The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  In that hut of misery Big Leah moved from one to the other, bringing broth, bringing tea, her eyes in their dark hollows hardly closed all week, her voice sometimes hoarse and whispery from weariness. One good thing, the anguish for Moshe was for the time covered up in her, though with all her life she would have preferred to have her family in health and let the anguish burn. “Rest, rest,” she kept urging her mother, “or you too will fall sick with the fever, and then what will become of the children?” And on her side Feigel kept repeating the same to Leah. It was Leah more than her mother who hovered over the stricken Tateh, mopping Yankel’s brow all night long in the worst night of all, and holding him down when he struggled with the wild strength of the enfevered to rise to go to the fields.

  Gidon was the first to rise, tottering out, declaring he was well, it was finished; he fed the mules and watered them. The others still lay stretched toe to head on their pallets around the walls.

  And it was Leah who, before Dr. Rachman arrived, quietly lifted the limp body of Avramchick away from the breast of his mother, who did not yet know that the fever had at last burned through the final fragile hold of the flesh on his uncertain soul, which had risen away.

  With this first sacrifice a legend arose about the soul of Avramchick and the plight of his brother Reuven.

  For when Reuven borrowed the swift mare from the supervisor, Kramer, his ride was known, as everything is known that happens in the land. Among the Arabs of Dja’adi it was known that a Yahud was galloping to Mescha on the famous swift mare of the tawny mane. The Arabs of Dja’adi wouldn’t touch what belonged to Hawadja Kramer, for he had long established friendship with their mukhtar, and old Ibrim had received money for long-abandoned land. And though Kramer did not employ any villagers in the construction of the houses, there were greens and eggs bought from them, cheese and olives as well, and soon more Yehudim would arrive with money.

  But across another twist of the Jordan was the village of the Zbeh, a bitter, marauding clan who had a long-standing feud with Dja’adi, a ghoum that had endured for twelve years and claimed some thirty dead from each tribe. Despite this or because of it, what was known in one village was instantly known on the other side; a few horsemen of the Zbeh were constantly circling around, and nothing escaped their eyes.

  Nor would the Zbeh have dared to try for the steed while Kramer himself rode her; he stood too well with the Turks, and the bastinado was a certainty. Yet here was an opportunity to waylay the mare.

  Since it was certain dark would fall before they could reach the settlement, Dr. Rachman had at first urged Reuven to wait overnight; he would come in the early morning—he was the one doctor who never had it in his heart to refuse, though what could he do? he said. “Quinine you have, and they all have taken quinine. Reuven, you went through a bad kadahat yourself, you know there is nothing much I can do.”

  But his baggy unhappy eyes acknowledged that there was the one thing: to be there. For the doctor to be there. This one added remedy, could it be denied that it sometimes made the difference? For the eyes of the sick, particularly a sick child, to fix themselves on the face of a doctor?

  And so they rode out, hoping to pass the dangerous place atop the ridge still during daylight, and they reached the ridge in time, but nevertheless four of the Zbeh stormed out from behind a rock shelter, blocking the way.

  Though he could not recognize each man by name, nevertheless Dr. Rachman knew the Zbeh and the tribe knew him, for had he ever refused to come to tend a daughter of the tribe bleeding in childbirth? “Yours you can keep, Hawadja Doctor,” the first marauder called, “but the tawny mare we must have.”

  In Yiddish Reuven shouted to Dr. Rachman, “I’ll hold them off, go, go on to my family. Send help!” And in the same moment Reuven jumped down, pulling Kramer’s horse with him into a crevice, while he fired off the revolver that Kramer had insisted he carry. Dr. Rachman’s horse reared but moved on. Perhaps Zev the Hotblood, the shomer in nearby Yavniel, might hear the shooting and come galloping.

  How it was Reuven never understood, but in that single moment he had slipped like some experienced warrior into the best position. The crevice was like a trench and a verge of rocks gave him a protected firing point. Kramer’s mare stood strangely quiet, like some heroine—it even came to Reuven’s mind—in an opera when men fight over a woman, and she waits to be led away by the victor.

  The Zbeh fired at his rocks and he fired with his pistol, still not aiming, only hoping to keep them off, and even in this moment tormenting himself with the thought that he did not want to kill. They wheeled before him for position; doubtless they did not want to injure the steed. Ceaselessly they screamed blood-curdling curses at him, obscenities in Arabic, filth against a man’s mother.

  The sun was behind him, directly in their eyes. Would they rush at him to seize the horse?

  And then there happened something that Reuven did not understand. Their shouting suddenly ceased. They drew together on their mounts. He saw them in a cluster, one huge dark menacing form. And instead of charging upon him, they wheeled and thundered away.

  What became widely talked of afterward was learned from a very old shepherd of Dja’adi, who sometimes talked with a very old shepherd of the Zbeh.

  The Zbeh tribesmen related that they had beheld a golden circlet coursing around the head of the Yahud, a live, golden circle of light that was protecting him. An angel hovered over the Yahud, they saw, and so they had departed.

  Some said the mare had tossed her tawny mane, and with the sunlight coming through it directly into their eyes, the Arabs had seen a golden vision.

  But when Feigel had passed beyond the stony silence of her first grief, and when she heard the story told, she said it was the soul of Avramchick that had paused on the way to heaven and hovered over the head of Reuven his brother, protecting him from the murderers.

  * * * *

  The little white bundle with the body of Avramchick was placed in the ground high up at the far edge of the fields, just beneath the tumbled stone ruins of the village of ancient times. It was Reuven who chose this place that was to become the cemetery of Mishkan Yaacov, and in his choice was the thought that this was where his own body would lie one day.

  And so, as they repeated to each other—the family, and the chaverim from the kvutsa, and the Chevrah Kadushah, the sanctified burial men who came from Yavniel, and the elders of the Yemenites as well, and Kramer and his workers—this little body in a shroud was the first sacrifice here.

  It seemed to Reuven as though some blind, compelling perpetuation was in process, and they were bound forever, as in the most remote of times, to place their sacrifice in the earth when coming to dwell in the land. The thought terrified him, he wanted to wrench himself away from it—even Abraham had been freed of that gruesome demand. He must banish, banish this thought; who could free him of it? His eyes caught sight of Leah, but in all her sorrow he would not add to her burden this dread fantasy that had come to his mind. To this haunting vestige of an ancient superstition, there now joined itself the legend people had already begun to tell of how the soul of Avramchick had saved him. Was he then after all not even a rational man? Was it not reason and will that had brought him back to this land, this earth? Was all that a self-delusion and a pretense, and was modern man even more ironically the slave of unremitting determined commands? Yet meanwhile his lips were moving automatically, and then with intention, in the Kaddish of his father and brothers.

  Yankel’s eyes were downcast; he could not look into the face of his wife. It was not that he feared an accusation, but because he, a man, did not know how to reach to, even to acknowledge, the suffering of a woman, of his wife.—“Praised and extolled,” he repeated, “exalted and glorified, lauded be the Name …” A man could affirm, but in all these days and months of hard life since they had come here, he had time and again wanted to touch his wife with words of understanding, words she must need, just as he himself had so dreadfully felt the ne
ed for a talk with a man like himself. Just so, Yankel knew, his Feigel must also feel the need for a woman, a woman to whom there could be an outpouring of her womanly heart. Even with all the sons and daughters of her flesh to sustain her, Yankel knew her need, how in Cherezinka she would sit for long hours with her sister Hannah and be assuaged; here, she had not even a neighbor-woman. The thought of leaving this place, of perhaps going on to America or even returning to Cherezinka, prevented Yankel from looking up into the face of his eldest son; yet words prepared themselves in his mind. “For the sake of your mother, we must go. This is too much to ask of a woman—see what this land is doing to her.” And he would also be impelled to break out, “You wanted your young brothers to be brought here so they would have a new life in their own land, but instead of life, it is bringing them death.”

  Then also to Yankel at this moment came that Sabbath image, when all his sons and daughters had walked onto the field with him, and little Avramchick had cried from the other side of the river not to be left behind; Yankel seemed to feel the child’s hand slipping into his, after Gidon brought him across the stream and set him down. Yankel turned away his head, but everyone saw the tears come onto the father’s face.

  —Perhaps then, Leah told herself, it was all too much to ask for, from the older generation, from her mother and father. She would take them back to Cherezinka, and then go on as far as Siberia to seek Moshe, one faraway day to return with him to Eretz, to the kvutsa.

  Yet as they all turned from the little area of fresh earth, where Leah promised herself she would come and plant a tree, her eyes were assaulted by the sun-drenched blaze of the valley, yellow and red, quilted with wildflowers, sparkling with dew, “exalted and glorified,” offering an anguish of over-exuberant life.

  It was the mother who released the final thought that they all felt within them. “Now we are bound to this land,” Feigel said. “We could never leave our Avremeleh to lie here alone.”

  During the days of sitting in mourning, Gedalia the letter carrier came on his weekly round and brought Feigel an envelope that had been two months on its way from her sister Hannah in America. Then surely Hannah must have had a premonition.

  While the rest all clustered to hear Hannah’s words, Leah, who also had received a letter, seized the moment to be alone with it. Moshe’s mother had written again.—Our dearest Leah—she wrote, and there was important news. They had received the name of the Siberian village where almost certainly Moshe was living. It was in the region of Irkutsk. Moshe’s father had traveled to St. Petersburg and engaged the eminent lawyer Igor Rabinovitch, a specialist in defending social revolutionaries, a lawyer with the highest connections in government circles, and thus Moshe’s place of exile was known—the village of Tarakusta—and the moment further word was received, Moshe’s dear Leah would be the first to be told.

  She could not contain herself. “Tarakusta!” she cried. Did her father know of the place? Had Reuven perhaps heard of such a place? Surely Dovidl would know, or certainly Avner. Didn’t someone in the kvutsa have a book with a map of Siberia? “Tarakusta, in the region of Irkutsk.” How did one arrive there? How long would such a journey take?

  There still remained two days to sit in mourning, and though her mother told her it was not an obligation of women to sit the whole seven days, and that her father would not think ill of her if she went to the kvutsa to try to find out more, Leah contained her impatience; she could not cut short this farewell to her little brother.

  That very afternoon Dvora’s young shomer, Yechezkiel, appeared from Sejera. Riding over to the kvutsa, he came back with a Russian geography schoolbook that one of the chalutzim had carried with him to Eretz. There was a large map spread over two pages, a map of the whole of Russia, but the part that showed Siberia was empty and white as the snow itself. Here and there appeared a speck of a name; Irkutsk they found, but there was no Tarakusta. Then, as they raised their heads from the book that was spread under the lamp, Yechezkiel struck his brow for not having thought of it before—in Sejera there was someone who would surely know! A new chalutz had appeared, only recently escaped from Siberia with false papers he had made for himself. He knew everyone among the exiles! The stories he told!

  It was to Leah as though she were already on the way to Tarakusta—only how could she let the family remain here like this in all this misery—her mother heavy of heart and a month before her time? Even with Dvora to help in the house, should anything happen there was no midwife nearer than Yavniel, and the doctor was still further, in Mescha. Suddenly a plan came to Leah. The entire family must move for a time up to Sejera. There, at least, there were people, a whole village of older settlers, besides the training farm. Mameh would not feel so lonely there, she could talk out her grief to other women like herself who had also suffered in their lives, also lost children. And Schmulik and Yaffaleh could go to school in Sejera. As for leaving the farm for a time, the animals they could take along with them. Reuven could come over occasionally to keep an eye on the crops—in winter little care was needed, the grain would grow—and when the houses on the hillside were completed and the Roumanian settlers arrived, then they could all return and live like human beings!

  Feigel did not disagree. Yankel was still weak from his fever, she said, and away from here he would perhaps not feel he must be up and laboring from morning to night. A midwife was to be had in the village of Sejera, and besides, the thought came to her, in the state Leah was in, it was best to go with her, or the girl might even try to leave for Siberia!

  Only Gidon refused to fall in with the plan. “I’ll stay and take care of everything,” he said. But who would take care of him? Feigel worried. —He himself! her son laughed, and even patted her. “Mameleh, go!” There were a few workers in the other hut, he would manage very well.

  The chickens that had survived in Dvora’s flock they took with them. Yaffaleh wept at parting from her geese, though Gidon promised he would watch over them: “I won’t eat even one!”

  A sprawling one-time caravanserie only a few minutes’ walk outside the Sejera settlement was being used as the farm training center, and the director, Yud Eichelberg, by moving a few chalutzim about, cleared two rooms together for the Chaimovitches; though narrow, the rooms were whitewashed and even had tiled floors. In the same structure, Nadina too was housed, and Galil, and at the long table in the cheder ochel—the eating hall—Nadina pointed out to Leah the young comrade from Siberia, a husky lad with a clever glint in his eyes. Tarakusta? Moshe? Who hadn’t heard of Handsome Moshe! Lustily, he told the story. “That one! Imagine Tarakusta—you know what it is? In the furthest wastes, whole days by sledge from the railway, ten huts, maybe twelve. The Siberians there fish through holes in the ice. Besides our Zionists, we had in Irkutsk a little band of social revolutionists, already a few years they were there, and to one of them, his girl came out from Odessa. Very comfortable. One day this couple hears that this same Moshe is in Tarakusta—a long time ago a comrade in their cell. Fifty versts on a sledge they travel to greet him. Piff-paff, the social revolutionist comes back alone, the girl has remained there in Tarakusta and is living with Moshe! For Handsome Moshe you don’t have to worry, even in the furthest wastes of Siberia!”

  In her torment Leah did not know what to do with herself, where to hide, where to go with her foolishness. Not back to the kvutsa. Though no one would taunt her, no one would laugh behind her back, how would her eyes in her shame meet Nahama’s? So Leah told herself she could not leave her mother here, she must at least remain until after the birthing. At Mama’s age, who knew what might happen, God forbid.

  Everywhere on the training farm, Big Leah was to be found at some task, wearing hobnailed men’s shoes as she clumped through the barn to help with the milking, or even with shoveling out manure. Or one encountered her constantly in the yard, fetching this or that for her mother.

  To her sister Dvoraleh in the clouds of her love for her shomer, Leah surely could not talk of wha
t had happened to her; let Dvoraleh dream. Her mother had somehow heard the tale, and Leah was thankful that Feigel did not speak of it. But a great sweetness had come between them in these weeks. Feigel at last let herself be tended, and when the time came, the big girl lifted up her mother from the bed and carried her in her arms to the birthing stool that the midwife had brought to the room.

  Eliza and Yaffaleh were sent away, but Dvora, soon to be married, was allowed to take part in the preparations, spreading out linen, and fetching hot water from the big kitchen. Only after the pains came rapidly did Chaye-Pesya, Sejera’s midwife, thrust her out.

  It was Leah’s hands that received him, the throbbing new flesh on her broad palms, as though this little brother were in a way her own child that she had missed creating, when she had let her moment pass by. It was as though her mother out of her boundless goodness and understanding had even brought this child for her.

  Leah turned him on her hands, and then the cry of life was heard, so powerful a cry that it resounded from the stone walls of the old caravanserie, the round little face fiercely red—the cry of anger, the cry of Chaimovitch rage! “A true Chaimovitch!” Leah laughed, for all at once her healthy, cheerful laughter had returned.