The Source

by James A. Michener

  At Ilana’s the old gang met for the last time: Bar-El, Bagdadi, Gottesmann and Vered Yevneski. Ilana slapped together some food and studied her husband apprehensively: “You seem tired, Gottesmann.”

  “I am,” the veteran confessed. “I wish it were ended, the whole war.”

  “Gottesmann!” Ilana laughed. “It won’t be over for years. After we take Safad we get right on a truck and move down to Jerusalem and from there we march to Gaza.” Her husband lowered his head.

  Bagdadi chuckled when he thought how surprised the Arabs at the police station were going to be: “They must believe those concrete walls will protect them forever. Wait till the dynamite starts!”

  “You think you can take it?” Gottesmann asked, looking up.

  “Of course,” the Iraqi cried. “Don’t you think you can capture the ruins on top?”

  “No,” Gottesmann said.

  Bagdadi expressed no surprise at this assessment. Instead, he drew up a chair and placed his fat hands on the table. “To tell the truth, Gottesmann, I don’t have much hope, either. That is, not unless a miracle happens. But I’m sure one will.”

  “What kind?” Gottesmann asked sullenly.

  “Don’t mind him,” Ilana laughed from the kitchen of the old house. “Before a fight he’s always pessimistic. Remember how he was the day we bombed the lorry. I’ll bet you this, Bagdadi. He’ll capture the ruins before you take the police station.”

  The five friends, the kind of young Jews upon whom the fate of Israel depended in those lonely days, ate a meager meal, then sat talking of the hours ahead. Ilana, still perplexed by her dialogue with the rebbe, said, “I wonder what kind of Israel we’re building tonight?” And the MemMem said in his pragmatic way, “Kill enough Arabs now and worry about the state later.” She looked to Gottesmann for help to combat this grievous error, but he was staring at his knuckles.

  “The Israel I have in mind,” Bagdadi offered, “is one where the Jews of Iraq and Iran and Egypt would be welcome. To work with the better-educated Jews of Germany and Russia. Believe me, Gottesmann, you may not think so now, but this state really needs the Sephardim. To build bridges with the Arabs when the war’s over.”

  Bar-El yawned and said, “We need you, Bagdadi, but we need sleep more,” and the three men found places to catch a little rest before launching their assault up the hill. When they were well asleep Vered asked softly, “Is it nice, Ilana, living with a man?”

  The older girl looked down at her tall German husband, twitching nervously in his sleep, and replied, “If you’re lucky enough to catch one like Gottesmann …”

  “What is there … I mean especially?”

  Again Ilana studied her sleeping fighter. “I can’t say,” she replied.

  Vered was silent for some minutes, then asked, “Is going to bed … I mean, is it so important?”

  Ilana laughed. “How important do you think it is?” she asked.

  Vered blushed and smoothed her hair. “I suppose it’s very important.”

  “Ten times that much,” Ilana said quietly. “Maybe fifty times.”

  “I’m ashamed I made such a fool of myself the other night … when Teddy Reich came.” Neither girl spoke, then Vered asked shyly, “If you were me, and if MemMem …” She hesitated, and the girls looked down at the sleeping dandy. He was a most attractive young man. Ilana could think of nothing to say, so Vered observed, “The trouble is, after the war’s over I want to go to university.”

  “I’m going back,” Ilana assured her.

  “Even if you have children?” Vered asked.

  “Especially if I have children.” She grew excited and moved her hands as her grandfather had done when explaining to others what Kfar Kerem would one day be. “We mustn’t have the women of Israel a dull lot.”

  And when the hour came, and the fighters moved out toward their horrifying targets, from the house next door appeared Rebbe Itzik’s wife in her wig, calling, “Go on, children. God will lead you as He led us out of Egypt,” but the rebbe himself did not hear his wife’s blasphemous words, for he was in the Vodzher synagogue praying with two old men, the last of his congregation to support him in opposing the battle that was about to start.

  At eight o’clock all units were in take-off position. The night was dark and Teddy Reich was hoping that a surprise rush might carry the Jews well into the front lines of the Arabs before the latter knew what was happening; but as he was about to give the signal to move out, an ominous thing occurred. A drop of rain fell. Then another. Rain in mid-May was impossible. It rarely happened, but here it came, drop by drop. Frantically the Jews looked at each other, trying to assess this unexpected development, then Rabbi Gedalia whispered to Teddy Reich and Bar-El the tremendous commandment of the Lord to His Jews: “ ‘Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.’ ” Reich whistled and the attack moved forward.

  To climb from the Jewish quarter to the police station was difficult even in times of peace—one had to twist and turn up narrow alleys before attaining the upper plateau—but to negotiate this dangerous terrain on a rainy night, with Arabs blazing away at point-blank range, called for true heroism, and Reich’s men displayed it. When necessary they fired with cold resolution, astounding the Arabs by pressing forward until, at nine o’clock, they reached the gray concrete walls of the police station itself. Bagdadi and his team of dynamiters brought their stuff into position against the stout walls, but when they ran back to protect themselves from the blast, nothing happened. The unexpected rain had put out the fuses.

  “In again!” Bagdadi shouted, and he led his angry men back to the wall. Two were killed.

  Once more the rain put out the fuses, and for the third time Bagdadi called, “Here we go!” His fat, clumsy courage was the inspiration his men needed, and this time Teddy Reich’s team held off the Arab fire, and Bagdadi lost no one. Nor did he manage to ignite the stubborn dynamite. The Iraqi thought of the number of times he had seen dynamite go off almost by itself, and it made him curse.

  Reich called his team back and tried to ignite the explosive by rifle fire, but nothing happened. From the Crusader ruins directly above the police station came many rounds of frenzied fire. “How does it sound up there?” Teddy shouted to no one in particular.

  “Sounds like Ilana’s winning her bet,” Bagdadi replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re going to take the top before we get the station,” Bagdadi growled. He was off for the fourth time to assault the wall, again without result. “Damn the rain!” he cried, as drops ran down his fat face like tears.

  At four minutes after ten the team handling the davidka threw potato masher number one into the far end of the Crusader ruins, and the whine and subsequent explosion were horrendous to hear, for to insure firing, the Palmach were using eighteen pounds of black gunpowder where an ordinary gun would have used two. “You can smell the cordite down here,” Bagdadi said in disbelief.

  At ten-twenty-five potato masher number two headed for the Kurdish quarter, with equal noise but with little effect, except that when it exploded it seemed to make the May rain turn into a real downpour. Reich called to Bagdadi, “Any use trying to explode our dynamite?”

  “Let’s wait,” the Iraqi replied, and through the rainstorm the police station remained in Arab hands.

  Then davidka launched shots three, four, five at the Arab souks, at the mayor’s house and at the ammo dump behind the girls’ school, and as the last explosion died away, Bagdadi screamed in unsoldierly fashion, “Teddy! Look!”

  Through the gloom, down the side of the Crusader hill, came Isidore Gottesmann and Ilana Hacohen. They were running like children, and Ilana was shouting, “Teddy, we’ve taken the whole hill. It’s ours!”

  For a moment Teddy Reich held his hands over his face, muddy rain running down his wrists. Then he kissed Ilana a
nd asked, “The stone house?”

  “Great difficulty.”

  “Take it,” he said, and as the two ran off to that stubborn house, he said to Bagdadi, “Now we knock out this station.”

  The dynamiters, exhilarated by the news from above, darted once more through Arab bullets, reached once more the face of the concrete stronghold, but try as they might, they accomplished nothing. It was frustrating, bitterly disappointing. From above they could hear the Palmach song of victory, yet if the police station were held by the Arabs all would be lost. The Arabs inside, knowing this, fired back with cruel effect and the Jews were driven off.

  At about three that morning Ilana and Gottesmann returned to the plateau.

  “The stone house is ours!” they cried, and Teddy shouted, “Everyone here!” and with desperation the reinforced Jews rushed at the powerful concrete installation, again accomplishing nothing.

  The rain halted, and Bagdadi promised, “Now we can explode the place,” but again the fuses failed to work and his valiant effort came to naught. Of his original team only he was left. He was crying.

  It was now a few minutes after four and Teddy Reich was in despair. If dawn came, lighting the streets, the Arabs in the police station—not to mention those in the dread fortress on the high hill—could pick off the Jews with ease. “Everybody!” Reich begged. “Let’s get this cursed place.”

  Isidore Gottesmann felt his nerves going, and Ilana knew that her husband could stand no more. Both wanted to retreat to the Jewish quarter, but neither would do so. “Once more,” she begged her tall German, and he who had led the fight both on top and at the stone house bit his cheeks and accompanied the next charge on the concrete walls. Nothing happened and Teddy led his men back.

  It was now dawn and the Jews could expect from the Arab quarters a violent counterattack at any moment, but as Teddy stood disconsolately at the head of the stairs he began to laugh hysterically. Others ran to him, and they laughed too, like idiots, for halfway down the stairs, in the soft gray light of morning, an old Jewish woman with a shawl over her head was coming out of the Arab quarter, lugging a sewing machine.

  “They’ve all gone,” she called hoarsely.

  “They’ve what?” Teddy screamed.

  “They are no more,” she cried, disappearing with her treasure.

  Four Palmachniks leaped down the stairs, five, six steps at a time. With rifles ready they moved into the Arab quarter. Soon they fired, but in the air.

  “See what’s happened!” Teddy shouted. There was no need. From the Crusader ruins Bar-El cried down, “They’ve fled from all positions,” and from the direction of the stone house other Jews came running with news that the Kurdish quarter, the sites on the hill, all were empty.

  But the key position was not, and stubborn Arab shooting rang out from the police station, so that the Jews had to take cover down the stairs, and there Teddy Reich looked grimly at Bagdadi and asked, “Ready?” The plump Iraqi nodded, and with quick signals Reich sent many troops against the flanks of the building while he and Bagdadi ran zigzag to the front wall, where they tied down a massive charge of dynamite. Retiring to a corner of the building, where Arab bullets whined at them, they waited, and this time the fuse worked. There was a low, ugly, roaring explosion, after which Reich and Bagdadi darted boldly through the dust and into the gaping hole. Jews were at last inside the concrete police station.

  The fighting was brief and hideous. In one room a Jew and an Arab, having exhausted their weapons, scratched and bit each other until the Arab finally strangled his opponent, but Bagdadi came blazing in to spray the place. Then he and Reich, in a compelling partnership of German and Iraqi, went heavy-footed room by room, with one-armed Reich swinging his Shmeisser in deadly fashion, until at last Bagdadi stuck his head out the top window, bellowing, “It’s ours! All but the roof.” And in this manner the impregnable station fell.

  Only then could the Palmach believe that Safad was theirs. Men came running in from all quarters of the town to report, “There is no enemy,” and Reich led his leaders on a quick tour of the place to find it mysteriously deserted except for a few old Arabs too weak to run away. From one of these he pieced together what had happened. The old man said, “My son Mahmoud read about it in the paper.”

  “About what?” Teddy asked in Arabic.

  “Hashiroma,” the old man said. He didn’t understand the word, but he explained, “When the atoomi bomb fell at Hashiroma the rains came.” He moved his hand through the air, simulating a bomb. He mimicked the whining of the davidka and mumbled, “Don’t let the rain touch you, young man. It can eat right through your body.”

  The unbelievable had happened. The miracle that Nissim Bagdadi had hoped for had taken place. The Arabs of Safad, that powerful multitude, had heard the ugly whine of davidka, had listened to the unprecedented rain, and had recalled the Jewish children crying, “A new weapon …” In the darkness dilated eyes spread terror, whispers crashed louder than explosions, and finally some fool had cried, “Atoomi bomb!”

  “Where’s your son?” Reich asked the old man in Arabic.

  “He ran away.”

  “He left you? Like that?”

  “It was the atoomi,” the old man cackled. “Be careful of the rain.”

  From the safe homes by the mosque of Jama el-Ahmar the Arabs had fled. In the hours before dawn they had abandoned the strong points at the ends of the Heart-Purifying Bridge, where no Jews fought. From solid entrenchments the red-capped soldiers of Iraq, the black-and-white-crowned Lions of Aleppo and the warriors of the Grand Mufti fled. Outnumbering their enemy by more than forty to one, the Arab forces had constructed their own panic, and had then obeyed it.

  But Reich’s sense of victory was shattered when Vered Yevneski came crying, “Gottesmann’s gone out of his mind!” She said that at the edge of town he had found an abandoned English Land Rover and was now driving down the road to Damascus, pleading with the fleeing Arabs to come back to Safad. It was an act of lunacy and would surely get him killed.

  Reich sent Bagdadi to investigate, and the Iraqi Jew, trailed by Ilana and Vered, ran out of town, where they finally overtook the English car, and just as Vered had reported, Gottesmann was driving slowly along the road, pleading with the Arab refugees to come back to their homes. “We need you,” he said over and over in Yiddish, but the frightened Arabs continued their flight.

  Patiently Nissim turned the car around and drove the Jews back in triumph, but Gottesmann sat silent, for he knew that if the Arabs had left permanently, the triumph was somehow tarnished.

  In only one spot in all of Safad did the Arabs hold fast—in the great fortress on the mountain back of the town; and when Bagdadi and Gottesmann rejoined Teddy Reich they stared across the wadi at this ominous monster, and Reich could not repress a cry of triumph. “I told you!” he exulted. “Right now they’re the worried ones, not us,” but the Jewish lieutenants were also worried, for they knew that before long they would have to storm that final fortress, too.

  At seven that morning Reich and his leaders met at the head of the stairs, and Bagdadi confessed to Ilana, “You won your bet. Gottesmann took the plateau before I entered the station.” Then he asked, “How’d it go up there?”

  “You know Gottesmann,” she said with pride. “Start him down a trench …” Quietly she added, “He was responsible for the Arab collapse. Jumped into the middle of a headquarters area, blazing.”

  At this moment one of the Arabs who had been left isolated on the roof of the police station drew a fine bead on Nissim Bagdadi, and the men about Reich heard a soft ping, following which Bagdadi slumped to the ground. Ilana quickly bent over him as Jewish marksmen shot down the Arab, but as she drew her hand away from the unconscious Iraqi Jew’s chest, Gottesmann saw the fatal blood and cried, “No! No!”

  He fell on Bagdadi and began tearing away the fat soldier’s clothes, but the blood kept coming. “Nissim!” he cried in an agonizing wail. His hands were smeared
with the blood and he shouted, “Nissim! We need you! The fortress …” He continued with incoherent phrases until Ilana persuaded two Palmach men to carry him home, where they placed him on a bed; then they returned to help celebrate the victory of 1,214 stubborn Jews over a final force of some 19,000 Arabs.

  For three days Isidore Gottesmann lay in physical and moral stupor. His body was worn out and his mind no longer tried to bring into clear focus the death of Bagdadi, who had symbolized the common destiny of Sephardim and Ashkenazim; the tall German sought the escape of sleep. But on the morning of May 13 Teddy Reich burst into the house, his eyes dancing with joy, whispering, “Lan! We’ve got to waken Gottesmann. Such news!”

  “Let him sleep,” Ilana replied, and little Teddy grasped her two hands in his one, danced giddily for a moment, then kissed her. She sat him in a chair.

  “It’s unbelievable, and I wanted Gottesmann to know,” the wiry leader whispered. “The fortress …”

  “What about it?” Ilana asked. Although she would not tell Teddy Reich so, she suspected that Gottesmann had fled reality because the prospect of assaulting that great stone monster was more than he could face up to.

  “Remember how the fortress terrified us?” Teddy looked at the sleeping man. “Maybe that’s what’s driven him to sleep.” Suddenly, out of compassion which he could not normally express, the driving commander of the Palmach lowered his head and placed his one hand over his face. An ordinary man would have had tears in his eyes. Teddy Reich merely wanted to cover the uncontrollable twitching of his chin. Then came a whisper: “This morning two boys from a village in the hills went to the great fort … door was open … nobody inside. They brought us secret papers … documents you wouldn’t believe. I went up there myself.” He started to laugh. He rose and walked with explosive passion about the narrow room. Then with his solitary hand he produced from his map holder a sheaf of papers which he spread before Ilana. They were secret orders to Arab field officers directing them to evacuate from Palestine all Arab civilians: “Command them to create maximum confusion and disrupt normal services. Assure them that within seven days Arab armies will capture all Palestine and they can then return to claim not only their old property but any Jewish holdings they desire.”