The Blue Mountain (52 page)
The street was full of tractors as usual. No one ever made a fuss about the High Holy Days in our village.
‘The hens do not stop laying on Yom Kippur, nor do the cows’ udders go on strike,’ Eliezer Liberson had written in the newsletter years before I was born.
Leaning against the wall of the synagogue, I listened to the supplicatory murmur of the prayer, which was interrupted by the merry shouts of playing children, the sharp whistles of swifts, and the purr of the refrigerator in the dairy.
I peered through the window. Weissberg was rocking back and forth like a huge owl. His wife and daughter were in the women’s gallery along with some other unfamiliar females who
were visiting relatives in the village. A few softly giggling girls walked in and out to stare at my cousin, whose handsome looks were enhanced by the embroidered skullcap on his head. The two little Weissbergs sat on either side of him, singing in thin, piercing voices. Uri followed their soft fingers, which led him over the sombre furrows of the prayer-book, helping him past the obstacles of the age-old words.
‘For the sins we have sinned before Thee without knowing. For the sins we have sinned before Thee by our prurience. For the sins we have sinned before Thee by profligacy. For the sins we have sinned before Thee by our foolish utterance. For the sins we have sinned before Thee by our evil urge.’
Weissberg shut his eyes and crooned lamentingly, like Grandfather when he was bitten by the hyena.
‘For all of these, O Lord of Forgiveness, forgive us, excuse us, absolve us.’
The sun dipped towards the blue mountain amid the last clam- our of the youngsters splashing in the nearby swimming pool.
The clear, pleasant voice of the cantor carried through the synagogue windows. ‘Open Thy gate as the gates are shut, for the day has passed, the sun will set and will pass, let us come unto Thy gates.’ And the small congregation joined in. ‘O Lord, we pray you, forgive us, excuse us, pardon us, absolve us, have mercy on us, atone for us, forget our sin and iniquity.’
The air was warm and still. There was not a breath of wind. Clear, round, and unblemished, the words went forth on their great flight.
Early the next morning I went to Pioneer Home. Uri was still asleep. Towards noon Busquilla arrived to announce that he had had ‘a good atonement’ and that it looked like we would have two funerals next month, ‘a small one from abroad and a big one from Tel Aviv’. Efficient executive that he was, he sometimes went on reconnaissance trips to villages, hospitals, and old folk’s homes and never erred in his predictions. ‘He’s gone to look over the merchandise,’ Pinness would sneer whenever he saw the black vehicle kicking up dust in the fields.
From afar I saw the figures of the Weissberg twins and their sister heading down the gravel path towards the cemetery. In my embarrassment I tried to hide among the trees, but the two boys discovered me at once.
‘We’re going tomorrow,’ they informed me. Their sister strolled among the gravestones, keeping her back turned towards me.
I felt an awful fear of my own body. ‘Have a good trip,’ I whispered to the boys, leaving quickly before I did something unforeseen. I had always felt at home in the dark, deep quiet of my flesh, and now, appalled and furious, I took off on the run for the cabin.
‘What’s the rush?’ inquired Uri, coming towards me.
‘I forgot something,’ I said. Two minutes later, perched on the roof of the hayloft, I saw him open the cemetery gate.
That afternoon I went to see Pinness.
‘Ya’akov,’ I said, ‘Uri was in the synagogue the whole day of Yom Kippur and prayed as though he had been bitten by a hyena.’
‘There’s nothing so terrible about that, my child,’ Pinness said.
‘Can I sleep at your house tonight?’ I asked him.
‘Of course,’ he said. He kept a folding bed behind the door, and after supper he showed me where to put it.
‘Cover me, Ya’akov,’ I said. I wanted to talk to him, I wanted him tell me a story, to complain that he and Grandfather had never taught me to eradicate the pests in my own flesh.
His fat, ailing old body moved with difficulty. My skin tingled with pleasure and longing as he covered me with the thin blanket. He ran his hand over my face in the darkness, and then there was only the squeak of his bed springs and the soft murmur of his speech.
I awoke an hour after midnight. In the darkness I made out the hunched silhouette of the old teacher sitting awake on his bed. Without his glasses he looked like a frightened mole awaiting the thud of a hoe on its neck.
‘What is it, Ya’akov?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Shhh!’ said Pinness sharply. ‘Quiet!’
The air was still. A breeze as warm and light as a sleeping calf’s breath whispered in the trees. Suddenly Pinness caught his breath and shuddered. Distinct and defiant, the fierce, perfectly formed words struck the earth like big drops of first rain, like the wings of thousands of locusts.
‘I’m screwing the cantor’s daughter.’
Then there was silence. I didn’t know where to rush first – to Pinness, who had fallen off his bed like a feed sack, wheezing and gasping for breath, or to Uri up on the water tower, already encircled by shouts and the tramp of running feet.
‘Help me,’ groaned Pinness, who was an expert at detecting conflict in living organisms.
I laid him in bed and shovelled food into him, spoon after savage solacing spoon, pausing only to wipe his chin and mouth.
By the time I reached the water tower dozens of people were there. As pale as my American corpses, Weissberg and his wife were sitting on the ground. Burly farmers waited at the foot of the ladder.
All eyes were focused upward as my cousin appeared, hitched his legs over the metal railing, and began to descend the ladder with the bell-shaped silhouette of a dark dress behind him. Through their latticework of long stockings, the splendour of forbidden thighs flashed in the night. The crowd let out an angry growl. I stepped forward, pushed my way through it with the slow butting motion that every cattle breeder in the village knew well, and planted myself at the bottom of the ladder with my arms crossed over my chest.
Uri came down first, reaching up to help the cantor’s daughter, and I walked protectively behind them until we got to the house.
The Weissbergs left the village that same night. Uri buried himself in Grandfather’s bed, and in the morning Riva Margulis was awakened by a damp stench coming from outside. For a moment she thought that Bulgakov was back, fouling the yard with his breath. Yet when she skipped happily to the
window, against which, smitten by transparency and yearning, bees crashed ceaselessly, and pulled back its spotless curtains to peer out, she saw that it was only Meshulam, who had smashed the big water meter in her yard.
Filthy animals were splashing around, splattering mud on the porch steps. Riva, who had even scrubbed the street outside her house on Rosh Hashana eve and made the tractors keep off it until it was dry, was the last living soul in the village to possess the ancient mixture of madness, faith, and uncompromising loyalty to principle. Without further ado, she joined the fray.
She had not been caught unprepared. In her husband’s old shed, on shelves that were once stocked with fumigators, honey extractors, honeycomb frames, and jars of propolis, now lay thousands of neatly folded mopping cloths, while hundreds of brooms and fresh towels stood against the walls.
Armed with these simple tools and a visionary gleam in her eye, she sallied forth to the biggest mop-up of them all. The whole village turned out to watch the mocked old woman whose madness had lost her her husband and made her a public nuisance.
Riva’s practised hands twirled the cloths with deft motions, each ending with a well-aimed splat as the cloth hit the ground. She first drove the swamp back from the house, and then, after pausing to rest, pushed on for the final battle. For three whole days she mopped Meshulam’s swamp, wringing out the cloths in the wadi.
‘Now this place looks clean,’ she said contentedly when she had finished. She washed all the cloths, hung them out to dry, and went home to scrub the windows.
U
ri did not go back to work for Rivka’s brother. For weeks he lay in Grandfather’s bed making horrible noises. Nehama, the
cantor’s beautiful, silent daughter, was taken home that same night. The Weissbergs did not even stay to pack their things.
The cantor refused to accept his pay, turned down all offers of a lift to the railway station, and rebuffed apologies and pained expressions of regret. Taking his wife and children, he walked them through the fields, stumbling in the dark on big clods of earth, scratched by autumn brambles.
For weeks I ministered to Uri, who was overcome with love and longing.
‘I want only her, Nehama,’ he groaned. ‘No one else. I want you to go and bring her back from there,’ he insisted. ‘No one can stand up to you. Go!’ he screamed. ‘Carry her piggyback, sling her over your shoulder, hold her in your arms, do it any way you like. If you don’t bring her to me, I’m going to die in this bed!’
I was scared. I didn’t know where to begin. I drove to the village of the Hasidim, but no one would even talk to me.
‘This isn’t funny any more,’ was all I heard from the old barber, who sat grieving on the ground, cleaning his cycle chain with a bowl of oil and petrol. ‘It’s not like our arguments with Eliezer Liberson. No fouler deed was ever done by Jew to Jew.’
Uri refused to wash, dress, or eat. All night he groaned and called Nehama’s name. Spasmodically he plucked at his loins, groping and moaning and sniffing his fingers compulsively, searching for the musky smell of the girl, which had remained there like sticky drops of amber.
At first I tried to talk him into eating. Then, terror-stricken, I tried force-feeding him. But the spoon just bent against his teeth, and he threw up clear spittle on the sheet.
Five weeks later, by which time he had lost four stone and most of his pubic hair, Nehama Weissberg was brought to the village in the company of three mournful rabbis.
‘She’s pregnant,’ they said, taking Uri back with them.
That was what took me to the city for the first time in my life. Uri and Nehama’s wedding was held in a mouldy old courtyard. Weissberg did not invite many guests, and only Pinness and Yosi
came from the village. Busquilla, who alone had remembered to cable Avraham and Rivka, came too. Uri’s parents arrived straight from the airport. Avraham was tense and irritable, but his first glimpse of Nehama ironed the creases from his brow and made him beam. Rivka was suntanned, suspicious, and loudmouthed until Mrs Weissberg threw a heavy shawl over her head, which made her pipe down like a bird in the dark and sit quietly.
The ceremony was strictly Orthodox. The Hasidim wouldn’t even let us bring the fruit for the banquet from the village. They also supplied the drinks and the wine and the greasy dumplings and the burnt noodle pudding. Two waiters served the food while the cantor cried non-stop in sweet, familiar tones.
While Nehama’s pregnancy did not yet show, its soft velvety sheen lit up her face. Her opulent voice was surprisingly, almost magically rich. Although the Hasidim had shaved her head as is their custom, her veil gave off a good smell of damp earth. Even Weissberg and his friends, who were unfamiliar with such odours, understood that the bride would follow her husband to the village.
After the wedding ceremony a few self-conscious musicians played tunes that we all knew from the village, because they were the same as the ones the founding fathers used to sing on winter nights – ‘Rabbi Elimelech’, ‘My Soul That Yearns for Thee’, and ‘On the Sabbath Day’. None of the band, however, could play like Mandolin Tsirkin, who had the knack of ‘plucking the heartstrings along with the bowstrings’. Yosi, Avraham, and I stood in a corner with awkward smiles, watching the Hasidim dutifully go through the motions of dancing. A fatuously gay Pinness joined in loudly, while Busquilla was already deep in whispered negotiations with a pale bearded man. No one laughed when the wedding jester jumped on the table, or when Weissberg’s fat brother balanced a chair with seven bottles of brandy on his forehead, all of which fell to the floor and smashed to pieces.
Later it clouded over and we rode home in a thin, pleasant autumn rain. Yosi drove, Avraham talked gaily all the way about marvellous tropical fruits and hot equatorial storms, Busquilla
tried to tell jokes, and Pinness went on singing. Knowing I would soon be leaving the village, I kept silent. Uri sat in the back holding Nehama’s hand, in which a small, protective kerchief was tightly clutched.
That winter I helped Uri cut down the ornamental trees in Pioneer Home, dig up the flower beds, and rip out the gravel paths.
Uri was full of enthusiasm. He wanted to bring two power saws to speed up the work, but I preferred to chop down the trees with an axe and drag their heavy corpses off myself, for once more I felt the old restlessness coursing through my body and the need for hard, violent work.
The bauhinias, the poincianas, the Judas trees, and the big hibiscus bushes fell under my blows, sappy puddles seeping into the ground. I cut the trunks and branches into fragrant cords of firewood and stacked them in the cowshed.
Avraham and Rivka gave the young couple their house. When spring came and Nehama went out to the fields in short hair and a maternity dress down to her knees, the sun shining through the thin fabric outlined the lovely roundness of her belly and the soft arched space between her legs. Yosi came home for a week’s leave, and the four of us planted fruit trees and sowed fodder in between the gravestones. I liked the feel of the smooth little seeds of clover as they went slipping through my fingers.
Uri had all kinds of plans. Though he had no savings, his parents, his uncle, and I were glad to lend him all the money he needed. Nehama cleaned out Avraham’s cowshed, and the cows filed back in their iron yokes to moo and listen to music while the milking machines whirred once again.
Late that summer we buried Eliezer Liberson. Some time before he had vanished from his room.