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the beggar with a golden coin. And then I would have to confess to Aldo's mother that I had let Aldo have a bicycle, had even signed a contract for it. At which Aldo's mother would certainly punish him severely, because, under no circumstances, was he supposed to have a bicycle. And I would have behaved like a dirty low informer and not even got my bicycle back for my pains, since I no longer had the railway. Out of the question.
    C. I could return to Goel Germanski. And announce in a very cold and ominous voice that he was to return the railway immediately, our contract being cancelled. That he'd better give it back or I'd finish him for good. Yes, but how?
    D. I could still return to Goel Germanski. But apparently friendly. "Hello, how are you, how's things?" And then ask casually if Keeper has come back to him by any chance? Yes. Of course. And tomorrow the joke will be all round the neighborhood. Total disgrace.
    E. Who needs the wretched dog in any case? Who needs anything? I don't. So there. Anyway, who says Keeper fled straight back to Goel Germanski's? More likely he had run in the darkness to the Tel Arza wood and then on to the barren hills and then on to the forests of Galilee to join the rest of the pack in the wild and so to lead the life of a real free wolf at last, tearing out throats with his fangs.
    Perhaps, right now, at this moment, I too could get to my feet and go to the Tel Arza wood; and from there to the hills and the caves and the winds to live as a bandit all the rest of my life and spread the fear of my name through the land forever.
    Or, I could go home, tell, humbly, the whole truth, get my face slapped a few times and promise faithfully that from now on I would be a well-behaved and sensible boy instead of a crazy one. Then, straightaway, I would be dispatched with polite and apologetic notes from my father to Mrs. Castelnuovo and Mr. Germanski. I would apologize in my turn; assure everyone I hadn't really meant it; would smile a stupid smile and beg everyone's pardon; tell everyone how sorry I was for everything that had happened. Quite out of the question.
    F?G?H? Never mind. But a further possibility was simply to fall asleep among the ruins just like Huckleberry Finn in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
I'd spend the night under the steps of the Inbars' house; in the very dead of night I'd climb the drainpipe to Esthie's room and we'd elope together to the land of Obangi-Shari before the crack of dawn.
    But Esthie hates me. Perhaps worse than hates, she never thinks of me at all.
    One last possibility. At Passover, I'd gone in Sergeant Dunlop's Jeep to an Arab village and never told my parents anything. Well now, I could go to Aunt Edna's in the Yegia Capiim neighborhood, look unhappy, tell her Father and Mother had gone to Beit Hakerem this morning to visit friends and wouldn't be back till late, so they'd left me a key, and, well, I didn't quite know how to put this, only, well, I seem to have lost it, and ... But, oh, that Aunt Edna, who wore imitation fruit in her hair and had a house full of paper flowers and ornaments and never stopped kissing me and fussing over me ... and ... Never mind. It would have to do. At least it solved the problem for tonight. And by tomorrow Mother and Father would be so out of their minds with worry and so thankful to see me safe and well, they would quite forget to ask what had happened to my bicycle.
    Right. Let's go. I got to my feet, having made up my mind at last to beg shelter at my Aunt Edna's in the Yegia Capiim neighborhood. Only there was something glittering in the dark among the pine needles. I bent to the ground, straightened up again, and there it was, a pencil sharpener.
    Not a large pencil sharpener. And not exactly new. Yet made of metal, painted silver, and heavy for its size, cool-feeling and pleasant to my hand. A pencil sharpener. That I could sharpen pencils with, but also make serve as a tank in the battles that I fought out with buttons on