The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  Some kind of bond was growing between them, and Nahum had already determined in his soul that one way or another he would win her, while in Shula there was a certain calm because she knew without doubt that one boy was bound to her in his heart, that she could do whatever she wanted with him and not lose him; that unlike all the boys who were drawn to her by her beauty and who stared and tried to touch her here and there where she wanted and didn’t want to be touched, Nahum was truly in love with her, the love one read about, like Levin’s love for Natasha in War and Peace. So too in the end it was conceivable that she might be his, Shula joked to herself and even to him—if, for instance, everybody should starve in the war—and people were already beginning to speak of such horrors in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—why then, a half-starved Nahum would become slender and handsome!

  But though tales of want came from Judea, here in Galilee things were not yet difficult, and in Tiberias, though the season at the hot baths was poor, the Bagelmacher pension had taken on a sudden prosperity. Each week Nahum bought more and more geese.

  The pension had been discovered by the German fliers, the same who had taken over half of Gilboa as their quarters. They could be seen in their automobiles rushing back and forth on the newly-built road along the lakeside, for which the Turks had made Abba cart stones on his wagon. In Tiberias, in their visored caps and their mirror-bright boots, the aviators strolled about, bored, along the one street, or ate fish at the Arab cafes by the shore. And this had given Nahum a thought.

  One day he sought out Malach the carpenter to make him a signboard, bringing him words already drawn out in German script. “Deutsche Speisen,” it said, and Nahum had also traced the outline of a roast goose, legs in the air—this was to be painted above the German words.

  “After all,” Nahum explained to Shulamith, “Jewish cooking is German cooking, with maybe a little more schmaltz.”

  Reb Bagelmacher had at first hesitated. It was true that important goyish visitors had from time to time been brought to his dining room as guests by Jewish dignitaries, and they had always shown respectful interest when the kashruth laws were explained to them, and avowed the highest willingness to observe these laws at the meal; about religion, people of high importance were always respectful. The Belly, too, had appeared more than once to gorge himself on Mama Bagelmacher’s roast goose. But to open the dining room to strangers, even though the German aviators were all officers, struck him as opening the door to trouble. From his own father he had heard of dreadful occasions in their inn—that had been in Russia before the family came here—when Cossacks had at knife-point forced him to serve them butter with their meat dishes, contaminating everything on the table.

  “The Germans are not Cossacks,” Nahum argued, “and those who can’t do without butter will go elsewhere. Tateh, try it. You’ll see, it will save us!”

  One Friday, Reb Bagelmacher gazed over his near-empty dining room, and on Sunday Nahum hung up the sign. The first customers appeared almost at once, for the noon meal, peering into the pension with an air of well-intentioned curiosity. Pointing to the portrait of the brooding Herzl that hung in the entrance hall, one of them expertly informed his companions, “This is their Zionist Messias.”

  It was Nahum who explained to them that although the cooking was German, it was kosher. In good spirits they sat down, while the knowing one with an indulgent laugh explained to the others, “That means we can’t have butter on our bread. But we can have goose-fat!”

  The bird itself, from Yaffaleh’s brood, well-fed on the Chaimovitch corn, seasoned with Mama Bagelmacher’s spices and served with numerous side-dishes of pickles and cucumbers and sour tomatoes and even red cabbage, so delighted the Germans that they called forth Frau Bagelmacher and laughingly declared that if this was Jewish cooking, they would all become Jews!

  On the very next day two huge motorcars filled with yellow-haired young officers roared into Tiberias, halting directly before the pension.

  Their voices were loud, they raised their glasses and toasted Kaiser Wilhelm, they toasted their high commander Kress von Kressenstein, and the Roman Emperor Tiberius. A pious Jerusalemite, who for many years had come regularly for the season at the hot baths, rose to leave the room and would have departed forever, had not Nahum instantly thought of arranging the glassed veranda as a special dining room for the pension’s regular guests. “How can we refuse the military?” he begged, as one who would do nothing that might hurt the Jewish community, and the Jerusalemite, who, like all steady customers, counted heads to keep track of how Reb Bagelmacher’s affairs were going, sighed, “Well, it’s been a very bad season for you.”

  That very afternoon Nahum had to make a special trip to the Chaimovitch farm for more geese. And presently it proved Nahum’s own doing that threatened to bring about his undoing. For one day Yankel drove to Tiberias with a load of potatoes for the pension, and Shula-Eliza rode along to shop a bit in the souk and “breathe the air of the city.”

  Nahum, such was his bad luck, was out when they arrived, and while Reb Chaimovitch and Reb Bagelmacher made up their accounts, and decided between them which side would win the war, agreeing that for the Jews what did it matter, a Kaiser, a Czar, one devil was as bad as the other, Mama Bagelmacher did her best to entertain the beautiful Chaimovitch daughter and keep her there until Nahum came back, surely at any moment. A bite, Shula must take something in her mouth, a bite of something tasty after the long ride, and not in the kitchen! Like for a real guest, Mama Bagelmacher set out tea and cake in the dining room, and in the moment when she left Shula alone while she fetched some preserves to put in the tea—for such moments are fated—the outer door was flung open, and Shula looked up. A godlike young man stood there, his shining head the sun itself, the blue Kinnereth behind him.

  Now occurred that moment of astonished fatedness that Shula had so often read about and had awaited in her soul.

  It was for her he snatched off his officer’s cap, and he now advanced in smiling politeness and made a request in German. More than once before in her life Shula had heard German spoken and found herself understanding most of it because the words were similar to Yiddish. Indeed, Reuven and Leah and the melamed and all the Hebraists were eternally disdainfully explaining that Yiddish was nothing but a jargon of German mixed with Russian. What the young god asked sounded to her like “Is there a goose here?”

  And a laugh blurted from her. For as in a joke with Nahum she almost responded, “Yes, right here!” She already knew this would be true of herself, for the entire course of her foolishness, Shula told herself, was already clear as though written in a book. And doubtless he too at once sensed the fatedness, for while she was explaining that she was not of the house, in a Yiddish that she stumblingly tried to make sound dignified like German, the officer gazed at her with that growing glow of enchantment that any pretty girl knew she must beware of. “Excuse my German,” she ended.

  “Oh, but it is charming. But then what could not be charming, from such a source!” And before Mama Bagelmacher returned, he had learned her name; she repeated the full Shulamith and he exclaimed, “But naturally! I should have guessed! The Shulamite!” And even while Mama Bagelmacher stood there, he learned that Shulamith was from a farm, a place called Mishkan Yaacov— “Ah yes! The settlement by the riverbend.” And after he had placed his order, for already tables had to be reserved, the young officer clicked his heels and made a half bow directed more to Shula than to Mama Bagelmacher, saying “Servus,” while he withdrew with his eyes still on the girl. Boldly he added that he trusted they might meet again.

  Shula knew she was flushing under Mama Bagelmacher’s gaze. But nothing was said, Nahum’s mother wisely did not even make her usual remarks about how for her part she could do without these German fliers altogether. Fortunately Nahum appeared just then so that his mother could suggest he accompany Shula to the souk as, with all the soldiers that were roving about in Tiberias, a decent girl could no longer go alone to the m
arket.

  The very next day a plane thundered down low over the Mishkan Yaacov, sending the hens and geese into wild cackling circles in every farmyard. With one accord, all the boys rushed out of the schoolroom and Mati raced along the open street trying to keep directly under the airplane as it made loops and circles and even—he recognized—a figure eight. In front of the house he kept shouting to Shula, “Look! It’s so low you can even see the aviator!”

  She did not go out into the yard but remained in the doorway. He could not know which was her home, but she could see him; he had taken off his helmet and his shining head was now the sun in the sky. Yesterday, when he had clicked his heels in departing, he had spoken his name, Luft-Leutnant Gottfried and then something doubled, like the names of noblemen. Though to be so stupidly romantic as to be enchanted by a click of the heels and an aristocratic name, she certainly was not.

  Mati was excitedly showing everyone, with complicated movements of his hands, the movements the plane had made. She withdrew into the house.

  Hardly a week later, Bronescu was suggesting to one after another of the villagers when they came into his shop that it would be good policy to invite some of the German officers to a festive occasion when they could perhaps mingle and make friends. After all, the Germans, unlike the Turks, were a cultured and civilized nation, nor should people believe all the horror-tales about Belgium. It looked as though Germany would quickly win the war, and with the Germans in the land, something could be accomplished! The British, it was plain, despite all the might of their entire fleet had failed to break open the Dardanelles, and this was the turning point of the great conflict. The Germans and the Turks in their turn would clearly now prepare a truly massive assault on the Suez Canal; that was why the aviators were here, and this time the canal would be seized and the British lifeline would be cut. France would fall, Russia would be defeated. It was wise to be on good terms with the Germans.

  Presently, the commanders in Nazareth and Tiberias and the fliers from the camp in Gilboa were invited to a Lag B’Omer festival to be held in the open center of the village. Not that Lag B’Omer had been such a festival in Roumania, but from the old-time Jews in Tiberias, the children had picked up the custom of lighting bonfires on this holiday—what child will miss an excuse to light a bonfire? And also since it was a custom to hold marriages on Lag B’Omer, the festival would be a wedding celebration for two couples who would be going under the canopy, one, a village romance on both sides, and the other, a son of a villager to a girl from a fine Sephardic family from Safed. Quickly, let the boys be married. Each day the fear of the Roumanians increased that their former homeland would be dragged into the war; if on the side of the Triple Entente then the boys might be deported or imprisoned, and if on the side of the Germans and Turks, they could be conscripted for labor. A married man was still safer than a single man.

  Among the young people themselves, especially the girls, it was said that the fever of war brought on the fever of love. The bride from the village, Gerta Kolnodly, explained to Shula that you suddenly saw with different eyes the boys you had seen all your life. You saw them in danger of death, and you suddenly became afraid that you would miss everything that life was intended for. “Do you understand what I mean, Shula?”

  Shula understood. Yes, she had felt something of that herself.

  The invitation to the Germans was made not without opposition. Several of the mothers declared to each other, why tempt fate? And in every kitchen they repeated to each other the tales of Jewish girls led astray by Christians, by Czarist officers and Polish noblemen. Sometimes the wretched misled daughter returned unmarried with her baby, or left the baby on the doorstep with a note, while she herself was found days later floating in the river; here it could be either the river or the Kinnereth. Sometimes the nobleman even married the Jewish daughter, and many years later a grown son, a Christian, wandered into the town’s synagogue, led by fate alone, as he did not know his mother was a Jewess, and the wanderer would beg a sage to teach him the Torah. And sometimes after many years the daughter herself returned, usually to her father’s deathbed, to fall on her knees, her tears indistinguishable from her neck-chain of glistening diamonds, as she begged his forgiveness.

  All these tales Shula heard with one ear, knowing they were intended for her, even though her own mama would only sigh and repeat to the neighbor-woman, “So is the way of life.”

  A few of the mothers even declared that if the Germans were invited to the festival, they would take their daughters off to Chedera, to Haifa, to Jerusalem, and some vowed they would keep them locked indoors at home. But as the festival neared, and the street was arched over with green branches, and the children dragged wood from rotted chicken coops for their bonfires, who could stay away?

  The four musicians from Yavniel came on a flower-decked wagon, the open street was filled with townsmen and guests, and then a whole caravan of military automobiles arrived. Shula saw her Gottfried at once. He jumped out and came to her directly, bowing, whisking her around to the music, his hand pressing against the small of her back.

  “I must be careful not to show I want to be only with you,” he said after their second dance, and somehow Shula felt sure that Bronescu’s suggestion of hospitality to the Germans had been connected with Gottfried’s search for her. A little frightened by the young German’s determination, she also felt both pleased and frightened by an oddly adventurous thought that came to her, that for this beauty that had been bestowed on her a special fate must be destined. Was she simply, like Dvoraleh, to marry a shomer, or a chalutz, and live in a communa or a village settlement? or even in Tiberias?

  Luckily Nahum had not come; it was a busy night at the Bagelmacher hostelry, for many German officers, before going out to watch the picturesque Jewish festival, were gathering for festive dinners. Some planned to drive up as far as Meron, where the long-bearded long-coated Jews were said to dance all night in mad circles around the tomb of an ancient rabbi. Others had been invited to various villages.

  All over the Yishuv it was being repeated now, that after all the Germans were a cultured people. Their young officers came from good families and could be trusted; naturally these young men had a longing for breathing the air of a civilized home where they might talk about literature and music and enjoy the presence of decent women. For other needs they could find their way; in Jaffa and other places there were houses of shame. “But let us not treat them as outcasts. It may well prove to our advantage to have friends among them.”

  In Mishkan Yaacov everyone agreed the festival was a great success. The Germans had behaved with the most perfect manners. Though the melamed let no one forget that anti-Semitism had even been made into a science by a German professor, these young men were of a new generation, and perhaps things would change.

  In departing, Gottfried had kissed Shula’s hand.

  Then it was a cruise on the Kinnereth—the Sea of Galilee, as they called it. Organized by a whole group of aviators, it was to take place on a Sunday, and Malka Bronescu begged Shula to join the select number of girls who would enliven the excursion with their feminine company.

  Cleverly, the officers had invited along the melamed himself, since he had discoursed so interestingly at the festival to their commander about the ancient synagogue ruins in the region. He would be their guide.

  When one or two of the villagers objected that things were already going too far, since after all it was a Christian place they were going to, where That One was said to have preached, the melamed reminded them that it was nevertheless a synagogue, Kfar Nahum, which was now called Capernaum, indeed the most ancient synagogue in the land. Every Jew should visit it, only keeping in mind that it was ours, not theirs.

  Though living so close by, Shula had never been there. It was said to be a most romantic place for picnics. Just then Leah was staying at home. “Ah, it’s beautiful there,” she said, in such a dreamy way as to make Shula wonder whether something had happened
to Leah in that very place with her Handsome Moshe? And since Leah too had been invited, what was there to fear, what reason was there not to go?

  They were restrained the whole way across the lake, the girls sitting in their little cluster around Leah, who kept them singing, sometimes getting the young officers to join in and learn the Hebrew words. But once among the ruins, Gottfried managed in a lane of fallen pillars to walk Shula aside, and then, lingering to examine closely a six-pointed star that the melamed had pointed out on a stone, he kept her separate from the others. Today he was no longer a cavalier pursuing a flirtation but a man making ready to show a woman his soul.

  When they stood by a broken-off pillar, gazing out to the dream-blue sea, Gottfried suddenly remarked, very seriously, “You know, Shulamith, I am a believer.”

  He wore a hovering smile, as one who, had he approached too far, was ready to withdraw. Her heartbeat quickened as she kept on her face only the look of friendly interest and earnestness due to anyone who speaks of sincere belief. And Gottfried spoke to her of his beliefs the way a man tells innermost things, perhaps the story of his family, to the woman he hopes to draw to him.

  She retained on her lips that earnest, interested smile which she had already long ago learned to use when a boy talked of things important to him, such as the speed of bullets, or the number of horses in an engine; even if a girl did not understand, she could smile. But today Shula found herself straining to understand. Yet just when she felt she caught a glimmer of their strange Christian idea, the thought suddenly vanished among the glinting tips of the tiny golden hairs on Gottfried’s arm when he moved it in the sun.

  In all her young life this was really the first time she had spoken naturally to a Christian about their religion. In Russia, she had been only a little girl, and all she knew was to fear them. Their church in the center of the town was the place from which death issued for the Jews. The priests in their black robes and black cylinder hats were executioners. On Sundays, in times of quiet, she, together with her closest girl friends—with a pang Shula suddenly recalled them, were they still there in Cherezinka?—on Sundays they would peep from behind a standing wagon, waiting for the peasants to stream out, and if the band of goyish boys espied them, though these were the same boys they saw every day in the marketplace, the little group of Jewish girls would whirl around and run away in terror.