They sat together and exchanged pleasantries. Manfred was afraid he might say something inappropriate, for in such a setting and at such a time one might very well say words it would be embarrassing to recall, because of their banality. Manfred took the flowers from Henrietta and put her hand in his rather gruffly. He placed the flowers on a rock and closed his eyes. He saw Henrietta’s affection rising up before him, completely engulfing him. Now her hand was in his, lifeless. Only the afterscent of the flowers he took from her hand and placed on the rock was still alive. Manfred knew that the stress of caring for the household and the children had consumed the years of love. Add to this the anxiety about her relatives in Germany, where God’s wrath was loose. To remain alive, her relatives and acquaintances needed certificates. Henrietta used to spend half her day dealing with the household and the other half in pursuit of certificates. The household had its routines. As for the immigration officials, if no tears can move their ruthless hearts, from whence will our help come? While Manfred held Henrietta’s hand, the day darkened, the garden grew dusky, the array of colors vanished from the sky, and an evening chill set in. Henrietta went to get her shawl. Manfred followed her. As she wrapped herself in the shawl, Manfred reached out his arms and embraced her. She teased him and said, “What do you want with this withered stick of wood?” And she slipped out of his arms.
Chapter eighteen
Zahara and Tamara, Manfred and Henrietta’s daughters, came to welcome their little sister. Zahara is about nineteen, and Tamara is a year and a half younger as well as half a head taller, for she was only a baby when her parents brought her to this country, whose special milk makes people tall. Their faces are tanned, their hands steady — Zahara’s as a result of work, and Tamara’s from bathing in the sea and rowing on the Yarkon. Zahara belongs to a kvutza called Kfar Ahinoam, and Tamara is a student at a teachers’ seminary in Tel Aviv. They were both slow to arrive. One, because of a group of youngsters from abroad she was asked to take charge of; the other, because she went hiking with some friends.
Before dealing with the daughters, let us deal with the parents. Henrietta is blonde; her limbs are full and relaxed, responding to her at work as well as at rest. Her eyes are a medium blue that can turn fierce. Her hair is pulled across the middle of her ears and folded up in back, framing her face and leaving her neck exposed. Manfred is dark. His hair is thick, so that, seeing him in the street, you assume he is on the way to get a haircut. His eyes, either laughing or bemused, suggest a pleasant temperament. His mouth is small. A narrow mustache separates his nose from his mouth, and a wrinkle begins between his eyes, curving up to his broad forehead, where it joins with the other three and a half wrinkles that are there. This is approximately how Manfred and Henrietta look.
Now I will give about a pen’s worth of ink to a description of their daughters. But I will precede this with a few remarks about our other sisters in this land, as well as about ourselves.
When we came to the Land of Israel, we were shy young men with no interest in women, our every thought being centered on the land and on work. Finding work, we found a slice of bread, a plate of greens, and a cup of tea, and we were grateful for the land and its bounty. If we didn’t find work, we were hungry. In a hungry period, we sometimes danced to take our minds off our hunger. Whether or not the Lord of Hunger saw our situation, we paid no attention to Him. Either way, we were devoured by malaria and the other scourges of the land. If a young woman fell in with our group, we paid no attention to her looks, since it was not for the sake of beauty that she came to this country, but to work the land. When we sat discussing land, labor, farmers, and workers, it didn’t occur to us that the One who made farmers different from laborers made young men and women different too. If a fellow had his eye on a girl, it was her virtues that interested him, not her anatomy; if he had romantic tendencies, he would be interested in her doleful eyes, her plaintive voice. If she brought us songs of her homeland, in Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Ruthenian — which is now called Ukrainian — and sang them to us, we enjoyed these times on the beach at Jaffa far more than any concert we later attended in Europe’s great cities.
There were other young women, whose families were Sephardic exiles descended from the ruling class of Judea, from the tribe of Judah, like David our king and like our righteous Messiah, who will come to deliver us from exile in the lands of Edom and Ishmael. They would sit at a window and never come out of the house, for their dignity enclosed them. Unlike their Ashkenazic sisters, their dignity was interior. Their eyes were black; their black hair was parted in the middle and flowed to the edge of the forehead. A blue-black or black-blue spark flashed from their eyes, settling on their eyebrows with a fiery glow. A baffled smile fluttered over their mouth. Between eyes and mouth, the nose loomed, angry and menacing.
There were others, also descendants of exiles from Spain. They took on any job that came their way to earn their bread. Both their hair and their eyes were black. Their eyebrows glistened with warm compassion. Their mouth seemed about to cry, and, when they opened their lips to sing, their voice would embrace you and you would want to cry for no reason. If you took notice of such a one, she would turn away from the window and withdraw into the house. Why? Because you could have asked her father for her hand, but you did no such thing; you merely peered and gazed at her.
There were other young women, Moroccans, with full faces, oval heads, eyes almost as large as their face. I mean not to disparage but to praise these eyes, for they animated the entire face. They spoke a brand of Arabic not many people in this country would recognize. We include ourselves, realizing that, if we were to speak Arabic, the Arabs would assume it was Russian.
There were still others, descendants of the exile into Yemen, the cruelest of all exiles. They came to this country with a purpose — to welcome the Messiah, for our righteous Messiah will reveal himself here first, before other countries. They left homes filled with every comfort and came empty-handed, with only the clothes on their back, carrying their books, which were written with ink on parchment and on parchmentlike paper. Some were copied from the manuscripts of our great Maimonides; others, we had heard of but never seen until these immigrants from Yemen came to the country. They wandered from desert to desert, hungry and thirsty. Their days were consumed by drought, their nights by frost, and they couldn’t sleep for fear of snakes, scorpions, or bandits. Still, they never said, “Why did we forsake a settled place to wander in this wasteland?” When they reached this country, they were not welcomed with bread; no door was opened to shelter them from the night, for their brothers regarded them as strangers. They slept in the woods, foraged for food, accepted their fate without rebelling. God opened the eyes of a few unique individuals, who saw the plight of their brothers from Yemen, bought Kfar Hashiloah, and built them houses there, so they could live off the yield of their labor. This, in summary, is the tale of our brothers, the early settlers from Yemen who have been a boon to the country.
So much for the fathers, for I mean to deal only with the daughters.
They were like children, though already mothers. Only yesterday they were nurslings; today it is they who offer the breast. We noticed their work but not their charm. The good Lord, cherishing their reserve, spread a film over our eyes, so we would not be led astray.