A Pigeon and a Boy (27 page)

Several of the participants spoke as well. A tearful pigeon handler from Jerusalem read a heartwarming short story she had written about a pigeon that had become entangled in electrical wires and had reached her destination two months after being dispatched, “walking on the burnt stumps of her legs.” A pigeon handler from Kibbutz Yagur read a report filed by an American officer in the First World War: “We awaited news from the battlefield when the pigeon Cher Ami arrived, his body in shreds. The pigeongram he carried said, ‘Our artillery is firing on our own troops. Adjust sights or we shall all fall victim.’”

After that someone told about a homing pigeon that delivered a “highly disturbing pigeongram” to the starved citizens of besieged Candia, on the island of Crete: It read
EAT ME.
This led to a moral discussion. One person shouted out that the story was unbelievable and improbable. Dr. Laufer hushed the gathered crowd and announced loudly, “And now—pigeons in Hebrew poetry!” He asked the Girl to rise and stand beside him to read from a poem he had asked her to prepare, “penned by the famous poet Dr. Shaul Tchernichovsky” who described many varied types of pigeons:

This the Girl recited, with great seriousness, a light blush deepening the pink of her skin. Dr. Laufer thanked her and said, “It would appear that the poet forgot to mention here the homing pigeon, noting only the ornamental pigeons”—he could not help himself and called them man-made “monsters”—but a closer reading revealed the Syrian pigeons at the end of the list, “and we have no doubt that the poet was hinting at the prized homing pigeons of Damascus.”

Most of the assembled pigeon handlers were adults, and during lunch the Baby and the Girl exchanged glances and pressed their thighs one to the other underneath the table. Though shorter and younger than she, as he would remain to the day of his death, he was no longer bashful—neither with her or others —and even expressed his opinion like a veteran pigeon handler.

The afternoon sessions dealt with protein-enriched seeds versus seeds rich in fats, and with the question of whether the hand-feeding of chicks was liable to imprint a pigeon and prevent her from mating later on. After that they moved on to the problem of smallpox and how to disinfect a pigeon loft during a plague of dysentery and from there to matters with no solution or resolution: Does the pigeon navigate by using her sense of direction alone or does she remember landmarks? Or perhaps both are right? The Baby dared to speak up in order to point out that the participants were projecting a human perception of maps and directions and compass roses onto pigeons. But perhaps, he said, she is unfamiliar with all of these, understanding one direction only, and its name is “homeward,” unaware that humans give this direction other names — sometimes “southward” and sometimes “eastward” and sometimes “north-by-northwestward.”

The room fell silent. The Girl flushed like a proud mother. “That is very interesting,” Dr. Laufer said. He was reminded of what she had said about the pigeon disappearing from the eyes of the dispatcher as soon as she is seen by the person waiting for her, and suddenly he understood that this love blooming in front of his very eyes was greater and deeper than what he had imagined. But he shook himself free of these thoughts and resumed his role. “We, too, have interesting and beautiful ruminations such as these on occasion, but it is impossible to work thus.”

The other pigeon handlers agreed immediately One should return to the practical questions: What brings the pigeon back to the loft? A longing for home, the trough, the family? Is it fair and right and worth-while
to train pigeons to fly against their nature, at night? Does the pigeon’s beak contain magnetic particles? And what function does the swelling on the beak play?

In the evening the Girl took the Baby for a walk on the beach, strolling with him on the promenade and keeping out of sight of several classmates of hers who wished to know who this boy, the stranger, was. She kissed him on his lips, and this time she allowed him to caress every part of her body, but only through her clothing. He showed her how he had learned to whistle, but he asked if they could do it as they had on their first meeting, each one’s fingers in the other’s mouth.

The next morning the Baby participated once again in the grownups’ discussion and said it was his dream to hybridize a local species more impervious to heat and parasites and thirst than the European pigeons. The Girl suddenly noted that in the past the greatest world centers for raising pigeons were in Cairo, Baghdad, and India, where the climate was far less optimal than in Liège or Brussels.

Later, during a ceremonious break during which everyone dunked cookies in tea colored yellow from so much lemon, the Baby followed the Girl from the classroom outside to the schoolyard.

“Is this where you go to school?” he asked. He was already planning in his heart how he would verify in which classroom she studied, in which row she sat, which table and which chair were hers.

“No,” she said. “Ahad Ha’am is a boys’ school.”

“So where do you go to school?”

“At Carmel. It’s near the zoo.”

“I practically don’t go to school anymore,” he told her. “I spend the whole day at the loft with the pigeons. But I do kibbutz chores and I read books, too.”

The Girl told him that the point he had raised about the sense of direction of pigeons was absolutely correct. “It’s not just about directions, either,” she said. “All she wants is to get home, but we’re sure she wants to pass important pigeongrams to the central pigeon loft.”

“We
ladies
are sure,” he corrected her, and this time when they laughed their eyes locked. They sat down, and he told her about another idea he had had, an idea that could fulfill the dream of all pigeon handlers of every generation: to train pigeons for two-way flight, not just to return home from somewhere but to travel back and forth between two lofts. Such a capability would open new opportunities in pigeon husbandry, he said excitedly A homing pigeon could make regular trips
between a shepherd in the hills and his farm, between journalists in the field and the offices of their newspapers, or back and forth between army units and the high command.

“Between family members,” said the Girl. “Or lovers and couples, too.”

T
HE CONFERENCE
lasted three days, and at the end the fat man from the zoo came laden with woven wicker baskets that cooed. Dr. Laufer fished pigeon after pigeon from them, handing them out to the participants and asking them to dispatch them upon their return home. He placed the pigeons brought by the others in the now empty baskets and told them the pigeons would be dispatched two mornings hence.

The pigeon handlers took their leave of one another and returned to their homes and their lofts. Dr. Laufer, whose life among the animals had taught him to comprehend every shudder of an eye and every hue of skin and every twitch of an earlobe, asked the Baby to stay awhile longer to help the Girl take down the pictures and posters and carry the baskets back to the zoo.

Now the two were alone. They took the pictures and mottoes down from the walls, rolling them up carefully so they would not wrinkle, and when they bent over to collect the baskets their heads drew close and touched. All at once they straightened up and their bodies pressed together.

While she leaned over him and planted her lips on his, the Baby took hold of her hips and pulled her body to his own; then—without knowing what he was doing—he lifted the edges of her blouse, so that her breasts were showing, and removed his lips from hers in order to kiss and suckle her nipples.

She trembled and moaned, but her hands descended, and before she could do anything more than grasp hold of him, the Baby sighed and, with the haste of young men, dispatched his seed into her hand. A pang of longing nipped at him even though she was with him. He felt he was both alive and dead. He had lost his strength and his age. And the Girl felt the warm flow between her fingers and a tremor passed through her. Never before had she known how strong she was.

The Baby, embarrassed, went searching for and found a rag to wipe clean his flesh and clothing, and her hand. But the Girl threw the rag to the floor, wiped her hand on his face, pulled him to the floor, and said, “Now you touch me like that, too.”

He was a boy, and did not know who was more anxious and who more pleasured, his hand or her loins, her flesh or his, and he wished to know who had bestowed upon his fingers the sense of taste and the ability to see, and although he did not yet understand all the messages his body was sending him, he already wanted to feel everything that she was—not approximately, but precisely To know the form of this wonder that his hand was caressing and exploring, not only its warmth and its smoothness and its softness, but also to taste it with his mouth and smell it with his nose and see it with his eyes. Would all this be similar to what he was feeling with his fingers?

The Girl took hold of his hand and moved it from her sex to her stomach. “No, that’s it,” she said. “I can’t anymore.” They lay for a while alongside each other, astonished by their power and their weakness, and he licked himself from her hand and she from his. They rose to their feet and adjusted their clothes and lifted the baskets with the pigeons. At first, slightly bashful, they walked down Ahad Ha’am Street. Then, smiling in their hearts, they descended the long, moderate slope that led to the zoo.

At the end of the slope there spread before them a sandy field and the remains of an orchard and a few sycamore trees, and at the opposite end the sandstone hillock with the pool and the zoo. These days, when I pass by there going in the other direction, I imagine the wooden planks placed there “before there were so many sidewalks.” The Baby did not wish to walk ahead of the Girl, nor behind her. He walked abreast of her, his legs sinking, his heart overjoyed, and already sadness was eating away at him: soon they would part. The Girl would remain in Tel Aviv and he would return to his pigeon loft on the kibbutz.

Chapter Twelve

T
HE TELEPHONE RANG.
Aman’s thin voice said that my wife and I had passed the interview

“But there’s still one small problem that our treasurer would like to discuss with you,” he said, handing the phone to the treasurer, who cleared his throat grandly; something about this coughing indicated that a few other people were standing about and listening to the conversation. The treasurer told me that “there has been a slight misunderstanding,” and that the village, “after further investigation and consideration and the input of a professional,” would require a small addition to the price that had been set.

“How small?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars; that’s what we were told it would take.”

“I’ll get back to you,” I said, and phoned Tirzah.

“Of course,” she said. “Their ‘further investigation’ was that fancy car your real wife bought for you. We should have come in the junker of one of my plasterers and not in the security vehicle of the president of the United States of America.”

“So what am I supposed to do now?”

“Phone and tell them that you’re calling off the deal. But not right away. Do it another forty minutes from now Forty minutes is a particularly annoying amount of time: it’s too short for people to go home and too long to sit around waiting in the office.”

“But the house …” I fretted. “I want it.”

“Don’t worry They’ll back down. I’ll bet you that fifteen thousand dollars they asked for. Call back in forty minutes, and remember: don’t
get emotional or angry Remind them that they were the ones who had set the price and we agreed on it, no haggling. Tell them that you’ve got the money ready and give them until tomorrow to decide. And don’t forget that as far as they’re concerned, I’m Mrs. Mendelsohn. If things get messed up I can step into the picture.”

“But why?” the village secretary said. “You passed the membership-committee interview so nicely If you don’t have enough cash on hand we can always make some sort of arrangement.”

“It’s not a matter of arrangements,” I said. “You set the price and we agreed without haggling. The money is ready, and you have until tomorrow afternoon to return to your original price or else you can find another buyer.”

Meshulam, upon hearing the story from his daughter, inc., the next morning, could not hide his satisfaction. “A new Iraleh!” He slapped my shoulder. “Too bad you didn’t add one more sentence: ‘You folks did not pass
our
membership committee.’ But never mind, the point is that now they know who they’re dealing with.”