One evening Elkano came to Ramona, telling that the ‘Hagana’ organization, to which he had been committed, was in a need of weapons. Elkao promised to obtain some, but who knows how.
“To rob a bank is an easy act,” he said, “but to bring arms we can only by robbing the British, and they would kill us for that.”.
“I know something,” said Ramona. She ordered Nahumik to bring the long ladder from the courtyard. Elkano wondered what she had intended to offer him by the ladder, and Nahumik himself didn’t know. She brought a glass of tea to the kitchen’s table, at which he was seated, and wanted to mix milk in it. But Elkano said he had hated milk since his babyuhood. His mother had told him that.
“You are like Nahumik in that,” Ramona said. “But you certainly love butter made of milk.” He nodded and she brought a piece of bread and smeared butter on it. While he was eating and looking at her moving around, the boy was heard dragging the big ladder. He brought it inside the house, and Ramona told him to set it up below the upper small store, above the kitchen’s door.
“You can climb there,” she pointed out to Elkano, “and try to bring down an old suitcase. It had been lying there- since my late husband brought it with other things from our native homes. Ten years have passed since we arrived here, in Palestine. We were used to call it: Eretz Israel.” …Elkano promptly climbed the ladder, and his hand opened the small wicket. He was searching inside the small over-store.
“Quite a darkness there,” he said, his head down , “But now I see two orange boxes. In one of them- an old dusty long folded coat; the other is empty”.
“There should be something else,” Ramona said.
“Ah, an old suitcase.”
“Can you reach it with your fingers?”
“Not yet. I’ll lift myself into the narrow place.”
Elkano’s elbows were sent forward. Sustaing his weight while he had pushed his upper body inside, his palms already reached the suitcaes, grabbed it and dragged it toward his chest. Then he slipped with it outside and down. He shouted to the boy, who was waiting under the ladder, to move aside. Being already on the floor, Elkano opened the old suitcase, peeped inside and said that there had been some rugs, and two round tin cans. He re-closed the suitcase and threw it on the floor.
“Oops,” cried Ramona, “be cautious, man.”
“We should clean there above very thoroughly”, said Elkano,” I have seen a mouse rambling on my hand.”
Ramona has already reopened the suitcase. Elkano was still standing near the ladder and cleaning his dress from the dust.
He was smiling to the Ramona and son, while they were looking at a small box inside the suitcase – and pulling out a small toy train. Nahumik remembered it from his childhood. His Pa stored it for him or for a brother, that would be born one day. But… what are these tin cans here? ‘Plum Jam’- is written on their yellow, worn out labels.
“Why are you holding these antiquities here?” asked Elkano, suspecting that there was some mystery in these cans.
“They are hermetically closed,” she said, “But my dear husband arranged them so, that they will be filled with greeze, not jam.”
Ramona ran aside to the front door and was locking it from inside. She rushed to the kitchen and brought a tin-opener. While Elkano’s has already opened the can, Nahumik found another toy of his childhood- a long Python: It was folded there, itss grey green colors’ body and yellow eyes – frightened him in his childhood.
At this point of time Elkano peeped inside the tin can: in the fatness of the brown greeze he saw a barrel of a firearm, but he still wasn’t sure of that. Then he saw some screws and a small pistol’s nagazine, and surveyed them in pleasure and interest.
“I guess that the handle and other accessories are in the second can”, he said loudly and opened the other one.
“To who should I give all that – if not to you?” Ramona said.
He began to assemble the weapon. Still sticky and wet, but -
“A true Parabelum,” he said, and pulled the trigger with a click.
“A spring is broken there, but I don’t mind. It’ll not fire in Automat mode. You saw that I’ve tried a single bullet mode. O.K.”
At that night Ramona suddenly felt that a war was approaching. Her sleep hadn’t come, and she was lying on her bed, meditating and bewildered… She knows that she is a stong personality, but sometimes she has a feeling of self-accusation about her relationship with the guy. She has been trapped in the net of love. Maybe she’ll be disappointed. But she can view all those events from above, cooly. She knows that everything will pass, and life will continue as ever- for so many human beings. She knows all that from her literature studies in the University of Prague.
CHAPTER 12
To America and Back Page 11