Levin with a suspicious look at the three ragged young men weeding grapevines with dizzying speed.
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ she said. ‘But we can’t put it off much longer. It will be one of those three.’
‘They’re hooligans. They’ll make you cook for them, darn their socks, do their washing.’
‘We have a constitution,’ said Feyge.
‘They’ll turn you into their charwoman. You won’t be the first girl who came here as a pioneer and ended up buried in the communal kitchen.’
‘But they’ll keep me laughing,’ said Grandmother Feyge. ‘And I’ll get to know the land through them.’
‘And no one can say,’ said Shlomo Levin with a catch in his throat, ‘no one can say that Ya’akov Mirkin did not help her get to know the land.’
By now, long years after her death, he had forgiven Grandfather, even helping him with the farm work and playing draughts with him. Twice a year, though, on the anniversary of his arrival from Russia and on that of his sister’s death, he visited her grave ‘so that I can have a quiet place for an hour or two to hate all the big shots and smart alecks’.
He followed them to the colonies of Judea, to the experimental farms, to the Jordan and the Yavne’el valleys. Grandfather told me how they had danced, hungered, drained swamps, quarried rock, ploughed fields, and hiked together through the Galilee and the Golan.
‘We had no Busquilla or Zis to bring us mail in those days. Do you know how we got letters from Russia?’
‘How?’
‘Liberson had some friends who were pelicans. They brought them.’
I opened an incredulous mouth, into which Grandfather stuck a hard toothbrush smeared with acrid paste and began to scrub my gums.
‘Have you ever seen the bill of a pelican?’
‘Ah?’ I gargled.
‘It comes with a sack. Now rinse your mouth. The pelicans put the mail there, and on their way to Africa they stopped to bring us letters and regards.’
Pinness had no use for such stories. ‘This Valley and the coastal plain aren’t even on the pelicans’ migration route,’ he said to Grandfather. ‘Why fill the boy’s head with such nonsense?’
But Grandfather, Liberson, and Tsirkin didn’t obey Pinness’s laws of nature. Mounted on hoes, they flew over poisonous swamps and blazed trails through a rank cover of rushes and crabgrass while the light, fragrant cloud of Feyge’s dress draped their faces with thin veils of devotion. I saw them airborne like groundsel seeds, white splotches against the drab landscape. Below them ran Levin, shouting at Feyge to come down.
‘Not one of them dared lay a hand on your grandmother,’ Pinness told me. ‘They just romanced her with their pranks and silly jokes, making her laugh until their sweet blood built up her resistance against malaria and depression.’
They slung stones like shepherd boys, sang in Russian to the waterfowl that arrived each autumn from the delta of the Don, and bathed but twice a month. All night they danced barefoot, and with the break of dawn they walked across the country. ‘They could work a whole week on no more food than five oranges,’ I told my cousin Uri.
But my uncle Avraham’s twins Yosi and Uri were not impressed by these tales.
‘That’s nothing,’ said Uri. ‘They forgot to tell you how Liberson streaked naked across the Sea of Galilee in Feyge’s honour, how Tsirkin played the mandolin for her all night on the shore, and how three giant Saint Peter’s fish jumped out of the water in the morning and landed bewitched at her feet, hopping on their spiny fins while Grandfather skimmed pebbles across the water to the other side of the lake.’
To be on the safe side, I asked Meshulam for his opinion. He knew of no source, he replied, ‘that could authenticate the more fantastic stories about the Workingman’s Circle.’
Meshulam had no sense of perspective. Pinness explainedto me that this happened to people who remembered other people’s memories. In
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ she said. ‘But we can’t put it off much longer. It will be one of those three.’
‘They’re hooligans. They’ll make you cook for them, darn their socks, do their washing.’
‘We have a constitution,’ said Feyge.
‘They’ll turn you into their charwoman. You won’t be the first girl who came here as a pioneer and ended up buried in the communal kitchen.’
‘But they’ll keep me laughing,’ said Grandmother Feyge. ‘And I’ll get to know the land through them.’
‘And no one can say,’ said Shlomo Levin with a catch in his throat, ‘no one can say that Ya’akov Mirkin did not help her get to know the land.’
By now, long years after her death, he had forgiven Grandfather, even helping him with the farm work and playing draughts with him. Twice a year, though, on the anniversary of his arrival from Russia and on that of his sister’s death, he visited her grave ‘so that I can have a quiet place for an hour or two to hate all the big shots and smart alecks’.
He followed them to the colonies of Judea, to the experimental farms, to the Jordan and the Yavne’el valleys. Grandfather told me how they had danced, hungered, drained swamps, quarried rock, ploughed fields, and hiked together through the Galilee and the Golan.
‘We had no Busquilla or Zis to bring us mail in those days. Do you know how we got letters from Russia?’
‘How?’
‘Liberson had some friends who were pelicans. They brought them.’
I opened an incredulous mouth, into which Grandfather stuck a hard toothbrush smeared with acrid paste and began to scrub my gums.
‘Have you ever seen the bill of a pelican?’
‘Ah?’ I gargled.
‘It comes with a sack. Now rinse your mouth. The pelicans put the mail there, and on their way to Africa they stopped to bring us letters and regards.’
Pinness had no use for such stories. ‘This Valley and the coastal plain aren’t even on the pelicans’ migration route,’ he said to Grandfather. ‘Why fill the boy’s head with such nonsense?’
But Grandfather, Liberson, and Tsirkin didn’t obey Pinness’s laws of nature. Mounted on hoes, they flew over poisonous swamps and blazed trails through a rank cover of rushes and crabgrass while the light, fragrant cloud of Feyge’s dress draped their faces with thin veils of devotion. I saw them airborne like groundsel seeds, white splotches against the drab landscape. Below them ran Levin, shouting at Feyge to come down.
‘Not one of them dared lay a hand on your grandmother,’ Pinness told me. ‘They just romanced her with their pranks and silly jokes, making her laugh until their sweet blood built up her resistance against malaria and depression.’
They slung stones like shepherd boys, sang in Russian to the waterfowl that arrived each autumn from the delta of the Don, and bathed but twice a month. All night they danced barefoot, and with the break of dawn they walked across the country. ‘They could work a whole week on no more food than five oranges,’ I told my cousin Uri.
But my uncle Avraham’s twins Yosi and Uri were not impressed by these tales.
‘That’s nothing,’ said Uri. ‘They forgot to tell you how Liberson streaked naked across the Sea of Galilee in Feyge’s honour, how Tsirkin played the mandolin for her all night on the shore, and how three giant Saint Peter’s fish jumped out of the water in the morning and landed bewitched at her feet, hopping on their spiny fins while Grandfather skimmed pebbles across the water to the other side of the lake.’
To be on the safe side, I asked Meshulam for his opinion. He knew of no source, he replied, ‘that could authenticate the more fantastic stories about the Workingman’s Circle.’
Meshulam had no sense of perspective. Pinness explainedto me that this happened to people who remembered other people’s memories. In
Similar Books
