A Pigeon and a Boy (25 page)

Agood, refreshing scent wafted from the skin of her face, and my lips felt her smile before she pulled away In contrast to the daring of our youth, I thought how now we were acting in innocence and restraint.

“What are you planning to say at the committee meeting?”

She laughed. “That your lips have remained the same but your soul has become worried and nagging.” She brought her head close to mine. “We don’t need to plan anything. The first thing they say to you at a membership interview is ‘Tell us about yourselves.’ It’s important that you answer first, without looking at me. They want a normal couple, the man at the head of household with his little woman.”

She opened the cooler and burst out laughing. “Papa Fried’s aphrodisiacs,” she announced as she removed each and placed it on the blanket. “Feta cheese, Swiss cheese with holes, rye bread, cherry tomatoes—he sure knows his daughter well—Hungarian salami, white wine. He really wants us to do it already, even if it means getting to the interview drunk. Radishes with butter, olive oil, pickles …” She sniffed them. “Poor thing—he tries to re-create my mother’s, but he can’t quite manage. While we’re sitting here devouring all this he’ll be at home devouring his fingernails from worry”

W
E ENTERED
the village.

“Lovely” Tirzah said. “Pitch-black streets, huge potholes, and of course they don’t sell anchovies in the local grocery”

“What’s so lovely about that?”

“It means they don’t have a penny It means they need us more than we need them.”

Two cars and several bicycles were parked next to the secretariat. We
entered; Tirzah peered into a room in which several people were sitting and said, graciously, “Hello. We’re the Mendelsohns.”

“We’ll be with you in just a few minutes,” said a voice.

“Three men,” she whispered, “and two women. How predictable. Those are exactly the faces I expected to see here.”

We looked at the aerial photographs hanging on the walls. The village: its homes, its chicken coops, its cowsheds, its fields.

“Nothing much happens here,” Tirzah said. “That’s very good.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because nothing’s changed from the black-and-white photos to the color ones. Same public buildings, a bit of construction on the farms. Look at this place: in the black and whites there are still a few cows, but not in the color photos. The houses have stayed the same, too.”

All the secretariats in all the villages have the same photos,” I informed her.

She told me she had not imagined I could be familiar with so many village secretariats, and I told her I had searched a lot of places for our house before finally finding it here.

She smiled. “You don’t have to call it our house yet, Iraleh.”

I said, “I’m just practicing for the interview, Tiraleh.”

“It’s not easy to come and live in a place like this,” she said. “Small and old. You’ll never know its little secrets, the language of the place, who hates who and why, who is a tree that bears fruit and who is a tree that does not. You’re liable to make friends with the village outcast, or praise one man to another when he’s actually sleeping with the guy’s wife. You have to be careful.”

Two more men arrived and entered the room; right away a voice called, “Come in, please.”

Tirzah was right. At once I had them figured out: Mr. All-Is-Lost, Mr. How-Shall-This-Man-Save-Us, the birdman, the old maid, the maiden of hopes, the deputy battalion commander in army reserves, and the self-appointed watchdog. Thirteen eyes—the birdman wore a patch over his left eye— scrutinized us with a mixture of mercy and authority

Tirzah apologized for the muck stuck to our shoes. “We didn’t want to be late,” she explained. “We left home early, and when we got here we took a little walk around.”

“Tell us about yourselves,” the deputy battalion commander and All-Is-Lost said at the same time. They exchanged angry looks. Tirzah smiled to herself.

“My name is Yair Mendelsohn,” I said, the manly head of the household, “and this is my wife, Liora. I was born in 1949, I’m a tour guide, and now, with the economic situation the way it is, I’m in transportation. As for Liora—”

“Where would you bring tourists in this area?”

“In my field, which is bird-watching and history, there aren’t a lot of attractions around here.”

“Why is that?” said the birdman, fixing his one good eye on me. “Pelicans and storks pass overhead regularly Sometimes cranes, too, and we have a system of ancient wells on the other side of the hill, and secret caves dating back to the Bar-Kochva rebellion.”

“Indeed,” said the maiden of hopes. “Every year thousands of tourists from around the world come looking for the system of wells on the other side of the hill, and we need someone to lead them and explain, and policemen to direct the heavy traffic.”

“Where did you serve in the army?” the old maid asked, surprising me.

“I was a medic. I wound up as an instructor in the course.”

“It says here, Yair, that you don’t have any children,” the deputy battalion commander said in a friendly but aggressive manner.

“Excuse me for butting in,” Tirzah said congenially, “but since you’ve mentioned children, well, I’m the wife you asked him to bring and it seems that’s sort of in my sphere.”

“Excuse me.”

“Well, I actually have children from a previous marriage. My son is in the U.S. and my daughter is trekking around the Far East.”

“And what do you do, Liora?”

“A number of things. I have experience with growing things — flowers, children—and I’m a nurse, and in the army I was a medic, like Yair. In fact, we met in the course, but afterward we went our separate ways until we met up again.”

She smiled at me and I blanched. I am not good at improvisations, and most certainly not the rapid-fire spinning of tall tales.

“And now?”

“Now? We’re blowing air on old coals.”

One of the women laughed. Mr. All-Is-Lost persisted. “I understand, Mrs. Mendelsohn, that you have many talents, but I still wish to know what it is that you do.”

“I’m a jack-of-all-trades,” Tirzah said. “But I’ve always earned a living,
never been dependent on anyone. I worked for a catering firm and I designed and marketed wooden toys. I teach folk dancing, too, but he won’t dance,” she said, pointing at me. “Two left feet.”

“And why is it that you want to live here?”

So that I won’t shoot you people or myself, I said to myself So that I’ll calm down, have a place that’s my own. Because large trees are growing in the yard and weeds from cracks in the sidewalks.

“The area is beautiful,” Tirzah said. “The village, too. And we like the house. We’re nature people, and we’ve saved up some money and we’re looking for a new environment, a new atmosphere.”

“And what will you two do here?”

“I hope the situation will improve and I’ll be able to keep on in my profession,” I said. “Maybe I’ll even specialize in tourism for this area. And Liora—”

“First of all, I plan to renovate the house as my own contractor. And if I enjoy myself I’ll make it into my profession.”

“In your opinion,” asked the watchdog, who, until that moment, had been silently scribbling, “what sort of contribution will you be able to make here?”

“I believe in good neighborly relations,” I said. “With pleasure I’ll help anyone who needs it.”

“I’m talking about organized commitment to the community”

“Perhaps the culture committee,” I said. “And Liora, as you can see, will be able to help in a number of areas, organizing—”

“I can sit on the membership-committee interviews of other potential candidates,” Tirzah said. “I’m enjoying this.”

“You two are a bit old,” said the watchdog. “We were hoping for younger couples with small children and plans for more.”

“We were hoping to stay young, too,” Tirzah said, “and to have more and more babies. But since we’ve come back to reality let’s get serious here. That house has been standing empty and locked up for quite a while and nobody has shown an interest in it, and here you have buyers. So there’s no sense in dealing in irrelevant matters. We’re just like all of you: decent, normal people with no criminal record who want to live in peace. We’ll contribute to the community just like all the rest of you. No less and no more.”

Several minutes later we parted company with them and took a short, dark walk around the village. We stopped for a few minutes near the house. Tirzah said she needed to get back; she had to be in the south
of the country the next day She made a phone call, gave directions, and I brought her down to the main road. One of the
MESHULAM FRIED AND DAUGHTER, INC.
pickup trucks was already waiting for her there, shining whitely in the dark, its parking lights lit.

She kissed me good-bye on the mouth. I felt her lips smiling.

I could not resist telling her what the tractor operator that had come to mow the yard had said about her, and she laughed. “That’s really what he said? Your contractor is a woman? He got the order of the words a bit mixed up, but never mind.”

“Good night, Tiraleh. Thanks for your help with the committee.”

“Thank you for the trip. And don’t worry we passed.”

“You did. I was awful.”

“We both passed. It’s clear to them that we’re not Mrs. Ideal and Mr. Perfect, but they have debts, they don’t have any other candidates, and nobody else is going to make an offer like the one you did. Start making decisions about the rooms because we’ve got to get the plans prepared.”

“I go along with your idea of one large room and one small one.”

“Good choice. Give my regards to Meshulam—I’m sure he’ll phone you in a few minutes. And tomorrow start cleaning up all the creepers and parasites around the carob trees, and cut back all the weeds. The tractor can’t get in there with the mower.”

“Don’t you want to hear from the committee first?”

“There’s no need to wait. We passed. And if not, then they got a nice cleanup for free.” From the back of the pickup truck that had come to fetch her she took a scythe, a sickle, a pair of work gloves, shears, and a saw “Here, take these. You should have them.”

A
FEW WEEKS LATER,
again, I stayed over in the new house. I even received a gift from it, in the form of a dream. In the dream, a telephone rang. I lifted the receiver; at first I heard only silence, then my name. You were calling me, the first time since your death. You said, “Yair …” And again: “Yair …” Your voice was softer than your normal voice, but I recognized its pleasantness, and in my heart I had no doubt. “Yair … Yair …” you called, with that tiny question mark you sometimes added to my name, a question mark so small that it was nearly impossible to
hear and absolutely impossible to write. And it meant, Is that you? Are you there? Answer me, my son …

By the time I had gathered my wits and answered, my mother had returned the receiver to its cradle. The dream ended. Silence prevailed. Only that small, common, and hairy owl was hooting rhythmically outside. I woke up shaken. Why had I not answered? “Here I am, Mother.” Why had I not said, “I am in the house you bought me”? Why had I not asked, “Where are you? When will you return?”

I am here, the insides of my chest told me. She is no longer, responded the wall. Yair … ? Yair … ? Yairi, Yairi, my son, my son, echoed my dream. It is he, my senses confirmed. He is with us, let him in, my memories told me. All at once the knowledge of my place and existence grew stronger and I felt the house my mother bought for me and my luvey is building for me, and it was growing and encircling me like a new and healthy skin, and the feeling was pleasant and decisive to the point that I could no longer be certain whether it was growing within me or rebounding like a warm-cool echo on my brow

I covered my head with the blanket. A small darkness all my own. I am here, in my place, wrapped up in your gift. I am the void between the walls. I am the man and his home. I am my house and its insides. I am the foot and the step, the span between the doorposts, the space between the floor and the head.

The paleness of the end of night awaits my open eyes—how much time has passed?—like the songs of the bulbuls in my ears, like the continuation of the dream in my heart. Let me go, for day has dawned, you said. Let me go, my son.

M
Y HAND RISES
and reaches toward the light switch. In Liora’s house it would always run into a lampshade and make noise, and back when we slept in the same bed it would cause a long hiss of protest to escape her lips. But here my hand is confident and the finger finds its way and lights the lamp without hesitation or groping. That’s the way it was that night with a flashlight and that’s the way it is today with a lamp, in the very same house, which is new and renovated, and once again Tirzah is no longer with me. She finished building it and left. Sometimes I read a book, waiting for sleep to return, and sometimes I
calm myself by perusing a topographical map, departing at last on a journey

It’s good like this: hiking clothes and walking shoes and knapsacks and storm tents and sleeping bags are piled in the closet and in Behemoth, my feet are up on the bed, resting, my lungs fill up and empty quietly and only my eyes step between the altitudinal lines and guess the view, expanding the two dimensions of the map to the three of reality: here is a ravine, here is a hilltop, here is a tributary; here it is steep and here is it level; here is a cliff. Here I climb and here I slide and here I pitch my tent and light a fire.

Sometimes I even set out for real. From the house to the garden, and from there to the view from the hills. I discover walking trails that people have trampled, and cow trails, and narrow trails made by ants and hedgehogs, hunting trails made by porcupines and jackals and wild boar. This is what I do everywhere and with every opportunity: I make myself known to the system of tracks and dirt roads, to the possibilities of escape, detour, flight.

“Where is this paranoia of yours from? Why does an Israeli guy have the fears of Jews abroad?” Liora asked on my first and last trip overseas, to marry her in her parents’ home in New Rochelle. I had gone off on a morning walk and returned after an absence that had worried the entire family