Authors: Edeet Ravel
Baby Diary
July 12
The rash is worse. It’s spread to her entire face. I put on cod liver oil. Today she really smiled at me when I spoke to her.
Dori
It’s Passover today. Shoshana brings us white shirts and clean shorts. I’m hoping she’ll give me shorts with a big zipper on the side and she does.
We go to the fields with all the children and all the adults. There’s a tractor decorated with flowers and the bigger children sing in a choir. Some people get up and dance to Stalks in the Field. Someone reads a poem about figs. Everyone is happy.
Daddy is sitting on the ground smiling. I sit on his lap. There’s a speech about peace with the Arabs. I remember what I wanted to ask Daddy. It’s about the toilets in Gush Halav. But he wants to hear the speech so he whispers
tell me after
.
Suddenly it’s way past suppertime and the adults have to go to the Dining Hall to read the Haggada
35
and eat and we have to go to the Children’s House. At least we were together almost the whole day.
Poem About Figs
Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone
The flowers appear on the earth
The time of the singing of birds is come
And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land
The fig tree puts forth its green figs
And the vines are in blossom; they give forth their fragrance
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away
My dove is in the clefts of the rock
In the secret places of the hills
Let me see thy face
Let me hear thy voice
For sweet is thy voice
And thy face is comely
Take us the foxes, the little foxes
That spoil the vineyards
For our vineyards are in blossom
My beloved is mine and I am his
He feedeth among the lilies
Until the sun spreads, and the shadows flee away
Turn my beloved
And be thou like a roe or a young hart
Upon the distant mountains.
Dori
Marx is famous for saying
share everything
. I don’t know why that made him famous. Everyone already knows it’s more fair if you share.
I remember to ask Daddy about the toilets in Gush Halav. I say
David says they go in holes in the ground.
Daddy really really doesn’t want to talk about this topic. He says
I don’t know
but how can that be? I say
but do they have toilets?
and he says
they don’t have plumbing like we have
.
I say
why don’t we give them half our toilets?
For example we have two toilets in the Children’s House. We could give one to Jish.
He says
our country doesn’t have enough money right now but as soon as we have more everyone will have plumbing
. I ask
how can we get more money
and he says
we have to work hard
.
I’m glad I’m only a child. I don’t want to work all day. I might be a little bit lazy. Shoshana likes to sing that song to us when she wakes us up in the morning—
Get up lazybones
And off you go to work
Get up lazybones
And off you go to work
Cuku-Riku Cuku-Riku
Hear the rooster crow
Cuku-Riku Cuku-Riku
Hear the rooster crow
in that mean laughing voice of hers. If Shoshana thinks it’s bad to be lazy it can’t be that bad.
Our First Year
3 February 1949.
The snow is beginning to melt and living conditions are really tough. Just to get in and out of bed, to keep clean, to drain the water out of the room, to shuffle from one meal to the next, to say nothing of putting in an eight- or nine-hour work day—in other words, just to go through the simple process of keeping alive during the twenty-four hour day saps all of one’s energy.
Cultural activities are almost impossible, but we try, we try. Now preparing a skit for the celebration when the folks from Kibbutz Shaar Hagolan arrive. Those of us who used to whine that the days of pioneering are over in Israel have stopped whining.
Dori
I’m in love with Tarzan. There was a movie about him today and now I love him. He’s the handsomest man in the world. Until now Daddy was the handsomest but now it’s Tarzan and Daddy together.
Daddy tells me more about Tarzan. How his parents died in an airplane crash in the jungle and the apes raised him. That’s why he knows the language of apes and other animals.
A funny song about God comes on the radio. In Canada they actually believe in God but we’re more advanced here. Daddy really likes this song. It makes him laugh.
God was simply feeling bored as hell one day
He thought hey say
Why not create a world out of clay
But how much better
How much better it would be
For every animal and tree
If instead of all this muddle
He’d gone and solved
A crossword puzzle
The song has a lot of the crazy things humans do. When it’s over Daddy sings the lines he remembers and laughs some more. He’s happy here in Eldar.
Between the Motion and the Act
A beautiful American woman was standing outside the hotel with a huge knapsack on her back, waiting for a bus. Nat was trying to think of a way to offer her his services when she recognized him—a few months ago she’d appeared in the YG Federation office in Tel Aviv to ask about visiting a kibbutz. He had been there by chance and they had talked. Her name, she said, was Joy.
He’d stared at her smooth shiny black hair falling gently on her soft shoulders and framing the white smooth neck that extended from her summer dress. He’d boldly looked at her red lips, high cheekbones, perfect Nordic nose, and bright grey eyes. How could her parents have guessed that she’d become the embodiment of her name?
“Why don’t you come to our kibbutz?” he’d offered and was aware of the blood flowing in his reproductive veins.
“I want a kibbutz of Hebrew speakers,” she’d said, mentioning a few near the Syrian border.
“Are you busy tonight?”
“Yes, but maybe another time.”
But Joy didn’t vanish forever; here she was now in Haifa. And she remembered him!
“Do you have a place to stay here in Haifa?” His thoughts worked quickly with the acumen of a wolf.
“Yes, the kibbutz I’m on has a house on the Carmel.”
“Are you free tonight?” he asked, remembering the last time he was rejected.
“Yes.” She smiled and he carried her heavy knapsack. He was very happy. He seated her in a café and asked her to wait ten minutes so he could put on clean clothes and tell Rubin about his change of plans. He hurried up the stairs. Rubin lay on his bed in underwear and undershirt and read the Palestine Post while waving away the flies with his other hand.
“Rubin, I have a fabulous girl waiting for me. If you want to come with us, hurry.”
He didn’t even raise his eyes from the newspaper. “Ha ha,” he said.
“Okay,” Nat said, trying to hide his relief. “You don’t have to come.”
He hurried to shower. He couldn’t find the leg of his pants as he raised them from the dusty floor. Rubin started to notice that something was up. He lay down the newspaper and leaned on his elbow in amusement. He saw that Nat wasn’t joking, grabbed his clothes, applied Brylcreem to his wild curls and ran after Nat, buttoning his pants and shouting, “Wait for me, wait a minute!”
Nat introduced Rubin to Joy. Rubin gave an amazed look, as if to say, Where the hell did you manage to find such a charming creature? Her face was like pale petals surrounded by black hair, her exposed legs were lovely, her full body rustled under her thin summer dress, radiating naughty adventures.
They walked along the neat streets lined with trees and decided on supper at the Balfour Cellar. Leo the barman played favourite oldies like Frankie Laine crooning “Jezebel.”
They questioned her. She had come to Israel because her parents were Quakers and she was interested in peace, she told them.
“You want to help the Arabs, no?” Rubin was agitated, chewing his liver with an open mouth and unabashed enthusiasm.
A ghostly shadow passed for a moment in her eyes.
“We don’t make any distinctions in providing our services,” she said. “The kibbutzim interest me as a way of life, as a way of achieving harmony on the basis of mutual help.” She cut her portion with deliberation and delicacy, like a girl from a good home.
As she munched on her french fries in the murky basement, she began to shower them with questions. What sort of work do they do? What are their roles apart from their regular workday? How many are they? How far are they from the border?
Nat tried to stifle his suspicious nature. His answers were measured, but Rubin, who had already managed to drink a few glasses of whiskey, and who was also drunk on Joy’s stunning beauty, spoke freely. In any case, he always jokingly claimed that any information extracted from them was completely useless to anyone. Maybe he was right. From the minute that she learned he was in charge of “security”, that he was a former Air Force Pilot who’d received a Silver Star, her eyes and ears were tuned only to him.
Rubin and Nat worriedly split the bill. When they emerged from the basement bar to the street, which glowed with neon lights, a few army officers greeted her. She left her companions for a few seconds, and had a quiet exchange with her military acquaintances. Rubin and Nat, themselves former soldiers, mused again on the attractions that beautiful girls exert on high-ranking military men.
She sat between them at a movie, laughed out loud, and licked a popsicle with her scarlet tongue. She thanked them from the bottom of her heart and refused to let them accompany her home.
The two disappointed friends took the bus back to their paltry room.
A few months later, two policemen arrived at the kibbutz and asked whether anyone there had seen a girl named Joy. Nat happened to be at the office at that moment. “I know her,” he said.
“So where is she?” asked the police officer.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you know her?”
Nat told him and then asked, “Why are you looking for her?”
They explained that she’d been under surveillance for quite some time, on suspicion of espionage. They had lost her, though, they said. She was last seen boarding a bus and had probably crossed the border by now, or escaped on a ship from Acre.
Dori
Daddy bought me a book about Tarzan! He found it in the city!