Iftach Spector - Loud and Clear

Shortly before her death, Dvorah told me about that first year I spent with them. “Suddenly you just showed up. Listen, I really had no interest in a seven-year-old boy. I had no idea of how to care for children. And especially one like you, a nonstop talker who couldn’t shut his mouth.” I disagreed. On the contrary, I told her, I was shy and introverted, a daydreamer immersed in himself and reading books.

“What the hell were you supposed to do?” I asked. She laughed, in that same girlish way that even the pain couldn’t take from her.

THE HEART OF HULATTA was the lake. In the heavy summer heat the upper layer of the water cleared, and mirroring the sky above, became almost blue. On Saturdays, under the burning sun, we floated boxes and planks among the water flora and the leaves of the blue water lilies, the nymphaeas. Giant colorful dragonflies hurried about with loud buzzing voices. We fried carp and conchs over fires and ate them, stirring the brown water with our thumbs.

The muddy water was mysterious and scary. When you went deep it darkened fast, as if pulling you down. I would jump in and paddle like mad to the beach, feeling safe only when I felt firm ground under my feet. Dvorah laughed at me and my fantasies. She loved the water and was a good swimmer. I still can see her, swimming far away on a wide expanse of clear water, her black head floating like the head of an otter. She was narrow-waisted, light and sleek, and did not disturb the surface of the water when she dove deep, searching for the cool, secret places. She would disappear for a long, scary time and then return laughing to the surface.

ACROSS THE LAKE LAY the big swamp.

Early in the morning all of us children got out of bed and were led to the jetty. A fishing boat took us across the lake and into the forest of phragmite reeds. The canal divided into secondary narrow channels that expanded in places to make pools. It was like wandering in a maze. The brown water passed the boat slowly and silently. Hulla buffaloes, the jamusses, raised heavy, horned heads. The crowns of the cyperus, the papyrus rushes, closed over our heads like a roof, and the pink of the morning sky disappeared in the blue shades of the tunnel. Around us sailed huge rafts of yellow nuffar water lilies and white and blue nimphaeas. Their massive floating roots banged the boat’s sides like logs.

Pairs of us were unloaded in different places and vanished in the thickets. The boat pushed off with a big paddle and continued deeper into the swamp. The number of kids who remained on board diminished.

Finally our turn came. Sweet Ronnie and I left the boat and entered, on all fours, into a tunnel among typha reeds and tendrils of stinging “holy” raspberry. A narrow path opened before us, dark and secretive and thrilling. Our soles chirped like frogs in the black slime. Wild pigs and swamp cats were listening and knew we were coming. I trembled, for we had lost the golden thread that led out of the black forest, but just when I was getting really frightened, a green light appeared. A bale of hay floated in the clear water of a small pool. This was the bird-watchers’ hide allotted to us.

On the raft was a low shelter covered with straw. We entered it and squeezed, shaking and whispering to each other, plucking black and red leeches from our ankles and cooling the burning mosquito stings with water. Our mission was to keep absolutely quiet, watch and remember anything that went on around us, and bring back a detailed report. Anxiety filled me.

“We are hunters,” I whispered in sweet Ronnie’s ear. “I am Vinetu.”

“Minnehaha, the avenging Indian,” she introduced herself. The color of her eyes was rich brown, almost red, like her hair.

The morning sun finally peeped over the wall of canes, and all turned gold and azure. The air warmed. The vegetation around us woke up and spread out toward the light, and the birds rose, about their business. A magnificent kingfisher, all shining green and blue, appeared and stood right above us, sharpening his large beak with a harsh zik-zakking sound and inflating his red chest to show the clear white of his belly. He searched the water with his beady eyes. Under the shallow, slow going and diamond-clear water, crabs ran merrily around, leaving strings of fine footprints on the muddy bottom, vying for the tiny, elegant cyprinodon fishes that glided in the underwater thickets like multicolored lightning. Sweet water oysters opened, breathed water, and closed in small dust clouds. A big fin of a catfish emerged and slashed the surface. Black grebes turned over on their heads.

The sun was high already when a gray Nile goose came out of the canes near us and sat herself on the water of the small pool. Soon a convoy of goslings followed her. And suddenly Ronnie pointed with a pounding heart to the other side of the pool. Less than ten meters away a heron fed its nestlings. When we observed her, she straightened up, long and thin, and vanished into the reeds.

Heavy heat descended on the swamp, and all around us fell asleep. We woke when the wind came up and the surface of the water was covered with green-gray waves. The forest of canes around us was agitated, whistled and swished and moved to and fro under the blows of the hot wind. The air above our heads filled with powder and flying pollen, a golden rain falling on our heads. Light arrows penetrated in, combed the space, and lit the ground.

Suddenly we recognized prints in the mud—small split hooves. Wild boar. After they had reconnoitered the area with their snouts, the dreadful beasts hid in their dark dens among the plants and waited with their yellow tusks for the right moment, when the light dims. All the birds took screaming to the air and circled over us. The sun sank and disappeared behind the papyrus tufts, and the first wave of cold wind passed. Exactly at that moment the boat sounded its horn, and Mussa was calling us back.

We collected our notebooks and pencils and ran. Back on the quay a bonfire waited, and we were served slices of bread spread with margarine, olives, tomatoes, and eggs toasted in embers that smelled like burned hair. We yawned, but Mussa didn’t give up until he had debriefed us and investigated every detail. He checked the sketches in our notebooks and examined every finding we brought from the marsh: flowers, leaves, insects. Coppery wings suddenly shone, glowing green, and a wave of excitement rose among us: can this be the golden bug?

“No,” said Mussa, and a quick smile crossed his face. “Just Potosia cuprea —an ordinary pest.”

He turned the specimen over and over again, checking plants’ leaves and testing names: Hizzanit. Arzaff. Laana. And maybe shkhelet? Or khelbna? His black eyes glowed over the Eretz-Israel Plant Guide , which didn’t have an answer. After a while I thought he might be attaching ancient biblical names to species of plants he couldn’t recognize.

THEN WAR CAME TO THE northern valley. Our kibbutz was shelled. One day an airplane appeared and scored a direct hit on the cowshed. When we emerged from the trench the elders took us away, so that we didn’t see the cows. There were rumors. Apparently the Syrians had taken a nearby settlement, Mishmar HaYarden, killing settlers, taking some prisoners, and destroying everything. Faces of men and women we used to see, we saw no more.

One morning we were hurriedly packed up, clothes and toys bundled into blanket covers, and a truck backed up to our door. The children and the caretaker climbed into the truck and for the next year, 1948, we lived in different places. One day somebody came and told me that Aronchik was badly wounded. I thought Aronchik was dead. After all, this was the way they told you, right? I had experience with this. And then again they came and told me that my mother had gone to America.