24
The wild garden bestows not only interest, knowledge, pleasure, and satisfaction—but also moments of bliss upon its owner. Most of these moments are seasonal and predictable, but this does not decrease the happiness and delight they bring. These are the moments of budding and blooming, the return of winter or summer birds, moments of that same breeze I described, blowing through the section of the garden where poppies bloom, and also the emergence of the sea squill’s green leaves after it has flowered and wilted. It is the same for the sprouting of the lupines I sow, the moment their first leaflets emerge and rise up, looking like tiny hands, beseeching heaven from the earth below. And also the sprouting of cyclamen seeds because, in contrast to the first leaflets of many other flowers that differ greatly from the leaves of the mature plant, the first leaf of a cyclamen looks exactly like that of a mature one, aside from its size—it is very small—and aside from the design unique to each cyclamen which appears on every single one of its leaves after the first year.
There are also moments of bliss generated by animals and insects. Like the song of bees that resonates from within the oak and the buckthorn, surprising and delighting me anew, because the flowers of these trees are not as prominent and alluring as, for example, the flowers of the Judas tree or styrax. They are minuscule, without color or fragrance, but the bees come to them for free meals of pollen. By January’s end, when a warm sunny day suddenly lights up, it is possible to hear them within the tree, as if a contrabass and cello are playing there. Their hum is deep and soft, but distinctly audible as it rises up, filling the air.
When I heard this magnificent choir for the first time I did not understand what I was listening to until I drew close to the oak, lifted my head, and discovered that the sound was emerging from within the branches. Hundreds of bees were toiling away there, gathering pollen from the flowers and buzzing wildly. I went under the tree’s canopy, stood by the trunk, closed my eyes, and sank down into the bee’s song from head to toe, and since then I do it every year. What a magnificent concert this is, refined and deep, warm and intense, signifying that bees do not perceive springtime as we do: Our own springtime is colorful and fragrant and warm and arousing and caressing, pleasant to the eye, the skin, and the nose, pulling at the heart and then the body—to go out, to hike, to inhale, see, love. The bees, however, come out in springtime in order to work. They do not talk about “cyclamen hills” and do not tell of “carpets of anemones.” Their springtime has a purely economic meaning: the hive is full of hungry mouths, the larder is bare during the rainy winter, flower pollen and nectar must be brought to produce honey, feed the queen and the larvae, and raise another generation of workers. I enjoy listening to their song, but enjoy even more knowing that I am not one of them—bees, ants, and other societies in which bondage is inherited, a tradition so sanctified that it can never be changed.
A further moment of bliss for me is when a hedgehog or tortoise appears in the garden. I love hedgehogs and tortoises, and every year I see fewer and fewer of them. But occasionally they appear, filling my heart with joy. Once, at dusk, as I sat on the ground in the garden, a female hedgehog came with her two small hoglets, whose spines had not quite stiffened. They went hither and thither with the deportment of wheelers and dealers; they searched, they sniffed, and they passed close by, so close that one of the hoglets brushed up against me. Such proximity to a wild animal, even a mere hedgehog, is one of trust and confidence, and this brings great pleasure.
And birds, too. In the surrounding area, as well as in my garden, are hoopoes, ravens, turtledoves, sunbirds, laughing doves, parakeets, snake eagles, bulbuls, blackbirds, warblers, tufted titmice, robins and white-breasts, Syrian woodpeckers, barn owls, scops owls, stone curlews, partridges, larks, falcons, jaybirds, and sparrows. I recognize them by appearance and also voice. Just before dawn, when I awaken, I can tell the time according to which bird is singing outside.
I’ve heard the calls of all these birds, except for that of the snake eagle. The blackbird and the bulbul are the pleasantest singers, but I also love hearing the white-breasted kingfisher, a bird that no longer plucks its food out of the water but dives down to the ground, ensnaring lizards and insects. In the morning it releases loud laughter above my garden, announcing to me that it is his alone. But the garden also belongs to the sunbird who, despite its tiny proportions, also declares ownership in a sharp, courageous voice, and the parakeet, too, an invasive bird who behaves like the lord of the manor. They banish woodpeckers from my garden, not because God has promised them this plot of land, but because they crave the nesting cavities that have been dug into the tree trunks. The garden also belongs to the robin, returning to me from Europe each year, reminding me and all the other birds that the garden is not mine, nor theirs, but the robin’s.
This is my second robin. The first one arrived in my second or third winter here, perching on the terebinth tree near the window, rendering war cries and shrill, aggressive tut-tutting. “Tut! Tut! Tut! Take off!” I have seen it more than once guarding its borders, and the spectacle is an amusing one: a small, tubby bird hopping valiantly from branch to branch: “Tut! Tut! Tut! All trespassers will die!”
At the beginning of summer, the robin returned to its homeland, and the following winter, when the Tut! Tut! Tut! and its robin came back, I asked someone who told me that in all likelihood it is the very same robin, coming back to its winter residence. But small songbirds do not live long, and I was deeply sorry the winter this robin failed to reappear on the terebinth tree, a few years after it first arrived.
For some years I lived without robins, until the gods sent me a new one. One cold and wintry morning, I heard it and rushed outside, overwhelmed with happiness. It had arrived: tut-tutting energetically, guarding its estate from strangers and invaders. In spite of its socialist colors and thin, straight beak, the robin is extremely hawkish.
The sunbird has also given me a moment of great bliss or, more precisely, a moment of pain and regret that turned into joy. The sunbird, also known by its old Hebrew nickname that translates as “honey-sucker,” is the smallest bird in my garden. Sometimes—very rarely—a warbler appears, competing for this title, but the sunbird is almost always around. The females are brown-gray, and the iridescent males shimmer green and black with every movement of their bodies.
More than once I have seen them hovering above the flowers like tiny helicopters, and the sight is really lovely, except that under this miniature sweetness hides a hot-tempered, aggressive, and impetuous creature. The males chase one another above the garden and between the branches, and they fight their own reflections, mirrored in windowpanes. They rise and fall and change direction with a dexterity that would make fighter planes and their pilots jealous, and they fear nothing, neither other sunbirds nor any other type of bird, nor animals or humans. When I see them, I recall a lovely description by Nahum Gutman that appeared in In the Land of Lobengulu King of Zulu. It describes a voyage in South Africa, and how a honey-sucker—Gutman uses the old name for the sunbird—intimidated a baboon who came too close to its nest: “When the monkey drew nearer toward the location of the nest, the honey-sucker began disturbing the world. The tweets frequently exited her throat one after the other, like gunshots. She jumped toward the monkey, gyrated around him, flew upon him…This is what happens when there are two eggs in the nest. Size is not important.”
Once I damaged a sunbirds’ nest in my garden, and I regret it to this day. I was pruning the lavender bushes that grow on one of the garden terraces, and I noticed how the entire time two sunbirds hovered above me, a male and a female, calling loudly. At the time, I did not understand they were trying to banish me from the vicinity. I thought they were occupied with the usual business of sunbirds, an argument between neighbors, or courtship and betrayal. It was only when the pruning shears struck their nest, suspended and concealed within the thicket, that I finally understood. By then it was too late. The nest disconnected and collapsed; the two minuscule eggs contained within it fell and shattered. The sunbirds departed and did not return to the garden that summer, and I was afraid they would never come back. But the next summer they returned once again—either the same sunbirds or another pair—and I rejoiced with great joy and since then have kept my eyes open and taken better care.
The birds that bestow the greatest bliss on me do not live in my garden but in the adjacent field. These are the stone curlews—fowl that can fly but prefer to walk and run. They are the size of pullets, their legs are long, their eyes yellow, and their gaze a fierce one. Their feathers are fashioned into a camouflaged costume of yellows and browns and grays. When the stone curlews stand motionless, the eye cannot see them, but at night their calls can be heard from afar. Shortly after sunset, and in the middle of the night and at predawn, they hold folk-dance festivals and sing-alongs that are popular here in the valley. There is something mysterious and attractive about these gatherings that appeals to me. On summer nights, when the stone curlews sing and dance in the reaped field below my house, I sometimes go down there, edging toward them in the darkness. I am careful not to get too close, because then they fall silent and flee. I stop at a distance of a hundred feet from them and lie supinely on the ground, gazing up at the sky and listening.
Lying on the ground under vast and deep summer skies, listening to the stone curlews’ strange and mysterious voices, endows this moment with an air of dreaming with open eyes. Regrettably, I see neither ladders nor angels, but a person must make do with what he or she has. And at this moment I am blessed with a warm night and soft soil, devoid of stones, and skies filled with stars, and stone curlews singing me a song—and this is so much more than most people have, and so much more than I have at many other moments.