by Alan Collins
One night that Spring, they made love with a fierce passion. Peg rested Jacob’s hand on her belly. ‘‘A good place for a baby to grow, eh, Yakov?’’
‘‘I can’t think of a better one,’’ he whispered to her. He kissed her forehead. ‘‘Just think — we might have a Jewish red-head.’’
‘‘Don’t forget the freckles! There’s only one problem though, Yakov.’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Who’d believe that he — or she — could be Joshua’s brother or sister?’’
Yakov wrapped her in his arms. ‘‘I don’t care — do you?’’
‘‘Not really.’’ With her mouth close to his she told him that in her letters home to Bathurst, she had not told her mother about Joshua. ‘‘And I know you haven’t written about it to Mrs Rothfield, either. Oh, Yakov, such a lot has happened to us in such a short time.’’ She sat up in bed and tickled him. ‘‘Crumbs, in a few months, we have become Mummy and Daddy, or Ima and Aba, and now we are Mister and Missus. They don’t move that fast in Bathurst or Bondi, do they?’’
Jacob, drifting off into sleep, was jolted awake at her mention of Bondi. How far away it all was from this little hut, with a wife beside him, a rifle in the cupboard and a child to hug him in the morning. His days were now so filled with worthwhile things to do, it was as though he was reborn. The emptiness of his life that ensued when he, his father and Solly had moved to The Balconies, had never fully left him. Now he would never again need to seek shelter in the crevices of the rocks at Bondi. With Peg beside him, he knew that at last, complete and absolute happiness was his.
In his head he tried to compose a letter to Mrs Rothfield.
Dear Mrs Rothfield,
(or, now that he was a married man, could he address her as Shulamit or perhaps Chaver — yes that was it!)
Dear Chaver,
Guess what? Peg and I are married!!! Well, we are practically an old married couple by now. We were married a few weeks ago on this kibbutz, Jezreel, under a chupa by a real rabbi and I stamped on the glass and broke it and the rabbi said it was in remembrance of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, but Avi, who is the kibbutz leader says it is to remind us of how fragile life is. Oh well, whatever, we’re properly married, and Pnina (that’s Peg’s Hebrew name) has a beautiful certificate to prove it.
NOW, MRS SHULAMIT ROTHFIELD, are you sitting down? WE HAVE A BABY SON!!!
It’s a long story but little Joshua (about two and a half) is not ours by — you know. We got him after his mother drowned trying to get ashore with a boatload of refugees. There’s a bit more to tell you but I’m so tired. Tomorrow Pnina and I are being sent to the northern border of the kibbutz to do guard duty. Pnina’s job is to set up a first-aid post there and I’m to do perimeter patrol. Remember your picture of the guard on horseback? Well, I’m the same — except there’s no horse!
He fell asleep, undecided about how to end the letter… ‘‘Yours sincerely’’…‘‘Lovingly’’?
They awoke together. A small shiver went through Jacob as he remembered what they had to do this day. His eye went to the cupboard where the rifle was resting like a savage dog waiting to be unleashed. Peg understood his feelings. She knew that what he felt was not cowardice but a real abhorrence of killing. He had helped her with her first-aid studies; the graphic pictures sent shudders through them both. Now she put her arms about him, bringing him close to her until they lay side by side. They made love as equals, as sharers in sexual joy and whatever else the day would bring.
Trucks were rumbling past their door. Farm vehicles had been fitted with two-way field radios and many carried rolls of barbed wire. Drivers wore tin hats and looked grim.
A truck pulled off the road outside their hut. It was driven by Uri, the kibbutz poultry expert; only now he was Uri the trench expert. On the back of his truck was a small ditch-dig-ger, the earth from its last job, digging a sewerage line, still clinging to it. Next to him was Aviva, and, to Jacob and Peg’s delight, Shirley had brought Joshua. The little boy gurgled ‘‘Ima’’, and Peg melted. She hugged and kissed him, then, after a nudge from Jacob, reluctantly handed him over. Jacob was nervous with the child and the boy sensed it. The combination of a rifle on one shoulder and a child on the other was still, for Jacob, too big a gap to bridge. Shirley recognised the problem. She picked Joshua up. ‘‘Now you two,’’ she called in a broad Cockney accent, ‘‘get up on the bloody truck, it ain’t goin’ to wait all day.’’ Uri put Peg’s first-aid emergency bag in the back with Aviva’s radio gear. There was only room for one more in the cabin, so Peg climbed in beside Uri, who gave off his customary chookyard smell. Jacob got in the back and hoped the ditch-digger was secure.
Aviva, who had been up most of the night monitoring Arab radio, spoke above the roar of the truck engine. ‘‘The news is not good. The main road through the valley of Jezreel has been harrassed by Arab positions on Mount Gilboa. A bus on its way from Jerusalem to Atarot hit a road mine and fourteen passengers were killed. The British have abandoned defence of the north and are only interested in the coastal strip.’’ She fiddled with the truck radio but could only get static, with the occasional Arab broadcast from Trans Jordan.
The truck was now second last in the convoy that headed up towards the Arab border town of Afula. Avi had been directed by the Palmach brigade HQ to take up defensive positions on the Israeli Partition border. He had about fifty men and three women — Nurit, Aviva and Peg — under his command. Jacob was only just beginning to realise what a tiny country Palestine was. From the Gulf of Akaba on the Red Sea was about 300 miles to the northern border and from Haifa to the Jordan River was no more than seventy-five miles. The Partition border had even cut the country in half to make Jerusalem a shared Arab-Jewish capital. From Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean to Jerusalem was about thirty miles.
From their kibbutz to the Jordan River border was less than twenty miles.
Suddenly, Peg felt Aviva’s body go tense. She had been trying to tune her field pack radio when without warning it blared forth in strident Hebrew. Uri jammed on the brakes. Aviva called up Avi in the lead truck.
‘‘Attack on Kibbutz Mishma Ha’emek. Request render immediate assistance.’’
A runner was sent to the other trucks. Avi turned west at the next junction. As they proceeded, Jacob, from his vantage position, saw puffs of smoke before he heard the whoompf of field guns. Fortunately, the trucks entered a wadi, which gave some shelter — but it soon petered out. The artillery sounds became louder; as they entered the kibbutz perimeter, a shell whistled overhead. Jacob lay flat on the truck floor until it stopped and Uri let down the tailgate.
The women ran for the shelter of the concrete buildings. Jacob went to help Peg with her kit. Uri misunderstood his action. ‘You don’t go with the women. You help me. Here we dig in. It is front line, n’est pas ?’’
Jacob was so surprised to discover that Uri was originally French that he forgot to protest at the inference of cowardice. ‘‘What a strange country this is,’’ he said out loud.
‘‘And you? From the bottom of the world you come with your lady to dig a slit trench here where already there has been a hundred wars for this tiny piece of land.’’
All the trucks had now arrived. Avi was impressively calm, issuing orders as the shellfire increased, the Arab gunners finding their range. Uri drove the ditch-digger until steam came out of its radiator; Jacob joined the gang shovelling up the earth to make a higher embankment. Now the shellfire was joined by mortars. The men answered back with small artillery pieces. After a while the shelling stopped. The men were jubilant. Avi surmised that all it meant was that the Arab forces had run out of ammunition.
‘‘Now they will send the fanatics down the hill with rifles,’’ he predicted.
Jacob crouched in the trench, his old Lee Enfield rifle ready with the safety catch off, the sights adjusted just as Abe Lewis’s handbook had instructed him. He hoped that he would never see th
e Arab shepherd boy in the rifle’s sights. Uri was next to him; the chook smell now had the odour of fear mingled with it. He held a British Sten gun in a nervous grip. At the other end of the trench, Avi had mounted a Bren gun, its tripod splayed out on sandbags. It looked to Jacob like a threatening, misshapen bird.
The women came down the track carrying a large tray with bottles on it. Jacob thought it was a rather odd time to be serving drinks, but a man near Jacob cheered. ‘‘Molotov cocktails — haven’t seen one of those since I fought in the Warsaw Ghetto!’’ Nurit stood them at intervals along the parapet at the back of the trench. ‘‘If the Arabs get thirsty, boys, here’s a hot drink for them!’’ she said. The bottles reeked of petrol, and a rag wick was jammed in each top. She ran back to the concrete building before Jacob could ask her about Peg.
There was a midday stillness in the air. The tamarisk trees were a carved filigree against the skyline. Then a goat ambled placidly across the hillside, turning the rocks over with its hooves to get at the moss underneath. The bullet that tore it apart continued on its deflected trajectory and pinged against a rock. Even as the goat’s legs gave a nervous death twitch, an enfilade of bullets swept the earthworks of the trenches. Uri fired round after round while Jacob experienced the kick of the old Lee Enfield as he fired his first shot ever at a definable target. On the crest of the hill he had seen clearly the Arab kefiah head-dress. It was this he had set the rifle’s sight on and now it had gone.
Jacob was sure he had killed a man.
Avi had not fired the Bren gun. He watched dispassionately at the exchange of small arms fire, his finger tight on the machine-gun trigger. What he had expected now happened. A wave of Arabs swept down the hillside, rifles fired on the run, shouting ‘‘Allah Akbar!’’ (God is great.) Avi took no notice of the frantic return fire of his men until, when no more than three hundred yards separated him from the Arabs, he raked the hillside with the Bren gun.
As suddenly as the gun battle had started, it changed to an awful silence broken only by the cries of a wounded Arab lying on open ground directly in front of Jacob’s section of trench, at about a hundred yards distance. The women left the shelter of the concrete and came out to the trenches. Jacob could see the man’s shattered leg. He wanted to go to his aid, but in the time it took him to make up his mind, Uri had heaved himself out of the trench. Peg, with a field dressing kit in her hand, climbed the little wooden steps out of the trench and ran after Uri. As they reached the man, a machine gun clattered out from the top of the rise. It cut up the dirt, Peg, Uri and the wounded man indiscriminately. Every gun in the trench was fired in despairing answer, but it was a futile descant that could not restore life to the three whose blood now mingled on soil that had seen uncountable years of fighting.
Avi held Jacob, his head pressed against his chest. If Avi had anticipated a struggle to hold him, he was hopelessly wrong. Jacob hung on to him, devoid of muscle, of nerve, of fibre to hold himself together. He made no attempt to free himself and looked across the dirt to the untidy sprawl of bodies. From afar he could hear a woman sobbing. It came nearer as Nurit brought Aviva along the trench line to Avi, who opened his massive arms to enfold both Jacob and Aviva. The acrid smell of cordite was fading — or perhaps it was supplanted by the mild perfume Aviva wore. Whatever it was, it gave Jacob the feeling that the terrible events of the past few minutes had not really happened, that he and Peg would soon get on the truck and go back to their hut —.
He felt a wetness on his neck, he freed himself and looked up at Avi. Tears were flowing down his face to end their course in the thickets of his beard. Now Jacob broke away and climbed out of the trench, followed by Aviva. Avi waited for a few minutes while the two of them sat beside the bodies in silent grief, then he signalled another man and they approached carrying a stretcher. Peg had been shredded by bullets, her body a torn and ragged mess. Her green eyes still stared hard at the Israeli sky. Avi and the other man lifted her lovingly on to the stretcher. Jacob covered her with his jacket. As they moved away, he ran behind a scrubby tree and was violently sick.
Kibbutz Jezreel could no longer be a home to Jacob. Where once he had seen its hard-edged concrete buildings and shabby little huts through the eyes of love, it now held no more charm for him than a Bondi block of flats. He looked at each member of the kibbutz as though the selection of Peg for death was like the death of his young brother Solly — yet another unfathomable injustice.
The kibbutz members had gathered in the olive grove for Peg’s burial. Avi, who dug the grave himself, offered to bring his uncle, the rabbi who had married them, to officiate but Jacob had refused.
Avi agreed. ‘‘It is not necessary, Jacob. We in Israel unfortunately have experience enough…’’
Peg’s body was sheathed in a white shroud. Avi and Jacob lowered it gently into its stony grave. She was given a coverlet of Aleppo pine needles to soften the sound of the falling soil.
Avi turned to Jacob. ‘‘Do you want say anything?’’
Jacob did not answer. He turned and beckoned to Shirley, who stood at the back of the mourners with Joshua in her arms. She came to his side and wordlessly handed Joshua over to him. Together they approached the edge of the grave; he put the boy down, held his hand and together they let a handful of the soil trickle through their fingers into the grave. Joshua thought it was a game. He gathered up more soil and threw it in.
Then Jacob lifted Joshua into his arms. The little boy left his dirty finger marks on Jacob’s white shirt. Jacob turned slowly to the kibbutzniks.
Through his tears he said, ‘‘I should hate this country for taking away the only real happiness I have ever known. It’s no consolation to me or to Aviva to be told our loved ones died in a good cause. No country and no war is a good cause if it robs us of the ones we love.’’
Joshua struggled to be put down. He played with the mound of dirt at the graveside. Jacob, watching him, went on, ‘‘You accepted Peg as one of you. She even had a beautiful new Hebrew name — the name that was on her marriage certificate and will now be on her…’’ He paused and stared hard at the grave. ‘‘Oh God,’’ he cried, ‘‘let’s fill the bloody thing in and let me go.’’
The men quickly filled in the grave according to Jewish custom. As they walked back to the kibbutz buildings, Shirley said to him, ‘‘Jacob, kibbutz life is not for everyone. I can tell you now, that it is not for me. And a kibbutz is not a refuge for the unhappy — which is what I am — but,’’ she shrugged, ‘‘Ein brera — I have no alternative.’’
They drew level with the little hut, Joshua made a dash for it, calling ‘‘Ima, Ima!”
Jacob fought back the hot tears. Shirley skilfully distracted the little boy and they continued walking. ‘‘Look, Jacob, take my advice. Go home. There is going to be more fighting and killing here. Israel will get its independence and then all hell will break loose once the British leave. Take Joshua away to Australia — even I have heard of your famous Bondi beach.’’
They reached the children’s house. Shirley slipped away. Jacob got down on the floor and built a tower of blocks. Joshua said, ‘‘Tov, Aba.’’
Jacob drew him close. ‘‘Now Joshua, you will also have to learn to say ‘Good on you, Daddy.’ ’’
Joshua was engrossed in his play. Jacob sat close to him, watching the little boy intently. There was no point in searching his face for traces of Peg but perhaps some of her mannerisms would be perpetuated in him, some tiny link that he could nurture and cherish.
A shadow fell across them. Avi, for all his bulk, had moved silently into the room. Nurit was by his side. The two of them crouched down; Nurit reached out her arms to Joshua then changed her mind. Avi put his huge hand forward and delicately placed one block on top of another. Joshua laughed and then knocked the pile down.
Avi said: ‘‘This kibbutz, this country is still home to you, Yakov. I know little of your life in Australia but whatever brought you and Pnina here to Israel should not die with h
er.’’ Nurit put her arm around Jacob’s shoulders. He moved away from her, not churlishly but in an unmistakable gesture of rejection which took in all she represented.
Jacob lifted Joshua up. The child wriggled to be put down again. Avi joked, ‘‘See, he wants to stay.’’ He stood up and faced Jacob. ‘‘Have you thought that Joshua’s real mother came here to settle, to make a new life for both of them? You may not like what I say but it is the truth, isn’t it? He should grow up with his own people and for that matter, so should you.’’
Jacob looked out of the window. He saw a perimeter fence festooned with barbed wire, he saw armed guards patrolling to and fro. The children’s playground was now criss-crossed with trenches. Sandbags were piled high against the walls.
Sand was for playing in. Sand belonged on a beach. He saw a truck, just like Abe Lewis’s only this one had a Bren gun mounted on the roof. Trucks were for picking up cotton waste. What had Shirley told him? ‘‘All hell will break loose here.’’
He looked beyond the perimeter. He could see Bondi beach, with no barbed wire any more; Joshua and himself building sandcastles at the water’s edge. Mrs Rothfield would understand why he had come back. After all, she had not stayed in Palestine. Yes, he would have an ally there. And she would treat him differently, now he was a man — a man with a son.
He turned from the window to tell Avi of his decision but the big man had gone. Nurit stood in the doorway.
‘‘I can see we have lost you, Yakov. Pnina will stay with us in peace. I wish only that you and Joshua too will find peace.’’
She came to him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘‘Shalom, Yakov. Shalom, Joshua.’’
