The odd thing was that Grandfather had never had the slightest use for doctors. He trusted only nurses and medics and couldn’t stand our former physician, a strange supervegetarian who had come to us from Scotland long before Efrayim’s letters and had been dead for several years. Far in advance of the discovery of penicillin he smeared infected cuts and drippy penises with bread mould, and included in his diet baked bulb of autumn crocus, mesocarp of mandrake, and ground walnut bark. He also made sure to sunbathe every morning, and his guests were offered such refreshments as mallow leaves picked by the roadside and purslane filched from the chickens’ feedboxes. His language was a source of general amusement. One of his more famous diagnoses was, ‘The cow kicked Rilov in the head, and for half an hour he lay in manure with no sense.’
So healthy and balanced were the foods the Scottish doctor ate that he never aged at all. When as a man of eighty he crumbled to a yellow powder, the last of his cellulose consumed by bostrychids and weevils, there was not a wrinkle in his skin.
Doctor Munk was acquainted with the stories told about Ya’akov Mirkin in the village.
‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Grandpa,’ he said, leafing through the clinic’s medical file. ‘I’m glad to get to know you.’
He phoned the doctor at the old folk’s home, took Grandfather’s pulse and blood pressure, and performed a cardiogram to be on the safe side.
‘Grandpa,’ he said, ‘you’re as healthy as a horse. I wouldn’t send you to the Olympics, but you’re in fine form.’
‘Let’s get this right,’ said Grandfather, the chill in his voice cheering me. ‘In the first place, I’m not your grandfather. And in the second place, I didn’t ask for your medical opinion. Don’t call me Grandpa, and don’t send me to the Olympics. Just tell me what it feels like to die.’
‘To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know,’ said the offended physician. ‘I suppose it depends what you die of.’
‘Old age,’ said Grandfather. ‘I intend to die of something as banal as old age.’
I was up all that night. I was so glad to have him back in the cabin and so scared by the way he talked that I was too tense to fall asleep. He himself, after laboriously rising to cover me and returning to bed, fell asleep like a baby.
As soon as the sun was up I made him breakfast. After we had eaten, Grandfather asked me to take him to the fields. I pushed him along the ruts of the tractor path in his wheelchair. The old milk cows sighed happily to see him as we passed the cowshed, but some of the young calves and heifers didn’t know who he was.
‘You need to put a salt lick in the feed stalls,’ Grandfather said to Avraham, who had just arrived.
‘Nowadays there’s already salt in the concentrate, Father,’ said Avraham.
‘Any cow would rather lick her own salt,’ insisted Grandfather stubbornly.
We passed the fig tree and the olive. Grandfather gave Zeitser a hug and patted him on his nose, which was as smooth and soft as a colt’s despite his great age.
We reached the orchard, which looked wild and healthy.
‘Very nice,’ said Grandfather, fingering the leaves and branches. ‘Go and bring me some fruit.’
He sniffed the Methley and Vixen plums, varieties no one grew any more, and declared that the soil needed nitrogen. Next autumn, he suggested, I should enrich it by sowing sweet peas among the trees.
‘Listen to me, Baruch,’ he said all of a sudden. ‘That doctor knows nothing. I’m dying and I want to be buried here, in my orchard.’
I could feel my face twitch. A frightened smile struggled for a foothold at one corner of my mouth.
‘But Avraham wants to keep up the orchard. You yourself asked me to look after it,’ I said.
‘And so you will,’ said Grandfather. ‘Don’t you worry. I won’t take up much room.’
‘Listen to me carefully, my child,’ he added after a while. ‘I didn’t come here to visit. I came here to die. I want to do it at home, because it will be easier to bury me here if you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission or snatch my body from the freezer at the old folk’s home.’
‘But why, Grandfather?’ I stammered.
‘They drove my son from the village,’ Grandfather declaimed. ‘I don’t want to be in their cemetery. I don’t want any part of them. I’ll stand their earth on its head.’
He looked at me sternly. ‘You’ll bury me here. This land is yours and mine. And after me you’ll bury Shulamit, and perhaps there will be others. Don’t let anyone move us from here. I’m counting on you, Baruch. You’re the only one who can do it.’