The Blue Mountain(147)

‘The old geezer,’ raged Uri on our way home. ‘He doesn’t give a damn. I planned this meeting for so long, and the two of you had to go and ruin it – you with your nonsense stories and him with his textbook memories. Lecturing us with that cane. Even when they’re blind, those founding fathers of yours, they have to see more and know better than anyone.’

‘What do you want from him?’ I asked. ‘His wife is dead, his friends are dead, and Meshulam’s swamp, if you ask me, scared him more than he let on.’

‘I’d rather he did chuck me out than treat me so condescendingly. They were always blind. They stood up to their knees in mud with earth in their ears and never saw more than one thing.’

‘But why should he give a damn about your problems? What did you ever do for him?’

‘I suppose it’s just as well,’ Uri said. ‘Maybe all my feelings of guilt just came from missing this place.’

‘He only thinks about Fanya,’ I said. ‘That whole performance on the terrace was just to show us that he remembers where the vineyard was.’

‘He’s a sick man,’ Uri said. ‘He’s demented. He could easily have an operation to remove those stupid cataracts. He wants to be blind. I swear he does.’

‘What’s left for him to see?’

‘My mother was right,’ Uri said. ‘All those crazy people really drove you mad.’

I didn’t answer him.

‘You can’t imagine how much I missed this place,’ Uri said. ‘In spite of the scandal. In spite of being beaten and made to leave. Twice I even came secretly at night, but both times I left right away.’

He looked at me for a moment and laughed. ‘What a waste for you to walk around like this. You should be hitched to a cart or a plough.’

‘Suppose I carried you in my arms,’ I suggested.



‘Fat chance,’ he said.

‘It’s no problem for me.’ I smiled with forlorn hope. ‘I could easily carry you home from here.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t you find a nice bull to lay instead of picking up boys?’

Uri can be as vicious as a weasel.

‘I can carry you in my arms, on my back, on my shoulders, any way you want,’ I persisted.

But he wasn’t having it. ‘Stop it, will you!’ he said, and now his voice sounded jagged and scared.

We walked on in silence. As we approached the village, we saw a crowd of men by Ben-Ya’akov’s pear orchard. We could hear shouting in the distance, and when we came closer we saw that it was Meshulam again with his sawtoothed sickle and sickening bandanna.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ Ya’akovi was yelling. ‘Station a guard by every water tap?’

The earth moved like jelly around him. Squishily it threw up from the depths dark refuse, sludge, bones, and thick, pale worms that coiled around the pear trees and dragged them down into the pestilent muck. In their place sprang up reeds and rushes as tall as a man, which Meshulam charged brandishing his sickle. An old Arab he had hired ploughed lazily by the swampside, mumbling familiar words. A small herd of wild boars came grunting out of Grandfather’s stories. There were several large males, some brutish-looking females, and a dozen or so bristle-haired piglets with stiff, erect tails. Trotting up to the swamp, they sloshed in to wallow in the deepening mire. I glanced at the sky. Black dots soared overhead and swooped closer. Shrieking madly, they circled above me.

I looked at the hysterical Ya’akovi, at Uri, at the crowd of angry farmers. Through the thin veil of their work clothes, sun-parched skin, and strong bodies, I could see the great mud fossils that had been waiting these many years in the earth.

Now the ponderous water buffalo approached, their deep, moist nostrils flaring excitedly at the first signs of human apostasy. They didn’t scare me. I was used to animals. A huge blond bull strode among them. The girth of its shoulders, the thickness of its hooves, and the hot vapours blowing from its wet muzzle made my heart beat faster. I began running towards them, and as I drew near I saw the young man in khaki trousers and a beekeeper’s mask supporting a stumbling old man who carried a decrepit pack. Yet soon the whole drove crossed the field and vanished beyond the distant cypresses, and when I returned to the flooded orchard and the questioning looks, I realised that no one else had seen a thing.





            49



After Rosh Hashana Yosi came home on leave. I heard the tyres of his jeep screech to a stop, the loud crackle of a two-way radio, footsteps running and climbing stairs, and last of all, a loud girlish scream from Avraham and Rivka’s house.