A Pigeon and a Boy

by Meir Shalev

  The Girl’s eyelids grew heavy and exhausted. Large teardrops escaped from beneath them and streamed down her cheeks. Now that the act had been completed she was free to contemplate her beloved’s death, not what he had sent her or what she had done with it.

  “Tell me what happened,” she requested. “Was he carrying you in the dovecote when he was hit?”

  “No,” answered the dove, “he had left us in a safe place and gone out. A bell rang, thunder pealed, a tongue of fire leapt forth. The world shook and the dovecote fell and broke open. My two comrades were killed, the small one instantly and the large male shortly thereafter. I alone remained, waiting.”

  She fell silent. She gathered a single kernel from the floor and sipped a bit of water to indicate that she had finished eating, then moved away from the dish and eyed the Girl.

  “And what about the Baby?”

  “He returned. His skin was flayed and his blood flowing. He came back crawling and moaning.”

  The pigeon’s ceremonious recounting alarmed the Girl. She restrained her tears so that her body would not tremble and disturb the flow of the seed inside her.

  “And what did he do?”

  “He slit open his trousers and exposed his flesh and did things to his body that you used to do, right in this very place.”

  Both smiled. The pigeon charmingly so, with a squint, her beak slightly open, and the Girl, her eyes scrunched and tearful, her lips white.

  “If he had wings he would have come to you himself, exactly like I did, all purpose and progress and direction and aim. The trickle, the pouring, the closing and affixing of the capsule to my leg. He took hold of me, crawled, dispatched, and expired.”

  “If I had wings, I would have flown to him and rescued him,” the Girl said.

  “I was your wings,” the pigeon declaimed, “I am the flesh and the soul, I am the breeze of the body and the burden of love, I am wind and strength.”

  The pigeons that had been flying over the loft now descended and circled it. Perhaps they were hungry and thirsty; perhaps they wished to listen in on the conversation. Several of them perched on the roof while others landed and walked about and cooed on the ground.

  “Hush,” the pigeon said to them. “Hush. The seed is returning to its nesting place. Be patient.”

  “Hush,” the Girl intoned. “He is returning, he is sailing inside me, soaring. I can feel it.”

  The pigeons outside flew off again, circling over the loft. The Girl removed the syringe from her body and, without casting a single glance at its empty chamber, let it drop to the ground. Her eyelids shut, her limbs fell limp, her entire body slackened. And that was how Dr. Laufer found her when he came running in several minutes later, panting and sweaty Half an hour earlier he had seen from a distance the pigeons hovering, neither descending nor ascending, neither drawing near nor departing, merely floating in a circle whose center was clear and singular. He saw and understood that something had happened.

  He was no longer a young man, but his fear restored his legs to those of a buck and his imagination infused them with youthfulness. He ran like a madman, hopping over fences, sinking in sandy patches, flailing and gulping and plying forward, shortening the distance to the zoo through backyards, rushing along shouting, “Please, not now, we are in a terrible hurry!” to anyone wishing to detain or protest or stop him. And when he reached the zoo, he did not head for the gate but girded his loins, continued on his direct course, and stormed the wall, climbing over it and dropping down on the other side, where he stood and made straight for the pigeon loft.

  He peeled back the flap of the curtain and peered inside, where he saw the Girl lying on the ground. At first he feared she was dead, then discerned that she was sleeping, and only then saw that she was naked. Naked, her limbs sprawled, drying trails of tears shining on her cheeks and drying trails of saliva fading between her thighs. And what was the missing Belgian champion pigeon doing there with her? Why was she sitting by the Girl’s shoulder? And what was she watching over?

  At once he turned his face so as not to gaze any longer at the Girl’s nakedness. He went off to find his gray woolen blanket, the one he used when he needed to sleep on a cot in the zoo while caring for some animal that was ill or giving birth with difficulty Walking backward, he entered the loft, spread the blanket over the Girl, and departed, closing the door behind him and proceeding to his tiny office, where he found the storeroom attendant, who informed him in an excited whisper that the Girl had gone crazy

  “I mean totally crazy, Dr. Laufer,” she said. “I’m telling you, Dr. Laufer, she went nuts. She showed up in the storeroom screaming and you won’t believe, Dr. Laufer, what she wanted: a spoon and a syringe, Dr. Laufer, I don’t understand what for.”

  Neither did Dr. Laufer understand the meaning of this, but he— unlike the storeroom attendant—knew the Girl well and comprehended that this was an act not of madness but of purpose. He returned to the pigeon loft and waited outside until the curtains were raised and the Girl—awake and dressed—came out. The Belgian pigeon was perched on her shoulder, and the pigeons that had been flying overhead just a moment before entered the loft and began to eat.

  “That is the pigeon that disappeared on us several days ago,” he told her.

  “The Baby is dead,” said the Girl.

  “Where? What?” Dr. Laufer shouted. “How could he be dead?”

  And before he died he dispatched this pigeon to me.”

  “What are you talking about? When did you give her to him?”

  “He came to say good-bye to me, to take his leave before going to battle. I gave her to him and he left.”

  “Before going to battle?” Dr. Laufer exclaimed, feeling the facts land one after the other around him. “What battle? He is a pigeon handler, not a fighter. What battle? And why do you say that he died?”

  “This morning he fell in a battle for some monastery in Jerusalem. A monastery with a bell and a cannon …”

  At this point the Girl burst into heavy, bitter, howling sobs. Dr. Laufer hugged her shoulders, said, “Shhh … shhhh … shhhh. Who told you he died? What has caused you to say such things?”

  “He told me. And the pigeon, too.”

  “How can a person announce his own death? How can pigeons converse? This cannot be!”

  The Girl said nothing.

  And what is it that he sent with her?”

  The Girl handed him the open capsule and the empty tube.

  Dr. Laufer looked inside. His legs gave way even before he caught the scent. His nose confirmed what his body understood and what his heart had accepted and his mind had rejected. He sat slowly on one of the boxes, clasped the Girl around her thighs, and pressed his head against her belly His shoulders trembled. His throat constricted.

  “Forgive us,” he told her. “Please forgive us for crying. We were promised that he would merely raise pigeons, that he would simply set up a loft. But what, in the end, do we know? All we do is heal animals and raise pigeons. What do we understand?”

  He stood to his full height and rested the Girl’s head on his shoulder, muttering, “And you … it is unbelievable. That is why you asked the storeroom attendant for a spoon and a syringe … no wavering, no FOR and AGAINST, such a decision …”

  “It was what I wanted, what he wanted. We talked about having a baby when we last met, a child we would make after the war. And that is what he sent me.”

  A miraculous new story,” Dr. Laufer said, taking heart, as though the Girl’s returning strength was pouring into him. “A story unlike any other in the world history of pigeonry We shall tell the story at our next convention of pigeon handlers.”

  3

  SEVERAL DAYS PASSED, amassed, turned into weeks. Dr. Laufer came to his senses and told nothing to anyone, but at the next convention— which took place half a year later—all the pigeon handlers could clearly make out the Girl’s large belly, and the Belgian pigeon that did not leave her shoulder. Three months after
that she gave birth to a boy who closely resembled his father, and there is no need to make any effort in guessing his identity

  When the child was six months old his mother brought him to a pigeon handlers’ conference. Dr. Laufer photographed her sitting there, the Belgian pigeon on her shoulder, the baby suckling at her breast—Where is that picture now? I wish I knew—and the pigeon handlers were out of their minds with joy They approached her one after the other, sharing her mourning and her happiness, smiling and wiping their tears.

  The Girl nursed her son for a relatively long time—some twelve months or so—and just when Dr. Laufer hinted to her that the time had come to desist (“As veterinarians we understand these things better than pediatricians”), a nearly forgotten guest appeared at the zoo: the boy who had been with her that day on the balcony when the wounded pigeon landed. He was the neighbors’ son who had dressed the pigeon’s injury and accompanied the Girl to the zoo and brought stale bread and studied Corning’s Anatomy and the English dictionary and traveled to America to study medicine in Chicago.

  Ten years had passed since then, and they were as long as a hundred in his eyes. There was not a day in which he did not think of her, a night in which she did not visit his dreams. He was no longer a boy; he was a young man for whom the world awaited his choices and deeds. Behind him were a dozen rejected job offers, a dozen failed attempts at persuasion, and four broken American hearts. He had disembarked from the ship in Haifa Port, kissed his proud, excited parents hello, and an hour later, in the taxi en route to Tel Aviv, had asked about the Girl.

  “Better you shouldn’t know,” his mother said. His father said, “We’ll talk about it at home,” to which his mother added in a low grumble, “The whole city knows. It’s a scandal.”

  They no longer lived on Ben Yehuda Street above the Girl’s parents; they’d taken a larger new apartment near Dizengoff Square. He put his luggage in the room his parents had prepared for him and told them, “I’m going out. I’ll be back later.”

  “Where are you going?” his mother called out. “You’ve only just come back from America and you’re already off?”

  “I’ll only be gone a little while,” he said. “I need to see her.”

  His legs carried him not toward Ben Yehuda Street but in the opposite direction. The fat man collected from him the stale bread he had gathered on the way and allowed him to enter the gate of the zoo, but with a distressed and lowered gaze.

  The young doctor entered the zoo, followed the path, and at the pigeon loft he saw the Girl sitting and nursing a baby His blood hardened in his veins. His flesh turned to wood. The Girl did not notice him because her head was bent in the way of nursing mothers. He managed to withdraw, and there, hidden behind the bend in the path, he regained his strength. He drew near and stood next to her.

  “Hello, Raya,” he said.

  “Hello, Yaacov,” Raya said, raising her head.

  “You were a girl when we parted, and now you are nursing a baby”

  “His name is Yair.”

  “He’s a beautiful child.”

  “He looks like his father. Had he looked like me he would have been more handsome.”

  “I’ve just returned from America. I finished my medical studies there.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “You, too. I got home half an hour ago. The first thing I did was come to see you.”

  “Thank you.”

  And where is Yair’s father?”

  “His father was killed in the war.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know”

  Suddenly he felt courageous and could no longer contain or imprison what he had said in his heart all those years when he rose in the morning and when he walked about and when he sat in the university library, the laboratory the hospital, and when he lay down at night. And the words burst out: “It could be, Raya, that I should have stayed in this country, and instead of going to study medicine in America I should have gone to war here. It could be that I should have accepted Dr. Laufer’s offer to work with you here in the pigeon loft. That could be, too. But then he was the one who said I would make a good doctor, and he was right.”

  “Funny,” said my mother, “how Dr. Laufer determined all of our fates. Yours, mine, my baby that lives, and my Baby who died.”

  She moved me from one breast to the other in a decisive movement, a hurried, terrifying skip from fear to security, and said, “Dr. Yaacov Mendelsohn. It has a nice ring to it.”

  “I had hoped to forget you, Raya,” said the young doctor. “But I couldn’t.”

  She did not answer.

  “I sent you seven letters in the first year and ten in the third and another five in the fourth, and then I stopped because you did not respond.”

  “There was no point.”

  He sat facing her and said, “I have always loved you, Raya, from the time you were a girl, when you lay reading on your stomach on the balcony, even before that wounded pigeon landed there. Often I would watch you from our balcony above. Once your shirt rose a little and I saw the dimples on your back and from upstairs I closed my eyes and kissed them.”

  She was silent.

  “And that shirt of ours that fell to your balcony on the day the wounded pigeon landed—I threw it there. It didn’t fall.”

  “I thought so.”

  “And if you ask me what the most important thing I learned in medical school was, I will tell you this: that things can be fixed. Not only bodies. Souls, too. They can be fixed and mended. And in my opinion that is exactly what we need to do now”

  She was silent.

  “I didn’t even know you’d married,” he said. “My parents wrote about all sorts of things, but they never wrote that you’d gotten married.”

  “I didn’t,” my mother said.

  The young doctor took a deep breath. He decided to save all the clarifications and all the surprises for other times and conversations.

  “I’d like you to marry me,” he said. “And you’ll give birth to a girl, I want a daughter, and this boy I will raise exactly as if he were my own.”

  And so it was, more or less. That is to say, several days later my mother told him, “We agree,” though instead of a sister, a brother was born, and Dr. Yaacov Mendelsohn become Yordad, a nickname that suited everyone from every standpoint.

  Chapter Nineteen

  1

  THAT’S THAT,” said my contractor who is a woman. “We’ve torn down and thrown out everything we needed to. Now it’s time to build.”

  “What are you starting with?”

  “Usually you put up the inner walls and lay the groundwork for water and electricity. But we’re going to start with your outdoor shower.”

  She called one of the Chinese workers. “Pour the concrete here,” she instructed him, “five feet by five feet so there’s room for two, with a two-degree depression toward the drain.”

  “Are you sure this is a good spot?” I queried. “I don’t want all the village kids to come and spy on me.”

  “Don’t worry The Chinese invented noodles, kites, gunpowder, and outdoor showers. They know how to build them so that nobody can see you.”

  The worker asked something incomprehensible and Tirzah pointed and said, “Have the water drain off to that lemon tree over there. Use a two-inch pipe.”

  To me she said, “That’s all. Now we just have to leave him alone. The Chinese are just like us—it makes them mad to have someone breathing down their necks.”

  “How did he understand what you said?”

  “When we each speak our own language, the music of our speech is normal and our hand movements and body languages are natural, and then we understand each other.”

  “How could he understand ‘a two-degree depression’?”

  “What do you mean, how? He’s a professional craftsman. He knows it’s a two-degree depression.”

  “So why did you have to tell him?”

  “So he knows his contractor understands, t
oo, even if his contractor is a woman. He should respect me.”

  And that was how the building of my new home commenced: with an outdoor shower. The Chinese worker leveled the earth, built a wooden frame for the pouring of the concrete, laid down a metal net to which he affixed the drainpipe, and mixed and poured and smoothed with long strokes. When the cement had hardened a bit he suggested— smiling cordially, and gesturing naturally—that I sink the palms of my hands in as a memento. I did, then suggested that he do the same. He laughed, refused, walked away, and finally bent down next to me and did as I had asked.

  The following day I led a barn-owl tour in the Beit She’an Valley, and when I returned Tirzah announced, “Your shower is ready Come have a look.”

  I went to have a look. A narrow path of tiles—“So mud doesn’t get in between your wet toes”—led to my new spot, where I found everything one needs for an outdoor shower: a floor and a drain, towel racks, a place to put soap and a scrub brush, even a small mirror—the inspiration of the Chinese worker, who’d guessed what Meshulam and Tirzah had failed to: that I like to shave in the shower, under a light sprinkle and with my face soaped.

  “Check to make sure everything works properly” Tirzah said. “So that you don’t come complaining to your contractor later.”

  I turned on the faucet. There was a soft and plentiful outburst of rain—a sharp stream does not suit an outdoor shower—and the water disappeared into the whole in the floor, emerging by the lemon tree.

  “The tree is no less happy than you,” Tirzah said.

  “Why did you choose that one? You could have drained the water off to some other trees.”

  “That tree deserves it. It gives off a wonderful scent and good fruit,” she said. She pushed me toward the worker. “Go thank him. The Chinese are just like us—they like praise and compliments.”

  I thanked him with warm Hebrew words and natural body movements and he beamed and bowed and smiled. I returned his bow and told him the shower was his to use whenever he wanted. Tirzah came back from her pickup truck with soap, shampoo, hand cream, four new towels, a wood-slat bathmat, a loofah, a small, hard brush for the palms