With Cibi’s arrival date on the horizon, Livi’s mood is better. She begins to feel the past receding, just a little, with each day she spends in the orange groves, amongst the trees, watching the fruit grow, their hues shifting from green to pale yellow, to brilliant orange. The first fruit she picks makes her face pucker as she tastes its bitter juice, but she drinks it down just the same.
‘Too soon,’ Menachem tells her, with a grin. ‘Another month, young Livi.’
Eventually, the large trucks arrive. It is time to pick the oranges. Everyone is shown how to secure the wicker baskets to their bodies, and they march into the fields, line up in front of the rows of trees and begin to pick oranges. It’s not supposed to be a race, but Livi can’t help herself: she is the first in the kibbutz to haul an overflowing basket to the sorting shed.
The sisters collapse into bed straight after dinner during picking season; the long days have robbed them of any desire to socialise, and it is the same for everyone. But, four weeks later, when the last orange is plucked from the final tree, they are allowed a week off. They can go to Haifa or stay and recuperate on the farm.
The sisters stay where they are, enjoying the silence of the empty fruit groves, a silence which is soon shattered by cries of delirious excitement when Cibi’s letter arrives, informing them of her departure date.
‘We’ll be together again, Magda,’ says Livi, waving the letter in the air. ‘The Meller sisters in one place, just as they should be. She says they’re sailing from Italy – didn’t you once want to go to Italy?’
‘Did I?’ Magda can’t recall wanting anything for years other than her sisters’ safety.
‘You did, but never mind. Hopefully Cibi won’t decide to stay there.’
‘I wish we knew more about their trip.’
‘You know they can’t put too much in their letters.’ Livi opens her eyes comically wide. ‘There are eyes everywhere!’ she booms.
Magda laughs and mimics her expression. ‘Spies everywhere!’ But then she seems to deflate, the joke over. ‘This place, though? Can they really come here? There aren’t even any children on the kibbutz.’
‘Can we worry about that later?’ Livi folds the letter and puts in her pocket. ‘Don’t spoil it just yet!’
*
‘Just how much have you packed, Cibi?’ Mischka sighs, looking at the three open suitcases on their bed, brimming with clothes, books, toys and – sticking out of the sleeve of a winter coat – Chaya’s precious candlesticks.
‘What would you have me leave behind? Kari’s toys? Your clothes?’ Cibi says, with a pout.
‘We can buy Kari more toys in Israel. I can make him more toys – but at least let’s leave behind his enormous yellow truck?’
‘Can we take his train at least? You made it, and he would be heartbroken to leave it here.’
‘The train can stay, but not the truck. And only two books – the others we can give to your uncle’s children.’
Reluctantly Cibi removes the wooden yellow truck and several books from one of the suitcases. ‘I will only take one extra pair of shoes,’ Cibi says, examining the two pairs she has packed, deciding which to discard. ‘And food? For the journey?’ She doesn’t intend to stuff tins of sardines in between her son’s toys, but the inclination to is strong.
‘Again, not too much. We’re not abandoning civilisation, you know. We can buy what we need as we go,’ says Mischka.
‘Uncle Ivan will be here in the morning to help us, so he can take anything we don’t want.’
‘Will Irinka be with him?’
‘No, he’s coming alone. He said he’d be much more useful if he was on his own. And anyway, their baby is so small still.’ Cibi looks wistful for a moment. ‘Hopefully he will join us very soon and then the whole family will be together.’
Only the whole family will never be together again, thinks Cibi. Packing these suitcases has returned her to an earlier time, one she would rather forget, where she and her mother had carefully gathered clothes for two small suitcases that she and Livi were never to lay eyes on again once they had entered Auschwitz.
‘What do you want to do today? We should mark it – our last day in the country of our birth,’ Mischka says.
Cibi pushes aside the discarded books, sits on the bed, and sighs deeply. ‘You don’t think we’ll ever come back?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe for a visit.’ Mischka sits beside his wife and puts his arm around her.