by Alison Pick
“We’re new Jews,” said Zeruvabel the fiddler, his red hair flaming in the light of the gas lamp.
Dov was silent.
“You’re free to go back to the shtetl,” Zeruvabel said.
Leah jumped in then with a diatribe about the difference between pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist social revolutionaries. The latter, she said, were really only self-hating anti-Semites. The goyim Winston Churchill and Lord Balfour were better Zionists.
Shoshanna said, “Karl Marx created the internationalist utopia as a replacement for the Jewish Messiah. If ever there was a self-hating—”
But David interrupted, drawing the debate back to the matter at hand. It was a tricky business, he conceded to the group. Here on the kibbutz they did not believe in organized religion, in archaic tradition, or even—especially—in God. But they believed in the Jews’ need for a homeland, and what could be more fitting, he asked rhetorically, than marking the New Year within the first days of their arrival?
Zeruvabel moved his fingers aggressively up and down an imaginary fingerboard.
In the week that followed, the Germans and Dov set to work hammering nails into planks to make a rough approximation of tables. Until now the settlers had been sitting cross-legged on the earth to eat, and although there was something fitting about this, their skin touching the skin of the Promised Land, the coming holiday gave them motivation to scrape together some furniture. There were rickety old stacking chairs the Agency had provided, but not enough to go around, so Levi upended some old orange crates to use for seats. Ida watched him from a distance, his muscles moving smoothly under his tanned skin. It gave her a feeling she could only describe as a bellyache, although that was inadequate. Something gnawed at her now, a kind of happy sadness that filled all her days with meaning.
For her part, Ida was relieved to be freed from clearing rocks and placed in charge of the primitive laundry. This entailed building fires under enormous cauldrons of water. After only one morning, her arms were flecked with tiny blisters where sparks had flown up and burned her. Her glasses were continually fogged up from the heat. But she felt necessary, productive. Once the water was roiling, soap flakes were added. The dirty shirts were the final ingredient. She was not so much washing them as she was boiling the life out of them, sterilizing them down to their basic components. Laundry back home was to make a garment shine. Laundry here was to remove all possible contaminants.
Shirts were worn by a halutz for several days—and when they came to Ida they were filthy. After she washed them, they were reassigned. One shirt was as good as any other and they all belonged to everyone. When Ida hung the shirts on the line, they dried instantly in the blistering heat. As though they had never been wet at all.
On the eighth afternoon she saw Hannah crossing the field toward her. The older woman’s hips stretched the material of her cotton skirt; her blouse was tied in a knot at her waist, and her hair was knotted on the top of her head. They were all equals here, Ida knew, but some were more equal than others. Hannah was David’s wife, and a vision of calm and competence. Ida pulled on her braids to straighten them and brushed down her own plain skirt.
“Shalom, Ida,” Hannah said. “Ma shlomech?”
But something about Hannah’s question seemed shrouded; Ida could not discern the level of reply that was requested. Was she asking about Ida’s emotional wellbeing or was she asking whether there was enough soap for tomorrow’s laundry?
Ida smiled vaguely and made a murmur in the back of her throat.
“Did you sleep well?” Hannah asked, trying again.
Ida nodded, the smile still plastered on her face. And when Hannah said “Can I ask you a favour?” Ida didn’t hesitate.
“I’d be honoured,” she said.
The words, once uttered, sounded ridiculous, but it was too late to take them back.
Hannah flushed and handed over a bundle. It was a pile of rags, wrapped and tied in more rags. The inner knot of fabric was soaked in blood.
The thought came to Ida that Hannah had killed someone. But that, of course, was ridiculous. Hannah stood there with her eyes lowered, and when Ida didn’t speak Hannah nodded with her chin toward Ida’s vat of water.
“Oh,” Ida said dumbly. “Of course.”
Hannah wanted the rags washed. She was ashamed about the private nature of the blood that had stained them.
“Is that the favour?” she asked.
Hannah’s cheeks were pink, her jaw set. But now she looked up with a forced smile on her face. “Well, there’s another one. It’s nothing very exciting, I’m afraid. I’m organizing the Rosh Hashanah table. We have nothing, as you know.”
Her smile turned genuine, as if this was a great blessing.
“I’ve been charged with cooking a feast out of air,” Hannah added.
Ida laughed. “As Jews have been doing since the beginning of time!”
Her memories of home reconstituted themselves in her mind, like a latent sourdough starter coaxed into becoming bread. Back in Kiev her mother would be baking challah, not loaf-shaped but round as was tradition for the holiday. Little Eva would be dipping apples in honey.
There would be no apples and honey on the kibbutz, although David said they had kept bees at Kinneret, and one day they would have them here as well.
Eva and her mother would be preparing for their first High Holy Days without her father. He had been a holy man, entirely genuine in his piety. He loved his family, but his inner life turned around the synagogue like a planet circling the sun. Had he been alive, he would be busy repenting, for after Rosh Hashanah came Yom Kippur, the great Day of Atonement, when God decided who would be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. What had he done wrong to not be included?
Hannah cleared her throat and Ida looked up.
“I need tablecloths,” Hannah said. “For the meal. Or something to use as tablecloths. Just a bolt of fabric maybe? And I need a kiddish cup.” Hannah paused. She touched the hair around her face that had come free of the knot.
“Could you try to drum those things up?”
Ida nodded.
“And pamotim,” Hannah said.
Ida was quiet.
“Candlesticks,” Hannah translated into Russian, in case Ida didn’t know the Hebrew. “Although I have no idea where you’ll find them,” she added, her face apologetic.
Still Ida was silent, her jaw clenched. Then she said, “I don’t have any candlesticks!”
Hannah looked surprised at the vehemence of Ida’s reply.
“That’s okay, achoti,” she said kindly.
Later, Ida would wish she’d remembered this moment.
Later still, Ida would look back and wonder why she had acted as she did. She could equally have taken the opposite path, and everything would have turned out entirely differently.
—
As it was, Ida wasted no time. She watched Hannah retreating, hips swinging, gait relaxed as though she belonged exactly where she had found herself. When Hannah was out of view, she went straight to her tent and felt around under her straw mattress. Dust rose from beneath it. She let out three fast sneezes and wiped her nose on her arm. Then she pulled out her candlesticks; they seemed heavier than she remembered, more substantial. She folded them quickly into her old blue and green flowered kerchief. The other tents were deserted, the rest of the pioneers clearing boulders from the fields, and she walked quickly away from the encampment toward the river without thinking where she was going.
She continued along the riverbank. A sudden movement in the corner of her eye made her flinch, but it was only a fat bullfrog saving itself from the heat. Soon, the Arab village came into view. There were flowers planted beside the mud houses and children playing a game with a knobby stick and a ball in the dirt. Two men wearing long robes were bent over a broken plough. She averted her gaze and continued down their donkey path until eventually a stone well appeared. It held a kind of allure, a magnetism, made greater by the oppressiv
e heat: the promise of water. When she reached it, though, she saw that its old, rusted bucket was almost buried in sand, just the top of the handle sticking out. Nobody had used this well for years.
In the distance, she saw the silhouettes of four girls walking single file with jars balanced on their heads. She waited until they were out of sight, then looked in all directions. Yes, she was far enough; she would not be observed. There was a clump of prickly shrubs a few metres away. Ida dropped to her knees and began digging, automatically, frantically. She had forgotten to bring a shovel so she scraped the dry earth with the heel of her sandal, and then used her hands. She thought of her mother’s clean white apron and the early morning smell of bread rising. She thought of the shattered storefront window with lines spread out across the glass. She thought of Katya’s father, of the look of shame and defiance on his face when he had seen Ida watching what he was about to do. She heard again the short cry that her father had released when his body first hit the ground. And the sound of her mother crying from behind her closed bedroom door after. Ida dug faster. The earth was full of stones and her fingernails broke. Soon, though, she had a shallow hole. The candlesticks were nestled in the soft cotton of her kerchief. She would bury the whole package, and with it what had happened at home. It would be a burial with the idea of preservation at its core. Saving something for later, when it was safe to come back to. Ida smoothed the dirt in the hollow and turned to reach for the bundle; a woman stood, a metre away, watching her.
The sound Ida made was half scream and half sob. She drew up from her knees, the flat of her palm against her heart. She took a big step backward, then squinted. There was something familiar about this woman, her eyes sharp like emeralds in her hijab, and the visible part of her face brown from the wind and the sun. Ida remembered her from the day of arrival, remembered the freighted look that had passed between them.
For a moment, they regarded each other cautiously.
Then, suddenly, there was a blur of motion and the woman lunged for the candlesticks in Ida’s hands.
Instinctively, Ida pushed forward, knocking her off balance. There was a tussle of limbs and hands. For a moment, each woman held separate ends of the bundle. Ida pulled hard before wresting it back. She cradled it to her chest. Her breathing was ragged.
The other woman had taken a step away.
They eyed each other warily. Then, suddenly and decisively, Ida turned her back. She no longer cared if she was putting herself in danger; her indignation had become bigger than the instinct to protect herself. She began to walk away. The woman shouted, though, an indescribable cry, and Ida spun back toward her. She was nodding and nodding, as if her head was attached to some kind of spring. “No,” the woman said. “No.”
“No indeed,” Ida said hotly, mostly to herself. She didn’t expect an answer.
The woman was gesturing behind them, toward her village. It occurred to Ida that these were the buildings the halutzim would eventually inhabit if David got his way. But would the Arabs really go as easily as the man in Beirut had promised? This, Ida understood newly, looking at the village, was their home. The Jews needed a homeland, yes, but what right did they have to make the Arabs leave?
It took Ida a few moments to register that her opponent had willingly surrendered the prize; there was something else she was trying to communicate. The woman ran a finger under the fabric of her hijab, easing it back to reveal another bit of her face, and then hastily tugging it back down again. She said something in rapid Arabic.
Ida caught the scent of a verdant kind of sweetness, some kind of flowering shrub perhaps, its smell aloft in the heat. From somewhere behind her came the violent caw of a vulture. Again the woman spoke, this time a long stream of words, going on until Ida thought she would somehow have to stop her. She shrugged and lifted her hands to show she did not understand Arabic, had no way of translating.
“Fatima,” the woman said, and pointed at her chest.
Ida told the woman her own name.
Fatima began to speak again, and looked to see if Ida was following. Ida shook her head.
Fatima changed her approach. She nodded at the candlesticks and reached her hands out for them, but kept her eyes on Ida’s face, to show that she was not going to take them but only mimic doing so. Then she acted out walking a few steps away, cradling the pile of air in her arms. Fatima pointed again toward her village.
“Beit,” she said, and Ida understood the Arabic word for home, so similar to the Hebrew “bayit.” Fatima was showing Ida the mud house she must share with her husband and children.
Perhaps there were other wives, Ida thought. Dov had told her Arab women were forced to marry young, some of them into harems.
Now Fatima pretended to hide the candlesticks under an invisible piece of furniture. When she mimicked lifting it, Ida could almost feel the weight. Fatima was an actress of some talent.
“Ida,” Fatima said, pointing to her own chest. Fatima was Ida, now, come to retrieve her valuables. Then she was herself, giving them back to Ida willingly. And all at once Ida understood. Fatima would hide the candlesticks. She would keep them safe for Ida.
Fatima pointed to the dirty hole. “No,” she said, wrinkling her face.
Ida stood still, holding one of her braids. Then she pushed her sweaty glasses up on her nose. Her heart was still racing. She looked at Fatima’s bare feet, the dry cracks webbing her heels. She could take the bundle and find a new place to hide it, but in Fatima’s gaze she had seen a kind of recognition. The women were from different worlds, but they both understood the preciousness of an heirloom. And they both understood the need to conceal certain things.
She wrapped the kerchief more tightly around the pamotim, thinking of them in her mother’s hands when her mother had come out to the storefront to see what all the noise was about. She pictured her mother thrusting the candlesticks at her to keep them safe. Ida took a long breath and let it out slowly. Then she handed the bundle to Fatima. From her mother to her to this Arab stranger. An image flashed into her mind: a chain of women passing along a baby to keep it safe during wartime.
Fatima patted the bundle like she would pat a baby’s bottom—she had understood—and said something in Arabic that Ida did not understand. But Fatima clearly understood this too. There were no more words that could be shared between them.
Fatima pointed again to her house, jabbing with her forefinger. This is where you can find me, her gesture said.
Ida nodded. She lifted her hand goodbye.
She hesitated.
“Ma’sallam,” she said finally.
She turned to leave, both relieved and bereft.
—
Later, when the halutzim were gathering for dinner, they heard the sound of hoofbeats. The galloping grew louder and a wagon drew into the yard, a cloud of dust trailing behind it for almost a kilometre. “The right horse is pulling harder than the left,” Zeruvabel commented.
Shoshanna said, “The rider is leaning toward the left.”
The rider was a man of maybe thirty-five—an old man, thought Ida. He had a wide face and broad nostrils; he wore a straw hat. A woman and child sat upright beside him, staring straight ahead, their hands folded in their laps. The woman’s face was thin and pinched. The man tied the horses and hopped down from the wagon. His face was red with the effort of riding so quickly. Word spread through the crowd that he had come from Kinneret. He was looking for Hannah.
A few moments later, Hannah came speed-walking from the kitchen, one hand making little flapping motions while the other held a bundle. Even from across the yard, Ida could see the rapid blinking that must have been the holding back of tears. Hannah hoisted her bundle onto the back of the wagon, then the old man extended his hand and helped her up. Ida waited for David to appear, for their little girl to come running for her mother. But neither did, and the man hopped up himself behind the horses. He slapped the reins. They were gone.
—
The prep
arations for the High Holy Days were miraculously completed on time. Before she left, Hannah had succeeded in finding tablecloths. It was not Ida who had provided them in the end, but Shoshanna, who had stitched together leftover scraps of the shirt material.
The candlesticks on the table—Ida didn’t know where they had come from—were cheap and made out of tin.
The halutzim arrived slowly for the meal, some with grass in their hair, the knees of their pants stained bronze from the day’s labour. Shoshanna passed a rag to one of the twins and scolded him like a mother, “Wipe the shmutz off your face.”
The eggplant was the same as at every other meal, but a wagon had been sent to Tiberias for flour and out of it an enormous braided challah had been made. It was brushed with a precious egg, David told them, traded from a Sephardim in a flowing blue gown who spoke a strange Judaeo-Spanish called Ladino. Leah had received a package from her family, who lived near the Dead Sea: it contained newspaper twists of the region’s famous rough salt. She distributed these along the length of the table for the halutzim to dip their challah into.
David, as patriarch, recited the prayers, but Ida could see he was doing so out of obligation rather than reverence.
In the morning, chores resumed as usual. Yom Kippur was coming, when work was forbidden, but the fields needed to be cleared of rocks so that ploughing and planting could begin. Ida was worried they would work instead of observing the Day of Atonement. The Agency had finally delivered on their promise of a tractor, and a large crowd of Arab villagers arrived to observe how it worked, an iron horse with a blade that cut into the land in the place of human hands. Ida scanned the gathering for Fatima but did not see her.
—
The next day, at lunch, Levi brought his plate over and sat down beside her. “Eggplant,” he said.
“Is it?” she asked.
“Isn’t it?” he asked.
“It’s chicken,” she answered.
It was a joke they all made use of, a joke that ran like a golden thread through the whole camp. It encompassed both longing for what they’d left behind, and collective belief in the ability of willpower to create something new. Eggplant? Imagine it’s a chicken. Soon enough it will be walking around clucking and you’ll have to cut its head off to eat it.
