mother died, still remembers her, her funeral, and her fingers on his wrist. Yetthough the veils of orphanhood flit over his face and graze its terrible creases, he never mentions her.
‘Avraham, our first son, is now our first orphan,’ said Pinness over the open grave.
The huge cypresses in the village cemetery were tender saplings then. There were only ten graves at the time: six pioneers whose bodies or souls had given out; the old mother of Margulis the beekeeper, who arrived from Russia with a hive of choice Caucasian bees and died of happiness three days later; two children dead from the cold in their tents; and Tonya Rilov’s secret daughter, who slipped out of her cabin at the age of one year, crawled across the yard, and was trampled by a cow. ‘The poor thing didn’t die in her own bed either,’ said Pinness in one of the few cruel remarks I ever heard him make.
‘It was then,’ he added, ‘that I first understood that we had founded two settlements, the village and the cemetery, and that both would keep on growing.’
A flock of sheep was grazing nearby. The tinkle of their bells, the daubs of colour on their wool, and the whistles of the shepherds drifted toward the mourners. In the crisp, still air they were small, clear, and precise. From the village came the melancholy cries of Daniel Liberson, who, left alone at home, had gone looking for Esther and had tripped and fallen in the hayloft. Shlomo Levin wept by his sister’s grave.
Tsirkin and Liberson stood by Grandfather, their hands protectively on his shoulders, half touching, half shielding him. The Workingman’s Circle was silent. It was a spring day, and flocks of pelicans glided over the village, flying low as they screeched their way north. Fanya stood apart from her husband and his friends, cursing and crying. ‘You can go and tell that bitch that Feyge is dead,’ she whispered, her face turned toward the sky.
I tried to picture Shlomo Levin receiving the telegram from Grandfather, dropping his fountain pen, and passing out on the floor of his stationery shop.
‘No,’ he said to me when I asked him if that was how it was. ‘I just looked at the telegram and thought to myself, “Thehooligans, the hooligans, the hooligans!” That’s all I thought. Hooligans. Over and over.’
He had sat there in a chair, imagining the lash of his father’s belt on his body. ‘I was holding a fountain pen that I was fixing, and the broken well dripped ink on my trousers.’ He shut the shop, wrote a letter to his family in Russia, and took the train to Haifa. Outside the station he was spotted by Rilov, who was transporting a cart full of cement sacks and hidden shotgun parts to the village.
‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ Rilov asked suspiciously.
‘“I’m Mirkin’s brother-in-law,” I said to him.’
‘Hop aboard.’
‘What exactly happened?’ asked Levin. He sat by Rilov’s side, feeling the sinewy thigh with its metallic bulge against his own frightened body. But all Rilov said was, ‘She was ill.’ His rough hands, the low, muscular brow behind which he was knitting plans for the establishment of military communes in Transjordan, and the unintelligible language in which he talked to his two mules reminded Levin of his first days in the country. It took an hour’s silent deliberation for Rilov to decide to reveal another fact. ‘There was something wrong with her,’ he said. ‘She wasted ammunition. Twice in the last month she went outside and started shooting at birds in the sky.’
Levin’s hatred and fear of Tsirkin, Mirkin, and Liberson turned to pity when he saw my grandfather carrying Efrayim on one arm and Esther on the other with little Avraham clinging to his legs. Levin hugged his brother-in-law and cried uncontrollably for his dead little sister and his own directionless life. Everyone remembered him from Avraham’s circumcision, and Hayyim Margulis patted him on the back.
‘I have a new
‘Avraham, our first son, is now our first orphan,’ said Pinness over the open grave.
The huge cypresses in the village cemetery were tender saplings then. There were only ten graves at the time: six pioneers whose bodies or souls had given out; the old mother of Margulis the beekeeper, who arrived from Russia with a hive of choice Caucasian bees and died of happiness three days later; two children dead from the cold in their tents; and Tonya Rilov’s secret daughter, who slipped out of her cabin at the age of one year, crawled across the yard, and was trampled by a cow. ‘The poor thing didn’t die in her own bed either,’ said Pinness in one of the few cruel remarks I ever heard him make.
‘It was then,’ he added, ‘that I first understood that we had founded two settlements, the village and the cemetery, and that both would keep on growing.’
A flock of sheep was grazing nearby. The tinkle of their bells, the daubs of colour on their wool, and the whistles of the shepherds drifted toward the mourners. In the crisp, still air they were small, clear, and precise. From the village came the melancholy cries of Daniel Liberson, who, left alone at home, had gone looking for Esther and had tripped and fallen in the hayloft. Shlomo Levin wept by his sister’s grave.
Tsirkin and Liberson stood by Grandfather, their hands protectively on his shoulders, half touching, half shielding him. The Workingman’s Circle was silent. It was a spring day, and flocks of pelicans glided over the village, flying low as they screeched their way north. Fanya stood apart from her husband and his friends, cursing and crying. ‘You can go and tell that bitch that Feyge is dead,’ she whispered, her face turned toward the sky.
I tried to picture Shlomo Levin receiving the telegram from Grandfather, dropping his fountain pen, and passing out on the floor of his stationery shop.
‘No,’ he said to me when I asked him if that was how it was. ‘I just looked at the telegram and thought to myself, “Thehooligans, the hooligans, the hooligans!” That’s all I thought. Hooligans. Over and over.’
He had sat there in a chair, imagining the lash of his father’s belt on his body. ‘I was holding a fountain pen that I was fixing, and the broken well dripped ink on my trousers.’ He shut the shop, wrote a letter to his family in Russia, and took the train to Haifa. Outside the station he was spotted by Rilov, who was transporting a cart full of cement sacks and hidden shotgun parts to the village.
‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ Rilov asked suspiciously.
‘“I’m Mirkin’s brother-in-law,” I said to him.’
‘Hop aboard.’
‘What exactly happened?’ asked Levin. He sat by Rilov’s side, feeling the sinewy thigh with its metallic bulge against his own frightened body. But all Rilov said was, ‘She was ill.’ His rough hands, the low, muscular brow behind which he was knitting plans for the establishment of military communes in Transjordan, and the unintelligible language in which he talked to his two mules reminded Levin of his first days in the country. It took an hour’s silent deliberation for Rilov to decide to reveal another fact. ‘There was something wrong with her,’ he said. ‘She wasted ammunition. Twice in the last month she went outside and started shooting at birds in the sky.’
Levin’s hatred and fear of Tsirkin, Mirkin, and Liberson turned to pity when he saw my grandfather carrying Efrayim on one arm and Esther on the other with little Avraham clinging to his legs. Levin hugged his brother-in-law and cried uncontrollably for his dead little sister and his own directionless life. Everyone remembered him from Avraham’s circumcision, and Hayyim Margulis patted him on the back.
‘I have a new
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