One Night, Markovitch
Published in Issue #15 Translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston(Excerpt from a Novel)
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Yaacov Markovitch wasn’t ugly. Which is not to say he was handsome. Little girls didn’t burst into tears at the sight of him, but neither did they smile when they saw his face. He was, you might say, gloriously average. Moreover, Yaacov Markovitch’s face was remarkably free of distinguishing features. So much so that your eyes could not linger on him, but slipped onward to other objects. A tree on the street. A cat in the corner. It required an enormous effort to keep looking at the barrenness of Yaacov Markovitch’s face. People do not enjoy making enormous efforts, and so they only rarely looked at his face for any length of time. This had its advantages, and the unit commander was aware of them. He looked at Yaacov Markovitch’s face for exactly the amount of time he needed, then dropped his gaze. You will smuggle weapons, the unit commander said. With that face, no one will notice. And he was right. Yaacov Markovitch probably smuggled more weapons than any other member of the Irgun, and never came close to being caught. The British soldiers’ gaze slid over his face like oil on a gun. If the Irgun members valued Yaacov Markovitch for his daring, he didn’t know it. Few spoke to him.
When he wasn’t smuggling weapons, he worked in the field. In the evening, he sat in the yard and fed leftover bread to the pigeons. Very quickly, a flock took to gathering there regularly, eating from his hands...
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