The Blue Mountain(10)

I was watering the year-round Burbank roses I had planted by Grandfather’s and Shulamit’s graves.

Luther Burbank had also left home because of a tragic love affair. And though Grandfather often told me about Burbank’s fruit trees, prickleless prickly pears, and light-skinned potatoes, it was to my uncle Avraham’s twin sons Uri and Yosi that he read the passage about Burbank’s unrequited love, which made me so jealous that I almost burst into tears.

I slammed the door of the cabin and went outside, where through the window I heard Grandfather continue to read as if oblivious to my torment: ‘“The truth is that I was very deeply fond of a beautiful young lady who seemed to me, I remember, less ardent than I was. A trifling disagreement, two positive natures, probably hasty words – and I determined that my heart was broken. To be frank, I think I gave that affair to many as my reason for coming West.”’

‘Don’t shout,’ I scolded Busquilla. ‘This is one place where I won’t have any shouting.’

He handed me the envelope and stood waiting by my side.





Busquilla arrived in the village in the early fifties, when Grandfather was still alive and I was still his child. Walking into the village co-op, he stood by the till where Shlomo Levin was seated. Busquilla, who was wearing loafers and a funny blue beret on his head, glanced down at the counter while pleasureably slurping a bottle of grapefruit juice. Levin was mumbling numbers as he added up a customer’s bill.

‘Two pounds fifty-four,’ said Busquilla over Levin’s shoulder before the storekeeper’s pencil had finished the first column of numbers.

Levin’s personal history had made him highly sensitive to kibitzers, people who advised you without being asked. There was nothing he liked less than feeling he was under surveillance, and turning around, he gave the uninvited guest an angry stare. The man, he saw at once, belonged to the transit camp for new immigrants that had been hastily erected on the hill beyond the eucalyptus woods, where it aroused the village’s scorn and compassion. The villagers volunteered to help the newcomers, gave them surplus farm produce, and showed them how to use their work tools, but once back in the village they regaled each other with tales about the little men in blue berets who did nothing but drink, play cards, and shoot craps all day while ‘longing for their caves in Morocco and wiping their rear ends with stones’.

The affront was so great that Levin sat there open-mouthed. He said nothing, however, and turned to the next customer.

‘One pound seventeen,’ announced Busquilla before Levin had even drawn a line beneath the numbers he had written down.

Shlomo Levin, who had managed the village store for decades, rose, doffed his cap, and demanded to know to whom he was speaking.

‘Busquilla, Mordecai,’ said the amazing newcomer. Sucking up the last of his juice, he added, ‘Newly arrived from Morocco and looking for work.’

‘So I see,’ said Shlomo Levin.

In Morocco Busquilla had taught arithmetic and written letters in three languages for the courts and government offices. Now he was seeking a job as a book-keeper, a teacher, or a worker in the poultry incubator.

‘I have a soft spot for baby chicks, children, and money,’ he explained.

Though Levin was taken aback, he told Liberson, who was then the village treasurer, about the new immigrant.

‘The man’s got cheek, but he knows his arithmetic,’ he said.

Busquilla’s request was received sympathetically, although his weakness for money was held against him by most of the Committee members. ‘Not to mention the beret,’ said Uri. ‘No one with any principles would ever wear anything but a worker’s cap.’



‘We discussed the matter in terms of our values, the overall needs of the new immigrants, and Busquilla’s areas of competence,’ Eliezer Liberson told me, ‘and decided to try him out at onion picking.’

After two years, in the course of which Busquilla was indentured to the earth in such menial jobs as spraying insecticide, thinning corn, hoeing weeds, and picking fruit, the village postman heard the hyena laughing in the fields, lost his mind, bought a black crayon, and appointed himself censor of outgoing mail. The Committee fired him and gave his job and donkey to Busquilla. Busquilla planted Moroccan herbs around the post office, brewed spicy tea that had a maddening aroma, and won general approval by introducing home mail pick-up, thus saving the inhabitants the bother of betaking themselves to the village centre.





I opened the envelope. Since Shulamit’s arrival from Russia, there had been no letters from abroad.

‘What’s in it, Baruch?’ asked Busquilla discreetly.