A person of Neshiyah
Hadassah Barak, power station engineer
Power station engineer
Hadassah Barak
Power station engineer, about 82 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.
Hadassah Barak, seventy-four, runs the power station with the unhurried patience of a woman who has watched dials and gauges for fifty years. Her hands, calloused and stained at the knuckles, move over switches with a quiet tenderness, as if coaxing the machinery to behave. At the river, she sits with her boots off, trailing a finger through the current, listening to the water the way others listen to gossip. She wants the lights to stay on—that is all, that is everything. The town sees her as a fixture, like the bridge or the fog itself: dependable, slightly worn, always there. Her curiosity is a habit she cannot break; she asks questions of everyone, and believes the answers, even when they contradict each other. She has never raised her voice at work, though once, in the square, she swung a fist over a remark about her dead dog.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; quick to believe what they are told; hard to anger; friendly enough; given to sitting by the river.
What people say
Hadassah Barak believes what everyone believes: the fog is the edge of the world, and the fields need working whether it is true or not.
What the record shows
- day 42 Hadassah Barak and Perez Erez talked a long while at the mill.
- day 42 Rivka Raz and Hadassah Barak talked a long while at the square.
- day 39 Eliana Segal and Hadassah Barak talked a long while at the square.
- day 39 Ronen Segal and Hadassah Barak came to blows at the square over nothing much.