quinine-laced formula the baby required, Shprintze began to take her turn again among the mortals. With the squinch-faced infant dangling marsupial-like from a sling around her neck, she arranged the books in the recently established colony library, where she infiltrated the small Hebrew collection with her Yiddish texts. Lest his son be regarded a pariah like himself, Ruby offered his services for odd jobs, again displaying the talent for tinkering he’d inherited from his own starry-eyed papa. He devised a mechanical scarecrow to frighten away birds from the vineyard, used his skill at setting booby traps to blow a hole for a rainwater cistern, and recalling his sojourn among moonshiners designed a still for the manufacture of potato schnapps. In his absence his neglected flock strayed into alien pastures, where they were slaughtered by hostile neighbors to the dismay of nobody but Ruby himself, who silently mourned their sacrifice to higher priorities. No longer afraid of him, the colonists relaxed into a general impression that paternity had tamed the assassin: He was judged a reformed character whose past all somewhat self-righteously forgave. So when the circuit-riding rabbi traveled through the settlement on his sumpter nag, they felt confident enough to approach the regenerate Ruby about having his son circumcised. He had no reason to refuse provided he be allowed to guide the palsied old rabbi’s knife—“like,” observed a waggish onlooker, “cutting a wedding cake.” The remark inspired the colonists to propose that, as one good turn called for another, the rabbi might as well go ahead and consecrate the mother and father’s union. “They can stroke the prepuce,” the same wag suggested, “till it spreads to a bridal canopy.”
Since there was no time to advertise the spur-of-the-moment event, the wedding was a modest affair. Still, the few women in attendance insisted that, maiden or no, Shprintze should wear the communal bridal gown, which they altered then and there to fit her no longer so boyish frame. Also made available was a much recycled gold-filled wedding band, a decanter of plum brandy, and the machinist Kotik Gilboa playing “Rozhinkes mit mandlen” on his fiddle at the bride’s request. The handful of IZL boys drew straws for the honor of standing up for the Baal Shatikah, and the ceremony—the old rabbi seemed anxious to wash his hands of it—was over in a matter of minutes. Ruby crushed the glass with his heel as if stomping a dormouse and, with the colicky Yudl squirming larvalike between them, kissed the bride. Then the witnesses toasted their health before dispersing, though one uninvited guest, tarrying with his dog behind a medlar at a distance of some hundred yards, continued to look on with an invidious eye.
However tentative, Ruby’s reentry into the life of the settlement gave him an aura of accessibility, which made the young bravos of the revolutionary underground think he might now be fair game; and so they came calling. By this time the mood of the Yishuv had altered, and even the most accomodationist among the settlers were now in favor of hastening the departure of the British at any cost. The abuses of the centuries had culminated in such obscenities that enough was finally enough: Amale-kites be blotted out, give us a home! For his part Ruby was so wracked by devotion to his wife and child that he could scarcely abide the thought of leaving them for even a day. But when the lads, some of whom had seen action in Europe in the Jewish Brigade and so could not be easily ignored, appealed for his assistance, he listened; though when they insisted that his participation in the next major tactical strike would be a boost to morale, he deprecated the idea: His soldiering days were over. But eventually they began to wear down his resistance, and in his new capacity as member in good standing of the Kibbutz Tel Elohim, Ruby was at last persuaded to yield just this once to their pleas.
This was during the Days of Awe, when the newlyweds ate apples and honey and attended Rosh Hashonah services in the sweatbox of the cinderblock chapel. Shprintze wore the toweling sling containing the baby, which Ruby had almost come to regard as an auxiliary appendage, almost as if mother and son were one flesh; and though the whiffy Yudl might have been an obstacle to their intimacy, his doting father found the contrary to be the case: He adored his wife and child as a single entity.