8 Great Hebrew Short Novels

by Неизвестный

  “It happened in Alexandria. That was as far as our ship went. From there we had to take the train to Port Said, where we would board another steamer for Jaffa that belonged to the same line.

  “It was dawn when we arrived in Alexandria. Arabs in long gowns that looked like dresses assailed us on shore and begged, practically threatened us, to let them carry our bags. But why bother telling you all this? You’ve traveled the same route and seen it all too. To make a long story short, then, we were standing there confusedly, uncertain how to proceed in this strange, primitive, deafening place, when we were approached by a Jew with a limp who warned us not to give our bags to any Arabs, as the price they would demand from us in the end would be more than the worth of the luggage itself.

  “ ‘You can trust what he says!’ said another, assertive voice that belonged to a younger person, who according to the cap he wore on his head was a bellboy at some hotel. ‘You have to watch out for swindlers everywhere here, but this man is absolutely dependable.’ He pointed at the lame Jew. ‘Did you say you were bound for Palestine? You must be Zionists then. Lots of people are headed there these days. I’m a Zionist too, that makes us brothers. Here, I can show you letters…but tell me, what’s new in Russia?’

  “I hardly need tell you that that was all we needed to hear. At once I, by now the family’s adopted father, felt a surge of affection for this new brother and permitted the lame Jew to order an Arab to load our luggage into his wagon and bring it to the train station. We ourselves proceeded on foot through the streets of Alexandria, which were as filthy as only the streets of an Arab city can be, staring at the nargilleh smokers in the cafes, at the veiled women with their shawls, nose rings, and breathing tubes, and at all the rest of that Oriental clutter. Near the railway station the lame man caught up with us and asked us for half-a-franc apiece, that is, for four francs all in all—’which includes the customs tax that I’ve already paid for you.’ Unlike the woman—my head was spinning from the journey and lack of sleep, which had apparently robbed me of all powers of resistance—I did not think the price unreasonable. True, the Jew had paid the Arab driver only a quarter-of-a-franc for his services—but had we had to carry our own bags we might have missed the train connection, and consequently the ship in Port Said, which sailed toward evening. All that we needed was to have to wait a week in Port Said for it to return! Whereas now, though we were four francs poorer, we had at least arrived in time…in fact, there was still half-an-hour until the train was scheduled to leave. We could thank our lucky stars for that.

  “ ‘Do you know what the tickets to Port Said cost?’ asked the man.

  “ ‘As soon as the ticket office opens, we’ll find out.’

  “ ‘I hope you’ll be able to fight your way through the crowd. You do have Egyptian money, don’t you?’

  “ ‘No. Only Austrian.’

  “ ‘But it is at least gold?’

  “ ‘No.’ Our faces fell. ‘Silver.’

  “ ‘What do you propose to do then? You’ll have to change it for gold. Look, here comes your Zionist, why don’t you ask him. Perhaps he can offer some advice.’

  “ ‘Our Zionist,’ that is, the bellhop, seemed surprised to see us. As far as our plight was concerned, however, he would be only too glad to help. If we gave him the money, he would even purchase the tickets himself. How many of them did we say we needed: eight?

  “By now the ticket office had opened and was besieged by a throng of people, some wishing to board the next train, some later ones, who stood on each other’s feet and even shoulders. Without counting the money that I gave him—all told, some sixty or seventy Austrian crowns—our benefactor quickly took it and headed for the ticket window. Prompted by the woman, I followed closely behind. While we waited he began to perform some complicated calculation in Egyptian money that turned into such a confusion of pounds, guineas, and piastres that my tired brain could not possibly absorb it, while continuing at the same time to warn me of the danger of swindlers and showing me a letter from Cairo that was, he claimed, an invitation to speak before the Zionist association there…only this letter, when I read it, turned out to be another sort of document entirely, sent to somebody else three years before! I could feel my heart sink and my knees begin to shake, but I forbad myself to lose faith in the man—who for his part now developed such confidence that he began to tell me about a trip he had once taken with Herzl to Uganda…

  “ ‘But how can that be?’ I asked. ‘Since when was Herzl ever in Uganda?’

  “ ‘Believe me,’ he insisted, ‘he was there.’

  “We were already close to the black ticket seller. Everyone was pushing and shoving, but the bellhop somehow managed to elbow them all out of the way (including the apprentice emissary from Safed, who was himself engaged in a fracas with some Egyptian women), and began to talk through the window in French. ‘La course…la course…’ I could hear him say. Yet the ticket seller for some reason handed the money back to him, so that, making an annoyed face, he said:

  “ ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to run and change it.’

  “Perhaps it was a display of pan-Semitic goodwill on the ticket seller’s part that he now pointed at the bellhop and said in English to the emissary, who stood in line behind us, ‘No good ’—but there was no time for me to digest all this, because I was already running after our Zionist as fast as I could. The Russian woman’s sister, seeing me run, began to run on her clumsy legs too. The woman herself began to scream…by which point, however, the bellhop was already in the streets of the town with me hot on his heels in pursuit. The strangest part of it was that even now my addled brain refused to admit that our money was actually in danger! As swift as a leopard he bounded up the steps of banks, none of which seemed able to help him, ran back down them again, and cut across streets and alleyways, while I followed him with the last of my strength, for I was on the brink of exhaustion and a good deal weaker than he. In the corridor of one bank—it seemed to surface from nowhere like an underground creature’s—I caught sight of the profile of that same young man who was later to join us on the ship from Port Said.

  Suddenly the bellhop stopped running.

  “ ‘Keep going!’ I said. ‘We’ll miss our train!’

  “ ‘Don’t worry,’ he answered. ‘I promise you that you won’t.’

  And indeed just then he found a moneychanger to perform the necessary transaction. I took what he gave me without question and off we sped. ‘We’ve got only a few minutes!’ he urged me. I flew back toward the train station through the bizarre streets of Alexandria as fast as my legs could carry me. My shirt stuck to my sweaty skin; I doubt if I would have found my way back at all if the woman’s sister, now accompanied by that same young man from the bank, who had already managed to attach himself to her as yet another guardian angel, had not spotted me on a street corner.

  “ ‘Hurry! Hurry! Only ten minutes to go!’

  “The ticket seller now informed me, however, that the money I had received from the moneychanger was twenty-one-and-a-half francs short of the sum needed to buy the eight tickets.

  “ ‘What?’ I protested, waving my arms. ‘I was told in so many words that I would even get change in return!’

  “The ticket seller waved his arms back. ‘I told you the man was no good.’

  “When I finally held the tickets in my hand, the family and its bundles were still spread all over the waiting room of the station. Good lord, only five minutes left! They were not minutes for weak hearts, believe me. But the crowning touch was that just as the train was about to depart, our offended Zionist stuck his head into the car. How could we have run out on him like this without even paying him for his pains?

  “ ‘Haven’t you cheated us enough?’ I asked. I honestly could not understand him.

  “ ‘What?!” And he launched into a harangue on Egyptian currency rates, all the time swearing with an injured expression that he hadn’t taken a penny for himself. If we were determined to ex
ploit him, however, he was helpless to prevent it

  “ ‘Thief ! Chiseler! Crook!’ screamed the woman.

  “ ‘Listen to her! That’s what comes of doing favors for Jews.’

  “The train began to move. He leaped from the car and vanished.

  “I made up the loss from my own pocket, of course—but it wasn’t it that grieved me. I gritted my teeth with a feeling of impotence. There was a dry, bad taste in my mouth. When the children began to munch their stale bread I had to turn my face to the window. The sun beat down outside. It was summer in the month of January. Egypt…Egypt and Canaan…Sheaves were being gathered in the fields…‘And lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and your sheaves gathered round it and bowed down to my sheaf’…Cairo!”

  Chapter six

  In Cairo—where you had to change trains by means of various strange and endless under- and overpasses while so many porters clung to you at once and begged to be given your bags that you were forced to shake them off like flies, crying ‘No, no, no!’ all the time until you were hoarse in the throat—I caught sight of that underground creature again. I, carrying five packages and two small girls, and their mother, who with the rest of the family and the bundles was not far behind me, were trying to find our train. Which of the many around us was the right one? There seemed to be no one whom one could possibly ask…when suddenly we heard a voice politely declare—and in Yiddish:

  “ ‘Not that one! The one on that track over there.’

  “Like a true gentleman he helped the woman’s sister into the car, where she found seats for us all; then he rose and excused himself, saying that he had business elsewhere in another part of the train. Were we aware, by the way, that he had been with us since Alexandria? He had spent several weeks there. Originally he was from Buenos Aires…did we know that in Spanish the words meant…what? Someone had tried to rob us? You couldn’t be too careful of such people. On the other hand, there was no certainty that it was a deliberate swindle. Currencies in Egypt were a nightmare and the difference between silver and gold was indeed great. What did we propose to do, though, in Port Said?

  “ ‘What do you mean, do? Our tickets are good for Jaffa.’

  “He knew that. But Port Said was not exactly a port. You had to be rowed out to the ship in lighters, for which the Arabs fleeced you, but good. For us and our belongings they would probably ask three francs apiece, perhaps even four. He himself had already suggested to the young lady…who hadn’t objected…if we wished, he would be happy to be of service. He would take only twelve—no, ten francs—for the lot of us. This wasn’t his first trip and he had connections…was it agreed? He would even include in the price the cost of bringing our things from the train station to the shore.

  “ ‘No thank you!’ I interrupted him in a fury as soon as I heard the word ‘shore.’

  “ ‘No is no…but I’m afraid you’ll regret it…’

  “The prospect was not encouraging. Worse yet, the fear crossed my mind that perhaps our ship had already sailed…in which case we were lost. Yet in the depths of my despair I made up my mind to trust no one any further, and upon our arrival in Port Said to carry our bags to the ship by ourselves. Of course Port Said had a port—why should anyone need lighters? As for missing the boat, either we did or we didn’t…if only the children would stop crying…

  “But why bore you, old man, with my psychology? Port Said had no port after all, and one did need lighters to get to the ship, to say nothing of the distance from the train station to the shore, which was no small trek…in the middle of which—are you ready for a fairy tale?—we encountered a man whose name I never learned (I imagine he can still be found there), a hotel employee too, who exclaimed that it was beyond him how anyone with God in his heart could pass us by and not offer to help. At first we didn’t believe him either, but he simply grabbed our things…yes, grabbed them by force…and put them and the children into his hotel cart. ‘From poor Jews like yourselves I won’t take a penny more than three francs for everything, including the lighters…’

  “The water was clear and calm, the sun shone down, and it was pleasant to row out in the lighter. The children’s spirits revived. Our guide did not leave our side and argued all the way out to the ship with the Arab boatmen, who accused him of taking money from us in order to hold down their wages, while he in turn complained that they had no God in their hearts…

  “At last he saw us safely aboard ship—and then, once and for all to silence the Arabs, who still insisted that he was secretly in our pay, he reached into his pocket and paid the three francs himself. An improbable story? I told you it was. But nonetheless true. Perhaps he was doing penance for something that day…who knows…

  “ ‘I only wanted to do’—so he said— ‘my human duty.’

  “The woman, for her part, kept repeating over and over:

  “ ‘The man was an angel from heaven…an angel from heaven…’

  “I myself, once I had regained my composure, fetched a bit of water, washed the sweat from my hands and face, peeled myself an orange, took a piece of bread to go with it, and made a brave attempt to eat. (Not that I was hungry, although I hadn’t tasted a single thing all day.) Yet with the first bite I took I was overcome with dread all over again at the contrast between the two men whom we had met by accident that day, “the dread of the contrast between ‘no good’ and ‘good’…No, I don’t mean good and evil in relation to me or the effect it had on me, or on that wreck of a woman with her five children who was the symbol of Jewish homelessness and misfortune…What I mean is…good and evil, and all that they imply, in themselves…Good and evil as two different worlds, two essences…with an infinite abyss between them. Good lord, how infinite it was! And how tragic human life was, how hard, how hard it was to live!

  “The slice of bread stuck in my throat and the tears began to come nonstop. They were hysterical, those tears, yet at the same time quiet and unobtrusive. Some Christian Arabs, on their way to the Holy Sepulcher, stared at me with the knowledge that I was a sufferer in life, and that Allah had not been kind to me…

  “Simultaneously, the new passenger who had joined us in Cairo was busy telling the Russian woman’s sister some ridiculous tale about life in Buenos Aires, followed by another concerning the sultan’s harem in Constantinople, to which she listened with mixed fear and delight.”

  Chapter seven

  Where was I? Yes; in the harbor in Jaffa, and in my eccentric mood. “The peculiar thing about this mood was that it was in a sense the opposite of what is said to happen to people who are on the verge of disaster or even death itself. Before death or disaster, so I’ve been told, one’s whole life passes regretfully before one: if only one had it to live over again, how differently one would live it! Whereas my own state was the contrary: suddenly I was filled with an enormous love for everything that had ever happened to me, with an especially great, perfectly satisfied love for the events of the past several weeks—and with an almost ecstatic sense of expectation for what lay ahead. I was about to land in the Promised Land, after which nothing else mattered…after which everything would take care of itself. It was necessary only to set foot there, which I would do today, or at the latest, tomorrow. There was Jaffa in plain sight—what joy! On the first- and second-class decks the passengers were already staring through their binoculars at the majestic veil of gray haze that hung over the mountains of Judea in the distance.

  “Incidentally, I forgot to mention that I myself was not planning to disembark in Jaffa at all. On the advice of a friend from New York, who had been here some three years before, I had decided to spend time first in the Galilee, and only later in Judea, and so had bought a ticket for Beirut…none of which prevented me, however, from experiencing all the emotions that would have been appropriate had I been about to land now.

  “ ‘It seems strange that we should have come all this way together and now must leave ship separately,’ said the Russian woman’s oldest daughter to me with
all the intimacy of an eleven-year-old child. How endearing her Lithuanian accent had become to me with its confusion of “sh” and “s”! To this day I am sure that if my desire to take her in my arms, to hold her there and kiss her a thousand times, had not been so powerful, and—so it seemed to me—so obvious at the time, I would have gone ahead and done it. But my blood was on fire…and so I slaked my thirst by patting the cheek of her nine-year-old sister instead. Life is sometimes like that, you know. The other three girls, starting with the one who had told me on the train that she was from ‘Yondon,’ were eight, seven, and six years old respectively. The woman had been a widow for exactly five years!

  “ ‘Wait, it’s far from certain that our ship will be allowed to dock in Jaffa,’ cautioned the rabbinical emissary, who—in spite of his long ear curls, his even longer black gown, and the round fur hat of extreme Orthodoxy on his head—had gotten to know us well enough to lay aside his monkish exterior and reveal himself as a jolly fellow who spent hours gossiping with the women and grew so friendly with the traveler from Buenos Aires that he even traded dirty jokes with him.

  “ ‘Nonsense,’ said the Argentinian. ‘It’s true that the port in Jaffa is rocky and can’t be safely entered in a storm—but the sea is calm today. If you want to worry, you’d do better to worry about the fact that our Russian passengers don’t have an entry visa.’

  “ ‘But why,’ inquired the emissary, ‘should I worry about that?’