Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [98]
“That’s not how we operate,” Ami Dan answered. “Unless you come in with a special skill like a carpenter or a blacksmith, we all rotate positions. In that way each of us learns every job on the kibbutz. After a year, when you are voted in as a full member, you can petition for a semi-permanent position.”
The rest of it was a portrait of spartan life and nearly total communal existence. Clothing, time off, a few pounds a year spending money, medical care—all necessities came out of a common pool. All decisions were made collectively.
NATHAN’S FIRST assignment was as assistant custodian of the barn, which housed a small dairy herd and the workhorses and mules. It was the simplest of jobs, however unpleasant. Nathan likened it to the coalyard in Mariupol, with manure replacing coal as the object of his loathing. Manure, he learned, was a useful commodity to nourish the orchards.
The rest of the work was simple. Mending harnesses and other leather work he had learned from his father. Shoveling hay into stalls, pumping bellows for the farrier, and whitewashing did not require a higher education. Nor did watchtower duty, a nightly obligation. The future held little promise.
Nathan could not understand the mentality of Comrade Amos, who was in charge of the barn and herd and spent his days singing and extolling the glories of Zionism. It seemed that Comrade Amos got a spiritual uplift out of merely smelling manure.
Once he had mastered milking the cows, Nathan felt he would be able to petition to move on to more promising work. The cows proved uncooperative. “Kicking the bucket” took on new meaning. Nathan did not listen too well to Comrade Amos’s instructions and it took him a week to realize that the cows expected to be milked from the right side instead of the left. Nathan was kicked repeatedly, stomped on, developed milker’s elbow, and wore his hands raw.
On the other hand, Comrade Amos loved the cows. And they loved him. On those icy mornings when Comrade Amos laid his head against the cow for warmth, the animal responded. Nathan realized they talked to each other. Comrade Amos and the cows actually held discussions.
Nathan struggled on with swollen hands, overturned pails, barked shins, as he learned deft moves to get out of their way. The most unpleasant part of it was when the cow did a large wet flop that streaked down its tail, then swished it quickly, banging it into the side of Nathan’s face. The milk production fell so low that the children were going without. Comrade Amos finally asked that Nathan be assigned elsewhere.
EACH MORNING at five o’clock, when the kibbutz came to life in earnest, Nathan wondered if this was truly where he wanted to spend the rest of his life.
Many things came to Nathan’s attention that bordered on the shocking. Since his arrival in Palestine, he had become hardened to the fact that the women did not practice traditional modesty. One could certainly overlook short sleeves and no head kerchief because of the type of work, although his mother always wore long sleeves, even during heat waves. He had seen a number of women expose their legs, wearing brief pants that were rolled up to there, since his arrival in Palestine. He had never before seen a female in public exposed up to there. At Kibbutz Hermon all of them, married or single, dressed immodestly.
This lack of demureness, an affront to Jewish life, carried over to other things in daily kibbutz life. Nathan had a problem with the showers. In Wolkowysk there were no showers. A tub in the yard had greeted him at the end of the day, the water heated to a pleasant warmth. Here the showers were icy, particularly at five o’clock in the morning.
The men’s and women’s showers were separated by a flimsy partition that was partly open. If one wanted to catch a glimpse, it was no problem.
The worst of it was that this perpetual condition of nakedness didn’t seem to annoy anyone but him. After all, these were all shtetl-born people, traditionally observant Jews who were cautioned about such