by Meyer Levin
At last Yankel understood—papieren, papers, and letting go of the Arab, he managed to reach for their papers, all prepared in a bundle, to show to the man. But the official snatched them from Yankel’s hand and was gone!
“Our papers!” Feigel gasped, and hurried after the Turk. God alone knew what would happen to them without papers! Meanwhile Dvora ran after Feigel to remind her that Reuven had written that a red card must be obtained for each passport, Yechezkiel too had said so, a card was given to religious pilgrims, and they must answer all questions by saying they were all pilgrims coming to pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. They were not settlers. They were here on a religious journey and would soon go back. Of course, Feigel agreed, so Reuven had written, but who would have known that the papers would be snatched out of their hands? Who knew if they could even land without them? Who could have known even officials would behave like wild beasts?
The young men from Kostarnitza, Gidon saw, were already climbing over the rail and leaping down into the small boats. Each one stood poised until the little vessel was tossed up by the crest of a wave against the side of the steamer, and then in that instant you leaped, to be caught by an Arab boatman standing in the prow of the tossing tender below. Gidon could easily do it, he was sure—but what about Tateh in his long Sabbath coat, and what about his mother? “Don’t be afraid, Shaindeleh, I’m coming,” he called down to his little sister, already handed into the rowboat by the Arabs. But as Gidon clambered half-over the rail, he heard his father cry out anew, “Help! Bandits! Help!”
A giant Arab had seized his father’s fur coat from atop their pile of belongings. Managing to reverse his balance, Gidon jumped back onto the deck where his father was pulling at the tail of his greatcoat. The boy seized hold of a dangling sleeve and also pulled with his entire strength, and together father and son managed to yank loose the garment. That was as Reuven had written—you had to be strong with the Arabs, show no fear! Then they respected you.
But even as Yankel clutched his fur coat, he saw his entire household being invaded. Gidon struggled to save the bedding, the girls howled and wailed as the bundles with all their cherished possessions were taken, and Feigel had her arms spread over the cookpots. In the midst of this, a sailor from the boat’s crew came howling at them, waving his arms, “Off! Off!” They must at once descend from the ship.
Despite the rising heat, Yankel put on his fur coat over his black silk. One of the heroes of Kostarnitza, Dvora’s stalwart boy Yechezkiel, had lingered behind his group and now hurried over to say farewell, he would meet them in Eretz Yisroel. Then above the tumult, thank heaven, a Jewish voice was heard, a strong reas suring voice telling them they would find all their belongings in the port, they need have no fear. But suddenly Feigel let out her most piercing shriek, “Shaindel!” The little vessel below them with Shaindel already in it was being rowed away. The child’s shriek echoed her mother’s.
Wild visions assailed Yankel as his wife clutched him, distraught with the same terror—little girls carried off and sold into harems, gone for life! Their Shaindeleh! Swallowed into the sands of the desert! Quick, they must follow! Thrusting one leg over the rail, Gidon sat astride it while he took hold of the smaller children one at a time, grasping each around the waist until the moment came to swing them down to the Arab boatmen, who caught them by the legs.
Little Schmuel insisted on climbing over by himself, then came Eliza, half-tumbling, shrieking and laughing, into the arms of the huge laughing boatman, then Dvora managed, furling her skirt below her knees and somehow holding it gracefully with one hand as the grinning Arab reached up for her amidst evil-sounding shouts from the others. Leaning far over, Gidon handed down Avramchick, and then his mother came. With surprising deftness Feigel was already down into the bobbing boat, her girls around her. Since a boy could not offer help of this kind to his father, Gidon now dropped down himself, and waited.
Yankel Chaimovitch was in one more dispute over baksheesh. “Baksheesh! Baksheesh!” the devils shouted from all sides, their open hands thrust out, and then suddenly he saw the little vessel with his entire family, wife and children, pulling away, like the other vessel with Shaindel, chopping and plunging in the sea, and from Feigel and the children a wail arose, “Tateh! Gevald!” Theirs was the last of the rowboats.
Amidst the desperate shrieks and yells from above and below, the savage Arabs down there churned their little vessel around and waited for him. “Leap, leap!” a sailor shouted in Russian as Yankel mounted the rail. The remaining coins were pulled from his hands, and he was pushed. The great fur coat floated about him, the steamer slid away with a sudden lurch, everyone below screamed, and he felt the angry waters already seizing his feet. But he was pulled, the coat half over his head—where was his hat? His head was uncovered before the Almighty!
The hat had fallen into the sea. The salt water stung his face and matted his beard. “My hat!” Yankel howled as he was tumbled into the bottom of the bark.
“I have your hat!” Feigel cried; she snatched it from the water and gave it to him, dripping.
So they were rowed, the Arabs chanting now, and Feigel naming the children one by one to make sure they were all there, little Avramchick with his huge gray-blue eyes, never crying or complaining at anything, and Schmulik to whom it was all a game, but what of Shaindeleh—would they find her? And would they also find all their belongings ashore? And would they meet Leah and Reuven? And if not, where would they go, what would they do? If only the little boat would move more quickly! It seemed to remain in the same place in the water! Would she soon have them all, Feigel worried, all her children, even Reuven and Leah too, with Dvora, Eliza, Gidon, Schmuel, Avramchick, and oy, Shaindeleh, would she have them all safely in her bosom? Soon, soon, on shore.
The father meanwhile touched his fingers against his inner belt to make sure that nothing had been lost in the terrible leap, and all the while he calculated in his mind what it had already cost him to get off that cursed ship, twice what he had allowed it would cost, enough money to feed the family for several days.
The little vessel plunged into the troughs but did not sink; his hat seemed already to be drying in the sun, but the gloss was gone; Yankel put the hat on to cover a Jew’s head before the Above One. For a moment there was peace; the family gazed toward the city—houses of stone could be made out now, yellowish in color, and now even a few clusters of green trees, palm trees, standing before them on the hill that bulked into the sea, forming the harbor where Jonah the Prophet had taken ship.
All at once, still in mid-sea, the Arabs stopped rowing. Two of them abandoned their oars and stood up amongst the passengers, hands outstretched. “Baksheesh!” they roared, their great teeth bared under their pirate mustaches. The remaining boatmen rested on their oars—were they growling or laughing?
Five or six other passengers were in the vessel with Yankel and his family; two were ancient Arabs in their long white gowns, curled back amongst the baggage as though they were part of it. On the best seats in the middle were a few men wearing western clothing, perhaps merchants, with the air of experienced travelers, and among them was one who spoke Arabic. Bargaining began. Fists were shaken, a dagger was even pulled out, the chief pirate lifted aloft a suitcase—at least, Yankel saw, it was not one of theirs—and threateningly held it over the water. Now another of the bandits came to Yankel, seizing him by the lapels. First all their possessions would be thrown into the sea, and then they themselves!
Finally the man who spoke Arabic handed over money, and after much shouting, a little more. Though watching closely, Yankel could not tell how much had been extorted. The man was not a Jew or he might have settled a price for them all. Now, having made his bargain, the goy settled back and watched, even smiling, as the Arab bandit tried to seize from Yankel’s hand a few coins he had brought out for a start. At last the goy leaned over and showed Yankel what he must pay—a small fortune, a robbery!—while the Arab still growled and threaten
ed and demanded more, and another of the boatmen tried to seize Yankel’s watch, pulling it by the chain out of his pocket. But at last they were saved, every passenger had been fleeced, the rowing began again, and in a moment the bandits were singing and laughing as though it was all a friendly game that they played every day.
And where, Yankel suddenly realized, was the great chest? the trunk from the hold of the ship? Would it be put ashore or would the steamer sail off with it?
A group of people could be made out now on the stone jetty; Gidon was the first to recognize their own, Reuven and Leah together! Thank God, Feigel saw, Leah already held Shaindeleh aloft to them! Everyone began to wave, in the tender, on the shore, yet even from this distance Feigel discerned that Reuven didn’t look well. Leah was waving energetically, but Reuven only raised his arm once or twice and let it drop.
As the boat pulled to the wharf there was a tumult of embraces and weeping, even Leah’s tears flowing on her happy beaming face, and Shaindeleh was relating her adventure, the whole family one cluster of flesh until the mother, having kissed her eldest son all over his face, held him off and studied him worriedly. “You have fever, Reuven, I can feel it on my lips.”
“No, no, nothing, Mamaleh,” he shrugged. “A touch of kadahat,” he said disparagingly. “I am just up from a little kadahat attack.” And they had written that his malaria was finished!
“He shouldn’t have got up,” Leah shouted over the commotion. “I told him, stay in bed, but he had to come!” At least she herself was glowing, bursting with health, red-cheeked, her arms thick and strong. Leah had grown even taller, a giantess! Only, Reuven was a shadow of himself; at the open collar of his blouse his bones could be seen. His face was all hollow too, and his eyes glowed on the surface; what had at first seemed excitement was surely fever. Yet something of triumph was there too, Feigel saw. A fulfillment. He had got them all here. His brothers and sisters would grow up here, and not in the land of the czars.
Reuven put his arm around young Gidon’s shoulders. The boy’s eyes were also aglow. They were family eyes; both mother and father had them, as though both sides of the family were one, with the same warm dark Jewish eyes undercast with melancholy. Even in Leah with her beaming energy and joy, that dark look could suddenly peep through. Feigel recognized it from her own self; even in pretty Eliza with her feminine ways the melancholy would appear, masked as a childish wistfulness. And here in the midst of the outpouring of gladness, the sating of hunger for each other, Feigel saw the darkness behind the eyes of her eldest son.
“Nothing, the kadahat attack is over!” he assured her, and turned smiling to his father. “Nu?”
Yankel would indeed have wanted to savor the moment when a Jew at last set his foot on the shores of Eretz HaKodesh, and even in the little rowboat he had prepared a Shehechiyanu to be said as he stepped ashore. But in this tumult the words he spoke were not to God but to Reuven. “So, you made us all come.”
He had surely not intended to say these words, but a thousand devils tormented Yankel—how much money those bandits had torn from him on the one boat and the other, and what would he yet have to pay to retrieve their papers? And Feigel pregnant. And here was Reuven scarcely able to stand on his feet from the kadahat, the pioneer hero, and this fever was lurking for them all. Suddenly the land seemed hostile, the voyage a terrible mistake. How would he feed them all when his coins were gone?
“Your hat, Abba!” Leah was laughing. Already he was no longer tateh but abba, in Hebrew. And water still dripped from the brim of his good hat.
Meanwhile Reuven, surveying his father in his great fur-lined coat, his boots, his round velvet hat, the most respectable of Yehudim, cried out with the abruptness of the feverish, “Why wait! We must begin at once to make a new man out of you!” With this, Reuven darted to a stand in a row of stalls crowded against the wall behind them, an open market tumbled with bolts of cloth, earthen pots, tin pots, clocks. There Yankel saw a stand selling headgear, white tropical helmets for Christian pilgrims, red tarbooshes, Arab scarfs, caps. From a pile, Reuven seized a workman’s cap, a common cap such as any wagon-driver wore in the old country, and before Yankel knew what was happening to him, his son had swept the fine round hat from his head and planted the work-cap on it. “There! Now you belong here, Father!”
All the children broke into laughter, and the vendor too, a Jew with a little yellow beard and watery eyes. Yankel felt stripped, shamed, his dignity wrenched from him by his eldest son. He had come, it was true, to labor, to pioneer—was he a man who had ever turned away from a task in all his life?—but this, this clownishness on the moment of his arrival in the Holy Land was like insulting a Jew on the Sabbath. Even a moujik wouldn’t be so crass. Only his own son, the freethinker.
Nor did Reuven know why he had done it; such prankishness was not usually his way. Seeing the thunderstruck look on his father’s face, he had an impulse to apologize, to say it was a touch of the fever; but just then a striking figure appeared before them, a ponderous bearded personality in a dazzling white flowing gown with a colorful sash and a jeweled curved dagger case, yet wearing a light straw Panama hat—perhaps a high Arab effendi? But with such a beard? The personality gazed upon the cluster of children, each a head taller than the next smaller, and with a beneficent smile, as though he were no Arab but Elijah the Prophet himself, the dignitary exclaimed, in good Hebrew, “Now here is a family for Eretz Yisroel!” And beaming on Yankel and Feigel, the Palestinian pronounced the blessing of welcome, “Beruchim haba’im!” Then taking a pinch of snuff, he went on his way.
Leah gazed after him. “Do you know who that was?” Her face was aglow. “It was Ostrov himself, Yehoshua Ostrov the Landbuyer.” Ostrov, she explained, was an early settler who had gone up and down the whole of the land until he was known in every Arab village and every Bedouin tent. He could tell you what tribe a man came from by his dialect, and he could speak to each in the tongue of his region. He was known also in Damascus and Beirut, he was the friend of every Arab effendi, and he had been the first to urge the purchase of a vast tract, those sands that could be seen stretching away from Jaffa to the north. A whole new Jewish town was to be built there one day, around a great new gymnasia, a modern high school, for the entire yishuv. When Avramchick grew up he would have a gymnasia to go to!
“Even the sands, we have to buy from them?” Yankel mumbled, but his daughter was filled with enthusiastic news of other great plans, especially in the Galilee, and meanwhile Reuven rushed about to complete their papers. A word of Turkish, a word of Arabic, he had learned. “Sit, sit, rest, everything will be in order,” and he left them with Leah.
Twice Reuven had to come hurrying back to his father for more money. And why, Reuven demanded, had he changed currency in Constantinople? “How much did they give you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Here you can get twenty-nine.” Yankel stared disconcerted at his son—then why had Reuven not written a word of warning? Meanwhile on all sides vendors pressed on them soap, beads, even crosses elaborately encrusted with mother-of-pearl. An Arab boy, chattering excitedly, pushed a whole box of crosses at him. Yankel pulled away, avoiding the contamination, and spat. Even in Eretz Yisroel a Jew couldn’t get free of their Yoshka.
A short distance off, Yankel could see Reuven paying out his money to some sleepy-eyed Turk; Reuven was paying too much, he was sure—the socialist had always disdained a bit of honest bargaining.
At last it was done. Reuven had their pilgrim cards. And the big trunk with their belongings was safe, it had been hauled down from the ship, Reuven had seen it with his own eyes in the shed.
Yankel’s family started picking up their bundles and valises, Gidon driving off a shouting swarm of porters while Leah cheerily called out an Arab word to them that got them to leave off. The family would carry the things themselves. And with Feigel constantly turning her head to make sure that not a child had been lost, especially Schmulik who had already once disappea
red at his first sight of a camel, they formed a line and moved on into the narrow crowded lanes of Jaffa.
Moment by moment Yankel’s heart was growing heavier with misgivings. Now the stench and filth of the Oriental city was upon him. This was not what he had envisioned. A place of dignity, among lemon trees, a barn with a good cow or two, a goat, green fields, and going out with his sons to their labors. Sabbath at ease beneath his own fig and vine. Of course, once away from this fetid Arab city all might yet become true.
In the swarming passageway they had to string out single file. The stink was in the very stones—urine, garbage, dead fish. Fierce, ugly cats darted from behind the stalls. And the Arab children, some entirely naked, the older ones in a few rags, pressed around them crying “baksheesh.” Tots hardly bigger than Avramchick, beggars already! Other children sat apathetic against the hovels, their eyes crowded with flies.
Reuven led the family up the lane.—The Galilee! He was explaining, everyone was leaving for the Galilee! A true Eden! In his last letters he had already written this, declaring he was arranging for a homestead for them. They would go at once, he said now, they would go tomorrow morning to the recently opened Zionist settlement office. They would be received by Dr. Lubin himself, the director. A family, a whole large family like this—whenever had anyone seen such a family arriving!
And even in that crowded lane it was true they were a spectacle, for now they had entered a Jewish part of the street where there were shopwindow signs in Hebrew and Yiddish, and out of doorways shopkeepers and housewives appeared to gaze on the immigrants—so many children! sons and daughters for Eretz Yisroel! A blessing on them! Smiling, calling a welcome, they asked “Where does a Jew come from?” It seemed as though the entire Jewish population was embracing the arrival of Yankel Chaimovitch with his family. Many already knew Leah, and cried out cheerily to her, “Your family has arrived! Bless God! Beruchim haba’im!”
