A friend of the frog,
Of the frog
Am I,
And just like the frog,
Like the frog
I cry:
Give me water,
Or I die.
Though at first they were embarrassed, little by little their voices gathered strength and their arms began to move in sweeping motions. Within an hour, however, several big tankers appeared on Ya’akovi’s orders, sucked up Meshulam’s swamp water, and drove off to dump it in the nearby wadi. On their heels came dumper trucks loaded with earth that they spread over the wet fields. Before the day was out the fresh soil was firmed down by angrily vibrating rollers and the entire bill for the water, labour, materials, and heavy equipment was presented to the Tsirkin farm with a strongly worded threat of seizure in case of non-payment. By the time I drove to the railway station that evening to pick Uri up, the morning’s events seemed simply one more story I had heard, a nightmarish figment of my imagination.
I drove the farm truck through the fields. I don’t have a licence and only drive on the tractor paths around the village.
Uri jumped down from the train, and we gave each other a big hug. As I embraced him I could feel how much stronger and older he had grown.
‘You’re crushing me, you big ox,’ he groaned, half laughing. ‘You don’t know your own strength.’
He looked good, as slim, sardonic, and handsome as always. As we drove back, he stared at the farmed fields. White beards of cotton were flowering all around, and the first pomegranates were turning red on the trees, taking over from the last Somerset peaches. Far in the distance a big red International was beginning the autumn ploughing. We turned into a path that ran along the wall of Pioneer Home. Uri kept silent as he looked in amazement at the gravestones, the greenery, the flowers, and the ornamentals.
‘What do you do with all the money you make?’ he asked as we entered the cabin. ‘Nothing has changed here.’
I still slept in my old bed and dried myself with Grandfather’s soft old sheet after showering. Grandmother Feyge’s glass plates and big tin spoons were still in use in the kitchen.
We drank tea and ate some good cake Uri brought me. I suggested that he sleep in Grandfather’s bed, since at the request of the Committee I had put his parents’ house at the disposal of the cantor who had come to the village to lead the High Holy Day services.
We stayed up talking all night.
‘Tomorrow,’ Uri said, ‘we’ll go and see Pinness. And maybe we can visit Eliezer Liberson in the old folk’s home.’
That surprised me, because when Grandfather was in the home Uri had rarely bothered to visit him.
‘Working on the bulldozers has given me a lot of time to think,’ he said. ‘Of all the old folk in this village, Liberson is my man. More than Pinness. More even than Grandfather.’
‘Everyone’s looking for a model,’ I answered him. ‘Busquilla still thinks that Pinness is a holy man, and Pinness wrote in the village newsletter how special you are.’
‘All I am for Pinness is an exotic species of mammal.’
His laughter in the darkness made my skin tingle pleasantly.
‘I’m sorry about it,’ he said after a few minutes. ‘I’m sorry about that whole water tower business. I was a kid and they seduced me. I was just a toy for them to have fun with or to help them get even with the village. I should have gone straight to Eliezer Liberson as soon as the whole thing started.’
‘He would have chucked you out,’ I said. ‘Especially after you screwed Daniel’s daughter.’
‘He would have done no such thing,’ replied Uri. ‘He would have talked to me. But it doesn’t matter any more. In the end I learned the hard way. You’re talking to the most monogamous man not only in the Valley but in the whole world.’
‘Not everyone can find a woman like Fanya who’s worth devoting a lifetime to,’ I said.
‘You don’t know a damn thing about it,’ said Uri. ‘Every woman is worth devoting a lifetime to. It has nothing to do with her. It’s just a matter of deciding. The only thing special about Fanya was Liberson’s love for her. She was just a mirror he kept polishing to do his jetés and pirouettes in front of. He danced and he sang and he thought a great deal of himself. That’s all most women ever are.’
‘And Grandfather and Shulamit?’
Uri lifted his head. ‘Grandfather also decided that Shulamit was worth a lifetime’s devotion,’ he said deliberately, as if he had thought it through long ago, in the same tone Grandfather used to give his they-drove-my-son-from-the-village speech. ‘Not that she was worth two minutes of it. But he went ahead, even if it meant killing Grandmother and living his whole life hardly seeing Shulamit at all.’