The whole family could tell that Ephraïm was unhappy, exhausted by the heat, by the long round-trips between Migdal and Haifa. He was not himself. Five years passed in this way. These were cycles: just over four years in Latvia, nearly five years in Palestine. Unlike in Riga, where their fall from grace was as rapid as it was sudden, their situation in Migdal deteriorated year by year, slowly but surely.
