by Alison Pick
“Why not?” one of the Germans asked, disdainfully.
“There is a part missing,” David said.
“We can make it from our bare hands!” That was one of the youngest men, barely sixteen. A boy, really, thought Ida. With a boy’s enthusiasm.
David nodded benignly, indulging.
“We will have to find a way to purchase a new part,” he said, gracing them with the answer he had been seeking.
“The Agency?” the youngster asked.
“Eventually,” David said. “But they don’t have the funds at the moment.”
So far, Ida noticed, he had said nothing about the medical emergency unfolding alongside the mechanical one, the scalding of Dov that Sarah had referred to. Ida thought he would address this next, but David only repeated himself. “We will have to find a way to purchase the missing part.” He cleared his throat for emphasis.
“I have twenty lira,” the same boy called out. This was equivalent to the change in a child’s piggy bank, and everyone laughed except David.
“It’s a good point,” he said.
He let his approval hang in the air for several long moments.
“Does anyone have any money? Or anything we could sell?”
Ida saw immediately what David was doing. The halutzim had already been asked to turn in their personal belongings. But he was offering them another opportunity to come forward with anything outstanding. He was telling them implicitly that he would not fault them for not having done so already.
Ida pictured her heavy silver candlesticks. This was a desperate situation, David was saying. And also, a chance to make things new.
—
Levi was overcome by another round of convulsions and Ida stayed by his side, touching his forehead with a cool cloth, dipping it back in the pail of water and wringing it out. He still seemed not to know she was there. David had delivered on his promise and pumped Levi full of quinine, but if it was working the results were not yet visible. The words of the halutz rang in Ida’s ears. Died from the kadachat.
Eventually she was forced to leave him; night was falling and she had neglected her work. There was a last load of laundry waiting to be dealt with before she slept. As she was hanging shirts on the line with wooden pins, one of the Germans approached her. “May I help you?” he asked.
Ida eyed him warily. She had given up trying to tell which twin was which.
“No thank you,” she said.
“Hard work in the trenches today,” he said, and he waggled his fingers to show her the mud caked under his fingernails. There was something effeminate in the gesture, something fey, despite the size of his knuckles and the cracks that snaked across his skin.
“Unfortunate about the tractor,” he said idly.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“A German machine would not have broken,” he said.
He turned toward her basket of damp shirts, extracted one, and hung it on the line.
“I’m fine,” Ida said.
“It’s no problem,” the German said.
The wooden pin clamped down on the fabric like teeth.
She looked at the German. There was something else he wanted to say. He had hooked his thumbs beneath his suspenders, taking the posture of a farmer, which was oddly incongruous with his perfectly polished shoes.
“You turned in your candlesticks?” he asked finally.
Ida swallowed.
The German raised his eyebrows, but his incredulousness was feigned.
She clenched her teeth, turned her back and selected a wooden pin from her wicker basket. The shirt she drew up was enormous; there was nobody on the kibbutz it would fit.
The air was still so hot that the shirt was almost dry before she got it to the line.
“Well,” the German said. “Well, well.”
From across the yard came the sound of one of the donkeys braying. They both turned their heads. Shoshanna was lifting the leather harness and rubbing a wound beneath it with salve. Beyond her was the infirmary, and Ida pictured Levi laying there, his own skin sore and hot, his eyelids fluttering in his sleep.
“You have forsaken the group for your own benefit,” the German said.
“Hardly,” Ida snapped, and then wished she hadn’t spoken, for in her answer was a tacit acknowledgement.
“Levi is quite sick,” the German said, taking another approach. His eyes drifted in the direction of the infirmary, then back to Ida’s face to gauge her reaction.
She kept her gaze steady, but the German must have detected a trace of fear, because he asked, “What would Levi think if he knew what you’d done?”
She turned away and adjusted a wooden pin. She would not give him the satisfaction of an answer. But he had seen her weak spot. He held it to his chest like an ace.
“Samuel,” Ida said, reprimand in her voice, like an adult trying to shame a child.
But the German only smirked. “I’m Selig,” he said. His smirk broke into a full smile.
“You can’t tell us apart,” he marvelled, and she saw he had settled on a way to use this to his advantage.
“I suppose you could give the candlesticks to David now,” he said. “But that would be a shame.”
He bit his lip, considering.
“They’re very beautiful,” he added.
Ida tried not to picture the candlesticks, as though by banishing them from her mind she could banish them from his too. But the more she tried to ignore them the more they made themselves known to her, with Fatima’s face beside them.
She saw them in her mother’s hands.
She saw her father’s torso bent at an odd angle, a pool of blood spreading out around him on the floor.
The German lifted his suspender and snapped it against his shirt.
He said, “You could give them to David, but I’d rather you give them to me.”
Ida looked at him. “Pardon?”
“You heard what I said.”
“My belongings are not your concern,” she answered.
“Oh, but they are. Haven’t you heard? We’re all a family here.”
She shut her eyes tightly, as if to make him disappear.
“There are two of them,” he said.
“Two what?”
“What do you think? Candlesticks. One for each of us.”
He snapped the suspender again.
“Otherwise?” she asked.
And he said, as though it had just occurred to him, “Otherwise I will tell everyone what you’ve done.”
—
Later, of course, Ida would doubt herself. I go back and watch her reconsider. Could she have made a different choice? Was the German—Selig? Samuel?—calling her bluff? But the thought of being revealed as selfish was more than she could tolerate. To favour herself at the expense of the group. What would David think? and Hannah? Not to mention the first man she had ever loved, who was close to death in the sick house. The man who had told her he felt as strongly for her as he did for Eretz Yisrael, and the other way around. From where I am now I can see what held her back. She was worried about what Levi would say.
CHAPTER 5
THE FOLLOWING MORNING DAVID was there when Ida came out of her tent. His hands were clasped behind his back. It seemed that he had been waiting, perhaps for a long time, a shy suitor afraid to make his presence known. His little daughter was hiding behind him, her hands poking out on either side of his waist. David looked surprised to see Ida, as though he had been expecting, or hoping, to see someone else, but he forged ahead.
“I need to ask you a favour,” he said.
The last time they had spoken, Ida had petitioned David for a day of observance—and thus no work—on Yom Kippur. For Levi’s sake. David had soundly rejected her. But his voice now was different; from the repentant cast of his eyes, Ida understood that the favour was a personal one.
He extracted the pencil tucked over his ear, then used its tip to dig into his curls and scratch at the back of his scalp. �
�Would you watch Ruth for a few hours?” he asked Ida, reaching behind his back to tickle his daughter.
Any other request, Ida knew, would have been phrased in the form of an instruction—an instruction phrased to make the listener think they had come up with it on their own, but an instruction nevertheless. This, however, was a genuine question.
“Of course,” she said immediately. “I’d be happy to.”
Beyond David, storm clouds were amassing on the horizon, dense, high castles of purple and blue. The air smelled wet. Ruth belonged to this land in the same way the clouds did, and the day birds and the night birds and the soft, lithe gazelles. She did not need “watching.” But Ida remembered how David had gone to Tiberias to fetch the quinine for Levi. She owed him.
Besides, she missed Eva in a way that made her arms ache for want of hugging her. Ruth was younger than Eva, but only slightly.
Ida crouched down. She peered behind David to where the child was clinging to his back. “Shalom, Ruth,” she said.
The child’s wild black curls were identical to her father’s, as though someone had snipped off a few of his locks and affixed them with glue to the top of his daughter’s head.
“Have you seen my doll?” the girl asked.
“Oh no. Is she missing?”
Ruth nodded.
Ida remembered the doll from the first day, but still she asked, “What does she look like?”
Ruth’s face lit up. “She’s made of a puffy.”
“A pillow,” her father corrected.
“She has a headscarf that turns into a kippah,” Ruth said, and added, “she’s so pretty.”
In the distance came the sound of someone shaking a tambourine.
A look of sadness came over Ruth’s face. “My doll belonged to my friend, Sakina,” she said.
David shifted and cleared his throat loudly, as if to distract Ruth.
Ida said, “What’s your doll’s name?”
“Salam,” Ruth said, without meeting her eye.
Ida reached for Ruth’s hand.
“Thank you,” David said to Ida. He turned to leave but Ruth remained stuck to his backside, her face buried in his linen shirt. He tried to pry her fingers open one by one, but she was clinging too tightly.
“Look, bubi,” David said. “Ida is your friend.”
Ruth let out a small mewl of protest.
David pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows at Ida. The gesture said, You’re the woman here. Do something.
“I have an idea,” Ida said, her mind going again to Eva, who could be convinced into most things if she was told it was a secret. “Would you like to go on a special adventure with me?”
Ruth poked her head around the corner of David’s hip. She looked at Ida.
Ida said, “You can’t tell anyone.”
Ruth’s eyes widened.
“You have to promise,” Ida said.
Tears came suddenly to the little girl’s eyes. “I don’t want to go,” she said.
But a sound of frustration came from her father’s throat and Ruth reached out for Ida’s extended hand. She knew she had no other option. She did not look back at David—Ida could see she was bracing herself for the separation, pretending she was not being abandoned.
The little palm was sweaty in Ida’s and so small she could have crushed it with one squeeze. Ida waved goodbye to David over her shoulder, without turning to look back. She talked to Ruth in a gentle voice, a steady stream of words like she was soothing a skittish pony.
“Here’s the cook tent,” she said, “where someone is frying eggplant. We only have a propane stove but one day we will have a real oven. And here is the garden with all the rakes and hoes—one day it will grow all our vegetables.”
She was drawing a picture of the kibbutz of tomorrow in the girl’s mind, but it occurred to her that Ruth was the one who could properly imagine a functioning commune, having been born at Kinneret. Perhaps Ida was painting this picture for herself.
“Here’s Trotsky!” Ida said. The donkey hung its head over the newly built fence. The smell of sawdust still hung in the air, and wood chips coated the ground. A work sheet had been posted on it, hung by a single nail.
“Do you think he’d like some clover?” Ida asked.
Ruth nodded, and they stopped to feed Trotsky, his floppy black lips widening to reveal the pink gums and cracked yellow teeth. The sound of them grinding together made Ida wince. Ruth made her own sideways chewing motion, imitating the beast, and rubbed the smooth flank. Trotsky accepted the touch. Ida and Ruth continued walking, holding hands, through the maze of tents and past the edge of the field where some of the workers were stopping for their noonday meal. The break would be brief; there was a push now to plant before the heavy rains.
Beyond them, the plot of cleared land shimmered, the dark, neat square in stark contrast to the thistles and brambles that surrounded it. Yashka and Zeruvabel wrestled with a final boulder, attempting to pry it from the earth with a long bar of steel. Saul examined the plough, looking first at the handles, then at the blades, checking that all was in working order. The seeds waited in a burlap sack, glistening; their promise would soon be revealed.
Shoshanna, who had made it known that when there were children she would be the teacher, looked up from the water tap and waved.
Ida liked that the comrades were seeing her with Ruth. It was as if she had been charged with something special. She longed, suddenly and violently, for Levi to be well again so he could join them. Perhaps he could walk on the other side of Ruth, holding her other hand, like they were, the three of them, a little family.
As though she had heard Ida’s inner thought, Ruth said sharply, “I want my Imma!”
“Where has she gone?” Ida asked, picturing the wagon galloping from the yard with Hannah’s knot of hair bouncing wildly on the top of her head. She hoped she might get some information out of the girl, but Ruth only clenched her jaw, her bottom lip trembling.
“I want to see her,” Ruth said.
“You will. Later,” Ida said. “But first we have to have our adventure.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
They passed the laundry, the big vat where Ida toiled all day, and she thought of a game that she played with Eva at home. She dumped a basket of fresh laundry over top of her sister’s small body, pawed through the clothes pretending she was lost, and then feigned delight when she found her. But Ruth was restless, and on the verge of tears again, so Ida scooped her up and lifted her onto her shoulders. This cheered the girl up; Ruth took Ida’s braids in her hands like they were reins. “Giddy-up,” she said.
The child was surprisingly heavy, given that her limbs were spindly and she looked half starved.
Ida walked quickly and soon reached the donkey path. The grass was dry as straw; she heard crickets and a sound like bellows being pumped. They passed the old well. Ida saw the place where she had begun to dig her burial site for the candlesticks, a dent of earth torn up and dark, as though there had been some kind of scuffle. She kept going toward the Arab houses. A group of children were playing marbles in the dirt. A baby toddled toward them, his bottom bare; he started to pee, and kept toddling, the fountain of urine spouting out in front of him. Ruth tightened her grip on Ida’s head. Perhaps, Ida thought, the girl had not known there were other houses at all, and other people with dark brown eyes and skin like caramel. But Ruth leaned over her head and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, I know Arabs. They’re kind.”
And the children! How long had it been since Ruth had someone to play with? Ida felt Ruth shift and wriggle on her shoulders; Ida bent her knees and braced herself and lifted her down. Ruth looked up at her through her long lashes, asking the silent question. Ida nodded her consent and Ruth ran toward the children. She hesitated at the edge of the circle, but when Ida nodded again, she joined in.
Ida took her moment. She walked purposefully toward Fatima’s house, the one
with the flaked wooden shutters and a thin white sheet in place of a door. Heat rose off the baked earth in waves. She pushed the fabric to the side—up close she could see it had once borne a pattern of stripes that had faded almost completely in the sun—and peered into the hut. There was a dull samovar on a rickety table, the cups around it arranged for tea. Fatima was crouched over a wicker basket, doing something Ida could not see. She raised her head, though, as if she had been expecting a visitor. Her eyes were even brighter than Ida remembered. The women exchanged a nod. Fatima rose slowly, her robe swaying with the movement, a hand on her lower back. Ida saw she was pregnant.
The sun slanted through the wooden slats and fell on the floor in hot white lines. In a dusty corner another child tried to pull a crumpled rag off a hook on the wall. Behind this, the mukhtar with the scar on his cheek observed from a chair. Ida remembered him from the day of their arrival, the stand-off between him and David. Then he had seemed threatening, but now he looked only tired and old.
Ida turned to leave but Fatima caught her eye, nodding to assure her it was okay.
One side of the mud hut stood in for the kitchen; there were some dry chickpeas in a chipped blue bowl, cheese in a mesh cloth, and a bundle of herbs tied with a string on the counter. Fatima moved toward it, and for a moment Ida thought she was going to give her a chunk of the cheese. Her stomach growled. But instead Fatima drew out an old woven box from under the counter. She rummaged in it and came out with Ida’s bundle. It was still wrapped in the kerchief and tied neatly with a measure of rope. She held it close to her body, keeping Ida’s gaze.
The sight of the pamotim hidden in the cloth brought sharp tears to Ida’s eyes. She imagined her mother’s horror if she knew what Ida had done. Ida reached out her hands in a gesture of supplication, asking for her belongings back, but Fatima stood her ground. And then, all at once, Ida understood. Fatima wanted acknowledgement. She wanted Ida to admit she was trustworthy.
“Thank you,” Ida said, and whether or not Fatima knew the words themselves, the meaning in Ida’s voice was clear. Fatima nodded, and spoke in Arabic. Then she passed the bundle to her solemnly, honouring her vow.
