A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [8]
RICKY
I’m a good nudnik.
RITA
You can say that again. (She makes up her bed)
RICKY
I’m a good nudnik. (rita groans. ricky mops about her
feet, trying to attract her attention) Halva, the crazy red
cow, finally calved. Guess what she had? Triplets! …
Well—a calf, anyway … And I found a Roman coin in
the valley. (Shows her) Gila burnt the soup today and
threw the whole pot at Yossi. She blamed him for not
watching it.
RITA
So what else is new?
RICKY
Eli wants to do away with Nebuchadnezzar. The poor
donkey broke a leg. Do you think it’s humane? (rifle
shots audible)
RICKY
(holds up stick) Boom boom … The army is here.
RITA
On a night like this, it’s not much fun to be on guard.
RICKY
Unless you’re on guard with me.
Dori
More Pinocchio. I love the pictures in this book.15 The puppet-master is huge and has two green snakes twisted around his whip and his eyes are red. I like the picture of Geppetto in the snow and Pinocchio eating the apple peels. I love the picture where the fairy is carrying two jugs. The Arab women have those kind of jugs. Sometimes they balance them on their heads. I wouldn’t be able to do that no matter how much I practised. But I wouldn’t mind having a jug.
I only like some parts of Pinocchio. I like the puppet show and the funfair and the donkey ears. I like when his nose grows and the whale and the buried treasure. I feel bad for him that he got tricked. It wasn’t his fault.
What I don’t like is when Pinocchio buries his head in the ground. I told Daddy to skip that part.
My brother David comes in and Daddy says he has to go out for a few minutes. David thinks of something to do. He decides to put some of Mummy’s skin lotion on his peenie. He wants it to have a good smell.
David Playing with String
Dori
Mummy comes into the Room with my sister Sara. Sara is screaming and crying. She wants something but no one knows what it is. She repeats a word over and over but we can’t understand what she’s saying. We offer her everything we can think of but she goes on crying and screaming and saying the word.
One time Mummy was carrying Sara down the long hallway of our house on Davaar Street and I pinched Sara’s foot and she cried. It was my first time being mean. My first and so far my last time. Mummy turned around and said Dori are you doing anything to Sara? and I said no but as soon as Mummy turned her head I pinched Sara’s foot again and she cried again.
Now I feel bad about what I did. Sometimes I see Sara in the yard of the Toddlers’ House and her face is the saddest face I’ve ever seen. I want to bite her sad cheeks but it would hurt her. I want to bite them and eat them but all I can do is look. It’s not enough.
Our First Year
17 January 1949. Our immediate and most aggravating specific problem is Hebrew. Without Hebrew you’re lame, blind, and frustrated; and we have many comrades, especially newcomers, who can hardly say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in the holy tongue.
Another routine problem is that of inexperience in kibbutz administration. The completely free and democratic set-up leads to many subtle problems of efficiency and procedure, which often assume delicate human angles.
The weekly Meeting,16 for instance—and it deserves the capital letter—is the most sacred, the most complex, and the most easily violated of the institutions of kibbutz. It is the chief organ of democratic procedure in which every member of the kibbutz stands as an equal and has the right to express his or her views on any and every subject. All committees, institutions, and individuals must bow before the decisions of the Meeting. The Meeting is the dynamic and intangible repository of the philosophy of kibbutz collectivism.
Quite obviously such an institution cannot be mastered within a few days. In my opinion some of our Meetings are miserable failures. There are endless repetitions of the same point; lengthy, vapid speeches; undisciplined and prejudiced expressions of opinions; a senseless burrowing into