3. Dolphin Trainer
Many sailors were lured by beautiful mermaids,
and all of them disappeared in the dark
abyss. But a few have escaped the enchantment, by the way of Odysseus or by other
methods.
Janus Gorensteinius of Antwerp. On Wonders of the Seas
We moored in Yaffo, the old part of Greater Tel Aviv. It was late November, but the sea was still warm. Although it was well past midnight, some kids were splashing in the water, trying to get beyond the breakers on their surfboards. While Sam was looking for a payphone, I took a quick dip, knowing that in a few days it would get too cold for swimming. My captain returned in a small truck, driven by an unshaved Arab. We loaded all our cargo on the truck, and opened one bottle to celebrate the end of the journey.
"When will you come here next time?" I asked Sam.
"In May. It was my last trip this year. The sea gets too rough in December. Here's the phone number of my companion Jafar. He'll have all the information."
I was planning to spend the first few days at my distant cousin's place in Givataim, a suburb at the far side of the city. There was just enough time left to walk there before the morning rush hour. I crossed the downtown, and skyscrapers gave way to residential streets: white houses with young trees on the roofs, sycamore-lined alleys, tiny parks, where owls and fruit bats were silently flying between palm crowns. At any time of the year, you can smell young grass and flowers here - no wonder the city was named Tel Aviv, "Hill of Spring".
Polina, my cousin, came to Israel with her old father and little daughter at the most difficult time, in the late 1980-s, when a wave of immigrants flooded the labor market, and finding a professional job was virtually impossible. But she was apparently smarter than others, or less prone to panic felt by almost everybody who is suddenly transported to an unfamiliar country with unfamiliar problems. She quickly got the same kind of job she'd had at home: insurance agent. Now the hard times were mostly over, her daughter was about to graduate from school, and she was planning to buy an apartment. Only her father still looked a bit unhappy, and kept telling everybody that he would return to Russia some day.
I had almost no money left, and Israel was an expensive country. I had to find a job as soon as possible to be able to rent a corner, or may be even half a room. There were lots of shelters for Russian immigrants in Tel Aviv, some of them relatively cheap. At that time they were mostly occupied not by immigrants, but by people who'd come to make some money, with or without citizenship.
It would be easy to get a construction job, but I decided to try other options first. In my backpack, I had a carefully packed business suit. I put it on and spent a few days looking for work in zoos, safari parks and similar places. Finally, I got to a small dolphinarium, a lonely building on a beach.
"We need a worker and a night guard," said the director. "The only problem is, you don't speak Hebrew. We all speak English here, but the dolphins know only Hebrew commands."
"Well, it's only a few words, I'll learn them soon."
"Good, in this case we'll probably make you a trainer in about a month. We can't pay you much, but you can sleep in our shack. You can start in two days. But if we find a Hebrew speaker, we'll hire him instead."
Just in case, I also tried looking for work in Jerusalem, although it was the last place I'd want to live in. It's nice to walk around the old city as if it was a museum, but spending all winter in its narrow white streets would be like going back in time - to the USSR of Stalin's era, for example. I am an aggressive atheist and don't like racists. A city so filled with hate, xenophobia, and religious fanaticism really makes me sick - its Arab and Jewish parts alike.
Anyway, I was wasting time there. Natural sciences don't flourish among people who think they know answers to all questions, even if those "answers" are fished out from fossilized fairy tales. Jerusalem is more popular among historians and theologists.
I gave up the hopeless search, waited until nightfall, and hiked to Bet Lehem. This Arab town is said to be a dangerous place for travelers, but you can sleep safely almost anywhere on Earth if you arrive late enough. I got to Bet Lehem just after midnight, spent the rest of the night in an orange grove, got up early, picked some oranges for breakfast, got a quick look at local places of interest, and walked back to Jerusalem while all terrorists were still in beds.
I didn't think I could really get in any trouble - I looked more like a Western backpacker than an Israeli. So I explored all the labyrinth of the Old City, and got into some Muslims-only parts of mosques by claiming to be a Sunni from Tatarstan.
In the evening I hitchhiked back to Tel Aviv, moved to the shack, swam in the sea for a while (it was just a few steps away from my workplace), and got acquainted with dolphins in a large pool and with fishes in tanks. My first assignment next morning was to clean the fish tanks, and I really enjoyed working - it had been almost a year since I'd had a regular job.
Soon, I discovered that my new profession had one fault. The dolphinarium was located in the downtown, and there was no cheap place to eat for miles around. I couldn't cook in my shack, so I would have to spend most of my salary on food. And I was hoping to put aside at least a thousand dollars in four months for a trip to India next summer.
I decided to keep looking for a better job, and went to an office hiring volunteers for kibbutzes. The clerk was a young snub-nosed girl wearing military uniform. She had green eyes, a halo of curly hair, and lots of freckles.
"I wouldn't recommend it," she said. "They pay almost nothing, and the work is hard."
"How do they manage to find volunteers?" I asked.
"A lot of young people come from Europe and the States to work in a commune. They think a kibbutz is some sort of an ashram or a summer camp. Many don't need money, but work for "spiritual reasons", even if they don't really know what those reasons are. Others have heard about kibbutzim before, and don't look into other options."
"You sound like you don't like kibbutzim."
"I grew up in one."
"I understand. I grew up in Russia."
"Really?" she laughed. "Your people only move to kibbutzim if they have many children and no choice."
"OK, forget the kibbutzim. Would you like to try swimming with dolphins?"
"What?" For the first time she seemed to notice that I was a human being, not just another client.
"I work as a dolphin trainer for now. Come to the dolphinarium this evening, you'll see."
"Oi, that sounds interesting. What's your name?" she asked.
"Vovi. Yours?"
"Nadin. What time should I come?"
That was a good question. The stuff was supposed to leave around ten, but I couldn't invite her for such a late hour - she would grow suspicious.
"Half past eight," I said finally, hoping she'd be late. "Don't forget a swimsuit."
At nine, I met her on the beach and took to dinner. It cost me almost all money I had left. She surprised me when she said that her work in the kibbutz bureau was part of her military service. Some draftees who don't seem to be particularly useful in the Army are sent to perform civil duties. At the moment, however, she was wearing red shorts, and looked delightfully civilian.
At ten o'clock, I left her looking at the fish tanks, and picked the keys from my boss.
"Don't let any strangers in," he reminded, getting in his car. "Don't tease the dolphins, and don't sleep on duty."
Well, Nadin wasn't a stranger, I couldn't even imagine teasing the dolphins, and sleep was the last thing on my mind.
We went to the pool, stripped to swimsuits (Nadin was very tanned and looked quite appetizing), and jumped in. The dolphins, startled a little, stopped splashing and puffing, but then recognized me and came to greet us.
"Do they bite?" asked Nadin.
"No. Just avoid scaring them: move slowly and don't try to hold them underwater."
It was really great - swimming in a pool with smooth, funny, swift dolphins and a charming, soft, agile girl. She was a good swimmer, but sometimes I would help her stay on surface, and every sudden touch of a dolphin's fluke somehow made us get closer to each other. Finally, tired and excited at the same time, we climbed out of the water. Wet Nadin was so beautiful that I couldn't wait any longer and kissed her. She was taken off guard, returned my kiss, and then it was too late to say no. Besides, we were a bit cold after spending at least an hour in the pool, so she probably didn't want to get away from my warm body. I think I kissed each one of her freckles before she smiled and said:
"I'm all salty..."
"To the showers!" - I said, dragged her there, turned the water on, and, trying not to give her time to think, took off her swimsuit. When her back was already against the wall and I put her thighs on my hips, she said lazily:
"No, you shouldn't... I don't want to... I have to go, it's late..."
Nothing would have sounded more stupid at the moment. It would be obvious even to a blind person that I should, that she wanted it with every freckle of her young body, and that she didn't have to go. It's a pity almost every girl finds it necessary to perform that ritual. But Nadin was smart enough to consider her duty fulfilled at that point, and never got distracted again. We were already so aroused that I came too soon, and she gave me a disappointed look. But before she had time to criticize me, I picked her knees up again. The night was still young.
My unknown predecessor had brought some floor mats in the shower room, so we spent the remaining hours on them, cooling off in the shower from time to time. By dawn we got so worked up that we had one round of sex in the main pool, to the dolphins' obvious delight. I had no money left to buy condoms and no place to hide them while swimming with Nadin in the evening, so I had to leave it to her, hoping she knew what she was doing. As a result, we got rubbed of sore, but didn't realize it until I got to walk her to a bus stop in the morning.
We both thought we'd spend the winter together, but it never happened.
Next evening Nadin arrived at ten prompt, and said she'd have to leave in two hours. It was too painful to have conventional sex, so we had to use our tongues most of time, and allowed ourselves only one cautious coitus in the end. She promised to come back on Monday and left. I went to the central bus station and took the last bus to Eilat.
When I visited Israel for the first time eight months earlier, I made a quick trip around the country, and the part I liked the most was the Far South. That area was outside the historic "promised land", but when the UN was discussing the borders of the new state to be created, nobody else wanted it. That's how Israel got Negev Desert - a narrow triangle between Sinai and Jordan, terminating at the Gulf of Akaba, the northern tip of the Red Sea.
Northern Negev is now irrigated and mostly covered with fields, but the southern part is still an endless expanse of gravel hammadas and bizarre rocks. There is almost no vegetation there even after rare winter rains, and you have to hike for hours to see any wildlife. In the past, however, people had managed to collect rainwater into low-lying areas and grow some crops there. So Negev is dotted with archeological sites, left by Egyptians, Hebrews, Nabateans, Romans, and Bedouins.
You have to be a true wilderness enthusiast to appreciate Negev. But for me it was more interesting than Israel's green North, which closely resembled many places I was already familiar with, such as Turkmenistan and The Crimea.
The dry plateau of Negev is cut by deep wadis - canyons formed by occasional flash floods. All wadis lead eastward, to Arava - a huge valley, formed by a colossal rift in the Earth's crust. In the south, Arava is flooded by the Red Sea, an even deeper rift. In the north, it also dips below the sea level - that's where the Dead Sea is located. The Israeli/Jordanian border follows Arava, and so does the main highway to Eilat, the only Israeli city on the Red Sea. Between the highway and the border is sandwiched a small Nature reserve called Hai Bar - 200 square kilometers of beautiful acacia savanna.
I was probably no more than four years old when my family got our first black-and-white TV set. One of the first movies we saw was called "African Adventures". I don't remember much of the movie, but somewhere in my memory was stuck an image of living paradise, full of wonderful animals and nice people who watched them from jeeps. Hai Bar looked exactly like that image. I liked it more than any other place in Israel. If there was at least a remote chance of finding a job there, I had to give it a try. I was looking forward to spending winter with the dolphins and Nadin, but Hai Bar was too much of a temptation.
I got off the bus and walked to the park office. Under a large tree, a few men were standing around a dead body of a white antelope - an Arabian oryx. One of them was obviously an immigrant from a land far North.
"What are you guys doing?" I asked him quietly in Russian.
"We're gonna do an autopsy."
I took off my T-shirt and joined them. In a few minutes, we cut the lungs open, and said in unison: "Aspergillosis."
"We should give a fungicide shot to the male which was in the same pen," said someone.
In silence, we all walked towards the enclosure. I noticed that everybody was carrying a wooden shield, a rope, and a piece of a rubber tube.
"Where did you come from?" asked me the Russian-speaking guy.
"From Moscow. I'm looking for a job."
"No openings here. But you're lucky. See him?" he pointed to a tanned man who looked like a veteran prison inmate. "He's Moni, the chief of local Nature Conservation Department. Talk to him. Our boss, Toni (he waived his arm towards a bald guy who'd been performing the autopsy) would never hire you. There are already two Russians working here."
In Israel, all people from the former USSR are called "Russians", even Mountain and Bukhara Jews.
We entered the pen, formed a chain and tried to push the oryx to an opposite wall. The antelope immediately attacked us. Attacked me, actually, because I was the only one without a shield. African oryxes sometimes stab lions to death, and the horns of Arabians are even more effective - almost straight, meter-long, sharp as lances. I had to jump to a side while throwing my shirt over his head. It was not a good jump: I pushed the guy next to me, and we all fell on each other like domino, while the antelope kicked me in a shoulder (I tried to catch him by a hind leg). A few seconds later we were all covered in dust and oryx dung, but the animal had rubber tubes put on the tips of his horns, and was tied up.
"Using your shirt was a good idea," said Moni. "Who are you, if I may ask?"
"Later," I said. "Give him an injection fast, or he can die from stress."
We gave the poor oryx a shot, untied him and got out of the pen before he could decide whom to kill first. Then I told them who I was, and asked if there was a job for me. Moni and Toni talked for a while, then asked me what I could do, and said:
"A female oryx gave birth in the far end of the reserve. You have to weigh the calf, tag it, and vaccinate. Then we'll decide."
Together with Shlomi, one of the reserve's technicians, we got in a jeep and took off across the bumpy savanna. For about an hour we kept driving back and forth along the barbed wire fence, looking cautiously across it (Jordanians sometimes shoot at cars from their side of the border). We remained silent: Shlomi was the only Hai Bar employee who didn't speak much English. Finally we spotted a pair of oryxes in a small acacia grove.
Arabian oryx is one of the world's most beautiful antelopes. It is the size of a mule deer, white with black horse-like tail, "stockings" and face mask. At one point they had been hunted to extinction in the wild, but survived in a few zoos, and were being reintroduced in the wild - in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and in Hai Bar, which had about sixty of them.
Unlike other male antelopes, oryx fathers take part in raising their young. When we got close to the acacia which was providing shadow for the mother and the newborn calf, the male charged immediately, and began chasing our jeep. Shlomi avoided him by driving in circles, trying to stay between him and me, while I was running after the baby, cute tiny creature covered with bright-golden fur. After a few falls on thorns-strewed sand, I managed to grab it and, chased by the mother, dashed back to the car. At +50 Centigrade it was quite a workout. I jumped in, and we drove off in a cloud of dust. We only had three minutes to weigh, measure, ear-tag and vaccinate the calf - after that the parents could refuse to accept it. Bouncing up and down, I wrestled with desperately kicking baby, while Shlomi made a large circle and returned to the acacia. I still remember the data: 52 cm and 5-something kilograms.
We stopped to let me inject the vaccine. The very moment I was pressing the syringe, the angry father showed up and tried to stab me. I kicked his horns away with my shoe, put the baby on the ground, and we drove away from there as fast as we could.
After listening to our report, Moni said:
"OK, we hire you as a volunteer. We'll not pay you yet, but you can live in a cabin. You can have the leftovers from the animals' food. If all goes well, we'd promote you to assistant scientist. Than you'd be paid, but not much. You start tomorrow. Don't enter predators' cages, don't handle snakes, and don't walk in the desert at night. Try not to get eaten in the first month - it happened here before. Good luck!"
I took a quick shower, ran two kilometers to the highway, got to Tel Aviv by sunset, quit my job at the dolphinarium, said good bye to my cousin Polina and (alas, by phone) to Nadin, got to the bus station again, and had to spend all my salary for three days at the dolphinarium on a bus ticket. At dawn, I was back in Hai Bar. From there I sent my first letter to Irina, telling her that I'd found a job, that I was missing her a lot, that the weather was great, and that the winter would be over soon.
Odysseus
You are probably angry tonight
For me leaving you, lonely and bored,
You think
you were betrayed and ignored,
You are right, you are perfectly right.
Yes, my guilt is too much to forgive,
It's not love - meeting three times a year.
What I did was completely unfair,
It was cruel and stupid to leave.
Girl, I miss
you! I'm cursing my fate:
I was born just to wonder forever,
And instead of us being together
I'm away, and it might be too late.
You'll forget
me - and I'll understand,
You so loved
me, but I chose the road,
Well, you don't have to carry this load -
Quit, cut off, dump me, leave, put an end.
No, wait, don't severe the ties:
In this life,
way too short, cold, and brittle,
We might still give each other a little
Warmth, and fun, and some other things nice.
You are probably happy tonight,
Not so lonely, and not very bored,
You forgot me, by others adored,
But some day I'll be back for the fight.