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Father observed jokingly:

*Zerta Abramski, "Excerpts from the Diary of a Woman from the Siege of Jerusalem, 1948," in The Correspondence of Yakov-David Abramski, edited and annotated by Shula Abramski (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 5751/1991), pp. 288-89.

"Our Mummy goes one further than King Solomon. Legend says that he understood the language of every animal and bird, but our Mummy has even mastered the languages of towels, saucepans, and brushes."

And he went on, beaming mischievously:

"She can make trees and stones speak by touching them: Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke, as it says in the Psalms."

Aunt Rauha said:

"Or as the prophet Joel put it, The mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk. And it is written in the twenty-ninth Psalm: The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve."

Father said:

"But coming from someone who is not a poet, such things are always liable to sound somewhat, how shall I put it, prettified. As if they are trying to sound very deep. Very mystical. Very hylozoical. Trying to make the hinds to calve. Let me explain the meaning of these difficult words, mystical and hylozoical. Behind them both is a clear, rather unhealthy, desire to blur realities, to dim the light of reason, to blunt definitions, and to muddle distinct domains."

Mother said:

"Arieh?"

And Father, in a conciliatory tone (because although he enjoyed teasing her, goading her, and even occasionally gloating, he enjoyed even more repenting, apologizing, and beaming with goodwill, just like his own father, Grandpa Alexander), said:

"Nu, that's enough, Fanitchka. I've finished. I was only having a bit of fun."

The two missionaries did not leave Jerusalem during the siege: they had a strong sense of mission. The Savior himself seemed to have charged them with the task of boosting the spirits of the besieged and helping as volunteers to treat the wounded at the Shaarei Tsedek Hospital. They believed that every Christian had a duty to try to atone, in deeds rather than words, for what Hitler had done to the Jews. They considered the establishment of the State of Israel as the finger of God. As Aunt Rauha put it, in her biblical language and gravely pronunciation: It is like the appearance of the rainbow in the cloud, after the flood. And Aunt Aili, with a tiny smile, no more than a twitch of the corner of her mouth: "For it repented the Lord of all that great evil, and He would no longer destroy them."

Between bombardments they used to walk around our neighborhood, in their ankle boots and headscarves, carrying a deep bag of grayish hessian, distributing a jar of pickled cucumbers, half an onion, a piece of soap, a pair of woolen socks, a radish, or a small quantity of black pepper to anyone prepared to receive it from them. Who knows how they got hold of all these treasures. Some of the ultra-Orthodox rejected these gifts in disgust, some drove the two ladies away from their doors contemptuously, others accepted the gifts but spat on the ground the missionaries' feet had trodden on the moment their backs were turned.

They did not take offense. They were constantly quoting verses of consolation from the Prophets, which seemed strange to us in their Finnish accent, which sounded like their heavy boots tramping on gravel. "For I will defend this city, to save it." "No enemy or foe shall come into the gates of this city." "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace ... for the wicked shall no more pass through thee..." "Fear not, O Jacob my servant, saith the Lord: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee."

Sometimes one of them would volunteer to take our place in the long line for water that was distributed from a tanker, half a bucket per family on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays only, assuming the tanker had not been pierced by shrapnel before it reached our street. Or else one of them would go around our