Early the next morning I went to Pioneer Home. Uri was still asleep. Towards noon Busquilla arrived to announce that he had had ‘a good atonement’ and that it looked like we would have two funerals next month, ‘a small one from abroad and a big one from Tel Aviv’. Efficient executive that he was, he sometimes went on reconnaissance trips to villages, hospitals, and old folk’s homes and never erred in his predictions. ‘He’s gone to look over the merchandise,’ Pinness would sneer whenever he saw the black vehicle kicking up dust in the fields.
From afar I saw the figures of the Weissberg twins and their sister heading down the gravel path towards the cemetery. In my embarrassment I tried to hide among the trees, but the two boys discovered me at once.
‘We’re going tomorrow,’ they informed me. Their sister strolled among the gravestones, keeping her back turned towards me.
I felt an awful fear of my own body. ‘Have a good trip,’ I whispered to the boys, leaving quickly before I did something unforeseen. I had always felt at home in the dark, deep quiet of my flesh, and now, appalled and furious, I took off on the run for the cabin.
‘What’s the rush?’ inquired Uri, coming towards me.
‘I forgot something,’ I said. Two minutes later, perched on the roof of the hayloft, I saw him open the cemetery gate.
That afternoon I went to see Pinness.
‘Ya’akov,’ I said, ‘Uri was in the synagogue the whole day of Yom Kippur and prayed as though he had been bitten by a hyena.’
‘There’s nothing so terrible about that, my child,’ Pinness said.
‘Can I sleep at your house tonight?’ I asked him.
‘Of course,’ he said. He kept a folding bed behind the door, and after supper he showed me where to put it.
‘Cover me, Ya’akov,’ I said. I wanted to talk to him, I wanted him tell me a story, to complain that he and Grandfather had never taught me to eradicate the pests in my own flesh.
His fat, ailing old body moved with difficulty. My skin tingled with pleasure and longing as he covered me with the thin blanket. He ran his hand over my face in the darkness, and then there was only the squeak of his bed springs and the soft murmur of his speech.
I awoke an hour after midnight. In the darkness I made out the hunched silhouette of the old teacher sitting awake on his bed. Without his glasses he looked like a frightened mole awaiting the thud of a hoe on its neck.
‘What is it, Ya’akov?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Shhh!’ said Pinness sharply. ‘Quiet!’
The air was still. A breeze as warm and light as a sleeping calf’s breath whispered in the trees. Suddenly Pinness caught his breath and shuddered. Distinct and defiant, the fierce, perfectly formed words struck the earth like big drops of first rain, like the wings of thousands of locusts.
‘I’m screwing the cantor’s daughter.’
Then there was silence. I didn’t know where to rush first – to Pinness, who had fallen off his bed like a feed sack, wheezing and gasping for breath, or to Uri up on the water tower, already encircled by shouts and the tramp of running feet.
‘Help me,’ groaned Pinness, who was an expert at detecting conflict in living organisms.
I laid him in bed and shovelled food into him, spoon after savage solacing spoon, pausing only to wipe his chin and mouth.
By the time I reached the water tower dozens of people were there. As pale as my American corpses, Weissberg and his wife were sitting on the ground. Burly farmers waited at the foot of the ladder.
All eyes were focused upward as my cousin appeared, hitched his legs over the metal railing, and began to descend the ladder with the bell-shaped silhouette of a dark dress behind him. Through their latticework of long stockings, the splendour of forbidden thighs flashed in the night. The crowd let out an angry growl. I stepped forward, pushed my way through it with the slow butting motion that every cattle breeder in the village knew well, and planted myself at the bottom of the ladder with my arms crossed over my chest.
Uri came down first, reaching up to help the cantor’s daughter, and I walked protectively behind them until we got to the house.
The Weissbergs left the village that same night. Uri buried himself in Grandfather’s bed, and in the morning Riva Margulis was awakened by a damp stench coming from outside. For a moment she thought that Bulgakov was back, fouling the yard with his breath. Yet when she skipped happily to the window, against which, smitten by transparency and yearning, bees crashed ceaselessly, and pulled back its spotless curtains to peer out, she saw that it was only Meshulam, who had smashed the big water meter in her yard.