by Dita Kraus
I had a terrible feeling that Yaacov wouldn’t survive many more incidents like this.
Despite this, I had devised a plan to reorganize the shoe-repair shop and make it function according to the highly valued principle of equal rights. Yaacov’s system was not a system but rather chaos: When a chaver or chavera brought their shoes to be mended, they would be deposited next to his stool, where they formed a smelly mound. He then took the top pair, which might have arrived the same day, mended it, and perhaps the next one, too. Meanwhile, another pair had arrived, so that the top ones were always done first, while those on the bottom stayed forever unmended. When the owner came to fetch his boots, they were still deep under the pile, sometimes for weeks.
Yaacov would shrug his shoulders.
“You can see yourself how much work we have; your turn hasn’t come up yet.”
Most people accepted the answer, afraid to rouse Yaacov’s ill humor. Some, however, grew desperate because they had no spare boots to wear to work. For them Yaacov had the perfect solution: he would reach behind him and hand over another repaired pair from the shelf. Those, of course, belonged to somebody else. When the owner came to claim them, Yaacov would declare the missing boots unmendable—they just had to be thrown away—or he might explain that they were under the pile somewhere, waiting to be repaired.
I realized that I would have to proceed very cautiously, perhaps even secretly, to introduce order into the shoe-repair shop.
On a day when Yaacov was in Tel Aviv, I removed a few pairs from the top of the heap next to his stool and placed them in a row on the shelf in the order of their arrival.
I awaited Yaacov’s reaction with trepidation the next morning. Nothing happened; there was no comment. Perhaps Yaacov was even glad that the heap had miraculously decreased. And so each week when he was away, I would arrange the incoming shoes, one behind the other, and slowly the system became established. Yaacov seemed relieved that he was rid of the complaints of his fellow kibbutzniks. With time they ceased to turn to him, and gradually I became the go-between. Yaacov could work away in his corner, cutting out the soles and heels from the large leather hides, and didn’t have to listen to the talk around the worktable. He even let me sweep the floor but only around the clutter, of course, so as not to disturb the accumulated junk. After a few weeks the place looked friendlier, somehow brighter, and the people who arrived with worried expressions on their faces left with smiles.
Working in the shoe-repair shop had one great advantage for me. I am a late riser, and getting up at dawn at five thirty, especially in winter in the dark, is sheer torment for me. People who work in the kitchen, in the children’s homes or with the farm animals, could not be late to work. But the shoes were neither hungry nor did they cry for me, and so it didn’t matter if I started work at half past seven or at eight. I often remained alone at the end of the workday to complete my eight and a half hours. I could tell that Yaacov didn’t approve, but he tolerated it in silence. The weeks passed, and I felt more and more settled. Yaacov taught me to repair other things besides heels. He was a master shoemaker, having learned the craft when he was a young man back in his native Hungary.
Not so his assistant, my colleague Mimon, whom Yaacov insisted on addressing as Maimon. Mimon was an outsider—that is, he was not a member of the kibbutz but a paid employee. This was an exception, because originally the kibbutz was entirely self-sufficient. Everything was produced by the members themselves. We grew our own vegetables and fruit, raised chickens and ducks and cattle, baked our bread, built the houses, produced the furniture, ran a school for the kibbutz children, and even had a drama circle and choir to provide our entertainment.
Mimon was not a cobbler by profession. He was one of those people with golden hands who can do anything. He only had to look at a tool or machine to know immediately how it worked; he could take it apart and put together again without a problem. He was tall and lean, with tough muscles, and his neck seemed as if someone had pulled it upward; he had a huge Adam’s apple sliding up and down its whole length. He was from Morocco and was unable to pronounce sh.
“Salom, Sosana,” he greeted the kindergarten teacher, “your soes are finised, they’re on the self.”
Mimon had a wife and child, but he rarely mentioned them in conversation. In the three years the two of us sat at the worktable on the low stools at right angles from each other, six days a week, eight and a half hours daily, he talked about many things: about his numerous brothers, his old home, or his army service. In passing he mentioned, “We have a new baby.”
“I know,” I said, “you already told me some time ago.”
“That was the one before,” he corrected me, “the boy. Now there is a girl again.”
“Mazel tov! So now you have three.”
“Thanks. No, now we have four.”
In the beginning Mimon used to come to the kibbutz by bus. But as soon as he earned a few lira, he bought an old motorcycle. The trouble was that the motorcycle used to break down in the middle of his journey, and Mimon would arrive at work pushing his heavy vehicle, panting and sweating. He left it parked in front of the shop, and the moment Yaacov left on some errand, Mimon would squat next to the machine and start fixing it. Often he stayed for hours after work, tinkering with the engine and cursing under his breath. Sometimes he got a ride to the nearest town to buy a spare part. He was, however, a happy-go-lucky, optimistic type of person. Each time the motor started and didn’t die on him, he became full of childlike joy and believed that from then on it would run smoothly forever. Yet the machine would let him down again and again. He must have invested his entire meager wages in the contraption, until he finally gave up and sold it at a loss.
But Mimon was not a man to travel by bus like other mortals. He needed the motorcycle to boost his male ego, to feel like the king of the road. Soon he bought another motorbike: “But a much better one, a real bargain.” Poor Mimon; his bargain turned out to be no more reliable than its predecessor. Only now Mimon was ashamed to admit another failure. He kept the broken-down vehicle hidden behind an abandoned building and attempted to repair it after work when no one was around.
Our best days were when Yaacov was absent and we were free to talk. Mimon was a born storyteller, but in front of Yaacov he would never hold forth, so as not to appear to be neglecting his work. He knew lots of fairy tales, long convoluted narratives of magic birds, prophetic dreams, and pursuits of revenge. Most times I couldn’t make head or tail of the stories; they meandered so that there remained no connection between the beginning, the middle, and the end. It was all very absorbing and fascinating, but I suspect that he was inventing the tales as he went along. In later years I found a similarity between Mimon’s stories and the way of certain people who mix reality with imagination, so alien to our modern, rational way of thinking.
As the months passed, I learned more and more about mending shoes. I knew how to sew torn straps onto sandals on the sewing machine, and I could polish finished heels with wax by the rotating brushes. I was able to sharpen my long cobbler’s knife by myself, no longer having to ask Yaacov or Mimon to do it for me. It was necessary to sharpen the knife several times a day, so that it could cut through the tough leather as if it were butter.
Once a month, an elderly man used to come to buy old shoes. He was an oleh chadash, a newcomer from Romania, who spoke Yiddish but no Hebrew. With Yaacov he could communicate, but with Mimon, who knew Arabic, French, and Hebrew, conversation was rather difficult. Over his shoulder he carried an empty jute sack, which he dropped on the floor in happy anticipation of a friendly talk. I, being a woman, was not considered a partner. Yaacov was not the type to encourage chumminess. Only Mimon remained.
“Where did you learn shoemaking?” the man began.
“Yach nisst ferstayn” (I don’t understand) was all Mimon had learned to say.
The man disregarded Mimon’s declaration and embarked on a long account of his woes and misfortunes, how he was
cheated here and robbed there, how the government promised all kinds of assistance and in the end he got nothing.
Mimon nodded in sympathy. He grasped that the man was complaining, though he understood not a word.
“You good, good. You are understand,” the poor man managed in Hebrew. Afterward he started sorting out the discarded shoes from the mountain in the corner, first making two heaps and then checking each shoe, boot, or sandal against the more acceptable specimens. In the end he stuffed them into his sack and the haggling over the price began. Yaacov was no businessman; he knew that the old shoes were worth nothing, but he couldn’t disappoint the peddler, for whom the bargaining was the heart of the transaction. After the negotiation ritual, Yaacov agreed to the man’s initial offer, and they shook hands.
The Romanian then stood his full sack near the door, went around the worktable to pat Mimon on the back, and shook his hand vigorously.
“You good, good,” he enthused. Then he heaved the sack over his shoulder and left.
They were pleasant days in the shoe-repair shop. In the nearly three years I worked there, I was promoted to mend Shabbat shoes, and I replaced worn-out soles the professional way, with the invisible stitch. With a sharp knife one makes a diagonal groove in the new leather; with an awl one pricks a small hole and then inserts two needles from opposite sides with a waxed twine, to attach the new sole. When it’s done, one must smear shoemaker’s glue into the groove and then close the flap so that the seam becomes invisible. Sometimes I even assisted in the construction of new shoes. My hands became callused and rough; neither soaping and scrubbing nor rubbing them with lemon could remove the brown and black color from the cracks in my hands. Worst of all were the dark rims that accumulated around my nails and stayed there long after we had left the kibbutz.
There lived on our kibbutz an important chaver, a politician who often went abroad on official state missions. He considered it a great achievement that the kibbutz had enabled a woman to become a cobbler, thus providing living proof of the equality between men and women. Before one of his trips overseas, he decided to use me as a propaganda gimmick.
One morning he persuaded old Mr. Heller, the aged father of one of the chaverot, to take a photo of me at work. The old man owned one of the two cameras on the kibbutz. He circled the worktable trying to find the best angle and the proper light, told us to look this way and that way, to say cheese, and finally snapped a few shots.
Armed with these historical photos, our prominent chaver traveled abroad, convinced that my pictures would prove the most enticing bait for the Jewish diaspora to make Aliyah and join the pioneers in the new State of Israel. He believed that a picture of a female cobbler would make all the Jewish women come flocking to our kibbutz.
He did not recruit one single newcomer. I suspect that my photos had an adverse effect. I think that when the rich Jewish ladies of Argentina saw me sitting with the tripod, mending old shoes, they got scared, thinking that if they came to live on the kibbutz, they would all have to become cobblers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dining Room
The dining room of a kibbutz fulfilled several purposes. Primarily, of course, it served the three meals of the day: breakfast, lunch, and supper. In the one-room living quarters of the chaverim, there were neither kitchens nor any cooking utensils; at most they had a hotplate and a kettle. They could make tea or coffee, and perhaps boil an egg, if they had good relations with the chicken-farm man or with Chava, the manager of the food storeroom. The only meal one had at home regularly was in the afternoon with the children. We would take home a few slices of bread from the dining room and spread them with jam, of which there was no shortage due to the Pri-Gat factory. It was also possible to have afternoon tea in the dining room. On the tables were jugs with tea, bread, and tins whose label proclaimed SARDINES AND OTHER FISH. People sneered: Yes, one sardine and one shark.
But the dining room was also the place where we held our weekly general assemblies. The kibbutz secretary—a job also filled by rotation—would announce the agenda, and the members voted for or against each item. These could be the purchase of a new tractor, or approving someone’s demand to be allowed to take driving lessons, or the announcement that Eva and Arieh are from now on a couple and want to move into a room together. While the discussion went on, many of the chaverot knitted, and there were whispered conversations. When it came to the vote, everyone participated: some raised their hand for yea, and some for nay, and I’m not sure they always knew exactly what they had just agreed to or rejected.
One had to read the various important notices at the entrance to the dining room. There was, for example, the list of the three people whose turn had come to do night watch this week, or the announcement about two free places in a car that would be traveling to Tel Aviv the next morning, or a notice to the public that Efra and Gerti Schalinger had hebraized their name and were from then on called Shalev, or the warning that from eight o’clock that night till the next morning the water main would be shut off, due to the cleaning of the water tower reservoir, where accumulated sand had blocked the flow.
After supper the tables were occupied by the various committees. Here, the chavera responsible for matters of health distributed money to people who had to go by bus to the various HMO specialists in town. She knew the exact price of a ticket to Tel Aviv or to nearby Hadera. When I had to see the gynecologist or have an X-ray, I used to go by the auto stop and, with the money I saved, buy sweets for the children. In those days most drivers in Israel would give you a lift, especially if you were a pretty young woman.
There, at another table, sat Ayko, the man who distributed razors and condoms. The weekly allocation was two of each. He was stingy with his wares; if someone asked for a third condom, Ayko would accuse him of wastefulness. “Can’t you recycle them?” he would grumble. He himself was a bachelor, who had his gray hair cut once a year and walked around without a shirt or jacket in all seasons, exposing his leathery brown chest with a tangle of white hairs. He also was a sports buff, a champion on the parallel bars.
The busiest of all was the sadran avodah. This was a most unpleasant job—coordinating work assignments. He or she had to find workers to fill in for someone who had fallen ill or who, for some other weighty reason, could not work next day. If it was the electrician, the cobbler, or the accountant who was missing, it did not matter so much. But what if the cows, the chickens, or the children had to be fed? The only people who were free were those who were having their Shabbat—that is, who had worked on Shabbat and got a free day on a weekday in exchange. But who would be willing to give up a free day? For all their Zionist zeal, the kibbutzniks wanted their Shabbat. After all his persuasive efforts, the poor sadran avodah often had to man the post him or herself.
At other tables sat groups discussing various plans. For instance, there was the topic of vacations, to which every member was entitled for ten days once a year. Going to a hotel was out of the question; the vacation allocation would not buy even a single night at a third-rate hotel. Many people had family in Haifa, in Tel Aviv, or in villages, but most wouldn’t want to impose on them. The best option was to take a tent and go camping. A discussion was held about the location. Often someone was sent out to scout for a suitable place.
I remember with nostalgia the week in the abandoned Arab village of Ein Hod on Mount Carmel. It was completely empty except for a Jewish couple with a child, who had started a primitive kiosk in one of the abandoned houses, selling cigarettes and drinks to people who passed through on their way to settlements higher up.
The houses were bare; instead of windows and doors, there were just holes. We picked one where the wind blew through and moved in. The vacationers, as well as the equipment, were brought up by the kibbutz truck. We carried iron bedsteads with their mattresses; pots, pans, oil cookers, plates, and cutlery; food for a week; anti-mosquito spray; toilet paper; first-aid kit; rucksacks; straw hats; and swimsuits into the house and started
planning our itinerary. Despite the breeze that cooled the building, we preferred to sleep on the flat roof. My fondest memories are of the warm nights, when I watched the stars and the moon above me and listened to the sounds, the plaintive hoot of the owls and the music of the cicadas.
There were ten of us—men and women in equal numbers. All of us were one half of a couple; the other half had to stay behind in the kibbutz to take care of the children. They got their turn with the next group.
The organizer of our group, Efra, had already checked the surrounding area and located the spots that were of interest. So on the next day, we walked to the ancient crusader fort at Atlit, and the day after, we went along the track on Mount Carmel, and then to Haifa with its Bahai Temple, then one day at the beach at Tantura—in short, a whole day’s outing for each day of the week. On our return to base in the late afternoon, we all participated in the preparation of supper, usually soup, salad, an egg, bread, cheese, yogurt, olives, and sometimes boiled potatoes or spaghetti.
I went on two such camping vacations. The second was in western Galilee next to Kibbutz Gesher HaZiv, where we stayed in an empty citrus packing plant in the middle of the orange groves. This time I was with different people than in the former group, but there was one thing in common to both: several halves of couples had arranged it so they could have a little fun on the side with the opposite-sex half of another couple.
* * *
Among the many jobs I did during our seven years in the kibbutz was a stint in the dining room. It was shift work, either from six to half past two, or from half past eleven to eight in the evening. When we first came to the kibbutz, there were long tables with benches seating four at each side. The two people at the end had it easy, but the two in the middle had to climb over the bench holding on to the shoulder of the neighbor, who was often just lifting his spoon with soup, which he spilled, of course. Or if three people finished and got up and you were the one sitting at the end of the bench, your weight would tilt it up and you slid to the floor. Later the kibbutz bought square tables with two chairs at each side. Since there were never enough knives, because they got nicked for home use, each table was allocated two knives to be used in rotation. It didn’t help when the “economist” of supplies bought new knives. Within a few weeks they were gone again.