A person of Neshiyah
Nitzan Levin, cook
Cook
Nitzan Levin
Cook, about 86 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.
Nitzan Levin, at eighty-six, still moved through the kitchen like a current through water, thin arms lifting pots with the ease of long habit, white hair netted tight against the steam. They tasted everything twice, once for the dish and once for the story, and hummed scraps of old songs while scrubbing a pan. Their one stubborn habit was pinning small, useless treasures—a blue button, a smooth stone—to the inside of their apron, as if gathering luck. The town knew Nitzan as the person who never let a meal pass without asking how you’d slept, who argued at the mill with Kinneret the younger over flour proportions, and who, when turned back from the fog line, only nodded and walked home to knead dough. What they wanted was simple: tomorrow’s bread to rise. In their last days, asleep and still, people said it with fondness—Nitzan, finally still.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; trusting, within reason; hard to anger; always in company; never still.
What people say
Nitzan Levin 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 45 Nitzan Levin, the cook, died at 86, of old age. In their last days people said they were asleep.
- day 35 A guard at the end of the north road turned Nitzan Levin back at the fog line with a reminder that the Council prefers people to stay at their work.
- day 30 Kinneret and Nitzan the younger came to blows at the mill over nothing much.
Nitzan Levin died on day 45.