by Meir Shalev
“No cause for alarm!” they shouted. “We’re little, but men like you. No big deal that we saw you without your clothes.”
The tractor operator left and Meshulam entered. “Tiraleh’s not here?” he asked, pleased. “Very good. Because I want to do something here, too. I want my handprint on this new house, too.”
He looked around and told me he would handle the weather stripping, because that was something she probably would not notice. He also mixed mortar and sand in a tin, then cemented and rounded the straight angles between the floor of the bathroom and the walls. “Otherwise, the sealant will crack and there will be dampness here again.”
We ate lunch together. Then Meshulam said he would deliver the Chinese workers to their lodgings, “because the house isn’t so urgent and pretty soon Tiraleh will be back and you two will want to be alone.”
He took them and left. Pretty soon my contractor will be back. We will sit facing the view, we’ll talk, we’ll fill up with love and happiness. We’ll say “And it was good” about what has already been built and we’ll mark and we’ll inaugurate and we’ll give names.
Chapter Twenty-One
1
WIND WAS BLOWING among the pine trees of the monastery Children were playing on an old tank that once stood there but has since been removed. A young teacher flailed his arms this way and that as he told his pupils about the battle that had been fought here and about “the heroes that fell during the War of Independence.”
“I have a story to tell you,” my mother said. “It will be your story, too. You can pass it on. You can tell it to whomever you want.”
To my children, if I have any. To a friend, if I find one. To a woman I love, if she will lie in the crook of my arm. To myself, if none of these will come to be. A story that will not only touch one’s intellect and knowledge but will cause the muscles and bowels to contract, will hover and flutter about the valves of the eyes and heart as well.
“A story, and a place of one’s own, and air and love, and two hilltops —one on which to stand and the other upon which to gaze— and two eyes for watching the heavens and waiting. Do you understand what every person needs, Yair?”
“Yes,” I answered.
A story. Not necessarily about heroism or castles or fairies or witchcraft, but not about petty matters, either. Reality provides us with more than enough pettiness. A story that contains some pain and some confession, some culture and politesse as well, and a dash of amusement and a hint of mystery And since you are no longer with me, I’ll add this as well: this is my story, and I shorten it and lengthen it, I fabricate and confess, I write “my mother” instead of “our mother,” even though I have a brother; I fall prey to temptation and conjure up conjectures and guesses. And one more thing I will tell you: you are not the central character of this story I am. Not you, but your son.
2
WE CIRCLED the monastery “Do you remember,” my mother asked, “that we visited this place when you were a little boy? A nun came out from this door and gave us cold water, and you were worried: what would happen to the glasses?”
We returned to the swings. We lingered by the memorial plaque, where above the names of the fallen someone had engraved the following: HERE THEIR LIVES DEPARTED BUT THEIR COURAGE DID NOT.
“Well put but untrue!” my mother exclaimed. “When life departs, everything departs. Love and courage and knowledge and memory You’re fifteen years old, Yair; you can already know and understand this.”
And she told the story She told of the wounded pigeon with the YES OR NO? and of the pigeon loft in the Tel Aviv zoo and of Dr. Laufer who used the feminine plural when he spoke and of the neighbor’s son who went to America to study medicine and came back and became Yordad and of Miriam the pigeon handler and of the Belgian pigeon and of the Baby’s kibbutz aunt and uncle and of his father and his stepmother and his real mother, and of the Baby himself
“This is where he was killed, and from here he sent his last pigeon before he died, and he was my boyfriend, for whom you are named.”
At first I was angry I thought that if she had not had this boyfriend and if he had not been killed, then I would not have been given his name. I would have taken after my parents, I would have received their fair curly hair and the name Benjamin, and Benjamin would not have been born because they would have had no mistakes to correct.
But when I continued pondering this, another possibility arose in my mind. Now I was angry with Benjamin because he had been born second and had given me his birthright. Had he been born first, it would have been he who looked like a criminal and who would have gotten the name of the dead boyfriend, and I would have been him: light and handsome, with the face of an angel and goldene locks. I would have stolen from kiosks and read shop signs on Ben Yehuda Street as they passed by the windows of the bus, and the names of poets engraved on the tombstones.
Meshulam accompanied us on this visit as well. He walked behind us at a distance only he could calculate. A distance whose smallness was protection and worry and whose largeness was consideration and good manners. He walked along making sure that only I could hear, that not a single word fell to the ground.
I asked, “Did you always have a pigeon of his, and did he always have a pigeon of yours?”
“Yes.”
“And you sent letters to each other.”
“Pigeongrams. When we could.”
“How many words can you fit onto such small pieces of paper?”
“You’d be surprised, Yair. Sometimes a very short note suffices. Yes and no, and yes and yes and yes, and no and yes and no.”
And she recalled what Dr. Laufer had told his pigeon handlers: that the ancient Greeks, even before the message capsule was invented, made do with tinting one of the pigeon’s wing feathers in predetermined colors that heralded good news or bad. She also said what Dr. Laufer had not: that the pigeon itself is a kind of letter. In her hovering and the fluttering of her wings, in her landing, in the heat of her body, in the prints of the fingers that held and dispatched her, in the eyes that watched her until she was seen by the person waiting for her.
She fell silent. I was already quite familiar with her silences, and I waited patiently She had long silences and short ones. She had wide ones and narrow ones. She had smiling silences and impassive ones. And then there was the quietest silence of them all, the one that began with “I can’t anymore” and has continued to this very day I remember, too, her seasonal insomnia—“From Purim to Pentecost I do not sleep”— and her daily glass of brandy and the beautiful song of farewell she played without cessation on her little gramophone: “More I would, but Death invades me; Death is now a welcome guest …”
Finally I asked her, “So it’s really true? From here he sent you a pigeon, too?”
“Dispatched, Yair. Not sent. It’s time for you to know and remember this.”
“From here he dispatched a pigeon to you?”
“Yes. His last one.”
“With a letter?”
“Yes.”
“What was written in it?”
“Nothing.”
“So what did he send you from here? A blank piece of paper?”
“No. From here he sent me you.”
And she told the story
Chapter Twenty-Two
1
CEMENT TRUSSES were poured between the beams of the roof, and cement girders around what were to become the windows and doors. Tirzah put up the inner walls and together we inaugurated the two new spaces, the very large one in which I will live and the small one that perhaps I will need one day. She installed and cemented doorposts and lintels, affixed sills to the windows, and said, It is good.
Illuz and his brother stretched tensioned light mesh in preparation for the new Ravitz ceiling. They replaced planks, set down tiles on the roof frame, sealed every opening that might tempt rats or pigeons — and Tirzah said, “It is very good!”
I felt her love for me and my love for her not
only when she touched me, not only when she called me “luvey” but also in her building of my house—the way she measured, assessed, gave instructions to the workers, the way the house she was building for me took shape. And when we ate together at the end of the day, and when she went elsewhere and I remained alone.
And sometimes her body and her scent drive me mad and I am flooded by all this love and a spirit of foolishness overtakes me. I press into her like a puppy, nudging and nestling and waggling, grunting and growling, nibbling at her flesh.
And then she laughs and says, “Iraleh …”
And I say, “What?”
And she repeats her prognosis: “You love me.”
“So?”
“You love me, I can feel it,” she says, and the tone of her voice is the tone of other women’s voices —anyway, that’s the way it seems to me; I have no way of comparing—when they say, “I love you.”
2
YOAV AND YARIV showed up suddenly as well, large and laughing. “Hello, Uncle Yair. What’ve you got to eat?”
“Hello, Double-Ys,” I said, happy to greet them. “What’s up that you decided to come visit your uncle?”
“Dad says that when you die this house is going to be ours. So we came to see the place.”
My love for them does not dull the pain I felt on the day of their birth. By chance—or not—I was at my mother’s place when my brother phoned from the hospital. I did not hear what he said, but I saw her face beam and I listened as she said, “At last I am a grandmother. Thank you, Benjamin.”
The envy that attacked me then was similar to others from the days of my childhood, and my mother was obliged to soothe me with words and ways also borrowed from that period. I shouted, “Why must you do that when I’m here? Why do you have to thank him like that when I can hear you?” And you said, “Calm down, please.” I continued: “And what’s this ‘at last I’m a grandmother’ business? Is it my fault that Liora can’t give birth to my children? That you’re not at last a grandmother thanks to me?” And you said again, “Calm down.”
A look of dissatisfaction appeared on your face, but your fingers had already found their own way and were consoling and caressing me. “Please calm down, Yair. Benjamin is my son, too.”
I did not calm down, but time did its trick. I discovered that what Yordad had said to you when he asked for your hand in marriage was correct: things can be fixed. Fixed and mended. The years passed and I learned to love my brother’s enormous boys. In some measure I even found solace in them for the two fetuses that were not born to me. Like me, the two of them are army medics, although they serve in military clinics at two different bases and are not engaged in course instruction, as I was.
It is not easy raising twins, especially with a partner like Benjamin. When Yoav and Yariv were young, Zohar would ask me to help her out, and on occasion I would take them. I have already said there is affection between Zohar and me, and a number of times I took them for several hours. When they grew older I began inviting them over for weekends. We would play, hike, read. I would tell them stories and dredge up memories.
“Did you know,” I told them, “that once there was a zoo right near here? Shall we take a walk and I’ll show exactly where?”
“Later. Let’s eat first.”
And every evening the neighbors would hear the animals. Imagine, in the middle of the city, roars and shrieks and growls. There was a pigeon loft there, too.”
“Who needs pigeons in a zoo? There are enough of them on the street, and Dad says they carry diseases.”
Their bodies inclined toward the kitchen. Their necks stretched to bring Liora’s giant refrigerator into view
“What have you got inside that thing to eat?”
“Soon Aunt Liora will be home and we’ll all eat together. In the meantime we’ll look at the albums.”
My finger moved from face to face in old wedding photos. “Who’s this?”
“Dad.”
“No. That’s his father when he was young. They looked a lot alike.”
“Who’s this?” asked Y-2.
“That’s me.”
“You don’t look like anyone, Uncle Yair.”
“I look like me, when I was a baby”
“Here’s a meat pie,” Yoav said to Yariv, pointing at Yordad’s plate.
I told them that Grandpa Yaacov did not like to stand in the line that formed around the casserole dishes and the platters. “Prepare a plate for me, please, Raya,” he would say
They laughed. “So prepare a plate for us, please, Yairi.”
I was horrified. “Where did you hear that name?”
“That’s how Dad talks to us when we come back from your place. ‘Did you have a good time at Yairi’s? What did Yairi give you to eat?’”
“That’s what he says? Yairi? Really?”
“Yes. But Mom tells him to stop, and that it’s not nice.”
“Look, there’s roast beef And ribs.”
“Then it must be a wedding of the kibbutz uncles.”
I flipped the pages. Yairi. It couldn’t be Yair or Iraleh or my brother or Uncle Yair. Of all the names, Yairi.
And now the boys were scouting about my new house, and the yard, and the view
“Very nice place,” Y-1 said.
“Cool,” concluded Y-2.
“We’ll put in a big grill here, and a wood-fired oven over there,” saidY-1.
“We’ll scarf down pizzas and steak from morning to night.”
“And baked potatoes.”
“If you don’t mind, boys, I am still alive and I have plans to live here another thirty years or so at least.”
“We can wait.”
3
SIGAL PHONED with two matters to discuss: first, Liora’s father wanted us to come to America for a family event. It would be taking place during the High Holidays and the airline tickets should be ordered well in advance. When would it be convenient for me to depart and return?
I: “There’s no need to order tickets for me. I’m not traveling to any United States.”
Sigal: “I’ll pass you through to your wife.”
Piano music in the background. Other offices have electronic music while you wait. Liora has hired Glenn Gould to play Bach for her fans.
Liora: “What’s with you, Yair? What’s your problem this time?”
I: “I have no desire to travel.”
Liora: “It’s not a question of desire, it’s a question of good manners and behavior.”
I: “I don’t like traveling and I’m busy”
Liora to me: “I want a clear answer: are you coming or not?”
I to her: “No.”
Liora hung up. Sigal came back on the line with her second matter for discussion. She apologized for the short notice, but several Dutch bird-watchers who had arrived in Israel had requested that I take them on a three-day tour. Beginning the next day, if possible.
Possible? Of course it was possible. Guiding bird-watchers was more pleasant and paid better than ferrying lecturers and actors about. I picked them up from a hotel on Nes Ziona Street in Tel Aviv, very near the Romanian restaurant that is the payback spot for bets between Benjamin and me, and that afternoon we reached the guesthouse I had reserved in the Galilee.
The owner, a tall, thin man, seemed bitter and fatigued. Years earlier he had uprooted a grove of lychee trees and built rooms for rent. For a while his business had prospered. Then later—“With all the troubles in this country”—tourists had stopped coming. “For a while,” he told me, “I was forced to rent the rooms out to couples. What can I tell you, it’s simply unpleasant. Couples married to other people would come here, you know what I mean?”
“More or less,” I answered. To myself I said, If ever I come up to the Galilee with Tirzah, I will stay in someone else’s guesthouse.
“Anyway they’ve finally fixed up the pond out at the Hula Valley Nature Reserve and they’ve been spreading corn for the cranes so that they don’t eat
the chickpeas planted in the fields. So I’m hoping that more people will come for that reason than others.”
Not only cranes. Pelicans and cormorants spend time here, and all kinds of geese and gulls and ducks and birds of prey all of them arriving at dusk for their nightly rest. The skies become spotted with spread wings and beaks calling and shrieking. The pelicans, with their tight and sturdy bodies, go down to the water assuredly, but a moment before touching down they are stricken with an amusing panic, as though they have discovered a malfunction in the landing gear. Their legs thrash and spray water and their wings—especially those of the younger birds — get tangled up. The cranes, with their long legs and outstretched necks, are not swimmers. They land in the shallowest water, first hovering like dancers hanging from strings and only then handing themselves over to gravity and plunging down into the congestion of their congregating friends, a flock that resembles a hundred of the letter kaph-sophit printed in your own handwriting.
My excited Dutch tourists stepped out of Behemoth toting binoculars and cameras. One of them, a tall, gaunt old woman, removed from her bag a drawing pad, watercolors, and brushes and sat down to paint the birds with incredible speed and precision. Her friends peered at her drawings, uttered expressions of amazement, and returned to watching the real birds. Bird-watchers constantly share their discoveries with one another by issuing short directives—name of bird, direction, distance—which change from language to language but always keep their sense of urgency At once, all heads turn, all binoculars are raised. And there is always someone who has come up with a nice catch in his spotting scope. With a gesture of the benevolent victor he invites his colleagues to view his treasure, and in no time a short line forms, polite and grateful, in front of the lens.
