Murder on a Kibbutz by Batya Gur

Author:Batya Gur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

11

For almost two days and nights Moish and Jojo made the rounds of the members’ rooms, the children’s houses, the laundry, the sewing shop. They visited the factory as well. They didn’t always succeed in timing their visits for when nobody was there, but the pretexts they came up with went unchallenged, no one asking them why it was suddenly necessary to examine the electricity boxes and storerooms in the children’s houses or why they were checking the sewing machines in advance of the technician’s semiannual inspection of the sewing shop, where they were greeted, instead, with open arms. After a few hours on the job, they had already become skillful enough to convince even Fanya. Matilda too asked no questions when she was told that there was a malfunction in the main generator. It was tacitly understood that Dvorka and Osnat’s children would take no part in the search. Moish understood Dvorka’s need to shut herself off in her room in order to devote herself to the children and to avoid the necessarily deceitful contacts with kibbutz members.

It seemed to him that she had completely lost her feeling of togetherness. Her loss was greater than anyone’s, and she knew something they didn’t know. This extra knowledge, Moish was painfully aware, put her in the position of an outsider. And he was horrified when he realized that he too was separated from the others by knowing what he knew. That knowledge placed him in an ironic position vis-à-vis the members who spoke of the way Osnat had neglected herself.

“She took too much on herself,” said Matilda, who was standing next to him in the storeroom of the kibbutz minimarket while he pretended to be examining the electric cable of the refrigerator unit. (“Where’s Hilik? That’s his job,” she said, and went on talking without waiting for an answer.) He waited for her to leave him alone, and when she failed to do so, he started looking around openly while she went on talking.

“That’s just what I say, there are a lot of parasites here, people who do nothing, and a few people who do everything for the parasites. You think it’s easy for me to run the minimarket and manage the kitchen supplies and the storage and all the other functions I perform, that I took on myself, I’m not saying unwillingly. I don’t have to rest, I’ll rest in my grave, but look what happens in the end—snuffed out like a candle. Her of all people. Who dies today of pneumonia? They’ve got all kinds of medicines today. But when people neglect themselves because they haven’t got time to breathe, because they’re the secretary and the education committee, and they’ve got all kinds of newfangled ideas on top of it—then what’s the wonder?” Matilda started when she saw his hand raised to one of the shelves. “What are you looking for?” she asked.

He took down a bottle and read the label. “What are you looking for?” she repeated suspiciously.

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