A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [12]
Daddy says I’ll read you a whole other chapter instead. He really doesn’t like reading the end before you get there. But I don’t give in so he reads the end and then he says we have to go.
Now I’m sorry I didn’t give in because I could have had a whole other chapter which would have taken much longer.
I’m so sorry I feel sick.
Our First Year
18 January 1949. Woke up at 5:30 today, crawled over our beds, and stumbled down the road to the kitchen to put in a day’s work. The weather is absolutely miserable. There’s a pool of water in the middle of our room, and surrounding this pool are the beds of twelve people.
At present I’m hunched over a fireplace which produces more smoke than heat, and there are five people packed on either side of me so that I haven’t the elbow room to wield a pencil in my icy fingers. My knees are warm but the rest of me is cold.
But wot-the-hell, it’s been a wonderful day! We’re started, on our own land, and the exhilaration can’t be stamped out by all the hail and sleet in Greenland. Martin, sitting next to me, is trying to read a pamphlet on sub-tropical fruits. That’s Eldar optimism.
We’ve set up three guard posts: at our entrance, at the northeast, and at the north-west of the village … too exhausted and cold to continue writing.
Dori
Soup bits tonight! Only one spoon each though. I don’t know why we can’t have more. Also a slice of cake because it’s Friday. Half chocolate half plain. It’s a bit dry but so what.
In the shower Skye says to Shoshana you promised we could wash our own hair this week. And then everyone says yes you promised you promised even though I can’t really remember any promise.
Shoshana has no choice. She has to let us. I don’t know why Skye wants to wash her own hair but I want to because Skye wants to.
I’ve been hearing lately that if you keep your head up and back instead of down the soap on your hair won’t get in your eyes. You think the soap will get in less if your face is down but it seems it’s better to keep it up.
You have to be a little brave to lift your face because what if it doesn’t work? I gather my courage and do it. I think it works.
Transcript of Meeting April 1961
Topic:
Status of Jeremiah Ben-Jacob
Chair:
Isaac Milman
Isaac:
First on the agenda: Coco and Varda claim, among
other things, that “Jeremiah Ben-Jacob is a danger to
health, does not contribute sufficiently to the kibbutz,
is not a member, has not requested to be considered
for membership, and should be asked to leave Eldar.”
Specific reference was made to Jeremiah’s attempt to
enter the Kitchen after lying on a pile of manure.
Naftali:
I saw him carrying a rat by its tail—who knows where
he was going.
Martin:
He likes garbage. He does a good job collecting all the
garbage—a job no one else especially wants.
Coco:
That’s hardly enough work to justify his expenses.
Martin:
What expenses? He sleeps in the ruins on a pile of hay,
never asks for new clothes, and eats whatever you give
him. He never complains, unlike some people I could
mention.
Nina:
I do feel that he should not be given the job of delivering
clean laundry on the donkey.
Isaac:
If I may go one step further, I also don’t think he should
be allowed to eat in the Dining Hall. No one wants to sit
next to him or handle anything he’s touched, and with
good reason.
Varda:
I agree—it’s extremely unsanitary. We have enough
health issues as it is. I’d like to hear Dafna’s profes-
sional opinion about the health hazard he poses to the
community.
Dafna:
I don’t know that he has anywhere to go. I don’t think
he has anyone in England … he said something to that
effect, though I didn’t entirely understand … We should
remember that he was a well-known Shakespearean
actor once.
Varda:
Once was once. I was Queen Esther once. Now he’s
dotty.
Martin:
I find