A Pigeon and a Boy (33 page)

The Baby lay on the ground like a bound lamb, writhing and spitting and shrieking. “Those pigeons could have saved your lives. You’re scum! You should have died instead of them! I hope the graves I dig tonight will be yours!”

“It wasn’t nice to say that to us,” the elderly leonine American said. “We had enough fatalities as it was. The guys got really mad, took a few good swipes at him to make sure he knew the difference between a pigeon and a human being, then dragged him outside and left him there to simmer down.”

After they untied him, the Baby returned to the loft to calm himself in the only way he knew how: by writing a pigeongram to his beloved. This time he added a complaint to Dr. Laufer, reporting what had happened. One of his pigeons returned the next day from Tel Aviv; so overjoyed was he that against all the rules he pounced on her even before she had entered the loft. However, the pigeon was not carrying a quill with a letter from the Girl, and the pigeongram in the message capsule had not been written by the veterinarian. It was notification of an impending military operation concerning the transfer of large supply convoys to besieged Jerusalem.

He hastened to the operations officer, a sturdy fellow from Ra’anana, about whom there were many rumors of his bravery and coolheadedness
in battle. The officer read the pigeongram and demanded to know why it had been opened. The Baby apologized, told him he had thought it was a personal letter. The operations officer upbraided him: the pigeons were not intended for the swapping of personal letters. But immediately thereafter he removed from a cabinet green U.S. Army battle dress, the kind that fighters had been wearing for quite some time, and said, “This is for you, because you’re going to take a few pigeons out with one of the convoys and we wouldn’t want you to suddenly catch cold.”

The Baby put on the battle dress and the operations officer burst out laughing. “We’ll make a fighter of you yet,” he said. “The pigeons won’t even recognize you by the time you come back.” He pointed to the darker spots on the sleeves and breast, where unit and rank badges had once been sewn, and said, “This belonged to an American sergeant. We don’t know what his name was or where he fought or whether he’s alive or dead. Now it’s yours. Watch out for each other.”

The Baby pulled the battle dress tight around his body, enjoying the pleasant, enticing feeling that enveloped him at once. Instead of rushing back to the loft he headed for the carpentry shop to get a look at himself in the carpenter’s large mirror. The anonymous American sergeant was a large man, and the Baby looked slightly ridiculous. He pondered whether he should ask the kibbutz seamstress to take it in, make it more suited to his size. It was actually the dandified carpenter who said it was not necessary: “That battle dress has already been worn by soldiers in other countries and other wars. See? It has stains that don’t come off, maybe even blood and grease, and two patches on the back and the side. Coats like these know how to fit themselves to their wearers.”

The carpenter finished making his point and the Baby raced back through the tent camp, ignoring cries of “Looking good” and “Way to go” and “Look what we have here” from the tents, in order to prepare his portable dovecote for the operation.

He was not requisitioned for the first or second convoys, but on April 17, 1948, two weeks before he would fall in battle, a third convoy was organized. He was ordered to bring several pigeons and join the fighters traveling to Hulda. From there he was sent to Givat Brenner, where he met Shimon, the kibbutz pigeon handler, who told him, “Your girlfriend was here a month ago. She took pigeons to the south.”

The Baby realized that the pigeongram he had received from her
then—“No and yes and yes and no”—had not been sent from Tel Aviv, a fact she had kept from him because she had not wanted to worry him. He looked at the pigeons she had left in Shimon’s loft and imagined her fingers on their wings and their breasts. He picked one up in his own hands and was overcome with passion and longing. Shimon said, “Listen, one of our commanders is taking a motorcycle to Tel Aviv and coming back tonight. If you want, I’ll talk to him about taking you with him.”

The Baby took one of the pigeons he had brought from Kiryat Anavim and slipped it into the pocket of his new battle dress. He went to headquarters and stood by the motorcycle parked there.

Are you the hitchhiker?” the commander asked when he emerged a short while later.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever ridden on a motorcycle before?”

“No.”

“Put your hands here and here. Got it?”

“Yes.”

And don’t you dare try hanging on to me.”

“Okay”

“Let’s go. Get on and we’re off.”

I
T WAS EVENING.
The zoo was already closed for the day The motorcycle stopped by the gate and the Baby alighted. He thanked the commander and they agreed on the pickup time. Then he climbed over the wall of the zoo and dropped to his feet on the other side. The Girl, he knew, would be in the pigeon loft. He hoped she would be there alone.

All around him the animals were noisy and unstill, sounding their growls and shrieks and chirps and roars as they did every evening in every zoo. Sadness, too, prevailed in the zoo, as it did every evening in every zoo. The Baby ran between the cages feeling the curious, hopeful glances of the imprisoned and avoided glancing at them in return.

There was light in the storeroom next to the loft. The Girl was working there, arranging sacks and filing cards and medicines. She heard his footsteps, looked behind her, emitted a cry of joy They embraced.

“Not too hard. I have a pigeon in my pocket.”

She thrust her hand into his pocket and held the pigeon.

“For me?”

“No, for me,” the Baby said. “For you to dispatch another letter to me.”

The Girl marked the pigeon’s leg with a ribbon and placed her in a box at the side. “I’m so happy you’re here. How much time do you have?”

“An hour.”

“That’s all?”

“Tomorrow we’re leaving with a convoy to Jerusalem,” he told her, “and I’m going out with the fighters. I’ve got battle dress like theirs, see? It belonged to an American sergeant in World War II.” He twirled and laughed.

“Great,” she said. “And I got a Shinel. So what? A pistol, too, they gave me, and I practiced at a firing range and went all over the south in a command car.”

“And the pigeon you dispatched from there was sent as if you were in Tel Aviv.”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Shimon told me you were at his kibbutz as well.”

“I took some pigeons from him, too. They sent me to hand them out at each and every kibbutz.”

“And how was it?”

“Interesting. Frightening. Sad. Full of hope, and despair, too. I saw the fighters writing home and I thought how wonderful it is that you are with your pigeons at the loft. What happened that they’re suddenly sending you out with a convoy? You don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”

“I do too, a little, but anyway I won’t need to. There will be enough guys around me who do. And stop worrying, I’m not going to battle. I’ll be at the rear with the pigeons on my back.”

“That’s not true. You’re like a signalman—you’ll have to walk at the head, next to the commander.”

She brushed away a tear of acrimony flushed, kissed him, then drew back. “So, you’ve come to say good-bye?”

“I came to see you and touch you and talk to you. And also to say good-bye. We had an hour, but because you’re arguing with me we only have fifty-two minutes left.”

She pressed against him again, pushed her breasts into his body; his thigh found its place between hers, felt the heat of her loins. She took hold of him through his trousers. He sighed, pulled away from her, removed the battle dress. The Girl hugged him and smiled at him with eyes wide open and very close.

“Stroke me,” the Baby said. “Touch me and say what you always do: ‘Now you touch me like that, too.’”

They entered the pigeon loft, and while he was still unlacing his boots the Girl began kissing the hollow of his neck, between two muscles that descended to his back, and her kisses were warm and long and enfeebling.

“I hate those monkeys,” she said. “Look at them—they’re watching us like some hooligans on the beach.”

She pulled the cords from around the curtains and all at once the cooing of the pigeons ceased. Together they spread an army blanket on the floor and lay upon it, kissing at length. He leaned his chin into her neck and said, “That’s you. Your fingers are like the petals of a tulip. I can feel that’s you.”

She released her grip, brought her hand to her mouth, dripped saliva into the crook of her fingers, and took hold of him again.

“And now?”

“Like the belly of a lizard.”

“And now?”

He moaned. “Like a ring of velvet.”

“Now you touch me like that, too,” the Girl said.

He slid his fingers in between her thighs and she squeezed, stretched, relaxed. Her scent filled the room.

“Let’s do it,” she said. “All the way We’re not kids anymore. We are people who deliver homing pigeons to the front and who go to battle.”

“When I get back from the war,” he said.

“I looked at the boys down south,” she said, “the ones who gave me their letters to send, and I thought, Who’s going to make it home? Who’s going to have children, and who isn’t?”

“We will.”

“Come, my love, let’s do it,” she said. “Let’s make our child right now”

“I’m afraid to do it now”

“Afraid? Of what? What people will say?”

“No way …”

“So then what?”

“That if we make love I won’t come back.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Things like that happen.”

She pulled away from him, sprawled on her back, breathed. “I want to take off my clothes, be naked. You, too.”

They stripped down to their bare skin and lay upon the blanket.

“Hold me, my love,” she said. From where was this terror sneaking in? What was this sadness in her heart?

“When I come back from the war,” he said, embracing her. “We’ll do it then. When you have what to live for you don’t die.”

And after a short silence and the probing of fingers he said, “I want our first time to be a reuniting, not a parting. At home, on a bed with sheets, not on the floor of a pigeon loft. We’ve held off this long, we can wait a little longer.”

They pressed together with all their might, then pulled slightly apart so that her other hand could join in.

“That’s nice,” he said.

“What’s nice? Tell me exactly”

“That you can do two different things with your hands at the same time.”

They giggled, then fell silent, his the silence of preparation and concentration, hers that of curiosity “I love watching your semen spurt out,” she said, and the Baby’s entire body trembled, his back arched, he moaned, and he buried his head between her breasts and laughed. “And your laugh. And your scent, just like our first time together. You remember? At the Ahad Ha’am School.”

“I remember. Even now I don’t understand how it happened.”

“You were suddenly suckling my nipples and I touched you and your semen was so new and white,” she said, holding up her cupped fingers as if on display “We haven’t been together for a while—look how much there is … I could put this inside me and then I would have a child from you.”

“Don’t you dare!” the Baby said, grabbing her wrist and wiping her hand vigorously on his chest. “We’ll make our child after the war. I’ll come home alive. We’ll make love in daylight, with our eyes wide open. We’ll see each other, we’ll be inside you, inside me.”

“Kiss me,” she said. From where this ache in her belly? Who would roll this boulder from her breast?

And when you’re pregnant, I’ll shell almonds for you so your milk will be white and the baby’s teeth will be, too.”

He caressed her stomach; her breathing was ragged. “You touch me like that, too …” she said, and the Baby sprawled on top of her, his lips wandering between her nipples, her fingers guiding his, revealing, encircling the delight of her flesh, and she fell mute, then moaned, and her voice rose so that the Baby had to shush her. “Someone on the street will think something is happening to one of the animals in here …”

“That wouldn’t be wrong,” the Girl said. They both stifled their laughter, and she silenced him, grew taut, released, keened, then whispered, “Next time. This war will end, you’ll come home, we’ll make love with our eyes open, you inside and around me and I around and inside you. We’ll hold hands and eyes and we’ll be one in the other.”

“We’ll get family housing at my kibbutz,” the Baby said. “And we’ll have a child who goes barefoot and gets dirty in the mud.”

The Girl did not respond.

“Yes or no?” the Baby asked.

She rose, and when she spread her legs over his body he could see her sex hovering in the darkness above him, puffed and grassy and soft, fair and dark at the same time. And the sight of her was so enticing and beautiful that he sat up and grabbed hold of her hips and placed his lips between her thighs and breathed and kissed and longed to wrap himself inside her and drench himself in her scent and her taste. Again he asked her, “Yes or no? Answer me.”

She laughed. “Are you asking me or her?” Her body shook. “Stop …” she said, then asked him if he liked her smell, because the attendant in the storeroom had told her that there were boys who said nasty things about a girl’s scent.

“The storeroom attendant? She’s an idiot! Your scent is wonderful,” the Baby said. “Now I’m not going to wash my face or hands until this war is over so that the scent will keep me alive and stay with me every breath I take. Lie down next to me a little while longer; I have to go soon.”

She lay down beside him, his right arm under her neck, his left on her waist, his leg between hers, her thigh between his.

“Yes or no?” the Baby asked. “You can’t send me off without an answer.”

“Yes,” she said. “After the war you’ll come back, and yes and yes and
yes and yes. Yes you and I will make a baby, and yes I love you, and yes I’m already missing you, and yes I will wait.”