‘About me?’ says Cibi.
‘About both of you – she wanted to know about my family. I showed her my arm and she wanted to know if you had numbers too.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said you didn’t. I told her the Nazis only blessed the special ones with a number.’
‘Magda!’
‘I’m joking! She asked me about Auschwitz and listened for ages while I told her our story. I probably said too much, but she let me talk.’
‘This calls for a toast!’ Mischka says.
Raising their glasses of iced tea, they chant, ‘To Magda and President and Mrs Weizmann.’
*
Magda knows she was right to move to Rehovot when she starts her new job. As she makes her way to the Weizmann household, her heart expands to meet the day. In the president’s beautiful home, where the staff are kind and her work is easy enough, she feels, maybe for the first time, she is making a valuable contribution to this new homeland. Magda knows herself well enough to recognise her demons are merely lurking for the moment, but she’ll take the respite where she can. Losing herself in her work, she forgets, sometimes for whole hours at a time, that for two whole years she was oblivious to her sisters’ suffering.
Livi has found work picking fruit on a local farm, and soon she is tasked with registering and overseeing the fruit pickers as well. She takes pride in the fact that her oranges are now among the thousands being exported to the rest of the world. But there is little continuity in casual labour; no sooner has she made friends they move on, to another community, or another part of the country, each one hoping to find a place they might finally call home.
Livi works alongside the new arrivals, but also with the Palestinians who regularly return to harvest the fruit. She enjoys the way her tongue folds around the Arabic words she is so keen to learn. Sabah alkhyr kayf halik alyawm was the first phrase Livi mastered, taught to her by a shy girl, Amara. She used it to greet her Arab friends every day: Good morning, how are you today?
Lina’a bikhayr kayf halik, comes the reply. I am well, how are you? to which Livi would respond: Ana bikhayr shukraan lak. I am well, thank you.
One morning, Amara arrives with a small bag of dates.
‘They look ugly,’ she tells Livi in simple Hebrew, ‘but when they crunch between your teeth .?.?. ah, heaven!’
Livi takes the fruit and bites, her teeth landing hard on the stone. She winces.
‘Oh, sorry!’ says Amara. ‘There’s a stone.’
‘I know that now,’ grins Livi, chewing the sticky fruit. ‘This is delicious,’ she exclaims. ‘Even better than oranges.’
*
Exchanges with new arrivals always begin with the same questions: ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘Who do you know in Israel?’ Livi is proficient in a number of languages; her time in Auschwitz taught her that languages can be a means of survival. And now she uses her new Hebrew, plus German and Russian, to welcome the fruit pickers to the farm.
It is during one of these exchanges that that she makes friends with a girl her own age. Soon they are heading into the groves together, picking oranges side by side in companionable silence.
‘Do you have a boyfriend, Livi?’ Rachel asks her one day. Nosy, thinks Livi. But all the talk amongst the young people on the farm is about who is dating who.
Livi lobs oranges into the huge basket. When it is full, they will heave it to the sorting sheds. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I work here all day and then I go home to bed, and I don’t fancy any of these boys.’ Livi waves a hand at the pickers.
‘I know someone you might like. He’s my cousin. And he’s not a fruit picker.’
Despite Livi’s protestations, and with Magda’s firm encouragement, Ziggy Ravek is invited to lunch the following Saturday.
Livi spends the rest of the week trying to concentrate on her work and failing. She can’t decide if she is looking forward to meeting this stranger, or terrified. It is probably a little of both, she decides.
But Saturday rolls around anyway, despite her misgivings, and Livi is getting ready.
‘You look nice.’ Magda appraises her little sister with a critical eye. ‘But your hair needs some work.’
Magda sits Livi at the dressing table in her bedroom and pins up her curls. She adds a little blusher to Livi’s cheeks and swipes a pale lipstick across her mouth.
‘Much better,’ says Magda, standing back to appreciate her work. But Livi isn’t so sure.
‘I look like a painted doll,’ she complains, just as the doorbell rings.