Surveyor

Tamar Navon

Surveyor, about 80 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.

Tamar Navon sets up the theodolite on the same scratched brass tripod before first light, leveling it against a bubble that has not drifted in forty years. He works the east fields with a slow, deliberate rhythm, measuring what the fog permits, noting where the plough can go and where it cannot. He asks no questions of the boundary, only of the soil. A habit: he taps the instrument’s casing twice before recording a reading, as if greeting an old colleague. He wants the mill’s waterwheel repaired before the autumn rains, a quiet, practical wish he has voiced twice. The town trusts his numbers absolutely, though no one can say why he still marks lines the fog will erase by noon. He sits at the mill’s bench, patient as a stone, and believes, as everyone does, that the fields need working either way.