A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [75]
past midnight, there was hardly anyone there,
it was so beautiful, the waves rolling in. I
missed you.
Novelist55:
I wouldn’t have been able to go in with you
anyhow.
Nissim73:
Oh yes, I remember, you get a rash.
Novelist55:
Were you at the demo yesterday?
Nissim73:
You mean against the oath? No, I didn’t feel
like it. Too tired after work.
Novelist55:
How was work?
Nissim73:
Next you’ll ask me about the weather. How’s
the book going?
Novelist55:
I’m almost finished. I have this sense, but it
could be wrong …
Nissim73:
?
Novelist55:
Remember Sweet Mud?
Nissim73:
The film?
Novelist55:
Yes. Remember the Minder from hell?
Nissim73:
yes
Novelist55:
She washes their mouths with soap. And she
gives this lecture on sex …
Nissim73:
yes
Novelist55:
I could tell it wasn’t a Shomer [Young Guard]
kibbutz.
Nissim73:
Because of the sex?
Novelist55:
Because of the authoritarianism. I mean it’s
all connected. You need that totally progres-
sive radical approach that Shomer had to
counteract the dangers of the collective …
Nissim73:
I don’t know about that. I always felt the
adults were trying to emasculate us. This con-
cept they had back then, teaching us to obey
and also suffer a little along the way.
Novelist55:
So you don’t think it’s related to being Shomer
or not …
Nissim73:
I don’t know. Sometimes I visit another kib-
butz, it’s like walking into a movie set, it feels
so unreal. Even if you go to the same place ten
years later, it’s already a whole new story.
Novelist55:
Just like no two families …
Nissim73:
Except the happy ones, which don’t exist.
Novelist55:
Still, Shomer had very progressive ideas
about kids, education, etc.
Nissim73:
Didn’t you say Shoshana tied kids to the bed?
Novelist55:
One kid. But she did it secretly. If they’d
known, they would have been shocked. They
still don’t know. One guy from Eldar won-
dered about something I said in an interview
and he asked me what I was referring to.
When I told him about Shoshana, he wrote
back Everyone here remembers Shoshana as
a warm, caring person.
Nissim73:
So what else is new …
Novelist55:
But in Dror Shaul’s film everyone accepts that
Minder. Her policies are the policies of the
kibbutz.
Nissim73:
Maybe.
Novelist55:
Did you ever get hit?
Nissim73:
Yes and no.
Novelist55:
?
Nissim73:
We did have one Minder—a guy, actually. He
hit us all the time but he disguised it as play.
And the problem was that we liked him. And
we didn’t know how to think about his hitting.
I still see him sometimes, at demos. Anyhow,
he left the kibbutz.
Novelist55:
There was someone at Eldar who did shmirat
leila [Night Guarding] who choked and slapped
babies. I mean, not everyone likes babies, not
everyone is nice or sane. You’re in your twen-
ties, you’re exhausted, the babies wake you up
for the sixth time, they’re not your kids, four
of them are shrieking at the same time—not
everyone is going to deal with that situation
the way they should.
Nissim73:
How do you know?
Novelist55:
Everyone knows when things happen to them.
What I can’t know is whether it was only the
once or more than once. And I’ll never know
who. Why does that surprise anyone?
Nissim73:
It’s very disturbing.
Novelist55:
Well, you don’t leave babies with random
strangers, it’s asking for trouble. Poor Edna,
she put so much into bringing us up and then
in one night someone undoes it all … Anyhow
we all survived. It’s very moving, in Children of
the Sun, how one woman says at the end that
when she visits her old kibbutz her feet enjoy
stepping on the ground—na’im li baragla’im
lidrokh. I love that phrase.
Nissim73:
What are you wearing?
Novelist55:
I always felt lucky that we grew up without
inhibitions.
Nissim73:
That may be just you.
Novelist55:
I guess I bought it all. I still