with a sharp, heady odor of carpenter's glue.
Sometimes he sat there after sunset, playing to himself on a mouth organ in the twilight or the moonlight.
"There he is again, pouring out his soul with his oriental wailing," the old man would grumble from the veranda. "It's probably some song of yearning for our land, which they'll never give up."
Adel knew only five or six tunes, but he never tired of repeating them. Sometimes he would stop playing and sit motionless on the top step with his back leaning against the side of the shed, deep in thought, or dozing. Around eleven o'clock he would stand up and go inside. The light above his bed would still be on after Rachel and her father had turned out their own bedside lamps and gone to sleep.
"At two o'clock in the morning, when the digging sounds started again," the old man said, "I got up and went to check if the little Arab's light was still on. There was no light. He may have turned it off and gone to sleep, but it's just as likely he turned it off and went to dig in our foundation."
Adel made his own meals: brown bread with slices of tomato, olives, cucumber, onion and green pepper, with pieces of salty cheese or sardines, a hard-boiled egg, zucchini or eggplant cooked with garlic and tomato sauce, washed down with his favorite drink, which he brewed in a soot-stained tin kettle: hot water and honey, flavored with sage leaves and cloves or with rose petals.
Rachel sometimes watched him from the veranda as he sat on his usual step, with his back against the side of the shed, his notebook on his knees, writing, pausing, thinking, writing a few more words, then pausing again, thinking, writing another line or two, getting up and walking slowly around the yard, turning off a sprinkler, feeding the cats or scattering a handful of durra for the pigeons.(He had also installed a dovecote at the bottom of the yard.)Then he would sit down again on his step, play his five or six tunes one after the other, eliciting heart-rendingly plaintive, long-drawn-out notes from his harmonica, then wipe the instrument carefully on his shirt tail and tuck it into his breast pocket. Then he would bend over his notebook again.
Rachel Franco, too, wrote in the evenings. Three or four times a week, almost every day during that summer, she and her old father sat facing each other on the veranda, on either side of the table that was covered in a flowered oilcloth. The old man talked and talked, while Rachel, frequently pursing her lips, wrote down his memories.
11
" YITZHAK TABENKIN, " Pesach Kedem said, "better you shouldn't ask me anything about Tabenkin." (She didn't.) "When he was an old man Tabenkin decided to disguise himself as a Hasidic rabbi: he grew his beard down to his knees and started issuing rabbinic rulings. But I don't want to say a single word about him. For good or ill. He was a considerable fanatic, believe me, and he was a dogmatist, too. A cruel, tyrannical man. He maltreated even his wife and his children all those years. But what is he to me? I have nothing to say about him. You can torture me if you like, you won't get me to say a bad word about Tabenkin. Or a good one either. Kindly note down: Pesach Kedem chooses to maintain a total silence over the whole incident of the great split between him and Tabenkin in 1952. Did you write that down? Word for word? Then kindly add this, too: From an ethical viewpoint, Poalei Zion stood at least two or three rungs below Hapoel Hatza'ir. No. That you should please cross out. Instead you should write: Pesach Kedem no longer sees any reason to become involved in the controversy between Poalei Zion and Hapoel Hatza'ir. It's all over and done with. History has proved both of them wrong, and proved to anyone who is not a fanatic or a dogmatist how wrong they were and how right I was in that controversy. I state this with all due modesty, and with total objectivity: I was right where they both erred. No, cross out ‘erred' and write
Sometimes he sat there after sunset, playing to himself on a mouth organ in the twilight or the moonlight.
"There he is again, pouring out his soul with his oriental wailing," the old man would grumble from the veranda. "It's probably some song of yearning for our land, which they'll never give up."
Adel knew only five or six tunes, but he never tired of repeating them. Sometimes he would stop playing and sit motionless on the top step with his back leaning against the side of the shed, deep in thought, or dozing. Around eleven o'clock he would stand up and go inside. The light above his bed would still be on after Rachel and her father had turned out their own bedside lamps and gone to sleep.
"At two o'clock in the morning, when the digging sounds started again," the old man said, "I got up and went to check if the little Arab's light was still on. There was no light. He may have turned it off and gone to sleep, but it's just as likely he turned it off and went to dig in our foundation."
Adel made his own meals: brown bread with slices of tomato, olives, cucumber, onion and green pepper, with pieces of salty cheese or sardines, a hard-boiled egg, zucchini or eggplant cooked with garlic and tomato sauce, washed down with his favorite drink, which he brewed in a soot-stained tin kettle: hot water and honey, flavored with sage leaves and cloves or with rose petals.
Rachel sometimes watched him from the veranda as he sat on his usual step, with his back against the side of the shed, his notebook on his knees, writing, pausing, thinking, writing a few more words, then pausing again, thinking, writing another line or two, getting up and walking slowly around the yard, turning off a sprinkler, feeding the cats or scattering a handful of durra for the pigeons.(He had also installed a dovecote at the bottom of the yard.)Then he would sit down again on his step, play his five or six tunes one after the other, eliciting heart-rendingly plaintive, long-drawn-out notes from his harmonica, then wipe the instrument carefully on his shirt tail and tuck it into his breast pocket. Then he would bend over his notebook again.
Rachel Franco, too, wrote in the evenings. Three or four times a week, almost every day during that summer, she and her old father sat facing each other on the veranda, on either side of the table that was covered in a flowered oilcloth. The old man talked and talked, while Rachel, frequently pursing her lips, wrote down his memories.
11
" YITZHAK TABENKIN, " Pesach Kedem said, "better you shouldn't ask me anything about Tabenkin." (She didn't.) "When he was an old man Tabenkin decided to disguise himself as a Hasidic rabbi: he grew his beard down to his knees and started issuing rabbinic rulings. But I don't want to say a single word about him. For good or ill. He was a considerable fanatic, believe me, and he was a dogmatist, too. A cruel, tyrannical man. He maltreated even his wife and his children all those years. But what is he to me? I have nothing to say about him. You can torture me if you like, you won't get me to say a bad word about Tabenkin. Or a good one either. Kindly note down: Pesach Kedem chooses to maintain a total silence over the whole incident of the great split between him and Tabenkin in 1952. Did you write that down? Word for word? Then kindly add this, too: From an ethical viewpoint, Poalei Zion stood at least two or three rungs below Hapoel Hatza'ir. No. That you should please cross out. Instead you should write: Pesach Kedem no longer sees any reason to become involved in the controversy between Poalei Zion and Hapoel Hatza'ir. It's all over and done with. History has proved both of them wrong, and proved to anyone who is not a fanatic or a dogmatist how wrong they were and how right I was in that controversy. I state this with all due modesty, and with total objectivity: I was right where they both erred. No, cross out ‘erred' and write
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