Isaac's Beacon

by David L. Robbins

  One boy said, “Kharda.”

  Hugo did not ask his name. “Have you done this before?”

  “This is my first.”

  “What have you been doing all morning? Never mind. Tell me what you will do.”

  The young Irgunist held out a grenade. “Throw this inside when the door opens.”

  Hugo indicated the pin. “Pull that first.”

  “I will.”

  “Then shoot everything but me and those two. Got it?”

  The squad surrounding the house opened fire to cover the arrival of the sapper. He brought only one gelignite stick, laid it down, lit the fuse, and took off again. The Irgun boys moved back on the marble porch, hands over their ears.

  The blast blew down the door. Two Irgunists tossed their grenades across the smoking threshold; the young one pulled the pin and added his. One, two, then three blasts flashed, shrapnel buzzed out the opened portal. Hugo yanked the boy to his feet and with a hand in his back shoved him inside, the other two followed Hugo closely.

  Instantly, the boy fired into the grey boiling cloud; screeches came from the staircase. Hugo pushed the boy’s gun down; women were screaming. The pair of Irgunists rushed past them to go deal with the sniper on the second floor.

  Three Arab women cowered on the staircase. Two were young like the Irgun boy; the third was an elder, perhaps their grandmother.

  “Take them outside.” Hugo pushed the boy again to make him move. The lad leveled his gun at the three. He spoke Hebrew, gently, for them to go outside or he would kill them. They hurried ahead of the boy’s rifle.

  On the second floor, another grenade went off. Two shots snapped.

  Hugo crept into the still-hazy den off the main hall. Furniture lay overturned and split open, curtains were mangled and much chinaware was in shards. In the debris lay two men, both in khaki uniforms, one in a red-checkered keffiyeh. Hugo advanced with the muzzle of his Sten in their stunned eyes.

  “Up.”

  The Arabs staggered to their feet without their weapons, barely conscious. Both bled from their ears. The two Irgunists clomped down the stairs; one disappeared to clear the rest of the house. The other spoke Arabic.

  He asked the Arabs who they were. Dust-coated and woozy, they produced papers. These were not stonecutters of Deir Yassin: one was Iraqi, the other Syrian, come to fight the Jews. Hugo’s Sten pointed for them to head for the door.

  On the porch, the boy waited behind the women. With the house pacified, the squad stepped from cover. The two Irgunists trudged off, job done. Hugo walked out guarding his two shuffling prisoners; ahead, the boy prodded the three women into the open.

  “Move aside.”

  Hugo did not see who’d called out. The Iraqi and Syrian halted, arms high, the women, too. The elder woman looked back to Hugo as if he were her protector.

  Twenty yards away, the barrel of a light machine gun was leveled at Hugo. Behind the Bren was the little gunner who’d fired the first tracers to open the battle.

  “Walk away, Kharda. You, too.”

  No one seemed to know the Irgun boy’s name. The Bren gunner lowered his cheek to the stock. On the verge of tears, he said, “For my brother Bobby.”

  The Irgun boy said, “No.” Hugo shoved him hard.

  The Bren gunner let Hugo leap clear before slaughtering the Iraqi, the Syrian, and the three women. No one stopped him. The Bren still had tracer rounds in the magazine. The silk wrap of the old woman caught fire, and on the ground her clothes ignited. Hugo turned the Irgun boy away to move deeper into Deir Yassin.

  At noon, the assault reached the village center. There, the Irgunists joined the smaller Lehi force. Neither group would answer to the other’s commanders. The Lehi, too, were low on ammunition and explosives. The assault had stalled.

  Arab women were pressed into carrying Jewish wounded to the rear. Snipers shot at them, dropping some. Getting the hurt and dead to safety became almost impossible.

  No one knew how many Arabs were killed. Corpses by the dozens lay in the dirt lanes and alleys, many more inside the stone homes, killed by grenades, bullets, or entombed in rubble. At least a hundred villagers had been killed, half were women and children.

  Twice that many prisoners had been taken. The Irgun gave them the choice of being trucked to the Jerusalem’s Moslem Quarter or to a neighboring village.

  With the sun high, Hugo rested his back against a shaded wall. Six fighters did the same, helmets in their hands and rifles on their laps. Around the corner, the last Arabs fighting in Deir Yassin had turned a big house into a fortress. From windows and parapets, they shot at any Jew who showed his head. The Irgun and Lehi mounted several assaults together; all failed.

  Fifteen Palmach arrived to ask about the wounded and how they might assist in the evacuation. When they saw the attack had bogged down and the wounded couldn’t be moved, the Palmachniks said they would enter the fight.

  Hugo had three full magazines for his Sten. Donning his helmet, he got to his feet and approached the Palmach commander.

  “My name is Kharda.”

  Chapter 106

  Hugo

  Hugo strapped his empty Sten across his back.

  He strode through areas of the village controlled by the Irgun, where every window was shattered and every home gutted behind its stone face. Hugo walked by spring blossoms and gardens in the yards.

  Potshots spurted out of the western part of Deir Yassin from the mukhtar’s house where several Arabs had barricaded themselves; the mukhtar’s house might not fall until tomorrow.

  Jewish fighters denuded Arab corpses of valuables, money, and jewelry. No one prevented this. Those homes still standing were rummaged for clocks, silver, lamps, and pots. Irgun and Lehi sat not far from the dead to eat their first meal of the day.

  An order came down from the Haganah to dispose of the Arab bodies. The fighters combed through the wreckage they’d made, but the effort was halfhearted. The debris of the stonecutters’ village was heavy; recovering crushed corpses proved too much for the exhausted boys. The stench of defecation, blood, and putrefaction in the rubble overwhelmed them. The recovery effort soon stopped, left for others who had not fought in Deir Yassin.

  Burning the corpses seemed the easiest way of disposal. Everywhere in the village, bodies smoldered but would not catch fire. The clothes burned, but wool and cotton made poor kindling, and no one had gasoline; the bodies only charred. The smoke they made was filthy from fat. When the fires burned out, the corpses were not ash but uglier things, things Hugo had seen before. Hugo and every Jew wore a bandana across their face which made them appear like thieves.

  Until dusk, Hugo walked all of Deir Yassin. He didn’t eat nor loot, did not search through the rubble, did nothing anyone told him to do. He gave away his Sten.

  With the sun disappearing, Hugo stood in front of eight solid homes, all captured by him and the Palmach at the end of the fighting. Hugo didn’t recall what he’d done inside these houses, only the rattle of his Sten and the dust on his tongue. The Palmachniks had dragged bodies into the street to warn the Arabs defending the next house to come out. The Arabs had not.

  Hugo finished his long walk around Deir Yassin where he began this morning, outside the orchard, standing over the first three Arabs to die. He was numb, and comfortable with the numbness.

  After dark, disobeying orders, Hugo left Deir Yassin.

  Chapter 107

  Vince

  April 11

  Jerusalem

  Hugo arrived by bicycle.

  He pedaled up Chancellor Avenue and rang the handlebar bell when he saw Vince standing in the hospital courtyard.

  Chancellor and Jaffa Streets were quiet; Jerusalem under siege kept its voice down.

  No traffic rolled through the intersection, just bikes and military vehicles. Days ago, a sixty-truck convoy
had reached Jerusalem, the first in weeks, bringing food, fuel, and ammo, enough to keep the city surviving. In a window of his ward, Vince and his nurse cheered the column. None of the other wounded could join them but raised their voices from their beds.

  Hugo dismounted the bike beside an elm shading the patio. When he leaned the bike on its kickstand, the thing keeled over, taking two parked bikes with it. The tangle of wheels and frames frustrated Hugo, and he left them jumbled.

  He climbed the steps. Vince greeted him with a lefthanded clasp.

  “Why did you ride a bicycle?”

  “The taxis aren’t running. Besides, I still don’t have any money.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I don’t know. I just took it.”

  “You stole it?”

  “They’re everywhere, like cats. I don’t think anybody actually owns a bicycle.” Hugo peered down on the heap he’d left. “How are you?”

  “They let me outside today.” Vince wiggled the fingers of his right hand hanging from the sling. “My arm hurts. But it works. What about you? You okay?”

  Hugo shrugged. The question wasn’t adequate.

  “Did he come?”

  “Over there.”

  Across the patio, on a bench under another elm, the Herald Tribune reporter got heavily to his feet.

  Hugo said, “He’s fat. No one should be fat in a starving city.”

  “I think he knows some shady people.”

  “So do you.”

  “Listen.” Vince put a hand on Hugo to stop him walking across the patio. “Before you talk to him. Tell me quick. What happened?”

  “What have you heard?”

  “That there was a massacre. Is it true?”

  “Some of it.”

  “How much?”

  “How much has to be true before all of it is?”

  Hugo strode across the sunny flagstones, Vince followed. Beneath the elm, the reporter and Hugo shook hands.

  “Thank you for talking with me. Mister…?”

  “Kharda.”

  “Is here okay?”

  The reporter gestured to the shaded bench. Hugo remained standing, and Vince took the seat. The reporter sat to flip open his notebook.

  “You were at Deir Yassin. With the Irgun.”

  “I was.”

  “May I ask a question first?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you talking to me?”

  “I’ve been instructed to.”

  Vince raised his good hand. “Normally, he’d talk to me.”

  The reporter waggled his pencil between himself and Vince. “I get it, I’m second place. Guess what? I don’t care. Now, Mister Kharda.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Irgun has made a statement that two hundred and fifty-four Arabs were killed. That’s a very specific number. Does that sound accurate to you?”

  “It’s impossible to know an exact count. Corpses were everywhere. In the streets and alleys, inside the houses, in the quarries. Parts of bodies.”

  “You were there. Is it a proper figure or not?”

  “It is the number the Irgun wishes to report.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is a very big number.”

  “I see. Alright. Tell me about the battle.”

  Hugo paced, hands behind his back like a man talking to himself in a cell.

  The battle was to start with a pre-dawn warning to Deir Yassin from a loudspeaker in an armored car. The car was found abandoned, stuck in a ditch far from the village. Hugo never heard the warning. Seventy-two Irgun attacked from the south, an uphill fight. Lehi attacked out of the north, downhill. Lehi made better progress with half the fighters.

  “The fighting was fierce, mostly in the first few hours. We blew up dozens of buildings. The rest we cleared with grenades and guns. In all the smoke, shooting in tight quarters, no one could be sure who or how many died in each house. Any Arab who stayed in Deir Yassin was captured or killed.” Without remorse, Hugo repeated, “Any Arab.”

  “Did the Irgun and Lehi fight well?”

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  “You’re not trained as soldiers. You’re not Haganah. You’re terrorists.”

  “Two hundred and fifty-four. Draw from that what you wish.”

  The reporter raised a palm, the point taken. “What time did the battle end?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “Then what?”

  “We told the Haganah, here is the village, we’re done. You take it; we don’t want to stay.”

  “Why not?”

  “You understand. The British are leaving Palestine. But they hate the Irgun and Lehi. We’ve given them good reason. In Deir Yassin, a hundred of us were in one place, a blasted-out village with no Arabs left. We were afraid the British might bomb us or attack us. We wanted to go. But the Haganah said no.”

  “Why?”

  “They told us to clean it up before the Red Cross arrived.”

  “Clean it up?”

  “The bodies.”

  The reporter looked up from his scribbles. “Did you bury them?”

  “After a day of combat, to ask us to lift cement blocks and Jerusalem stone to uncover the remains? No. We did not dig graves.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We threw the Arabs into the wells and the quarries. We made piles and tried to burn them. Are you judging me?”

  “Professionally, no. Personally? Of course I am. I think you should get used to it, Mister Kharda.”

  The reporter scratched in his notebook. “You burned piles of bodies.”

  “They were not the first I have seen. Would you like to ask me about that?”

  Vince wanted to stop the interview. He regretted bringing this callous man to do the job that should be his. But his arm was in a sling, and this ape was Dennis’s reporter in Jerusalem now. Vince stood from the bench, because Hugo needed to see him stand.

  Hugo waved him back down to the bench. The reporter remained aloof and asked more.

  “I heard there was looting. Jewelry and money were taken off the dead.”

  “That is so.”

  “What about rape?”

  “Have you been told there was rape?”

  “It’s in the wind.”

  “I saw no instances.”

  “What about the Arabs who surrendered?”

  “Again, what have you heard?”

  “Prisoners, mostly women, children, and elderly got trucked into the Old City. Driven around. Crowds spit at them. Then they were driven back to Deir Yassin and executed in a quarry.”

  “You’ve been told this?”

  “Why would I make it up, Mister Kharda?”

  Birds in the elm caught Hugo’s attention. He gazed into the lightly swaying branches.

  “What is your name?” Before the reporter could reply, Hugo faced Vince, “What is his name?” Hugo waved off both questions. “I don’t care.”

  He walked away, hands in his pockets. In the sunlit center of the courtyard, Hugo halted, then returned under the elm. The reporter addressed him straightaway.

  “Was this a slaughter, Mister Kharda? You said you were instructed to talk to me. Is that what I’m supposed to hear? Deir Yassin was a slaughter?”

  Hugo’s hands stayed jammed in his pockets. Vince got to his feet. “That’s enough.”

  Hugo rattled his head. He’d been told to do Pinchus’s bidding, and he would do it one more time.

  “The Arabs have committed atrocities. Every Jew knows what they are. Yesterday, in Deir Yassin, we ran out of Arabs to kill. Write that.”

  Hugo swung his small shoulders sideways like a door opened to usher the reporter out.

  The reporter shut his notebook and sto
od beside Vince. “I hope your shoulder heals up.”

  Without a word to Hugo, the man walked off. Hugo took the reporter’s place on the bench. Vince sat beside him, softly, as though one of the birds had landed.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “Not all of it. You said not all.”

  “No.”

  “Was it two hundred and fifty?”

  “No.”

  “How many?”

  “Maybe a hundred.”

  “What about the prisoners on the trucks? Were they shot in the quarries?”

  “I didn’t see it. But there were excesses. There was brutality. It was war.”

  “Then why the hell did you let him walk out of here thinking it was a massacre? He’s going to print that.”

  “Pinchus wants him to.”

  “Why would Pinchus want that? What’s in it for him?”

  “What’s in it for everyone? Pinchus boasts about the number of Arabs we killed; it adds to our prestige. The Haganah gets to label us terrorists one more time, which helps their narrative that we don’t belong in the government. The Arabs slander all Jews as savages. The British add this to our crimes. Everyone profits from a massacre at Deir Yassin.”

  “Hugo, this is dangerous.”

  “Is it? Are you keeping up with the news? Today, three more villages were deserted. Three thousand Arabs, gone, without a shot fired. The Arabs are terrified. A hundred thousand will leave Palestine on their own, just because they’re afraid Deir Yassin will happen to them.”

  Vince let moments go by. More birds sang overhead.

  Hugo said, “You should know. I would have.”

  “Would have what?”

  “Kept killing. I did run out.” Hugo strode off. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He went down the patio stairs to the mangle of bicycles. Hugo didn’t know which one he’d ridden, so he abandoned them all. He turned to Vince at the courtyard railing.