A Pigeon and a Boy (15 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He didn’t know you’d react so strongly”

I was afraid to open my mouth for fear of retching or fainting. I made do with a gesture of “Leave me alone!” and managed to get to my feet, staggering and nauseous. Liora came after me and laid me out— yes, precisely that—on the grass, then sat down next to me and settled my neck onto her thigh, so that my head tilted slightly backward.

After a little while my head cleared. I rose to my feet and stumbled back to my room. Liora followed and made me a cup of Turkish coffee.

“This is the first time I’ve ever made Turkish coffee,” she said. “I hope I’m doing it right.”

She held my hand. I responded to her encouraging smile with my own apologetic one. I told her I wanted to return to the grass and breathe the fresh air.

The Englishmen had already turned in. The full moon had risen higher in the sky; it was no longer bathed in a soft yellow light, but was now bluish and metallic. I sat on the grass, Liora at my side, tilting her lovely head toward mine and parting her lips for a kiss. Her body relaxed a bit, announcing its desire to lie next to me. We pressed up against each other. I could not believe what was happening. Her beauty was so near, I could see it in my eyes, feel it over the whole surface of my skin.

Her mouth and tongue surprised me with their heat and vitality, her hands with their daring, my body with its joy, her loins with their ardor.

“You are lovely” the rich tourist I met on the bus told me. “You are small and sweet, just the way men should be. Even without meeting your mother I can tell she’s taller than you. I liked that about you right from the first time we met, on the bus.”

Suddenly she pulled away from me and lay back in the grass. “Listen,” she said.

I listened but heard nothing. I wanted to kiss her again, but she put her hand on my chest. “Wait. Be patient. The moment you first hear them is important.”

We lay on our backs next to each other, holding hands. Time passed, measured by the howls of jackals and the dull roar from a distant road. Then a hush fell, a thin silence, followed by a sort of faraway chattering that grew closer and more defined. The world overflowed with wings, the ears with a soft whispering. The full moon blinked and skittered, vanishing, then reappearing from behind passing shadows and uttered words.

I asked, “What is this?”

“Those are the cranes,” said the rich young tourist from America. “You remember the three scouts we saw this afternoon? This is the large flock that followed them.”

I listened. And wondered: What was it they were discussing? Were they telling one another of experiences from previous journeys? Were they arguing over where to land? Were they comparing this resting place with others? And this rich young woman, who was destined to become my wife at the end of that very year, made me laugh by saying, in three different croaking voices, “Faster! We’re landing soon, got to catch a good spot …” “Hey where’s Grandma disappeared to now … ?” “We’re gonna be last
again
and nothing’s gonna be left to eat…”

The sounds of conversation grew stronger. To this very day I am astounded at the distance to which the voices of cranes carry They can be heard long before the birds arrive and do not dissipate until after they have departed.

“Geese and cranes talk among themselves when they fly,” Liora told me. “Perhaps because they fly at night.” She explained that these were voices used by “Mommy Crane” and “Daddy Crane” to calm the little cranes that were just old enough to be making their first journey with the flock.

The rich young tourist you’d prophesied for me had become a flesh-and-blood woman lying at my side. She pleased me. Her conversation was very congenial. She said, “In Japan the crane is a symbol of a long and faithful marriage, but in ancient Egypt it was the raven.”

I said, “Really? Here lovebirds are called ‘turtledoves.’”

Liora bent my head slightly and planted many soft kisses on my neck.
I felt she was sucking my strength, that any minute I would die from the intensity of the pleasure and feebleness I was feeling. She stripped off her shirt, exposing small and beautiful breasts, then pushed me gently away so that I would remain lying on my back. She laid a long thigh on top of me and said, “Here, Yair, this is going to be our first time.”

“Are you a virgin?” I asked, taken aback.

She chuckled. “We’ll soon find out.”

“Well, I am,” I told her. “So you know that right up front and we don’t have any misunderstandings.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?” I said. “My mother was a virgin, and I think my father was, too. It’s our family’s way”

She drew her face near. Her hands opened, parted, drew out, aimed. Her body climbed, mounted. “I’ve heard that story before,” she said. “Make up a new one.”

The beating of wings intensified. The din filled my head. The rich young tourist arched and unfurled and I slipped inside her flesh. It was much easier than I had suspected, more pleasant than I had hoped.

“Shhhh … keep quiet. You’ll wake up everyone around here,” she said as she placed her hand over my mouth.

A
PPARENTLY
the English bird-watchers told their friends about me upon their return home, because people began to make contact and visit, and my name became known among travel agents as well. I was overcome with the joy of a young man, the joy of financial independence. I felt as though I was taking off, that my wings were spread. And because my mother had no money and my father objected to my choice of profession, reminding me that “it isn’t too late, Yairi, to alter this erroneous course,” I turned to Meshulam Fried for a loan to enable me to get set up and to purchase the necessary vehicle.

Only a few years had passed since Gershon had fallen in battle, and Meshulam would remove the large blue handkerchief from his pocket every time I came to visit. “Ever since Gershon, it’s hard for me to look at you.” That is what he has been saying from the time his son fell to this very day “Ever since Gershon,” without the terrible verb that should follow his name.

“I can’t look at you, Iraleh,” he bellowed into his handkerchief, “without seeing him next to you. Seeing Tiraleh without him is hard too, but it’s worse with you.” All at once he stopped. “That’s enough. I’m done crying this time. What can I do for you?”

I told him about the bird-watchers I guided and the opportunity that had presented itself, and Meshulam said, “I smell the hand of a woman in this. May my right hand cleave to the roof of my mouth if I don’t feel her presence.”

“That would be my mother’s hand,” I said. “It was her idea.”

“Another woman,” Meshulam said. “Not only Mrs. Mendelsohn. It’s there on your forehead like the headlights of a newspaper.”

I asked him if he could help me find a used minibus and he said he would find one. I asked if he could loan me money and he refused. “For you, the only money I give is a gift.”

I told him I would not accept a gift of that magnitude and he said, “So it’s not a gift. Meshulam is going to loan you some money and you aren’t going to pay it back.” He gave me an admonishing look. “Ever since Gershon, you’re like a son to me. If he was living, Iraleh, I wouldn’t give him the money? If you married Tiraleh, I wouldn’t give it to you?”

I refused again. “I’m not Gershon, and Tirzah’s already married to someone else.”

Meshulam grimaced. “What a wedding we made for her. Good food, good bride, pretty bridesmaids, only the groom should have been somebody else.”

I did not react. He said, “Pardon me. With Meshulam, the mouth and the heart are the same thing. What he says in his heart he thinks out loud.”

Several days later he phoned. “I found you a car. Come see.”

I hurried to his office. “What a shame,” he said. “Tiraleh was here fifteen minutes ago. I told her, ‘Hold on, your friend Iraleh’s on his way’ but she’s all the time on tender hooks, running from one job to another. That’s what happens when you got a husband like she got herself”

The minibus was standing in the parking lot. I told Meshulam it was exactly what I had been looking for and he told his fleet manager to check everything there was to check and to take care of transferring the title, and apparently he whispered a few more instructions, because after the test the minibus returned with a roof rack and a ladder on top, new tires, and an additional spare.

“How much did all that cost?” I asked, concerned.

“Peanuts. What, I can’t buy a little something for the son of Professor Mendelsohn? I wish you every success.”

“And where’s the seller? I want to talk to him about the price.”

Meshulam burst out laughing. “A guy who’s got Meshulam needs to talk prices? I already talked to him and I took him down and everything’s settled and you’re going to give me my money back when you start to earn something.”

A
YEAR PASSED.
The birds migrated and returned and my minibus — packed with bird-watchers from Scandinavia and Germany, from Holland and America—followed after them, from the Hula Valley to the Dead Sea, the Beit She’an Valley, and the southern Arava. My new business was flourishing and I had already succeeded in paying back a large part of the loan to Meshulam—after much argument.

During that time I corresponded with Liora. Her letters and life were far more interesting and entertaining than mine. We planned another visit. This time she would come alone.

“Now I’m a student of photography,” she announced. “Until they bring me into the family business I’m trying out all kinds of other things.”

I took her to photograph ibexes at Hever and Mishmar creeks, vultures at David Creek, and some rare owl at Arugot. We drove around a lot. We hiked a lot. We slept in a pup tent that filled up with love. She told me she had missed me, that she thought about and dreamt of that night when cranes had flown overhead and we had lain beneath them.

I told my mother and Yordad that I “had a girlfriend.” I told them that I intended to bring her home and present her to them. Yordad gathered his courage, phoned my mother, and told her that in his opinion this was serious and that they should spare me having to do a repeat performance. She agreed, and came for her first visit since she had left home. Benjamin, who was then a medical student, also made an effort and joined us.

“Let’s sit in the living room,” Yordad said, but we remained in the
küche,
the large kitchen that was once yours.
You
eyed Liora, while
Yordad only had eyes for you. Afterward he composed himself, apologized, and said, “Liora, you really look like one of the family”

She smiled. “Your son didn’t warn us.”

Indeed, until that day the similarity between Liora and my mother, brother, and Yordad was known only to me. Now I enjoyed watching it work them over. They regarded one another, looked at her again, grew excited. A small and pleasant cloud rose up above them and blushed near the ceiling.

Benjamin left after an hour, and Liora and I a short while after that. “Why don’t you stay awhile, Raya?” Yordad said to my mother, but she left with us and declined my offer to drive her home. “I’ll go home on foot,” she said. “It’s not far.”

Liora returned to America, and about two months later I went there—my first and last trip abroad—to meet her parents and her brother Emmanuel. We came back to Israel a married couple. Liora never photographed ibexes again, nor did she go bird-watching. She set up the Israeli branch of the family business, succeeded brilliantly bought us a home, got pregnant, learned Hebrew quickly, and, with the same speed she amassed money and words, she lost her fetuses. My two children died in the grave of her womb one after the other and at the exact same age, after a pregnancy of twenty-two weeks.

I remember the slap of the doctor’s words — that very same old
Vogelkundler
who, several years earlier, had shown me the best bird-watching spots. After the first miscarriage he told us, “It was a boy,” and after the second, in monstrously bad Hebrew that mirrored the horror he was describing, he told us, “This boy was a girl,” as if hinting at something full of portent but without explaining its meaning.

“Why does he tell us?” I fumed. “Did anyone ask him to? It’s a good thing he didn’t tell us their names, and where they would have studied, and in which units they would have served in the army”

Liora brushed out her hair slowly in front of the mirror. It was impossible to detect anything in her face but fatigue; her beauty had actually increased. Cascades of copper and gold flowed between the black bristles of her hairbrush. We both regarded her, I in profile, she head-on. And then our reflected gazes met and Liora smiled forgivingly, as mothers smile at the sight of their tiny sons angry for the very first time.

She turned her fair and beautiful face toward me, the face of a queen, I thought. Ivory studded with sapphires and crowned with copper and gold. I felt the mirror’s affront, its pain: until that moment it
had held the entirety of her beauty, and now, all at once, it had been emptied.

I said, “Maybe you’d like to stay with your parents for two or three weeks?”

She said, “My home is here, and my work and my office are here. You are here, too.”

My mother—I ran away from our house in Tel Aviv to see her in Jerusalem for a few hours — said, “Liora is a strong woman, as you already know, but when strong people crack the break is larger and the shards are smaller.”

“But maybe something’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“Don’t blame Liora,” she said. “Maybe it’s something of mine I passed on to you. Don’t forget that we had a miscarriage, too.” She put her hand on mine. “Do you remember how we would vomit together every morning, you and I?”

“Sure, I remember,” I said, smiling. “And I’m not blaming anyone, Mother, not her, not myself, not you. I just want to try to understand what’s happened.”

“Go back to her now,” she said. “It’s not good to leave a woman alone in such a situation.”

I went back. Liora had already pieced her tiny shards together so that nothing at all was discernible from the outside. She was as straight-backed and handsome as ever, her skin smooth and pure, her brushed hair whispering like fire, and her clear eyes quiet. She did not ask where I had been and did not scold me for leaving her alone, but when we sat to drink tea she told me she had no intention of getting pregnant again.