The Blue Mountain(15)

Tsirkin could read the hunger in anyone’s eyes. With a tip of the neck of his mandolin, he invited her to partake.

‘She looked like a hunted bird. I smiled at her with my eyes the way you smile at a child.’

Feyge let go of her brother’s sleeve and joined them.

‘She did eat of their own meat, and drank of their own cup,’ quoted Pinness over Grandmother’s grave.

Shlomo Levin didn’t like the noisy threesome and was afraid of them. ‘They ate and drank like Arab coolies and sang like Russian hooligans,’ he told me in the office of the co-op. ‘At a time when all of us were torn by a thousand loyalties and conflicts, nothing fazed them at all.’

He didn’t look up at me. We sat by ourselves in his office, the sun glinting off the myriad particles of dust that danced outside the window. Levin was cutting carbon paper for the co-op’s receipt books with his thumbnail. Though I was too young to understand everything he said, I didn’t interrupt him with questions. Like the desert flowers in Pinness’s collection, Levin opened up once every few years, and it would have been a great mistake to stop him.

‘She fell for them at once,’ he whispered, his blue fingers trembling. ‘Like a dumb moth for the flame that kills it.’

Levin was shocked to see them tear off pieces of bread and cheese with their dirty fingers and put them in his sister’s dry mouth. Though he tried to keep her away from them, that same night, when Liberson, Mirkin, and Mandolin Tsirkin were high from finishing their bottle of brandy, they founded the Feyge Levin Workingman’s Circle ‘in order to cheer your grandmother up’. They even voted a budget, wrote a constitution, and composed a preamble to it.

‘The historians never took the Feyge Levin Workingman’s Circle seriously,’ said Meshulam Tsirkin to me. ‘Perhaps it suffered from its name. What serious scholar would write a dissertation on an organisation with a name like that?’ he grinned. ‘Still, it was a living legend among the pioneers. It was the first true commune in this country, because it was the first to grant full equality to women. And though its by-laws were highly idiosyncratic, you’ll find several important breakthroughs in them.’

Underneath Grandfather’s bed in the cabin was a large wooden trunk. I shut the curtains and opened it. The documents lay beneath a white embroidered blouse, a Russian worker’s cap, and a yellowing mosquito net. Her picture, too.

Grandmother smiled at me. She had two black braids and little hands, and looked as though she were about to come skipping right out of the photograph. Wheeling around, I saw Grandfather behind me, his pale face looking stern. He knelt by my side, prised my fingers from the picture one by one, returned it to the trunk, and took out an envelope with different photographs.

‘This is Rilov, the famous Watchman,’ he said in a mocking tone I knew well. Grandfather had never liked the members of the Watchmen’s Society. ‘Underneath that Arab cloak he’s got two Mauser pistols and a French field cannon. Behind him is that good-for-nothing Rosa Munkin, and the two men lying down in front of him are Pinness and Bodenkin.’

He began to pace the room.

‘In all our old photographs,’ he said, ‘you’ll always find one row of us standing, another sitting, and two of us lying in front of them, propped on their elbows with their heads touching. One of those standing and one of those lying down always left the country in the end. One of those sitting always died young.’

He bent down, pulled an old sheet of paper from the trunk, and burst into laughter.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘This is the constitution of the Feyge Levin Workingman’s Circle.’

He stood up and began reading with a flourish.

‘“Article One. The Feyge Levin Workingman’s Circle will avoid the seductive and vain glamour of all cities.

‘“Article Two. Comrade Levin will cook. Comrade Tsirkin will wash the dishes. Comrade Mirkin will look for work. Comrade Liberson will do the laundry and the talking.

‘“Article Three. Comrades Tsirkin, Liberson, and Mirkin will make no dishonourable advances toward Comrade Levin.

‘“Article Four. Comrade Levin will make no attempt …”’

The door of the cabin swung open and Meshulam Tsirkin barged inside, wagging his head energetically.

‘Give that to me!’ he shouted. ‘Give it to me, Mirkin, I beg of you! I must have that document for the archives.’

‘Why don’t you go help your old man, he’s bringing in the hay today,’ said Grandfather. ‘Make it quick, before I set Baruch on you.’

‘Whatever you say about him,’ said Meshulam Tsirkin after Grandfather’s death, ‘Mirkin was one of the revered figures of the Movement. It’s no wonder that so many wasters are willing to pay a fortune to be buried next to him. That’s a fine last will and testament he’s left you!’