15

Misgav Yitzhak lay in the very heart of the Judean Hills. There was abundant light. The few tall cypress trees cast no shadow. The sky was soaring and cloudless. One’s body wanted to lean on a wall, so as not to be the target of the great light, but there was no wall. We stood, exposed, in the courtyard.

At our first meeting, the secretary of the kibbutz, a tall, bald man, spoke in a soft voice and used practical terms that we already knew.

“Article One,” he said (it was a new word in our vocabulary). “Misgav Yitzhak isn’t a permanent place but a transit spot. From here, we’ll go on to more advanced training.

“Article Two: Everything we’ll learn here is of equal importance. The work, the studies, the training. You mustn’t get lazy and neglectful. The staff will discuss personal problems every week.

“Article Three: Three per room, and the rooms have to be tidied before you go out to work.

“Article Four: Lights out at ten-thirty.”

—

Strangely, these simple, clear words didn’t gladden the heart. Life at the previous way stations—in Naples, on the ship, in Atlit—seemed soft compared to the life we could expect here.

We weren’t wrong. We worked in the orchard. Alongside the orchard, they were building a new terrace, and we would make that stony earth into fertile soil. Dynamite had already uprooted the boulders, and now we would be breaking up the large rocks, which would be used in the retaining wall of the terrace, and we would be filling the pits with loose brown soil, which we would bring up from the wadi in rubber buckets.

The hammers were heavy, and it was hard to break the rocks. Ephraim didn’t make a fuss about scratches and wounds. There were bandages in his pocket, and he promised us that in a month or two our hands would know what to do.

Ephraim lifted the hammer easily, and his blows were strong and precise. Our blows didn’t break the rocks; they just scattered chips all over. Ephraim had learned from the Arabs how to split and dress stones and how to lay them. He spoke of the Arabs with admiration. They knew the earth like their own bodies and guarded it. Building terraces was their great secret. Their terraces withstood all the ferocious rainstorms.

Ephraim spoke about the earth and its virtues in Hebrew mixed with Arabic. For us everything was foreign, adopted, and forced. We remembered with nostalgia the running and the training on the shore near Naples. They shaped our muscles and prepared us to absorb Hebrew words. Despite the hardships, there was happiness there. Here, breaking the rocks and carrying buckets up from the wadi was exhausting and joyless.

Were it not for Ephraim, the chilly reception would have wiped out our hidden hopes. Ephraim knew that the journey from one point to another wasn’t a trivial matter. You had to admit that it wasn’t easy for hands to grasp the hammers and swing them.

Ephraim was a great expert in manual labor, but he wasn’t arrogant. He spoke to us simply, the way you talk to a friend. Sometimes it seemed as if he was a member of a secret, ascetic order and what he was teaching us now was a mere smattering of what we would be learning later.

“And the next stop?” one of the comrades asked.

“Still far away,” Ephraim replied, laughing.

—

In the afternoon, we studied the Bible and Ethics of the Fathers. Our teacher, Slobotsky, promised that if we made good progress, we would start reading passages from modern Hebrew literature. But what could we do? During that hot hour, as though in spite, fatigue overcame us, our concentration weakened, and our eyes closed by themselves. The roots of the words floated before our eyes and weren’t absorbed.

Our new life here was intense, and it overpowered us.

But sleep at night was deep, like the sleep after the war, and I felt that the walls of the tunnel of sleep were only slightly distant from my body. As it turned out, that was only the opening of the tunnel. Every night the opening widened and brought to my eyes clear visions of my childhood, accompanied by the moist fragrance that follows the rain.

—

Mother and I were walking without speaking. Mother’s silences were among the wonders of her self-expression. When she was quiet, her face displayed a singular purity, and it seemed to me that she had been planted in a world that was entirely her own. I did not dare disturb her. Once, however, I couldn’t control myself.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

Mother turned to me, and I felt that I had caused her pain.

Now it was different. Mother was sitting by my side, as she did when I was sick. I told her that splitting rocks wasn’t trivial work. When she heard this, she narrowed her eyes and said, “You’re using incomprehensible words.”

“Me?”

“You appear to be using a secret language.”

I became confused and didn’t know how to reply. Finally, I realized that I was mixing words from home with new words, so I tried to separate them. I wanted to tell her about all my adventures since I had been parted from her. I knew I had a lot to tell her, but it seemed beyond my power, like a pile of broken stones that I had to load onto my back.

“Mother,” I said, “I can’t right now.”

“No matter,” she said. Her short reply implied that we had a lot of time. If I couldn’t tell her now, certainly I could do so later on. Mother never pressured me, but this time her patience seemed excessive.

“Mother,” I said, “in a little while the bell will ring, and I’ll have to go to work. I promise to return as soon as possible.”

“Work?” She was surprised. “At your age, studies are your work.”

I wanted to tell her more, but the words stuck in my mouth. Or, actually, they clung to one another, and I couldn’t pull them apart.

Then Dr. Weingarten appeared, pale but not without some irony. I was afraid he would scold me for not going out to look for him. I was wrong. He was glad to see me.

“Every generation has its passions,” he said. “We wanted to reform the world from the foundations to the roof, and you smash rocks to build terraces. Let’s pray that your passion will come out better than ours.”

I wanted to apologize, but the bell rang and cut off my sleep. It was six o’clock, and we headed toward the orchard. No worry: after two hours of work, we would go to the dining hall, where a splendid breakfast would await us.