The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  But they had the pig backed against the open water, his long snout vibrating as though from some long lost reptilian time, as though even now it would shoot out a stream of poison at them. The boar would charge; Yadid and Ayesha had followed close to the hunters, and as the wild boar’s tiny, evil eyes sought out the horses, the boys knew it was there he would charge, to rip the underbelly. The hunters fired together and seemed to have struck each into a burning, hating small swine’s eye.

  With the greatest caution they worked their way, this time Gidon before Fawzi, who held to firm ground, until finally they could pull the enormous carcass out of the slime. It lay before them. What a repulsive animal it was, and each said, no wonder it was forbidden to eat it.

  Not for its ugliness, Gidon said—it was because the meat rotted quickly and in the old days had brought disease.

  Just as much that it was repulsive and ugly, a beast of Satan, Fawzi said. But the Bedouin in these parts killed the pig for skin and bristles. Some said the meat could even be sold to the Christians in their monasteries.

  The wicked, challenging idea came to both at the same moment; their eyes met and they laughed. Fawzi already had his knife free to cut a souvenir. “You don’t believe in the kashrut, like your father who prays,” Fawzi said, testingly.

  “I don’t believe in all these things, all those rules,” Gidon said. “Do you believe like your father?”

  They fell to talking in this vein. How much should a person believe? In God, Gidon said, yes, he believed. Not exactly in everything the way it was written, and not in all the rules, but he believed in God.

  Fawzi too said he believed in God, and he believed in Mohammed the Prophet. Now that he could read, he was reading the Koran, and it was different from only hearing it read in small pieces by the mullah.

  But many things in the Koran were the same as in the Bible, Gidon had heard from Reuven. Not only such things as everyone knew, that Moslems also were forbidden to eat pig. But Abraham—wasn’t he too in the Koran?

  “Yes,” Fawzi said, with his odd touch of merriment that came when he spoke of serious matters. “Abraham is the father of us all.”

  —Did they have in their Koran the story of when Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac? Gidon asked.

  —It was Ishmael, Fawzi said. Abraham was ready to sacrifice Ishmael on the altar, and was stopped at the last moment, when God sent him a sheep instead.

  And he laughed.

  “In your Koran, it is Ishmael, not Isaac?”

  “Yes, it was Ishmael.” And they both laughed.

  All at once, Fawzi cut away a section of hide from the haunch of the pig. The flesh lay exposed, firm and darkly pink. They looked at each other, and the odd, soft laugh was repeated.

  “Would you eat it?” Fawzi said.

  “Why not?” said Gidon. “It is only meat, and it hasn’t had time to spoil. It is not such rules that are important.”

  “To eat pig is the worst,” Fawzi said. His eyes rested on the meat, in fascination.

  “Do you want to taste it?” Gidon asked.

  “Have you ever tasted it?”

  “No.” Where would he have tasted it? Suppose it had been offered to Reuven, would he have tasted it? But Reuven was a vegetarian. But before, when he was away from home, that summer among the Russians?

  Fawzi was cutting off a slice of the meat. He held it out on his dagger. Something turned in Gidon’s stomach—perhaps from the sight of the dead boar’s ugly snout.

  “Not raw,” he said.

  “We will make a fire.” Still with his mischievous gleam, Fawzi set about picking up twigs. Flies had been attracted, and now, up above, a few buzzards began to circle. Next, hyenas would come near. With a growing sense of disgust, of vileness here, Gidon wanted to shrug and declare they should start home. But Fawzi held the meat over the little fire, that flared up each time fat dripped onto it. Meanwhile, somehow Fawzi had got to talking of women again. He described how, on your wedding night, you could test if you had married a virgin. His older brother had told him how to test with your finger. With his free hand, he demonstrated to Gidon how to make sure. —But in a kvutsa, Fawzi said, his eyes alight, was it true the girls did it with all the men?

  No, Gidon said, it was not true. Each had her own, the same as a marriage.

  Was this really so? Fawzi asked, as though surprised. Was Gidon certain?

  “Yes,” Gidon said. His brother lived in the kvutsa, and his sister Leah also had lived in one, and his sister Dvora was married in a kvutsa and had a child. So he knew for certain.

  Fawzi seemed disappointed. The meat was ready and he held it out on his knife. Gidon shrugged, blew on it, waited till it had cooled a bit, and then took a bite. It tasted much like calf’s meat, a little sweeter perhaps.

  He held the knife with the bit of meat toward Fawzi.

  His friend hesitated, laughed, took the dagger by the handle, touched his tongue to the meat, then bit off a small piece, chewed once, spit it out, and laughed again, handing the knife back to Gidon.

  Gidon flung away the remainder. They got up. A pity to waste such a carcass—perhaps they should tell some Bedouin when they passed their cane huts down below?

  “They’ll find it,” Fawzi said. “Or let there be a feast for the hyenas.”

  The hunters departed. Every once in a while on the way back, they looked at each other, somewhat abashedly, somewhat defiantly; perhaps, it occurred to Gidon, like two men who had been to a house of shame together.

  10

  FOR EACH settlement it seemed there had to come a time that was to form its legend, a time of testing, of fever, or hunger, or of blood; so it had been in Sejera on that tragic Passover of two deaths, Dvora’s Yechezkiel and Mottel the Carpenter, and so it had been with the shooting of a Jewish watchman and two Arabs in what began as a squabble in Rehovot, and so it had been when Aaron Zeira was killed in the founding days of the Kvutsa Emek Yisroel, and now the legend of Mishkan Yaacov was to be formed.

  Some would say it was only because of the misunderstandings between the ways of one people and another. Others would say it was because of hatreds being stirred up against the Jews, of late, in two Arab newspapers that had started, Falastin in Jaffa and El Carmel in Haifa. They had even tried to accuse Moshe Smilansky, Reuven’s first employer, of the shootings in Rehovot, though he had not been anywhere near. With false witnesses they had tried to get him hanged by the Turks. Menahem managed to read what they wrote to stir up the villagers, but Shabbatai Zeira sneered—how many fellaheen could read? Galil and Nadina said religious hatred was behind it all, the imam would read the papers to the villagers to stir them up. But these papers were owned by Christians, not Moslems, Menahem said, and though the Moslems disdained all unbelievers, they did not have the hatred of pogromists. The fellaheen were not moujiks. It was wrong to sneer at them. To this, Reuven hotly agreed. Each trouble had its own cause. There were feuds, killings among the Arabs themselves, much came from pride and hot-bloodedness. In the cities there might be some highly placed Arabs who did not like the coming of the Jews, while others saw advantages; but in the villages, the fellaheen were indifferent. And after each trouble, did they not settle down to peace with their neighbors?

  Leah found herself staying on at home, not that there was any man to be seen in prospect for her there, but at least she was no longer subjected to annoyances by Zev the Hotblood, for the shomer had married the daughter of one of the Roumanians, Lula Janovici—he had already got her with child, it was said—and now, as everyone jested, the shomer had to take his midnight tea at home. Even though gossips had it that Zev managed a second snack through a certain bedroom window at the other end of the settlement, he at least no longer went about putting his hands where they were not wanted.

  In the Chaimovitch yard, Leah had started a nursery school, a gan, using the new Montessori method she had brought from Jerusalem, and while this absorbed her energy, there was also a new friendship that gave her a sense
of appeasement here.

  The Roumanians next to the Chaimovitch farmyard had lost heart and returned to Kluj, and in their place had appeared an American—not altogether an American, since he was originally from Bialystok, but Joe Kleinman had spent fifteen years in America in a place called Nebraska in the west, where the philanthropic Baron de Hirsch had tried to establish Jews as farmers. The colony had fallen apart, Kleinman related, for sooner or later every Jewish farmer had put a pack on his back and gone off to peddle needles and buttons and eventually to open a store in some crossroads town, until Joe found himself the only farmer left. And since for some unfathomable reason he liked to live amongst Jews, maybe because they made him laugh, he had found himself lonesome out there in Nebraska and had decided—if with Jews he had to be, then why not in the Jewish land itself? So he had picked himself up one day, as he said, and come here to Eretz with his ever-willing wife and their two girls, the ages of Schmulik and Mati, though the boys would have nothing to do with them. Kleinman was given to jokes—his very name was a joke, he pointed out, as he was not a little man, but huge. This would have been a man for Leah! Even though he was eleven years older! But, alas, Joe, or Yosef as he now called himself, was well married. He and Leah laughed frequently over her predicament as to the size of men, and he offered, if she found a fellow whom she otherwise liked, to stretch him up for her. But at least Joe Kleinman’s presence served as a constant reassurance to Leah, for see, there were indeed some tall Jews in the world!

  Now, if she would only accept a goy, Kleinman would jest, he could import her one from the American west, where none was less than eight feet tall; he would have a sample shipped along with the farm machinery he kept bringing over. Not that he had so much money as to pay for all these machines, he would say, but his wife had brothers who owned stores.

  Kleinman had brought with him catalogues with pictures of all sorts of American machinery, even newer things than Max Wilner knew about, and Reuven would come from the kvutsa and study the pages, while Yosef translated the particulars. What things there were! Machines to plant, machines to pick, machines to bale hay, and the biggest wonder of all, a wooden box as large as a small house—a threshing machine. The stalks went in at one end and pure clean grain poured out into a sack at the other end! Next year, Kleinman vowed, he would import one. Already he had brought a reaper, the first in the land. Kleinman sat perched on a high seat while a huge wheel with protruding blades whirled through the grain; not only the Roumanians, but Arabs from as far as Kfar Kana came and stared in awe as he reaped an entire field in a single day. Mansour, the mukhtar of Dja’adi, came down himself and after some urging took Kleinman’s perch on the machine. But if such machines were to be brought here, the mukhtar questioned reflectively, what would be left for the fellaheen to do?

  In Kleinman’s house there was a large canister in which cream was turned into a sweet ice. Yosef’s wife, Clara, now called Chava, let the children turn the handle, producing ice cream for them all, and even for Leah’s Montessori children as well. Ah, America!

  The village cattle grazed as a herd under the eyes of Alter Pincus, a venerable sage with a wispy white beard like a Chinaman; he was the patriarch of one of the Roumanian families. Alter’s great-grandson Shaikeh was that summer already big enough to do his running for him, while the patriarch sat on a stone, looking like a prophet except that his beard might have been thicker. Shaikeh was Mati’s age, and their companionship was one long wrestling match in which, as in the races between Gidon’s horse and Fawzi’s, neither consistently triumphed.

  Mati kept his eye on his own family’s cattle, knowing the grazing preferences of each one—Schorah the black, mother of Bathsheba the beauty, and Malka the queen, who liked to stray near the riverbank and who gave the most milk; also there was Klugah the Clever, who would obey neither Shaikeh nor Alter Pincus when Mati was anywhere near, and finally Zipporah the Stupid, who would always take the wrong turn and had to be kept from entering other people’s barns to be milked.

  On this morning Mati took his herd somewhat apart, to the end of the family’s fields, where the barley was being cut, and they grazed steadily on the stubble. His next older brother Schmulik, already big enough this year to swing a scythe, was deep in the field, but not able to keep up with Gidon who mowed at the far end. When their neighbor Kleinman was finished with his machine on his own fields, he would lend it to Gidon, he had promised, and what remained on the field would be mowed as by the wind. By the time Mati himself was grown up, Yosef Kleinman told him, machines would do all the work for everyone. Yet in a way Mati wanted the whole process to hold back until he had shown how well he could swing a scythe.

  Just now Mati was sharpening a goad, using a flintstone he had picked up in the riverbed. The stone fitted well into his palm, and though the edge was not as sharp as a knife, he was managing to take off shavings from the stick. Thus he was a man of long ago, as Reuven had explained to him. These stones were washed down by the winter rains that made fresh crevices among the rocks below the caves; among the tumbled stones that had fallen into the stream and been slowly washed along, one could espy such flinty ones, sharp tools that had been shaped by the hands of cave dwellers long before even the time of Abraham.

  Down by the river he saw a boy from Dja’adi, Abdul, with his flock of black goats. Abdul was older than himself, but younger than Schmulik, and he had a brother the age of Gidon, Gidon’s friend Fawzi, who raced his Ayesha against Gidon’s Yadid, and went hunting with Gidon as far as the Huleh.

  Abdul’s goats moved in on the stubble, feeding not far from Mati’s cattle, but this was permitted, Mati knew. It had been discussed by several of the Roumanians standing in the yard with his father, and they had all agreed, very well, let the Arab sheep and goats come onto the cut fields, it was a good thing to be friends, and though there was no lack of grass up there among the rocks, let their flocks also graze on the stubble. Later, Fawzi’s father had come down, riding into their yard; as with so many of the Arabs, one of his eyes was unfocused, and he was one of those who sat all day up there in their cafe, complaining that his sons were lazy. Abba himself had told Fawzi’s father that it would be permitted for their flocks to graze on the mown fields, but not in the grain.

  The green stick was hard to cut and Mati concentrated on his work. After a time the goad was finished, and he looked up, but he no longer saw Abdul or his black goats. Mati moved his gaze then along to the standing, uncut grain. To God it must look like golden hair on earth, if there was really a God. And deep in the smooth field he saw a slight movement. Abdul’s goats were in there devouring the grain itself.

  Shouting a foul Arab word that he was forbidden to utter within hearing of his mother and sisters, Mati rushed to drive the goats out from his barley, but Abdul rose up from where he had been lying, and shouted back the filthiest of mother-curses. Brandishing his goad, Mati tried to chase the animals out; Abdul placed himself in the way, and Mati charged him. They tumbled together, rolling, scuffling, with a sudden shriek from Abdul as the pointed stick tore into his cheek. “I’ll put your eyes out!” he spat, his face close to Mati’s, his breath a stink, and his thumbs thrusting. Mati tore at the hands. Abdul’s sinews were like vulture talons. Already Mati’s eyeballs pained as though bursting from their sockets. With the flintstone still in one hand, Mati slashed, and a talon gave way. One eye was free. But from under Abdul’s other thumb, Mati felt a doubled pain, and then terror of an eye destroyed as in the face of Abdul’s father; with a heave that was beyond his own strength, he wrenched himself around on top of his enemy, in the same movement pulling his head backward, free of the grinding finger.

  But with his bloodied hand, the Arab boy had reached for his dagger, and now Mati felt a burning streak along his back. Wildly he kept striking with his sharp stone, feeling blows on his head, smelling their bodies together, and in a maddening way, sensing the goats all around them continuing to feed.

  Then Schmulik’s voice was on top
of them, but as though from afar, commanding through a thickness of wild curses, “Leave off!” With such violence had Schmulik torn away Abdul’s knife-arm that the break of the bone was heard.

  The howling and shrieked pain of the boys had already brought men running from nearby fields, Arabs and Jews arriving simultaneously and falling upon each other, the grown cousins and half-brothers of Abdul rushing with their staves at Schmuel. From above and below men came as to a tocsin, some on foot, some on mules, some on horses, and presently the entire field was alive with shouting and fighting men. A few for the first instant only stood calling out for everyone to stop—then they too started flinging accusations and insults at each other like gobs of dripping dung. Suddenly one would ride down on an adversary, who would strike back with a stave, and there would be an additional melee, men rolling on the ground, others trying to strike into the heap, still others arriving and trying to pull the fighters apart until they too were fighting.

  The first boys were already separated and held away from each other, Abdul with his arm limp and face bloodied, and Mati doubled over on the ground, face down, while Gidon, who had arrived at a gallop, tried with a cloth torn from his shirt to staunch the flow of blood from the open lips of the dagger-gash in his little brother’s back. Maledictions and accusations reverberated in the sultry air.

  The men, somewhat subdued by the sight of the wide-open gash, stood now in two lines, gesticulating and shouting still, but at least separated from one another. Yet suddenly at one end or the other, with a thrown stone, or an insult hurled, bodies would come together, and others add onto them, and the melee was resumed.

  Already it had been cried out in the settlement that marauders in a multitude were carrying off grain from the fields, and that little Mati Chaimovitch had been cut to pieces. Barely up from his early morning sleep, Zev the Shomer came charging into the battle. It was a confused moment. A melee had started again, and from Dja’adi, Abdul’s brother Fawzi also came galloping, charging into the fight, swinging a rake. Without pause, Zev raised up his rifle and fired.