The Loves of Judith (21 page)

In the pantry were pots and skillets, heavy as rocks and very dirty, and a yellow wooden canary, marvelously precise and carved, which Jacob immediately took for himself without telling anyone.

He remembered the worn-out book the albino used to read and weep over as he sat in the yard of an afternoon, and after a feverish search, he found it, too, hidden in a closet in the canaries’ hut. To his surprise, it wasn’t a personal diary or a love story or a book of poetry, but old schedules, carefully bound, of trains that had once traveled between Prague and Berlin, Vienna and Budapest.

The next day, Jacob went to the nearby village to ask Menahem Rabinovitch how come a person was interested in schedules of trains that never traveled here. The carob grower leafed through the book and smiled and explained to him that everybody has his own ways of taming regrets and sharpening memory, and everybody, in his own way, tries and fails.

E
VERY AFTERNOON
, the crows assemble for a meeting.

They come to find out what’s new, and I come for the same purpose. To human eyes all crows look alike, but I know every one of them by name and by his history. Some I recognize as I recognize people, by their face, and others by the borderline between the gray and the black on their chest. So I know who died and who disappeared, who was born and who got married.

They come from all around for meetings and conversations that go on almost until dark, and then each goes off to his own tree and his abode.

Until the day my mother died, they used to congregate on our big eucalyptus tree. After Moshe cut it down they still hovered over its ruin for two more days, black and screaming as if their world were destroyed, and on the third day, they transferred their meeting to the old railroad station beyond the wadi, and to the plot of anemones.

There, the young crows, who are as big as their parents, but whose wings are still tentative, show off their progress in flying. The old ones utter well-turned caws. The scouts and the guards supervise what goes on in the area.

Now and then, some of them swoop down on a cat who came out of the village or pester an owl who appeared in the light.
Some take off to pursue a buzzard and even pick a fight with an eagle circling in the sky. What a fine spectacle that is. Six or seven crows fly to the eagle, but only one of them does battle. Eager for excitement and fearless, light, and nimble, he swoops down on the eagle, attacks him from the side, rises underneath him, and the eagle, when his patience runs out, tries to clash with him, to hit him and bring him down, in vain. The crow evades him and turns over, lands like a rock, and immediately rises again and attacks and he’s supple and bold, craving entertainment and honor.

But back then, when the albino died, the eucalyptus was still standing in the yard, and seven days after his funeral, the crows cut off their regular meeting, and suddenly they all landed in the cow yard. Excitement and suppressed violence were obvious in their behavior. They ran around on the rails and screamed bizarre, coarse screams that startled the doves out of their regular lodging on the roof.

Now I’m tempted to say that they wanted to herald my birth. And secretly I’m proud that it was a noisy black flock of crows and not white doves that prophesied my coming into the world. But back then no one paid attention to such stretches of time, and no one connected the crows to the death of the canary breeder, especially since everyone knew that such a gathering of crows in the cow yard could mean only one thing: the impending birth of a calf.

The crows are mad about cow placentas. Their senses are so sharp and their passion is so great that they’re often the first to discern labor pains, sometimes even before the pregnant female herself. Now they danced on the fence, hopped, and shrieked on the roof of the cowshed and terrified the cows in heat.

Moshe heard them, went out to the yard and noticed the breathing of the cow and the swelling of her loins. A thick rope of mucus was already stretching under her tail.

“Well, children,” he said. “Ask nice that we’ll have a heifer.”

“What difference does it make?” asked Naomi.

“A farmer is glad when females are born in the cowshed and males in the house,” said Moshe.

He noticed the reservation spreading over Judith’s face and wanted to appease her, but he didn’t yet know the keys to her anger or the preludes to her wrath.

“Well, Judith, that’s only a saying of farmers.” He was embarrassed, put on his rubber boots, and went back to the cow.

T
HE BIRTH WAS LONG
and hard. Rabinovitch tied a rope around the fetus’s legs and pulled hard for a long time.

“You’re hurting her, Father!” cried Naomi. “You’re pulling too hard.”

But Moshe didn’t answer and Oded said: “Shut up, Naomi, you don’t understand anything about it. Giving birth isn’t any business for women.”

The cow groaned. Her eyelids seemed to pull down. The other cows looked at her with heavy faces.

“Here, it’s coming out,” said Moshe. He put his hand in up to the elbow, turned the body of the fetus to a more comfortable position, and pulled out a fat calf that was already dead.

“Dammit.” He tossed the carcass aside. “Hitch up the horse, Oded, and drag it to the eucalyptus forest.”

He went into the cowshed, but Judith was looking at the cow, whose eyes were shut with weakness and whose legs were trembling, and she said: “She’s got another one inside.”

“How do you know?” asked Oded. “How come you understand more than my father?”

“I know,” said Judith, and she touched the cow’s nose and added: “She’s cold as ice. Fast, go call your father to come back. She’s hemorrhaging inside.”

Suddenly the cow’s knees buckled and she knelt down, and when she turned over helplessly on her side, a heifer burst out
of her guts, followed by a spring of blood. She spread her hooves and her neck, shook and groaned.

“Father, Father!” shouted Oded. “There’s also a heifer—”

Moshe rushed to the yard. One look at the dying cow and the flowing blood was enough for him. He ran to the cowshed and came back with the corn scythe.

“Take the children away from here so they won’t see,” he said to Judith. “And run and get the dealer. I think he’s wandering around in the village today.”

His broad body hid the act, but a new puddle of blood immediately collected at his feet.

Off to the side, the heifer started trying to stand up. She was strong and nimble, and when she made it, the typical physical features of a barren heifer appeared. She was tall, her shoulders broad and sloping, her legs long, and her face the face of a male.

“Sonofabitch,” Moshe cursed. “The calf died, the mother passed away, and now this
tumtum
.”

Fifteen minutes later, Mother and Globerman came.

“Did you manage to slaughter it in time?” asked the dealer.

“I did.”

Then Globerman noticed the dead calf and his peculiar twin.

“Troubles come in threes, eh, Rabinovitch?” he said.

Moshe didn’t answer.

“Look at that
maydele
how she looks,” said the dealer. “It’s always like that when there’s a
tsvilling
—a
kelbele un a bikele
. It’s her brother’s blood that made her half a boy. She won’t give milk and she won’t give birth. I’ll take her, too.”

“Her you won’t take,” Judith said suddenly.

“I’m talking to the boss now, Lady Judith.” Globerman took his filthy beret off his head. “That heifer is half a calf. If you give her to me, Rabinovitch, we’ll make a deal for the old lady, too. I’ve got an Arab who’ll give a good price for the carcass.”

But the heifer already started walking, shaking and wet, stumbling and searching for a teat. Her feet led her to Judith,
and Judith took a sack and started wiping the mucus and blood off her.

“Rabinovitch,” she suddenly said, “I’ve never asked you for anything up to now. Don’t give him this heifer.”

“That’s the most beautiful sound in the world,” said Globerman. “The voice of a woman pleading.”

“Leave that heifer here,” said Judith. “I’ll take care of her.”

“It’s not a heifer, it’s a calf, and I’ll take him now,” said the dealer. “He can already walk by himself.”

“No!” shouted Judith, and her voice was loud and shrill and strange.

Moshe looked at her, at the dealer, at the heifer, and at his feet.

“Listen, Globerman,” he said at last. “You say she’s a calf? So I’ll sell her to you like we sell a calf. We’ll raise her, we’ll feed her a little so she puts on weight, and we’ll sell her to you in half a year.”

The dealer took out his notebook, pulled his pencil from behind his ear, and asked: “What will you name her?”

“Roast Beef,” said Oded.

“Shut up, Oded!” said Naomi.

“We won’t name her,” said Moshe. “Only milk cows have names.”

In the yard, the crows hopped, bloody fragments of placenta dripping from their beaks.

“I need a name,” said Globerman. “Without a name, I can’t write in my notebook.”

“We’ll call her Rachel,” said Judith.

“Rachel?” Moshe was amazed.

“Rachel,” said Judith.

When I grew up and my Mother told me the rest of the story about her and her cow Rachel, I realized that Rachel may have been the name of my sister who was taken to America, and when I said that to my mother, her face became glum and she said:
“What are you talking about, Zayde? What strange ideas you have.”

“So what is her name?” I asked. “Maybe you’ll finally tell me her name.”

“A nafka mina,”
replied Mother.

I was sure that was a Yiddish word, and only when I grew up did I learn it was Aramaic for “who cares.”

I
N THE END
, Lady Judith, you’ll be mine.”

“No, not even if you were the last man on earth.”

“Lady Judith, you need a man with heart. With money. With a generous hand and a generous heart. Who’s like that here except me?”

Very slowly, the cunning livestock dealer focused his attempts, his remarks became sharper, all his expertise in human and cattle souls he invested in Moshe and Judith. He started giving her the little something he brought in Rabinovitch’s presence to see how the two of them would react.

Once he came and when he saw that Judith wasn’t in the yard, he said to Moshe: “Reb Yid, I brought a little something for Lady Judith, you’ll please give it to her when she comes back, and don’t forget to tell her who brought it.”

Another time, he dared to bend down to Moshe, who was a head shorter than him, and ask in a mocking tone: “Reb Yid, how is it that you live with that woman in the yard and don’t go nuts?”

Judith and Naomi were crossing the yard, carrying tin buckets to water the young calves. The dealer looked at my mother and said with a coarseness unexpected even in him: “From that udder the doctor wouldn’t reject even the smallest piece.”

Judith left Rachel to the end. The strong, wild orphan bleated
impatiently, and when Judith approached her she stuck her head in the bucket so eagerly she almost spilled its contents. Judith stroked her neck and whispered affectionately to her.

“Don’t give her so much,” Naomi whispered so her father and Globerman wouldn’t hear. “ ’Cause then she’ll gain weight and Father will sell her to the dealer.”

“He won’t sell her, Nomele,” said Judith. “This heifer is mine.”

A
FEW DAYS
after the albino’s funeral, the Council held a sale of the dead man’s belongings.

One man—“a weird character,” as the Village Papish defined him—came from Haifa and haggled for hours over the five suits.

The blind Arab, father of the
bandooks
from the village of Illut, bought the sunglasses and some empty cages.

Jacob took the filthy pots and frying pans that nobody wanted, and said he’d go on taking care of the birds; because nobody knew what to do with them.

And the green pickup truck was sold at auction.

A special auctioneer was brought from the city and the whole village gathered to see the spectacle, but only two buyers showed up: the treasurer of the nearby kibbutz and the dealer Globerman.

The treasurer saw who his rival was at the sale and started laughing. “Globerman,” he said, “since when do you know anything about cars? You don’t even know how to drive.”

But the dealer walked around the pickup truck, gave a few
“tappen”
on the fenders and the hood, and felt the tires to see if they didn’t have any bones in them. Then he asked one of the men to drive the truck in a circle. Everybody chuckled and somebody shouted: “The truck swallowed a nail, Globerman!” But the livestock dealer stood in the center of the circle, importantly waving his thick baston, listening to the motor, and watching the spinning wheels.

“It’ll hold two cows in the back and one woman in the cabin?” he asked. And when they told him it would, he was satisfied,
pulled the legendary
knippl
out of his pocket, and everybody stopped chuckling because the thick bundle of notes immediately put an end to the planned auction.

The pickup truck became the property of the cattle dealer, the embarrassed treasurer went back to his kibbutz, and Globerman gave the auctioneer half a lira and a case of beer for his
Benemones Parnussa
, and sent him home.

N
OW THAT HIS CHICKS
were growing up at Rabinovitch’s farm, Jacob decided he had an excuse to visit there, and after a week of cogitation, he appeared and proclaimed: “I came to see if the chicks are growing good.”

He asked Judith what she was giving them to eat, made all sorts of recommendations and gave all sorts of advice, and after all that, he gathered up his courage and asked if she wanted to learn how to make paper boats so she could play with Moshe’s children and win their hearts.

Before she could answer, Jacob took out a few pieces of paper, sat down, and started folding them with a surprising agility, folding them and turning them over and smoothing their folds with his thumbnail, and four beautiful paper boats immediately stood gloriously on the table.