by dan pine
staff writer
As his last act on earth, a mortally wounded soldier in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence dispatches a homing pigeon into the blood-red skies near Jerusalem. Whatever could that have to do with a present-day Israeli man facing a failed marriage and an extensive home remodel?
In the hands of author Meir Shalev, the answer is, plenty. In his brilliant novel, “A Pigeon and a Boy,” Shalev presents a poetic sweep of modern Israeli history and culture, while never losing sight of his essential –– and universal –– love story.
Make that, love stories.
“Who but the Jewish people returning to their homeland can better appreciate the tremendous yearning of the pigeon for her home and homeland?” asks one of the novel’s characters, a pigeon expert in pre-state Tel Aviv.
Indeed, homing pigeons do loom large in Shalev’s sprawling tale.
In one of its two interrelated narratives, we learn how important these message-bearing birds were in the fight for an independent Israel. A young boy, referred to only as the Baby, studies pigeon-rearing after the Palmach (Jewish freedom fighters) installs a loft on his kibbutz. As the Baby grows, he befriends –– and falls in love with –– a Tel Aviv girl, also a pigeon fancier.
Shalev weaves their story of unconsummated passion with that of Yair Mendelsohn, a world-weary contemporary Israeli who ekes out a living leading tourists on bird-watching expeditions. He’s trapped in a loveless, childless marriage to a beautiful, wealthy American woman. The death of his indomitable mother two years earlier sparks a midlife crisis.
Yair’s ticket out: buying a dilapidated house for himself in a remote Israeli village. The place, like Yair himself, needs work. To do the repairs, he hires a family friend, the boisterous, larger-than-life Meshulam Fried, and his spitfire contractor/ daughter, Tirzah, Yair’s old flame.
As that flame rekindles, and as the house –– nail by nail, shingle by shingle –– becomes a home, Shalev tunnels a link between past and present.
The son of Israeli poet Yitzchak Shalev, Meir Shalev has a refined, poetic style. Even in translation from the Hebrew, his prose sings. Describing Yair’s mother nursing her twins, Shalev writes that her breasts “emptied and her boys filled up and everything blurred and her body was light and bent on flying, while her boys grew full and heavy, becoming sandbags that weighted her to the ground.”
He’s funny, too. Shalev has one character dissing her Orthodox relative as “the only Hasidic Jew in the world who wears a tallis made by Versace.”
The twin symbolism of homing pigeons and Yair’s new home couldn’t be more apparent. Shalev knows we know that, adorning the novel with detailed descriptions of proper pigeon handling and home remodeling from the ground up.
Shalev populates his story with memorable characters: the sad-eyed Yair; his spicy paramour, Tirzah (who calls him “luvey”); the tough-as-bricks Meshulam; the taciturn Palmach pigeon handler, Miriam, who teaches the Baby the ways of the bird (and sneaks a nightly cigarette, her leg always nervously shaking).
Shalev sets up and delivers a stunning payoff, connecting his two stories in a way that ties together every element that came before. To speak another word about this twist is to spoil a masterstroke of fiction.
Shalev integrates his narratives so well that he had no need to tack on the “what happened to …” epilogue. Ostensibly done in the interest of more fully realizing his characters, this addendum serves to diminish what had been a perfectly told story.
But that’s a minor complaint. Overall, “A Pigeon and a Boy” satisfies as only great literature can, taking the reader to another place and time, and plumbing the lives of characters who seem more real than most real people.
Along with Amos Oz and David Grossman, Shalev has stood for some time at the pinnacle of contemporary Israeli fiction. With “A Pigeon and a Boy,” he may have flown to an even higher perch.
“A Pigeon and a Boy” by Meir Shalev (320 pages, Schocken Books, $25)
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California