Paper Bride

by Nava Semel

  Anna and I put on our beekeeper suits. I loved hiding behind that costume. No one could recognize me. Anemones and poppies covered the field next to the beehives, and Anna was surprised.

  “Bees are not attracted to the color red, “ I told her.

  She picked a flower and pulled out its petals, leaving the stamen exposed, swaying in the breeze. “Happy are the bees that don’t see blood.”

  Sometimes, I didn’t like what she said.

  All kinds of insects surrounded the hives. Busy little lives. Beetles crawling in the grass, processions of ants searching for food, worms munching leaves. This is our short spring, Anna. It ends almost before it begins, and soon everything dries up.

  I remember how I once ran after a flying bug. I wanted so much to train one, so I could have a pet of my own. That was before Mohammed brought me Johnny Weissmuller. Imri, who could identify every kind of insect, got scared when he saw me running after it. It was a locust. I was little and didn’t understand why the whole village had come to an emergency meeting at the committee house. The children stood at the window and listened to the frightened farmers arguing and shouting at each other until the rabbi stood up and said that the Talmudic sages believed the locust was a shoah, a holocaust, like war, and that was why we had to fight it to the death.

  “Shoah,” Anna repeated the word in Hebrew. I didn’t know how to say it in Yiddish, or in any other language.

  I opened the cover of the hive. I wished the bees would come out in one fell swoop, swarm over the fence straight to the English base, and sting the military policemen and the soldiers, the pale commander with the freckles, and especially Charlie. He would swell up and no woman in the world would want to suck honey with him.

  I took out the slabs of beeswax, and extracted the golden liquid into the tins. I didn’t want to taste it. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. Aharonchik was right when he said we had to encourage the workers to start a revolution in the hive. Monarchy belonged to the old world. We’d behead the queen and set up a just society of workers. The hive was wide open, and only one bee flew out, hovering around Anna’s hood.

  She didn’t draw back. “Some people believe that bees are the souls of human beings on their way to heaven,” she said.

  “Don’t believe them. There’s no such thing. It’s all empty up there.”

  Three Hawkers landed. How pathetic they looked on the ground. I asked, “What does it feel like to suck honey with someone?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You and Imri ... that night. I saw.”

  She knelt down and took off her mask. The bee flew around her exposed head and didn’t sting her.

  “Uzik, you’re not afraid, are you? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “But you were so sad the next morning. I don’t ever want to do it.”

  Anna hugged me. I felt clumsy in my beekeeper suit. She said, “I would never take Imri away from you. He’ll always be your brother.”

  You’re wrong, Anna. I’m not afraid. You don’t lose people because they touch each other. That’s not the reason they disappear into the air.

  I was hot, sweating into my suit. Her suit made it difficult for her to move. If it would only snow here.

  “Where is your brown fur coat? You didn’t wear it even once. It was in the trunk you brought .”

  Anna smiled and took my hand in hers. I could feel her caressing fingers even through the gloves.

  “The coat is in a safe place. Don’t worry.” “It’s not only the coat. I have to tell you something. In the sleeves .” “Yes. I know.”

  A well-guarded fur coat, Anna said. I never would have guessed that it was hanging in the Holy Ark, behind the Torah Scroll.

  I laughed, but Anna didn’t hear. I hadn’t noticed how friendly she was with the rabbi. Their conversations weren’t only about divorce and the sanctity of the Sabbath. The rabbi should add the “Radom commandment” to the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish laws. God, may His name be blessed, pulled the trigger in heaven, and never missed a shot.

  I’d forget Charlie. Maybe he meant to keep his promise, but he was just a pilot who had no real power, not an anarchist who could turn the world upside down and free prisoners.

  Anna and I carried the tins. The honey spilled over onto the sides, making it hard to keep our balance. As we made our way home, Johnny Weissmuller, followed by Aunt Miriam, came running towards us. I was shocked, because she was always shooing the dog away so he wouldn’t touch her. At that moment, she didn’t care if Johnny dirtied the whole house with mud-covered paws. She even looked happy, although Aunt Miriam’s happiness was wound-up film with flat pictures.

  “Imri was released today! Thank God! He’s free!”

  “Where is he?” I wanted to run to him. Maybe I’d finally tell him all the things I hadn’t dared to say before. Imri, you’re not a brother on paper.

  Aunt Miriam lowered her gaze, and her voice shook. “He left the prison and went directly to Jerusalem.”

  If only Tonka Greenbaum could be cut out of the movie. There was no choice but to burn the strip of celluloid as if it were a locust, so no one would ever see that flop of a movie and decide that all movies were harmful.

  Anna didn’t say a word. She was mute again.

  Fahtma

  I’m passing on another plant to you for safekeeping, Anna. It is a remedy for women who hemorrhage after giving birth. Take some of these za’atar sadna Mussa leaves. I climbed the tall mountain to bring Moses’ summer savory for you. The prophet Mussa once stood on the mountain like me, not understanding Allah’s decree that he would only see the land from afar, but would never enter it. In his sorrow, Mussa wandered, weeping, across all the mountaintops surrounding Mt. Nevo, over-looking Jericho. Allah, the all merciful, took pity on him, and planted summer savory, with its sweet scent and its blue flowers, on every mountain the prophet Mussa’s bare feet had trod. The prophet became intoxicated, tasted the leaves of the plant, and his pain was healed. From that time onward, those leaves grow on the summit of every tall mountain, and only they know where he is buried.

  I was a young child when Imri’s mother died, and I could not help. Save these leaves for the day you give birth to his children and yours. And if the labor pains are unbearable, taste of the leaves dipped in olive oil and no evil will befall you. Then you will live to raise them yourself, and together, you will have a good life.

  Chapter 36

  I was watching my teacher. The blackboard was a frame, and he never stepped out of it. His lips were moving, but I didn’t hear a word, as if somebody had removed the soundtrack and turned it into a silent movie. The first movie Imri ever saw was a silent one, and he still preferred them to talking movies. He said the thing he liked best was guessing what the actors were saying, or making up the words himself before they appeared on the screen between scenes.

  I was lucky my first movie was Tarzan of the Apes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself. A movie where you had to read in order to understand was not for me. Imri said that Tarzan was once a silent movie, but I didn’t believe you couldn’t hear his roar.

  Zionka was sitting in front of me, filling her notebook with cramped little letters. I wasn’t writing, and I was also the only one in class who didn’t pass notes during lessons, and didn’t laugh at the jokes they wrote about the teacher.

  This is the same school Imri had gone to, and he had the same teacher in the same classroom. Nothing had changed. But Imri, once he was free, ran straight into the arms of Tonka Greenbaum, and forgot Anna and us. Now we were all air.

  The pupils were writing, and my two Uziks were talking away at the same time inside me. If I started speaking to Zionka again, I would tell her this: “I don’t know what’s worse, love or movies. They both end in disappointment. In both, you get carried away like a fool, and you’re both the happiest and the most miserable person in the world.”

  The beginning looks promising. You feel like Mohammed’s mukhtar ri
ding on his talking horse, the two of you riding towards a mysterious place, but for some reason, you can’t direct the end to be like the beginning. If I were aiming the way I aim at the Jewish National Fund blue box, I would find the problem and understand exactly what had gone wrong.

  The teacher called Herzl Fleischer to the board, and he wrote something in giant letters. I didn’t want to be tested anymore, not even orally. At the end of the year, they would expel me and that would be that.

  But on second thought, it seemed to me that love was worse than the movies.

  Zionka, it would be worth your while to go to movies, but don’t ever fall in love. I’m warning you only because I haven’t forgotten that you are the one who guarded the guns for me.

  If the Polish word for “love” is so complicated, that means the Poles must be very smart. They don’t use it very much, so they save themselves unnecessary heartache. In Hebrew, it’s a simple word, only four letters, and you told me it was easy to write and easy to read. But I think words like love, or homeland seem swollen, as if they’d been stung. I must explain to you, Zionka, that no one does anything for the sake of something or someone. People do things only for themselves.

  Recess. Everyone went out into the yard. The boys were playing soccer, and I was stuck at the window. Even though I could see it all, I was far away from it, in a completely different place. Herzl Fleischer was storming the goal. A tremendous kick. I was sure he’d scored a goal, but because of the silence that followed, I understood he hadn’t.

  How to continue? The picture was slowly dissolving. The screen was empty. Just a wrinkled old rag someone tried hard to stretch tight, but ended up by tearing the edges. I put out my hand. To touch—that was the most important thing. To try and touch something. A leaf, a hair of Cheetah’s tail, a thread of Johnny Weissmuller’s loincloth.

  There was nothing there. Even I wasn’t here. I wish someone would save me from myself.

  Something bounced against my back. I wasn’t sure I felt pain. I turned around.

  Zionka was in the doorway, throwing a paper plane at me.

  It was all done in slow motion. First, her hand arcing upward, then the folded plane fluttering in the air, losing its equilibrium, crashing.

  “What do you want?”

  Zionka said, “The fact that I’m talking to you doesn’t mean I’m not angry any more. I’m just going out for the recess.”

  I didn’t like recesses and intermissions. I was too impatient to see the continuation. Imri said there were intermissions so we could remember who and where we were. And of course, so the person selling candy could make a living.

  “You have to hurry,” Zionka said, “Fahtma was here. Mohammed wants you to go to his village right away. He has to give you something.”

  “I’ll go after school.” In the meantime, I crushed Zionka’s paper plane into a ball, but I didn’t feel like throwing it at her.

  Zionka stamped her feet. Her braids bounced, but because of the slow motion, they looked like dancing snakes.

  “Mohammed said it was urgent. You should go immediately! He said now!”

  The girl next door. I didn’t know whether she was a girlfriend on paper. I walked slowly, imitating the way she moved. No one was going to tell me how fast to go forward or backward. I sometimes thought that they were exactly the same.

  The eye of the camera would zoom in and magnify everything. The dusty hilltops, the terraced hillsides covered with vineyards, the Sheik’s tomb, the olive trees at the entrance to the village, every leaf a drop of glistening silver. “Those trees,” Mohammed had said, “are a reminder of what the world has long forgotten.” Hundreds of years ago, some passerby threw an olive pit on the ground, and this olive grove and later, the village, grew from it. The water well and the mosque and the vine arbor near Mohammed’s house and Fahtma’s herbs. I wouldn’t leave anything out.

  As I walked out the door, Zionka called, “I’ll tell the teacher you didn’t feel well. I’ll cover for you.”

  The kids in the yard were shouting excitedly. Herzl Fleischer had scored a goal. They were cheering him. I was right on the threshold, marking it with my feet, swaying between what was happening there and what was happening here. Johnny Weissmuller was the only one who didn’t hesitate to break through fences.

  I unfolded the paper plane, and saw that it was made from a page Zionka had torn out of her notebook. Cramped little ant letters disappeared over the edges of the paper.

  Chapter 37

  The shabab was lying in wait for me at the entrance to the village. I recognized them right away, even though they hadn’t had time to cover their faces with kaffiyehs. All of a sudden, I wasn’t scared. They were just boys, just a little older than I was, and I wanted to shout “troublemakers” at them.

  They let me pass along the road, only their blazing looks stinging my back. One of them skipped in front of me, drawing his finger across his throat.

  “Here’s Mohammed’s Jew friend.” Jew, Jew, Jew. A distant echo rolled around in my mind. Zydzi! Jews, get out! I wanted to proclaim that Johnny Weissmuller was also Jewish. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t choose to be Jewish. If it were a matter of choice, maybe there wouldn’t even be one Jew left in the world.

  I almost stopped to tell him I’m Uzik and you’re whoever you are. We both talk to the same air, drink from the same well, and hide from the burning sun, and those olive trees don’t look like the fir or the birch or the oak trees that grow in Anna’s Europe, and we have what we have, and we don’t have what we don’t have, and that’s all there is to it. Nothing you could turn into a great movie.

  I’m sorry to this very day that I didn’t say it. Maybe it would have changed something.

  Fahtma Daudi showed me the way, as we slipped quietly among the trees with their rustling silver leaves. She didn’t answer my questions or assure me that nothing bad had happened to Mohammed. The innocent girl of Mohammed’s tale. I always knew when she entered a room, because of the scent of herbs that emanated from her. I didn’t want her father to marry her to the old man from the Galilee just because he had a hundred goats to give for her hand, and I hoped she would be lucky, like Jane, and get to choose her own Tarzan.

  It was cool in the grove. As we walked, I filled my pockets with unripe olives. Mohammed was waiting near the last tree, the one that grew closest to the wadi. That was the one people meant when they said that hundreds of years ago, a passerby threw a pit onto the ground, and the whole grove, and later the village, grew from it. A donkey piled with twigs was tied to the tree. The sting inside me started working.

  “I have to leave here,” Mohammed said. “There is going to be a war, and neither side will back down.” He had found the guns in the beehives a long time ago, but hadn’t turned us in. Loyalty is not a word only for horses.

  “Don’t hate, Aza’ar. Hate is a poison more terrible that that of the bees. It destroys you slowly. Someday, I don’t know when, people here will understand that they have no choice but to grit their teeth, back down, and live together.” And then he repeated that first, blood would be spilled.

  I wished I were a colorblind bee. I remembered what Anna had said about blood and its price.

  Mohammed took a jar of new queens from the donkey’s back. There, across the river, he would harvest his own honey, and the Jordan would be the fence that Johnny Weissmuller wouldn’t be able to cross. The gang had threatened Mohammed. They’d caught him smuggling Imri’s letter from the prison. He didn’t join Az a-Din el-Kasam, the fanatic from the Gilboa mountains who was always inciting the people to massacre. “You and Imri are my brothers. My hand will never touch a dagger.”

  There was a huge lump in my throat. I hadn’t said goodbye to my father. Even when his body was twitching, I couldn’t say goodbye to him.

  I was choking. “Mohammed, I’ll never see you again.”

  “Maybe your children and mine, Aza’ar, or our grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, will meet one day ...” I made hi
m stop talking. His words were too sweet. I didn’t have the kind of imagination he did, and it was hard for me to see myself as a father.

  We are beekeepers, Mohammed said, the healthiest people in the world. God blessed us with sharp vision and the ability to produce many children. We will bring many boys and girls into the world. Maybe we’ll give jars of honey to the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine, and we’ll offer the British a taste too.

  “Pretty words,” I said, “very pretty. The kind they always write in books.”

  “What do I know. I’m only a simplefellah.” Mohammed wrapped me in his strong arms, and I hugged him and held my feelings inside, deep inside.

  “Take this and give it to Anna.”

  It was the last letter Mohammed would smuggle out of the prison.

  I whispered into his soft kaffiyeh, “He went to Jerusalem. He didn’t even come to say goodbye to us.”

  “The letter is important,” Mohammed said firmly. “Your brother wanted it to reach ‘the mother of Uzik’ immediately.”

  “I know what it says. He chose the second wife. Anna will leave, like you, and I’ll talk to the air.”

  My head was starting to hurt even before I looked at the letters. I hurled the letter, along with the unripe olives I’d picked, at the last tree, which was also the first one. I missed. My hand was shaking. I felt Mohammed starting to get angry. He picked up the letter and wiped off the dirt and dust with his hand. “If I could read Hebrew, I could explain to you how important this letter is.”

  The last promise he got out of me was that I would eat a large spoonful of honey every morning. Every time I harvested honey, I would try to distinguish between the visible sweetness and the hidden bitterness. The queens were buzzing in Mohammed’s jar. They wanted to be on their way. I didn’t know what kind of society would finally be established, or whether there was anyone who could avoid the collision. I did eat honey, not only because I promised Mohammed, but because honey has the power to lengthen life, and I thought I’d have to live to a ripe old age if I wanted another opportunity to wrap myself in the mukhtar’s kaffiyeh again.