Stepping out her front door, she saw the light on in Eyal’s office. What could he be doing in there at all hours? Brainstorming new ways to ruin the place? He hadn’t had a girlfriend since that artsy-fartsy Orna woman, ten years ago already. Why hadn’t he just gone and lived in Tel Aviv with her? Why did he refuse to leave the kibbutz if all he was going to do was try to destroy it? It didn’t make sense. Maybe he was subconsciously seeking revenge on his mother.
Such a muggy, quiet night. She would wait until she had passed the old people’s building before hanging up a sign. No use wasting posters on people who, aside from her, didn’t work anymore; they would never vote for salaries. It was the future she had to convince. Walking with her article, her stack of signs, and a roll of scotch tape, Ziva felt very much in her element. In the eighties, she drove around Galilee gumming up posters for the Labor Party. During the wars of the sixties and seventies, she hiked about the Jezreel Valley with heartening images of dancing children and homegrown watermelons. There were a few posters, she was proud to say, she had nailed up at great risk to herself. In 1936, she and another woman, dressed as British officers’ wives, marched up to the British police station in Haifa and hammered a sign to its door with the warning: GO HOME OR ELSE! And three years before that, while still a girl in Berlin, she pinned to the school’s bulletin board a drawing of a buck-toothed Hitler Youth under the dictum: ONLY COWARDS JOIN THE HITLER YOUTH! Dov and another freckled boy from their Maccabi Hatzair chapter, a mischling, as the Nazis would have called him, a half-breed, whose name she hadn’t been able to recall for decades, stood guard on either end of the hallway. Wait! His name was David. And they called him Bloomie. Funny, for most of her life she couldn’t remember, and now there it was, both his real name and nickname.
Ziva reached the smaller houses belonging to young couples without children and stopped to tape her first poster to a lamppost. While breaking off the tape, she heard a rustle behind her and quickly turned around. Just a rabbit darting out of a bush. She exhaled and went back to taping the poster. Instead of having to watch out for Nazis or British patrolmen or Arab raiders, she had to beware of busybodies who would ask her if she thought it was a good idea to be out at this hour. And where was her helper from Canada? they would say. It was sickening the way people treated someone like a child as soon as they reached a certain age. She wanted to shout into their concerned little faces that she was taking on the world before their parents had even fucked, but her bluntness, a point of pride her whole life, was now shrugged off as crotchety old-ladyhood. Fuming, Ziva scanned about for another good place for a poster and, lo and behold, there was her son’s bungalow. She would stick one to his front door.
By the time Ziva reached the western edge of the kibbutz, she had posted all her signs and was out of breath. Her skin prickled from the heat, and her knees smarted with every step. She wheezed up the path to the library, which had a banner along its white wall, faint ink on continuous computer paper: WELCOME BACK, OFIR! She paused at the door to savor the moment before slipping the article into the metal slot.
With only the roll of scotch tape left, she hobbled over to a wooden picnic table to rest before starting the trek back. Nestled in a patch of pines, the table overlooked the bank leading down to the plastics factory. An ugly but practical factory. Corrugated steel, cement, a parking lot. That boy was right about one thing: the cotton fields had been magical. In September, before the harvesting, a sea of white fluff glowed in the sunlight. Ziva exhaled deeply, trying to expel the nostalgia. Nostalgia was an idle person’s ailment.
She took a shorter route back to the old people’s quarters, cutting across the parking lot and its flock of white Subarus—compacts, hatchbacks, minivans, some new and shiny, others beat up. Look how many cars the kibbutz had now. She paused to count the keys in the cabinet. Twenty-three. One missing. Why did people need their own cars when they had twenty-four sitting here waiting for them?
“Ziva?”
Two teenage boys and a girl stood beside her. The handsome boy with the thick dark eyebrows held the missing key. She didn’t know any of their names—when had she stopped knowing everyone’s name?—though she could guess who their parents were.
“Yes?”
“It’s late,” said the girl, glittery purple stars hanging from her ears. “Is everything okay? Can we help you?”
“Can you help me? How dare you tell me it’s late. If one of us should have a bedtime, it’s you, don’t you think?”
The teenagers exchanged looks. The handsome boy, smirking, reached past Ziva to return the key to its hook. Then they walked off, waiting until they were a couple of meters away before bursting into laughter. She heard the shorter, gingery boy call her a witch.
She arrived at her apartment in nearly unbearable pain. Her joints burned. The marrow in her bones throbbed. She leaned on her desk to read her article one last time, the hand copy she had made to later verify the newsletter hadn’t messed with her words. Was it indeed a tour de force? She found that it was.
Reassured that her pain was worth it, she changed into her nightie and limped to the bathroom to take her nightly muscle relaxer and opioid. Removing the cap from the opioids, she found only a couple of pills at the bottom of the bottle. Hadn’t she picked up a two-month supply only a month ago? She was sure of it. Was she losing her mind? Fear fluttered in her chest. A deteriorating body she could handle, not a failing mind.
She climbed into bed. At least tomorrow was Shabbat, and she could rest. She rolled onto one side, and then the other. It was impossible to fall asleep before the pills carried away the pain. It wouldn’t be too long. As much as she hated relying on so many pills, she was grateful for them. Without them, she might not have been able to keep working. Oh, yes, she could feel the sharp pain softening to a mild throb. Hmm, very good. Soon even the throbbing would disappear. When the hurt lifted, it always left her with a strange floaty feeling. Like lying on a stockpile of cotton.
That field of white. She remembered walking through it, the dusty path puffing under her boots. All around her, ripe white fluff, and the sky above a perfect blue, as if all the clouds had fallen to the ground. Her mind was at peace—it always was when she was heading into the fields. Her whole life she had watched people look for that peace—on psychologists’ couches, at ashrams, in nightcaps—when all they had to do was give themselves over to honest labor.
“Hello, Ziva.”
Startled, she turned to Franz, who was short of breath from jogging to catch up. It crossed her mind to pretend not to remember his name. But why would she do that? Sometimes she had to wonder if she were the one making things needlessly awkward.
“Hello, Franz.”
“I’m also working in the cotton fields. It seems I’ve been deemed well enough to work outdoors.”
He did look healthier, the tendons in his face no longer visible, though the cheekbones were still too sharp. His black hair didn’t grow in patches anymore; it was thick and combed back with pomade. Who wore pomade to work in the fields? He was as clean-shaven as if he’d stepped out of a barbershop. Most men on the kibbutz shaved only on Fridays, but come to think of it, she had never seen Franz with bristles. His ironed shirt glowed as white as the cotton fluffs. And yet, for all the newfound health and careful grooming, the hue of someone recently sick lingered, an ashen cast.
“Don’t you have a hat?”
“No.”
Should she tell him that she knows very well that he does have a hat? A brown fedora with a black ribbon—a green feather reserved for Shabbat and holidays. But to say so felt like an admission, while not saying so also felt like one. She decided, no matter, a felt fedora wasn’t appropriate for picking cotton.
“You could have requested a tembel hat from the clothing house.”
“Today’s my first day in the fields. I didn’t think of it. I’ll be fine.”
She couldn’t let this pasty man, still too thin, work all afternoon in the sun with his head un
covered. She took off her own hat and held it out.
“Take mine.”
Franz stopped walking, forcing her to stop. He looked down at the beige bucket hat.
“That’s kind. But, of course, no thank you.”
“Why? Are you afraid of messing up your hairdo?”
He smiled and touched his hair. “No, it’s not that.”
She gazed off to the side, holding back her own smile. She had really embarrassed him. When she had regained the air of a person who only happened to know better and was just doing her duty, she turned back to him. “You don’t understand what it’s like in the fields. You’re going to get sunstroke. You must take my hat.”
“Then you won’t have one.”
“I’m used to the sun. And, let’s be frank, I’m in better shape than you.”
He nodded. “Yes, you’re in great shape.”
Was that a lewd remark? Pretending not to have heard it that way, she proffered the hat. Franz’s shoulders dropped in mock defeat. He reached for it, and Ziva let go of it too early. Why did she do that? She apologized, diving to catch the hat, while Franz lunged for it too, and they knocked heads.
Laughing, Franz swept the hat from the dusty ground. Ziva straightened up, her face warm as if the midday sun were already here. Franz brushed off the hat, pulled it onto his head, and gave her a wide closed-lip smile. The floppy thing looked so wrong on him, she couldn’t help but snort and shake her head.
All day Ziva and Franz picked cotton off the dry bushes one row down from one another, along with five or six other pickers. She kept messing up, plucking the stalks off with the bolls. Then she had to waste time picking the brittle twigs off the cotton, cutting her fingers in the process. The fluff stuck to the blood. The day before she’d only pulled off a couple of stalks.
Why had Franz broken their months of awkward silence? Or was that awkward silence just a figment of her imagination? No, she had caught him watching her many times, hadn’t she? On Friday nights, while everyone sang around the campfire, she would catch him observing her from the other side of the flames. If he kept his eyes on her when she caught him, then she could have chalked it up to mere lechery. If he had tried to speak to her sooner, tried to flirt with her, this too would have defused everything. Instead, he always turned away, which Ziva found disconcerting, so she tried not to look at him. To do this, however, she had to keep track of his whereabouts, and that made his presence loom even larger, so that in the end their eyes met less often, but when they did, the effects were keener.
Ziva discreetly looked over at him now and found him doing the same. This time when their eyes met, he didn’t look away. He gave her another wide smile and a tug on the hat’s droopy brim. Should she smile back? What for? No, she should make no response at all, just go back to work.
The day wore on, and the sun grew vicious. Eventually, Ziva got into the right mind-set, picking the cotton efficiently and gracefully.
When the sun dipped behind Mount Carmel and the other pickers ambled toward a well-deserved dinner, Franz hung back. Was he waiting for her? He kept glancing in her direction.
“Go ahead!” she called. “I’m going to work a little longer.”
Tembel hat in his hands, he walked over to where she stood at the end of a row of harvested plants, not a boll to be seen.
“I’d say we worked enough for one day, don’t you think?”
“I’d feel better if I did one more bush.”
She wanted to insist that she usually wasn’t this slow, but she couldn’t risk giving him the impression that he had distracted her.
“Do you want me to help?”
“No. Really, I’m fine.”
“Well, thank you for your hat.” He held it out and then withdrew it. “Actually, it’s rather sweaty. I’ll wash it first.”
She extended her hand. “Don’t be silly. Give it to me. I’ll drop it in the laundry.”
He hesitated, as if unsure what would be the mannerly thing to do.
Before he had a chance to decide, she whisked it from his hands. “Anyway, I didn’t lend you my hat. It’s the kibbutz’s hat. I personally don’t own anything.”
“Nothing? Not one little thing?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t you want to own something? Just one little thing that belongs to you and nobody else?”
“No. Whatever I want for me, I want for everybody.”
Franz buried his hands in his pockets and regarded her, pensively. “You have a real sense of purpose, Ziva. That must be nice.”
Ziva started on a new bush while Franz walked back toward the kibbutz. Every once in a while, she would look up and find him farther down the path. After she picked the bush clean, she walked down the rows the others had picked, gleaning the missed fluffs.
When it was well into twilight, she started back toward the kibbutz. As she walked down the dirt path between the cotton, she turned the hat in her hands. Sweat darkened the band. His sweat.
The path grew dimmer and seemed to lengthen with every step.
At last sleep descended on Ziva, with the kibbutz as it used to be, just up ahead, a few lovely lights on a dusky plateau.
“Ofir-chik!”
At least that’s what Ofir thought he heard. He turned to see who was coming through the door. He had never been a popular kid, and yet every afternoon a different delegation of his peers stopped by his studio apartment, leading him to believe they were taking turns. On visiting duty today was Hadas the guffawer, Gingi of the orange Isfro, and handsome, cooler-than-thou Ido.
Hadas, dark hair pulled into a ponytail to show off her feather earrings, came up to the side of his bed, saying, “Hey there, Ofir.” Ido stood next to her. “What’s up?” Gingi stationed at the foot of the mattress.
After the hellos always came the uncomfortable silence while his visitors scrambled for conversation, something other than what would’ve been the go-to topics, his music or their army service. Ido said something about it being hot, though his tanned, chiseled face showed no sweat. He tapped a pack of red Marlboros against his palm.
The same kids who used to tease Ofir for his Mozart and pimples now regarded him as a hero. But what had he done? In the hospital, when he told the other patient in his room, a middle-aged man who’d also been on the bus, that it didn’t make sense that they were being treated like heroes when all they had done was be at the wrong place at the wrong time, the man, staring down at his missing leg, claimed it was heroic that anyone in this country boarded a bus. He had a point, but then the people visiting him were also heroes. He wanted his specialness to come from his music.
Ofir pointed at Ido’s pack of Marlboros. “I’ll have one.”
Ido shot a look at the other two visitors. “You sure you can smoke?”
“What?” The what came out before he had a chance to catch it.
Ido raised his voice: “Your mom said not to give you cigarettes.”
Ofir still couldn’t hear him over the whistle in his head, and he seemed not to have said the same thing. He nodded. “Yes.”
Ido shrugged and lit a cigarette for him. Ofir took a drag while Gingi straightened the mirror from the kasbah. That dark room full of mirrors felt like it belonged to a past life.
Hadas perched on the edge of his bed. Enunciating each syllable, she shouted: “IRIT was seen SNEA-KING out the BACK DOOR of YOSSI’s HOUSE. Everyone says they are ha-ving AN AFFAIR.”
Ido sat in one of the visitor chairs. “You’re KIDDING! IRIT? Which Irit?”
“Which Irit? One of them’s TWELVE YEARS OLD.”
The strained shouting at each other reminded Ofir of the Purim plays they put on as children. No one could relax and have a real conversation when they had to talk like that. It was never long before his visitors gave up and gabbed amongst themselves while he sat there, nodding, pretending for their sakes that he could follow along. Ofir watched Hadas’s head kick back as she laughed. He didn’t even have quiet amid all this ha h
a ha. He had the fucking whistle. And the doctors said the ringing would only worsen as his hearing diminished with age. By forty he could be completely deaf, alone with the whistle.
Fed up with everyone small-talking around him as if that were some kind of cure, he said, “I’ll never hear music again.”
The three of them stopped talking, turned to him.
Gingi leaned on the bed. “Don’t be silly, Ofir! Of course you will!”
“Or compose.”
Ido shook his head like someone privy to secret information. “Believe me, Ofir-chik, you will play in the greatest halls in Europe. I know it.”
Gingi said something else, which Ofir couldn’t hear, except for “Beethoven,” which made him the hundredth person to say if Beethoven could do it, he could.
Hadas nodded, her feathers shimmying. “YOU—should—be—HAP-PY—you’re—ALIVE!”
Ofir looked from one visitor to the other, debating whether to tell them that without music, he wasn’t sure why he was alive. He decided against it. It would only lead to more inane lies and maxims and false cheer.
After they left, Ofir rose to open the blinds. He wasn’t allowed direct sunlight on his skin, but it was late in the afternoon and none of the light fell directly on the bed. He climbed back under the sheets and stared at the golden square of light the window cast on the wall. The square faded as it ascended toward the ceiling. What was the sound of sunlight dying on a wall? A cello? He stopped the train of thought. What if he really couldn’t compose again? How would he appreciate afternoon light?
“My son! My little boy!”
Ofir was startled to see his mother and stepfather standing at the end of his bed. His mother, seeming to have gained another twenty pounds, wore that maniacal smile she acquired the day of the bombing. She had never been a smiler. His reticent stepfather appeared as he always did, red faced, paunch pressing against his Haifa football shirt.
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