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And this being the case, a great void opened up in Propheta’s life. And he filled this void with geopolitics, a field in which he began to be very interested, and also, in his opinion, to master.

He was of the opinion that the period of the beginning of the third millennium, in other words right now, was of unparalleled importance, and that the future of humanity would be determined by the people who set the tone. Propheta wanted to set the tone, but first he set out to master the contents. And in the meantime, so as not to cut himself off from the revolution, in a special notebook he wrote down all the great events all over the world, including in Chechnya, and also in all kinds of African states that didn’t even have a functioning state. He wrote down everything in a clear hand in a special notebook, in case there wouldn’t be any computers after the world was destroyed.

Recently Propheta had published a book of his own on the subject of contemporary politics, intended to sell for eleven dollars to students of international relations so that if they didn’t have a clue about what was happening, his words would reverberate inside them. To the students of Hebrew at Berkeley, fifteen in all, he distributed the book for free.

The First Autoimmune Period —this was the title of his book, and its thesis was that the new terror should be fought in the same way as autoimmune diseases. “What is happening here?” he asked in his book. “The world should be seen as a human body that fails to perceive something as friendly, and attacks it. Wake up sick world! Build alternatives!” he cried, without going into details.

His book was relatively thin, one hundred and forty pages in all, and it ended with a call to action. Professor Propheta called on psychologists and depth psychologists to found a new psychology that would explain what was happening and what had happened in the soul of the contemporary terrorist to make him want to carry out a large scale, disturbing act of destruction.

The confused citizens of the world had the right to receive a more serious explanation than “these people are insane.” The terrorists who emerged from the refugee camps or from the heart of one or another European capital were not crazy people. Their acts had a rational explanation, and it had to be discovered. Reading between the lines it was evident that he was unimpressed by chaos theory, and that he scorned those who relied on it to provide a so-called explanation, while in fact they were throwing sand in the eyes of the confused citizens seeking peace and justice.

Psychologists were falling down on the job, they had to set everything else aside and concentrate on the question of how to identify potential terrorists in childhood, and to prevent them, through educational means, from reaching such extremes. He did not rule out the possibility that early signs of the potential for destruction might even be identified in future terrorists while still in the mother’s womb.

Until white smoke rises! he demanded. They had to work on it until the personality structure of the suicide bomber was exposed! For example, to understand why he didn’t put an end to his life on his own, alone in his room, or in a solitary spot in the bosom of nature, why he insisted on taking other people with him. And the brilliant minds should also identify the personality structures of those who sent the suicide bombers. What kind of psychological projection led a man to send someone else to commit suicide, instead of committing suicide himself? And this information should be made available to everybody. He demanded transparency!

His book was full of exclamation marks, which made his readers feel uneasy.

He was interviewed in the local Berkeley paper, and he explained his positions in detail, but the interview only received one short, thin column, accompanying a terrible passport photo (the one from his green card), and it read that a new book had been published by an ex-Israeli who argued that many Israelis, in contrast to himself, had lost their minds because of the occupation, and that he, whose mind was clear and lucid, wanted to warn people that the world was about to be destroyed, with Israel at the top of the list.

Propheta was insulted at having been mentioned in the context of the occupation when he had sought to write an abstract book, and tried to make sure that the word “occupation” didn’t appear in it even once.

In the last chapter of the book he asserted unequivocally that the human race had embarked on its suicidal autoimmune journey with two important historical events: the rise of Khomeinism, and the fall of the walls between East and West, which had completely confused the world. He hinted that the fall of the walls had been a calamity for mankind.

But he also had a consoling, optimistic message. In the end, humanity would be saved thanks to the Chinese. The Chinese, who constituted a very serious slice of the global population, would realize that there was no other nation capable of overcoming the dangerous autoimmunism that had invaded the human race. And then, with Confucian discipline and an emphasis on bureaucracy and minute detail, the Chinese would take over the world, which by then would be almost completely virtual, and set it to order, in their Chinese way.

ALL THIS, more or less, Propheta told Gruber while standing up and sipping his chai, with the smell of the ginger spreading through Bahat’s living room. In the end it didn’t make a big impression on Gruber, in spite of the dramatic silence with which Propheta concluded his words. The parrot too, which had flown off his shoulder and was standing on the table, seemed indifferent.

“Where did you meet Bahat McPhee?” asked Gruber.

“The first time was on the forum on Rod Serling, if you’re familiar with the name. But the second time I met her was at the JCC, the Jewish Community Center in Berkeley, on the ninth anniversary of Rabin’s assassination. There was some Israeli klutz there who talked about economics and corporations, as if it had anything to do with Rabin’s murder, and I shouted ‘Murderer, murderer!’ from the audience, and she tried to calm me down, but I was already in a trance. ‘You killed fifteen Arab kids then, you’re criminals, but that’s a different matter.’”

“But why blame the lecturer for corporations?”

“He’s morally responsible. Anyone who doesn’t leave Israel, like I did by the way, bears moral responsibility. After a few years of seeing the damage done to the Israelis by the occupation, I picked up my heels and made for France. It was only there that I began to live. And when I say ‘live’, I don’t mean ‘survive.’”

“Obviously,” said Gruber.

“They removed me from the hall and Bahat came with me, even though she doesn’t hold my opinions. From then we’ve been friends, in spite of the ideological chasm. She says that the law of sympathy according to Gershom Scholem operates between us.”

“I never read him,” said Gruber.

“Neither did I. But it’s something in the kabbalah. About souls knowing each other from previous incarnations, and the law of sympathy operates between them. She says that kind of sympathy exists between us, mystical.”

“You know what?” said Gruber, “I will have chai.”

“Really?” Propheta said, pleased. “I’m the chai champion of Berkeley.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“WHERE IS SHE?” ASKED PROPHETA, STEPPING CAREFULLY with two fresh cups of chai toward Gruber, who was sitting in front of the television and watching the end of All the President’s Men . Again the smell of the ginger pervaded the living room. Propheta took a coaster from a little stack of rubber coasters standing on the table, and Gruber followed his movements with interest. He couldn’t remember if they had this same custom at home, or if Mandy served tea and coffee in cups with saucers, making coasters unnecessary.