Filthy animals were splashing around, splattering mud on the porch steps. Riva, who had even scrubbed the street outside her house on Rosh Hashana eve and made the tractors keep off it until it was dry, was the last living soul in the village to possess the ancient mixture of madness, faith, and uncompromising loyalty to principle. Without further ado, she joined the fray.
She had not been caught unprepared. In her husband’s old shed, on shelves that were once stocked with fumigators, honey extractors, honeycomb frames, and jars of propolis, now lay thousands of neatly folded mopping cloths, while hundreds of brooms and fresh towels stood against the walls.
Armed with these simple tools and a visionary gleam in her eye, she sallied forth to the biggest mop-up of them all. The whole village turned out to watch the mocked old woman whose madness had lost her her husband and made her a public nuisance.
Riva’s practised hands twirled the cloths with deft motions, each ending with a well-aimed splat as the cloth hit the ground. She first drove the swamp back from the house, and then, after pausing to rest, pushed on for the final battle. For three whole days she mopped Meshulam’s swamp, wringing out the cloths in the wadi.
‘Now this place looks clean,’ she said contentedly when she had finished. She washed all the cloths, hung them out to dry, and went home to scrub the windows.
51
Uri did not go back to work for Rivka’s brother. For weeks he lay in Grandfather’s bed making horrible noises. Nehama, the cantor’s beautiful, silent daughter, was taken home that same night. The Weissbergs did not even stay to pack their things.
The cantor refused to accept his pay, turned down all offers of a lift to the railway station, and rebuffed apologies and pained expressions of regret. Taking his wife and children, he walked them through the fields, stumbling in the dark on big clods of earth, scratched by autumn brambles.
For weeks I ministered to Uri, who was overcome with love and longing.
‘I want only her, Nehama,’ he groaned. ‘No one else. I want you to go and bring her back from there,’ he insisted. ‘No one can stand up to you. Go!’ he screamed. ‘Carry her piggyback, sling her over your shoulder, hold her in your arms, do it any way you like. If you don’t bring her to me, I’m going to die in this bed!’
I was scared. I didn’t know where to begin. I drove to the village of the Hasidim, but no one would even talk to me.
‘This isn’t funny any more,’ was all I heard from the old barber, who sat grieving on the ground, cleaning his cycle chain with a bowl of oil and petrol. ‘It’s not like our arguments with Eliezer Liberson. No fouler deed was ever done by Jew to Jew.’
Uri refused to wash, dress, or eat. All night he groaned and called Nehama’s name. Spasmodically he plucked at his loins, groping and moaning and sniffing his fingers compulsively, searching for the musky smell of the girl, which had remained there like sticky drops of amber.
At first I tried to talk him into eating. Then, terror-stricken, I tried force-feeding him. But the spoon just bent against his teeth, and he threw up clear spittle on the sheet.
Five weeks later, by which time he had lost four stone and most of his pubic hair, Nehama Weissberg was brought to the village in the company of three mournful rabbis.
‘She’s pregnant,’ they said, taking Uri back with them.
That was what took me to the city for the first time in my life. Uri and Nehama’s wedding was held in a mouldy old courtyard. Weissberg did not invite many guests, and only Pinness and Yosi came from the village. Busquilla, who alone had remembered to cable Avraham and Rivka, came too. Uri’s parents arrived straight from the airport. Avraham was tense and irritable, but his first glimpse of Nehama ironed the creases from his brow and made him beam. Rivka was suntanned, suspicious, and loudmouthed until Mrs Weissberg threw a heavy shawl over her head, which made her pipe down like a bird in the dark and sit quietly.
The ceremony was strictly Orthodox. The Hasidim wouldn’t even let us bring the fruit for the banquet from the village. They also supplied the drinks and the wine and the greasy dumplings and the burnt noodle pudding. Two waiters served the food while the cantor cried non-stop in sweet, familiar tones.
While Nehama’s pregnancy did not yet show, its soft velvety sheen lit up her face. Her opulent voice was surprisingly, almost magically rich. Although the Hasidim had shaved her head as is their custom, her veil gave off a good smell of damp earth. Even Weissberg and his friends, who were unfamiliar with such odours, understood that the bride would follow her husband to the village.