The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  This led to other tales, and so they rode, Zev recalling with Menahem the time they had ridden the rounds together at Mishkan Yaacov, and then telling a few tales of his famous nighttime “tea parties.” Ah, Roumanian women! And then it was Bedouin women, and Christian women who were crazy for Jewish men, and a certain nun in Nazareth who had opened a rear garden gate to him.

  “Ah, grandmothers’ tales!” Menahem said.

  “Indeed, indeed,” replied the incorrigible Zev, telling a tale of a grandmother and her daughter and the thirteen-year-old granddaughter, all to be enjoyed together in a certain house in Beirut. “By my life!” he swore, he had done it. So in amity the men rode between Meron and Safed, gazing down on the distant black-mirror surface of the Kinnereth, and up ahead to the pallor of the snow-topped Hermon.

  Later, on a nearing height, Yaacov perceived the glimmer of the night lantern of Shimshoni’s settlement.

  26

  PASSING THE gate to Gilboa, there rattled a wagon with a whole family from Zichron, a townsman fleeing to a cousin in Yavniel, halting only to cry out, “Sara Aaronson shot herself.”

  In the fourth day of her torment. Live coals in her armpits. Her fingernails wrenched out. The skin beaten from her soles, her feet like butcher’s meat. Then Hassan Bey allowed her to go to the bathroom, in her brother’s house, and there a small pistol had been hidden, and Sara Aaronson shot herself in the mouth.

  Now that no more could be learned from her, the fury would fall on every Jew.

  An oppressive lethargy covered the kvutsa. As with the doomed who await the executioner, every movement felt futile. Though Avraham the Secretary stubbornly continued with his manuring, the work otherwise fell off. The women gravitated to the children’s house, and even when two small girls became hysterical, the metapelet did not drive out the mothers.

  Why didn’t Hassan Bey appear here already, and an end!

  Leah sat with Rahel, with Dvora, talking of poor Sara Aaronson. To them she revealed much about that last time Sara had come to her in the south, in deep hunger for a woman’s friendship. How alone, how alone Sara must have been in her marriage in Constantinople, and then in her frantic secret labor of the last year, and now in her dying!

  And still the search did not come, but word did come of a train of prisoners. Young Avram, driving the water-barrel wagon filled up at the springs of Ain Harod, plunged into the yard with the barrels jumping on the floorboards. The horror he had seen! A train halted on the tracks while the trainman foraged for firewood for the engine, and young Avram, hearing unearthly howling, had driven nearer. Four closed animal cars, with human hands reaching out from the airhole high in each car. Voices calling out in despair, and when he answered, one face appeared, hoisted up to the hole. It was an aged notable from Jerusalem, a Sephardi.

  “Yeshayahu?” Leah cried.

  “I think so. They called out so many names I can’t be sure.”

  “Our own members?” Rahel demanded. “What of Misha, the party secretary in Jerusalem?” Avram didn’t know.

  “They are packed eighty in a wagon, no room even to sit. They said their feet are chained. They are dying of thirst—I gave them water. They’ve had nothing to eat since the day before yesterday. As far as Jeneen they were forced to walk, in the hamseen, roped together, with the irons on their feet. Chevreh, through the boards I heard men sobbing. I promised on my life I would come to Damascus to help them. Even on the way to Siberia, I didn’t see suffering like this.” Young Avram’s voice was choked. “The train is still standing there.”

  All the bread they had they threw into a wagon, and cheese, cucumbers and tomatoes, and half the kvutsa ran behind the wagon along the tracks. There was the train. Through the boards, voices called. Coins were passed to the guards, the people of Gilboa pressed themselves against the train, climbed on each other’s shoulders to reach the apertures, from which bits of paper, messages, were being dropped down. Misha, the Jerusalem secretary, was indeed inside; he managed to get his face into an opening. “Chevreh, you are our only hope.” The train began to move.

  Running alongside, Young Avram kept shouting, “I’ll come to Damascus! I vow it!”

  In the last moment Avraham Halperin galloped up. He had brought a few packets of the gold coins and managed to pass them through an opening.

  Cries came back to them, a tumult of last messages, pleadings, a maddened shriek joined with the whistle of the engine, and after it, a prolonged Job-like wail.

  What could be done? Any instant their own doom might arrive. Men and women found themselves standing dazedly in the yard or continuing absurd, meaningless tasks, like Guta ironing the Sabbath cloths.

  Mounting to return to Petach Tikvah, Motke had a last bitter word for Avraham the Secretary. “I want nothing more to do with it. We should have turned him in. We still should turn him in. But one thing for certain. Every chaver who laid eyes on him had better be got out of here before Hassan Bey arrives.” He rode away.

  In this last, all agreed Motke was right. Upstairs in Rahel’s room they hurriedly planned. Rahel must leave. Leah must leave. She could run with Rahel across the back fields to Merhavia, it had already been searched and was comparatively safe. From there she could get back to her girls. But what of the family at home? She was being pulled in two different directions.

  And Avraham Halperin himself? He was the mukhtar. If the mukhtar was missing, the Turks would be enraged. He would remain at hand—up in the cave on the hillside, Avraham declared. Young Avram could hide there as well.

  Motke, instead of heading homeward, had circled back around Mount Tabor to ride to Sejera where Shabbatai Zeira lived with his mother on their farm. The Kurd came only rarely now to the sittings—he was not one for discussions—yet after Shimshoni wasn’t he still commander?

  Shabbatai listened to Motke’s whole account and swiftly agreed. That the Nili had spied against the Turks did not trouble him; there were various tasks in war. That Zev was a man once cast out of the Shomer did not weigh strongly with him. For himself, the Kurd had always believed in the Hotblood, a good rider, a good rifleman, his one fault women. But all this was of no account in making the decision before them. The fate of one was outweighed by the fate of all.

  Together he and Motke rode to Nazareth. With the Bimbashi, Achmed Bey, the Kurd had had many dealings. Even the finely inlaid Damascus coffee table in Achmed’s office was but a small gift that attested to their long friendship. But just now Achmed was not occupying his imposing headquarters. He had generously insisted that Hassan Bek take over his office. Achmed’s aged coffee-bearer led them to the Bimbashi’s refuge at the end of the corridor, a dank hole without even a rug.

  The Nazareth chiefs eyes were red; he was shrunken and in bad temper, but some instinct turned away his abuse from the two Jews. Instead, muttering what might be taken as an apology for receiving them in this barren closet, he burst out over the pandemonium in the courtyard with Hassan Bek’s riders coming and going with their shoutings, curses, and whip-cracks. What blind geese, what rabbit-spawn were the whole lot of Hassan’s men, when one wolf of a Jew could bite their behinds and run free!

  Agreeing, Zeira deposited his coffee cup on the tray and moved his stool somewhat closer to Achmed Bey. “Difficult times, Achmed Bey, difficult for you and not easy for any of us.”

  Ah, everything was in the order of a man’s work. Difficult, easy, a man’s work must be done.

  “We have always wanted to be helpful. For after all are we not in the same work? Are not our interests the same? Lawfulness, order, and peace.”

  A measuring showed in Achmed’s eyes, as though to say, he appreciated Zeira’s people. Let Hassan Bek tear apart every Jew in the land, they were a clever, hard lot and would yield up nothing until they were ready. There was Hassan Bek’s five-hundred-pound reward for the capture of Zev the Hotblood, now doubled to a thousand. But it was not for this the Jews might want to arrange something, he was certain. And he was just as certain that Zeira
’s Shomer would know where Zev was to be found.

  Soon the Bimbashi at Nazareth understood the bargain that was being suggested. It was best that the hunted Jew should not be found by a Jew. The reward could naturally go to those of Achmed’s own men who brought in the spy. Or his body.

  So it was agreed. And why need Hassan Bey know anything of this helpful effort? If it succeeded, let the glory come to Achmed Bey, as was only just. Nor, of course, did his visitors really know of the whereabouts of the spy. “If we knew, would we protect him? Didn’t we ourselves throw him out of our ranks for the troubles he caused in Mishkan Yaacov?” Well did Achmed Bey remember. “We are fighters, not spies. Hear me, old friend,” said Zeira the Kurd, “what does a hunted animal do? He creeps homeward to his lair.”

  “Beersheba?” Achmed’s eyes measured Zeira—was this but a hoax?

  Motke glanced over to Shabbatai. The thick-headed goyim! Achmed didn’t even know that Zev came from Metulla.

  “I’ll send up a whole troop,” the Bimbashi cried, “and tear the place apart from wall to wall.”

  Shabbatai smiled as at a figure of speech. With the approach of a whole troop of hunters, the wolf might be alerted and run off. But suppose one officer went up, and brought back the wolf or his body?

  Then, with the hunt ended, Motke put in, surely the vicious Hassan Bek would depart from here, his searches would be halted and all the hostages returned to their homes!

  Achmed leaned forward, and touched Motke’s knee. “He who makes a promise for another binds neither himself nor the other,” he quoted. “But if a highwayman is caught and the robberies cease, there is no need to continue to search for him.”

  It was Achmed Bey’s youngish brother-in-law who rode off with Motke in a carriage large enough to bring back a man’s body.

  Serene as a white-haired god the Hermon sat, and in the lap of the god were sacred wonders, groves and caves, sanctuaries where men might breathe the stillness of peace and feel in their breathing how good this earth could be.

  From an opening in the mountain rock, a stream issued and became a pool, and from this again issued a stream, bordered by grassy banks where a man could lie still and hear only the music of the water. A grove of ancient trees stood eternally waiting for the rites of worship to begin again, and nearby, in the face of the stone from whose mouth water rushed out, just there where it came from the mountain form, men long ago, not knowing how else to show the awe and wonder they felt in this place, had cut an alcove as deep as a human body, and here in the ancient days, it was said, even before Abraham passed this way from Hauran, the pagans in their elation offered life-blood so as to be at one with their god. Not too far away was another such place of awesome beauty. The Chimney it was called, perhaps also a place of worship and sacrifice even more overwhelming than the tender grove. Here the torrents of melted snow had first, atop the height, cut a wide smooth stone basin, and then over one edge spilled downward, through centuries cutting a chimney-like chasm, the water plunging the depth of a mountainside and flowing away at the bottom in a narrow stream. Deeper and deeper the chimney was cut until the water fell fifty times the height of a man and then flowed away between bushes and wild vegetation to join the other streams that form the Jordan River.

  In spring the abundant waters from the upper basin did not seem to fall but rather to leap outward in a great shimmering wall of water, vitality itself, and no one who lived here, no one who came here, ever outgrew the spell of this sight. But in the heat of high summer the water only brimmed over the lip of the upper basin enough to keep the wetted inside of the stone chimney darkly glistening.

  Down along the valley near the converging headwaters of the Jordan lay an Arab village called Halsah, a small place with only a few footpaths between the earthen dwellings. An outer lane led to the sheikh’s house, made of stone and standing higher than the huts.

  His courtyard was open, and here they left the carriage until it should be needed. On the rug of the guest chamber, Motke and his companion were welcomed by the sheikh and his three sons—the sheikh himself, a broad-girdled man with the look of a confident bargainer, the sons all three with the heavy-lidded eyes of the kifsmoker. Through Halsah passed hasheesh traffic from the Syrian fields.

  After the formalities, and over the second cup of coffee, Motke’s companion Sayed, the fierce-looking young brother-in-law of Achmed Bey, Bimbashi of the Nazareth District, honorably known to all of them here, explained that they sought a traitor, a spy and bandit, believed to be hiding in this area. Instantly all three sons as one leaped up, ready to mount for the hunt; with Allah’s help, this bandit would not escape them, for, in this region there was not a mole but they knew its hole. Motke could already envisage them clattering into Metulla, storming each farmyard—and with the sanction of the police! Praising and thanking them, he explained that it was a matter of law for the officer himself, the excellent Sayed here, to capture the spy. All that was asked was the sheikh’s hospitality, as Sayed would wait here with the carriage, so as not to draw too much attention, while Motke himself went forward to make some inquiries.

  There were glances all around. Much was understood. There was an inner affair here among the Jews. And Motke went on foot up the grassy slope above Halsah.

  Climbing toward Shimshoni’s kvutsa, he already saw their broad flocks; the dream was well on the way to reality. Perhaps he too would have been wiser to have taken his wife and children and withdrawn with this group to this farthest corner of the land. Already on the lower of their two hills they were constructing a second meshek; wood was still plentiful hereabouts, and a pair of chaverim were constructing a stockade fence around a half-finished stone house with a large yard. What did it remind him of? Pictures he had seen in his children’s schoolbooks of the stockades of American cowboys.

  Motke approached the two lads—he did not know either one. Uncertain whether everyone in Shimshoni’s kvutsa would be aware that the Jewel was hidden among them, Motke started on something else. “It looks like a fort you’re building.”

  “All the better. They’ll respect us.”

  “Are they giving you trouble?” His head motioned to the village below.

  The first lad shrugged. “No. In the main our relations are good. The sheikh has a passion for Maria Theresa thalers and keeps begging us to buy more land.”

  “But the sons are annoying,” the other one said. “They’re always coming around, give us this, give us that—whatever they lay their eyes on, a teakettle, an iron rake.”

  “As for your Jewel,” the first chaver said dryly, “he’s right in there!” The lad pointed to the half-finished dwelling within the stockade.

  Had they lost their wits, here? Didn’t they understand what was going on over the entire Yishuv?

  “Don’t fear.” The second one had read his thoughts. “From up here we can see anyone coming from any direction, a long way off…. Do you want to pay him a visit? On top of everything, he can’t bear being alone.”

  “No.” It was enough having to carry out his task; he needed no discussions with Zev. “Where’s Shimshoni?”

  Above at the upper farm, where else?

  What could Motke have explained to Shimshoni? That an arrangement had been made to deliver Zev, for the safety of the Shomer and the whole Yishuv? Or perhaps only that Zev’s being here was known, that an Arab had seen three riders arrive, and only two going away, and that it was impossible to hide the Jewel any longer? Let him go. Perhaps he could even save himself and reach the Druze.

  With his unwavering small eyes in his round, compact head, Shimshoni listened to what Motke told him and said, “Then do you want to tell Zev yourself what has been decided?”

  Motke would not flinch from the task as he would not blink under Shimshoni’s gaze. Together they went back down the path to the lower hill, where these idealists were continuing to build while the whole Yishuv was on the brink of destruction.

  In a wall-hollow between the kitchen and sta
ble, a secret place for storing arms, Zev stood. At the mere sight of Motke, he comprehended. Instead of breaking into rage, he turned to Shimshoni the face of a man who sees his death. “I won’t, I won’t—” he began.

  “Achmed Bey from Nazareth has sent a man to Halsah,” Motke said matter-of-factly.

  “You brought him.”

  “Then why would I not simply have turned you over?”

  “You’re afraid of what I’d say if taken alive.”

  Then Motke said, “Sara’s dead. She shot herself.”

  Zev’s eyes went from one to the other, from one to the other. “You’re lying, to get me to do the same.”

  Shimshoni said, “Zev, you understand what it would mean if you are found among us. Besides, your only chance is to leave here.”

  Still his head turned from one to the other. Then Zev’s eyes became dull and his head dropped. “Where did they bury her?”

  “Her father buried her in the vineyard,” Motke said. “Old Aaronson by himself.”

  Zev drew in his breath. “I’ll get out after dark.”

  Below in Halsah the gendarme, Sayed, and Sheikh Jibran with his eldest son Ismael had enjoyed several more coffees and sweets while the meal was being prepared. There was nothing that Sayed knew of his mission that remained unknown to his hosts. The hunted one had received much gold from the British; as was well known among the Bedouin in the Hauran, the British were lavish with their gold. For a pair of Turkish ears a man could dip his fist into a sack of napoleons and keep all he could draw out.

  The Yahud hidden here must still have gold on him. Far more than the thousand paper pounds that was to be paid for his body.