Murder on a Kibbutz, page 38
“Guta,” said Moish, “please, I ask you.”
“Ask as much as you like, you won’t shut us up!” shouted Matilda. “It’s not just the housing, she also thought of it as a social solution, she told me so herself, how lonely older comrades would be able to meet new people in that old-age home, or whatever fancy name she called it.”
“You just want to get rid of us for no good reason!” yelled Guta. “That’s all your great new vision amounts to.”
“So we won’t be here to stop them from introducing all their modern changes,” said Yocheved. Now she too was standing.
“And what will happen to the institution of the housemother? How do you see that? What will we need housemothers for?” asked a well-groomed young woman from the center of the dining hall. Michael didn’t recognize her, and Avigail responded to his question with a shrug.
Dvorka bent over, pulled a dark-covered book out from under her chair, and said, “Comrades, comrades, please allow me.” Gradually silence fell, and they all sat down again except for Dvorka, who remained standing with the open book in her hands. “In difficult moments like these, we should listen to what the early pioneers had to say, those communards who shared their innermost thoughts with each other so that we could derive comfort from them in moments such as these. I want to read something to you now from Kehilatenu. These are the words of David Kahana, here called David K. As you see, they felt no need to immortalize their names, and even today, comrades writing in our news bulletin don’t sign with their full names but only with their first names and the initial of their family name, because the important thing is what we say and not who says it. We are living the highest ideal to which man can aspire: the happiness of the individual achieved by means of the integrity of the collective, as David Kahana says.” Dvorka now removed a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of her black trousers, bowed her head over the book, and began to read:
I tell you, brothers, even if I knew that in the end we would be drowned in the mire of life, I would not move from my place; perhaps I would pause for a moment to search for comrades in suffering and boldness, but I would not renounce the vision. Sometimes I come home from the quarry despondent and despairing, and it seems to me that everything around me has suddenly turned into a terrible tangle. Then I begin to unconsciously pass before me all the days of my life, from the Viennese Inferno—through the meetings and external events and through the inner struggles on board ship—until the ‘purifying crucible’ of the Galilee and the kibbutz, and the memories of the defeats and failures burn my flesh like fire and darken my eyes with thoughts of my decline in the Land . . . . But can I give up? No, brothers, I will not move from my place, for I make no distinction between the days of struggle and doubt and the days of the realization of the vision itself. Eternal seeking and endless struggle are our lot. They will accompany us all the days of our lives—from recovery to recovery, from task to task, from sacrifice to sacrifice; and to the extent to which the enterprise grows, the inner struggle will become harder, and to the extent to which the hand of fate presses more heavily on us—doubt will become more corrosive among us.
Dvorka shut the book, put it down on the chair, and then slowly took off her glasses.
“I don’t believe it,” said Michael. He was breathing hard and sweating. “That woman . . . she’s showing her true colors at last.” He stood up and went over to the sink, bent down, and drank from the tap.
“Has she gone off her rocker or what?” Avigail inquired of the room at large. “What was all that about?”
Michael returned to his chair and stared at the screen. The camera focused on Dvorka. “You don’t understand,” he said hoarsely, “she doesn’t walk around with Kehilatenu in her pocket; she had to have come prepared. In fact, now that I think of it, she staged the whole drama, she knew what was going to happen here tonight.”
“She has frightening eyes,” said Avigail, “and I don’t like her.”
Michael tried to steady his breath. He lit a cigarette and stood up without taking his eyes off the screen. He was flooded with anxiety, almost with horror. At that moment, Dvorka looked different to him. He felt his face burning, as if he were witnessing something very threatening.
“I read you that passage mainly for the last sentence,” said Dvorka now, stressing every word, “but also to show you that once upon a time people weren’t afraid to express their feelings, and that within the family, the kibbutz family, it was legitimate to speak out frankly. The last sentence, which speaks of struggles, is the essential one. We have to examine ourselves endlessly, over and over again, in order to ascertain if the world we have built is the right one, and if it is, we have to preserve it.” Dave stared at her wide-eyed, and shook his head from side to side like someone hearing words of wisdom from the master or like someone gazing at a rare species of animal.
The dramatic, passionate tone changed to a businesslike matter-of-factness as she said, “As far as family sleeping is concerned, I can’t see any disadvantages in the present arrangements. Think of your own generation for a moment—is there anything wrong with you? And the memories, the experiences you have in common? And the involvement of all the members of the kibbutz in the development of every single child? Our involvement was so intimate, we all knew when the first tooth came, when each of you took his first step. And you’re the living proof of the success of the experiment we carried out with such dedicated faith and devotion.”
But Matilda, with the spiteful smile Michael had come to recognize, said, “We’ll have to wait and see just how successful you are, but in the meantime you can enjoy the compliment.”
“What about the old-age home?” said Guta. “That’s what I want to know.”
“It’s impossible to talk about both subjects at the same time,” pronounced Dvorka.
“Osnat thought it was possible,” said Moish. “She thought it was necessary.”
Dvorka clamped her lips into a wide, narrow line and then parted them to say, with an evident attempt to control herself, “And you know that I disagreed with her.”
“There’ll always be disagreements,” said Zeev HaCohen in a conciliatory tone, “and there’s no need to be hasty. Personally, I can’t see any objection to a communal facility for older members, as long as it doesn’t deprive us of the right to vote and participate in the life of the kibbutz, and as far as family sleeping is concerned, I think we should be open-minded about it.”
“In any case,” Dvorka broke into his words with uncharacteristic impatience, “it’s clear that in the eyes of the majority these plans are completely unacceptable, because they undercut the whole idea on which the kibbutz was based.” After a deep breath, she added, in a voice filled with contempt, “And don’t quote other kibbutzim to us as examples. The idea of advancing with the times and following ruinous fashions won’t guide our footsteps here. In the United Kibbutz Movement they’re already talking about salaries, about paying kibbutz members for their work. In the light of such talk, I may sound anachronistic, but I know in my heart that the meaning of our lives won’t be found in material rewards, but in inner realization.”
“Only a minute ago you were talking about the need for dynamism and change,” Zeev HaCohen reminded her.
“What’s wrong with the way we brought up our children?” shouted Dvorka.
Moish’s hands were trembling when he stood up and looked at Dvorka and the row of old people with a new, hard, unapologetic look in his eyes. “I’ll tell you exactly what was wrong. There were a lot of things wrong. The first thing wrong is that we never talked about it. You didn’t allow it, you didn’t want to hear. I remember vividly how Srulke used to take me back to the children’s house when I ran away to their room at night. The main thing that happened to me after Osnat died the way she died is that I have to talk. And I’m going to have my say, and you’re going to listen to me. We’ll have the kind of session here they used to have in Kehilatenu. I’ve read that collection of soul-baring monologues too, and my main thought was how things have changed since then, how the sicha has turned into a rubber stamp that grants or refuses requests or debates this or that organizational problem. What do you know about us? Maybe you know when we began to walk or talk and when our first tooth arrived, but about what goes on inside us you know nothing at all. We never had a chance to talk, only under cover of the jokes and skits we wrote for kibbutz celebrations and bar mitzvahs. I’m not saying there wasn’t anything good about the way we grew up, but what about the misery, the nights when we woke up to a nonmother instead of a mother and a nonfather instead of a father, and to all kinds of other substitutes like the guy from the Nahal group who put talcum powder on Noga’s vagina when it hurt her? On the kibbutz, that was a big joke.”
Michael heard Avigail’s heavy breathing and was aware of the movements of her hand up and down her arm.
“My mother, Miriam,” said Moish in a choked voice, “who you all knew, was a simple, straightforward woman. I don’t have to describe her here,” he said, wiping his forehead. “She worked hard all her life, and she never spoke in the sicha, and there wasn’t a more loyal member of the kibbutz.” He looked around him. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. All eyes were fixed on him, some in amazement, some in shock. “My mother, Miriam,” repeated Moish, “used to tell me, she told me often, about how you threw out our first housemother, Golda. I remember her name only from my mother’s stories because, as people who understand about psychology have told me, we don’t remember anything from before the age of eighteen months, and you threw her out when I was eighteen months old. But what about before I was eighteen months old? What about what happened then?”
There was nothing restrained or inhibited about him when he shouted, “Where were you before I was eighteen months old, when Miriam told me that the memory she had of me as a baby was of a little toddler walking behind his housemother with his nose and eyes streaming, tugging at the housemother’s dress while the woman keeps pushing the little hand away? Where were you then?” His yell was directed at Dvorka, who did not lower her eyes. She was so still that Michael was afraid she would stop breathing. “That’s what I want to know: Where were you? What were you thinking about then, on the nights when we were afraid? How did you come to agree to let mothers see their babies for only half an hour a day? Where did you get the nerve to decide that the family cell was inimical to society, and at the same time to make jokes about it and laugh at yourselves at kibbutz celebrations? That’s what I want to know today. And what Osnat said to me was right: She said that you’re opposed to change because of your own guilt, that’s what she said. That in order to protect yourselves and justify yourselves you want to perpetuate that abuse!”
Someone muttered something, but Moish dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Don’t tell me to calm down,” he yelled, “that’s not what’s important now, if I calm down or not. I’m telling you that it’s enough! It’s gone on long enough! Maybe you had your reasons, I don’t know, you must have—the hardships of your lives and so on—but we don’t have to continue your craziness now. I want to tuck in my children at night myself, the ones that still need tucking in. I want to hear them when they cough, in the room next to me, and when they have a nightmare I want them to come to my bed, not to some intercom, and not to make them to go out at night in the dark looking for our room, stumbling over stones, thinking that every shadow is a monster, and in the end standing in front of a closed door or being dragged back to the children’s house. They’ll be with me, and nothing else matters a damn.”
He swallowed, and then his eyes met the eyes of the people sitting in the front row. “You’ll come to terms with your own mistakes, like they’ve done on all the other kibbutzim,” he said in a quieter voice. “I want you to feel guilty, why shouldn’t you feel guilty? Lotte’s no longer with us, but if she was here I’d have something to say to her about the years when my mother was allowed to come and see me only half an hour a day, and about the nights. You arranged things so it would be convenient for you. For the sake of the ideal of equality you organized things so we would have a group ego, but you destroyed our own, our personal egos. How healthy and secure do you think kids can be who’ve got only each other to turn to at night? And I’m not even talking about the beginning of adolescence and the communal showers and all your other brilliant ideas! I’m fed up! I’m fed up with being forgiving and understanding the hardships of the past. I want to understand what went on in your heads when you locked the doors of the children’s house from the outside and told the night watch to check up on us twice a night! Two whole times! And we would sometimes stand there the whole night long banging on the door and crying and nobody came! I explode every time I think about it! It drives me crazy!” He leaned forward and burst out again, “Think of the little kids of this generation standing and crying at the door!”
“Well, well, well!” said Michael, lighting another cigarette. “Look at what’s going on there!”
Avigail kept silent.
“And when we were bigger and ran away to you in the middle of the night, you took us right back to the children’s house. I remember vividly how Srulke got out of bed and took me back. Twice I slept outside, at the door to my parents’ room, so that I wouldn’t be taken back.”
Zeev HaCohen stood up, but Moish yelled at him, “You can sit down. I’m not through yet. Now that I’ve begun, I’m not going to shut up. You can wait until I’ve finished, you can wait until I’ve finished.” Zeev HaCohen sat down, with a frightened expression on his face. “I don’t give a damn about your equality,” shouted Moish, “we’re not the glory of the state of Israel or of anything else. What, I ask you, what came of it all? People accuse our kids of being materialistic and all kinds of things. What’s the wonder? How else can they compensate themselves for the deprivations of their childhood? You at least had ideals that you could hide behind. What can we hide behind? What can we hide behind today? Work? Is work all our lives? Is that what you created the kibbutz for? The kibbutz: the glory of the state of Israel! Yes, sure!”
Moish stared at the ceiling and then fixed his eyes on the first row and shook his finger at them. “One of our members has been murdered; we don’t know who did it or why. But what Osnat wanted to do I’ll do now: There’s no reason on earth why our children should be brought up by people who aren’t their parents, and to hell with everything else!” He looked straight ahead of him and said spitefully, “No, Matilda, I haven’t gone mad. On the contrary, up to now I’ve been mad. Nearly all the other kibbutzim have already done it, we’ve got the money to do it, and we’re dragging our feet and messing around as if it’s some trivial matter. My Asaf is going to be tucked in by me at night, you hear, Dvorka? Me and not the housemother, me and not the night watchman, me and not the intercom, me and nobody else. Because all you thought about was our first tooth, not our first fears, which we didn’t even know how to put into words because we were so young. And I’m asking you, Dvorka, what ideal you can wave at me that’s worth the fear and the loneliness of a child who doesn’t know how to talk yet—why am I saying ‘child’? a baby! I see my sister bringing up her children in town, and I’m not saying they’ve got everything they want, or that they go on picnics with insulated hampers and ice-cream bars or get clarinet lessons from the age of three, but they don’t have the kind of fears I still suffer from to this day. And that’s what I’ve got to say to you: We’re going to have family sleeping here and everything else that Osnat wanted. An old-age home too, if that’s what we decide.”
“Over my dead body!” Guta’s voice rose loud and clear, and then the storm burst and the TV screen blacked out.
19
“He agrees,” said Guta, pushing Yankele into the room. “But do you remember what we talked about?”
Michael nodded.
“Without Fanya. Leave Fanya out of it,” she said grimly, and then she looked at him, softened, and said, “Only on account of her health, Yankele’s already upset anyway.” She talked about him in his presence as if he weren’t there at all, thought Michael, as adults talked about small children. He looked at her expectantly. Guta ran her hand through her hair and looked back at him stubbornly.
“I want to talk to him alone,” said Michael.
“Do you have secrets?” asked Guta, pushing her fists into the pockets of her smock. “I’m not leaving him alone with the police,” she said in a determined voice.
“Guta,” pleaded Michael. “I’m not the police. I’m me. We’ve already been over it. If you want the truth to come out, you have to help me.”
“I’m not going,” said Guta quietly. “And you won’t make me. And you can stop looking at me with those pretty eyes of yours. I’m responsible for him. I’m not leaving him alone.”
Michael sighed. “It’s more for your sake than for his that I’m asking you to leave,” he said finally.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” said Guta, averting her eyes. “I can hear anything. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
Yankele sat on the edge of the ramshackle bed. He still hadn’t said a word. He stared at his sandals, and suddenly he began to tremble. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“But you were there at night, and you saw Aaron Meroz coming and going.”
“I was looking after her. I had to look after her,” said Yankele. He spoke heavily, as if there were stones in his mouth. His thin body trembled violently. Guta remained standing next to the closed door and lit a cigarette. “Why are you treating them with kid gloves,” Nahari had scolded him recently. “What’s all this pampering? We’ve got enough evidence to arrest all three of them, and that’s it. What are you playing games for? Arrest them and you’ll get whatever you want out of them. After a night in the lockup they’ll answer all your questions.”
