LETTER FROM ISRAEL
505
enites to the adamant drum. At Purim a girl posed in a circle of the
dark passionate Yemenite faces, fingers over shoulder in the attitude of
one carrying a pitcher. H er feet hardly moved, making a slurred,
delicate intimation of a step as she advanced, retreated, riding the
rhythm lightly, seeming hardly to be responsible for her floating circuit,
her hands slowly weaving, her body lifting with each impulse of the
never ceasing drum. The girl at the drum both sang and played, her
fingers flickering over the drum like water, in the center for the deep
pitch, over the rim for the sharper and lighter notes. They sang with
an Arab intonation, everyone in the party clapping in a deep slow
rhythm and giving at the same time a little shudder of the body as
though the rhythm were vibra ting from something deep down. Some–
times the dancer held her hand above her shoulder as though she were
acting some age-old ritual of the journey bearing a pitcher to the
well. She went on this interminable, delightful journey, rotating, sing–
ing, pausing, her body lilting, every movement subtly varied and yet
all identical celebrations of her sex on this parade where one laughs
and gossips with the other women and demurely preens before the ad–
miring men. A little girl, her cheeks carmined for Purim, stared with
delighted glowing eyes, her mouth curved in an incredulous smile while
the small room seemed to quiver with the chanting and the clapping
and the beating drum.
A little old woman joined in. Her face was as brown and wrinkled
as a walnut. She was tiny and she wore a gilt brocaded turban, a long
narrow dress down to her spindly ankles. H er eyes were small, deep-set,
brown, and she looked almost Burmese. She danced erectly, with pride,
rising on her toes at the end of each step so tha t it seemed to be part
of a ceremonial progress, a slow march, a hieratic dance of women
who know the dignity of their sex. She danced a wedding dance with
the girl and her face broke into a smile, revealing big uneven teeth,
yellow as the keys of an old piano. The dance was frank, physical, an
exhibition of the delights of the body, breaking up with giggles as
impulsively the demure girl made a more than usually abandoned
gesture.
Into the crowd burst a figure in a blaek cloak, brandishing a
stick. The face was deathly white, the eye sockets were empty and a
thin wisp of yellow mustache hung limply. The face was expression–
less as a dead man's. It was a mask and the figure began a menacing
dance, shaking the stick, bending first to one side then the other in
rhythm with the drum, almost coll apsing like a rundown doll, resur–
recting and slowly turning and shaking the stick while the children
