The Fairest Among Women

by Dalya Bilu

  At first Rosa dismissed the idea of there being any kind of connection between the child and the neighborhood crows, but as time went by she grew accustomed to the strange spectacle. When she emerged from the house with Angel, she would raise her eyes to the sky and look for the dark legions casting their terror on the birds above and the people below.

  Angel soon learned to follow the black birds that had become an integral part of her life with her eyes, and before she could say “Mama” she learned to say “birds.” When she grew older, Rosa would open the window of her room and stand her on a chair, and the little girl would thrust her golden head outside and call in her weak voice, “Cuckoo crow!” at the black birds streaking the sky as they soared and swooped over the house, cleverly exploiting the whirling currents of air, and they would answer her with calls of their own.

  Angel knew them all, from the leaders to the youngest and most insignificant among them, and she gave them all names. And when she was asked how she distinguished between them, since they all looked the same, she would laugh her chiming laugh and claim that this one had a thick beak, and that one a drooping tail feather, and the other was faded as if it had been too long in the sun; another had gleaming round spots on its down, another was vain and spent all day grooming its feathers, another was the smallest, another was the biggest, and yet another had a red glint in its eyes. And when Dror and Rosa tried to see the signs she gave them, they soon gave up in despair, because all the crows looked identical to them.

  Rosa would look at Angel in astonishment as she called the birds by their names. Even when they were otherwise occupied and far away, they would immediately drop whatever they had in their beaks, spread their black wings, and come flying to see what she wanted. And when she went around the neighborhood, one of them would always accompany her and keep watch over her. Wagging its tail to keep its balance, the crow would hover over her head, and when she lagged behind, it would turn its head and observe her every movement with its beady eyes.

  * * *

  The story of the “little Jerusalem cripple and the neighborhood birds” first appeared in a small item on the back page of the local paper. Soon the neighborhood was swarming with reporters, photographers, nature lovers, bird-watchers armed with binoculars and tape recorders, and scores of curiosity seekers beating a path to Angel’s door like stubborn suitors, raising their eyes to the sky to watch the gray birds flying past in formation and waiting for Angel to come out of the house so that they could witness the spectacle reported in the newspaper. Even the skeptics and those of little faith streamed into the neighborhood in order to scoff at the credulous who arrived there in droves. The former argued that any kind of bond between humans and crows was impossible, and to prove that they were wrong the neighbors would show them the indelible traces of the bird droppings lining the pavements in stripes.

  The enterprising boys who set up stalls to sell lemonade and almond water did good business. The long hours of watching and waiting for Angel and the crows, and the endless arguments that raged on the pavements between the believers and the skeptics, dried people’s throats and they drank eagerly.

  A learned article appeared in the journal Nature and Landscape about the little girl in Jerusalem and the crows. Dr. Jonathan Tzafrir, the well-known ornithologist, wrote that it was not unusual to find such friendships between people and birds, and that the phenomenon was especially common among crows, who were considered intelligent birds with a particularly well developed social and couple-oriented life. In the introduction to the article, which was entitled Friendly Birds in Jerusalem, it said:

  The state of Israel can claim the title of being the country with the densest population of crows in the world. For every square meter of the country today there are seventeen crows, and every day an average of eight distress calls are received from people all over the country who have been harmed by a crow. The confrontation with the crow sometimes concludes with the wounding of the bird, but there are other cases in which the crows nurse a grievance and persist in treating the person who harmed them as an enemy. The opposite case too occurs, and Angel’s case is not unique. Here the flock has adopted this child, and taken responsibility for her welfare.

  And when the author went around the country with his slides, lecturing on the subject of crows at high schools and community centers, he would include the story of Angel and the crows in his lectures, but he was unable to answer the question that troubled Rosa and kept coming up among his audiences: “Why Angel, of all people? Why didn’t they pick somebody else?”

  * * *

  And Rosa, brooding about the unsolved mystery whenever she heard the cawing of the crows over the house, would remember Angela drying the black watermelon seeds on white cotton sheets in the yard of the “House of Notes” in Old Katamon. Sheets and blankets in all the colors of the rainbow would be spread out in the summer months and covered with the wet black seeds of recently eaten watermelons. Around the sheets the women in their bright kerchiefs would crouch on low stools with wicker seats, their heavy breasts sagging to their waists and their vast behinds spreading in all directions. As they gossiped and chatted merrily, they would bend forward and reach automatically for the mountain of seeds, taste them, and mix them so that each and every one would receive its daily dose of sun. And when greedy sparrows and impudent crows approached, their placid chatter would turn into an uproar, and their voices would turn into shrill agitated shrieks. Then they would rise heavily from their stools, take up their posts by their sheets, and wave their arms vigorously to frighten the hungry birds and chase them away.

  Only Angela would stand at a distance and watch the birds pecking greedily at her watermelon seeds. And one bird brought another until her sheet was covered with birds of every type and kind, and they would hop about among the seeds and feast on them to their hearts’ content. In spite of these aviary attacks, Angela never found any bird droppings or feathers on her seeds, and there was never any lack of watermelon seeds to grace her table after the Sabbath meal was over.

  And Rosa remembered too, as if it were yesterday, how Angela would take her out into the broad fields surrounding Old Katamon in the twilight hours, always carrying dry pita wrapped in a bandanna. And when they sat down to rest in the shade of the carob tree, she would crumble the bread and scatter it around for the birds.

  When she shared her memories with Rachelle, the latter told her that it was a classic case of the reincarnation of the grandmother’s soul in the granddaughter, since Rosa’s mother had died only two months before the birth of the baby who had received her name, and there was no need for Rosa to be surprised, for the soul of Angela, God have mercy on her, was simply continuing to work through her granddaughter, and who but the crows were the first to recognize her? And since they were the first to make the discovery, they had succeeded in claiming the child for their own. Rosa pondered her friend’s words, which sounded logical enough, hugged Angel, and looked deep into her daughter’s eyes, seeking traces of her mother’s lost soul.

  twenty-three

  “MY LITTLE ANGEL HAS FALLEN!”

  All that night, the last of her nights, Angel couldn’t sleep. In addition to her fear of the thunder and the storm banging at the windows and threatening to break in, she was concerned for her friends the crows, huddling, exposed and frozen in their nests, their feathers bristling with cold. As she struggled with the troubling thoughts about the storm and the crows, her anxiety was diluted by expectation. The reason for the expectation seeping sweetly though her body was lying on her bed: a magnificent bridal gown, a long veil, and a pair of new patent leather shoes, waiting like her for the next morning. This ensemble was to be her costume for the Purim holiday, when all boys and girls dressed up.

  Before she went to bed she had tried on the dress. And Rosa, with her mouth full of the pins she was sticking in the hem of the dress to shorten it and adapt it to Angel’s short stature, muttered, as if to herself, that tomorrow Angel would be the fairest
of all the girls, the most beautiful bride in town. When she had finished putting up the hem, she examined the results of her work with satisfaction, hung the dress over the back of the chair, added a long veil decorated with flowers, and put the new patent leather shoes under the chair.

  After Rosa, with heavy sighs, got into bed, Angel couldn’t control herself. She jumped out of bed, took the dress, tried it on again in front of the mirror, put on the new shoes, and inspected her little body all clad in white. Then she took the dress off, and since she was unwilling to part with it, she laid it on her bed, careful not to crease it, and thought happily of how she would surprise Dror the next day with her bride’s costume.

  In the morning she woke up from a brief sleep earlier than usual.

  In days to come, when Rosa told Rachelle and Ruhama about the sequence of events, she would choke with tears and blame herself, and say that she was still sure that Angel had woken up because of the strange silence that had fallen on the town.

  The thick, fluffy, white blanket that had frozen on the ground smothered the sounds before they broke out into the cold air, and dimmed the usual noises of the morning. The blanket deceived the innocent, tricked the ignorant, and lied to those who were seeing it for the first time in their lives. They say that it starts its long journey high up in the sky, close to God, in the form of isolated feathery flakes that whirl and dance in all directions until they multiply in a mysterious process of reproduction hidden from the human eye. Overnight they accumulate on the ground and merge into a cold, deceptive, short-lived blanket covering the earth.

  At the sound of the magical silence Angel woke from her sleep in her room where crows and angels sailed through the clouds. She waited expectantly in bed for the morning crows to greet her, and when they tarried she called them in her thoughts. They made haste to obey her summons, leaving their warm nests and the sheltering wings of their mates, flew with ominous caws over the treetops adorned in their honor with caps of white that only God and the birds can see, and swooped down to her window. As they did every morning, they tapped on the windowpane, which that morning was decorated with perfect flowers of frost in shapes never seen before.

  Angel did not want to wake her mother, who opened the window for her every morning to receive the blessing of the crows. Slowly she dragged the wooden chair to the wall, climbed up on it, and opened the window. A blast of freezing cold burst into the room, which had been warmed all night by the heat of her body and breath. The crows beat their wings in delight, gave her their blessing, cawed their farewells, and disappeared into the gray sky, flying between the snowflakes whirling around without aim or direction in their fleeting lives.

  At that moment the white radiance of the earth dazzled her eyes. Angel was beside herself. First she raised her head to the gray sky as if seeking an answer, following the flight of the crows between the white feathers. Then she followed the dance of the snowflakes whirling opposite her, until her eyes grew tired and her head spun. With black spots dancing before her eyes, she looked down at the earth covered with a tempting blanket of soft, woolly clouds. In the excitement of seeing snow for the first time in her life, she forgot all about the Purim party and the bridal gown waiting for her on her bed, and hurried from her room to Rosa’s giant bed in order to share the scene with her mother, and shook her gently awake.

  “There are clouds on the ground,” she cried joyfully, “lots and lots of clouds on the ground. Clouds like the ones on my ceiling. I want to go down and play with the clouds.”

  Rosa turned over on her side, trying to preserve the warmth of her body under the thick blanket.

  “Go back to bed,” she said firmly. “It’s too early to get up.”

  Chastised, Angel went back to her room, picked up the doll, Belle, and climbed onto the chair with her so that she too could enjoy the spectacle. When she leaned out of the window, the snow covering the yard winked at her with a thousand starry white eyes and promised her angelic games and soft pamperings.

  “I have wings,” she murmured to herself, hugging Belle to her chest. “I can fly, I have wings, I can fly.” With great difficulty she climbed onto the windowsill holding the doll in her arms. Her feet sank into the frozen droppings of the crows, and before the horrified eyes of Mazel, the first-floor neighbor from the building opposite, who had opened her shutters to check out the suspicious silence, Angel’s bare feet slipped on the frozen slime. Her wings did not spread as her body cut through the air.

  To the accompaniment of shrieks of grief from the crows who rushed to the place and looked on in terror at her last flight, she fell to the ground, cleaving through the snowflakes fluttering around her. In an instant she sank into the deceptive blanket of white, which sucked her little body into its softness and flung it furiously against the hard, stony, frozen ground. Mazel’s horrified screams were swallowed up in the cries of fear and pain uttered by the crows, which came flying from all directions.

  Rosa was woken by the cold invading the house through the open window in Angel’s room. Deaf to the screeching of the crows and Mazel’s screams, she went into Angel’s room and slammed the window shut, fully intending to scold the child for leaving the window open on such a cold day. After looking for her all over the house she heard a loud knocking on the door, opened it, and ran into the yard behind the bearers of the evil tidings. She found her there lying in a bed of scarlet clouds, with her flannel nightgown, whose pattern of fleecy sheep had been dyed red, hiding her broken body. Angel’s smiling face was as pale as the snow, her golden hair was spread out around her like a halo of light, mingled with the hair of the doll, Belle, who was lying beside her with her china head smashed.

  “My little angel has fallen!” screamed Rosa as she gathered up the broken body that dangled in her frozen hands like a rag doll. Gently the neighbors tried to part her from the dead child, but Rosa held on, digging her nails into her body and leaving ten bleeding crescents in her cold flesh.

  “My little angel has fallen.” She repeated the sentence as if she were afraid of forgetting it as they hoisted her step by step up the stairs to her house, her nightgown sour with blood, the little girl clasped tightly to her bosom, her bare feet swaying lifelessly in the air with every step her mother took.

  “My little angel has fallen,” she mumbled when they succeeded in prying the child from her arms, removed her bloody nightgown, dressed her in heavy winter clothes, and supported her step by step downstairs to the ambulance waiting to take her and the little body to the hospital.

  “My little angel has fallen, my little angel has fallen,” she repeated all the way to the cemetery, as if to convince herself that the tragedy had truly happened.

  “My little angel has fallen,” she screamed into the little pit dug with difficulty in the frozen ground of the plot Rosa was saving for herself, next to Joseph. And Dror stood next to her and screamed and screamed until he fainted.

  To the sound of the despairing screeches of the crows, which merged with the weeping of the people and Rosa’s grief-stricken screams, they buried the little bundle wrapped in its shroud in the muddy ground. When it was all over, they revived Dror with light slaps, and when he came back to life he refused to leave and asked to be buried with her, whispering to himself that now that Angel had turned into one of the angels in the sky he would join her there, and they would celebrate their wedding in heaven.

  Like a sad, ragged flock of wet black crows they left the fresh grave. At the exit of the cemetery they were met by the frozen face of Yochai, by the purple plastic tray and glass of water that had turned to ice. “My little angel has fallen,” Rosa flung at him accusingly, as if he were to blame for her death, and ignoring the glass of icy water she walked heavily away, dragging her feet and supported by her sons. Shamefaced, Yochai stood rooted to the spot, watching the column of mourners filing past him in their heavy coats, with black umbrellas that afforded scant protection from the lashing rain mixed with sleet and hail.

  Soaking wet, they
returned from the cemetery and huddled silently around Rosa’s kerosene stoves until vapors rose from their heavy winter clothes and the air filled with the reek of the kerosene, mingled with the smell of the mothballs that had seeped into their clothes during the long summer months. And when Rosa for the umpteenth time repeated the sentence, “My little angel has fallen,” in a howl that sounded like a jackal lamenting its lost cubs, she pressed the doll, Belle, to her breast. Suddenly the doll, who hadn’t uttered a sound for years, joined in and cried in a soft, squeaky voice: “Mama, mama, mama.”

  Horrified, Leslie-Shimon ran out of the room and returned with the heaviest hammer he could find in Joseph’s toolbox. With his mouth full of nails clenched between his lips, and his cheeks sucked in, he burst into Angel’s room, climbed onto the chair with the tiny pair of patent leather shoes waiting in vain underneath it, and furiously nailed the window to the wooden frame. The furious hammering brought the neighbors running to the scene of the fall, where they trampled the muddy, bloodstained snow, wringing their hands and sadly nodding their heads. They all agreed that Leslie-Shimon was right to nail the window up, so that nobody could jump out of Angel’s window again. For suicide, so they said there in the muddy yard, was contagious, and people who wanted to commit suicide were like criminals returning to the scene of the crime. And people who chose to end their lives by jumping from a high place were liable to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors who had succeeded.