Newcomers in an Ancient Land

by Paula Wagner

  Chapter 19

  SAYING OUI

  One rainy winter night, I snuggled up next to René, grateful for his warmth against a ferocious storm outside. The wool rug on the stone floor and the yellow curtains I’d hung over the cracks in the windowpanes did little to keep out the drafts. Our only source of heat was a tanur—a ubiquitous kerosene heater used throughout the country. To avoid suffocation, we’d doused it for the night, but its smoky residue still hung in the room’s frigid air.

  “Brrrr, my t-t-toes are fr-fr-ozen,” I chattered.

  “But our hearts are warm,” bantered René. I was just sinking into sleep when his voice penetrated like an afterthought.

  “On se marie?” he murmured.

  “Oui” I answered dreamily.

  “Fantastic!” he cried.

  The gravity of my answer bolted me from slumber. Had I really promised to marry René? My heart banged against my ribs like a wild animal desperate to escape. At eighteen I could barely imagine the next day, let alone the arc of an entire lifetime! But his proposal also made me feel wanted in a way I’d never felt before. Now that I’d given my word, how could I take it back? From an early age, I had always taken great pride in keeping my promises, whether to myself or others. Indeed, all my major life decisions sprang from my heart like thunderbolts before my head could think them through. Once I’d made a commitment, logic was powerless against my passion, so my only defense was to make a plan, however harebrained, to reach my goal.

  Still, a small internal voice argued with this momentous decision. What was I getting myself into? While my head said caution, my heart whispered destiny. Meanwhile, my stomach churned in conflict. Hugging my knees to my chest, I locked my shivering arms over the eiderdown and turned away. Tears streaked my cheeks like the rain that coursed down the cracked windowpane. Deep inside, I knew I wasn’t ready for such a huge life decision. Lost in my own storm, I couldn’t find my way back from oui to non.

  “Let’s celebrate!” shouted René, oblivious of my reaction.

  He sprang out of bed to relight the tanur. After several attempts, the sooty ring sputtered to life with a loud bang and a great belch of smoke.

  “Achoo!” I sneezed. “Quick, open the door!”

  But the storm’s cold blast only fanned the blue flames into a cascade of orange. René kicked the tanur out the door with his bare feet, looking for all the world like a naked gnome dancing with fire. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Undaunted, René shouted over the wind, “Let’s make a toast!”

  He poured two small glasses from a bottle of Cointreau we’d saved for special occasions.

  “Quiet, you’ll wake our neighbors,” I shushed. There was only a thin wall between my room and the one next door.

  But René was not to be restrained. He switched on the turntable and put on the record I’d bought that very afternoon in Haifa for his twenty-third birthday.

  I’d agonized for hours over the choice, finally settling on Tchaikovsky’s Symphony Pathétique. At least it had a name that sounded French. Having been brought up on the classics, I hadn’t been able to think of anything else. But at the first strain, its melancholy minor chords and weeping violins sounded portentous. I pulled the covers over my head as if to hide from a bad omen.

  “What’s wrong, Cherie?” asked René, suddenly alarmed.

  “Nothing,” I hedged.

  “But you’re sad, I can tell,” he insisted, reciting a poem by Verlaine to comfort me. Il pleure dans mon coeur / Comme il pleut sur la ville. I loved poetry in any language, and René had a knack for salvaging impending disasters with distraction.

  Proud to have learned the poem in high school, I managed a wan smile, but in my ears, its meaning rang as ominously as the music: It rains in my heart as it rains on the rooftops.

  René murmured a line from another French poet.

  “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.”

  I knew Pascal was the author, but beyond that, the meaning of his words escaped me—“the heart has reasons that Reason cannot know.” Something about intuition versus reason? Was I overriding both my heart and my head?

  Sensing the tension in my coiled body, René folded me in his arms and coaxed my desire until passion melted my resistance and I gave in to seduction. How could I disappoint him? Like a child playing with the building blocks of my life, I decided to let the future unfold and see where it would take me.

  Chapter 20

  MOVING TO KIBBUTZ DAN

  By February of 1964, the ulpan on Ein Hashofet was coming to an end, which also meant René would be returning to his army unit on Kibbutz Dan. After my late night oui to his proposal, it went without saying that I would go with him. Still, I worried about what to tell the Feins. They already knew René was my boyfriend, but I hadn’t discussed any future plans with them, in part because I sensed they hoped I’d stay on at Ein Hashofet. As the time grew closer, I gathered the courage to tell them I had some news to share.

  Avram wore a serious look as he ushered me into their small bungalow for tea the following Shabbat. He and Frieda had once lived in a tzrif like mine, but now, as vatikim (senior members), they shared a two-room apartment with a tiny kitchen. Frieda looked up from making tea to greet me with her usual reserve. Naomi and Ruth rose to meet me in the living room, but their welcome seemed lukewarm. Seeing them all together gave me the uneasy feeling of a family conference like the ones my father would call whenever there was a family crisis. As Frieda poured the tea and Ruth passed around a plate of marbled coffee cake, we made small talk. But soon an ominous silence fell over the room until finally Avram cleared his throat.

  “Vell, you haf something to tell us?” he intoned, sounding for all the world like my father, except for his Polish accent.

  Anxiety mounting, I blurted out my news: Now that the ulpan was coming to an end, I’d decided to go to Kibbutz Dan with René. There, I’d said it!

  In the excruciating pause that followed, the Feins exchanged agonized looks, as if none of them wanted to be the first to speak. It was Ruth who broke the silence.

  “Paula, our family has been thinking about your, uh, relationship with this young Frenchman. To be perfectly honest, we’re divided about it, so we’ll each speak for ourselves.”

  Divided? I bristled. What business was this of theirs, anyway? But as I waited for her to continue, Avram cut in.

  “You see, Frieda and I—well, ve vorry that you are still very young. This, uh, Frenchman, maybe he doesn’t mean the best for you.”

  Instantly, my defenses rose like the ramparts of Akko. Why did they insist on calling him a Frenchman when he was an Israeli citizen just like them?

  But now that the subject had been broached, Avram and Naomi launched a volley of misgivings, reinforced by Frieda’s knowing nods. Their fears pierced my shield of anger like shrapnel. Only Ruth held her peace.

  “As friends of your parents, we feel responsible for you . . . René is too old for you . . . he’s taking advantage of you . . . only looking out for himself . . . he’s lazy, sexy, and manipulative like all the French . . . he’s not to be trusted . . . he only came to the ulpan to shirk his military duty.”

  As if that weren’t enough, I could only imagine what they left unsaid:

  We didn’t bargain on your being such a headstrong young woman instead of the little girl we remember from the Mauritania. We’re so disappointed—we were hoping you might stay and join our kibbutz.

  My ears burned. Entrapped, enraged, and embarrassed, I longed for wings to fly me far, far away from this supremely awkward afternoon with the Feins. Having enticed me to tea, they’d treated me to a diatribe. Wordless for once, I stared at the rug. Of all their accusations, the one about shirking his military duty hurt the worst.

  True, René had openly admitted that he’d come to the ulpan to escape the boredom of the army. But shirking his military duty? True, he was older than I, but only by four years. True, he was sexy—that I couldn�
��t deny. And true, he knew his way around the country in ways that I did not. But how dare they cast doubt on the very attributes I admired? Nevertheless, I wasn’t about to reveal my own creeping qualms—not nearly so much about René’s character, but about my own decision to follow him.

  Only Ruth spoke up in my defense. Now she raised her head from her hands. The room quieted as she spoke in a softer tone.

  “When Naomi said we were divided, she meant we don’t all agree. That is, I don’t agree that we should tell you what you do. We’re not your guardians, so we shouldn’t interfere. I can only wish you all the best if that’s what you want to do. Dan is a good kibbutz in a beautiful part of the country, way up north.” Soothed by Ruth’s words, I fought back tears of humiliation. At least one of the Feins saw things differently. I took comfort in that.

  “Well,” I mumbled, eager to leave, “thank you for tea, but I’ve made up my mind. We’re leaving next week.” The excruciating hour had felt like an eternity. I couldn’t escape fast enough.

  All the way back to my room, I agonized over what to tell René without offending him. But his indignation quickly turned to laughter when I recounted the Feins’ accusations.

  “Ha, ha! Those are all just French stereotypes. Who wouldn’t catch a break from the army if the opportunity presented itself? They’re just too uptight to appreciate the subtleties of French sensibilité.”

  Fearful of losing me and ignorant of my family’s long relationship with the Feins, René urged me to cut my ties without looking back. Once the ulpan was over, what would I do anyway if I stayed—work full time? By René’s light, Ein Hashofet would simply be exploiting my labor. Somehow he failed to mention that that’s exactly what I’d be doing on Kibbutz Dan.

  “You’ll see, the Galilee is beautiful,” he added, piquing my taste for adventure.

  The chance to experience a whole new part of the country was irresistible. Plus, defying the Feins was a chance to shed the worn out “good girl” mantle I’d been saddled with since childhood. As a child, I’d always gained my parents’ approval by playing Miss Responsible, but now I itched to be rid of the role.

  Now René and I began planning for the move to Kibbutz Dan in earnest. He had already made a trip there to let them know I’d be coming with him and to request a room together. All that remained was to pack up our few belongings and say goodbye to Naomi and Gidon before making the four-hour trip by bus along the narrow road that wound through the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee on its way from Haifa to the last stop at Kibbutz Dan. Although I’d miss Naomi, I felt excited at the prospect of exploring a new part of the country and experiencing a new community.

  If I regretted anything, it was that the Feins, whom I had idealized as a child, had turned out to be so stuffy and meddling. But the all-powerful force of the future was pulling me forward. If gaining my freedom meant sacrificing their friendship on the altar of youthful rebellion, I could not afford to worry about unforeseen consequences. From that vantage point, I could predict how the damage to my family’s friendship with the Feins would haunt me for a lifetime.

  Kibbutz Paths

  Chapter 21

  SNORING AND SNAKES

  It was still dark when I woke up at four a.m. in the room René and I were assigned on Kibbutz Dan. Swinging my bare feet onto the cool stone tiles, I scraped my toes on the rough pockmarks left by Syrian shells in the 1948 war. Badly damaged, the bungalow had long been slated for demolition but was left standing, offering a visceral reminder of bravery under fire and a temporary shelter for newcomers like us. As in Ein Hashofet, I had done my best to beautify the room by covering the worst of the shattered tiles under a colorful rug—ironically sweeping the evidence of the struggle for the land by two peoples quite literally under the carpet.

  After a dash to the outdoor toilet across the path from our room, I brushed my teeth at the small sink in the bungalow’s hallway. Next, I plugged in the electric kettle—tea for me, coffee for René, though he was still sacked out in bed. René was the heaviest sleeper I’d ever encountered. His snores could wake the dead. He routinely slept through the morning alarm, so I’d taken on the duty of waking him for work each morning. Although I tried my best to be patient, I felt a wave of resentment filling my chest, like a dam ready to burst.

  “Wake up, wake up,” I pleaded, nudging his inert form. But the snoring only intensified. For an otherwise healthy young man, it was downright scary how long he could hold his breath before gasping for air like a raspy carburetor shuddering to life. Some nights I had to shake him awake to catch a wink of sleep.

  “René, lève-toi!” I urged again, trying the phrase in French. Still no luck.

  Exasperated, I finally exploded in Hebrew. Shaking him by the shoulders, I shouted, “Takúm k’far!” (Get up already!) Although I’d learned the words for snoring and wake up in three languages, I couldn’t get results in any of them!

  “Put your feet on the floor and get up, for God’s sake!”

  Yanking off the covers, I tried dragging his legs off the mattress. As the covers slid away, his pale chest looked vulnerable in contrast with his deeply tanned thighs and biceps. The sight made me feel half sorry, yet half enraged.

  “Grrrrr . . . ,” he growled, rubbing his stubbled cheeks and yawning.

  How I hated this wake-up routine! Hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep from losing my patience after so many sleepless nights. Eventually my flickering resentment and exhaustion would explode into a full-blown fight. After some time, René would apologize, yet I’d still feel deeply guilty for my anger. René would then woo me with passionate lovemaking, and for a time we’d make peace—until the cycle repeated itself all over again. Yet like the pull of opposing magnets, we always found our way back to each other through physical attraction.

  “Ok, ok, I’m up!” René bellowed, lurching to his feet like a disoriented sleepwalker.

  “What, why . . . where am I?”

  How could he not know his own whereabouts? But he seemed genuinely confused, running his hands through his tousled salt-and-pepper hair.

  “I’m sorry,” I softened, “but you have to get up. It’s time for work.”

  “Ah, right, all right. Where’s my coffee?” he sputtered, appearing remarkably unfazed by his rough awakening.

  Vigilant lest he flop back into bed, I kept watch as he pulled on his work clothes—a brown shirt, shorts, and kneehigh rubber boots, all of which would be caked in sweat and mud by the end of his day hauling irrigation pipes through the kibbutz alfalfa fields. Repositioning the pipes was a heavy and perilous job, made even harder by the slippery mud and intense heat. But another danger lurked in them as well. By night, the pipes made an ideal sleeping spot for venomous vipers. Roused from its slumber, a writhing serpent might occasionally slither out of a pipe, its massive body coiled to strike. The image terrified me, but with a safe distance between us, I secretly sympathized with the sleep-deprived snake.

  Gulping down a quick breakfast of tea, coffee, and toast, we kissed each other goodbye and hurried off to our jobs in the vineyard and fields. The cool air of the still-dark morning soothed my inner turbulence. Tired as I always was, these predawn hours always felt precious. The heat of the day would arrive soon enough.

  Unlike Ein Hashofet, Kibbutz Dan didn’t host a work/study program, so I was now working full time. Still, I was learning new words and phrases every day, and the hands-on experience of a full-time job added to my sense of adulthood. As the most basic value of kibbutz life, work commanded the highest level of respect, even if compliments were few. A slight smile or nod of approval from my boss meant “job well done” when I wielded my clippers exactly as she showed me while thinning the vines in the spring.

  Compared with my parents’ highly intellectual professions in music and stagecraft, physical labor felt far more tangible. Whereas plays and concerts vanished like ephemeral dreams as soon as the curtain fell, in the vineyards, I could literally touch, taste, and smell the fruit
s of my labors. And although the work was backbreaking at times, it forced me out of my head and into my body. I welcomed the break from my intellectual upbringing.

  Besides work, my life on Dan made me feel grown up in other ways. Like Ein Hashofet, Dan also belonged to the secular kibbutz movement that opposed the monopoly on marriage by the Orthodox religious establishment. In keeping with this principle, in the eyes of the kibbutz, living together was as good as being officially married. What I didn’t fully grasp was the power of social acceptance to minimize my doubts while reinforcing my decision to marry René.

  Despite the nocturnal trauma of René’s snoring, my days on Kibbutz Dan took on a pleasant routine. I loved working outdoors in the kerem, sharing meals in the hadar ha’ochel, and exploring the Upper Galilee area on Saturdays. One of my favorite Shabbat excursions was a hike to Tel Dan where the headwaters of the River Dan bubbled up from the arid ground, creating a small oasis before flowing to the Jordan River. Tel Dan was also the archaeological site of a shrine to the Greek god Pan and the ancient Hebrew tribe of Dan. With every stone and grain of sand that lodged in my sandals, I felt eons of history rubbing between my toes.

  As winter turned to spring, I was becoming more and more at ease in my new country, language, and culture. I sensed my future moving toward me with the inexorable force of a sunrise ready to burst over the horizon—a future heralding the new young woman I was becoming.

  Chapter 22

  SUNRISE OVER THE GOLAN

  The sky was pitch black but studded with stars at fourthirty in the morning as I crept down the dimly lit paths of the kibbutz on my way to work in the kerem on the outskirts of the community. Passing by the terra-cotta bungalows, children’s houses, health center, and hadar ha’ochel, my heart thumped. Being out and about before dawn felt slightly illicit—reminding me of the summer when Naomi and I had snuck out of the house at dawn to raid the abundant vegetable gardens in our Iowa City neighborhood when we were eight. Tiptoeing past our parents’ bedroom, we had eased the screen door open and slipped outside. Dewy lawns sparkled in the moonlight, and the sleeping houses of our friends—so familiar by day—looked utterly transformed in the shadowy darkness. A waning moon hung in the sky. Then as now, I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the exhilarating scent of damp grass. Every cell in my body tingled on high alert.