“Adam. It looks like you went to college for . . . what was it?”
“History. I majored in New York City history at Baruch College, which is one of the best schools in the City University. That high school I went to, Stuyvesant, it’s the best public high school in the city, maybe the country. Three Nobel Prize winners went there.”
These weren’t entirely lies. He had gone to Stuy, but they wouldn’t readmit him after he got back from rehab. As for Baruch, he was about to declare himself a history major when he was suspended that last time. He did love those history classes, and actually got an A- in “NYC: The People Who Shaped the City.” The only reason he hadn’t yet declared his major—how stupid it seemed now—was because he had worried that it was kind of pathetic to be a historian, that people who wanted to be great became great, and people who couldn’t become great became historians and studied great people.
“Not much I can do with history. What about jobs?”
He’d been fired from many shitty jobs—painting apartments, moving furniture, scooping ice cream—usually within a month.
“Well, I’ve had a lot of internships and other jobs, but—” What had his grandfather done on the kibbutz? He thought hard. “Cotton! What about picking cotton? My grandfather was on this kibbutz for a couple of years after the war, and that’s something he did.”
“Your grandfather was on Sadot Hadar?” Eyal raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Sadly the cotton fields are long gone. Even with the machines we couldn’t compete with India, where people pick for seventy cents a day. Seventy cents a day—wrap your head around that. There’s a plastics factory now where the cotton used to be, which means we now have to compete with China.”
Eyal massaged his forehead. Behind him a moth fluttered along the wall, past an oversized calendar scrawled with notes and scratched-out notes. Not a single day blank. Again, not the kind of calendar Adam would have expected on a kibbutz.
“I have an idea.” Eyal waved his pen at Claudette. “You worked with sick people, yes? We have an old woman on the kibbutz who’s very sick, but she won’t stop working. The problem is—and it breaks my heart to say this—wherever she goes, she’s more a nuisance than help. I try to send her somewhere different every day, spread the burden. Your job will be to accompany her, to help her get around. And to do some of the work she isn’t.”
Adam buried his hand in his pocket, clutched the brooch. Could this be the old woman he was looking for?
Claudette shook her head. “I would be better in the laundry.”
“But we don’t need anyone in the laundry.” Eyal picked up the phone. “Trust me, this is better. You’ll experience the whole kibbutz working with Ziva—picking mandarins, working in the dining hall. But whatever we do, we can’t let on that it’s you looking after her.” He raised his finger to suggest everything would be clear in a moment.
Adam released the brooch. He wasn’t looking for a Ziva.
“Hello, Ima,” Eyal said into the receiver. “We have a young Canadian woman for you to take charge of. She will follow you to your assignments, and you will make sure she understands the tasks and gets them done. Beseder?”
A squawk burst out of the handset, and Eyal jerked it away from his ear. He switched to Hebrew, but Adam understood by the jut of the secretary’s jaw that he was frustrated. He banged down the phone and lifted his hands in a what-can-you-do.
“I should warn you, Claudette, Ziva can be very . . . what’s a nice word for it? Forthright? Even Israelis find her rude. Don’t take anything she says personally. Believe me, I should know. She’s my mother.” He turned to Adam. “And you we can put in the plastics factory or the dishwashing room. It’s your choice.”
Neither sounded very Fields of Splendor, but Adam was relieved he could stay. “Dishwashing, thanks.”
Eyal pulled Monopoly money out of a drawer, two wads of colored copy paper stamped with numbers. “You can use these at the general store, the kolbo, to buy toiletries or other things you might need. In addition, we’ll give you a small stipend, a hundred and twenty shekels a month. You can pick up your work clothes and boots at the laundry.” Eyal stood, and Adam and Claudette followed suit. “Enjoy your time here at Sadot Hadar.”
Claudette departed without saying goodbye, while Adam hung back. He steadied himself on the back of his chair. “Hey, Eyal, one more thing. Can you tell me where I can find Dagmar?”
“Who?” Eyal carried his JNF mug to the kitchenette and scooped in a heap of Nescafé.
“I’m looking for an older woman named Dagmar. She lives on the kibbutz.”
“Not this kibbutz.” Eyal poured steaming water from an electric kettle. “There’s no one named Dagmar here. Never has been.”
Adam took a second to absorb the news that Dagmar might not live here anymore. Why hadn’t he prepared for that? He had assumed she’d either be here or dead. She wrote his grandfather that she would be on the kibbutz “for the rest of her life.”
The secretary carried the brimming mug back to his desk and settled into his chair behind the mounds of papers. He gazed up at Adam, clearly itching for him to leave.
Adam said, “Maybe she doesn’t live here right now, but I know she did in 1947.”
“Forty-seven?” Eyal shook his head. “Maybe in the DP section. Temporarily. But she couldn’t have been a kibbutznik.”
“She was a kibbutznik. I’m sure of it.”
Eyal spread his fingers out on his desk. “Listen, Adam. I was born here in forty-eight and have lived here my whole life. My mother is a founding member of the kibbutz, the only founder still alive. I’m the longest-running secretary we’ve ever had, and I know the name of every single person who’s ever been a member. I’ve been through their papers so many times I could draw their family trees. There was never any Dagmar on this kibbutz.”
Adam shrugged. “You’re wrong. My grandfather was here in forty-seven, and he knew her.”
“I’m not wrong.”
“Was your mom here then?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll ask her.”
“Fine, ask her. But she’s not going to give you a different answer. And please, please, leave her alone until after tomorrow night. We’re having a meeting, and . . . actually, leave her alone the next day too. This meeting—” He briefly closed his eyes. “It’s just not a good time.”
Adam didn’t want to wait two days, but what could he do? He promised not to bother this woman before Wednesday and turned to leave. As he was passing through the door, Eyal called him back.
“I want you to know, Adam, for your sake and ours, that we don’t give second chances.”
Adam leaned in the doorway. “What? I didn’t know it was a crime to ask about an old lady.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that I’ve had this job a long time, and I’ve met a lot of volunteers. All I’m saying is do your job, keep out of trouble, and everything will be fine.”
Adam descended the stairs of the small office building, shaking his head. Why did some people think they knew everything? Outside, the kibbutz’s poky main square was deserted except for Claudette, who stood in its center, head down, slowly rotating as if scanning the beige bricks for a lost earring.
Which way was the volunteers’ section? It wasn’t far, but he’d been such a wreck walking over here, nothing looked familiar. Across the square was the dining hall, a single-story concrete building with glass doors. On the left was presumably the general store, its corrugated steel awning shading an ice-cream