Broken Leaves of Autumn

by Eli Hai

  After she had gone through passport control, she collected her suitcase, put it on a trolley, and ran to the Arrival’s Hall, where she searched with frightened eyes for her aunt. When she didn’t see her, a terrible fear snuck into her heart that her aunt might’ve forgotten her. For a second, she regretted declining Morris’s offer, that someone from the agency would wait for her at the airport and help her make her way to the kibbutz.

  “That’s unnecessary,” she replied decisively. “My brother Ahron sent my aunt my flight number and the time of landing. He said that it’s better she wait for me in the airport, and not someone I don’t know.”

  Now, she continued worriedly scanning the people waiting for the arrival of their dear ones. Then she saw her. An old woman standing at the side, waving to her frantically with her thin hands until their eyes met. Rivka abandoned her trolley and luggage, ran to her aunt, and fell into her arms. The old lady and young girl embraced and kissed each other for several long minutes, and it was only after Rivka pulled back from her aunt’s arms, that she noticed she wasn’t alone. One step behind her, following them with bemusement, stood a tall, beautiful young man.

  “Rivkel, my sweet, I’m so happy to see you,” her aunt said in Yiddish. When she noticed Rivka glance at the young man at her side, she added proudly, “Rivkel, meet Amir, my lovely grandson, Abigail, my youngest daughter’s son. He accompanies me whenever I need him to.”

  “Nice to meet you. Grandma told me so much about you,” the young man said in English, ducking his head bashfully.

  “Good things, I hope,” Rivka said quietly, but her heart was pounding. As beautiful as Jeff, she thought.

  “Amir, sweetheart, go get her suitcase,” her aunt instructed and Amir complied immediately.

  They walked slowly to the car park: Amir leading the way with the trolley, Rivka and her aunt following. The entire time, Rachel couldn’t stop scrutinizing Rivka, wondering about her clothes.

  “Where did the long dresses and thick pantyhose go?” she finally asked, when they settled in the back seat of the car.

  “Why, aren’t I dressed nicely?” Rivka was almost offended.

  “You’re dressed beautifully, my lovely. I just didn’t expect to see you wearing these clothes as well as makeup. When I saw you come out, it took me a while to recognize you. I did recognize your face immediately, but the clothes and makeup confused me.”

  “Didn’t Ahron explain to you why I’m here?”

  “No. He just said you’re doing Aliyah, and you’ll come to the kibbutz for a while. He said that, in the beginning, you should spend time with people you know so things will be easier for you, and it sounded logical to me. At a certain stage, I thought it odd that you were coming to a kibbutz, but then I realized something must’ve happened. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think too much about it.” Her aunt insisted on speaking Yiddish, even though she was fluent in English as well.

  “I’m fed up with the life I lived there, Aunt Rachel. I couldn’t stay there anymore, so I came here,” Rivka answered in English.

  “For always?”

  “Yes. I want to say in Israel forever.”

  “That’s wonderful, maideleh. You take me back fifty years, to the day I first wore pants. Oy, it was so exciting and hard. I’ll never forget that day,” her aunt reminisced. Then, she leaned toward Rivka with tear-filled eyes and kissed her again.

  “Grandma! Stop with the Yiddish. It’s a ghetto language. I know Rivka doesn’t understand Hebrew, but what’s wrong with English?” Amir intervened.

  “It’s okay. I understand Yiddish, and I also know how to speak it,” Rivka assured him.

  “That’s not it. Every time Grandma meets someone from the family, she won’t stop speaking in Yiddish, even though she’s fluent in English and Hebrew. It’s as though she insists on going back to her childhood.” Amir glanced at Rivka through the rear-view mirror.

  “What’s so bad about that?” Aunt Rachel asked.

  “This is Israel, not Poland, Grandma. If you want to go back to your childhood, travel to Poland for a visit. I’m willing to accompany both you and Rivka if you want. As a matter of fact, why not? Let’s go, the three of us,” Amir said, pleased with the idea. “Traveling to find your roots is all the rage now in Israel,” he explained to Rivka.

  “No, dear. I can’t. Even though many years have passed, I can’t. Just the thought of that cursed place—where my parents’ and brothers’ and sister Hannah’s ashes are scattered—kills me. No, no. Yiddish is sufficient for me.” This time, she spoke in English, and when she finished, she began to sob. Rivka hurried to stroke her hair.

  “Look, girls, look how beautiful it is outside,” Amir tried to distract them, and they obliged.

  For the first time since she came to Israel, Rivka noticed the sun washing the green fields on both sides of the road. The open fields and birds gliding above instilled a sense of freedom in her. She felt like one of those birds. She could also fly anywhere she wanted. For the rest of the drive, and until they reached the kibbutz, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the magical vista. Only when they arrived at the kibbutz, did she look again at Amir. When she did, her thoughts wandered to Jeff. She felt a sudden and powerful yearning for the man who’d influenced her life more than anyone. She wanted him to see her now, with her new clothes, at her best, determined and full of confidence. Perhaps, if he saw her like this, he’d treat her differently, and who knows, maybe he’d prefer her over that woman. Just then, she felt as though she’d made the right choice and that the future held more, even better, surprises.

  “Home sweet home,” Aunt Rachel declared when Amir pulled over next to a small house surrounded by a large yard. Rivka surveyed her home for the near future with wide eyes. She liked everything she saw: the grass glistening under the sun, the dogs napping in the shade, the cats wandering to and fro, the caretakers pushing children in their carriages, and more than anything, the freedom of love. Next to a large, impressive building, which she later learned was the dining room, she saw a girl and guy kissing openly. For a moment, she felt as though all her dreams had come true.

  Within a short while, she became a real kibbutznik, as though born one. Wearing shorts and sandals, she worked on the dairy farm, milking the cows. She watched in fascination as the thick white liquid poured into a large tank. She worked at the dairy for two months. With Tzvika and Noa, who were more or less her age, they milked by hand the cows that couldn’t be milked by machines and had to be milked manually. Her first week on the kibbutz, right after she arrived, she was recruited to work in the kitchen. She set tables, waitressed, but mostly washed dishes. She worked morning, noon, and evening, three shifts a day, with just short breaks in between. Very quickly, the delicate, spoiled girl, who’d never worked a day in her life—not even to do the household chores—felt as though she was on the verge of exhaustion.

  “It’s really hard for me in the kitchen,” she complained to her aunt at the end of the first week.

  “You have no choice, sweetheart. That’s just how it is over here. All the new arrivals work in the kitchen or the dairy, and they work around the clock. Do you prefer the diary? It’s hard work there, as well. But if you want, I’ll ask that you be transferred to the dairy. I still have a say in this place,” Aunt Rachel suggested with joking self-importance.

  “Yes, I prefer the dairy. At least there, I’ll work with cute cows.”

  It wasn’t less hard at the dairy. Milking demanded that she kneel for long periods of time. Her thin body, which wasn’t used to any kind of work, ached. But since milking the cows started very early in the morning and ended at noon, she managed to grab a few hours of rest before she traveled to the Ulpan in Zephath, where she learned Hebrew.

  On the days she didn’t study, she kept her old aunt company. Sometimes, she spent time with Amir. They drove up to nearby Zephath to see a movie or frequent a café or a restaurant. He taught her how to “wipe” hummus, eat falafel, and even though she wasn�
��t especially enthusiastic, she ate those unfamiliar foods so he wouldn’t consider her an old-fashioned religious girl, confined to her habits. To her surprise, she became involved in kibbutz life faster than she thought possible. She became friendly with many kibbutzniks, and they grew fond of her. She even learned how to folk dance. Life with secular people enchanted her. Nevertheless, she didn’t completely abandon the religious laws. She always prayed before eating or drinking, washed her hands as prescribed by Jewish religious laws, blessed the candles on Shabbat night, and occasionally read Psalms. When she lit the candles, tears filled her eyes. She no longer ate kosher lemehadrin and, worse than that, she desecrated the Shabbat. Rivka would never forget the first time she traveled on that holy day. Her distress was seared in her memory. During the first Shabbats in Israel, she bravely withstood Amir’s cajoling. “I feel it’s not time yet,” she politely declined his entreaty to take a short drive in the area.

  “You don’t understand the views you’re missing,” he said and added a whistle of admiration. To his grandmother, he complained, “You get that, Grandma? She works at the dairy on Shabbat, peeks at the television on the Shabbat, eats at a restaurant with dubious kosher certificates, but the lady won’t travel on the Shabbat.”

  “Leave her be. I totally understand her. It took me a while until I traveled for the first time. Traveling has a different significance. You always fear that because you’re desecrating the Shabbat, an accident will happen,” Rachel defended Rivka.

  And then, on Saturday morning in the spring, she finally agreed to travel to the Golan Heights. The entire drive up the winding road, she cringed in her seat, gripping the handle over the window, as though the little plastic handle had the power to save her from impending disaster. She was positive that, eventually, the car would slip over the edge of the road into the gaping abyss, to the kingdom of darkness and the underworld, and Amir and herself would come to a horrifying end.

  “Why are you so nervous?” Amir inquired with a smile.

  “You know very well why…Shabbat,” she could barely reply.

  When Amir stopped the car, she ran out of it as though she were a lion in a cage. She started breathing quickly, as though suffering from hyperventilation, her heart pounded, sweat ran down her body, and she felt as though she was going to die. Amir noticed her distress and rushed to her, hugged her with a strong arm, and they sat on a bench, from which they had a view of the Sea of the Galilee.

  “Have some water. It’ll help you calm down.” He handed her a bottle of mineral water, and she gulped from it eagerly, as though she’d just finished a trek in the desert beneath the scorching sun. When she finally looked forward, she encountered magical views that she’d never come across before, which helped her regain her equilibrium. Her curls flew in the wind, stroking her neck, and it reminded her how she’d managed to escape the terrible slaughtering knife that threatened to destroy her hair and leave her bald. When she thought of those awful days, she hurried to crush the golden strands between her fingers, brought them to her nose, and inhaled their perfumed scent. The fragrance permeated her nostrils and filled her lungs. A supreme feeling of freedom encompassed her and caused her indescribable pleasure.

  Between one Saturday and another, which she devoted to exploring her new country, she found herself missing her parents and especially Ahron and his daughters. She managed to subdue those feelings through weekly phone calls to her mother and Ahron. The first time she called her mother, she expected her mother to yell at her, but to her surprise, her mother wasn’t angry at her at all.

  “How are you, daughter? Are you eating properly?” her mother asked in concern.

  “I feel great, Mother! I’ve never felt so good. I live with Aunt Rachel on the kibbutz, eat all the time, and I’m enjoying every minute. The only thing that saddens me is that I’m far from you.”

  “That’s wonderful, daughter. I’m so glad to hear that. But I hope you haven’t entirely abandoned the way of the Torah and the commandments…” she continued in concern.

  “No, Mother. Don’t worry. How can I turn my back on everything you taught me?” she replied without specifying. Then she inquired after their health.

  “Papa and I are fine. At first, it was difficult, especially when people wouldn’t stop slandering and gossiping about you and us. Some even boycotted the mini-market and sales decreased, but don’t worry, Papa had savings that helped us through that difficult time. Canceling the wedding was very difficult. The Ziedenbaums were furious, and Papa had to reimburse them for the expenses they claimed to have. Yehuda and Margalit wanted to sit shiva for you, but Papa explicitly forbid it. Just so you know, Ahron did a wonderful job regarding the matter and calmed them and us. Now, when I hear you, I’m very relieved.”

  When Rivka heard all that, she also was relieved. Now, with her soul at peace, she could focus on her Hebrew studies. Because of her burning desire to learn, the words she remembered from the prayers and Psalm chapters and conversing with Amir, who insisted on talking to her in Hebrew, after a year, she spoke Hebrew fluently.

  Amir was very supportive during those days. He frequently drove her to the Ulpan, spent his free time with her and, several times, got up early and helped her milk the cows. They were both well aware of the fact that their family ties prevented anything romantic from happening between them, but their friendship grew stronger. Sometimes, she wanted to tell him how beautiful she thought he was and how his beauty reminded her of Jeff, but she feared Amir would interpret it as though she were trying to hint she was interested in more than pure friendship. Once, she let her thoughts wander and asked herself if there was anything wrong in a marriage with the grandson of her grandmother’s sister. Yet, even though she knew there was nothing wrong about it, she never felt a true desire to change the status of her relationship with Amir.

  “What brings a girl like you to make such a drastic change in life? Obviously, something must have happened to you if you made such an extreme decision…” Amir said curiously during one of the times he offered to drive her to the Ulpan.

  “My life started to go wrong when I fell in love for the first time. I’m not really sure, but I think it was love. Otherwise, it’s hard for me to explain the madness that consumed me at the time. I think it’s a miracle I stayed sane,” she admitted to him.

  “What does that have to do with Yetzia bish’eila?”

  “Yetzia bish’eila?” Rivka didn’t understand.

  “Yetzia bish’eila is when a religious person becomes secular,” he explained with a smile.

  “I see,” she murmured thoughtfully.

  “Nu, so what happened then?” he prompted.

  And she told him about Jeff and her desperate love for him, about her attempt to be with him and how she got caught in his house.

  “And now? Do you still think of him?”

  “To tell you the truth, I think about him quite a lot, but, thank God, it’s not with that same madness that consumed me and made me do endlessly foolish things.” Her expression turned sad when she remembered what she had done.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” he apologized.

  “Never mind. Let’s change the subject. Tell me about yourself,” she requested.

  “I have nothing special to tell you. I’ve never had a real love,” he laughed.

  “So, tell me about your service in the army. You were in the army, right?”

  “In the Artillery Corps. I was a gunner. My army service wasn’t very interesting. Why do you ask?”

  “In New York, when I was at the agency, they told us about the IDF and gave us the opportunity to enlist. Since I arrived, I’ve thought about it a lot. I think I want to be a soldier. What do you think?”

  Her eyes gleamed as she spoke.

  “I think it’s a great idea. The army will do you good. Your Hebrew will improve immeasurably, and the army will instill in you the sabra mentality. And more importantly, after the army, you’ll be able to sustain yours
elf without being dependent on others. You’ll be independent. If you want to stay in Israel, I really recommend that you enlist. And you’re at the right age,” he added. Rivka was pleased someone was encouraging her to take this dramatic step because as much as she wanted it, she also feared it terribly. What would her parents and siblings say now that she’d completely abandoned their ways?

  Rivka took the olive-green uniform that the stock-keeper gave her and wore it before the scrutinizing gazes of the other recruits. Doing so, she felt frighteningly naked. How would she endure this scrutiny during her entire service? The terrifying commanders that screamed at them endlessly didn’t add to her desire to stay in this frightening place, all fear and discipline, which she’d tried to run away from when she left the Hasidic community. Just then, she regretted her decision to join the army.

  “From now on, when a ranked soldier addresses you, you answer every request with ‘yes, sir,’ or ‘yes, ma’am,’ is that clear?” the sergeant screamed at the group of girl soldiers standing in line.

  “Yes!” all the soldiers answered as one.

  “Yes what?” the sergeant hollered in fury.

  “Yes, ma’am!” they all screamed back, and some started giggling.

  “Glad that’s clear, girls. I’m glad you’re not slow-witted. Pay attention! From now on, you’re in the army, under strict discipline. Don’t even think of refusing your commanders’ orders. Disobeying an order means insubordination. Insubordination means grave punishments. Punishment may be military confinement and, sometimes, even military prison. Get it, girls? Prison, as in under lock and key. Am I being clear enough?”

  “Yes, ma’am! All clear!” the recruits answered as one.

  “Good. Now you’re free to go until tomorrow. At six a.m., report to lineup, and then transportation will take you to a different base, where you’ll go through basic training. And God help anyone who’s late,” she warned them. The girls grabbed their duffle bags and ran to the communal tent. Later on, Rivka would remember the warmth and fondness with which the girls who shared her tent treated her. That warmth reminded her of her friend Dvora. The two girls spoke on the phone frequently, and she found out that Dvora had a little baby girl and lived in the center of Israel. Did she do the right thing by joining the army? She could’ve also been a wife and mother now. … However, she wasn’t sorry. She was happy with the new way she’d chosen.