by Meir Shalev
He returned to the loft and the guy from the Palmach standing there. “You’re too close to the trap door,” he told him. “The pigeons will be afraid to enter.”
The Palmachnik said, “Buzz off, kid.”
The Baby fell silent and moved away from him. He looked skyward and waited. After about half an hour he called to the Palmachnik. “Here they are, they’re back!”
“Where? Where are they?” the Palmachnik asked, taken aback.
“There. Here. Don’t you see them? They’re getting closer. What are you waiting for? Raise the flag and whistle.”
The Palmachnik, nonplussed by the Baby’s surprising aggressiveness and his hawk eyes, raised the wrong flag. The three pigeons were startled and ascended over the loft.
“The blue flag,” the Baby called out to him. Then he shouted, “Come, come, come to eat.”
The pigeons landed, and the Palmachnik got confused again. He scattered a few seeds on the landing shelf instead of on the other side of the trap door. The pigeons ate a little, then flew off again.
When Miriam returned, sweating and huffing on her bicycle, the Palmachnik announced, “They all returned!” and handed the notepad to her. Miriam looked inside it and said, “You didn’t write a thing!” and the Baby could not control himself and shouted, “The blue one came back first!” and “He scattered their food outside.”
Miriam was furious. “They have to know they’ve got to come inside; otherwise you can’t remove the message capsules from their legs. Now I’ll have to repeat the whole thing.”
The next day she tested the Baby to see whether he would manage to fill in her forms legibly and informed him that from then on he would greet the returning pigeons.
“This is very important,” she told him. “It is not enough for the pigeon simply to come home. Every rock pigeon knows how to do that. We have to record how long it took her and what she does when she gets back. Does she meander outside or does she come right into the loft through the trap door?”
“So when are you going to take me with you?” the Baby asked several days later, to which Miriam replied that pigeon handling is learned one stage at a time and that now had come the time to move him up from pigeon greeter and trough cleaner to cook.
“You’ve got a lot to learn before you dispatch a pigeon on your own,” she said, placing the notepad and the pencil in his hand.
He wrote: the pea, the lentil, and the vetch provide protein. Sorghum, rice, corn, and wheat—carbohydrates. Linseed, sesame, and sunflower seeds—fats. Miriam taught him the secret to mixing the seeds, and how important it was to sniff them in case they smelled of mold, and to smash one or two of them with a hammer. If the seed was appropriately dry it would crumble, and if it was too moist it would mash.
A hungry pigeon is more attentive, more efficient, she explained to him, and livelier and lighter for flying. That was why they were fed a small meal in the morning and only after their late afternoon flight did they receive their main meal. And don’t forget: pigeons like to drink immediately after eating.
She opened the canister containing the mineral mix, which she called “gravel,” in which there were crumbs of basalt, which aids the pigeon in grinding the hard seeds she eats, and powdered ferric oxide, which purifies her blood, and coal, which keeps her digestive system clean, and crushed seashells and lime for strengthening her bones and eggshells, “just like they give the laying hens in the kibbutz chicken coops.” She added that “homing pigeons need stronger bones than common pigeons. Stronger and lighter.”
“And,” she said, “this mixture has salt in it, so you cannot give it to the pigeons before a long flight.”
“So they won’t get thirsty,” the Baby said.
“Very good. What happens if a pigeon gets thirsty?”
“She dies on the way”
“No,” Miriam laughed. “She’ll descend to drink and then in the best of cases, she’ll simply be waylaid a bit and in the worst of cases, someone will catch her or eat her.”
The Baby gathered his courage and asked what were the tiny smooth, dark seeds that she only rarely gave to the returning pigeons, and she told him they were hashish seeds, which the pigeons were wild about. A few were added to their daily meals, but a little more than that became a special treat, a prize.
“And twice a week,” she said, “we feed them from our hands.” This, she explained, is time-consuming but pleasant and useful, a chance to check on the pigeons and deepen their affection and affability Animals fear human eyes, the scent of their bodies, the cunning of their fingers. The way to overcome all these is by teaching them to eat from a human hand. That way they grow accustomed and draw near and become loyal friends.
“The pigeon is not intelligent or sensitive or complex, like a dog or horse,” she said, “and in spite of what people say about her and how she looks, she has a difficult character. But even she understands loyalty and friendship. You don’t need to write that down. With some things it’s enough to hear them and remember.”
2
“YOU’RE TERRIFIC,” she told him a few days later. “One day you’ll be a true duvejeck.”
“What’s a duvejeck?” the Baby asked, concerned.
“When you’re a duvejeck you’ll know”
“So when are you going to take me to send off the pigeons?”
“Not ‘send off! Dispatch! Before that you have to learn one very important thing: how to catch and hold a pigeon in your hand.”
Never catch it in midair, she taught him, and never outside the loft; only after the pigeon has landed and entered. The hands should be visible to the pigeon as they approach her, nothing stealthy and not too fast or hesitant or slow And always from above, so that if she takes off you can catch her. And lastly, there is the catching itself: palms hold the wings, fingers point downward and grasp the feet. “Gently Everything gently Their bodies are not simple like ours; theirs are complex and delicate, built to fly
And never look them in the eye!” she said, repeating that to animals, eye contact is an act of aggression. “Pigeons’ eyes look sideways, while ours look forward. So to them our gaze seems like that of a predatory animal or a bird of prey ”
The Baby’s hands drew near a pigeon, lowered to her, grasped her, and felt the quick agitation of her heart. His own throbbed in response. “Not too tight,” she said, and he grew anxious. “Very nice,” she said, and joy coursed through his body “Now take hold of another one—they’re very different one from the other,” she instructed, and he practiced and learned and became familiar with them, cautiously, gently, and with increasing confidence.
Several days later Miriam told him to get hold of a bicycle so that he could accompany her on one of her outings. He was short of stature and had not as yet managed to ride a “comrades” bicycle, so he asked to borrow his aunt’s “comradettes” bicycle instead.
His aunt hesitated. “That bicycle belongs to the cowshed,” she said.
“Please, Mother, please,” the Baby said. And when she heard that “Mother” and saw the hope and the desolation skittering across his brow, she consented, on one condition: that he would not ride too much and that he would practice before going off with “the young woman from the pigeon loft.”
He tried and fell, tried again, practiced until he gained his balance. Bruised and scraped, he rushed to the loft and was grateful when Miriam asked no questions, just instructed him to hurry and wash his wounds with soap and water. Then she smeared veterinary ointment on them and told him which three pigeons to catch.
They pedaled first on a dirt lane that ran parallel to the road, she effortlessly, he by pressing his full weight and breathing heavily but forgetful of his wounds and his fear and enjoying the whisper of crunching tires and his excitement at what was about to happen. Near a certain tall electricity pole they turned down a row of cypress trees and cycled toward the fields, bars of light and shadow hitting their eyes, the scent of blooming acacia trees caressing and yellowing their noses
.
Several miles on, near the pump house, Miriam stopped, leaned her bicycle against the trunk of a cypress tree, and took the pigeon with a red ribbon on her leg from the basket.
“Take the notepad and the pencil,” she said, “so you can write down the color of the ribbon and the date and the hour and the place, each in the proper order.”
He wrote in round, childish letters, proud and very anxious.
“First, record the numbers and letters written on her band. Very nice. And where it says PLACE write PUMP HOUSE, and where it says WEATHER write CLEAR, TEMP. 24°C, LIGHT EASTERLY WIND, and where it says TIME write 13:45. That’s a quarter to two. Did you write it all down? Did you understand it all? Now watch carefully”
He watched her hands as she dispatched the pigeon forward and upward, her body taut, her breasts suddenly lifting under her gray work shirt, a smile rising on her lips without her thinking about it. The dispatch was so smooth that the pigeon looked like a smile that had detached itself from her body and ascended, and the sight was so lovely and attractive that the Baby did not know why he was ashamed of his excitement.
In the same way, Miriam dispatched the pigeon with the yellow ribbon, and this caused the Baby to worry Would she let him have the third pigeon or would she dispatch her herself? He filled in the third form and lifted his eyes to her, and Miriam said, “It’s your turn.”
He took hold of the pigeon and, in spite of what he had learned, briefly stared straight into her eyes like a bird of prey
“Think about what you are doing,” Miriam told him. “This is your first pigeon; don’t forget that. Don’t just release her, and don’t throw her. Think that you’re handing her to the heavens. Gently”
Even before he had opened his hands as wide as they would go he felt that his movements were not as successful as hers. But the pigeon had already spread her wings, and his eyes escorted her as she lifted off and his body wished to rise along with her. Her wings were beating, first turning a bluish-gray then—in an immense, clear sky—blackening and shrinking. The Baby watched her, unaware that this would be the last scene he would witness nine years later as he lay bleeding on his back in the ruined gardener’s shed of a monastery, his body riddled with holes and broken and slit open, a pigeon lifting off above him carrying his final wish.
“You’re very good,” Miriam said. She patted his head with a cool hand, first in small, joyful circular motions, then with two fingers that slipped down to the sides of his neck and delighted his back.
3
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER Miriam asked the Baby to ask his aunt to ask the milk-truck driver if he would take a few pigeons for more distant dispatches. First from near the Sea of Galilee, then from Afula and Haifa. Then she told him she knew his uncle traveled to kibbutz movement meetings in Tel Aviv on occasion, and she wanted him to ask the uncle to take three pigeons with him for dispatch from there.
“How will I take them?” the uncle asked.
“There’s a special pigeon basket,” the Baby answered. “It’s made of wicker and it has a handle and a lid.”
“And what if they start quarreling on the way, or if they make a mess?”
Miriam did not give up. She went with the Baby to the uncle and said, “The pigeons will not fight. They will make a little mess but nothing terrible. The basket is lined with newspapers.”
And where would I release them?” the uncle grumbled. “Just anywhere? In the middle of the street? Would I just stand there and open the basket?”
“Do you remember Dr. Laufer, who saved your wife’s sick calf? I’m sure you’d be happy to do him a favor in return. Take the pigeons to him. You’ll find him at our central pigeon loft, in the zoo,” Miriam said. “He’ll dispatch them and he’ll fill in the forms and maybe he’ll even give you a few pigeons of his own for us to dispatch from here. That’s important. We don’t have so many opportunities to dispatch pigeons from great distances.”
The uncle looked agitated. His body broadcast his refusal. But then the Baby, to whom the words “central pigeon loft” seemed as magical and important as palaces and temples, called out to his uncle, “I’ll come with you. I’ll take care of the basket and I’ll watch over the pigeons. All you have to do is bring me to the central pigeon loft in the zoo.”
“That’s a good idea,” Miriam said, leaning over him. “I trust you.”
“What about afterward?” the uncle said, preoccupied with his own concerns. “Are you going to tag along after me the whole day and come with me to my meetings?”
“You can leave him at the zoo,” Miriam said. “Dr. Laufer will find things for him to do. The central loft is large, and there is always work to be done.”
At three o’clock in the morning the uncle woke the Baby and led him with his eyes shut and his hands clutching the pigeon basket to the milk truck. The trip deepened his sleep but here and there he snapped awake, and each time he opened his eyes he took in a different landscape, so that the journey came to seem like an interrupted series of dreams. In Haifa they proceeded to the central bus station. The uncle handed him a sandwich from his satchel and bought him a tart drink from an Arab vendor, and when the bus pulled away from the station and headed southward down the coast he told him that it was not enough to look out the window; he should breathe deeply and smell what he was looking at as well, since smells are what we remember best.
The bus stopped at many stations, taking in and discharging passengers. The sea, which was at first nearby and blue and salty-smelling, drew farther away and turned greener. Its scent changed, too: first it weakened, then strengthened; then it took on the smell of an orchard. The pigeons were silent in their basket and the Baby fell asleep again, awakening only when the uncle nudged him and told him to open his eyes and look around. “We’re here. This is your first time in Tel Aviv Look, here’s the central bus station.”
The Baby was impressed. “There’s a central pigeon loft and a central bus station here?” he asked.
This made the uncle laugh. “There’s a Central Committee for Settlement of the Land of Israel and a Central Department Store for Agricultural Supplies here, too. That’s the way it is in Tel Aviv.”
From the central bus station the two walked down a scalding, humid street and caught another bus. Again the uncle poked him to look around, and he pointed out shops and cars and men wearing panama hats — things you see in the city but not on the kibbutz—but the Baby was preoccupied with only one thing, and when they were in the vicinity of the zoo and could hear the sounds of the animals and smell their smells, he told the uncle that now he must dispatch the pigeons.
“But Miriam said that Dr. Laufer would dispatch them,” the uncle said.
“She trusts me,” the Baby said. “And it’s the only reason I came all the way here. You’ll see, Father. The pigeons will return safely and Miriam will even say that I did a good job dispatching them.”
He gave a few seeds to the pigeons—a light meal, nothing to weigh them down but enough to satiate them a bit so that they would not stop to eat on the way—and then he ladled some water into a small bowl and handed the forms to be filled in to his uncle. “Here, write the date,” the Baby instructed, and he dictated: “Place of dispatch: gate of Tel Aviv zoo.” The uncle recorded the time of day and the weather as well: hot and humid and still and clear. Miriam had entered the numbers on the pigeons’ bands ahead of time.
The Baby copied the information onto a slip of paper he would keep with him, inserted the forms into the message capsules, and attached them to the pigeons’ legs. He lifted his hands in the air and dispatched them one after the other, first the light-colored one and then, several minutes later, the bluish-gray ones. The uncle watched him. While his lips smiled, his heart—this is the way he would remember it in the future—constricted. He was a kind and loving uncle and he would never forget this moment and would recount it tearfully to all who came to comfort him nine years later, at his nephew’s death. As for the Baby, he was sorry that Miriam w
as not there to see how smooth and right his movements had been and he said, “Now let’s go into the zoo and find the central pigeon loft.”
However, Dr. Laufer beat them to it. He emerged from the entrance, tall and slightly stooped in his rubber boots, his nose long and his limbs flapping, his hair red and his freckles overflowing, and behind him was a very fat man wearing a cap with a visor.
“Here he is,” the Baby whispered. “That’s the Dr. Laufer who built the pigeon loft on our kibbutz.”
“Well, look who is here!” exclaimed the veterinarian. “The young man sent to us by Miriam, and his uncle. Only the pigeons are not with us.”
Crestfallen, the Baby said nothing.
“And there was no voice, nor any that answered,’” Dr. Laufer said, quoting Scriptures and Bialik, “ ‘and a pigeon with a boy, still knocking at the gate’! You dispatched the pigeons yourself, didn’t you? We saw them rising in the air two minutes ago.”
“I filled in all the details, too,” the Baby boasted, showing the veterinarian the copy he had retained.
Dr. Laufer perused the slip of paper. “Very nice. But we were hoping to add a little pigeongram of our own to Miriam, only now the pigeons have taken off and there is nothing we can do about it.”
“She didn’t tell me,” the Baby said, disconcerted.
“You, uncle-comrade,” the veterinarian said, “you are welcome to continue on your way now We will keep him gainfully employed until your return.”
The uncle left and Dr. Laufer said to the fat man, “You see this fine young fellow? He’s our guest. Anytime he shows up here, please let him in.” And to the Baby he said, “Come!”
The zoo spread out before the Baby’s eyes like some enchanted land of first sights. Near the entrance stood several huge turtles, the eye unable to believe they truly existed, in spite of—or perhaps because of—their enormous size. Past the turtle pens were the monkeys, which the Baby suddenly understood were the creatures that visited his nightmares and which he had been able to forget, until now, upon waking. There were a few cages containing smaller animals —cruel and cunning in appearance, the likes of which he had glimpsed more than once in the tangled reeds that grow by the Jordan River, not far from his kibbutz— and a pool for pelicans and all kinds of ducks, all of which were also familiar from the Jordan Valley Here, however, there was a black bear and a lion and two lionesses, and I amuse myself by wondering whether these were the very same Tamar and Dolly and Hero that I saw years later, when my mother brought me to the very same zoo. There was a leopard, too—Teddy the Great Leopard—which had been hunted in the Galilee. “Would you believe it, Yair? A leopard right here in Israel! Found near the town of Safed …”
