The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  When Reuven and the kvutsa had labored planting eucalyptus in the mud, Ibrim would ride near and watch them, warning them the place was pestilential. One day Reuven had tried to explain to him how the pestilence, it had been discovered, came from the sting of a mosquito, and how these trees, absorbing the water, would clear the swamp where mosquitoes bred.

  Sheikh Ibrim had listened to all this, and then told the tale in the village of how the mad Jews believed the pestilence came from the sting of a mosquito, making a swift jab against his leathery old skin and laughing with the rest, for the mad Jews were all lying sick to death down there, with glazed eyes, in the abandoned pestilential khan. Seven men and two women were living there together, the women belonging to all!

  In another abandoned half-ruin near the river there was now a whole family. Riding by and observing them, Sheikh Ibrim was touched by their ineptitude. They let their women cook over an open fire, like Bedouin; the big rains were coming, and the Jewish family had only open reeds for a roof. First, he sent down two of his grandsons to show them how to weave a tight roof of withes; the boys were of the age of Gidon, and while they worked, they did not take their eyes off the graceful little sister with the long swinging golden braids, Eliza, moving in and out of the house as she helped her mother at her tasks.

  When Sheikh Ibrim came down, to be thanked and thanked again for his kindness, and to be given ribbons for his womenfolk, he studied the primitive cooking arrangements of the Jews, who in their curious way had brought many new tools and machines to this land, and yet did not know how to build a simple earthen oven. And so he came down again with his grandson Fawzi and supervised the construction of a taboon. Gidon quickly understood how to heat it up and showed Feigel how to use it for baking, and Feigel herself discovered that it was excellent for the Sabbath cholent.

  Early that Friday, Yankel found himself sent by Kramer with his wagon to Tiberias to fetch ironwork from the smith. It fell well. Since his arrival here, each Friday the longing had come over Yankel to stand in a shul amidst the murmur of prayer from fellow Jews; alone, as each Sabbath eve approached, he had made his way along the riverbank to a little cove he had found for himself, to bathe for the Shabbat, remembering the steam bath in Cherezinka and the Jews good and bad, the friends and the swindlers gathered there, the bits of news and wisdom and also of stupid womanlike gossip that drifted through the steam, and occasionally the chance that came of a good business stroke; remembering all this, Yankel felt his loneliness.

  Here also, on the road before one came to Tiberias, there were baths, he had been told, the ancient natural baths with hot water coming out of the earth; in the winter season, Jews from Jerusalem journeyed here to cure their bones of rheumatism and other ills. In Tiberias itself were synagogues, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic. Although he had to return home before the Sabbath fell and therefore would not be able to remain in a shul for the prayers, still he might find a few men lingering about the study house for a shmoos. He had labored well and felt he deserved this day.

  The wagon road passed directly before the steam baths as one approached the city, and also, higher on the hillside, one saw a domed structure, the tomb, Abulafia had told him, of Rabbi Meir Baal Ness. But Yankel drove by the baths so as first to finish his business for Kramer. The town itself, with its single dusty street and the open market with its stalls for meat and fish and bolts of cloth somehow was homelike to him. The half-ruined, thick, surrounding wall of black stone made him think with a pang of sin that he had not yet gone to Yerushalayim.

  Arabs and Jews were mingled in the market like peasants and Yidden at home, and what with the Sephardim in their long striped gowns, he could hardly tell a Jew from an Arab in his galabiya. Bethinking himself of Abulafia, who no longer came out to cut stone, Yankel spoke the name questioningly in a Sephardi spice shop where he bought items that Feigel had written down, cinnamon, and saffron; the shopkeeper knew the family, but Yankel had a certain shyness—he did not want to impose hospitality, especially just before the Sabbath when every household was busy, so he asked rather where the Abulafias’ shul might be found, and there, in a courtyard and up a flight of outer stairs, was a long chamber with whitewashed walls, scarred old benches and an elaborately embroidered silk curtain hung before the Ark. Now, in the middle of the day, the shul was empty. But simply to stand there a bit made him feel easier.

  Last hour purchasers still stirred about the market. Yankel passed a row of Jewish butcher stalls. It was long since they had had meat; they would all become vegetarians like his son. But he was again spending from the small capital brought from Cherezinka, since he now worked mostly on his own land, and crops were yet distant. Still, Yankel thought of the faces of the children—Gidon, a meat-lover—the boy worked hard alongside him. Yankel approached a stall. Fowl was costly, and of good cattle flesh such as they ate at home, there was none. Feigel would have known what was best to put into her pots. Finally he bought scraps of sheep meat.

  Then before he reached his wagon an impulse overcame him. Fine white geese sat in wicker cages. Yankel thought of Shaindeleh, jealous of her sister when he had given Dvora charge of the chickens. In Yankel there was a tenderness of his daughters, rarely shown. Feigel would relate all their doings to him and speak of the nature of each, knowing how much this meant to him, yet little passed between himself and the growing girls except that the pretty Eliza knew she could always wheedle her tateh. But lately she no longer came and sat on his lap to twist her fingers in his beard. With the youngest, Shaindel, there was another feeling in him altogether, and Yankel knew this was in Feigel too, a curious hovering sense of worry, though nothing was wrong. She was not lovely as Eliza had been even as a baby. For that matter, neither had Dvora shown particular beauty as a child; yet she had grown now into an appealing girl, round-faced, with a short neck, but warmhearted-looking and womanly, resembling her mother, and recalling to him his first sight of Feigel. When she was proposed as his bride, his first reaction had been that the maiden was no beauty such as he had dreamed of, but then he had a slowly growing feeling that she looked very nice, and even, when she flushed and her eyes came alight, beautiful. Of Leah he only thought now in a kind of bewilderment; when she had grown so tall and strong, towering over him even at home, she had seemed a force beyond him, though he felt her love perhaps more powerfully than that of any other of the children. Only—something had happened in Leah with this chaver who had gone off on one of their mysterious missions; Yankel did not permit himself to envision his daughter lying with a man, and Feigel was silent, receding as into the realm of womanish things. His thoughts returned to Shaindel, Yaffaleh as she was called here. She was too small, too young, for judgment of her appearance to be made, and yet Yankel knew in his heart that the little girl would be ugly. Her body was lumpy, fattish, and though all the girls except Eliza were like Feigel, short-necked, little Shaindel seemed to have no throat at all, her head sitting heavily on her shoulders, and her face with heavy jaws. She simply was not favored. It was foolish to worry about a little girl of six, Feigel said—no matter how she looked, she could turn into a beauty. And her nature was sweetest of all. When Shaindeleh came and took his hand to walk with him sometimes, there was nothing, nothing she wanted from him—as it would be with Eliza. Shaindel wanted only to walk with her tateh.

  So, suddenly, Yankel bought two white geese in their wicker cage to bring home to Shaindeleh. Nor could this be counted as an extravagance, as it would be the beginning of a flock.

  Then, starting homeward, Yankel gave himself leave on the outskirts of Tiberias to spend a few coins for the bath. There was still time if he did not linger. The bathhouse was a vaulted stone chamber—who could tell how long it had been standing here—perhaps since the times of the great rabbis who had come to purify themselves in the mikveh here. And as he put off his clothes onto a stone bench, and took the towel handed him by an elderly Jew in a yarmulkeh, Yankel experienced in that dim chamber, where he stood naked, something t
hat he had in a way been expecting all through this day, the first day when he went about by himself a bit freely in the land.

  What came to Yankel was, though in a different way, what had come to Reuven and Leah when they found themselves alone in the hollow of a sand-dune beyond Jaffa. Yankel for some moments experienced a surpassing sense of returned peace, of having overcome all his fears of the world, of being a good father, a good Jew, a decent man. The odor of wet stone with a tartness in it came into him with a kind of returning familiarity, though at home in Cherezinka the benches had been of wood. He breathed in the close warm air.

  Advancing to the square pool of water, Yankel dipped in his foot. The water was indeed warm and of a peculiarly penetrating quality. It was known there were curative minerals in this Tiberias water that dissolved away the weariness from inside your bones. Slowly Yankel let himself down into the small pool, and stood on the bottom, his neck above the surface, his beard wet. His whole body felt engulfed by something good; it was a feeling akin to a stirring in his very soul. “A mechayah,” he said, half-aloud. A perfect pleasure!

  “Your first time?” a voice asked in Yiddish, and Yankel made out the head of another man of about his own age in the further corner. Then began between them the thing Yankel had really most longed for all these weeks, a shmoos. A talking. A feeling-out and talking-out with someone of his own sort. A father of sons and daughters too, of children of various ages, and in such a meeting, there is always in men as well as among women the thought of a possible shidach—a match. A Russian Jew too, it seemed; his family came from Vinnitsa, the seat of a Hasidic tzaddik. But like Yankel, Reb Bagelmacher was himself from a family of anti-Hasidim, Mitnagdim; his forefathers had been bakers, bagel-bakers to be sure, his grandfather, a Talmud chacham, had opened an inn, and Yankel even believed that in his forest-buying days he had one night stayed there, in Vinnitsa. No—or at least it could not have been with the Bagelmachers, his new friend said, since the family had come here to Eretz over thirty years before, moving their inn to Tiberias. Nu, one made a living, though the season was brief. The season was just barely beginning. In winter Jews came for the warm baths, excellent for rheumatism and liver trouble. On Fridays, with a turmoil of Sabbath preparation in the pension, Bagelmacher took refuge here for his midday rest.

  As for Yankel, he too told his story, perhaps exaggerating a bit his status as a merchant from Cherezinka who had liquidated his capital and come to Eretz to redeem the land. Until the new settlement would fill up he was alone, the first to come, he said, and what he missed there was a shul.

  —Whenever he was in Tiberias, he was welcome, declared Reb Bagelmacher; they had their own little synagogue, Russian Jews like himself, and Yankel felt refreshed and made his way home.

  It was truly a good Shabbes. Yaffaleh, overjoyed with her white geese, climbed on him in his chair and kissed her tateh all over his cheeks. The meat was in time to be cooked, though it proved not of the best. Still, Feigel kept some in the oven and on Shabbes itself the meat melted in your mouth.

  At sunrise each day, the little girl went off with her geese, down to the waterside, paddling with them, sitting dreamily, not so much watching them as being with them. She gave each a name, and would question and admonish them, “Estherkeh, when are you going to lay eggs for me?” One day Estherkeh swam off, pulling into a thick stand of reeds. Yaffa followed, wading carefully in the mud bank, breathless. And soon she came running up to the house, the trophy in her hand, telling how Estherkeh had led her a clever chase, pretending to stop, paddling further, and how at last Estherkeh had wiggled into the mud, making a small hollow, and—

  To eat one single goose-egg—the first? Queen Esther might become angry and lay no more, Yaffaleh pleaded. Then let her grow a flock, Feigel decided, in time there would be plenty of eggs, and geese too, for feasting. At Passover they would have a Seder with their own roast goose! But to this Yaffaleh wouldn’t even listen; she was already running back with the egg.

  One morning Yaffaleh saw her white mother goose emerging from her thicket, and there, paddling to one side of her, came her brood; the child counted—seven of them, still shaped like eggs, seven goose-eggs with tiny heads. The mother turned her queenly head to make sure of them—could she count? No, a goose couldn’t count, that was why you were called a goose if you couldn’t add numbers; yet Yaffaleh felt the mother goose knew perfectly well how many goslings there should be.

  Now Yaffaleh had a great desire to rush back to the house to tell Schmulik, to tell Avramchick, to bring them, the whole family must come running to gaze on this wonder. But how could she leave even for an instant? She stood transfixed. And watching, the perfection of the universe was revealed to her. How cunning, how divine was the way in which the creature floated out slowly, and her young followed, the glowing forms moving as stars moved across the Milky Way in the sky!

  But how far was the foolish mother going to swim with her goslings? Suppose she swam out to the Kinnereth and a storm arose? The sea rippled in soft strokes like when Dvora combed her long flowing hair. But how foolish to worry—hadn’t she already noticed that her geese sensed, even sooner than the fishermen, any change coming over the water? Hadn’t Gidon told her that fishermen watched the wild geese on the Kinnereth so as to know when to head homeward?

  Still further her Queen Esther moved with her brood; Yaffaleh waded a few steps into the water, she began to cluck, to call them back. At last Estherkeh circled; her shoe-button eyes looked directly into Yaffa’s, and she lifted her head proudly so her neck was a tower of David. Her babies were a fan of pearls behind her. Yaffaleh waded a few steps further, then, in an outburst of love, she plunged, dress and all, into the water and swam out, hugging her mother goose while the smooth beak pecked a kiss on her mouth.

  Just as Dvora fed the chickens and Yaffaleh had taken charge of the geese, so Gidon was master of the mules. They were kept for the time being along with Kramer’s; he had named them Habib and Baksheesh, because Habib, the beloved, was the friendlier, and Baksheesh was always demanding an extra mouthful before he would stir. Baksheesh was a thief, too, Gidon related, but a clever one. When fodder was placed in the cribs, Baksheesh would steal from his neighbor, but not from the neighbor on his left, his partner Habib—no, he stole from Kramer’s company mules—after all, the Rothschilds could afford it!

  Gidon’s bragging about this cleverness soon got to Kramer’s ears. The overseer was not one to tolerate such matters; Baksheesh must be placed in the end stall, he ordered. But there the wind blew in, and rain too when it rained. One morning Gidon went off with their ax to a small island in the middle of the Jordan, where scrub pines grew. Bringing back several slender poles, he built a lean-to against the hut. In any case Kramer had charged them too much for the feed; now they would keep their beasts at home.

  Dvora received word of Yechezkiel. The young man from the ship had not forgotten her, oh no! It was Leah who brought the news, coming from Yavniel. Only a few days ago, having heard there was a sitting of the Shomer at Yavniel, she had walked there, the whole way. For she had had a thought. Perhaps Moshe had been given an additional mission, a secret one, to bring back arms, and through this had fallen into trouble? Galil would be sure to come to this meeting, at which young men were to be examined as candidates for the Shomer, which now guarded virtually all the settlements as far as Rosh Pina.

  Before their closed sitting she drew Galil aside. In his direct way he answered her. Even in a secret matter she had a right to know, he agreed, and he was sure he could trust her. And it spoke well for Moshe that he had not told her; Moshe indeed was to have brought back arms for the Shomer, but this part of his mission would have been carried out only on his way back. It was known that he had left Constantinople, but from there, nothing was known. In Odessa he had not appeared, not at the Poale Zion and not at the Zionist office. Those who had to do with such matters had been notified and were still at work on the question. Yes, the vessel on which he had sailed was kn
own, a tramp Greek lumber ship; it was now somewhere on the seas, but one day it must return to Constantinople or to Odessa. “Leah, he is important to us, not of course in the same way as to you, but believe me everything is being done. Be patient yet a while.”

  Then she had tried to persuade Galil, “Let me go and find out.” At last he had promised that, if the present inquiries were futile, her plea would be considered.

  While there, she had begun to talk to a likable youth, one of the applicants who were being voted on, trying to ease her nervousness. And when he learned she was Leah Chaimovitch, and that her sister was right here on the other side of the heights of Yavniel, the boy almost forgot about the Shomer!

  “You know,” Leah teased Dvora, “at that moment I think he even forgot they were voting on him. He wanted to come straight here with me! He’s in the training farm at Sejera and said he would come on Sabbath Eve to visit you,” she ended.

  “No! Tonight! And they accepted him into the Shomer?” Dvora fell on her big sister’s breast, weeping with shameless girlish joy, and then she began to fly about the hut, the yard, putting up washing, taking down washing, beginning to sweep the stoop, running inside, exclaiming, “Oh, what a pigpen, a hegdesh!” and covering the beds, and suddenly demanding of her mother whether there would be raisins in the noodle kugel.

  “What’s happened, what’s come over you?” Feigel demanded, seizing Dvora’s wrists. “Not the kadahat? Your face is flushed.”