The Blue Mountain(158)

We went to see the red flags of Nature, the little wildcats, and the hornet queens, and then we went to visit the graves of Grandfather and his friends. Uri has put poles as tall as ships’ masts in the ground by every headstone, a strip of purple cloth hanging from each, because otherwise you could never find them among the thick cover of cotton and wheat, the crowded corn stalks, and the fruit trees.

Afterwards we walked barefoot along the paths that run through the fields and climbed the hill. The children ran around while I sat beside the rotting, bent old iron door, gazing at flocks of northbound pelicans, the chequered carpet of the Valley, and the wall of the blue mountain.

‘Look,’ said Feyge, pulling me by the shirt. ‘Look, Uncle Baruch.’

Her brown eyes flecked with yellow and green squinted into the sun like an owl’s mocked by the birds of day. Her great-grandmother’s anxious smile, which never quite settles down, played over the corners of her mouth. With a tiny hand she pointed to the distant name of my mother. Daniel Liberson had ploughed it in the earth, and every year it is coloured by the spring in huge blue letters of cornflowers.