The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  Chava sat on the ground and her grief for the murdered old man and the boy was her grief for her husband, whose death she knew but would not yet admit into herself.

  The fire was not yet to be readily conquered. Though there was no wind, the midsummer heat in the Jordan valley was like the inside of an earthen baking oven. Some even said the fire could have started of itself or sprung in this heat from a cigarette spark, since a donkey path went through the field. But with blackened, sweat-running faces most of them turned and looked toward Dja’adi. They must be standing up there on their hill and gloating! To take such a revenge! Let the Arab fields be set aflame in return!

  In their fury the farmers smote their sacks harder on the ground, a close line of them like a line of demons making an inroad on the line of flame. But beyond the end of their line the fire moved forward with a hissing devouring sound, like some exultant beast. A hundred paces inward, their arms and heads lit up by the approaching flames, Yankel Chaimovitch and the young Mikosh Janovici and still another plowman stumbled after their mules through the dark, while boys shouted and goaded to keep the animals from shying away from the oncoming scorching heat.

  Already by the time the fire fighters had reached the scene, Kleinman’s fields were cindered, and the flames had now eaten half across the sector of Yasha Janovici, the father-in-law of Zev. At least with Zev now, no fault could be found; he commanded with skill and presence of mind, he was everywhere, flailing with two sacks at a time where a spear of flame suddenly shot forward, riding ahead of the plowmen to trample a path for them, galloping where new sparks could be seen. Early, he had thought to send Gidon back for Kleinman’s American reaper, and Gidon was now slashing a secondary firebreak beyond the plowline, should the flames leap across.

  In the sweat and fury of their labor the entire village worked as one, the Roumanians and the two Russian families; even the melamed, his torso bare, swung shovelfuls of earth against the smoldering edges of the fire. A number of women worked by the water-barrels that had been hauled to the field, wetting the sacks and passing them forward, the younger girls running with them to the fire-line, the larger girls and boys standing with Leah and flailing at the flames.

  Slowly, slowly, the blaze was conquered, leaping up again in one corner to jump the plowlines, or stealing out from a patch of smoldering cinders only to be smothered again. Two entire holdings had been lost, Kleinman’s crop and Janovici’s.

  Wiping their smarting eyes even though each fire fighter told the others not to, snorting, spitting and half-vomiting to retch out the acrid smell that crawled through the nostrils and throat down into the very intestines, the settlers were already saying to each other that all must bear a share of the loss.

  As they slowly drew into a group, casting a final look for spots of flame over the dead fields, curses and mutterings of vengeance sparked up again out of their weariness. Young Gidon did not join in this. Once he remarked to young Mikosh Janovici, “If it came from Dja’adi, they would not have done it here, they would have done it on the same field where the boys stopped them from grazing.”

  Mikosh gave him a puzzled half-angry look, but did not reply.

  Then Gidon suddenly realized that, Zev being married to a Janovici, it could indeed have been a revenge.

  Only when, limp and stretched exhausted in their wagons, they dragged themselves toward the village, did the night’s full catastrophe come to them. A few of the older people who had remained at home stood half inside the gate around Chava Kleinman. She had made her way back. Even in the dark it could be seen that her face was haunted.

  From all those standing there around her, in Roumanian, in Yiddish, the same words came like bird shrieks; Alter Pincus and Shaikeh murdered, the Zbeh, the cattle, the entire herd, Alter and Shaikeh …

  So it was the Zbeh after all, Gidon realized. The fire to draw away the whole village. And then the herd, and blood. The Zbeh from over there, from the heights of Golan. Something came to him from far back, from cheder memory. This was Cain, this was Esau, this was embittered Ishmael.

  * * * *

  Chava Kleinman could not be left by herself, and Leah went over to spend the night in the house with the wife and daughters of the missing Yosef. The little girls went quietly and obediently to their room; the first time the mother looked in, they feigned sleep—but then as she stood in the partly opened doorway holding the lamp, an intake of breath, less than a sob, came from the smaller girl, and the brave pretenses were ended. Chava went in to them.

  Leah heard them weeping together, the three of them, and waited for them to cry themselves out. Sitting alone by the table, she struggled against the feeling that her nearness to anyone brought misfortune and tragedy. Moshe, Dvoraleh’s Yechezkiel, Avramaleh. It was she who had begged Mameh to come to Eretz and bring little Avramaleh here. No, she would not yield to such a way of thinking.

  If only there were noises, animal calls, voices, hooves! Even the jackals were silent tonight. As though the cindered fields lay on a dead world.

  11

  THE SITTING was in the rear of Bronescu’s store, deep into the night. With the cattle stolen and the fields burned, an old man and a child murdered, it seemed impossible that all this was retaliation from Dja’adi for the shooting of a horse.

  Reuven had come from the kvutsa; from Yavniel there was Shimshoni the Practical, just now stationed there for a turn as shomer. Back and forth the men puzzled. Shimshoni upheld Zev’s view—the fight in the field, even though a shot had been fired, could not have been a provocation for such disasters.

  —If it was the Zbeh taking advantage of the fight in the field, to make a raid?

  —Perhaps it was both the Zbeh and Dja’adi together?

  —From Dja’adi they hate the Zbeh. They have a ghoum.

  —It’s between two families. Otherwise, they have dealings.

  —But what could have become of Yosef Kleinman?

  Bronescu was for calling in the Turkish authorities.

  Not yet. Either Galil or Menahem or perhaps Shabbatai Zeira must surely be on the way from Gilboa.

  Shimshoni spoke what some were thinking. “If Yosef Kleinman rode in on the Zbeh while they were taking the cattle, he must have tried to stop them. They could have killed him and taken his horse.”

  “Then why didn’t we find his body in the field with the others?”

  “Perhaps he pursued them and got killed on the other side?” “Sometimes they hide the body,” said Zev. “That’s one of their ways.”

  In Reuven, something deeper wove, drawing back to the old troubles in Fuleh, to the Arab boy killed there in a theft. And then two Jews in retaliation, Dvora’s Yechezkiel and the carpenter from Sejera. With Galil, he had pressed for the way of law and justice, the jailing of the murderers. And then a third, young Aaron Zeira. And the assassination at Dagania. For all this everyone knew that the Shomer had at last made an end of the Fuleh bandits. They had vanished and never been found; the Three Rocks had been their haunt, and there it was rumored to have happened. And there it could have been that Kleinman had vanished.

  And now two more Jews had been added, Alter Pincus and Shaikeh. Was it to be an endless alternation of deaths, a ghoum without end? He kept seeing little Mati, the long raw seam on his back when Leah had rebandaged him just now. The deeply puzzled look in his little brother’s eyes, even there the dark look of Chaimovitch melancholy, of a profound sense of an absolute failing in the universe, felt by a child. What could a man do, what could even a whole society do of itself, when the others were moved by a totally different morality, as from some other universe?

  With the earliest thread of light, Gidon rode out to the Three Rocks. There was nothing. Not the mark of an ambush, a scuffle, nothing.

  He was leading Yadid in the muddy area behind the rocks when a Arab boy approached. Gidon knew him. He was not from Dja’adi but from a fisherman’s brood—the children loitered around the area and would come up to you asking for a cigarette. Now the
boy carried something under his arm. Nearing, he brought it forward with an uncertain smile. It was Joe Kleinman’s cowboy hat.

  His throat half-choked up, Gidon tried to keep his questions unexcited. “Where did you come by this hat, Jamal?”

  —Oh, he had found it.

  “Where?”

  “In a field.”

  “A field? Not here by the Three Rocks?”

  “No, a field,” he swore. “Over there.” He would show.

  Had the boy been sent, Gidon wondered? “You know whose hat this is?”

  “Cowboy. American.” A fleeting shy smile. Perhaps he really had found it.

  “Jamal, you saw the cowboy?”

  A tick of the tongue. No. Gidon brought out two cigarettes and gave one to the boy. Had he not seen the man? Or his horse? A black mare?

  —Ah, Jamal knew the mare well.

  —Had he seen her yesterday?

  The tongue ticked, no.

  At last, after receiving the second cigarette, Jamal led Gidon to the field where, he said, he had found the hat.

  Not far off the road. Nothing. Not even a hoof mark. A stony field of scattered wildflowers.

  Perhaps the cowboy hat had been thrown there as a marker? By Joe Kleinman himself? By the Zbeh? Perhaps it had not been Jamal who had found it, perhaps it had been entrusted to him as a beginning of some sort of bargaining?

  The boy asked if Gidon wanted to buy the cowboy hat.

  Then Kleinman was surely killed. Was this the beginning of bargaining for the body?

  —He had indeed seen nothing? And the cowboy himself?

  Nothing! The boy swore vehemently, by his future in paradise. Let his tongue be cut out, let his eyes be taken from his head, he had seen nothing! And in the absolute candor of those eyes, Gidon knew that whatever this Jamal had seen, for now he had seen nothing.

  —Did he perhaps have more to sell?

  No. Was there a glint of mischief? Even of contempt?

  Compressing his bitterness, Gidon gave the boy a coin, letting him grumble about the price. There would be more, Gidon said, if he brought word of the cowboy himself, or his horse.

  Now the boy looked a bit frightened. As Gidon took the hat, he knew that he took this thing on himself. In some of his pronouncements Zev was right; only in their own ways could you deal with them. Otherwise how was one to live with them in this land?

  Gidon rode back slowly. Whom should he tell of this? When the Kleinmans had first arrived, the cowboy hat, in constant fun, had gone from one head to another. Eliza had perched it above her long braids, Leah had tried it on, and Yaffaleh, and the boys, and he himself. Once when Tateh was in a good mood, Eliza had even perched it over his yarmulkeh.

  Entering through the small stable gate in the back wall, Gidon just had time to conceal the hat in the hay when Chava Kleinman appeared—she must have been anxiously watching for him. Already the woman seemed shrunken, her American clothes too large. Chava Kleinman was always giving clothes to his sisters, frilly shirtwaists and even gloves—Eliza could not resist them.

  No, no word of her Yosef, Gidon shook his head as Chava followed him about the yard, no, but perhaps that was a good sign. Mama and Leah came out to her, insisting there was still hope; she must eat something, take something into her mouth, Feigel kept repeating, she must have strength for the sake of her daughters at least.

  It was a time before he could manage to show the hat to Leah alone. And then Gidon saw the dark look come into his sister’s eyes; she held the cowboy hat against herself and stroked it, and behind the surface of her eyes was that darkness as when the world was a void of darkness.

  At last Leah sighed. “He wouldn’t even carry a pistol. What did they want of him?”

  “His horse,” Gidon said. The further thought, he couldn’t yet bring out.

  All morning men came riding from Yavniel, from Gilboa. Wild rumors had spread of a pitched battle. The Chaimovitch yard became the gathering place—twenty, forty men milled about; some said the Zbeh would yet attack in force, to wipe out the whole of Mishkan Yaacov.

  Menahem and Galil arrived; behind Bronescu’s store the sitting resumed. —A delegation must go to Damascus, even to Constantinople, Bronescu kept proposing, while Zev shouted—Mount a full attack and ride after the marauders! With an entire herd of cattle, they could not have got far. Not to lose another moment!

  Galil cut him short. In his quick, breathy voice he asked of Gidon exactly what happened. Gidon told of the fight, “Zev shot.”

  “Until then no one used firearms?”

  The Hotblood was glaring at Gidon. “No.”

  “Was it necessary to fire?”

  “It must have looked bad to Zev when he rode up. I am not the one to say if shooting was necessary.”

  “Aha.” This would be for the Shomer to decide amongst themselves.

  And the burned fields, the cattle, the two dead, and Joe Kleinman—where was the connection? As Galil understood it, the Arabs of Dja’adi were not even on good terms with the Zbeh.

  “Some take wives among the Zbeh, they cost less,” Menahem said. A queasy smile went around the table. —There were threads from one tribe to another, Menahem went on, and the family feud had long been quiescent, but in his view it would be wrong to conclude they had done all this together.

  “And Joe Kleinman?” Zev broke in. “Joe Kleinman wasn’t murdered from Dja’adi in revenge for their damn horse?”

  “Have you gone crazy!” Menahem burst out. “It’s not their way! You don’t know them!”

  “They’re all alike!” Zev spat on the floor. “I was raised with Arabs, what have you to tell me about their ways! We’re wasting time! They’ll get beyond reach with the cattle! Come on!” He rushed out.

  Mikosh Janovici jumped on his feet to follow Zev, who was already mounting. Galil shouted, “I command you, Zev! Get down!”

  In the uproar, Gidon found a moment to tell Menahem quietly of the hat. His brother-in-law gripped his wrist. “Don’t bring it up now.”

  Within Menahem, remotely yet powerfully, as when you strain two hooks together and they don’t quite link, Gidon’s words reached toward that other, deeply submerged event. Profoundly, Menahem knew that what had happened to Kleinman at the Three Rocks was not connected with the fire, the cattle. A coincidence. And yet more deeply, all, all was connected, just as roots all reach into the same earth.

  And to Gidon, as he watched the clouded face of Menahem, there also came a sense of connection, but to a different source. It was as though he were an Arab looking at the coming of the Jews. With their fat cattle from Europe. With their newly invented machines from America. It was not a thing of reason that arose. “Yahud!” he recalled Fawzi’s outburst.

  “And who set fire to the fields?” Zev was shouting, though he had obeyed and dismounted. “Go, go find out a little about their fine mukhtar Mansour up there. You think he didn’t call in the Zbeh? You can be sure he’ll get his share for our cattle! Go, let their goats gobble up the crops! Next, they’ll lay claim on the land for grazing rights forever! Go! Blame me for protecting the fields!”

  All morning the tension remained. Added guards rode the rounds, but not a man of Dja’adi was seen anywhere.

  In the Chaimovitch yard, Feigel was feeding everyone—she would be eaten out of house and home, but let that be the worst, Mati was saved.

  A volunteer from Yavniel said a few Arabs of Dja’adi had come out on their height and looked down on the burned fields. Mikosh Janovici still urged, “We should go and burn theirs!”

  All at once word spread that two of the Roumanian families were packing to leave Mishkan Yaacov altogether and would sell what was left at a bargain.

  Then came a distraction. A single cow walked slowly into the center of the village, from the direction of the river crossing. All ran toward the animal and onward beyond her as though the remainder of the herd must be following. “They can’t be far!” Zev shouted and galloped to the crossing. But even the Hotb
lood would not rashly clamber alone to the heights on the other side.

  Schmulik had run to the cow, excitedly seizing her halter. “It’s Klugeh,” he cried out, the wise one. He himself had given her this name, the cleverest of the cattle, and here she had proved herself, for somehow Klugeh had broken from the marauders and found her way home.

  But already the whole Zeidenschneur family from the other end of the village was pushing and dragging at the cow, claiming she belonged in their barn, she was theirs, black with a white star!

  Half the stolen cattle were black with a white star, from the same strain, but Klugeh was Klugeh, Schmulik cried, everyone knew her!

  Yet, as it became clear that no other cattle were returning, more claimants began to say the cow was theirs, pushing and dragging at the bewildered animal who planted her hooves in the dirt and urinated.

  “God in heaven!” Eliza cried out with a rage unknown in her, here was one cow left in the entire village on this day of disaster with two people lying dead waiting to be put into the ground, and the Roumanians would tear apart the single remaining cow with their quarreling over her!

  Suddenly Yankel Chaimovitch stormed into the center of the street. “Let her go!” Klugeh knew her home. Let everyone stand aside and the cow would go where she belonged.

  The cow waited, gazing around her as though she were judging mankind. Deliberately she now dropped a steaming turd. Then she went directly into the Chaimovitch yard.

  Presently another odd thing happened. In the Kleinman barn was a young calf that had been kept back yesterday to have a sore tended. Now the bleating calf hurried across toward Klugeh. The cow had never let any but her own approach, she would kick away the offspring of others, but as though she comprehended all that had happened, Klugeh remained still while the orphan calf approached and suckled.