‘All that was missing was for one or two of them to commit suicide,’ Grandfather said.
‘No one knew what to do with us,’ Liberson told me years later, when Fanya was dead and he himself had been brought to the home, blind and irritable. ‘They weren’t prepared for ageing pioneers. The sight of us mighty visionaries and men of action reduced to arteriosclerotic rheumatics sent them all into shock.’
I entered the dining hall, where Grandfather was waiting for me, and halted in front of him. Everyone looked at him enviously. He patted my stiff head of hair happily.
‘Good morning, Shulamit,’ I said to the woman seated beside him.
Grandfather’s lady friend, a large, stooped, sickly-looking woman with white hair and reading glasses, smiled at me. I stared down at the ground.
Once when I came Grandfather was not in the dining hall. I crossed the garden to look in his window and saw Shulamit lying on the bed, her dress hiked up above her fallen stomach. Grandfather was kneeling on the rug, his bald head pecking at the flesh between her legs while she talked to him in the same crooning, spongy alphabet that Pinness had not wanted to translate. I left the milk by their door. Later Grandfather came looking for me on the lawn. His moustache had a scary swamp smell when he kissed my cheek.
Now I put the can on the table, removed the lid, and poured Grandfather a cup of milk. ‘Straight from the cow,’ I said, proudly looking around. Shoshanna, a housemother, wiped her red hands on her apron and clapped them together.
‘That’s wonderful, Mirkin. Drink, Mirkin. Isn’t it good for you, Mirkin? There’s nothing healthier than milk.’
‘She thinks everyone over the age of sixty-five is senile,’ grumbled Grandfather, polishing off the milk. Four cups of it, one after the other. Shulamit did not like milk.
Afterwards, watched by everyone, Grandfather and I went for a walk in the garden or chatted on the terrace. I had to tell him over and over what was happening at home, what was new in the orchard and the farmyard, what was the latest in the village.
‘How’s Pinness?’
‘He heard that crank again.’
‘Who was he screwing this time?’
‘It’s always someone else.’
‘And Tsirkin?’
‘Tsirkin had a big fight with Meshulam. He wanted him to burn some weeds in the yard, but Meshulam was too busy repairing the old binding machine.’
‘That piece of junk?’
Meshulam had found the old Clayton binder next to the bullpen, its traces cracked and its wings broken, like the giant skeleton of some shattered bird. I stood up and started to mimic him. ‘You do not throw out history just because it has no spare parts.’
Grandfather laughed. ‘Meshulam will stuff his own father with his mandolin in his hand.’
When Grandfather moved to the old folk’s home, Meshulam came to ask me for all his papers, letters, and personal belongings.
‘Ya’akov Mirkin’s memoirs can throw valuable light on the situation in this country at the beginning of World War One,’ he declared.
‘He didn’t write any memoirs,’ I said.
‘Letters and notes are valuable too,’ explained Meshulam importantly.
Grandfather laughed when I told him how I had grabbed Meshulam by his belt and collar and thrown him out of the window.
‘Meshulam will cause some disaster yet,’ he said as he saw me off. ‘Don’t forget to water the orchard and help in the cowshed. You don’t have to wait for Avraham to ask you.’
After I left he would stand on the terrace for a long while, watching my figure disappear around the bend in the road. Once I waited there for half an hour and then ducked back and looked up. Grandfather was still at his post. Bent with work. Looking with longing. Waiting with vengeance. For his son Efrayim. For the blossoms in the orchard. For Shifris, the last pioneer, who would come walking slowly, making his way through sand and snow to the Land of Israel.
19
‘I have a photo of him,’ Meshulam informed me. Sometimes he would toady up to me, trying to get into my good books as we walked up and down among the graves.
He took it from his shirt pocket. Like all the old snapshots, its borders were cut in a wavy line. Efrayim looked like a beekeeper, his face invisible behind its mask. A slender young man in wide khaki trousers and crepe shoes. Neither beauty nor horror was immortalised here. Only quiet, still visible despite the years.
‘I’ll swap it for the constitution of the Feyge Levin Workingman’s Circle,’ offered Meshulam.
I pushed him away. ‘Beat it before I beat you.’