The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  His truck was about to enter a military compound. As the gates were opened, there swarmed from the street, from all along the compound fence, wraiths of religious Jews in their black capotes, haggard, clamorous, trying to squeeze alongside, into the area, begging bread, bread, each of them desperately holding forth some last possession, a silver spice-box, a ring, and one snow-bearded Hasid even snatched off his gilt-rimmed eyeglasses to thrust them at a passing soldier. The guards, using the sides of their rifles, swept them back like rubbish, the wretched Jews stumbling over each other, gaunt, ravenous, and beyond insult. Again they darted close, to each soldier who came out or approached they fastened themselves, pleading, begging. Along the barbed-wire fence Arab children, all but naked, pressed themselves, calling inward, their small hands thrust through between the barbs, even little girls carrying emaciated babies on their backs were begging, baksheesh, baksheesh, lechem, bread, bread. A wave of children rushed toward Leah, clutching, pleading. In her kerchief was the chunk of bread Chava had given her. Leah halted, thinking to divide it, to give half to one of the famished Hasidim. But as she began to unknot the scarf, the wretched children grasped at her hands, tore at her fingers with their talons; they tore at each other to get nearer, and suddenly the tallest of them clawed the bread out of her hands and fled, the howling pack behind him.

  So it was in Jerusalem.

  * * * *

  Among the names of advocates and importers on the doors along the second-floor corridor of a long, important looking edifice on Jaffa Road, she found that of the Yeshayahu Brothers, who were part of one of the fine Jerusalem families of “before,” before even the first Aliyah, a family listed at the head of every charity, of every school and hospital committee, a family respected both by the religious community and the Zionists. It was the elder brother, Ehud Yeshayahu, who now headed the administration of relief.

  Behind the railed entry was a desk with nobody yet there, but at a high bookkeeper’s stand Leah saw an elderly Jew who must have just opened the office, for he was pulling on his black half-sleeves. He looked calm, so nothing could yet have happened, she had arrived in time.

  With a broad well-tended beard and a silken skullcap, he was a specimen of the fine-looking old-style Jew, the scheiner Yid, and he leaned over his ledger like an eager scholar over his Talmud. “Is Mr. Yeshayahu here yet?” Leah asked.

  The bookkeeper glanced at her with the reproach of a worshiper at an interruption—and from a woman! “And who asks?”

  “I’m sent with an urgent message. From the committee in Gilboa.”

  He turned now and faced her. His eyes had the sad yet steady gaze of those who see beyond you to the ways of the Eternal, that are beyond questioning. Leah’s heart sank.

  “He is arrested,” the bookkeeper confirmed. “They already came yesterday.”

  Even her father would not accept God’s will with such calm but would cry out!

  Leah’s eye fell on a large iron safe that stood in a corner. “They took the gold?”

  The man too turned and gazed at the safe; she began to feel angry at this fine calm Jew. Then Leah noticed something about the safe itself. Over the edge where the door closed into the frame was a blot, a large wax seal.

  “Dr. Yeshayahu raised the legal question,” the Jew explained with a tone of delicate appreciation. “Since he is holding the funds in trust for the community, how could he surrender the keys to the safe until the police brought a proper order? Therefore they sealed the safe until they secure the document. But him they took away.”

  Then everything was meanwhile in this one’s care? “We must remove the gold coins!” Leah cried, explaining why. When would the Turks come back? Today? At any moment?

  The bookkeeper was still gazing at the iron box as though God’s law lay encased there. “It is true that the Jews of Jerusalem are perishing of starvation,” he repeated, as in a Talmudic argument with himself. “And this gold was sent by our brothers in America to buy food and save them.”

  Now he turned his gaze on her, and his eyes were filled with pain. “What I have seen in the Holy City!” he said. “In the Arab shops there have appeared Jews with Scrolls of the Torah in their arms, to be sold for a measure of lentils. And the Scrolls the Moslem shopkeepers have torn into scraps to be used instead of old newspapers for wrapping vegetables. Perhaps because we have profaned the Torah, God has sealed off the money sent to save us.”

  “Reb Yid!” Leah cried. She didn’t know where it came from—perhaps from Tateh. “Doesn’t God command us above all to save life?” And suddenly she saw that the seal was stamped with the Moslem crescent. “Is this the seal of our God? Shall we wait with folded hands for the will of Allah? Doesn’t God demand of us that we put our hands to the task and help!” At this, behind his startled gaze, she saw an uncertainty. “Who has the key to the safe?” Leah demanded. “You?”

  “No, no,” he cried. But she saw that he knew who had it. Softly the good Jew said, “It was I who was made responsible for the seal.”

  So it was fear. Of God or the Turks, what did it matter!

  “Listen,” Leah said, “it is not only by hunger that Bahad-ad-Din can kill our people. Do you know why the Turks came here for this money? Do you know how this money got here?” What Jew did not already know the secret of the Nili and the gold?

  “The Yeshayahu brothers had nothing to do with your spies!” he cried. “Even Djemal Pasha has respect for the Yeshayahu family.”

  “God in heaven!” Leah burst out. “Aaron Aaronson too Djemal Pasha respected. And the Turks are at this moment torturing Sara Aaronson to death. And if this money is found here it will give them an excuse to accuse the entire Yishuv, the Emergency Committee, everyone, of being part of the spy ring. They’ll hang even your Yeshayahus. Massacres will begin. We must break through the seal at once. Tell me where to get the key. The money must disappear. Don’t worry about your safety—I’ll take you away, we’ll hide you.”

  He made no move. But then Leah saw something else coming into his eyes, a certain little gleam. She recognized it from far back, from some sagacious Talmud-wizard in the old country, the gleam that came when a Talmudist found an interpretation, a way around something that seemed forbidden. “Perhaps God has put another way into your mind?” Leah asked.

  “After all, the authorities don’t yet know what is or is not in the safe,” he said. “If the brother of Ehud Yeshayahu should give you the key, then perhaps there is a way to deal with the seal.”

  “What way?” Leah stared at the wax imprint. Could they perhaps cut through it with a thin blade and then, heating the tip of the blade, try to melt back the wax when they closed the safe again? No, they could never hope that the seam would not show. “But what are you thinking of?” she asked.

  Now that his scruple was gone, or that he saw a way to get out of things safely, her Reb Yid was altogether changed, quick, clever, decisive. Oh, these pious Jews! You could always find a way to work with them!

  “The problem is,” he said concisely, “to know how to seal it up again with the same seal.”

  She did not quite follow. Could he obtain the official seal? Bribe someone and borrow it?

  “An artisan,” the bookkeeper revealed his thought. “With wax. The way a silversmith makes an imprint and then a copy of a medallion.”

  And he even knew a silversmith nearby who could make such an imprint. Only, he himself must not leave this office.

  Leah ran, but found the metal shutters of the shop shut down. In a doorway sat a pallid boy with long earcurls. Where did the silversmith live? The boy shrugged. Gone, gone away.

  Where, who else? And just there, in this very street, Leah saw, as she gazed around in desperation, was the courtyard where she had once stayed with Rahel, among the Bezalel students, among the stonecutters. In a corner of the yard Yosi the sculptor had made souvenirs for Jerusalem visitors, little plaques from molds of plaster. Elijah’s blessing was still with her! For there he was, the same Yosi, th
e baldness higher on his forehead, there he stood, whistling and grumbling, hacking away at a block of stone. Behind him in his narrow cave of a room, even as she approached, Leah saw, as always in Yosi’s room, some lazy-looking girl on the cot. As though not a day had passed. And before she could tell him what she so urgently needed, Yosi demanded, What did she think of his stone? An abstraction, he proclaimed it. The newest movement from Paris. And the abstract movement would be perfect for monuments in Eretz! Since images were forbidden by the everlastingly interfering rabbis, here finally was the answer! “Yosi,” she broke in, “you are needed.” And quickly she explained.

  “Why not?” Yosi said. She had come to just the right person. And from a table cluttered with tools, sketches, bits of food, he collected his materials, explaining all the while that he had managed very well through the war—the damned Germans, bless their stupidity, were addicted to antiquities, and he made for them the most authentic antiquities, and if the English should come, never mind, they too had a passion for antiquities. Before Leah could drag Yosi off to his task, she had to admire several clay figurines, women with snakes between their breasts. “Terafim! Leah, you don’t even recognize them? You don’t remember? The little household gods stolen from Laban by whom? By Leah and Rahel!” He laughed at his jest. Now as a test she must point out to him which of the lot was a real, which a new antiquity? “Later, later.” “Only one second. Which is the old one?”

  “This! Come already!” she pointed at random.

  “You see! That one is my own! A perfect re-creation!” And he followed her at last.

  Kneeling before the safe, mixing plaster in a saucer, grumbling and whistling, Yosi did his work while the bookkeeper hovered over him, frightened, yet pleased that his plan was practical. Meanwhile the good Jew told Leah where she must go for the key—to the other Yeshayahu brother in their bank.

  It was a small distinguished place, not the sort of bank ordinary people might go to, but with a hushed atmosphere as if the important financial affairs that made the world turn were conducted here. Through the arabesques of a wrought-iron grille, a clerk at last took her message, and departed to the rear. A few more clerks sat rigidly at their desks, their eyes following her as though she brought nearer the terror they were expecting. Now the first one returned, opened a gate, and led her to the rear chamber, where sat the other Yeshayahu brother, Raphael. A soft-cheeked man with a short, silver beard, and wearing a velvet kippa, he spoke to her in a solemn Biblical Hebrew. There had been many arrests in the night, his own turn might come momentarily. He must already have had some message from the bookkeeper, for the banker knew her mission. Yes, on his desk—Leah had heard there were a few in Jerusalem—was a telephone. The banker now took a small key from a desk-drawer and handed it to her.

  “One more problem you may not have considered,” he said. “When the safe is opened by the authorities, they must find some sort of funds inside.” He was, he said, assembling the largest possible amount on such short notice, in Turkish pounds. Part of this he could already entrust to her.

  In a moment, while the banker spoke to Leah of the darkness of the situation, of the recklessness and irresponsibility of the spies, of their unforgivable crime in involving the innocent leaders of the community with their gold from abroad, the first clerk entered carrying packets of currency. Leah tied them in her scarf. The banker did not forget to have her sign a receipt.

  Yosi had already taken the impression in fine plaster. Now he cut away the wax seal. He must hurry to his workshop to pour lead and make the duplicate stamp, but he lingered while they opened the safe. He just wanted to see all those golden napoleons, Yosi said.

  There were several small leather pouches. Still, Yosi had to open one and pour out the gold so as to feel it on his palm. “Go, go!” Leah screamed at him, but he examined a coin. It was indeed stamped 1915. No artist would have been so careless, he laughed. Tossing the coin onto the bookkeeper’s stand, he was finally on his way. They locked the door behind him.

  What if the police should come right now? It had been foolish to open the safe until all was ready, the substitute money, the new seal, so that only a moment would have passed before the safe was in order again. “At least,” Leah said, unbinding the kerchief, “put in these packets.” How long did it take to melt lead? Should she perhaps rush to Yosi’s, to hurry him?

  A knock came. But it proved only the bank clerk with more packets of money.

  Then she heard Yosi’s whistle. He had indeed worked quickly, the devil. As he melted a stick of wax and pressed in the new seal, they hung over him. Perfection! Yosi leaped up, so pleased with himself that he seized Leah in a bear hug, the pious bookkeeper even looking on with tolerance.

  “What’ll you do now with all this dangerous gold?” Yosi laughed.

  “Take it away, take it away!” the bookkeeper begged.

  “Maybe I’ll melt it for you into antiquities!”

  If only she could agree! But her task was not ended. The money was to be brought back to Petach Tikvah for hiding. Again Leah signed a receipt, which the bookkeeper secreted away as he bade her farewell. In Yosi’s toolbox the little sacks were carried to his workshop. How easy it would be to leave it all there amidst the litter of stones. Instead of feeling elated over her deed, Leah felt a dreadful weariness now, and the burden was still clamped on her. Such complicated actions as this were not in her nature. And how was she to get back? She was not clever, she would yet stumble.

  Yosi made tea, real tea he had gotten from the Germans. He bore up her spirits, he thought of a thousand comical plans for transporting the gold, while that girl of his still lay curled there on the sofa as if it was all of no interest. Then, like a teacher who has decided the children’s play hour is over, the girl remarked to Leah, “There should be an ambulance going down to Ramleh. If you want, I’ll try to arrange it for you.”

  She was a nurse at the Hatikvah Hospital. “Don’t you remember I always prefer nurses?” the sculptor jested. “Our Jewish nurses are easy game, they like to pretend they’re cultured.”

  Still with her lazy air, the girl went off and brought back a nurse’s uniform that Leah could get into. And for the bags of gold Tanya produced a medical supply satchel with Red Cross markings all over it, borrowed, she explained from a Christian mission nearby. They covered over the leather pouches with bandage rolls, and carried the satchel to the rear of the hospital where an ambulance stood waiting. Soon came the stretcher with the patient, an elderly notable from Ramleh. Leah took her place as his nurse, and thus began the return journey.

  After depositing the patient in Ramleh, the driver, a Polish Jew who sensibly asked no questions, delivered Leah and her baggage to Petach Tikvah, leaving her, as she asked, in the outskirts, for there was no need for him to be troubled with her exact destination. Shouldering the medical case, she plodded through the groves to the house of Motke the shomer, where the secret store of rifles was kept.

  With relief and joy they fell on her. Trust Leah! “I told you she would do it!” Motke cried to his wife, Bluma, who had been certain that Leah was arrested. Poor young Chemda, returned from Leah’s kvutsa, had been accusing herself incessantly for letting Leah take over her mission; red-eyed, she fell on Leah’s breast. The Turks were all over Rishon; they were arresting everyone even remotely connected with young Naaman’s family.

  Lifting the satchel to carry it to the attic, Motke nearly slipped on the ladder under its weight. “Never would I have dreamed I would be so glad to get rid of so much money,” Leah laughed as she steadied him. But Bluma, already ladling out kasha for her, had dreadful things to relate. A wagon had appeared with news of Zichron.

  In the choking hot attic, Bluma’s voice reached up, shrill, disembodied, a keening of timeless horrors. Leah saw, as Bluma cried it all upward, Sara Aaronson lashed to the gatepost of their yard, and, astride his horse, the Kaymakam of Haifa, Hassan Bey, not the Turkish Hassan Bek, but another butcher just as evil, coldly watching as t
he lashes struck the girl across her breast. As though Bluma saw it, her voice told of Sara’s bodice red from blood soaking through, soft-fleshed Sara Aaronson, round and milky, and as Bluma’s words still rose to her, Leah saw the father, old Ephraim Aaronson, flung on the ground in the dust of his gateway. Like her own father bearded and gnarled, the settler lay there; a decent man he was acknowledged by all, despite his following the ways of the Baron’s settlers when it came to Jewish labor, for nevertheless Ephraim Aaronson was a man who went out with every dawn and worked with his own hands among his vines. Old Aaronson lay in his gateway before his bound daughter, and when the tormentors paused in the lashing of Sara, they continued on him with the long whip used on bullocks, and she called out to him, “Be strong, hold strong against them!”

  Then Sara’s father shouted out to her, “Is there need for you to teach me, my daughter? Have no fear.”

  Through the entire first day not a scream, not a whimper came from the father or the daughter, it was said, but on the second day, yesterday, Sara’s screaming began, and rent all Zichron, and the Zichronites closed and shuttered their windows so as not to hear, so as not to see. But Sara’s screams pierced the walls of stone, as she cursed and reviled her tormentors, crying out to them that the British would soon destroy them, and that Hassan Bey and his overlord Bahad-ad-Din, and each of their executioners would be remembered and would receive his due when the British victors arrived. The entire civilized world, she cried out, already knew of their barbaric massacres, and everywhere the Turks were loathed.