Donkeys

Donkeys appear at three points in Alexander A. Gideon’s account, linking remembered childhood to the life of the household in the present. First associated with his friendship with Manfred M. Zakheim, they later belong to Alexander’s practical childhood world and to Yifat’s new skills. Their recurring presence gives the animal a modest but distinctive place in the book’s pattern of memory and inheritance.

Childhood and Friendship

Alexander recalls teaching Manfred to ride a donkey. The memory belongs to a series of childhood games and acts of care through which their friendship took shape: the boys traded stories, played cards, and found ways to comfort or help one another. The donkey is therefore part of a remembered shared life, not merely a detail of the rural setting.

A separate recollection places a donkey within Alexander’s early independence. By about four, he could harness a two-wheeled cart to one. The detail sits alongside his ability to manage animals and objects on his own, in a childhood otherwise marked by long periods of solitude. The donkey and cart represent practical competence learned in the world around the family home.

The Donkey in the Present

Years later, a young, docile donkey is part of the household’s everyday surroundings. Yifat has learned to ride it almost by herself. Alexander, now living alongside the family, offers to teach her to harness a cart if Boaz B. has not already done so. The parallel with Alexander’s own childhood is direct: a skill once learned by him becomes something he may pass on to the next generation.

The animal also unsettles Alexander’s habitual distance from ordinary contact. In the dark, he mistakes the donkey for a dog and nearly strokes it before realizing what it is. The brief confusion gives the donkey a place in the immediate, domestic present, where Alexander’s memories meet the household’s routines.

Narrative Significance

Across these scenes, donkeys connect three kinds of relation: Alexander’s childhood friendship with Manfred, his early capacity for practical self-sufficiency, and Yifat’s developing independence. The animal recurs without becoming a grand symbol; its significance comes from the specific actions attached to it—learning to ride, harnessing a cart, and teaching a child. In a story shaped by family memory and the transmission of skills, the donkey helps make continuity visible in ordinary life.