“Until I feel well enough. Then I’ll go. I’ve been alone a great deal lately.”
“I’ll speak to Mrs. Pappel.”
On the porch, away from Hugo and the doctor sewing him up, Yakob talked about the attack on the convoy and what Hugo had done.
He said to Mrs. Pappel, “I’d like to stay in Massuot Yitzhak. The others will, too. You need fighters. I was Palmach.”
“We have a guest house. You’ll be welcome there.”
Vince said, “I’ve been in charge of the defenses. I’ll be glad to turn it over to a Palmachnik.”
The doctor came out to say he’d put ten stitches in each of Hugo’s legs. Hugo was to rest for a week and have his bandages changed daily. Rivkah volunteered for that. They must watch his wounds for infection. Hugo would recover with a fine set of scars. The physician left into the night for the mile walk to Kfar Etzion.
Rivkah said, “Hugo wants to stay with us until he feels better.”
Yakob had no right to speak, this was not his home or decision, and lifted his hands to accept that he was out of turn, but said, “This morning, he was on death row.”
The redhead offered a memory of Hugo from two years ago, when Hugo had been the driver on a mission against a British coast guard facility. He recalled a dauntless little man fresh off the boat, who pitted himself against the police during a riot in Shefayim, made off with a cop’s hat, and stayed with Yakob when the police came. Yakob tugged up a pants leg to show a bullet scar below his knee, proof of the tale.
Vince told a story about Hugo, on the second day of his liberation from Buchenwald, emaciated and enraged, chasing German civilians around a Weimar fountain. Vince shook his head as if this were a pleasant remembrance.
Mrs. Pappel crossed her arms. “He was Irgun. He can’t be Irgun here.”
Rivkah left the porch. She entered her room to stand at the foot of the bed. Hugo lay as she’d left him, covered by the blanket, arms crossed in repose.
She asked, “Why are you here? Why did you come?”
“Because you have Palestine. You have all this. Why shouldn’t I?”
She took the chair to sit beside Hugo Ungar in her home.
“Do you know what they’re saying about you on the porch?”
“How could I?”
“Yakob said you were brave. Today on the road, and on some mission two years ago.”
“Do you believe him?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What did Vince say?”
“He told us about Weimar.”
“Ah, yes. Chasing Germans around a fountain. Did he mention a hanging?”
“No.”
“Good. And your Mrs. Pappel?”
“She’s decided that your past won’t follow you here.”
“If it’s as simple as that, I should have decided it myself long ago.”
The face above Rivkah’s blanket was a bland face. She said, “I understand your point now.”
“What point is that?”
“Why not build Palestine with a gun or a bomb? Why not use wickedness if nothing wicked sticks to you? Evil and violence are forgiven if they serve Palestine. You should hear them on the porch. You’re heroic.”
“I may have been. But that’s not my point at the moment.”
“Why not?”
“I have twenty stitches and no beer.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“Changed my mind. Let me see. After five years of waiting to go up a fucking chimney. Followed by five months of waiting for a noose and no one giving a fuck about me. Yes. I thought I’d try changing my mind.”
“What about the Irgun? Everything you’ve done?”
“Everything I’ve done is a drop in the bucket to what I’ve lost.”
Rivkah struggled to stay seated.
“You’ve lost? Do you know where you’ve come? Who we are here? We’ve all lost, some maybe more than you. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t ask the broken to carry the broken. We ask them to plant trees.”
“I’ll admit. You seem happier for it.”
“Is that why you came to Massuot Yitzhak?”
Hugo closed his eyes. “The doctor gave me something. I need to sleep.”
Rivkah stayed in the chair beside Hugo. In a minute, he began to breathe easy.
She collected clothes from her dresser; she’d spend the next week sleeping with Mrs. Pappel. Before leaving the room, Rivkah set a hand on Hugo’s arm through the wool. She felt his smallness and wondered how death had not caught up with this little man somewhere along the way.
December 13
The Arab shepherds of Surif and Jab’a were warned to stay out of the fields today.
Two thousand mourners were traveling from Jerusalem. The British had committed a massive force to escort a mile-long procession of vehicles on the heels of the attack on the relief convoy yesterday.
At noon, the first buses arrived in Kfar Etzion.
In the cemetery, the final depths of six graves were dug only minutes before the mass of dignitaries and rabbis descended into the Abu Rish. People in black picked their way to the fresh holes; three hundred settlers of Gush Etzion awaited, everyone in white work shirts and suspenders. Each had taken a turn with a shovel. Two hundred more settlers, on guard duty, would pay their respects tomorrow. Of the ten Jews killed in the convoy, six were from the Etzion bloc: four from Kfar Etzion, one from Ein Tzurim, one from Massuot Yitzhak. All had been Palmach. After the battle in the road, the British had taken the bodies to Jerusalem. They returned them now to the Gush.
Six caskets arrived draped in white and blue tallits, borne on the shoulders of Palmachniks. The cortege trekking down from Kfar Etzion was so long it took thirty minutes to assemble around the graves. After the coffins were set in place and the great crowd gathered, members of each kibbutz lit candles at the head of each casket.
The Sephardi chief rabbi recited Psalm 83, a prayer for the destruction of Israel’s enemies. The Ashkenazi chief rabbi eulogized the martyrs, concluding with a quote from Moses: “Neither shall you weep, nor even desist from your labor.” The two thousand from Jerusalem marched past to kiss the six pine boxes.
The line of mourners lasted another hour, then took the slow ascent from the wadi graveyard up to Kfar Etzion and the buses to Jerusalem. After the last griever had climbed the hill, gravediggers lowered the dead. Rivkah and Vince, Mrs. Pappel, Yakob, and all the haverim stayed behind and, in single file with the three hundred, threw shovelfuls into each grave.
At the rear of the line, the ten Palmach fighters who’d served as pallbearers, eight men plus Gabbi and another woman, tossed the last dirt into the holes. Rivkah didn’t catch her sister’s eye; Gabbi looked nowhere but into the graves. Rivkah and Gabbi hadn’t spoken in a month, though less than a mile separated them. Rivkah was her only true family, but Gabbi had found other sisters and brothers in the Palmach. For seven years, Rivkah had Missus Pappel and a community of settlers around her. In that time, Gabbi’s companions had been lost and searching. Rivkah would let her sister have whatever time and distance the girl needed to feel found again.
The immense convoy pulled away to Jerusalem; the British escorts joined them. Gabbi and her Palmachniks walked off to Revadim.
The settlers went to their homes to wash before dusk and the start of Shabbat Hanukkah. At her kitchen table, Rivkah asked Vince to light the menorah while Yakob said Kaddish for the dead. Seven days of mourning would pass alongside the days of Hanukkah.
Mrs. Pappel took tea to Hugo, whose wounds would not let him attend the funeral. Rivkah carried in the menorah to share the holiday with him. She sat with Mrs. Pappel and by the light of the candles told Hugo of the day.
1948
Are we really soldiers, is it a dream?…Despite the heavy mourning…the bell is sounded
and we respond; we eat, perform guard duty, hope and even laugh from time to time. Apparently, we are quite strong…Difficult days await us, but we will prevail, and we will yet see our children ambling among these trees, where danger now lurks behind every tree and rock.
—A letter from Massuot Yitzhak
January 1948
Chapter 80
Vince
January 5
Massuot Yitzhak
Young fathers clasped their children and made promises to their wives. Only for a few weeks, they said. Until we win.
Two British armored trucks idled on the quarry road. They’d been sent from Jerusalem to evacuate the Etzion bloc’s hundred mothers and children, among them eleven children and six mothers of Massuot Yitzhak.
An army captain climbed down from the lead truck when Mrs. Pappel and Vince approached. The officer presented himself properly starched. Mrs. Pappel shook his hand while Vince stayed a step behind.
“Captain. I’m Missus Pappel.”
“You’re in charge?”
“For the moment.”
“If your people are ready to go, please load them in. Be advised, I have a squad of soldiers inside every vehicle. I don’t want to frighten your women and children.”
“It’s not a concern.”
Vince retreated to stand with Rivkah on the shoulder of the road, to wave goodbye to their friends. The captain extended an arm to block Mrs. Pappel, a polite gesture for her to stay a moment. “Madam. If I may.”
“Yes?”
“I received a rather odd order last evening. I am to make certain a Missus Pappel is on board a transport.”
“Really? I was mentioned by name. How flattering.”
“We’re to evacuate the elderly, as well.”
“Do I look elderly, Captain?”
“It’s not for me to say, Madam. But why would you be singled out for evacuation? Are you the relative of a dignitary?”
“No. It was probably Pinchus.”
“The Irgun’s Pinchus?”
“You’ve heard of him, then?”
“Quite.”
The officer hooked thumbs in his gun belt. “Madam, should I arrest you for something?”
She rested a hand on her own sidearm, for which she would have been sentenced to death months ago.
“Young man, you’re a little late.”
Mrs. Pappel scooped up one of the toddlers. She kissed the girl’s cheek before handing her up to a soldier in the rear gate. She helped the little girl’s mother inside. The air in the truck was dark and close; the seats were benches and the windows mere slits, gun ports.
The officer asked, “May I help you up?”
“I have no intention of leaving.”
“I have orders.”
“And to obey them you will have to lay hands on me. In the middle of a Jewish settlement. Are you willing to do that? No? Then safe travels.”
Mrs. Pappel pivoted quickly enough for her ponytail to barely miss the officer.
The convoy lurched out of Massuot Yitzhak. The settlers lined the lane, arms raised in salute as much as farewell.
Chapter 81
JANUARY 10
MASSUOT YITZHAK
PALESTINE
By Vincent Haas
Herald Tribune News Service
THE CHILDREN HAVE BEEN evacuated from Massuot Yitzhak. They are gone, their laughter with them. At the end of the workdays, they do not wait in the road to greet their parents from fields and workshops. The teacher has no students, the barn workers no little ones to help in the barns and the chicken run. The children do not galivant around the gardens; they are no longer here to be shooed or shushed or comforted.
Water shipments from Jerusalem have been cancelled for the next month, following the ambush on the convoy in December where ten Haganah fighters were killed. No traffic comes to Gush Etzion. The winter rains have slackened; the cisterns are not filling. Each settler is permitted one shower per week; laundry is limited to essentials.
Diesel for the generators is reserved for nighttime to power Massuot Yitzhak’s searchlights and the lights on the perimeter fence, also to operate machinery and the bakery. There’s no more kerosene; homes make do with candles, early bedtimes, and extra blankets.
After the evening meal, the kibbutzniks gather around their few radios to listen to broadcasts from the Haganah’s Kol Israel station. Reports of the world, especially the civil war with the Arabs rising in Palestine, are distorted or incomplete. Relief packages dropped by small single-engine Auster airplanes twice a week rarely include newspapers.
Over the past month, three convoys have reached Gush Etzion. The first on Christmas Day brought a platoon of fifty students from Hebrew University who pull guard duty and have thrown themselves into the work of building fortifications. Today, sixty young Haganah fighters arrived with thirty weapons. Twelve were assigned to Massuot Yitzhak, a necessary strain on the kibbutz’s meager resources. I begged their driver to wait while I dashed off this column, for him to take it to Jerusalem and radio my copy editor in Tel Aviv.
One convoy of relief supplies arrived two weeks ago. Hungry settlers and fighters crammed around the vehicles. Soldiers bounced on toes for letters and packages; the few married men hoped for word from wives, but most of the settlers received no mail. Their loved ones are already around them.
Massuot Yitzhak has become a cold and wanting place. Searchlights sweep across the wadis and over the inclines of Rock Hill and Yellow Hill, past the quiet quarry and through the leafless orchard, north to dark little Revadim and Ein Tzurim. The pioneers of this hilltop swore to build Palestine, for themselves, for their dead, for the living who will one day come or be born here. But this was not what they swore to create. This is guns, spotlights, sandbags, and stone walls, an outpost without families. Reporting from Massuot Yitzhak, Palestine.
Chapter 82
Hugo
January 14
Hugo felt a nap coming on. The sun had risen enough to warm the white hillside and make him wish to return to his bed. He slumped to the bottom of the foxhole. Hugo might doze if Yakob would stop talking.
Yakob talked all the time. He scheduled Hugo’s hours on watch to mesh with his own. Red Yakob was immune to sarcasm. Hugo threw him tidbits, got him started, then let him roll by like clouds to pass the hours, but Yakob wouldn’t stop when Hugo wanted him to.
In close quarters Yakob smelled bad, even outdoors. Yakob was hungry, too. Hugo muttered he would get used to it. Yesterday’s convoy with fuel and food was ambushed on the return trip to Jerusalem. Two Haganah defenders were killed. That would likely be the final shipment for a while.
Last night, Yakob had spoken on the settlement’s radio with his mother in Jerusalem. She told him she was scared for him, and hungry, too. That made Yakob feel worse about being away. Hugo shifted on the floor of the foxhole to signal that he was trying to settle in.
Yakob took up the subject of constructing a runway in the valley. Supplies and reinforcements could be landed in Gush Etzion, bypassing the blocked roads; no more parachutes drifting outside the perimeter or crates crashing to earth.
Yakob said, “Can you drive a bulldozer?”
“I suppose.”
“Then, see, there’s work for you. Building a runway. Something you’ll be good at.”
This seemed a small jibe at Hugo’s poor approach to soldiering.
The putter of a light plane swelled overhead, suddenly making sense of Yakob’s random remarks about a landing strip.
Yakob kneed Hugo. “Come on. Get up.”
Hugo slid his legs under him. The wounds in his thighs had knit, but if he took a wrong step the scars sizzled.
A Piper Cub dove toward the hillside. The plane booted out a crate. A blue parachute opened and immediately collapsed. The crate plummeted a hundred mete
rs down the slope and crashed to splinters. The parachute had been only a bed linen. A mule cart would have to rattle down to fetch it. First, the crate had to be found, checked out, and marked.
Yakob tapped Hugo. “You go, Hugo.”
“That’s not funny, and no.”
Yakob stuffed Hugo’s rifle into his arms. “Find what’s left of the crate. Stay by it. I’ll send the wagon when it comes.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“Because if I go, you’ll fall asleep.”
“I won’t.”
“Hugo.” Yakob cocked his head, kindly. “You will.”
“Alright.” Hugo struggled out of the foxhole, slapping away the redhead’s attempt to help him.
Hugo’s gun was heavy and upset his balance on the uneven hill. His legs hadn’t regained their stamina. The incline had been burned clean of life, then the winter had done the rest. With all the brush and weeds gone, the hill looked unfertile forever.
Halfway to the crate, Hugo paused behind a chest-high sandstone boulder. Arab bands had been reported in the surrounding hills. He spotted the blue sheet flapping on the bleached earth and waved back at Yakob, who motioned him to keep going.
Hugo spit, unhappy to be out here by himself. He’d already been alone as much as any man in Palestine.
He inched from behind the boulder. Both legs griped as Hugo crouched downhill where boxes and tins littered the ground, a scatter of noodle cartons, tins of fruit and kosher meat, and ammo cartons. He tiptoed through the debris to stand on a stone to signal Yakob.
A flutter caught his eye, fifty meters downhill in a dry streambed.
“Oh, damn.”
In the shallow ravine, sixty Arabs squatted; Hugo had caught them hiding. Their robes and headdresses flicked on the windswept slope, but nothing else of them moved. The Arabs hunkered as if surprised or embarrassed to be seen. Hugo held his breath and his place on the stone; his legs prickled to get out of there and run shrieking to Yakob. Half the Arabs stooping in the crusty dirt were women and children. The rest were older, worn faces. These were fellahin, peasants. Every one held a sack; none had a gun.
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