The number of letters he writes when you are away, detailing each battle in his “cold war” against “those in power” and “their lies”! How pale their faces are when, against all odds, he manages to be elected head of the Yvel, thus speaking for the entire village.
— Like Mephistopheles before the cross in Faust!
Shmuel never lacks for the right words to celebrate his victories.
Moshav? Co-op? Sharing? Bah! After you and Dita are born, your father builds a fence around our farm, the only one in the whole moshav with a padlocked gate. A matter of principle! Later, when a surveyor runs a line of barbed wire across our field to mark the portion to be expropriated, I cut the wire myself. Oh, yes, if you stand next to the sprinkler, you can expect to get wet.
I’m the one who has to do the dirty work, who is at the receiving end of hostile looks after one of your father’s tirades. I am the one who must re-establish communications when Shmuel starts another one of his brawls. He gallivants all over the country, I rarely leave the village. When they’re not calling me the Mongolian, because of my slanted eyes, they call me the Spartan. My days are hard, his are …
Oh. I can’t breathe …
Wait, son, wait, let me get my breath back. Why have you come to me? Why are you stirring up this pain? Why? Let’s sit down by the river. I need a drink of water.
Ah … That’s better.
In Kfar Malal, I’m a prisoner. Your father, despite all his certitudes, is he really happy? Who knows? He manages a number of orchards besides our own. These provide him with an excuse to roam all over the territory, to escape the tension that poisons our daily lives. Breeding livestock, ploughing, working the farm — as much as he loves all of this, it’s not good for his frail constitution. He’s at war with himself, but too proud to admit it. What? Admit that he misses the opera or walking among the monuments and relics of Tiflis? Never! On those infrequent evenings when friends drop by with their instruments to accompany him on the violin, nostalgia washes over his face, his tired body leaps to life, and his tenor’s voice resounds.
Your father is a painter too — do you remember the landscapes he paints? No, Arik, not even that? Too bad. During his sixteen-hour days, he always finds a moment to slip away and paint. This split between man and peasant, or the Spartan woman and her medical calling, is sometimes unbearable. We’re the first to have a radio. We follow the news of scientific advances and, of course, political events such as the rise of Stalin and the Nazis. Our interest in whatever is going on beyond the borders of the co-op, or in the country yet to be built, perplexes the other moshavniks. When we do not strike them as disagreeable, they consider us simply bizarre. The fact that we live on the same moshav makes no difference. On the contrary. It underscores our differences even more.
If the neighbours plant oranges and lemons, we plant clementines and avocadoes. After the harvest, our fruit isn’t conveyed with the rest, isn’t sold with the rest, or even packed the same way. Shmuel insists on beauty.
— The eye eats before the stomach.
That’s the only Arabic proverb he allows himself to repeat. He insists we pack the clementines with their green leaves. Eventually everyone does it that way, but at the time he’s the only one to do so and it drives the others crazy.
When it comes to voting on one thing or another, Shmuel always opposes the majority stance — and I vote with him, of course. And when he loses an argument at the Council, he simply ignores the resolution and does what he wants! Over time, a wall rises between us and the other moshavniks. Arguments and betrayals are constant. Virtually all my days begin this way, fixing crockery broken by your father, when I’m not breaking it myself. The hatred of our supposed allies and compatriots, added to that of the Arabs around us. How do you think I ended up with this thick skin for a body?
— We have to do this today, before tomorrow, we must!
We have to do this, we have to do that! With Shmuel, everything is imperative, everything is a matter of principle. And what about the damage caused by these principles of his, eh, Arik? You have suffered so much, my poor boy, from his allergy to diplomacy. I watch you from the window, arguing with the neighbour children. They spit in your face when they speak of me or your father. Never invite you to their homes. Never reply to your invitations. Shmuel lectures you when you come home with a black eye. I watch from afar as you fight back the tears. I sense everything you wish you could say. Why do they hate us, Papachka? Why? Why!
I should have helped you, taken you into my arms, given you a few hugs and told you what I was feeling inside, but I was never able to do that. I lacked the courage. Instead of coming to you, I hide in the bedroom and write letters — to my friends, to my loved ones, to the life I left behind and all my abandoned happiness. I lock myself away instead of opening myself up to you. Oh, my dear boy, synulya … With just a little love, perhaps you wouldn’t have become such a glutton, starved for war and bloodshed. You might have studied history or agronomy instead of taking up a military career. You’re more than the bulldozer that only knows how to destroy, a manipulator who pulls the strings, a seeker of vengeance who kills without remorse. How I loved unexpectedly finding you lying in the cornfield, smiling at the nightingales, or wiping away the tears from your eyes at the birth of a lamb. What happened to us, my son? When did we become such effective warmongers?
The river flows and flows … how pure the water is … I miss the days when I could lie down nearby, sleep under the birches without being haunted by ghosts.
At night I hear the sound of choirs singing mass from deep in the woods, of church bells ringing at noon, of hymns in the synagogue. Or is it the ululation of owls? As others nap, I take hot baths in Tiflis’s Muslim Quarter. The mosque of the Azeris calls me to prayer. A welcome and a reproach. Where are you, Vera? Why did you leave us? Why are you angry with us?
The snow has stopped falling.
Here we are at the border. Can you feel the warm air coming from across the river? Do you recognize the tang of salt? Let’s go back, quickly, I’m feeling nauseous. What are you waiting for, Arik? Come on! Follow me. The road to Galevencici is over here.
Do you want to leave the forest? Go back to Kfar Malal? Why on earth? They hate us there, and I don’t just mean the Arabs, though God knows they have reason enough. I’m talking about the other moshavniks. No one likes us, Arik. No one! Not the Arabs. Not the Jews on the moshav. Because of your father and his arrogance. Because of me and my disdain for the vulgar settlers jabbering away in Yiddish and mocking my Russian. Oh yes, they hate us, Arik, Jews and Arabs alike!
You know, Arik, that during all those years we spent organizing a militia to defend our farms, no one ever asked why peasants, brown-skinned like us, who ploughed their land the same way as us, who harvested fruit and raised livestock the way we did, why they were so angry with us. On whose land were we living, exactly? How did we acquire it? And your father, fobbing me off with his theories:
— Ha-aretz, ba’aretz, he kept saying over and over, like a parrot.
That is his only answer to your awkward questions, yours and Dita’s. Truths only children are able to express. He takes a deep breath and slowly, deliberately, explains:
— We Jews have a divine right to live “on the land” … ha’aretz. Arabs are entirely welcome to live here “in the land” … ba’aretz … but no, they have no right to the land. We accommodate them, even grant them rights, but only one people can have dominion over the land, and that’s us, children. Ha’aretz!
Oh, how baffled are your faces! Especially when you ask what point there is in buying the land if we already own it? Well, to say we have bought it and laugh at the idiot Arab peasants who understand nothing of the transactions between the rich and the settlers, between imperialist Turks and English, between, between, between …
I pity them. For their ignorance, for their innocence. When they finally wake up a
nd start fighting back, you know what? I pity them even more. Just as you’d pity a dying man who swings his fists at nothing. You watch him until he exhausts himself, waiting for him to fall. Of course they detest us, and I detest them, too, our Arab neighbours, even though all my life all I’ve ever wanted was to love and be loved in return. They deserve everything that has happened to them because we’re more intelligent, stronger, craftier, more desperate. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Go on, Arik! Go to Kfar Malal! You’ll see how they too mock us. But I’m staying here. I’ve been looking for myself these last eighteen years and what have I found? Rottenness. I have some weeding to do.
What’s that expression I see? Remorse? Regret? Say something. Say …
— I’m sorry, Mamachka, so sorry that you’ve wasted your life for my father’s sake, for mine, for my sister’s — for an idea that causes such suffering to so many people, and most of all to you.
But you’re leaving all the same, aren’t you? For Kfar Malal, to Israel, to your cherished country? Well, you’re going alone. You’ll not take me into exile as your father did. Go! Become what that country makes of everyone who lives there: an assassin, begrudging, miserable. Every man and woman living there has blood on their hands. From defending themselves, from buying the peace, from their own imposition. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: betray, hate, kill. In order to exist.
The first lesson in medicine: Primum non nocere. First and foremost, do no harm. Those are the only Latin words I know, the only words that matter, and I have betrayed them!
When regret gnaws at me, I lie even to myself: I say, no, Vera, you’re one of the Chosen People, you were selected to realize the great dream. You’re right, Vera, you’re always right. Stop worrying. Sleep, be calm.
Forget who you were.
Forget the little girl who counts the stars.
Forget the forest pines.
Forget your father’s axe.
Forget the snow.
Forget Galevencici.
Forget Tiflis.
Forget medicine.
Forget the walks.
Forget the solitude.
Forget the arguments.
Forget the clementines.
Forget Shmuel.
Forget Dita.
Forget Arik.
Forget war.
Forget victory.
Forget the land.
Forget ha’aretz.
Forget ba’aretz.
Ha’aretz.
Ba’aretz.
Ha’aretz.
Ba’aretz.
Ha’a — what’s that sound!
Quick, quick, the rifle! Where is it, where’s my rifle?
Shadows in the woods.
They’re coming!
Who … who are you?
Speak! Speak up or I’ll put a bullet in your head!
Who are you? Answer me!
No! Don’t come any closer!
Stay back, you ghoul! Stay back or I’ll shoot, you dirty Arab!
This is my forest, my forest!
Get out of here!
Get out! Get out! Get out!
In the river! In the river!
I’ll shoot! I’ll shoot! I’ll shoot!
ARIK
The piano sings a melancholy tune. The notes float in the air. Arik would reach for the melody if only …
Every time, it’s the same. He hears the music. Then, voices to which he’s never quite able to attach a name: the doctor giving advice, the sing-song of the nurse, the physiotherapist using simple words to explain the exercises. The voices rise and fall, in and out of his consciousness. And then the music returns. Inviting, throwing him a lifeline. But the thread of the melody escapes him.
— What are you doing? a voice asks.
— Just lowering the volume a bit.
— No, don’t touch the music.
— Gilad, it’s the third time this piece has played, Uri says. I know it’s Mozart, but even Arik must be tired of it by now.
He lowers the volume.
No. Leave it! Leave it!
The music recedes into the mist. Specks of light and shade. The darker spots dance. Become more defined. Resemble eyes. Mouths.
They’re speaking to me. Who is it?
The hospital room takes shape. Corners, walls. The grey light of the ceiling, the yellow lampshade of the light on the side table. It illuminates a face at the bedside.
— Arik, it’s Uri. Can you hear me? Come on, old friend, when are you going to end this strike of yours? Those cretins in the Knesset are really screwing things up in your absence.
Uri.
Arik would like to sit up. To hold this man talking to him like a brother in his arms. Tell him: I’m here.
A pain in his chest. Images.
Vera. The forest. Snow. The rifle.
She assassinated me! My mother shot me in the chest!
— Gilad! Your father’s eyelids are flickering!
A tear runs from the corner of Arik’s eye. A hand strokes his left cheek, wipes away the tear. Gilad emerges from the mist.
— Don’t worry, Aba. You’re fine. You’re doing great.
Gilad gives him news of his health, as though talking about a friend who lives far away. Tenderly, he sponges his father’s forehead with a warm cloth as he utters the terrifying words. Heart attack. Hemorrhage. Coma. Surgery.
— I’m calling the nurse.
— Thanks, Uri. Ask for the Nightingale.
— Who?
— They’ll know who you mean.
— Okay. Then I’ll have to leave, I’m late for a meeting. If he wakes up—
— I’ll let you know right away. Don’t worry.
Since the stroke, his plunge into unconsciousness, the innumerable operations, Arik’s condition is relatively stable. He even shows signs of life. He opens his eyes when he hears Gilad’s voice. His expression is vague, but Gilad is certain his father recognizes him.
A few weeks earlier, Gilad surprised a nurse sitting by his father’s bed with a book in her hands.
— What are you reading to him?
— The memoir of a soldier in the 1948 War.
— You mean the War of Independence. My father was almost killed in it.
— He’s not dead.
— You call this being alive?
— He’s somewhere else.
— Will he be the same man he was if he ever wakes up?
— Miracles are possible.
Delicate features, her blonde hair in a ponytail, skin the colour of straw. A woman of ageless, evanescent beauty.
She places the book atop a pile of others.
— Hang on. Can I see it?
— If you like.
A bilingual edition. Arabic and Hebrew. The author, S. Yizhar, a Jew. The title, Khirbet Khizeh, is the name of an Arab village.
— Which language are you reading it in?
— Does it matter?
And she leaves.
We nicknamed her the Nightingale, one of the doctors would later tell him.
— Why is that?
An embarrassed pause.
— She, uh, looks after the serious cases.
— The Nightingale — ah, like Florence Nightingale. I get it.
— She’s the one who insisted we turn on the television. She even gave the assistant a list of your father’s favourite programs.
How would she know his favourite programs? What did it matter? The doctors noticed a reaction. Gilad is no longer the only one who believes that Arik remains present, maybe even screaming at them from within his inert body.
The hemorrhage had terrible complications, but his organs are intact. Neurologists, resuscitators, physiologis
ts, massage therapists, kinesiotherapists; a whole team experiments with different treatments and therapies. Some stimulate his brain with electric shocks, others place his favourite food under his nose — grilled stuffed fish, Hungarian dumplings soaked in butter, pâtés of all sorts and flavours. Meals for which Lily had a gift and that Arik loved so much. The slightest movement of the “Sleeping Giant” — the name the hospital staff have given him — is scrutinized and analyzed.
When, a few months after Arik’s coma, war breaks out in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, the Nightingale takes issue with the doctors worried about the effect violent images of the fighting might have on him. They recommend documentaries about nature, classical music — in particular, Mozart, his favourite composer. More so, his beloved wife Lily’s.
— The nurse is right, says Gilad. Aba would be furious if we kept him from following the news.
Lily, Gilad’s mother, is the one who loves music and art. It was she who introduced Arik to the pleasure of listening to Mozart. Until then, only war excited him. But thanks to Lily, he becomes reacquainted with the pleasures of his childhood: his father playing the violin in the evenings, or humming a few lines of opera on their way to the market.
On Saturdays, Gilad’s wife Inbal and their children visit Arik. Inbal brings flowers picked on Sycamore Farm. A refuge. The place where Arik indulged his earliest passions: agriculture and animal husbandry. He and Lily spent the most beautiful years of their lives on this farm bordering on the Negev. Inbal sets the bouquet of anemones in a vase across from the bed. The children replace the family photographs in the room with alternate ones. Arik shouldn’t have to stare at the same faces week after week.
Two of the photographs have never left the Sycamore Farm living room — one of Vera standing in sunlight, her face tanned and her white hair slightly lifted by the wind, and one of Lily in jeans, standing beside a wooden fence with horses grazing in the background.
— I have a surprise for you, Aba.
Gilad shows him the photographs of his mother and grandmother. Suddenly, a stir. Is Arik moving a finger? His eyes glimmer. The doctor hurries into the room.
I Am Ariel Sharon Page 4
