A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev

doors, the inner one with screens.
    For two whole days the sounds of pounding and sawing and arguments and instructions in Yiddish, German, and Hebrew could be heard. On the third day the platoon commander sent several youngmen from the Palmach tent camp around to the carpentry shop. They loaded the small screened-in shed onto a cart, pulled it to the petting farm of the kibbutz children, and set it up there, facing east. The visitor checked to make sure that no nail or splinter was sticking out, and when he was satisfied he said, several times, “That is good,” and “That is very good.” Then he opened the lid of the wicker basket he had brought with him and removed from it a pigeon. It was a pigeon like any other: bluish-gray similar to a thousand other pigeons, but broad-winged and short-tailed, a light-colored swelling where the beak met the head. The visitor placed the pigeon in the small shed, and while everyone understood that this was a pigeon loft, they had no idea for what purpose it had been built and why only one pigeon had taken up residence there.
    The visitor served his pigeon a dish of water and some seeds, then went to the dining hall but did not eat a full meal there. At first he pecked at his plate, then began dunking an endless series of cookies into an endless series of cups of tea with lemon, an act observed by many eyes and interrupted only when the Baby’s aunt approached his table.
    “Hello, Doctor,” she said, and added, “how are you?” Then she invited him to pay a visit to the cowshed to see a calf leaning toward death.
    Thus everyone learned what only the dairy-farmer aunt knew: that this was not just any redhead who builds pigeon lofts and places in them a single pigeon, but a veterinarian. And not just any cattle curer from some nearby town or kibbutz but a real doctor, with a diploma! The visitor examined the calf, collected ingredients from various women—the dairy farmer, the medic, the supplies administrator—as well as from the kitchen of the children’s house, and concocted a tepid and putrid remedy, which he siphoned into the calf’s mouth from a bucket; after this he went to the room allotted him and, according to the night watchmen, did not extinguish the light in there until dawn.
    First thing in the morning, the visitor left his room, hurried to the cowshed, administered more of the remedy he had mixed the day before, and said, “Patience, calf-comrade, soon you will heal and forget.” From there he proceeded, limbs flapping, to his pigeon loft, where he removed a small notepad from his shirt pocket, wrote something on a thin slip of paper, tore it out, rolled it up, and placed it inside a capsule he had taken from his trouser pocket. He took hold of the pigeon, attached the capsule to her leg, and let her fly
    There was something pleasant and pleasing in the way his hands dispatched the pigeon, a gesture that contained the granting of freedom and the handing over of power and a wave of good-bye and hope and envy Everyone present at that moment was stupefied. Their gazes followed the pigeon until she disappeared in the distance. Even the veterinarian was stirred, despite having dispatched thousands of pigeons since he was a boy in the German city of Köln, where he had been born and raised, and where he had dispatched his first pigeon.
    For a moment his hands remained outstretched, as if helping the pigeon in her ascent; then he pulled them in and tented them over his eyes. His gaze escorted her as she grew distant, his lips wishing her a safe and swift journey There is joy and newness in every dispatch, he thought to himself, and when she could no longer be seen he removed a second pad from a different pocket and scribbled something.
    The next day a green pickup truck entered the kibbutz laden with metal boxes and wood-frame crates with screens; small, bulging burlap sacks; more woven wicker baskets; troughs; and tin vessels. At the wheel sat a silent young woman, the