Where the Jackals Howl (20 page)

Felix saw to the dispatch of the van and proceeded to the nursery. From there he went on to the cowsheds and chicken coops. Then to the schoolhouse, where he gave instructions for lessons to be resumed not later than ten o'clock “without fail.”

Felix was animated by a passionate energy, which made his small, sturdy frame throb. He stowed his glasses away in his shirt pocket. His face took on a new look: a general, rather than a philosopher.

The farmyard was full of hens, unconcernedly scrabbling hither and thither, just like old-fashioned chickens in an old-fashioned village, as if oblivious that they had been born and bred in cages and batteries.

The livestock showed slight signs of shock: the cows kept raising their foolish heads to look for the roof, which had been carried off by the wind. Occasionally they uttered a long, unhappy groan, as if to warn of worse things still to come. The big telegraph pole had fallen on Batya Pinski's house and broken some roof tiles. By five past eight, the electricians had already trampled all over her flower beds rigging up a temporary line. First priority in restoring the electricity supply was given to the nurseries, the incubators for the chicks, and the steam boilers so there would be hot meals. Felix asked to have a transistor radio brought to him, so that he could follow developments elsewhere. Perhaps someone should look in on Batya Pinski and one or two invalids and elderly people, to reassure them and find out how they had weathered the terrors of the night. But social obligations could wait a little longer, until the more essential emergency arrangements had been made. For instance, the kitchens reported a gas leak whose source could not be traced. Anyway, one could not simply drop in on people like Batya Pinski for a brief chat: they would start talking, they would have complaints, criticisms, reminiscences, and this morning was the least suitable time possible for such psychological indulgence.

 

The radio news informed us that this had been no typhoon or tornado, but merely a local phenomenon. Even the nearby settlements had hardly been touched. Two conflicting winds had met here on our hills, and the resulting turbulence had caused some local damage. Meanwhile the first volunteers began to appear, followed by a mixed multitude of spectators, reporters, and broadcasters. Felix delegated three boys and a fluent veteran teacher to stem the tide of interlopers at the main gate of the kibbutz, and on no account to let them in to get under our feet. Only those on official business were to be admitted. The fallen telegraph pole was already temporarily secured by steel cables. The power supply would soon be restored to the most essential buildings. Felix demonstrated the qualities of theorist and man of action combined. Of course, he did not do everything himself. Each of us played his part to the best of his ability. And we would keep working until everything was in order.

C
ONDENSATION ON
the windows and the hiss of the kerosene stove.

Batya Pinski was catching flies. Her agility belied her years. If Abrasha had lived to grow old along with her, his mockery would surely have turned to astonishment and even to gentleness: over the years he would have learned to understand and appreciate her. But Abrasha had fallen many years before, in the Spanish Civil War, having volunteered to join the few and fight for the cause of justice. We could still remember the eulogy that Felix had composed in memory of his childhood friend and comrade; it was a sober, moving document, free from rhetorical hyperbole, burning with agony and conviction, full of love and vision. His widow squashed the flies she caught between her thumb and forefinger. But her mind was not on the job, and some of the flies continued to wriggle even after they were dropped into the enamel mug. The room was perfectly still. You could hear the flies being squashed between her fingers.

Abrasha Pinski's old writings were the issue of the moment. Thanks to Felix's energetic efforts, the kibbutz-movement publishing house had recognized the need to bring out a collected volume of the articles he had written in the thirties. These writings had not lost their freshness. On the contrary, the further we went from the values that had motivated us in those days, the more pressing became the need to combat oblivion. And there was also a certain nostalgia at this time for the atmosphere of the thirties, which promised a reasonable market for the book. Not to mention the vogue for memories of the Spanish Civil War. Felix would contribute an introduction. The volume would also contain nine letters written by Abrasha from the siege of Madrid to the committed socialist community in Palestine.

 

Batya Pinski sliced the dead flies at the bottom of the mug with a penknife. The blade scraped the enamel, producing a grating yellow sound.

At last the old woman removed the glass cover and poured the mess of crushed flies into the aquarium. The quick, colorful fish crowded to the front of the tank, their tails waving, their mouths opening and closing greedily. At the sight of their agile movements and magical colors, the widow's face lit up, and her imagination ran riot.

Fascinating creatures, fish: they are both cold and alive. A striking paradox. This, surely, is the longed-for bliss: to be cold and alive.

Over the years Batya Pinski had developed an amazing ability. She was capable of counting the fish in her aquarium, up to forty or fifty, despite their perpetual motion. At times she could even guess in advance what course an individual fish or a shoal would take. Circles, spirals, zigzags, sudden totally capricious swerves, swoops, and plunges, fluid lines that drew delicate, complicated arabesques in the water of the tank.

The water in the tank was clear. Even clearer were the bodies of the fish. Transparency within transparency. The movement of fins was the slightest movement possible, hardly a movement at all. The quivering of the gills was unbelievably fine. There were black fish and striped fish, blood-red fish and fish purple like the plague, pale-green fish like stagnant water in fresh water. All of them free. None of them subject to the law of gravity. Theirs was a different law, which Batya did not know. Abrasha would have been able to discern it over the years, but he had chosen instead to lay down his life on a faraway battlefield.

T
HE ILLUSION
of depth is produced by aquatic plants and scattered stones. The green silence of the underwater jungle. Fragments of rock on the bottom. Columns of coral up which plants twine. And on top of a hill of sand at the back of the tank is a stone with a hole.

Unlike the fish, the plants and stones in the aquarium are subject to the law of gravity. The fish continually swoop down on the stones and shrubs, now and then rubbing themselves against them or pecking at them. According to Batya Pinski, this is a display of malicious gloating.

As a procession of blood-red fish approaches the hollow stone, Batya Pinski rests her burning forehead against the cool glass. The passage of the live fish through the dead stone stirs a vague power deep inside her, and she trembles. That is when she has to fight back the tears. She feels for the letter in the pocket of her old dressing gown. The letter is crumpled and almost faded, but the words are still full of tenderness and compassion.

“I feel,” writes Abramek Bart, one of the directors of the kibbutz-movement publishing house, “that if we have been unfair to the beloved memory of Abrasha, we have been even more unfair to the minds of our children. The younger generation needs, and deserves, to discover the pearls of wisdom contained in the essays and letters of our dear Abrasha. I shall come and see you one of these days to rummage, in quotation marks of course, through your old papers. I am certain that you can be of great assistance to us in sorting through his literary remains and in preparing the work for publication. With fraternal good wishes, yours,” signed by some Ruth Bardor for Abramek Bart.

The old woman held the envelope to her nose. She sniffed it for a moment with her eyes closed. Her mouth hung open, revealing gaps in her teeth. A small drop hung between her nose and upper lip, where a slight mustache had begun to grow during these bad years. Then she put the letter back in the envelope, and the envelope in her pocket. Now she was exhausted and must rest in the armchair. She did not need to rest for long. It was enough for her to doze for a minute or two. A stray surviving fly began to buzz, and already she was up and ready for the chase.

 

Years before, Abrasha would come and bite. Love and hate. He would burst and collapse on her, and at once he would be distracted, not here, not with her.

For months before his departure the tune was always on his lips, sung in a Russian bass, shamelessly out of tune. She recalled the tune, the anthem of the Spanish freedom-fighters, full of longing, wildness, and revolt. It had swept their bare room up into the maelstrom of teeming forces as he enumerated the bleeding Spanish towns that had fallen to the enemies of mankind, counting them off one by one on his fingers. Their outlandish names conveyed to Batya a resonance of unbridled lechery. In her heart of hearts she disliked Spain and wished it no good; after all, that was where our ancestors had been burned at the stake and banished. But she held her peace. Abrasha enlarged on the implications of the struggle, expounding its dialectical significance and its place in the final battle that was being engaged all over Europe. He considered all wars as a snare and a delusion; civil wars were the only ones worth dying in. She liked to listen to all this, even though she could not and did not want to understand. It was only when he reached the climax of his speech—describing the iron laws of history and averring that the collapse of reaction would come like a thunderbolt from the blue—that she suddenly grasped what he was talking about, because she could see the thunderbolt itself in his eyes.

And suddenly he was tired of her. Perhaps he had seen the tortured look on her face, perhaps he had had a momentary glimpse of her own desires. Then he would sit down at the table, propping up his large square head with his massive elbows, and immerse himself in the newspaper, abstractedly eating one olive after another and arranging the pits in a neat pile.

T
HE KETTLE
whistles fiercely as it passes boiling point. Batya Pinski gets up and makes herself some tea. Since the storm died down, at about four o'clock in the morning, she has been drinking glass after glass of tea. She has still not been out to inspect the damage. She has not even tried to open the shutters. She sits behind her drawn curtains and imagines the damage in all its details. What is there to see? It is all there before her eyes: shattered roofs, trampled flower beds, torn trees, dead cows, Felix, plumbers, electricians, experts, and talkers. All boring. Today will be devoted to the fish, until the premonition is confirmed and Abramek Bart arrives. She always relies unhesitatingly on her premonitions. One can always know things in advance, if only one really and truly tries and is not afraid of what may emerge. Abramek will come today to see the havoc. He will come because he won't be able to contain his curiosity. But he won't want to come just like that, like the other good-for-nothings who collect wherever there's been a disaster. He will find some excuse. And then he'll suddenly remember his promise to Batya, to come and rummage in and sort through Abrasha's papers. It's half past eight now. He will be here by two or three. There is still time. Still plenty of time to get dressed, do my hair, and get the room tidy. And to make something nice to serve him. Plenty of time now to sit down in the armchair and drink my tea quietly.

 

She sat down in the armchair opposite the sideboard, under the chandelier. On the floor was a thick Persian carpet, and by her side an ebony card table. All these beautiful objects would shock Abrasha if he were to come back. On the other hand, if he had come back twenty years before, he would have risen high up the ladder of the party and the movement; he would have left all those Felixes and Abrameks behind, and by now he'd be an ambassador or a minister, and she would be surrounded by even nicer furnishings. But he made up his mind to go and die for the Spaniards, and the furnishings were bought for her by Martin Zlotkin, her son-in-law. After he married Ditza he brought all the presents, then took his young bride away with him to Zurich, where he now managed a division of his father's bank, with branches on three continents. Ditza ran a Zen study group, and every month she sent a letter with a mimeographed leaflet in German preaching humility and peace of mind. Grandchildren were out of the question, because Martin hated children and Ditza herself called him “our big baby.” Once a year they came to visit and contributed handsomely to various charities. Here in the kibbutz they had donated a library of books on socialist theory in memory of Abrasha Pinski. Martin himself, however, regarded socialism the same way he regarded horse-drawn carriages: very pretty and diverting, but out of place in this day and age, when there were other, more urgent problems.

O
N THE
eve of Abrasha's departure Ditza was taken ill with pneumonia. She was two at the time; blonde, temperamental, and sickly. Her illness distracted Batya from Abrasha's departure. She spent the whole day arguing with the nurses and pedagogues and by evening they had given in and allowed the sick child to be transferred in her cot from the nursery to her parents' room in one of the shabby huts. The doctor arrived from the neighboring settlement in a mule cart, prescribed various medicines, and instructed her to keep the temperature of the room high. Meanwhile Abrasha packed some khaki shirts, a pair of shoes, some underwear, and a few Russian and Hebrew books into a knapsack and added some cans of sardines. In the evening, fired with the spirit, he stood by his daughter's cot and sang her two songs, his voice trembling with emotional fervor. He even showed Batya the latest lines dividing the workers from their oppressors on a wall map of Spain. He enumerated the towns: Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Granada, Valencia, Valladolid, Seville. Batya half-heard him; she wanted to shout, What's the matter with you, madman, don't go away, stay, live; and she also wanted to shout, I hope you die. But she said nothing. She pursed her lips like an old witch. And she had never since lost that expression. She recalled that last evening as if it had been re-enacted every night for twenty-three years. Sometimes the fish moved across the picture, but they did not obscure it: their paths wound in and out of its lines, bestowing upon it an air of strange, desolate enchantment, as though the widow were confronted not by things that had happened a long time previously, but by things that were about to happen but could still be prevented. She must concentrate hard and not make a single mistake. This very day Abramek Bart will step into this room, all unawares, and then I shall have him in my power.