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compromised, it would have been worse. Far worse for all of us. For our country and for our family, which is part of our country.
    —But who cares about the country if it destroys our family? The country doesn’t care. All you need to do is read the newspapers to see how the people in this country care about us. To hear the disgusting things they’re saying on television. Have you seen the television where you are?
    —No.
    —Have you called Benzion?
    —Not yet.
    —He won’t say a word about it, but imagine what it’s like for him now. Did you think about that? He has to face it all. The army offered him a leave. He should have taken it. I told him to take it. But he wouldn’t.
    —Dafnaleh, this will pass. You have to believe me. I speak, unfortunately, from great experience.
    —I know about your experience, Papa. Everybody knows. You’ve sacrificed and sacrificed for this country, but they still ridicule you. They ridicule you
because
of your sacrifices. So what good is it? Let somebody else sacrifice for a change. And if nobody else wants to, then who are you sacrificing for?
    One sacrificed for one’s people as one sacrificed for one’s children. One did it because one felt that one knew better than they did. That one saw in them what they failed to see in themselves. One kept faith as God kept faith with the Israelites, the stubborn stiff-necked people, complaining even at the moment of their redemption, turning their backs, endlessly squabbling, quick to forget signs and wonders. One identified with them, even at their lowest, because otherwise one would be lost. He would be lost, desolate. A man needed to belong to something greater than himself.
    But the call ended with Kotler having conveyed none of this.
    It was late now, approaching midnight, too late, Kotler thought, to call Benzion. Besides, he still wasn’t fully accustomed to the idea that a soldier on active duty could be telephoned. On this subject, despite his having lived more than two decades in Israel, his frame of reference was seventy years outof date, rooted in childhood and his father’s stories of the eastern front. These stories, supported by a few photographs and a packet of yellowed field post—folded into triangles and bearing the censor’s seals—were deeply encoded in Kotler’s psyche.
    A movement in the window drew his eye and Kotler turned from the black absorption of the mountains. Faster than a thought, his knees buckled, responding to an overwhelming impulse to drop to the ground, to get out of sight. Kotler caught himself, and stood rigidly, his knees still slightly and comically bent. Blood battered his heart as if to dislodge it. The fear was one he’d not known in untold years. Framed in the window was a man, Svetlana’s husband, arrested by some worry or introspection, his profile presented to Kotler. Kotler’s thoughts swirled, sense convoluted with nonsense. He knew that the man could not see him, but he feared the man could see him. He knew the year was 2013 and that the Soviet Union no longer existed, but he felt the cold menace of the KGB, sensed the nearness of his old tormentors. He knew he was an Israeli citizen, a husband and father, a dissident champion, but he felt isolated and vulnerable, helpless to stave off the horror. In the window the man blinked his eyes and wearily ran his hand through his white hair. He cleared his throat, opened his mouth to call out to his wife, squinted as he listened for her reply, and then shuffled from the room.

FIVE
    L eora was watching the television when Kotler entered the room. He caught a glimpse of the screen and recognized the movie,
White Sun of the Desert,
a Soviet film, once a personal favorite. It had come out in 1970, when he was twenty years old and taking his first tentative steps down the dissident path. He’d read a samizdat translation of Leon Uris’s
Exodus.
He’d given vent in mixed company to some mildly provocative ideas. Little things. The