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By Root 599 0

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.

"Are you going to tell them, Fima?"

Fima thought about it. All through the confession he had not stopped stroking the albino hair. As in a bad dream he felt that the dog and Dimi and he had become one. In the same psalm where it says, "Their mind is gross like fat," it also says, "My soul droops with sorrow." He declared earnestly:

"No, Dimi, I'm not going to tell."

The boy peered obliquely up at him. His rabbit's eyes through the thick lenses seemed agonized yet full of trust, as though he was trying to demonstrate what he had described earlier in the eyes of the dog. So this is what love is.

Fima shuddered as though outside, from the depths of the darkness, wind, and rain, his ears had caught an elusive echo of a howl.

He stroked the little Challenger's head and dragged him inside the chunky sweater. As though he were pregnant with him. After a moment Dimi freed himself and asked:

"But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you agree not to tell them?"

"Because it wouldn't help Winston, and you've already suffered enough."

"You're okay, Fima."

And then :

"Even though you're a rather funny man. Sometimes they call you a clown behind your back. And you really are a little like a down."

"Now, Dimi, you're going to have a glass of milk. And tell me where I can find that Valium your mother said you're to take."

"I'm a little like a clown too. But I'm not okay. I should have said no. I shouldn't have let myself be carried away by them."

"But they made you do it."

"Still, it was murder."

"You can't tell," Fima ventured. "Maybe he was only wounded."

"He lost a lot of blood. A whole sea of blood."

"Sometimes you can bleed a lot even from a scratch. Once, when I was little, I was balancing on a wall and fell off, and I bled a huge amount from a tiny little gash on my head. Granpa Baruch nearly fainted."

"I hate them."

"They're just children, Dimi. Children sometimes do very cruel things, simply because they don't have enough imagination to know what pain is."

Dimi said:

"Not the children. Them. If they could have chosen, they wouldn't have had me. And I wouldn't have chosen them either. It's not fair: you can choose who you marry but you can't choose who your parents are. And you can't divorce them cither. Fima?"

"Yes."

"Shall we take a flashlight and some bandages and iodine and go and look for him down in the wadi?"

"In this darkness and rain there isn't a hope of finding him."

"True," said Dimi. "You're right. We haven't got a hope. But let's go and search anyhow. So at least we'll know we tried and failed." As he said this, he looked to Fima like a pocket-sized edition of his self-possessed, rational father. Even his intonation was a reflection of Ted's: the quiet voice of a well-balanced, solitary man. Dimi wiped his glasses as he added: "Tslil's family are also to blame. Why did they go abroad and leave their dog behind when he was sick? They could have taken him. They could have made some arrangements for him at least. Why did they throw him out on the trash heap like that? The Cherokees have a law that you mustn't throw anything away. Even a broken pot they keep in the wigwam. Anything you've ever used you mustn't get rid of. It might still need you. They even have a sort of ten commandments, or less than ten, and die