The novel opens on a hot evening in British-ruled Palestine with a young man named Elisha, a member of the Movement (a group of Jewish insurrectionists). Elisha has just been ordered to execute an English captain named John Dawson in retaliation for the scheduled death sentence of a Jewish fighter, David ben Moshe, at dawn tomorrow. Gazing out a window, Elisha also thinks about a mysterious beggar he met as a child, back in his village in Europe, before World War II began. The beggar taught him to distinguish between day and night by looking at a window: if he sees a face in the window, he’ll know that night has followed day. Ever since Elisha met the beggar, he always looks outside at nightfall and sees the face of someone dead. Tonight, he sees his own face.
Elisha met Gad, a compelling young terrorist, not long after Elisha was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp. At the time, Elisha’s goal was to study philosophy in Paris—after the sufferings he witnessed in the camp, he wanted to understand where to find God. But Gad showed up unexpectedly and persuaded Elisha to sacrifice his future to the Movement to create an independent Jewish homeland. In Palestine, Elisha was trained in terrorist tactics and Movement ideology, such as the “eleventh commandment” to hate one’s enemy.
The night before the executions, Elisha, Gad, and other Movement fighters, including Joab, Gideon, and Ilana, sit around somberly swapping memories related to death. Around midnight, ghosts from Elisha’s past begin appearing to him in the room—including the ghosts of his parents, the beggar from his childhood memories, his old rabbi, and people killed in the concentration camps or in terrorist operations. The only ghost who directly answers Elisha’s questions is a little boy who resembles Elisha himself before the war began. The little boy explains that the crowd of ghosts is here in order to watch Elisha become a murderer—because they are all part of him, the boy explains, Elisha can’t kill without them. Elisha walks among the ghosts, trying to defend his actions, but once again he gets no response from them.
By the time John Dawson has had his last meal in the prison cell downstairs, it’s four o’clock in the morning—dawn is only an hour away. Elisha decides to get to know Dawson before killing him; it seems cowardly to do otherwise. When he gets downstairs, he finds that Dawson is a handsome man in his 40s with a distinguished bearing. More strikingly, Elisha immediately feels an unexpected liking for Dawson. Dawson asks Elisha’s name and age and tells Elisha he feels sorry for him; he has a son Elisha’s age. He tells Elisha stories about his son and jots a farewell letter, which Elisha promises to mail that day. Elisha tries to hate Dawson by blaming him for Elisha’s own violence and by imagining that Dawson was responsible for David ben Moshe’s death. However, none of this works, and Elisha can summon no hatred. He wonders if God is present in this lack of hatred.
Just before dawn, the ghosts troop silently into the cell to witness the killing. Moments before the execution, Dawson suddenly smiles, saying he just realized that he doesn’t know why he’s dying. He wants to tell Elisha another story. However, Elisha tells him not to smile, raises his revolver, and fires. As Dawson dies, the name “Elisha” is on his lips. Elisha watches as the ghosts accompany Dawson’s spirit from the room, the little boy at Dawson’s side and Elisha’s mother sadly repeating, “Poor boy!”
Elisha rejoins the others upstairs and looks out the window. Dawn is breaking. Just beyond the window, he sees a face—it’s his own.
