by Meir Shalev
Truth be told, that tourist had caught my attention even earlier. Her height and her eyes reminded me of my mother and Yordad and my brother, but she was handsomer than they, albeit in a strange way Usually it is not only the contours of the face that make a person beautiful but also what one radiates. My mother’s features and her luminescence were one and the same. Tirzah’s features are not special, but she is radiant to the point of blinding. And this tourist radiated nothing, but she was exceptionally beautiful. When we sat that evening in the hotel lobby all those present stared at us in wonder, the way people stare in wonder at such a lady in the company of a dark young man, short and flustered.
The bus driver even made a vulgar crack about tourists who want to get something on with guides, but this tourist was headed in a very different direction. In the fall, she told me, she was supposed to return to Israel with several English friends of hers, young people who had money and time on their hands and were interested in birds. “And we would like you, Mr. Mendelsohn, to take us on a two-week nature tour in search of migrating birds.”
“I don’t know anything about nature,” I told her. “Especially about migrating birds.”
She touched my arm. “You won’t need to know any birds and you won’t need to explain anything to anyone. What you’ll have to do is locate and prepare observation points and places for us to eat and sleep, and to equip and drive a car. There will be six of us, including you and me.”
At that time Yordad had an acquaintance, an elderly gynecologist who was aggressive, short of temper and stature, and a knowledgeable amateur ornithologist: a Vogelkundler, he called it. I went to consult with him and he introduced me to his band of bird-watchers, all old German Jews like him, all far more strange and intriguing to me than the birds that caught their interest.
I told him about the offer I had received from the young American and he invited me to accompany his group on a bird-watching outing.
“She says I don’t need to be familiar with the birds,” I told him.
“You need to be familiar with the bird-watchers. They’ll be your clients, not the birds.”
The old yekke bird-watchers turned up armed with binoculars, cameras, and a telescope, wearing boots, and khaki trousers that reached their knees, and khaki socks that reached those same knees from the opposite direction. They all wore wide-brimmed straw hats, except for one; his hat was topped with a tuft of feathers, provoking the others to serve him with a sharp, educational rebuke that such a hat was not seemly for someone who loves birds: “Es gehört sich nicht!”
They sat on small folding chairs, and almost at once the announcements began: the distance, the direction, the type of bird. And then the arguments: Oriental honey buzzard or black kite? Steppe eagle or greater spotted eagle? The beginners tend to confuse the kestrel with the sparrow hawk, but the wingspan of the sparrow hawk is greater, they told me, and the hawk does not hover. Anyway, a small bird of prey that hovers could only be a kestrel, but a large bird of prey that does this must be a schlangenadler, a short-toed eagle.
After several hours, a vote was held and it was decided that we would eat. The men removed sandwiches, fruit, and thermoses of black coffee from their knapsacks. The scent of sausages and boiled eggs wafted through the air.
“We have two people on duty,” they told me. “One keeps his eye on the sky in order to alert the members of the group if something interesting appears overhead. As for the other, please meet Professor Freund, on cake duty today” Professor Freund, an expert on Greek history during the week, sliced and served with great ceremony a wonderful apple pastry made by his wife.
“She baked a strudel for us and she stayed at home,” he noted with pride. “Bird-watching is a very good hobby for us boys,” he said and laughed oddly, something akin to clearing his throat.
They spread before me a map of Israel, explaining which birds I was likely to meet in which locales. It was an important lesson to learn, because even though today I am no expert in identifying birds, I did become adept at knowing where to find them, and spot them, and show them to others. Some places, like the Hula Valley, are known by every bird-watcher, while in certain locations around Jerusalem you can find the resting places of eagles, and in one of the valleys of the Gilboan Hills, those of storks. I have a small ravine where they stay year-round, and a place in the Judean Desert where birds of prey gather to sleep on the ground. I had one eagle owl—the only bird that arouses true affection in me—whose nesting grounds I have visited a number of times; today I show my tourists his descendants. I have one small, isolated pool around which there are all manner of ducks, greenheads and coots, cormorants, egrets, gray herons, black storks, stilts, lapwings. You see, I remember the names even if I don’t always know to put them with the right birds.
2
SEVERAL MONTHS PASSED. On the appointed day I drove the minibus I had rented to the Haifa port to fetch the rich tourist from America and her English bird-watching friends. Overhead, seagulls and enormous flocks of pigeons circled, landing and alighting at the granaries nearby.
My clients disembarked from a ship arriving from Piraeus. Liora Kirschenbaum called me “darling,” tilted her head downward to kiss my cheek, and presented me to the others, a small and amiable group, slightly inebriated and emitting the scents of pleasant colognes, four sunburned noses protected—a little too late—by light-colored straw hats. Four pairs of binoculars hung on four concave chests; four leather-covered flasks were hidden in four back pockets.
We left the port in the direction of the Check Post, and already in the city they began to identify swifts and swallows. We traveled north. Although I was not asked to do so, perhaps out of awkwardness and habit I tried to tell them a few of my often-told tour-guide stories as we drove: Elijah on Mount Carmel, the Crusaders and Napoleon in Acre, the snail that produces the mauve color used by the ancient Phoenicians for dyeing, the invention of glass. Straightaway one of them, a squat and jaundiced fellow, his Adam’s apple jutting sharply from his neck, told me they did not want to hear any of the “holy garbage”— that’s what he called it—that tour guides pawn off on tourists in the Holy Land.
“We’ve come to watch the birds, Mr. Mendelsohn,” he said. “It’s best we make this perfectly clear now so this trip will be a success.”
And the trip was, indeed, a success. The organization, the food, the accommodations, the rented minibus—nothing failed. Even the birds did not disappoint. The stork knew the appointed hours, the swift observed the time of her coming, and large flocks of birds of prey passed by overhead as if on command. My new clients were satisfied. They were particularly excited by the sound of a soft crowing they could not locate. It was late in the afternoon and we were eating sandwiches at the edge of a large field in the Beit She’an Valley when suddenly all four raised their eyes skyward. Their gazes scoured the heavens, but the looks on their faces attested only to listening, not seeing.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
The squat, jaundiced, irascible one signaled me impatiently with his hand to be quiet, and after cocking his head and listening for half a minute he raised his binoculars to his eyes and said, “One o’clock, thirty degrees.” His cohorts looked, too, and one said, “The scouts.”
“Those are cranes, Yair,” Liora whispered to me, her mouth—how pleasant—very close to my ear. “Listen. They make a very soft, quiet sound, but they can be heard at great distances.”
I listened to their amicable crowing like conversation and then I saw them, three large fowl with long legs and outstretched necks.
“I thought they flew in large flocks,” I said.
“The scouts,” said the squat, jaundiced guy, “fly ahead of the flock. They’ll find a nice spot to rest, they’ll land there, and then signal to the rest of the flock from the ground.”
“Pretty soon the sun will set,” I noted.
“Cranes fly at night, too.”
The stork, the pelican, the birds of prey—all th
ese glide. That is what he explained to me later. The sun heats up the earth, the earth heats the air, and the hot air rises, enabling the birds to rise as well, and glide. That is why they fly exclusively during the day and over land. But the crane is the only large bird that both glides and beats its wings, so that while the stork takes several days of coasting to circumvent the Black Sea, the crane traverses it in one night of wing-flapping flight.
That night they slept at a kibbutz in the Beit She’an Valley Incidentally, years later it would turn out that this was the kibbutz where Zohar, my future sister-in-law, lived, and that the man who handled the room rental—a tall, stout young man, friendly and efficient—was one of her three brothers. Sometimes I ponder what would have happened if she herself had been working at the desk, or if I had not sat with my guests on the grass but had set out on a walk around the kibbutz and had met her on the sidewalk. I could have warned her against marrying Benjamin. But that evening I sat with my English bird-watchers on the grass until quite late, and my life took its present course.
A full moon was shining. The four of them drank a lot and told stories that amused one another and Liora immensely I envied them. Their behavior hinted at a certain insouciance and freedom from financial worry that had less to do with monies inherited or earned than with some mysterious heredity
The squat, jaundiced fellow with the jutting Adam’s apple coaxed me to take part in their drinking. I declined. I told them I was not accustomed, that I had never drunk liquor, and that I abstained almost entirely even from drinking wine. But Mr. Jaundice would not give up. “It’s high time you tried. Drink it down in one go. This is good Irish whiskey”
Perhaps because of Liora’s presence there and perhaps because his words convinced me, I downed the glass he handed me. Was this what my mother felt as she sipped her daily glass of brandy? A snake of fire coiled around my throat. Ahorse kicked the inside of my brow I wished to distance myself from them, breathe some air, and get hold of myself, but my body was unable to stand. I crawled to the side on all fours. Everyone laughed and Liora drew near, compassion in her eyes but mirth on her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “He didn’t know you’d react so strongly”
I was afraid to open my mouth for fear of retching or fainting. I made do with a gesture of “Leave me alone!” and managed to get to my feet, staggering and nauseous. Liora came after me and laid me out— yes, precisely that—on the grass, then sat down next to me and settled my neck onto her thigh, so that my head tilted slightly backward.
After a little while my head cleared. I rose to my feet and stumbled back to my room. Liora followed and made me a cup of Turkish coffee.
“This is the first time I’ve ever made Turkish coffee,” she said. “I hope I’m doing it right.”
She held my hand. I responded to her encouraging smile with my own apologetic one. I told her I wanted to return to the grass and breathe the fresh air.
The Englishmen had already turned in. The full moon had risen higher in the sky; it was no longer bathed in a soft yellow light, but was now bluish and metallic. I sat on the grass, Liora at my side, tilting her lovely head toward mine and parting her lips for a kiss. Her body relaxed a bit, announcing its desire to lie next to me. We pressed up against each other. I could not believe what was happening. Her beauty was so near, I could see it in my eyes, feel it over the whole surface of my skin.
Her mouth and tongue surprised me with their heat and vitality, her hands with their daring, my body with its joy, her loins with their ardor.
“You are lovely” the rich tourist I met on the bus told me. “You are small and sweet, just the way men should be. Even without meeting your mother I can tell she’s taller than you. I liked that about you right from the first time we met, on the bus.”
Suddenly she pulled away from me and lay back in the grass. “Listen,” she said.
I listened but heard nothing. I wanted to kiss her again, but she put her hand on my chest. “Wait. Be patient. The moment you first hear them is important.”
We lay on our backs next to each other, holding hands. Time passed, measured by the howls of jackals and the dull roar from a distant road. Then a hush fell, a thin silence, followed by a sort of faraway chattering that grew closer and more defined. The world overflowed with wings, the ears with a soft whispering. The full moon blinked and skittered, vanishing, then reappearing from behind passing shadows and uttered words.
I asked, “What is this?”
“Those are the cranes,” said the rich young tourist from America. “You remember the three scouts we saw this afternoon? This is the large flock that followed them.”
I listened. And wondered: What was it they were discussing? Were they telling one another of experiences from previous journeys? Were they arguing over where to land? Were they comparing this resting place with others? And this rich young woman, who was destined to become my wife at the end of that very year, made me laugh by saying, in three different croaking voices, “Faster! We’re landing soon, got to catch a good spot …” “Hey where’s Grandma disappeared to now … ?” “We’re gonna be last again and nothing’s gonna be left to eat…”
The sounds of conversation grew stronger. To this very day I am astounded at the distance to which the voices of cranes carry They can be heard long before the birds arrive and do not dissipate until after they have departed.
“Geese and cranes talk among themselves when they fly,” Liora told me. “Perhaps because they fly at night.” She explained that these were voices used by “Mommy Crane” and “Daddy Crane” to calm the little cranes that were just old enough to be making their first journey with the flock.
The rich young tourist you’d prophesied for me had become a flesh-and-blood woman lying at my side. She pleased me. Her conversation was very congenial. She said, “In Japan the crane is a symbol of a long and faithful marriage, but in ancient Egypt it was the raven.”
I said, “Really? Here lovebirds are called ‘turtledoves.’”
Liora bent my head slightly and planted many soft kisses on my neck. I felt she was sucking my strength, that any minute I would die from the intensity of the pleasure and feebleness I was feeling. She stripped off her shirt, exposing small and beautiful breasts, then pushed me gently away so that I would remain lying on my back. She laid a long thigh on top of me and said, “Here, Yair, this is going to be our first time.”
“Are you a virgin?” I asked, taken aback.
She chuckled. “We’ll soon find out.”
“Well, I am,” I told her. “So you know that right up front and we don’t have any misunderstandings.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?” I said. “My mother was a virgin, and I think my father was, too. It’s our family’s way”
She drew her face near. Her hands opened, parted, drew out, aimed. Her body climbed, mounted. “I’ve heard that story before,” she said. “Make up a new one.”
The beating of wings intensified. The din filled my head. The rich young tourist arched and unfurled and I slipped inside her flesh. It was much easier than I had suspected, more pleasant than I had hoped.
“Shhhh … keep quiet. You’ll wake up everyone around here,” she said as she placed her hand over my mouth.
3
APPARENTLY the English bird-watchers told their friends about me upon their return home, because people began to make contact and visit, and my name became known among travel agents as well. I was overcome with the joy of a young man, the joy of financial independence. I felt as though I was taking off, that my wings were spread. And because my mother had no money and my father objected to my choice of profession, reminding me that “it isn’t too late, Yairi, to alter this erroneous course,” I turned to Meshulam Fried for a loan to enable me to get set up and to purchase the necessary vehicle.
Only a few years had passed since Gershon had fallen in battle, and Meshulam would remove the large blue handkerchief from his pocket every
time I came to visit. “Ever since Gershon, it’s hard for me to look at you.” That is what he has been saying from the time his son fell to this very day “Ever since Gershon,” without the terrible verb that should follow his name.
“I can’t look at you, Iraleh,” he bellowed into his handkerchief, “without seeing him next to you. Seeing Tiraleh without him is hard too, but it’s worse with you.” All at once he stopped. “That’s enough. I’m done crying this time. What can I do for you?”
I told him about the bird-watchers I guided and the opportunity that had presented itself, and Meshulam said, “I smell the hand of a woman in this. May my right hand cleave to the roof of my mouth if I don’t feel her presence.”
“That would be my mother’s hand,” I said. “It was her idea.”
“Another woman,” Meshulam said. “Not only Mrs. Mendelsohn. It’s there on your forehead like the headlights of a newspaper.”
I asked him if he could help me find a used minibus and he said he would find one. I asked if he could loan me money and he refused. “For you, the only money I give is a gift.”
I told him I would not accept a gift of that magnitude and he said, “So it’s not a gift. Meshulam is going to loan you some money and you aren’t going to pay it back.” He gave me an admonishing look. “Ever since Gershon, you’re like a son to me. If he was living, Iraleh, I wouldn’t give him the money? If you married Tiraleh, I wouldn’t give it to you?”