by Meyer Levin
Of their Christian religion she knew almost nothing, Shula suddenly realized, except that far back there in Cherezinka the little Jewish girls had caught a story and puzzled over it amongst themselves, giggled over it, and solved it by laughing at the ignorant, gullible moujiks; it was true that you could get them to believe anything at all, even the greatest absurdity!
It was the story of the ikon they worshiped with candles before it, in alcoves in their houses, and everywhere, even in stone altars on the roads. Not the picture of the naked man on the cross with only a bit of cloth covering his secret part, but the picture of the mother and the baby. The moujiks all believed that the baby was conceived and born while their Matushka remained still an untouched maiden! How could any grown person believe such a thing? The stupid moujiks! And the little Jewish girls, whispering to each other the true secret about a man’s seed, would burst out laughing. It was like grown people believing the story of the stork.
And yet even at that remote time something akin to a wish had whispered in her—if such a thing could be true? To have a sweet little baby of her own. Like the joy that swept up in her when she had helped to bathe Dvoraleh’s newborn baby and felt the writhing naked little body in her hands. So, as a little girl, she had wondered about having a baby without the painful and ugly part of when a man tried to plant his seed in you, and it struck Shula now that this might be why all those millions and millions of Christians, the greatest part of the world she supposed, wanted to believe in such a story, especially the women.
So much was happening in Shulamith because of Gottfried’s nearness that she felt confused and a little afraid. Always, because of her being the prettiest and because she knew she was intelligent too, Shula had felt a special protection in the world. For a moment now she lost this feeling.
“To stand here where the Christ himself stood and preached,” Gottfried was saying with awe—but quickly, and managing to put a personal tenderness in it, he added, “—of course he was preaching as a rabbi to your own people—to stand here makes it all so real to me, more true than ever.” And gazing into her face, he added, “Excuse me, Shulamith, perhaps I am offending you?”
“Oh, no.” Her heartbeat was even more tumultuous, but Shula kept on her understanding womanly smile, and repeated what she had once heard Reuven say in a discussion with Leah, “Many things he preached are exactly in the words of other great rabbis of that time. And sayings of our prophets, too. My own generation is not very religious, I’m afraid—my oldest brother and Leah are freethinkers.” Would he guess that what she had just said meant they believed in free love as well? She was flushing. Was Leah keeping her eye on them, she wondered.
“Naturally.” Which part of what she said was he agreeing with? It was such a hot day, not a hamseen but a motionless heat; even by the waterside she felt uncomfortable, she was moist under her arms and below her breasts. He must feel so hot in his military jacket; should she ask him if he wanted to take it off?
“Naturally, the prophets,” Gottfried repeated. “Since our Jesus came as your Messias, just as they had prophesied.”
“Mashiach.” She felt on safe ground again and smiled. “Our religious people are still waiting for Mashiach. Each day my father prays he should come already!”
“And you?”
“I? Do I pray for the Messiah?” She giggled now. “I am a bad Jew, I don’t even pray.” Then she added seriously, “Our religion is old-fashioned and prejudiced, a woman doesn’t even count, if she prays or not. It is only for the men!” Leah should only hear, and be proud of her!
“Then you too are a freethinker?”
“Maybe worse. I don’t think at all!”
“Oh, you have already shown me the contrary.”
“Well, with our teacher in school we sometimes had discussions about such things.”
“About freethinking? I thought the Jewish schools were religious?”
“Oh, he is religious, but he let us discuss, to convince us.” She laughed.
“Do you believe in God?” he asked. How intimate and serious they were! She stopped laughing and giggling. “In God, yes.” Suddenly she was sure. Their eyes met as though in beautiful agreement that this was the most profound, the one thing. “I don’t even know exactly how I believe, but … My brother, the oldest one, Reuven, the one who is now in the Turkish army in Damascus—he is a true idealist, a vegetarian. He says that we ourselves, the Jewish people, we are the Mashiach. That we are the sign of God. That we ourselves must rebuild the Holy Land, because the Messiah is an idea and cannot be a person.”
Gottfried pondered a moment. His smile became lighter, and, as if to get out of the deepest depths, he remarked, “I wonder, when Christ returns, will he again be a Jew?”
Then he hadn’t really listened to her, he had disregarded what she said, as if this profound idea of Reuven’s didn’t matter. And instead the German began to explain to her the very first things about the Christians and their churches. To begin with there were the Catholics and Protestants—Oh yes, this she knew, she even knew that there was another big difference amongst the Catholics themselves, between the Russian priests and the Pope in Rome; the Russian pappas were allowed to marry, but the Pope’s priests were not.
“Our Protestant preachers too are permitted to marry.” Gottfried smiled, as though this somehow lessened the vast distance between them. He was a Protestant, a Lutheran, he called it, explaining that a Catholic priest named Martin Luther had been the first Protestant, for one reason because he protested against celibacy and wanted to marry.
She didn’t know whether a laugh just now would be proper, yet something about the whole struggle in their religion being started by a priest who wanted to go with a woman was suddenly farcical to Shula. The Christians were really mad people, to make a thing of God over something so natural. It came to her to wonder, was their Yoshka ever married? Nu, but hadn’t there been something about a beautiful woman who washed his feet and dried them with her hair? But wasn’t she also a prostitute? This was not the time to ask. Perhaps she should really try to read something about their religion; after all, the Christians ruled the world, even though here it was the Moslems, and it was important to know about their religion.
“And there are other important differences,” Gottfried was saying. “Our own Lutheran Christianity, we believe, Shulamith, is more like the way of Jesus Christ himself, without all the superstitions and primitive ceremonies that the Catholic church has added to it.”
She made a schoolgirl nod. Their principal belief, he said, was that God sent to mankind his own son, the Messiah, but mankind was not then ready to give up sin, and this son, Jesus—”
“Yoshua,” she said. “Yehoshua is a Hebrew name.”
“Yoshua took into himself the sins of all mankind, and suffered and died on the Roman cross to expiate those sins so that man could be cleansed and saved and again come into the realm of God—”
She concentrated, but could not quite understand this. He continued, “At the time of Judgment, Messiah will be sent down to us again—”
“Our religious people also believe Mashiach will still come,” she said, to find another point of agreement. “In the pogroms all the religious Jews cry out to God, send us Mashiach already!”
He nodded, and became even more serious. “But you see, for you, Messias is only to help the Jews, and for us, he is for all mankind, the whole world.”
This startled her; for an instant she was taken aback, for surely the Messiah should be for the whole world, for all mankind. “Isn’t he only for the Christians?” she asked and saw in his face that now in his turn he was a bit taken aback. With this, her spirit returned to her, the little teasing touch was back in her voice, the secure knowledge of a woman that one could always bring boys—no, men—down from their lofty superiority.
Gottfried had responded with a soft appreciative laugh. “Touché!” he said. From reading somewhere, perhaps in a Russian novel, she recognized the French wor
d, and joined his soft laugh, feeling victorious, and glad that they had somehow emerged from the most dangerous ground—religion.
Others from the excursion were coming toward them, led by a long-robed monk who must be the guide to the ruins; he was conversing with the melamed, who kept his head cocked in the pose of watchful but unprejudiced attention. Malka gave Shula a quick, gobbling smirk; Malka would be sure to ask if he had kissed her. At least Leah had no questions in her smile and only said they had missed a very interesting lecture.
Now Shula’s nights were invaded by the sweet, insatiable longing. It had come. The girlish longings she had known before had been but a longing for this longing. Before, when she had touched her breast and her secret woman’s chamber, it had always been with a defiant declaration to herself that this was only natural, but now she felt a tremble of shame, for now it was with the image of his face lying over her. And even worse, a certain curiosity grew, and though she could still manage to mock herself over it, the question would not depart from her mind. It was to know exactly what a man’s thing looked like uncircumcised.—Oy, Shula, she would mock herself, this proves it isn’t really love, only wantonness. But the curiosity would not go away.
She did not even know quite fully what a Jewish one looked like. Of course when Mati was a baby, and with Dvoraleh’s babies—But after they grew? A few times she had inadvertently caught glimpses of Schmulik’s, and of Gidon’s before he had moved out of the boys’ side of the room to his hut. Indeed, she had once even glimpsed it big, just as she awakened, and Gidon had rushed out and she believed that was why he had moved. Now even Schmulik was careful in dressing and undressing. On Dvoraleh’s new baby, Giora, she had once, when the communa had agreed that Dvoraleh could bring the babies on a visit, seen his tiny penis standing upright, and Mama and Dvoraleh had given a special kind of laugh. But how was it on a grown man, when it became swollen and strong? This she never had seen. Even in the art book of famous sculptures that Leah had brought from Jerusalem, it wasn’t shown this way but soft-looking and like asleep. In Reuven’s kvutsa, boys and girls were being raised to be much more natural and unashamed before each other; perhaps when they grew up, it would be better, because hungers like this should not be allowed to influence a choice of love. Yet she wanted, she needed to know. It haunted her. In animals—the sight of it coming out of a horse put Shula in such confusion that she would hurry away. But after all in a man it did not come out of hiding like that, it was always there on his outside. But—she dared to think further—when in a man it suddenly swelled and lengthened—she even wanted to ask a man, was it painful?
—Poor dear Leah. Now Shula felt she understood the terrible longing that Leah must be suffering every night, all these years, for her man. Could the longing be even worse after you had once begun with the man?
An awful part of her curiosity and longing was a desire in her very fingers to touch that part of a man, to know just what that hardness was that came into it. Almost—so friendly was she with poor Nahum, that she even had a fantasy—almost she could ask him. As a true complete comrade. Simply to help her understand. He would sit quietly like an artist’s model, and like an artist she would gaze calmly and study it, perhaps she would even touch it, just to know. This would be a protection for her, even against her own curiosity, so she would not do anything foolish as so many girls did merely because of curiosity and ignorance. But if she were to see Nahum’s, it would still be only a Jewish one, a circumcised one. Shula dared not let herself try to imagine touching the other.
In the midst of the day, in the kitchen, in the yard, Shula would suddenly feel her dreamy spells coming over her and find herself seeing the sun-gilded tips of the little hairs on the back of her Gottfried’s wrists.
Already Feigel had noticed, and worried, but she did not yet feel the time had come to speak.
In parting, the Jewish girls delivered safely home from the excursion, he had held her hand overlong. He must see her again, Gottfried had said, his eyes devouring her as though this need to see her was an actual hunger. And with an intimate pressure on her palm he had added, “Soon, my Shulamith.” Then his head dipped in a knightly manner as he once again gave her hand a cavalierly kiss. For a fleeting instant she had been frightened because of that hungry gaze, even wary, but this must be a part of feminine nature before there came the fullness of love and trust. The fear vanished when he kissed her hand.
And now the flying officers in their turn invited the young ladies to a celebration at their quarters in Gilboa. Several notables too were invited, with their wives—not only Issachar Bronescu but Yonah Kolodnitzer, the mukhtar of Yavniel, as well. Since Mishkan Yaacov was the furthest away, it was suggested that their contingent remain overnight at the camp. As it was really in Dvora’s communa, what harm could there be in this?
Yet one of the Roumanian mothers this time held back her daughter, and Feigel also mumbled. Yankel was away; again the Turks had commandeered him with his mules and wagon to haul things far down in Beersheba; perhaps if he were here, he would forbid his daughter to see so much of the Germans. Still, Leah would go as well, and it would be a visit to Dvoraleh and Menahem, who had been replaced here by another shomer. Since Nadina and Galil had been sent into exile, who knew where deep in Turkey, Menahem was needed in the leadership in Gilboa.
And Leah wanted to go there to hear—big problems were to be settled in Gilboa. The contract for guarding the fields of Chedera had been lost. The farmers could not pay; every week the Turks wrested new taxes out of them and also they had had to buy their sons out from labor conscription. Now those young men had revived their own secret society, the Sons of Nimrod, to rival the Shomer. They were not so much riding out on watch, but more like the old Bar Giora from the beginning, they were going to be like chieftains of Zion and who even knew what. The last time Leah had seen Menahem, he had laughed about them. The leader was a young poet, Avshalom Feinberg, son of that early settler from Rehovot who had first got the Baron to help the Yishuv. With the start of the war, this Avshalom had returned from Paris, and now he spent his days galloping around like an Arab sheikh. He was thick with the Aaronsons of Zichron—both daughters were said to be in love with him; their younger brother was one of the first in the Sons of Nimrod. Of course these fine guardsmen were hiring Arabs. The elders of the town had offered to keep a few of the Shomer’s men to watch their orange groves, using the Arabs only to guard the eucalyptus forest. But in outrage the Shomer had withdrawn all ten of its men. Let the Turks cut down their groves for locomotive fuel! Let the Chedera farmers learn their lesson all over again!
In the south too, a few contracts had been lost; Zev the Hotblood had got together a band of watchmen in Ruhama and they worked for less than the Shomer. As always in troubled times, the organization itself was strained with inner disputes. Since Nadina and Galil were gone, the quiet Shimshoni had risen to leadership, alongside Shabbatai Zeira, and each had different principles. Zeira believed their task was guarding, and nothing else. For this his brother had died. Shimshoni, with his small, stony half-bald head and his narrowed skeptical eyes, was a close follower of Nadina and Galil, a social idealist still imbued with the mission to “conquer the soil,” to bring ever new areas under cultivation, while also building up the ideal of the communa. The Shomer’s men must be guardsmen but not guardsmen alone. Shimshoni was one of those who had pressed for the settlement at Gilboa, and now he pressed for newer settlements. For what was their aim, their higher purpose? Not merely to watch for theives in the fields. It was twofold: to be prepared to protect the whole Yishuv, and always to pioneer new land. Shimshoni’s plan just now was to take a group up north, to the high hills touching on Lebanon; there the Keren Kayemeth was buying a hilltop, and they would become the settlers. There, as Shimshoni pictured it, they would raise herds of sheep and cattle. This was the sort of man he was, something like Reuven, loving peace and solitude though he was one of the bravest of the guardsmen.
Menahem too wa
s drawn to the idea of the new settlement, even in the midst of war—a deed of construction. Had it not been, long ago at Sejera, a dream of his closest comrade Yechezkiel, Dvora’s Yechezkiel? From up there, near Mount Hermon, they could work as watchmen for the Baron’s early settlements of Rosh Pina and Metulla; they could guard the whole north, and meanwhile build their own place. Yet could he take Dvoraleh and the babies up there, to live in tents again, and without a children’s house? Nor did the members of Gilboa want to lose Dvoraleh, who was their expert on egg incubation. All this was what was to be decided, and Leah was eager to be there.
As the military motorcar arrived in Mishkan Yaacov for them, Gottfried himself was driving, and while the sisters got ready, he allowed Mati to sit with his hands on the steering wheel. Twice, Shula changed the headscarf she would wear for the ride, and in the last moment flew back to change it again.
First Gottfried complimented Leah on her flowing white gown, and then he made a sweeping, cavalier’s bow before Shula, who wore a long velvet dress with lace ruffles at the wrists and throat that Feigel had brought out from among her rarely worn finery from Russia. Nu, even when a mother was dubious about what was happening to her daughter, she yet wanted to dress her in the most beautiful way. Admiring her, Gottfried remarked, “But won’t you be very warm?” “What won’t a girl suffer for her vanity!” Shula sparked, and they were off. He sat her next to him; when the back of the motorcar became crowded with the whole Bronescu family, Leah also moved to the front seat, pressing them closer together.
