The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  And indeed, as he told it later, he might well have carried off his entire scheme. He had managed the voyage, the debarkation, and had rushed home. Not Saraleh, not the child was there. An elderly couple from Petach Tikvah now was quartered in the room—but they knew where Saraleh was, she had gone to live with her father’s friends, and hurrying in a carriage to the Musaras, Araleh found her. Oh, what a surprise from heaven! she cried. She was well. Tiny Dudu threw her arms around her abba’s neck and wouldn’t let go to give her mother a chance. Every day she had written him! Saraleh said. And Trumpeldor had been here only the day before yesterday to inquire after her! Yes! Josef had come himself!

  As it turned out, the loyal Trumpeldor, having first failed to find her at the old address, had meanwhile been hurried to Cairo to recruit new volunteers for the depleted Mule Corps. But nevertheless on the way back he had fulfilled his promise to Araleh, and sent the wireless. The anti-Semitic Col. Whitbury, seeing the message, had in an impulse of human kindness gone in person to hand it to the anxious husband, and, unable to find Sgt. Aryah Tchenstokover, had thus tripped open poor Araleh’s entire escapade. Here the colonel had come in person with the message in his hand, and all the while that bloody smart Jew had already carried out a scheme of desertion! Search orders were put on the wireless, and Araleh was picked up as he left the Musara house early in the morning. For one thing he thanked God, that Saraleh hadn’t seen his arrest. Nor would anyone listen, much less believe, when he said he was on his way to a ship to return of his own accord. Put in irons on the vessel, he was led off, on landing, shackled hand and foot, to be court-martialed. By the time Trumpeldor and the Irishman returned with a hundred mules and word of a hundred and twenty-five new recruits to follow as soon as they were trained, Araleh’s penalty had already been posted.

  The deserter was to receive the lash, before the entire assembled Zion Mule Corps.

  “You see, they consider us their equals,” Herschel found it in himself to jest. “Just like a British soldier, a Jew may receive the lash.”

  Once before, the men had witnessed it, carried out before the entire regiment on a deserter, a Britisher, no less, found stowing away on a departing supply ship. All done in perfect parade order, the open square of men silent at attention, with only the cracking of the lash like an echo of shells from Achi Baba.

  Already Trumpeldor had protested. He himself was at fault, he declared to the Irishman, for he had been slow in carrying out his promise to the man, and the added days without a message had aggravated Araleh’s fears. Besides, as it was perfectly clear that Araleh had intended to return at once, this was not a desertion, but only absence without leave.

  Doubtless that was Araleh’s intention, the Irishman agreed, but unfortunately that bastard Whitbury had caught him out, the sentence was passed and could not be revoked. As Trumpeldor pleaded on, exasperation appeared in the Irishman. “Admit you’re not the easiest race in the world to deal with! I took you on, and I don’t regret it—your men have turned into good soldiers, I’ll stand up for you on that score—I’ll stake my whole bloody career. But godammit, when you’re caught out, you’re caught out, and that’s the game; fair or not, you take the punishment.” No, the Irishman could not, would not go to Whitbury. If he were to make an issue of this incident, every damn previous nastiness would be thrown up again, from the Zion man who was caught profiteering on two bars of issue chocolate, to the blasted squad that had refused an order to lead their mules under fire. “I’ve taken care of these things in my own way, I know our boys and we all know there isn’t a unit on the beach where such things and worse haven’t happened, but damn it, Josef, we can’t ignore the fact that there are plenty of staff officers who are Jew-haters, and never wanted this unit to exist in the first place.”

  That was precisely why, Josef insisted, Araleh’s sentence must be fought—it must be shown as an exaggerated punishment resulting from prejudice. The man would clearly have returned of his own accord.

  “How can we prove it except by his word?”

  “His word should be enough.”

  “Forging orders. Deception and lying. The whole way. And you want me to insist on his word!”

  “It’s my word too.”

  The Irishman could no longer control himself. He too had been caught out, for his damned Jews. “It’s your bloody unbearable stubbornness! The stiff-necked people! I don’t wonder they would only give you a mule corps. That’s what you are—a race of mules.”

  Their glares held like caught swords vibrating ungivingly. Then the Jew turned on his heel and marched out. From his tent Josef Trumpeldor sent his orderly with a letter resigning his commission and requesting to be severed from His Majesty’s Service. He had been insulted as a man and as a Jew.

  The shouted, heated words had been heard and carried through the camp. At first there was only a depressed sense of fatedness, that even with the best of the goyim the inevitable moment came. And if a man like Josef took it so deeply as to resign, the quarrel was beyond repair. Angriest was Tuvia the Cement-head. The entire corps should mutiny and demand to be sent back to Alexandria. “What are we proving here anyway, shoveling muleshit out of the trenches? Let them get gyppos! That’s all they take us for!”

  When the tale reached Araleh in the lockup, he sent word through the sentry: Tuvia and Gidon should come at once to the rear side where they could hear him.

  They heard his voice through the wood. “Nothing must happen! You hear me?” Araleh’s voice was calm, as if all personal anger had been strained out. “If we fail here, it will be worse than if the Jews had not come at all. Listen, Gidon. Go to Josef and tell him I refuse to have anything done because of me. They caught me and I will take my punishment. You hear me?” And he continued. “Everyone, every last man, must assemble and march to Josef and ask him not to resign. You hear me?”

  Slowly a different mood grew. Herschel proclaimed in a mock Talmudic singsong, “After all, what did the Irishman call us but mules? Don’t our own prophets call us mules in the scriptures? Are we not the stiff-necked people as he said? Is this an insult? The Irishman is already like one of ourselves, and if we can call ourselves mules, he also can call us mules—from him it is no insult.”

  The entire unit stood in ranks outside Trumpeldor’s tent, while Tuvia, Gidon, and Nissim Abulafia from a leading Jewish family in Cairo went in to plead with him. As was his way in a discussion, the Captain listened without making any comment, only asking a few questions at the end. Turning to Gidon, he asked, “Gidon, did Araleh tell you from the first that he would come back?”

  “With the first ship.”

  And to Tuvia, “He insists on accepting the punishment?”

  “He insists.”

  Then came an interval of silence. Josef would probably send them away saying he would think it over, as was his habit. But when he spoke, he had already decided. “I will withdraw my resignation. I see that it was a personal reaction on my part and did not represent the will of the unit.” Rising, he went out with them to the men. They were altogether less than four hundred now, but standing assembled at attention they looked like many, an army.

  From where he stood, just behind the hero, Gidon heard Josef’s caught breath as he saw his men, the full ranks, at attention. “You are right, chaverim, I’ll stay,” he said.

  When the punishment took place, the men kept their eyes to the ground. It was all done to form. Col. Whitbury and his staff attended. The Irishman stood rigidly in his place, saluting their arrival. Even Josef. But the distance seemed further than usual between him and the other officers.

  An English sergeant-major read off the charge and the verdict of the court-martial. Araleh was marched to the post, the blows were heard, but nothing from him.

  With his eyes lowered, Gidon still saw it. As he saw the bared back of Araleh and the lash cutting the sunlight, he also felt some last thing being cut out of himself to make the Jew a soldier.

  Araleh slumped over, but when t
he cords were undone, he did not fall. The regimental officers marched away. The Irishman gave his order. “Dismissed.” Only Herscheleh spoke; between his teeth he muttered, “The gentlemen.”

  When he was returned, his back healed, Araleh was to the men the same Araleh who would always find a way to help a fellow get something he wanted, especially now if it needed a little cleverness against the British order of things. He liked, even, to tell of his adventure, of the part where he had outwitted them all, for in final account, had he not succeeded, had he not got home as he intended? The rest had been a stupid accident, and above all, he cautioned Gidon, Saraleh must never know of the punishment. There was an instant’s calculation, now, in every little action Araleh considered, as though he first measured it by his own particular measure. It went with a new word that answered for everything—“Ourselves!” Nothing else in the world could be trusted. No stranger, no politics, no power. In the end, as indeed they had always known, it would be “ourselves.”

  17

  OF THE Chaimovitch daughters it was Eliza, the well-favored one, for whom something special in life was expected, let it only be for the good, may no evil eye fall upon her because of her loveliness. From earliest childhood, Eliza was the one whose golden little head drew every hand to stroke it, she was the appealing little female child with the great velvet eyes and a heart brimming with love and helpful willingness. She was the one who without being asked took joy in running to fetch things for Feigel in the kitchen, she pumped water without objecting that this was Schmulik’s task, and she took her greatest joy in carrying to the fields the basket that Feigel had filled with bread and tomatoes and cheese for the mid-morning meal.

  In the winter months it melted your heart to catch sight of the girl’s smoothly combed glowing head, beside the kerosene lamp, bent to her Hebrew grammar, while the soft light stroked her lustrous hair. It was a burnished gold, like a perfect Sabbath chaleh thickly braided.

  Naturally Eliza was aware that she was the well-favored one among the sisters, and she had the grace to accept her fortune as though this were not entirely a personal gift, as though one well-favored daughter was the family’s due, and since the luck and the role had happened to come to her, she must give it her best and fulfill it.

  In every village there are a few girls like this.

  “Show us your maidens” is the word of the visiting dignitary, prince, conqueror, and the judgment on a whole people, on an entire civilization, may well rest on these girls, the end product, proudly shown, most cherished and protected.

  A man trudging home wearily from the fields, the strength burned out of his bones by the all-day broiling sun, beholds the young girl, his own daughter, moving about the yard, perhaps hanging out clothes to dry, with her bare arms aloft, with the softer light of the afternoon’s end glowing on her skin, a ribbon in her braids, and his entire being wells over with joy. For this. For this young creature, calm, and still untroubled, innocent; let the world boil over with wars and cataclysms, only let her yet be protected from it and somehow indeed come to lead an untroubled life. For her it has all been done, she is the product. Her smiling face as she turns her eyes to him and says, “Nu, Abba”—this alone is enough, he is home from his day’s labor—what is there to discuss? For this end a man long ago lifted himself up and journeyed here, and cleared rocks from the fields, and pounded the hide of a stubborn mule, and haggled with Syrian merchants from Damascus to receive another franc for his measure of wheat—see, behold the lovely daughter of our family, our people.

  With her sisters Eliza was not overly vain. She carried her loveliness as though it were really some garment given for all of them together that it happened just now in her first bloom to be her turn to wear. True, this had always been the most troublesome aspect of her good fortune—to know that from her sisters all eyes would turn to her. There was Leah with her enormous thick-legged body—despite her great warm soul, she was no beauty. Perhaps, Eliza wondered lately, it was even because of her, Eliza, that Leah wandered away from home so much; sometimes when Leah was here of a Sabbath, and a chalutz working as a fieldhand for one of the Roumanians came over for a visit, Eliza had an impulse to disappear from the table and stay out of sight so that the man would learn to know her sister.

  Another embarrassing and yet pleasing part of it was that if Leah herself, or Mameh, bought a new kerchief, or even if Malka Bronescu bought herself a bit of finery, all the girls wanted at once to see how it looked on Eliza, as though only then could its true attractiveness be assessed.

  In the village, all the boys since childhood had been in love with her in their turns, though as it happened not one of them stirred her with the feelings she had read about and awaited. There had even been Gidon’s Arab friend, Fawzi, whom she often caught looking at her with burning eyes, when he rode up to meet Gidon to go hunting. She had teased herself with dreams about what she would do if she happened to fall desperately in love with an Arab. But fortunately she had not been put to the test, it had not happened to her, and perhaps luckily, now Fawzi had been taken away to the war, for in this year of her flowering, who knew what could come over her?

  To Dvora who was nearest to her and already twice a mother, Eliza sometimes confessed, on a Sabbath visit to Gilboa, about certain spells that came over her like … like intoxication from the scent of flowers, except it was as though the scent grew within herself. Dvoraleh sighed with her, and only said Eliza was coming into a time of her life when she must be careful, very careful.

  Some of those who had been infatuated with her had given up and gone to other girls; one pair was already married. Also, some of the young men of the village, particularly the farm-helpers, had hurriedly slipped out of the country to avoid labor conscription. And strangely, where there had been so many young men in the land for every girl, now, in her bloom and beauty, Eliza found herself much alone and without a beau.

  There was one whom she had not dismissed who had been in love with her now for two years and more, and she had often jested with Malka and the other girls, even jested with the boy himself, about his steadfast courtship, with a mock sigh declaring to him, “Don’t give up! In the end you are the kind a girl marries, instead of all the handsome heroes.”

  His one fault was chubbiness. His face was pudgy like a kugel and his body was a pillow. Yet occasionally, in a strong shaft of sunlight, Nahum’s face suddenly looked well-formed and handsome beneath that puffiness. And besides, he was highly intelligent. Even when he had come as hardly more than a boy, with his father, Reb Bagelmacher, to buy geese, Nahum had talked to her own father without timidity, giving sensible advice about the prices of crops, and entering at once into calculations over the citrus grove they were planning, advising lemons instead of oranges, since lemons could more easily be sold right here in Eretz so that the grower did not have to worry about export. How wise he had been, for now in the war the orange growers of Rehovot and Petach Tikvah were already in great difficulty, unable to ship out their crops.

  Nahum was also very sentimental, and it was he who persuaded her to call herself Shulamith. She had never liked the name Eliza, and since Shulamith was her second name, after an aunt on her mother’s side, she had suddenly decided to adopt it. As an excuse and to win Leah’s support, she declared it sounded more Hebrew. Malka Bronescu teased her: did she imagine herself the mysterious Shulamith of King Solomon’s Song of Songs? But in the end all the young people began calling her Shulamith because it suited her. Only at home the family kept calling her Eliza, it simply didn’t seem natural to change. Until she stopped answering to Eliza. Leah was the first to make the change, but she called her Shula instead of Shulamith, and then so did the boys; finally her mother also gave in, though Abba behaved as if he did not hear and simply kept on calling her Eliza. Only Yaffaleh, and the faithful Nahum, used the full name, Shulamith.

  Naturally Yankel and Feigel, though they never said a word for fear of arousing the contrariness of the young, eagerly and anxiousl
y watched, hoping that a match might develop. Not only was it that Reb Bagelmacher was well off with his hotel, but here at least was a good Jew, let the Above One grant that one of their daughters should marry into a respectable Jewish family instead of a communa. Or instead of becoming, the Above One forbid, like Leah, a who-even-knew-what in their modern world of free love!

  Each time he appeared to buy geese, Reb Bagelmacher would ceaselessly beam on Shula-Eliza, and sometimes even go so far as a little cheek-pinch. A beautiful maiden gladdens the house, he would quote from some sage—everything he said sounded like a quotation.

  —A long beard gladdens the mice, Nahum once mocked, but so that only she could hear it. Shula barely managed to stifle her laughter. This started a game between them; they would engage in conversations consisting totally of mock-wisdom, and in this mischief with its secretly amused whispers there began to grow in her a respect for Nahum’s quickness and daring of mind, while in Nahum an already full-grown infatuation was deepened by the discovery that his Shulamith had wit as well as beauty.

  It was a teasing kind of wit that in a girl less beautiful might have been a tongue with a cutting edge, but with each teasing remark—usually about his chubbiness—the look in her eyes assuaged him. “She has doe’s eyes, and her tongue is an adder’s,” he mocked her.

  “His mind is a sharp quill, and his flesh like a mattress of goose-feathers,” and he had to laugh.

  Yet when even teasingly Shulamith called him “my faithful,” “my suitor,” Nahum felt a balm under his smarting, and when she used him to fetch her little feminine things from the shops in Tiberias that he brought to her when he came for the geese, Nahum was happy.