The Last Jew by Noah Gordon

evening by candlelight, completing the arduous details of their departure.
    Yonah enjoyed sharing tasks with his father. It was not unpleasant to be alone with him, with Eleazar gone for the night. They made piles of their belongings, one pile composed of things they would leave behind, a smaller pile that they would pack onto the burros at dawn -- clothing, foodstuff, a prayer book, a set of his father's tools.
    Before it grew late, Helkias put his arm around Yonah and ordered him to bed. 'Tomorrow we travel. You will need your strength.'
    But Yonah had only just fallen asleep to the comforting sound of Helkias sweeping the floor when his father shook him, roughly and urgently. 'My son. You must leave the house through the rear window. Hurry.'
    Yonah could hear it, the sounds of many men coming down the road. Some were singing a fierce hymn. Others were shouting. They were not far off.
    'Where? ...'
    'Go to the cave in the cliff. Do not come out until I come there for you.'
    His father's fingers dug into his shoulder. 'Listen to me. Go now. Go at once. Let no neighbor see you.' Yonah threw half a loaf of bread into a small sack and thrust it at him. 'Yonah. If I don't come ... stay as long as you are able, then go to Benito Martín.'
    'Come with me now, Abba,' the boy said fearfully, but Helkias shoved his son through the window and Yonah was alone in the night.
    He circled cautiously behind the houses, but at some point he needed to cross the road to get to the cliff. When he was beyond the houses he moved to the road in the darkness and for the first time he saw the lights approaching, terrifyingly near. It was a large group of men, and the torchlight glinted sharply on weapons. He was trying not to sob but it didn't matter, because their noise was very loud now.
    And suddenly Yonah was running.
     
    10
    The Lair
     
    The narrowness and shape of the tunnel to the cave cut out most sound but now and again something came to his ears, a muffled roar, a howl like the wind in a far-off storm.
    He wept quietly, lying on the floor of rock and earth as if fallen there from a great height, heedless of the pebbles and stones under his body.
    After a long while he sank into sleep, deeply and gratefully, escaping from his small stone prison.
    When he awakened he had no idea how long he had slept, or how much time had passed since he had entered the cave.
    He was aware that what had dragged him from sleep was the sensation of something small moving over his leg. He stiffened, thinking of vipers, but finally he heard a familiar faint scurrying and he relaxed, unafraid of mice.
    His eyes long since had become accustomed to the velvet blackness but couldn't pierce it. He had no idea whether it was day or night. When he was hungry, he gnawed at the bread his father had given him.
    Next time he slept he dreamed of his father, in the dream studying the well-known face, the very blue eyes set deep above the strong nose, the wide, full-lipped mouth above the bush of beard, gray as the springy halo of hair. His father was speaking to him. But Yonah couldn't hear the words or didn't remember them when the dream was over and he awakened to find himself lying in his animal lair.
    He remembered the last thing his father had said to him, his stern instruction that Yonah was to wait in the cave until Helkias came to tell him all was well, so he finished the rest of the bread and lay there in the dark. He was powerfully thirsty, and he recalled that Meir had taught him to take a small pebble when there was no water, and suck on it to start the saliva flowing in his mouth. He searched with his hands, finding a pebble just the right size, brushing it off with his fingers. When he placed it in his mouth the saliva came and he sucked like a babe at a teat. Soon he remembered to spit out the pebble when he started to sink back into the deep well of sleep.
    Thus time passed amid dry hunger and consuming thirst and escape into slumber, and a terrible, growing