by Meir Shalev
Dr. Laufer took the pigeon from the crate, removed the splint, and asked, “Who dressed this?”
“My neighbor,” said the Girl.
“He did a nice job,” Dr. Laufer said. He removed the bandages, sterilized the pigeon’s wound with a brown ointment, reset the bone, and redressed the wound. After that he added, no guile intended, “You surely know that this is a homing pigeon, don’t you, young lady?”
“No,” said the Girl, feeling her face redden.
“From now on you shall. With a regular pigeon the beak protrudes from the head like the handle on a skillet, but the homing pigeon’s beak runs straight from the line of the forehead, and she has a light-colored swelling. Right here, you see? And her build is stronger, her shoulders broader, and inside she has the lungs and heart of an athlete. And if you see her fly she flies alone, in a straight line, higher than regular pigeons.”
“I didn’t see her fly All of a sudden she fell onto my balcony”
“Perhaps she had a band around her leg?” the veterinarian asked. “With a number? That way we can know who she belongs to.”
“No,” said the Girl.
“Perhaps she had something else attached to her leg? With a letter?” Dr. Laufer removed a small, metal tube with a strap and a tiny push button from his pocket. “This is called a ‘message capsule,’” he told her.
“No, not that,” said the Girl. Just then the Boy returned, bright red and huffing, with the bread he had found. He opened his mouth but fell silent when she glared at him.
“Or perhaps something like this?” asked Dr. Laufer as he removed from another pocket the severed quill of a goose feather.
The Girl blushed but said nothing.
“You have taken good care of her; she’s a good pigeon. She is young and she will heal quickly If you like we can continue her treatment here.”
“I’ll take care of her at home,” she said.
“I’ll help you,” the Boy was quick to offer.
And who might the gentleman be?” the veterinarian asked.
“I’m her neighbor.”
“You were the one who dressed the pigeon’s wound?” he asked the Boy “The knot was sloppy indeed, but you have good hands. Maybe one day you will be a professional yourself” He turned back to the Girl. “When this pigeon has been restored to good health, you will have to let her go. This is a homing pigeon. She must return to her home. That is the only thing she knows to do and the only thing she wants to do. ‘Odysseus of the Feathered Creatures’—that is what we call her.”
“That’s the way it is with homing pigeons,” said the Boy importantly “I read about it in the children’s newspaper. They fly upward, make a circle in the air, and then they head straight for home.”
“But I want her,” said the Girl. “She came wounded to me. I’ll nurse her and raise her, and my home will be her home.”
The doctor’s freckles drew closer to one another. “This pigeon will never be yours. Homing pigeons do not belong to human beings; they belong to a place. When she returns home the owner is of course very glad, but it is not to him that she returns but to her home. That is why they are called home-ing pigeons in English.”
“Maybe,” said the Girl, “it’s from the Hebrew word homiyah.”
“ ‘Longing,’” the veterinarian said, regarding her with a look of surprise. “Very clever. I should have thought of it myself, from that Bialik poem: ‘Light-colored pigeon of longing, my dove / Wings of the ship she does guide from above.’”
“I’ll take care of her,” the Girl insisted. “Please just tell me what to give her to eat.”
“An injured pigeon receives the same food that a healthy one gets. Most important, you must change her water twice a day Pigeons like to bathe and drink, and that is quite pleasant to watch. They drink like horses, dipping their beaks in the water and sucking it up, unlike other birds,” he said, and he imitated a drinking bird, his head bent backward and his lips protruding and smacking.
The Girl broke out in astonished laughter. Dr. Laufer gave her a bag of mixed seeds that would last, he said, a week, and to this he added a handful of dirt and bits of gravel and basalt, and slivers of eggshell; then he reminded her just how important it was to change the water twice daily and told her to return for more feed in another few days, and that if the fat man at the entrance to the zoo refused to let her enter she should tell him she was Dr. Laufer’s guest.
“And if you need to, just shout!” he said. “Call us from the other side of the fence in a loud voice. It’s a small zoo. If we ladies are inside, we always hear.”
“Why does he talk like that?” the Boy wondered aloud as they left the zoo.
The Girl said, “I actually like it.”
In spite of her injury, the pigeon ate with an appetite and drank from the water. Over the course of a few days she grew stronger, spreading and gathering her wings as far as she was able. A week later the Girl returned to the zoo. Dr. Laufer examined the wing of the pigeon and said, “We are making very good progress. This is a pigeon that has already performed some physiotherapy on herself. Leave her here, we’ll remove the splint and she will begin to spread her wing and grow strong soon, and it will not be long before she is able to fly”
“But she’s already getting used to my house— she can try to fly there!”
“In this crate she cannot exercise. If you set her free she will fly thirty feet and drop. Just like story of Sarah Aharonson’s spy pigeon that fell right into the courtyard of the local Turkish officer,” he said and he guffawed in the way yekkes do, a laugh the Girl would hear so many times henceforth.
“Leave her here in our large pigeon loft and come take care of her every day”
7
AND THAT IS PRECISELY what happened. The pigeon remained in the pigeon loft at the zoo and each day after school, the Girl came to visit her; and although the fat man of the zoo allowed her to enter, she was always careful to please him by bringing stale bread for the animals. The pigeon grew healthier and she tracked her progress as the bird practiced spreading and stretching her wing, and hopping a little higher each time.
A few days later Dr. Laufer called her to “see something interesting” in the laying compartments: a chick had hatched. Then he showed her how its parents fed it with “pigeon milk,” which they vomited from their throats. He taught her to rattle the seeds in their tin vessel and sing, “Come, come, come to eat,” and the next day he pointed out a pigeon seductress as she enticed another pigeon’s mate.
A few days after that he said, “Your pigeon is now healthy She can fly”
The Girl breathed deeply and said, “I’ve thought about it, and I consent.”
“We hereby thank you in her name,” said Dr. Laufer.
The Girl reddened again and said, “But there is one more small thing,” and she proceeded to tell him about the quill that had been attached to the pigeon’s tail, and the letter inside it.
“So there was, in fact, a pigeongram,” he scolded. “Why didn’t you tell me when you brought her?”
The Girl said nothing.
“You know what a pigeongram is, don’t you?”
“I don’t, but I understand.”
And what was written there? Surely you read it.”
“It was a love letter.”
“Really? That is quite a bit more interesting than the boring pigeongrams we send for the Haganah. But how much love can you write on such a tiny slip of paper?”
“Three words: ‘Yes or no?’”
“Yes,” Dr. Laufer said. “Absolutely”
The Girl removed the quill from her pocket and handed it to him. Dr. Laufer murmured in surprise. “We know of only two people who put their pigeongrams inside feather quills. One of them studied with us in Germany and remained there when we came to this country, and the other came along with us but has since died.”
He removed the slip of paper and read: “YES OR NO?” He smiled. “So that is really what was written …
we thought you were asking a question.” He rolled up the slip of paper and returned it to its place, then sealed the quill and fastened it to the middle feather of the pigeon’s tail.
“There,” he said. “Just like it was fastened by she who dispatched her.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Because that is the correct word. You send a letter but you dispatch a pigeon.”
“No, why ‘she’? How do you know it was a woman that dispatched her?”
“We see it clearly Look for yourself That is the handwriting of a young woman.”
“A boy sent it, not a girl,” said the Girl.
“It was a young woman,” Dr. Laufer said. “Regard the handwriting.”
It’s a boy, thought the Girl in her heart; look at the words. And she surprised herself: how can it be that at the age of twelve I already have such things in mind?
Dr. Laufer handed the pigeon to the Girl. “Here. You dispatch her.”
The Girl held the pigeon with two hands, feeling the smoothness of her feathers, her warmth, the beating of her heart, which was faster even than the Girl’s own.
“Do not toss her, do not drop her; dispatch her. Like this —” He demonstrated with empty hands. “Your movements must be fluid, and think about what you are doing. It is your first time. You will feel a special sensation. When we arrived here from Germany and we began to tour the Land of Israel and learn its flora and fauna and we saw our first squill and smelled our first dust from a herd of sheep and drank from our first spring and ate our first cracked olives and our first fig from a tree, we had just such a feeling.”
The Girl did his bidding, and with a fluid, confident movement she dispatched the pigeon. Three things happened at that exact moment: light shone on her face, a pang of longing filled her heart, and the pigeon, who knew nothing of this, not even the contents of the slip of paper she was carrying, spread her wings, beat them powerfully, and lifted off
“Beautiful,” Dr. Laufer said. “We are rising at a good angle. We have strength. We are healthy at last, and now that we can fly we shall grow stronger. Do not worry about her. She will reach her home. She is a good pigeon and this is a small country and the distances are not great.”
The pigeon rose up above the cages, rose and turned to the southeast. “It may just be that she is flying to Jerusalem,” the veterinarian explained. “But we hope that her home is closer than that, in Rishon Lezion or Rehovot.”
He added, “Or perhaps Serafend, the English army camp. There is a large military pigeon loft there, and even soldiers sometimes feel love. How is it that we did not think of Serafend before? We are sometimes exceedingly stupid.”
He tented his hand over his eyes, and when he noticed the Girl doing the same, he smiled. “Do not remove your gaze from her, because she will disappear from your view very quickly, much more quickly than you can imagine.”
The Girl said, “She will disappear as soon as she is seen by the person waiting for her.”
Dr. Laufer said, “That is not possible. That cannot be.”
The Girl said, “But that is how it will be.”
Dr. Laufer regarded the expression on her face and felt, in contrast to all logic, that she was right. He said, “Do you know what a duvejeck is? I was born in Köln, in Germany, and that is what someone who is crazy about pigeons is called there. That is what you are going to become. A real duvejeck.”
He removed a notepad from his pocket and recorded in it the new rule: “The pigeon disappears from the view of the dispatcher when she is seen by the person waiting for her.” He added, “That is the way it is even if that cannot be!” This he underlined; then he returned the pad to his pocket.
In her heart the Girl wondered whether the pigeon would reach home in time, for the consequences of both the yes and the no were liable to be unpredictable. She also formulated a wayfarer’s prayer in her heart, the words of which she believed would lift off behind the pigeon and escort her a short distance on her airborne journey
“Do you still see her?” asked Dr. Laufer.
“Yes,” said the Girl.
“We do not anymore.”
“That is because I dispatched her, not you.”
Two minutes later she said, “She has arrived.”
Dr. Laufer asked, “Do you want to continue to come here and help us in the loft?”
“I will think about it,” the Girl said.
“Just now a young woman who worked here six years left us. She also came here as a girl.”
“Did she come with a wounded pigeon, too?”
“No. She simply came one day with her mother, to visit the zoo.”
“And where did she go?”
“To run a new pigeon loft on a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley You can begin to learn and work in place of her. And bring that young man who came with you.” He leaned over her and smiled. “Yes or no?”
“I will think about it, and I will ask my parents, and I will let you know”
The next three days the Girl spent on the balcony of her home. She lifted her eyes skyward, and every pigeon she saw caused her heart to stop beating. But Dr. Laufer had been right: the pigeon did not return, and on the fourth day the Girl went to the zoo and told him, “Yes, I want to.”
“And where is your friend?”
“He can’t. He studies English all day long. He has an uncle in Chicago, America, and he wants to go there to study medicine.”
“Pity,” said Dr. Laufer. “A true pity But perhaps it is better this way”
“It’s because of what you told him,” said the Girl. “That he has good hands.”
And so it was that at the beginning of 1940 a boy from Tel Aviv began to study Corning’s Anatomy and the English dictionary, and two children began to work in two lofts for homing pigeons and learned to become pigeon handlers—the Girl in the Tel Aviv zoo and the Baby on a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley And because at that time there were few pigeon handlers in the country, and all of them were connected to the Haganah, and all of them met from time to time at professional pigeon handlers’ conferences, and mostly because fate wanted it that way— fate had its reasons—the Girl and the Baby were destined to meet and the Boy was destined to travel to America, and study there, and return to Tel Aviv.
Chapter Five
1
THERE ARE A FEW character traits that set me apart from my parents and brother and wife. Some I have already mentioned and others I will mention now They—she included—are well acquainted with the skies above their heads and the earth beneath their feet, while I am a kite whose string has severed. They—particularly she—take risks, while I hesitate. They—especially she—decide and do, while I settle for hopes and wishes, in the manner of the devout in prayer: like a hammer that pounds again and again on the same spot. Always the same words, always toward the same east. Sometimes—with my dark, closely spaced eyes, my desire for wandering and fear of travel, my uttering of prayers and my dread that they will be answered—I feel like the only Jew in my family
Yordad chose my major in high school—biology, the sciences track—just as he determined in which unit I would serve in the army On his strong advice I did the course for medics, and thanks to his good connections and my success I stayed on as an instructor. He saw this as a first step toward medical school and taking over his clinic, an idea that surprised me greatly I had never expressed an interest in becoming a doctor; nor would I have guessed that he had considered me, in particular, to be destined for that future.
“What about Benjamin?” I asked, amazed. “I thought he’d be the one to study medicine and take over your clinic.”
Yordad grew serious, his expression clouded. “Benjamin does not have the medical temperament.”
And when I asked what Benjamin would get if I received the clinic, he said, “You needn’t worry about Benjamin, Yairi. He’ll find himself a rich wife.”
But Benjamin studied medicine and married a woman whose only goods were her joyful h
eart and her excellent brain, while I did a course for tour guides sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism. That is what my mother advised me to do. “Don’t work in an office,” she said. “It’s good to be outside, and it is nice to return home from all sorts of places. Anyway,” she joked, “maybe on one of those tour buses you’ll meet a rich woman. An American tourist. Perhaps it won’t be Benjamin who meets her, but you.”
“What right does she have? What right does she have to intervene? She leaves us and still tells us what to do!” Yordad rose from his chair, paced back and forth, then lowered his voice. “You could be an excellent doctor, Yairi. Why be a tour guide?” He tilted his head downward to mine. “To tell tales to people and bring them to souvenir shops that sell little camels made from olivewood, and crosses made from sea-shells? To expect tips? And what’s all this nonsense, Yairi, about a rich American tourist? Rich tourists sit in the back seats of chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benzes, not in buses!”
“It’s just one of Mother’s jokes,” I said. “She didn’t mean it for real.”
“I don’t like those jokes of hers!” Yordad sputtered, fuming. “They don’t amuse me in the least.”
I did a FOR and AGAINST, became a tour guide, and met my rich wife in the exact manner you joked about: on a tourist bus. If I had the courage I would whine like a baby and say, “It was all your fault!” But instead I will describe things as they were, without pointing an accusatory finger at anyone. I was guiding groups at Christian holy places and Crusader sites and telling them tales and bringing them to souvenir shops, and I had already made a good name for myself and had amassed anecdotes and stories I collected first in my head, then in a small notepad purchased for me by Yordad, that fan of notepads, all of them small and black. And who knows? Maybe I would have continued thus, but one day a beautiful young American tourist climbed into my bus —I did not know then that she was rich as well—and sat in the back. She listened attentively to all my explanations. Sometimes I felt her gaze lingering on me, as though assessing me, weighing me. In the afternoon she approached and told me that her name was Liora Kirschenbaum and that she would like to meet with me after dinner.
