The Ascent of Eli Israel Read Free

wearing an oversized helmet on his head in the middle of the living room. He declared in his most official-sounding baritone, “Pirkl of Rehavia you are conscripted in the name of Zion.”
    â€œWhat are your duties, brave one?” Hannah said, batting her eyelashes dramatically.
    â€œTo save Jerusalem!” Tsrili shouted from his stretcher before losing consciousness.
    Now his grandmother entered with a crust of bread in one hand, a satchel thrown over her right shoulder. She handed him the bread, which was thinly covered with bitter chocolate spread. Pirkl gobbled it down.
    â€œGood morning,” she said.
    â€œThe reinforcements are ready,” he answered.
    â€œYou make a handsome soldier.”
    His mother interrupted, “Pirkl is not a soldier. He’s too young.”
    â€œI’m older than David when he killed Goliath.”
    â€œDon’t talk nonsense.”
    â€œWhat is he, a worthless shmatte, a worthless old rag?” his grandmother said. “Let him go. Every man must fight for Jerusalem. He will soon be bar mitzvah. He smells like a man,” she said, pinching her sharp nose.
    â€œYou belong at home . . .” his mother began.
    â€œBut what about the brave Trumpeldor?” Pirkl shot back.
    â€œHe was killed at Tel Hai,” his mother answered, shaking her head.
    â€œDefending Tel Hai,” his grandmother said. “He didn’t die in vain.”
    â€œYou’re not going to look for your father. Promise me,” his mother said.
    Pirkl smiled, but didn’t say anything. He thought of the Russian-born, one-armed Joseph Trumpeldor. His father’s hero.
    Pirkl’s grandmother winked at him.
    â€œAll right,” his mother said. “Come straight back, Malchyk! Just go to the barricade. Hold this above your head,” she said, handing him a piece of white muslin cloth. “Hold it high so the snipers can see. Look for the Red Cross, leave the package, tell them it is for those trapped in the city. They will listen to a child.”
    â€œLet him go!” his grandmother said. Though he was just five feet tall, she still had to reach up to kiss his cheek. “Be strong and brave,” she said.
    His grandmother had packed a small satchel filled to the top with two loaves of stale bread, three cans of asparagus soup, a tin of chocolate spread, a package of dried fruit, some potatoes, a cup of dried beans, sweet halvah, candles, a blanket, week-old copies of Ha’aretz and some small dark jars which contained a liquid that must have been medicine.
    His heart quickened, he could feel it boiling in his chest as he bounced down the stairs. The full weight of the hamsiin hit him as he stepped out into the magic pink light of morning. He walked around behind the apartment house and emptied the bag onto the ground next to a jagged bowl-shaped crater where a twenty-five-pounder had hit one night during heavy shelling, and dug in the dry earth where Tsrili, the soldier injured at Ramat Rahel, would later be buried.
    When his mother was busy tending to the wounded, he had hidden a pair of three-inch Davidka mortar shells made out of old pipes, a few dozen Enfield rifle bullets, three bayonets, and the pièce de résistance, a round Thompson submachine gun magazine. He held the magazine to his chest, like a stack of precious 78 rpm records that his mother used to play on the phonograph. And for a moment, he saw his parents dancing and laughing in their living room, his mother’s head thrown back with such joy, he could hardly recognize her now.
    He pressed the bullets into the stale bread until they all disappeared into the now-heavy loaves; wrapped the bayonets thickly in the old newspapers, and swaddled the Thompson magazine in the blanket, piling dried fruit on top in case he was stopped and asked the contents of his bag. Pirkl imagined his two rockets, marked “Dear King Abdullah” and “For Haj Amin Mufti,”