Either I see or I hear or I assume or I imagine or I remember.
That’s how it goes. Once in a while voices emanate from our yard that the whole moshava can hear. Sometimes shouts, sometimes roars of rage, and there were also gunshots, sometimes weeping and shrieking, but also wailing and moans of passion and sounds of laughter. From the day Eitan arrived until the disaster, lots of laughter.
He was great not only for the family but for our plant nursery. Dovik is good with numbers and accounting and bargaining with suppliers and dealing with municipalities and regional councils, so Eitan took on the job of rustling up private customers. And an interesting thing happened: you know how a handyman puts a magnet in a drawer, so all the screws and nuts and little nails will stick to it and not get lost? That’s how Eitan was with us. No sooner did he arrive than a whole little group formed around him.
You think I mean women? For God’s sake, get away from gender already. I already told you: a group of men was drawn to him. Every one of them a male. Customers, neighbors, friends: a whole kindergarten of men. Women, she says…women are passé, Varda. What men really want are other men. That’s what they lack. True friendship, real friends. What most women have a surplus of, they have a deficit, and that deficit is the basis of everything for them.
To cut it short, Eitan set up a pair of
poikehs
under Grandpa Ze’ev’s big mulberry tree, and the men began to gather round. You don’t need to write down the word
poikeh,
it’s a kind of heavy pot with little feet that stand in a fire. He lit a campfire, burned coals, cooked up and dished out his meat stew to customers. A wonderful period began: “The jug of beer shall not run dry nor shall the
poikeh
of beef be empty,” and our customers were spending huge amounts of money just because Eitan handed them a plastic bowl and plastic spoon and let them dig into the
poikeh
for a piece of meat and a potato with gravy and a slice of white bread for dipping, and they could sit together, to eat and drink and talk and look at his eternal flame. A fire was always burning here. Because of the cooking and also because men are attracted not only to one another but to fire. Not necessarily because they’re drawn to danger, but simply to fire itself. This is why the woman of the caveman tended the fire in the cave with such devotion, so he would want to return, and when he returned he would sit around it with other men who returned, sniff the embers, add twigs to the flame, keep busy with the fire and with each other, and not go out and pick fights with woolly mammoths and bears and other cavemen and do stupid things.
To make a long story short, soon enough all the supervisors of gardening and landscaping from municipalities and regional councils in the north and center of the country, who constituted most of our business and our profits, stopped inviting Dovik to their offices and started coming to us to sit and eat under the mulberry tree. And when the children—Dovik and Dalia’s twins, Dafna and Dorit, and our son, Neta—got a bit older, they would come straight from kindergarten or school to the nursery instead of the house, and every school day would end the same way: Dalia would still be at work at the regional council, I would still be at my work at school, Dovik in the office of the nursery, and Eitan in the nursery itself, telling customers to wait a minute, giving each child a big ladleful from the
poikeh,
making sure they ate it all up, and sitting them down to do their homework at one of the garden tables we sell here.
I remember: If they didn’t understand something, he would shout out to the whole plant nursery, “Is there someone here who finished high school? You? You have patience for kids? Sit with them a minute, please, and help them with their homework.” And if they brought school friends with them, after one of Eitan’s meals they didn’t want to eat
That’s how it goes. Once in a while voices emanate from our yard that the whole moshava can hear. Sometimes shouts, sometimes roars of rage, and there were also gunshots, sometimes weeping and shrieking, but also wailing and moans of passion and sounds of laughter. From the day Eitan arrived until the disaster, lots of laughter.
He was great not only for the family but for our plant nursery. Dovik is good with numbers and accounting and bargaining with suppliers and dealing with municipalities and regional councils, so Eitan took on the job of rustling up private customers. And an interesting thing happened: you know how a handyman puts a magnet in a drawer, so all the screws and nuts and little nails will stick to it and not get lost? That’s how Eitan was with us. No sooner did he arrive than a whole little group formed around him.
You think I mean women? For God’s sake, get away from gender already. I already told you: a group of men was drawn to him. Every one of them a male. Customers, neighbors, friends: a whole kindergarten of men. Women, she says…women are passé, Varda. What men really want are other men. That’s what they lack. True friendship, real friends. What most women have a surplus of, they have a deficit, and that deficit is the basis of everything for them.
To cut it short, Eitan set up a pair of
poikehs
under Grandpa Ze’ev’s big mulberry tree, and the men began to gather round. You don’t need to write down the word
poikeh,
it’s a kind of heavy pot with little feet that stand in a fire. He lit a campfire, burned coals, cooked up and dished out his meat stew to customers. A wonderful period began: “The jug of beer shall not run dry nor shall the
poikeh
of beef be empty,” and our customers were spending huge amounts of money just because Eitan handed them a plastic bowl and plastic spoon and let them dig into the
poikeh
for a piece of meat and a potato with gravy and a slice of white bread for dipping, and they could sit together, to eat and drink and talk and look at his eternal flame. A fire was always burning here. Because of the cooking and also because men are attracted not only to one another but to fire. Not necessarily because they’re drawn to danger, but simply to fire itself. This is why the woman of the caveman tended the fire in the cave with such devotion, so he would want to return, and when he returned he would sit around it with other men who returned, sniff the embers, add twigs to the flame, keep busy with the fire and with each other, and not go out and pick fights with woolly mammoths and bears and other cavemen and do stupid things.
To make a long story short, soon enough all the supervisors of gardening and landscaping from municipalities and regional councils in the north and center of the country, who constituted most of our business and our profits, stopped inviting Dovik to their offices and started coming to us to sit and eat under the mulberry tree. And when the children—Dovik and Dalia’s twins, Dafna and Dorit, and our son, Neta—got a bit older, they would come straight from kindergarten or school to the nursery instead of the house, and every school day would end the same way: Dalia would still be at work at the regional council, I would still be at my work at school, Dovik in the office of the nursery, and Eitan in the nursery itself, telling customers to wait a minute, giving each child a big ladleful from the
poikeh,
making sure they ate it all up, and sitting them down to do their homework at one of the garden tables we sell here.
I remember: If they didn’t understand something, he would shout out to the whole plant nursery, “Is there someone here who finished high school? You? You have patience for kids? Sit with them a minute, please, and help them with their homework.” And if they brought school friends with them, after one of Eitan’s meals they didn’t want to eat
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