A Pigeon and a Boy (37 page)

He laid a wooden crate next to Behemoth. “This car is comfortable but high. Put your foot here, Yaacov”

Yordad climbed up and seated himself with a soft groan and said, “This car really is comfortable,” then fastened his safety belt and settled in. Meshulam circled the car and came to my side. “Don’t you tell him I’m involved!” he whispered, then immediately raised his voice. “And take this crate with you, so Professor Mendelsohn can get in and out of the car.”

Only then, when Meshulam called him “Professor Mendelsohn,” did I realize that earlier he had used his first name. But Behemoth had
already begun moving and Meshulam called out, “Drive carefully, Iraleh. Do you hear me? You’ve got an important passenger with you!”

I decided to leave the city by way of the Jerusalem forest and the village of Beit Zayit in order to enjoy the view Yordad opened the window, sniffed the pine trees with pleasure, rejoiced at the sight of a gazelle skipping along the terraces beneath the Yad Vashem Holocaust Center.

He was in high spirits. “We used to enjoy hiking around here, your mother and I. We would gather mushrooms. Here, this is the path we would take to reach the elephant boulder. We would walk back in the direction of the bakery and buy a fresh challah bread from the workers.”

“We walked this way with her, too,” I said, provoking him, “in order to look from far away and remember Tel Aviv.”

But Yordad merely smiled. “Yes,” he said absentmindedly “She loved Tel Aviv very much. She loved gladioluses, a little brandy to drink, parsley, and Tel Aviv, of course.”

I decided to take advantage of the pleasant atmosphere and dispatched a question into the space inside Behemoth, an intimate space of father and son. “Maybe you remember what side her dimple was on?”

“Whose dimple, Yairi?”

“Mother’s. That’s who we were just talking about, right?”

Yordad is old, and an old man needs to recognize and exploit advantages when they cross his path.

“She had two,” he said. “Two
grübchen.
You know what
grübchen
are, Yairi? Dimples, in German.”

Was he pretending? Was he rewriting our history? Had he really and truly forgotten?

“Last time,” I reminded him, “you said she didn’t have any dimples at all. Another time you said she didn’t have dimples in her cheeks but she had one in her chin.”

“That could be,” he answered, then attacked straightaway “But if I have already told you all that, why do you two keep asking?”

“What do you mean by ‘you two’? Does Benjamin ask you as well?”

“The two of you. You never stop pestering me.”

“That’s because we can’t agree on whether the dimple was on her left cheek or her right.”

He fell silent. Just when I was about to lose my patience he spoke up. “It wasn’t her left cheek or her right one. She had two dimples at the
bottom of her back. Here,” he said, thrusting a long, white hand, surprising in its speed and precision, between my right hip and the car seat. His thumb and index finger jabbed both sides of my spine like the teeth of a snake.

“Two. One here,” he said, nearly pressing through to my flesh, “and one here, on the other side.”

The touch of his hand where the elderly American Palmachnik and the tractor operator with the sickle had touched me silenced and paralyzed me. Yordad, as if wishing to wound me further, said, “I loved kissing those dimples. Sometimes I picture them in my dreams. She was not an easy person, Yairi. Not now, either, when she is no longer here.” He fell silent again.

After a few minutes he continued. “We did a lot of bad things to one another. And we fought a lot of battles against each other. But first of all leaving me, then dying in order to beat me? That’s too much. For both of us.”

We were both silent for a long while, until suddenly Yordad said, in your voice, “I can’t anymore.” I was horrified, but he smiled at me as if pleased with himself. He fell asleep, and even then, sleeping sitting up, he looked respectable and elegant. Several minutes after waking up he said, “I’ve grown a little tired from our journey, Yairi. Let’s go back.”

I protested. “But you wanted to see my home. We’ll be there in just forty minutes.”

“I’ll see it another time. Now I want to go lie down and sleep.”

“I’ll find us a pretty spot with shade. I brought wine and food, and I have a blanket and a pillow You can lie down and rest and then we’ll continue.”

Another time, Yairi. Now please take me back.”

Chapter Seventeen

A
ND WHEN HAD
D
EATH
caught sight of him? When he slipped away from him that first time he ran for the shed? Now, as he drags himself toward it, bleeding into the dust? Or perhaps it was as the Girl had said about the apparition of the pigeon before one who awaits its return: it occurred at the moment the Baby had disappeared from her vision as he rounded the path in the zoo.

Another explosion in the distance and a blow that cracked open the wall of the shed. The Baby crawled into the shed through the breach, groaning and shaking from weakness and pain. He lay still, the roar of battle now a dull, remote din, as though a blanket had been thrown over his head. Draw strength. Don’t die yet. Open your eyes. Look around.

Rubble, scattered garden tools, the small dovecote shattered on the floor. It’s better that way, thought the Baby; who knows if I would have managed to get to my feet and reach it if it had still been hanging from a nail on the wall. The large male Jerusalem pigeon, half its body crushed, was twitching its last, while the small pigeon from Kiryat Anavim lay next to him. There was no sign on her body of having been hit, but it was clear she was dead. Dr. Laufer had taught Miriam the pigeon handler, and Miriam had taught him, that pigeons are liable to die from fear. “They are like us,” she had told him. “They fight, they cheat on each other, they eat with friends, they long for home, and they have heart attacks.” The Girl’s pigeon was unharmed; in shock, frightened by the tumult, the gunfire, the shouting, and the proximity of the dead and dying pigeons, but quiet and whole nonetheless.

The Baby reached his hand toward the broken remains of the dovecote
and withdrew the pigeon handler’s equipment, rolled into a scroll. He untied its laces and unraveled it; everything was in place. The pigeon handler likes tidiness, keeps things clean. Here are the goose quills and the empty message holders, the glass tube, the cup, the message pads. Here are the silk strings and the small, razor-edged pigeon handler’s scraping knife. Lying on his side, he arranged everything he would need; then he sliced through the strap of the tommy gun he had lifted from the dead platoon commander and let it fall to the ground. It was a good thing he had taken care to whet the knife on a regular basis; it was so sharp that he needed make no effort.

He unzipped his battle dress, slid the blade between his blood-soaked trousers and his skin, and cut the cloth away carefully, working his way to the groin and then left, over his shattered thigh. He peeled the shredded trousers as far downward and to the side as he was able, lowering his gaze to his loins. He sighed in relief: his penis was safe and sound, spotted with blood but unharmed, and in its own way managed to return the Baby’s gaze, friendly and abashed. It was short and thick like its owner, crouching now quite nearby two large holes where the bullets had exited his body Small and timid, his penis was a tunnel-dwelling creature fearful of the light and the cold and the loss of blood.

Thus the four of them remained: the wounded Baby his healthy organ, the pigeon, and Death, waiting at the side. The pigeon and the penis did not move or stir; Death sent a chilly, pleasant hand to touch him just as the Baby’s own hand was touching himself, though neither hand made do merely with wandering, or caresses. Each pressed, lightly: Was the fruit ripe yet? Had the hour arrived?

Not yet; the Baby pushed Death away, then lay sprawled on his back and resumed caressing his organ. There was not enough blood in his body for an erection, but the penis felt the urgent need of his owner as well as his touch, so different from usual, and understood that this was no ordinary form of relief, the kind young men grant themselves with a generous hand; rather, it was something important. He was as young and inexperienced as his master; like him he knew he would die a virgin, like him he grieved, for this is an organ that is capable of rejoicing, so why would it not be able to feel sadness?

The Baby’s fingers reached his lips in an attempt to smear them with saliva, for lubrication, and a pleasant feeling, and speeding up the process. But his mouth was as dry as clay and did not produce even a drop. He spilled a bit of water from his canteen into his hand and continued
with the task, his fingers simulating the Girl’s own fingers as they took the feel of the velvet ring, the tulip bulb, the lizard’s belly, but his body signaled to him that time was short and his death whispered to him that the task was great and he would be well advised to cease these pleasant ministrations and return to the plain and ordinary way of men, and his penis, whether from compassion or understanding of the urgency of the matter, managed to stiffen a bit.

The Baby feared that Death would lose patience, and that in this awful race his soul would beat his seed in departing his body He hoped that curiosity would compel Death to wait until this deed had been completed, and he hurried himself along by conjuring images and feelings that would help him on his way: the Girl’s fingers, her pleasant caresses in the place he called “there” and she called “here”—“If he wore a bow tie,” she had said, laughing, “it would be right here.”

He pictured her body straightening up and her legs parting as she stood over him, her beautiful, puffed genitals floating above his eyes in the dimness of the pigeon loft. He pictured himself, too, rising to his knees and taking hold of her thighs to kiss between them, causing her— and him—to tremble. Her scent returned to his lips and blew new life into his flesh and pooled under his nostrils and lingered in his nose.

And when he felt the miracle occurring, the seed rising in his pipes, not gushing forth but creeping along wishing to ooze out, he leaned on his side, moaning in pain, aimed for the glass cup, and ejaculated. The semen did not spurt, but a small quantity did trickle slowly along. And when this small, white loss joined the larger red loss of blood, the Baby’s muscles drained of strength, the heat abandoned his stomach chamber, memory expired in his brain. The laughter he would emit when this moment of release took place between the Girl’s breasts had now become a spasmodic smile.

Another squeeze, another drop, the Baby rested. His ejaculation had sharpened his nerves and heightened his pain. But he was happy: the pain would delay Death and grant him a few more minutes. He tilted the cup to the glass tube and helped the flow along with his finger, encouraging his seed to pass more quickly “Hurry up,” he said. “My hands are growing cold, a tremor is lying in wait.” He corked the tube and lay flat out on his back. Do not lose consciousness. Do not die yet. There is still work to be done.

All the while the Belgian pigeon watched the proceedings with round, unblinking eyes. First she saw the Baby drag himself inside the
shed, bloodied and moaning; then she watched him cut open his trousers and expose himself and perform the same deed that the girl had in the loft. After that he had uncapped the message capsule, placed the tube inside, and closed it, all the while shaking and mumbling. Finally, she watched as the hand that had held his flesh was now extended in her direction. Her heart pounded for him under skin and flesh and feather. By this time he did not know his own body, did not feel what it was he was grasping—her or himself—but the warmth of her body imbued him with strength; his palm sensed the anticipation in her back and wing muscles just like when, in the loft of his childhood, he had taken hold of his very first pigeon.

There was a great peal of thunder. This time a shell had been fired from the cannon mounted on the armored vehicle, knocking over more stones and raising a column of dust. But the Baby was not alarmed. When Death is so close there is no longer anything to fear. Nor was the pigeon frightened; she pulled shut her thin, transparent, auxiliary set of eyelids, which humans do not possess, and prepared herself for her dispatch and strengthened herself for the climb. The Baby attached the message capsule to her leg, groped and dragged himself along the floor as though wafting across his own feebleness, until his head and shoulders and chest and hand had come outside, through the breach in the wall. He stretched out his hand, then slackened his grip, amazed that even now he could feel something of the pleasure there is in every dispatch, and something of the excitement. The pigeon took off in a hurry as if spurted from the palm of his hand.

Death, who had been waiting all the while, emitted a snort of anger when he understood that he had been duped. But the Baby did not celebrate his victory He rolled onto his side ever so slightly, unable to summon enough strength to turn over completely, in order to watch his last pigeon rise in the air. Thus he lay, half on his back and half on his side, neither groaning nor moving. From this moment forth the matter was out of his hands. From this moment forth he had to put his trust solely in her: that she would fly straight and true, that she would accomplish her mission, that she would avoid every bullet and arrow and stone, that she would neither become prey nor be tempted, that she would not stop to eat or drink or rest, that she would understand what was contained in the capsule, the likes of which had never before been sent— that is what Dr. Laufer would soon say—throughout the history of homing pigeons worldwide, from its inception until this very day.