It was 7 a.m. when I awoke, my eyelids struck by the sunlight filtering through the foliage of the pear trees. Uncle Avraham was calling my name. Doctor Munk stood wanly off to one side while Ya’akovi, the Committee head, gave me a kick in the shoulders and demanded to know what I thought I was doing.
Doctor Munk plucked up his courage and flung himself on me, screaming like a madman as he tried pathetically to shake my body.
‘How can I fill out a death certificate? How do I even know he’s dead? What’s going on here?’ He went on asking his idiot questions. Ya’akovi picked up Grandfather’s pyjamas with a strange look on his face, as though expecting to find in them a clue to the mystery.
‘Put those pyjamas down!’ I yelled in a voice I had never used before.
He just stood there. I pushed Doctor Munk out of the way, rose to my feet like a bull, and slapped Ya’akovi in the face so hard that his lips split open like a plum. Hurt and incredulous, he staggered backward like a ludicrous mannequin and sat down on his rear. With two flying steps I was on him, snatching the pyjamas from his hands.
‘That’s for Grandfather and for Efrayim,’ I said.
Supporting himself on his knuckles, he started to rise.
‘And no funny stuff,’ I warned him.
Though shorter and lighter than me, he was well built and a veteran of several wars, like most of the men in the village. He got to his feet, wiped his bloody chin with his hand, and said dryly: ‘We’ll be back in an hour to open the grave. We’ll bury him in the village cemetery, in founders’ row, next to your grandmother. If I were you, Baruch, I wouldn’t make any more trouble.’
They left. A short while later Avraham came back by himself, carrying the heavy tow chain from the tractor and a length of two-inch metal pipe. He laid them on the grave without a word and returned to his cows.
He was back again in half an hour. This time there were several men with him, including Ya’akovi, whose face had been cleaned and bandaged, Pinness, and Dani Rilov. By then I had already dug holes for the ornamental bushes I planned to plant around the grave.
I straightened up and braced myself.
‘My grandfather asked to be buried here,’ I told them.
‘We know you were very attached to him,’ said Pinness in a friendly tone, ‘but this is no way to do things. There’s a cemetery, Baruch, and that’s where people are buried.’ He thought he would outsmart me as the farmers outsmart a calf bound for slaughter, sweet-talking himself close enough to lay his hypnotic hand on my neck. But I knew all the tricks of teachers and cattlemen and jumped back to the pile of rocks on the grave, where I stood without a word.
‘Don’t waste your time, Pinness, this isn’t a civics class,’ said Ya’akovi. ‘We’ve had enough trouble from this family.’
He made a hand motion. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the lanky form of Dani Rilov begin moving towards me with his arms out. The heavy tow chain with its wicked hook at one end whistled through the air, whirling over my head in a dark, glittering circle. Dani backed off and the group retreated.
Pinness, who more than once had seen me roll away heavy rocks to look for velvet ants and galeodes, went over to Ya’akovi. So did Avraham, whose angry whisper everyone could hear.
‘I don’t want any scenes now,’ he said, his forehead crawling and contorting. ‘Don’t forget that we’re in mourning. My father is dead, and we want to mourn him in peace.’
Ya’akovi took fresh stock. ‘We’ll go now,’ he said. ‘But take it from me, you haven’t heard the last of this from the Committee.’
To this day I don’t know who was right – Uri, who said that Grandfather had prophetic powers, or I, who argued that he simply had planned the future so long and so exactly that it was forced to flow in the ditch he had dug for it until it reached me and woke me up.
Grandfather knew that no one would move his body. He knew that no one would dare challenge the monster of a grandson he had raised. He knew that I would bury more ticking corpse- bombs and menacing sacks of gold after him.
He knew he would not be dug up because the village never unearthed anything embarrassing. We keep our scandals to ourselves. It takes something pretty grim or horrible for the police to be called in. We have never had a single case of rape or murder, while robbery, assault and battery, and other such irregularities are dealt with by our elected officials, loyally abetted by public pressure and the village newsletter.
I stood guard over the grave for a month. Avraham did nothing to encourage me, but neither did he try to dissuade me. Yosi and his mother seconded the general opinion that I was mad. Uri was amused. Pinness was horrified.