by Meyer Levin
* * * *
The hut was raised on posts so that one could look out from it over the rows of vines that flowed down the slope, and one could look out to the vista of the sea. The grapes were already fat, clusters hanging like full goats’ udders from under the vines. Reuven hoped to be strong enough by the time the gathering began to be employed in the cutting; perhaps Aaronson would employ both of them, among his Arabs. For though Dovidl had sent word from Jerusalem that Reuven was not to worry about money, that the sick fund would pay for his care, he did not want to draw a copper from the fledgling fund. Reuven was worried, too, that they were needed back in the kvutsa, and shyly he let Leah understand that he realized he was keeping her from her Moshe; perhaps now that he was well enough to manage, she should go back.
How hard it was to be away from Moshe she herself had not expected. What if meanwhile some other girl should appear and attach herself to him? No, Leah told herself, for then it would not have been real love with Moshe, and it was best to know this sooner rather than later. But if that which they had felt together was not real love, then what could be real in life?
Suddenly Moshe himself appeared in Zichron. At the sight of his form, glimpsed from the perched-up hut, a kind of glad shame added itself to her wave of joy, partly sexual shame and partly the shame of having doubted him.
But her Moshe had come with news to which he tried to give, as he told it to her, a regretful tone, even while Leah saw how it excited him.
The movement had chosen Moshe for a mission back home; he was to establish training farms and show young Zionists the kvutsa way of life, then bring back to Eretz with him the first such group of new chalutzim.
“And chalutzoth,” Leah bravely jested. For why had they picked the Handsome Moshe if not to deal with the shortage of girls?
“Yes, girls for the others,” Moshe laughed. For example he would keep a sharp eye out for the right girl for Reuven. “After all, I myself am satisfied!”
Yet it came to her, lying at last again in his arms, under the vines, it came with the contentful sigh ending their first love making, that even of this a human soul had to remain wary. How could life show anything more certain than in this joining that a man and woman felt together? Yet even in this, there crept into Leah’s soul a bitterness of doubt that she did not want to acknowledge, no, she had no bitterness. Only, after that time in the little boat on the Kinnereth, a peculiar understanding had come to her: things that seemed fated to be, and that even seemed accomplished, could also turn out untrue. There in the vessel when the new ecstatic convulsion had arrived within her body she had felt that what she had now experienced was conception. Yet a few days later her period had come. Perplexedly, even blushingly, Leah had drawn Saraleh into a discussion of womanly things, until Saraleh, comprehending, had revealed to her the knowledge she had received from her own mother on the eve of her marriage. Only in certain weeks of her month could a woman conceive. And what Leah had felt, like a wondrous discharge of love joining the discharge of the man, was not necessarily conception. It was, Saraleh said, simply the full joy of love.
So she had not conceived. Though tonight she did not know what to feel. To have his child in her would be the old, indeed the unworthy way of a woman’s keeping a man. Yet even without reference to keeping him, even if her Moshe should stray away from her—to have and keep his child, their child, would that not have been what the life-urge intended? And here too something puzzled and disturbed Leah, for she had always trusted in the purity of her life-urge, her inmost feeling, and here she saw that nature too could deceive. For again tonight, even had she so decided and dared it, it was not her time to conceive. Oddly, the maxim of Theodor Herzl drifted through her mind. “If you will it, then it need not remain but a dream.” And on this trust in human will, all they were doing here was being done. Yet a dim sense pervaded Leah of some possible flaw in the working of the universe, so that despite the most pure, the most deserving and innocent effort of will that God could expect of man, even in the truest love, the end could be barren.
No, she was only sad because Moshe was going away.
It was but for a limited time, for a few months, and Leah told herself she must banish the overshadowing of melancholy. They thrust themselves together as though to hold forever joined, their bodies sealed, as at the instant of all creation.
* * * *
To help them earn a bit, Mother Aaronson contrived still to give Leah a day’s housework now and again, especially the heavier cleaning for Sabbath Eve, as her Arab woman had still not regained her full strength. On one such afternoon, when Leah was at the Aaronson house, a young girl climbed up the ladder to the hut; Reuven knew it must be Sara. She had brought two huge books, wondrous French botanical volumes filled with delicate engravings of all the plants of the Levant. “I believe my brother himself would have lent them to you,” she said, as she placed the volumes carefully on the table. “That is why I decided to bring them. He likes to find people seriously interested in studying.” And then she simply gazed at him. Reuven in his eagerness was about to open the books, but on impulse first hurried to the basin in the corner and carefully washed his hands. A smile, an illumination, came over the girl’s face and their eyes met. Why he didn’t know, but she reminded him of Leah when she had not yet grown so tall, and was somewhat plump like this. He realized the girl had come out of curiosity to have a look at him, nothing more. Now he carefully opened a volume, leafing back the tissue paper over a magnificent, detailed engraving of a papyrus plant such as grew in the Huleh.
Could he read the Latin name? she wanted to know.
Yes, he had taught himself Latin nomenclature.
She smiled again. Her brother had discovered many plants that were not even in the books, she said. Sometimes her brother took her with him on his excursions, they rode on horseback, they had explored the whole of Galilee and even the Hauran …
And on and on she talked of her brother, and then all at once, abruptly, she bade him a farewell Shalom and was gone.
Nor did she return. It was as though she had satisfied herself in seeing the chalutz, and that was enough. As for Reuven, the image of the girl remained with him as something fresh, something good that had happened, but surely nothing more.
Now there were pastoral days on the Zichron hillside when the long-bearded, patriarchal Aaronson walked among the rows of vines where the Arab girls and women in their many-colored gowns knelt at the cutting, and Aaronson made certain no stem was injured.
In the evenings Leah would watch her brother, his head bent in the lamplight, his thick hair wild around his ascetic face; he was using a Russian-French dictionary that she had found for him—in Zichron there was even a bookshop.
It was at this time that Leah talked of her longing to have the family here; she too had thought of it. She worried about Dvoraleh, who was of the age when she needed a big sister to confide in, and she ached for their baby brother Avramchick; in each letter Mama had told new wonders of him—of how, even so tiny, he showed consideration for others, not like an infant, but like a person! And Gidon and Schmulik—Leah expressed Reuven’s own thoughts—what would become of them if they remained in Russia? Another tradesman? another fur worker?
Reuven admitted that he too sometimes longed for their own place where there would be no bickering over each thing he wanted to do, where he wouldn’t have to hear Max’s constant refrain, “No, Reuven, you can’t volunteer to find your own time. Your time, chaver, the same as for the rest of us, belongs to the kvutsa.” Sometimes he envied a simple farmer like Kolodnitzer who could bring his own cattle from Holland if he could manage it, and develop a new breed. If Tateh would agree to come with all the children, perhaps indeed they could receive a homestead—surely they would be put at the head of the list. The new settlement being planned would be quite close to the kvutsa, and Reuven had even wondered—he and Leah might stay on at the kvutsa, but with the family farm so close by, he could keep a corner of land there
for himself and carry out some of his ideas, on his Sabbaths.
“And what does Tateh have there in Cherezinka? Nothing but a life of insults and falling into debt each time he tries to break away from our Koslovsky and his sugar-beet mill.” On a farm even in bad years a family could manage to live on a cow and their own produce. And think of the boys growing up straight, riding horses, plowing the fields.
“Oh, if we could only get them to come,” Leah agreed.
And so they wrote long letters home, describing to their father the comforts and good life of the settlers in such a village as Zichron, and telling him of the new settlements waiting for families such as theirs.
3
IN HIS first night on the Zuckerman roof in Eretz Yisroel, Yankel Chaimovitch did not sleep well. Bad dreams sifted through his mind; he stood in a ship made of reeds like a basket, and water poured in through the cracks; the ship was going down, and small birds with sharp open beaks pecked at his shamefully uncovered head; he stood in the synagogue, called up to read the weekly portion, and his son Reuven the eldest snatched the tallis from around him and he was naked.
Before dawn Yankel arose, took his tfillim bag, carefully brushed and put on his round hat, and crept down the outside stairs with the thought of finding in the narrow lane a little shul they had passed the day before. Hardly had he stepped from the hotel when there in the grayish light stood a pious Jew with a small, pointed red beard and red-rimmed eyes, a prayer bag under his elbow, offering to guide a Jew to a shul.—A newcomer in the land? He spoke with a Litvak intonation. Beware of red-beards and of Litvaks, Yankel reminded himself, but already this Yidl had found out how many were the children in his family, had blessed each child by name, and remarked understandingly what a problem it would be to provide for such a huge family, and the children nearly all of them still small ones, may they thrive each and every one! Out of interest for a fellow pious Jew with such problems, there occurred to the red-beard a timely opportunity—a full-bearing orange grove requiring only the smallest cash investment, and providing a good living—a bargain to be snatched up, since land was leaping every day higher in value.
The Litvak kept nudging closer, as though he had divined the moneybelt and wanted to get a heft of it. He himself, praised be the Name, had seven mouths to feed and so he could understand a Jew’s problems. To settle in a new colony? In the Galilee? There came a shrewd smile and an inspection from his blinking eyes.—Why be dragged away to the ends of the earth and wait seven years until a tree grew and bore fruit? And the heat! It was a gehenna there in the valley. And the fevers! Three out of four died. Here in Jaffa even if a Jew did not possess enough capital to finance a full-bearing grove, he could make a decent living in the town itself. There was an excellent little shop—implements and building materials—that could be bought just now from a Jew leaving to join his wealthy brother in America.
They were already inside the little shul, and without leaving Yankel’s elbow, the red-beard, Reb Nussbaum, whispered to him about this one and that one in the minyan, influential Jews in Jaffa, some wealthy, some with good connections, and while racing through the prayers, he threw in a few words under his breath. After the Kaddish they would take a droshke, he would pay half out of his own pocket, and they would visit the widow who owned the orange grove—God grant her grove was not yet sold, it was only partway to Petach Tikvah, no distance at all, it would be just like living in Jaffa itself.
—No, he was not taken in by this Nussbaum, Yankel told himself—A luftmench, here in Eretz Yisroel too they were to be found. If you wanted a king’s palace, he had it for sale in his pocket. A husband for your daughter?—behold, he was a bit of a matchmaker too. But still even from such a type, if a man was careful, he could at least get an idea of how things stood in this land. Yankel was not yet ready, he told himself, to be led around by the nose by his son, to be dragged off God knows where to a wilderness of fever and heat.
If only he had come here in his youth as he had dreamed, he too would now be the possessor of a fine house such as he now beheld, with fig trees in the yard, and a bower of vines, and with his daughters sitting in the house practicing on the piano while matchmakers came to propose excellent suitors descended from the Gaon of Vilna. Instead, here he was a homeless man with a flock of children and only a few gold pieces sewn away.
There was indeed a widow, though she greeted Reb Nussbaum rather icily—a woman’s humors. Stiffly corseted in a black gown, she squeezed out a smile for the newcomer, and led them to a parlor with red velvet chairs with tassels, brought, she said, all the way from Berdichev. An Arab woman at once appeared with almond cakes and a pitcher of a cool milky drink with a wonderfully refreshing taste—lebeniyah, she called it. Ah, the widow said, everything looked fine and easy now; her husband might-he-rest-in-peace had been a Lover of Zion, and she told the whole tale of how this pestilential swamp had become a paradise. Three children they had lost. Only one daughter had survived; she was married and lived in Paris. There the widow wanted to end her days, close to her grandchildren. “Enough, enough have we suffered in our lives, enough we have given to this land of our heart’s blood—”
Feeling somehow an impostor, when the price was mentioned, Yankel still tried to maintain the air of a man of means. But the widow surely had sniffed him out; her eyes narrowed and her voice was harsh as she said something quickly to the red-beard. She did not offer to accompany them to inspect the grove, nor did Yankel even get to see it, for at the gate there stood his son Reuven.
“What are you doing here! I had to come looking for you!” Reuven cried. “We are expected in Dr. Lubin’s office!” He had arranged for the chief of the settlement bureau to see them, the entire family, “And you, you run off with this parasite, listening to his grandmother’s tales! Bobeh meises! A ready-made estate! A little baron with Arab serfs, is that what you came here to be?”
Luckily, at the shul, Zuckerman the hotelkeeper had overheard the conversation and sent Reuven after the red-beard, one of the most notorious swindlers of Jaffa, just now swarming with their kind.
And on the way back Reuven continued: Did his father know what troubles there were in Petach Tikvah? And around that very widow’s grove! Yes, bitter strife in which Turkish police had been called by Jewish landowners to club and beat up Jewish workers who asked for nothing but a day’s work! Did Yankel know that before taking back a single Jewish worker the Baron’s little barons had forced them to sign a paper that they would not smoke on the Sabbath?
At this Yankel had to hide a smile in his beard. Perhaps indeed he should live in Petach Tikvah. But his son raged on. What sort of homeland would be built, what sort of human freedom—
In one thing Yankel agreed. He too did not want to have serfs, Russian or Arab. He wanted to work his fields with his own hands, his sons laboring beside him, his daughters milking cows in the shed. Only, Reuven need not imagine that Yankel Chaimovitch was about to appear before the head of the Zionist office in Jaffa wearing that wagon-driver’s cap!
Now they had to wait for Leah who had vanished.
Seizing the hour, she had hurried to the Poale Zion office and there luckily found Avner, talking to yesterday’s newly arrived chalutzim. One thing at least Avner was able to tell her—Moshe had got to Constantinople and stayed there a few nights; then he had taken ship for Odessa. All this was in a letter that had just been brought from a good Turkish Jew whose house served as a way-station. But none of the new arrivals had seen or heard of Moshe in Odessa. This was worrisome, certainly. Avner was never one to belittle a situation, yet he was not one to panic. These new arrivals were not actually Odessans, they had only passed through. It could be that for certain reasons Moshe was keeping out of sight. At least no bad news had come.
But couldn’t he send an inquiry?
“Leachkeh—” only the tall, gangling Avner seemed able to sense how feminine and helpless she often felt—“Leahleh, you don’t imagine we haven’t already done it?” The instant t
here was news, good or bad, he promised it would be brought to her even if he had to walk himself from Jerusalem.
The family was waiting, and her mother saw something in her face. “No, no, I can’t explain to you,” Leah told her as Reuven hurried them through the lanes, but her mother even asked, “You heard something? Of the one you told me about last night? Moshe? What has happened?” Leah shook her head mulishly, and Feigel felt stricken. With the first one, her first daughter, she had already failed. She had not been able to protect the girl.
* * * *
The stairway was crowded. Here in this little office, then, was the compound result of all the orations, the journeyings and the gatherings, the World Congresses, the fervid discussions in Vilna and Bratislava and on New York’s East Side, the bribes and the subterfuges, bringing Jews into the land wearing white helmets as travelers, or even garbed as monks and nuns, or, some said, carried in as sacks of potatoes—building the Land brick by brick.
Up the stairway clattered the Chaimovitch family, the girls with their shining hair, neatly braided, smelling a bit of lice-killing kerosene, the boys, as Yankel had insisted, with the dust cleaned from their shoes. Even on the stairway, settlers and chalutzim made way for the family—they stood pressed against the wall to watch the troop move upward, led by the father in his fine capote and round hat, followed by Big Leah whom everybody knew and greeted, and a whole flock of younger brothers and sisters and at last the mother, wearing her finest gown and a crocheted shawl, still a noble-looking wife.
So they entered the inner office. A neat, small man, stoutish, clean-shaven, and cultured one could see at a glance, a Jew who addressed them in German instead of Yiddish, he already knew of Reuven. “Your son is an outstanding worker, known in the settlement,” he told Yankel, beaming, “and your daughter too! Ah, if we had ten thousand like them!” And he related with relish the tale of Reuven and the Herzl trees replanted by Jewish hands.
