The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  “To join the settlement,” Reuven repeated, as though the settlement would materialize simply by his speaking of it.

  Kramer extended an arm in a broad gesture. “Do you see a settlement?”

  Yankel was staring grimly at his son.

  “But I heard even before I went to Zichron to the hospital that permits had been granted for the houses here,” Reuven began. “They said that Dr. Lubin himself went all the way to Constantinople and bribed everyone up to the valet of the Sultan’s bedchamber to get the building permits.”

  “Maybe he greased them in Constantinople, but he didn’t grease them in Tiberias,” Kramer snapped, “or in Damascus either.” And did Reuven know there was a whole turmoil in Constantinople, that the Young Turks were rising, and that meanwhile a new governor had come to Damascus?

  Who didn’t know this? The entire yishuv was arguing whether the Young Turks might not change everything if they came to power. Surely they would open the doors to progress!

  But as a man who is not obliged to explain himself to every passerby, Kramer shrugged, and in his habitual way turned his back, marching to his hut.

  On the site Reuven now saw the outlines for several houses had been laid out, with one or two courses of stone. “But nevertheless you are building!” he cried. “How long will it be until a house is ready?”

  Kramer paused before his door. “Stones we are permitted to cut,” he said. “To build a house with windows and a roof is another matter.” And he pointed with his chin to a tent. Emerging and staring at them was a Turkish policeman, planted by the Kaymakam of Tiberias to make sure that no roof was laid until an order came from Damascus. Again baksheesh, for the new governor there.

  “In any case,” Kramer remarked, “all these houses are already bespoken; the owners are coming from Roumania.” And waving to Kalman the drayman to unload the materials, he entered his hut, closing the door behind him.

  Where would they even spend the night? It was now that Yankel broke out at his son with every bitter disappointment of the voyage. “Where have you brought me! Where have you brought us with small children to a wilderness of murderous Arabs, infested with deathly disease! You, my son full of enlightened knowledge and wisdom! Come, he writes his father, come, bring the children, everything is ready, all is prepared!”

  Yankel was shouting so that all the workmen heard. His face was livid, and there was spittle on his beard. Reuven, as an equal rage rose up in his own self, clenched his fists until his nails cut into his palms. However unjust the accusation, he would not raise his arm against his father…. If only Leah were here!

  “A curse on you and your lies!” the father shouted. Feigel stood, her face showing her great distress; the children had fallen back. “A curse on this place!”

  They gasped. Yankel lowered his eyes. Kalman the drayman stepped toward him. “Shah, shah, Reb Chaimovitch. It is only a mistake such as we have here in the land every day—” but as Yankel turned his face of bitterness on him, Kalman went back to his unloading.

  Gidon had walked off a small distance so as not to look at his father in his rage; little Schmuel was halfway to his mother and the girls, his cheeks red and his eyes furtive as though he did not know where to run.

  The mother waited, a woman who knew the way of her husband. This bitter anger of Yankel’s, did she not know it? His curse was not a true curse, it was a cry to God to witness that it was not he, Yankel, but others who were at fault for his misfortunes. This was the rage that came after each partner deceived him in business, it was the rage against her brother who had used him to draw the anger of the peasants, and now it was against his own son, so that whatever went wrong, Yankel would not be to blame.

  In her soul she did not despise him, for in her soul Feigel knew Yankel was a good man who wanted only to provide a decent life for his family, and who labored without end. But he was not a clever man, and also he was honest in his heart and by religious training; thus, when he had disappointments and failures, he always needed someone to blame for his victimization. Then, when before the Above One he had called out his rage and laid the blame elsewhere, he would turn to overcome his misfortunes with some remaining unknown strength, and somehow he always managed.

  Kramer had opened his door. “The men sleep down there,” the overseer said, motioning toward the riverbank, where they saw two square stone huts. “Tomorrow we’ll see what can be done.”

  Reuven had already started downward, with Gidon behind him. From the wagon Kalman called: What was he to do with the huge trunk? Should he drop it off here?

  “In a deep hole in the earth!” Yankel cursed, and then said, more quietly, “Bring everything down there.”

  Near the river, some hundred paces apart, stood two hovels made of the local black stone, abandoned since who knew when. Atop the first, Reuven saw, rushes had been laid to form a roof; inside that one, the stonemasons had their pallets.

  The second hut was doorless and roofless except for a few dried rushes over one corner; within hung a stale odor of ancient dung and accumulated filth. Still, there remained a shred of daylight and it could be cleaned. He kicked at the rubbish. Gidon, stepping inside onto the earthen floor, also kicked at the rubbish. “Along the shore there are plenty of reeds.” Reuven said, “Do you have a knife?” Gidon pulled out an enormous clasp knife, opened it, and started off.

  Feigel came in. At the base, the walls jutted out to form benches, and on these, bedding could be placed. “Dvoraleh,” she said as Dvoraleh sniffed, “perhaps in the other hut they have a broom and a pail?”

  Now Yankel entered and gazed around. “Tomorrow we will see what to do,” he declared. “Tonight there is no choice but to lie here.”

  Together with Dvora, there returned a middle-aged man wearing the long yellow-striped gown of the Sephardim and carrying a pail of water and a home-tied broom; he was from Tiberias, a stonemason; Dvora was laughingly trying to understand his words, spoken in Ladino, the Spanish Yiddish of the Sephardim.

  Yankel engaged him in the holy tongue, loshen koidesh, using the Ashkenazi pronunciation as in his prayers, though here in Eretz, as he already knew, it was the Sephardic that was spoken. The mason managed to understand Yankel’s Biblical Hebrew. Soon they were immersed in a pietistic discussion, while the family made the hut habitable.

  —A worthy ideal, the Sephardi said, to come and revive the soil, though as for inhabiting the Holy Land, his own family had lived here in Tiberias for many generations. So the land was not uninhabited. In Tiberias there were several thousands of Jews, even Ashkenazim as well, latecomers from only a generation ago. The city was not far distant, less than two hours with a donkey, if it was not a lazy one. For his Sabbaths he went home.

  Reuven and Kalman carried in the large trunk from the wagon, and Feigel had them set it in the center of the hut. Opening the lid, she at once found her red velvet spread with the tassels, and arranged it over the trunk—a table. Presently the Sephardi brought over his own kerosene lamp, insisting the family make use of it—there was another one among the men. Feigel gave him a thousand thanks, and set it on the “table.” In a moment he had returned again, carrying a large circular pittah such as they had seen in Jaffa transported on wooden platters atop the heads of young girls. It was soft and thick, and kept edible longer than the small rounds that quickly became dry. And in a twist of newspaper, their friend had also brought a pinch of coarse salt; it came, he said, from the Salt Sea.

  Uncountable blessings Yankel poured on him and on his children forever. Feigel was near to weeping.—On Sabbath, said the Sephardi, who bore the distinguished name of Abulafia, Yankel must come to Tiberias to their synagogue, which was near the tomb of Maimonides.

  And so they were home.

  Feather quilts and bedding were unfolded on the stone benches, making a long line of sleeping places around the walls. Already Feigel had settled Avramchick for the night. Gidon, with Schmulik jumping up to hand him the withes, had soon lightly roofed over the
hut; in slivers between the reeds, the night sky could be seen. Dvora’s spirits had risen. It was romantic, she said, and she and Eliza made secret wishes on a star glowing between Gidon’s rushes, disputing who had seen it first. Shaindeleh-Yaffaleh was asleep, wearing an expression of contentment.

  Yankel went out and stood before the doorway, gazing at the opposite hills, now a black wall. Edom, was it? Of Reuven he would not inquire.

  Yankel felt as though God’s will had manifested itself. Thus he had been brought here to this corner of the beginning of the world. As it was written, In the beginning, so it was for him now a beginning, even if in the middle of his life.

  Feigel too had emerged. Because they had arrived here, and the trunk was safely in the house, and there were beds around the walls, Yankel quietly said to her, so that she would know that he knew, “Feigel, you are carrying?”

  “It happened,” Feigel said.

  “If it was ordained,” Yankel said, “then it is well that it will be in Eretz Yisroel.” To bring a new life in this land would be a mitzvah.

  “Let it be with God’s blessing,” Yankel said.

  Just so, perhaps, it had been with Abraham and Sara late in life, after the angels appeared at the door of their dwelling and told of a coming birth.

  As for Reuven, when the best that could be done had been done in the hovel, he would not stay, not under the same roof or pretense of a roof, for the angry words his father had hurled at him still boiled in him with their injustice. Reuven walked up the hillside to where the fields would have to be cleared, and he sat on a stone under the stars and gazed out over the mirror of lake in the distance to his left, a black mirror. A black day it had been. He did not know if he should return there at all to the kvutsa, as, with the new chevreh arriving, he would not be urgently needed. Nor could he simply walk away from here and leave his father with the whole family to struggle in all this uncertainty.

  He stretched out with his head on the stone. How could he demand of the kvutsa that the decisions should always go his way? It was true that with Moshe and Araleh they had often left Max and Shimek defeated. If he accepted the communa as a principle, a principe, and he did accept it, then he must learn to be one with all the chaverim, and not place the judgment of some, or worse, of himself, above any others. It was hard, hard to learn a just way of life. Perhaps he was meant to live alone.

  In the hills the jackals howled.

  Leah’s tea strengthened Max and also the new young chaver; perhaps they had only felt miserably alone and discouraged. The new one had indeed come as a wanderer, having heard so much of their kvutsa; it was a way of life that appealed to him, he said. Ephraim was his name, and he came from the village of Motol, near Pinsk, the very village of a new Zionist leader who had sprung up since Herzl’s death, Chaim Weizmann, hadn’t they heard of him? Never mind. From young Weizmann he, as a boy, had learned, “Build, build, don’t wait for others to do it for you,” so he had come to build, and here instead he found himself a burden, a sick man.

  “Don’t worry,” Leah encouraged the enthusiast, “now you have had your kadahat, the land has entered into you—that’s what my brother says.”

  —Had she had any news of Moshe? Max Wilner asked. Then from a corner he brought a half-broken straw coffer. It was Moshe’s, he said, he had found it under the bed-boards; perhaps it should be in her care.

  Carrying it up to her little chamber on the roof, Leah opened the lid. Inside were personal oddments, even the photograph of his mother and father that Moshe had once shown her—would he have left these things if he had any thought of not returning? A pair of old leather gloves, the fingers torn. She would sew them. Would that be foolishness? And then a scattering of papers, letters, a Hebrew exercise book, all disordered, a man’s way. She would really not have begun on the letters, except that the first sheet that caught her eye under the lamplight said “Beloved Son.” So Leah read on, her heart storming. So much like the letters Mameh had written to Reuven. Admonitions always to wear a hat on his head since it was said that the sun was so hot in Eretz, people died of their brains set a-boil. And Misheleh—she knew how her Misheleh was with the girls, a mother was happy her son was so fine-looking and attractive, but still he must have a care. Even though it was said that the chalutzoth in Eretz were so modern and free, at least let her son not bring her the shame of getting a Jewish girl into trouble—

  Further, there was family news of uncles and aunts and cousins, and then of a certain Katya who had written, asking for news of him…. Instantly Leah sensed, this was the one. Could Moshe perhaps even have gone back for her? But no, everything she knew in her body denied it. Moshe had not gone away to leave her.

  … They longed for their son at home, he had been away nearly two years. Gladly his father would pay the cost of the voyage if Moshe would but come for a visit….

  Suddenly Leah’s heart felt illuminated. Surely this was what had happened. Why had she tormented herself, casting up every imaginable fear, seeing him in dungeons? Moshe had slipped home for a visit.

  On one of the envelopes she found the address. To surprise him and write to him there? But instead she wrote a friendly letter to his mother, and so as not to frighten her in case something after all should have gone wrong, Leah said she was an acquaintance of Moshe’s from Odessa and had just arrived here in Eretz Yisroel, and perhaps his mother could tell her where she might get in touch with Moshe? That way, if he had appeared at home, his mother would surely say so. Leah gave the Zuckerman address in Jaffa. And feeling all this was of a deviousness far beyond her, Leah laughed at herself, and lay down to sleep, making his name silently with her lips, Moshe, come to me, dear one, come!

  Reuven opened his eyes to the sun rising directly over the heights of Golan. He watched the mist lifting like a bride’s veil from the sleeping lake, and told himself he must make certain that their house would be built in such a way that if he were one day to live in it after all, that each morning of his life as he awakened he should open his eyes to this sight. He would never tire of it.

  Lying there, gazing over the water, Reuven recalled a tale of his first employer, Smilansky, that the writer and planter had heard from an Arab teller of tales, about the birth of the Kinnereth:

  In the far-off days when Allah created the heavens and earth, he created a lovely pool, Kinnereth, in the form of a woman lying still, with her limbs tucked under her, and nothing moving but the slow ripple of her smooth blue hair. In the same day he created Jordan, a rushing stream, noisy and bold. Allah looked on what he had created, and the clear innocent Kinnereth found favor in his eyes, he loved Kinnereth, but Jordan he saw as a creature of evil. Already, Jordan was winding about Kinnereth and, jealous for the gentle pool, Allah commanded his ministering angels to imprison Jordan in a cave at the foot of the King of Mountains, the Hermon. But Kinnereth they set down in a broad valley, engirdled by protective heights, and fed by springs that break forth from the Golan and the Bashan and the mouths of the valleys.

  Then it came to pass in a day of thunders and terrors when the upper powers contended with the lower, that Jordan broke out from his imprisonment, thrusting aside a great stone and bursting forth. Twining and darting down clefts and along ravines, escaping notice, he reached the broad plain and made his way to the heart of Kinnereth.

  Then Allah was told, “Jordan is come to Kinnereth!”

  Allah’s anger burst forth. At his fury, the whole world was terrified; the earth trembled and the heavens wept, the mountains quivered and the valleys quaked.

  Then Allah opened a way southward from the broad plain, and rolled Jordan down, ever downward to the gates of death. “For what you have done, O headstrong one,” Allah chastised Jordan, “unresting shall be your days. From the mouth of the cave you shall tumble down, downward you must ever go, bearing your toil unto death. Into Kinnereth you have come, and from her you shall go forth, nor shall you remain in her even for an instant, for Kinnereth you shall not know.”

&n
bsp; And to Kinnereth, also, Allah spoke. “Since you have allowed Jordan thus to encompass and beguile you, without turning away, you shall forever be bound to your place, crouching at the foot of the rocks, licking their dust, never to emerge.”

  Thousands of years have gone by, so goes the tale, yet the word of Allah is not changed. Jordan incessantly runs on, knowing no rest, leaping from stone to stone, slipping from crevice to crevice; into Kinnereth he enters, but must not stay; forth he goes, bearing all his vigor unto death.

  And Kinnereth? There she crouches at the foot of the rocks, licking their dust, bound hand and foot.

  Yet sometimes Kinnereth bestirs herself of a sudden, and storms and rages. She cries out, waves come riding one on another, flinging themselves against the flanks of the rocks which they smother with white foam. Her cries cleave the heavens. Kinnereth lashes herself like a dreadful beast; her blue locks turn white and scatter far and wide in a fury, while a shameful roar bursts from her, the roar of tempestuous desire.

  But the rocks stand closed about her as though dead, without moving.

  The waves scatter in all directions, break into fragments, and fall back powerless into Kinnereth. Cruel is the silence of heaven.

  Kinnereth at last also becomes still. Little by little she subsides into her repose. She is silent and crouches submissively at the feet of the rocks. Again her waters grow smooth and blue and deep. Innocence and modesty are within her, a light mist of sweet breath rises from her soul. Jordan flings himself ever downward without repose.

  But he could not lie here dreaming. Jumping up, Reuven began to carry stones off the earth, placing them in line where it seemed to him the field should end. First he carried over the very stone his head had lain on. He could not be certain this segment of the settlement would be theirs, yet he began to clear the field where he had lain, as though, in some vague echo of Jacob’s dream, the field had become sanctified to him.