Where the Jackals Howl (3 page)

The captive jackal cub was seized by weariness. The tip of his right paw was held fast in the teeth of the trap. He sprawled flat on the turf as if reconciled to his fate.

First he licked his fur, slowly, like a cat. Then he stretched out his neck and began licking the smooth, shining metal. As if lavishing warmth and love upon the silent foe. Love and hate, they both breed surrender. He threaded his free paw beneath the trap, groped slowly for the meat of the bait, withdrew the paw carefully and licked off the savor that had clung to it.

Finally, the others appeared.

Jackals, huge, emaciated, filthy and swollen-bellied. Some with running sores, others stinking of putrid carrion. One by one they came together from all their distant hiding places, summoned to the gruesome ritual. They formed themselves into a circle and fixed pitying eyes upon the captive innocent. Malicious joy striving hard to disguise itself as compassion, triumphant evil breaking through the mask of mourning. The unseen signal was given, the marauders of the night began slowly moving in a circle as in a dance, with mincing, gliding steps. When the excitement exploded into mirth the rhythm was shattered, the ritual broken, and the jackals cavorted madly like rabid dogs. Then the despairing voices rose into the night, sorrow and rage and envy and triumph, bestial laughter and a choking wail of supplication, angry, threatening, rising to a scream of terror and fading again into submission, lament, and silence.

After midnight they ceased. Perhaps the jackals despaired of their helpless child. Quietly they dispersed to their own sorrows. Night, the patient gatherer, took them up in his arms and wiped away all the traces.

M
ATITYAHU DAMKOV
was enjoying the interlude. Nor did Galila try to hasten the course of events. It was night. The girl unfolded the canvases that Matityahu Damkov had received from his cousin Leon and examined the tubes of paint. It was good quality material, the type used by professionals. Until now she had painted on oiled sackcloth or cheap mass-produced canvases with paints borrowed from the kindergarten. She's so young, thought Matityahu Damkov, she's a little girl, slender and spoiled. I'm going to smash her to pieces. Slowly. For a moment he was tempted to tell her the truth outright, like a bolt from the blue, but he thought better of it. The night was slow.

In oblivion and delight, compulsively, Galila fingered the fine brush, lightly touching the orange paint, lightly stroking the canvas with the hairs of the brush, an unconscious caress, like fingertips on the hairs of the neck. Innocence flowed from her body to his, his body responded with waves of desire.

Afterward Galila lay without moving, as if asleep, on the oily, paint-splashed tiles, canvases and tubes of paint scattered about her. Matityahu lay back on his single bed, closed his eyes and summoned a dream.

At his bidding they come to him, quiet dreams and wild dreams. They come and play before him. This time he chose to summon the dream of the flood, one of the severest in his repertoire.

First to appear is a mass of ravines descending the mountain slopes, scores of teeming watercourses, crisscrossing and zigzagging.

In a flash the throngs of tiny people appear in the gullies. Like little black ants they swarm and trickle from their hiding places in the crevices of the mountain, sweeping down like a cataract. Hordes of thin dark people streaming down the slopes, rolling like an avalanche of stone and plunging in a headlong torrent to the levels of the plain. Here they split into a thousand columns, racing westward in furious spate. Now they are so close that their shapes can be seen: a dark, disgusting, emaciated mass, crawling with lice and fleas, stinking. Hunger and hatred distort their faces. Their eyes blaze with madness. In full flood they swoop upon the fertile valleys, racing over the ruins of deserted villages without a moment's check. In their rush toward the sea they drag with them all that lies in their path, uprooting posts, ravaging fields, mowing down fences, trampling the gardens and stripping the orchards, pillaging homesteads, crawling through huts and stables, clambering over walls like demented apes, onward, westward, to the sands of the sea.

And suddenly you too are surrounded, besieged, paralyzed with fear. You see their eyes ablaze with primeval hatred, mouths hanging open, teeth yellow and rotten, curved daggers gleaming in their hands. They curse you in clipped tones, voices choking with rage or with dark desire. Now their hands are groping at your flesh. A knife and a scream. With the last spark of your life you extinguish the vision and almost breathe freely again.

“Come on,” said Matityahu Damkov, shaking the girl with his right hand, while the maimed hand, his left, caressed her neck. “Come on. Let's get away from here. Tonight. In the morning. I shall save you. We'll run away together to South America, to my cousin Leon. I'll take care of you. I'll always take care of you.”

“Leave me alone, don't touch me,” she said.

He clasped her in a powerful and silent embrace.

“My father will kill you tomorrow. I told you to leave me alone.”

“Your father will take care of you now and he'll always take care of you,” Matityahu Damkov replied softly. He let her go. The girl stood up, buttoning her skirt, smoothing back her blond hair.

“That isn't what I want. I didn't want to come here at all. You're taking advantage of me and doing things to me that I don't want and saying all kinds of things because you're mad and everyone knows you're mad, ask anyone you like.”

Matityahu Damkov's lips broadened into a smile.

“I won't come to you again, not ever, And I don't want your paints. You're dangerous. You're as ugly as a monkey. And you're mad.”

“I can tell you about your mother, if you want to hear. And if you want to hate and curse, then it's her you should hate, not me.”

The girl turned hurriedly to the window, flung it open with a desperate movement and leaned out into the empty night. Now she's going to scream, thought Matityahu Damkov in alarm, she'll scream and the opportunity won't come again. Blood filled his eyes. He swooped upon her, clapped his hand over her mouth, dragged her back inside the room, buried his lips in her hair, probed with his lips for her ear, found it, and told her.

S
HARP WAVES
of chill autumn air clung to the outer walls of the houses, seeking entry. From the yard on the slope of the hill came the sounds of cattle lowing and herdsmen cursing. A cow having difficulty giving birth perhaps, the big torch throwing light on the blood and the mire. Matityahu Damkov knelt on the floor and gathered up the paints and the brushes that his guest had left scattered there. Galila still stood beside the open window, her back to the room and her face to the darkness. Then she spoke, still with her back to the man.

“It's doubtful,” she said. “It's almost impossible, it isn't even logical, it can't be proved, and it's crazy. Absolutely.”

Matityahu Damkov stared at her back with his mongoloid eyes. Now his ugliness was complete, a concentrated, penetrating ugliness.

“I won't force you. Please. I shall say nothing. Perhaps just laugh to myself quietly. For all I care you can be Sashka's daughter or even Ben-Gurion's daughter. I shall say nothing. Like my cousin Leon I shall say nothing. He loved his Christian son and never said I love you, only when this son of his had killed eleven policemen and himself did he remember to tell him in his grave, I love you. Please.”

Suddenly, without warning, Galila burst into laughter:

“You fool, you little fool, look at me, I'm blond, look!”

Matityahu said nothing.

“I'm not yours, I'm sure of it because I'm blond, I'm not yours or Leon's either, I'm blond and it's all right! Come on!”

The man leaped at her, panting, groaning, groping his way blindly. In his rush he overturned the coffee table, he shuddered violently and the girl shuddered with him.

And then she recoiled from him, fled to the far wall. He pushed aside the coffee table. He kicked it. His eyes were shot with blood, and a sound like gargling came from his lips. She suddenly remembered her mother's face and the trembling of her lips and her tears, and she pushed the man from her with a dreamy hand. As if struck, they both retreated, staring at each other, eyes wide open.

“Father,” said Galila in surprise, as if waking on the first morning of winter at the end of a long summer, looking outside and saying, rain.

T
HE SUN
rises without dignity in our part of the world. With a cheap sentimentality it appears over the peaks of the eastern mountains and touches our lands with tentative rays. No glory, no complicated tricks of light. A purely conventional beauty, more like a picture postcard than a real landscape.

But this will be one of the last sunrises. Autumn will soon be here. A few more days and we shall wake in the morning to the sound of rain. There may be hail too. The sun will rise behind a screen of dirty gray clouds. Early risers will wrap themselves in overcoats and emerge from their houses fortified against the daggers of the wind.

The path of the seasons is well trodden. Autumn, winter, spring, summer, autumn. Things are as they have always been. Whoever seeks a fixed point in the current of time and the seasons would do well to listen to the sounds of the night that never change. They come to us from out there.

1963

T
HE FAMINE
brought them.

They fled north from the horrors of famine, together with their dusty flocks. From September to April the desert had not known a moment's relief from drought. The loess was pounded to dust. Famine had spread through the nomads' encampments and wrought havoc among their flocks.

The military authorities gave the situation their urgent attention. Despite certain hesitations, they decided to open the roads leading north to the Bedouins. A whole population—men, women, and children—could not simply be abandoned to the horrors of starvation.

Dark, sinuous, and wiry, the desert tribesmen trickled along the dirt paths, and with them came their emaciated flocks. They meandered along gullies hidden from town dwellers' eyes. A persistent stream pressed northward, circling the scattered settlements, staring wide-eyed at the sights of the settled land. The dark flocks spread into the fields of golden stubble, tearing and chewing with strong, vengeful teeth. The nomads' bearing was stealthy and subdued; they shrank from watchful eyes. They took pains to avoid encounters. Tried to conceal their presence.

If you passed them on a noisy tractor and set billows of dust loose on them, they would courteously gather their scattered flocks and give you a wide passage, wider by far than was necessary. They stared at you from a distance, frozen like statues. The scorching atmosphere blurred their appearance and gave a uniform look to their features: a shepherd with his staff, a woman with her babes, an old man with his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. Some were half-blind, or perhaps feigned half-blindness from some vague alms-gathering motive. Inscrutable to the likes of you.

How unlike our well-tended sheep were their miserable specimens: knots of small, skinny beasts huddling into a dark, seething mass, silent and subdued, humble as their dumb keepers.

The camels alone spurn meekness. From atop tall necks they fix you with tired eyes brimming with scornful sorrow. The wisdom of age seems to lurk in their eyes, and a nameless tremor runs often through their skin.

 

Sometimes you manage to catch them unawares. Crossing a field on foot, you may suddenly happen on an indolent flock standing motionless, noon-struck, their feet apparently rooted in the parched soil. Among them lies the shepherd, fast asleep, dark as a block of basalt. You approach and cover him with a harsh shadow. You are startled to find his eyes wide open. He bares most of his teeth in a placatory smile. Some of them are gleaming, others decayed. His smell hits you. You grimace. Your grimace hits him like a punch in the face. Daintily he picks himself up, trunk erect, shoulders hunched. You fix him with a cold blue eye. He broadens his smile and utters a guttural syllable. His garb is a compromise: a short, patched European jacket over a white desert robe. He cocks his head to one side. An appeased gleam crosses his face. If you do not upbraid him, he suddenly extends his left hand and asks for a cigarette in rapid Hebrew. His voice has a silken quality, like that of a shy woman. If your mood is generous, you put a cigarette to your lips and toss another into his wrinkled palm. To your surprise, he snatches a gilt lighter from the recesses of his robe and offers a furtive flame. The smile never leaves his lips. His smile lasts too long, is unconvincing. A flash of sunlight darts off the thick gold ring adorning his finger and pierces your squinting eyes.

Eventually you turn your back on the nomad and continue on your way. After a hundred, two hundred paces, you may turn your head and see him standing just as he was, his gaze stabbing your back. You could swear that he is still smiling, that he will go on smiling for a long while to come.

 

And then, their singing in the night. A long-drawn-out, dolorous wail drifts on the night air from sunset until the early hours. The voices penetrate to the gardens and pathways of the kibbutz and charge our nights with an uneasy heaviness. No sooner have you settled down to sleep than a distant drumbeat sets the rhythm of your slumber like the pounding of an obdurate heart. Hot are the nights, and vapor-laden. Stray clouds caress the moon like a train of gentle camels, camels without any bells.

The nomads' tents are made up of dark drapes. Stray women drift around at night, barefoot and noiseless. Lean, vicious nomad hounds dart out of the camp to challenge the moon all night long. Their barking drives our kibbutz dogs insane. Our finest dog went mad one night, broke into the henhouse, and massacred the young chicks. It was not out of savagery that the watchmen shot him. There was no alternative. Any reasonable man would justify their action.