern ocean bed below the whaling station. But he could find no pain in his heart. Or fear. No. His heart was light, and he almost began to see the humor in the metallic mortuary honeycomb with its drawers of corpses. He recalled his father’s anecdote about the argument between the Israeli and the American railway boss, and the story of the famous rabbi and the highwayman who exchanged their cloaks. He knew he would have to say something. But he had no idea what he could tell his friends. However, his ignorance was growing thinner and thinner. Like a veil that only half hides the face. He got up and went to the bathroom and rediscovered that here at his father’s the toilet was flushed by a tap that could be turned on or off at will, with no race, no defeat, no constant humiliation. So that was one less thing to worry about.

Returning, he joined Dimi on the carpet, got down on his knees, and asked:

“Do you know the legend of Atlantis?”

Dimi said:

“Sure I do. There was a program about it once on educational TV. It’s not exactly a legend.”

“What is it then? Fact?”

“Of course not.”

“So, if it’s not a legend and it’s not fact?”

“It’s a myth. A myth is not the same thing as a legend. It’s more like a nucleus.”

“Where was this Atlantis, roughly?”

Dimi turned the illuminated globe a little and gently placed a pale hand on the ocean that glowed from the depths in the radiance of the electric light between Africa and South America, and the boy’s fingers were also illuminated with a ghostly glow.

“Roughly here. But it makes no difference. It’s more in the mind.”

“Tell me something, Dimi. Do you think there’s anything after we die?”

“Why not?”

“Do you believe Granpa can hear us right now?”

“There isn’t that much to hear.”

“But can he?”

“Why not?”

“And can we hear him?”

“In our minds, yes.”

“Are you sad?”

“Yes. Both of us. But it’s not good-bye. You can go on loving.”

“So—we shouldn’t be afraid of dying?”

“No, that isn’t possible.”