‘Your son is spending too much time with the British,’ said Rilov.
‘The village threw Efrayim to the dogs. The British know how to honour their heroes,’ snapped Grandfather.
‘Those Indians are used to seeing monsters in India,’ said Rivka.
Efrayim drank beer, ate sausages, and bought candy bars for the cows in the same canteen he had once stolen tins of bully beef from. My uncle Avraham complained mildly that the candy bars were giving the cows worms, but they loved Efrayim because of them. His friendship with the British, on the other hand, became a public bone of contention, especially since he angrily refused to help the village defence force. Though all of the old Gang was active in the Palmach, the underground Jewish army, Efrayim would not agree to give them lessons in demolition, sniping, topography, or any of the other things he had learned in the British army.
‘Who does he think he is?’ grumbled Rilov, who knew how well versed Efrayim was in all the techniques of guerrilla warfare.
‘I would only frighten the poor boys,’ said Efrayim.
One day when the war had ended and Uri, Yosi, and I were already in our mothers’ wombs, a British army car drew up at our house. In it was Major Stoves, the two lean Scotsmen, and a red-haired sergeant with curly blond arms and the command insignia. Moving with the quiet efficiency of night fighters, they took a clinking case of beer and some tins of Players from their Land Rover, carried them to Efrayim’s room, and spent the night with him there. In his report to the Committee Rilov mentioned that the commandoes hardly spoke, communicated by prearranged winks and grunts, and departed totally drunk, the sergeant shouting, ‘You’ll have the cow in two months.’
18
Like Grandfather, I too drink my tea while drawing sustenance from the bitter olive in my mouth and imbibing strength from the sugar cube between my fingers. Like him, I stand staring into the distance to see Efrayim and Jean Valjean return and Shifris finally arrive. From the rooftop of my large house I look out at the sea. White boats bob on the waves, combs bulge in the bathing suits of trim men, and burly women crouch on windsurfers, guiding their sails with distant hips while their short, stippled hair bristles in the breeze.
Once a great wave drove one of the surfers onto the rocks. I put down my binoculars, hurried to her, slung her over one shoulder and her surfboard with its sail over the other, and carried them to the safety of the sand, leaving her there in a prone position. Back on my roof again, I watched her get to her feet and look dazedly around, studying her bloodstains and my footprints on the sand.
So Grandfather stood atop the hayloft and on the terrace of the old folk’s home, looking out over the Valley for his returning son.
The old folk’s home is eleven miles from the village, a tall building that rises high above its surroundings. I went there every other day, taking a shortcut through the fields and furiously covering the distance in three hours with a pitcher of milk from the cowshed.
‘Wait a minute, Baruch,’ my uncle Avraham would say to me, ‘I’ll give you milk from a better cow.’ While waiting, I carried heavy sacks of fodder, helped load the full milk cans, and slung timid calves into shipment pens.
My two cousins were busy with the cows: Yosi, as morose as his father, quick and efficient at work, his pet red falcon perched on his shoulder or hopping after him like a dog, and Uri, who had taken to disappearing at night and sleeping late in the morning.
‘Some female of his must be in heat,’ grumbled Avraham, slapping him fondly on the back.
Uri, said Grandfather, was like Efrayim, only dreamier and more delicate. The resemblance was strongest in their wiry bodies, gaunt cheeks, and breathtakingly good looks. You could see Grandfather turn his grandson this way and that with his eyes as though he were his lost son frozen in a drop of amber. ‘Children. Strung pearls. Long necklaces of sperm,’ he wrote in a note I found after he had moved to the old folk’s home.
Before starting out, I wrapped the aluminium pitcher in jute and dipped it in water to keep the milk fresh. On my way I wet it again from the sprinklers I passed.
The air was cool and crisp when I set out, and dewdrops still hung from the leaves. The Valley was mantled by a sea of low-lying clouds, the mountain jutting above them like a blue isle. The rising sun, the same sun of the Land of Israel that had tried to murder Grandfather and his brother at 5.15 in the morning, was already stripping the fields of their white coverlet of mist, which dissolved like a seething blanket in the heat. Slowly the Valley threw off its soft bedclothes. The earth grew warm, drying out the damp soles of my feet. I always went barefoot, my sandals slung around my neck so that my heels could crush the earth beneath them. I can still feel the pleasure of that thin, hot soil between my toes, a grey flour ground by cart wheels and tough cattle hooves. Sometimes I walk along the sandy beach by my house, but its sharp, coarse granules are unlike the soft powder of the paths that took me to Grandfather.