The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  “Here it has been quiet,” the mother said.

  “We are protected,” the daughter remarked dryly.

  “It’s just as well,” the father said. “Anything could have happened. Today convinced me nothing has changed in our compatriots.”

  Never before in this house had Reuven heard the father even indirectly refer to the Damascus blood libel of eighty years before. Though everyone who came here was aware that a Shalmoni had been among the community leaders accused, the family did not speak of the ghastly case. The avoidance of the subject, Reuven had always comprehended, was in no way out of shame, but was rather an aristocratic silence, in the way that high-standing families did not call your attention to their wealth and honors, either.

  “We have not seen you for a long time,” the mother said. “I hope it must not always take an evil event to bring you to our house.”

  He made the excuse that he had been away on an expedition, and on their questioning told how this time he had brought back cedars of Lebanon; the daughter took a lively interest and made him tell more. Elisheva even remembered the pistachio grove he had discovered and that he had given samples to Sara. When she spoke Sara’s name her voice was unflinching.

  It was indeed many months since he had come to their house. Reuven had told himself he did not really feel at home in this atmosphere of an ancient, important Sephardic family; and also that this house was perhaps somewhat dismal because of the blind uncle who sat at the Sabbath table with his fixed smile of the sightless. But more truly, Reuven admitted to himself, it was because he had begun to be drawn to the daughter. It would only have brought pain.

  There were far more suitable men than himself among the Jewish officers, better educated, more polished, and indeed handsome. He had seen this one and that one begin a campaign for Elisheva; a captain had even performed piano duets with her. But nothing had happened. It was declared she was engaged and that her fiancé was at a distant front in southern Arabia. This could explain her cool self-possession.

  She was not aloof. In the way of finely bred people, as he had noticed, she spoke to everyone with a show of real interest in their lives—just as now she asked every detail about his trees. Elisheva Shalmoni had been educated in France and liked to discuss French literature and music. Reuven knew little of either, and in the general conversations on Friday evenings he would often fall back on: “I must read that … No, I never have heard Debussy.”

  But increasingly his eyes had been drawn to her. Today, perhaps even because of the tragic atmosphere, he let his gaze rest on her. Elisheva was indeed like a bird, delicately boned, and with a hovering air as though she might at any instant fly off. Her face was formed in the long oval of the Sephardim, with a narrow long nose that at first had seemed a flaw to him, and she had tawny hair with a touch of reddishness not unlike Sara Aaronson’s. Others were always remarking on her color, seeming to find it surprising in an ancient Sephardic family, but after all in the Yishuv, Reuven remarked, many children whose parents were black-haired were being born even totally blond and with blue eyes. “My own nephew is blond, like a Scandinavian,” he said, and it was his first personal reference.

  Like a returning ghost, the subject of the Nili had again arisen: had they done right or wrong? Little was said of Zev; the taint was on him even now of having tried to escape while leaving Sara to the torturers.

  “Sara acted like a heroine,” Lev Bushinsky remarked. “She will live forever like a heroine of the Bible.”

  “Perhaps it would have been as well to live out her own life,” Madame Shalmoni said quietly. “I do not mean to detract from her heroism.”

  Elisheva turned away her head.

  —and even Zev had in the end conducted himself with dignity, the engineer said. He had watched it all. Zev had thrown off the guards to mount the scaffold himself, and he had shouted out his wrath, shouted that the British would hang his enemies, every one of them, shouted until the words were strangled in his mouth.

  Some of the tension seemed to pass from among them, as though at last now the description that they needed to hear had been heard, the worst had passed. “See what their heroism has led to,” the mother sighed. “They meant well, undoubtedly, people like the Aaronsons, but it is a danger for all Jews.”

  “You had only to hear the shrieks of the bloodthirsty mob,” a young officer began.

  “I heard them,” Elisheva said. She was looking at Reuven; her face was white and he felt a tremor from her as though a bird shuddered in his hands. So that only he might hear, she whispered, “Oh, poor Sara.”

  “You heard them? You went out?” her father asked, alarmed.

  “I couldn’t keep her,” the mother said.

  “Spying is a part of war,” Lev Bushinsky resumed, “and a spy knows the risks he takes.” Arabs too had been hanged by the Turks, in Jerusalem itself, he reminded them, for spying.

  “Yes, but this doesn’t put all the Arabs in danger. The Arab spies simply did it for money, for themselves.”

  The Turkish command was particularly on edge right now, Bushinsky reminded them, because at any moment Jerusalem—

  All around there was a sharp intaking of breath like a backdrawn cry of joy. “You’ve heard something?” Shalmoni asked, but in a neutral voice.

  “I believe the British have had heavy losses, but the attack continues.”

  Their eyes shone, but no one asked more.

  Reuven hadn’t noticed her movement, but, indeed like a bird, Elisheva had lighted closer to him. They could talk between themselves. “If only Sara could have lived to know this,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I must be romantic—I even imagined, at the time she was here, that you were perhaps infatuated with her when she was quite young.”

  He was startled that she had sensed something so hidden in him, and that she had actually remembered it. Her eyebrows were a straight line, making her gaze even more direct. “Forgive me if I intrude.”

  “Perhaps I was, in a way. When she was just a girl. I didn’t know it could be so noticeable.”

  “Oh, I notice things about people. I remember I noticed when you used to come here Erev Shabbat, you didn’t eat meat—you’re a vegetarian, an idealist.” She wasn’t mocking.

  “Oh,” he deprecated, “some ideals are not so difficult to live up to.”

  “You live in a commune. That’s an ideal. Only—” she paused, half-puzzled, half-troubled. “It’s like what they were saying of Sara. She was an idealist, but did that idealism make everything right?”

  He couldn’t answer.

  “In a commune you share everything in common,” she said, as though not quite certain what it meant, and added in an effort at lightness, “Even wives, people say!”

  Reuven was a little disappointed that she should repeat such foolishness.

  “Have I said something foolish?”

  “You said others said it.” He tried to pass it off. But now she earnestly kept asking more and more about the life they led, and her eyes became fixed on him with a kind of growing question. “But, Reuven, if, as you say, there are so many more men than women—more chaverim than chaveroth—and if all that we imagined was so foolish—then—then what do the other men do? Those that have no chavera?”

  Something within him was in flight now. “Well, we are vegetarians.” He flushed.

  The subject had awakened such self-consciousness in both of them that for an instant she seemed to take his words literally. “Oh. You mean—” She was on the point of asking, he saw, whether being a vegetarian really diminished carnal desire! As her eyes looked into his, she grew quite red, and laughed at herself.

  It was as though he caught himself up, in flight from her inquiries, for a wonderful thing in his life might be happening here, and he must not run away, he must face down his shyness. If only Elisheva would not ask things directly about himself! And that she sensed this too and now put her questions less directly was a second step in this wonder
ful happening. The more delicate exploration of each other had begun under the pretense of generalization.

  “We women are always led to believe that for men it is much more difficult, even unhealthy to abstain. Though of course modern women see this only as a masculine ruse so that men can claim the biological need for a double standard. That’s why today women are demanding more liberties. Still, though I do believe in equal rights for the sexes—”

  “Yes, our women demand the right to do the same work, even to plow,” Reuven said. “My sister was the first!”

  “Oh, no, thank you!” Elisheva’s laugh was musical, unaffected, a trill.

  He was suddenly overwhelmed with longing for Leah. “Of course she happens to be large and strong, she’s taller than I—” But why should this girl be interested in his sister? Reuven returned to the general subject. “I too—the idea that a woman should make free with herself like so many men—I know I could not love such a woman. But I do believe in equality, then if a man expects purity in a woman, he must bring her purity too.”

  He had said it, he had virtually revealed himself, and he did not turn away from her gaze. A welling up of wonderment, not yet allowed to break through for fear she might be mistaken, remained for a long moment in her eyes. But she did not pry further, she did not ask the definitive question of him. How good of her to know that it was not yet time. With a sociable smile, Elisheva turned to pick up the conversation with the other guests, as though apologizing for this tête-a-tête.

  But when Reuven was taking his leave, Elisheva remarked that he must not again stay away so long, and then added that she would indeed like to see the rare trees he had planted in the Pasha’s garden.

  “Whenever you want to,” Reuven said.

  And so out of the human destruction of this war he was perhaps yet to be blessed with love. All the tormented nights throughout his younger years, all those frustrated years through which he had held himself continent so as to come unsullied to his bride, all would prove to have been the true way for a union without flaw between them. But what dreams was he permitting himself! He was already envisioning her returning with him to the kvutsa, but how could Elisheva live such a life—she was delicate, fastidious, a girl who had studied in the conservatory in Paris. Other chalutzoth, it was true, had come from homes of luxury and fine families, women like Nadina, yet when he thought of the Shalmoni house, of the richly laid table, the dishes served so smoothly you scarcely realized how they came to be there before you, and set against this the clamor of the cheder ochel, the jostling and clambering over unsteady benches to find yourself a place, the flies, the slop-pan on the torn oilcloth, and worse, the common toilet, and everyone noticing you coming out, and Elisheva was a girl so reserved, so private—

  Reuven sensed all this as though the crisis had already come. He imagined her bravely trying to accept all the hard and ugly things of their life, as though he heard her final desperate cry, “But, Reuven—to have the chevreh know even when we—even every intimate thing we do in our room together—I can’t—I can’t!”

  But somehow he would help her, and Dvoraleh and Leah would help her, and perhaps—

  How foolish it was to dream so far. Yet really foolish? He knew; this time he felt sure.

  Scarcely a week had gone by when Elisheva came in her carriage and found him in the garden. Reuven had not dreamed it would be so soon. He had been wondering how soon he could go again to their house.

  She had indeed come to see his plants, she said, but first also—this a little breathily—she had a message for him. A man had come to the house who wanted to see Reuven. His name was Menahem. He was to be found in the Harat al Yahud in the Gelman house.

  The Gelman house Reuven knew, for it was from there, from time to time, that he had been able to send word home to the kvutsa and to the family. Far less imposing than the Shalmoni house, the lower part of it was occupied by the widow Hadassah Gelman whose husband had been among the first members of the Shomer to fall. Upstairs were several rooms rented out to refugees and emissaries from Eretz.

  On the second door, as the widow had instructed, Reuven knocked, and for an instant failed to recognize the gentleman who opened the door—a well-dressed gentleman, with a Van Dyke and a pince-nez. Menahem chuckled briefly. First, without explaining his presence, he gave the family news. But why had Menahem come here?

  “The eye of the storm is sometimes the safest place.” Despite the end of the Nili, men of the Shomer were still being hunted. But it was not to hide that he had come here. “I spent a month hiding in your cave. Now I have to work.” It was his way not to say more of that month of hiding. Well, his eyes were somewhat affected, these glasses he wore were really necessary; still, they made a serious impression, eh? Good. He was here as a wealthy Jew from Constantinople, head of the Committee to Aid Jewish Prisoners.

  Reuven remained puzzled.

  Menahem asked, “You know Young Avram from Gilboa?”

  “I heard he was here,” Reuven said. He didn’t personally know him.

  “Avram has already made some contacts. We need a little help.”

  So that was it. But what help could he possibly be? With Djemal Pasha others—for example, the engineer Bushinsky—had far more influence. Within himself Reuven begged that Menahem would not ask him to do something he would feel obliged to refuse.

  “Don’t worry.” Menahem knew Reuven’s scruples. “I’m not going to ask you to eat meat.” What he wanted was simple. Reuven had only to request the authorities to allocate to him a number of prisoners as day-laborers in the city’s gardens. As many as he could possibly justify and even a few more. Ay, what a fellow was Menahem! “How many do you think you can ask for? A few dozen?”

  Rapidly Reuven reviewed every project he had under way. Yes, he could justify as many as twenty-four men.

  Menahem had already noted down a list of those who most urgently needed to be brought out into the open air. Somehow, with gold, Young Avram from Gilboa had found his way to the keepers of different prisons. He had even secured lists. The Palestinian Jews were mostly in the Chan Pasha and the Kishleh. Each name on the list was a pang. Shimshoni. Tibor. Many had yet to be traced. “Max Wilner?” Reuven asked. Menahem shook his head. As yet untraced.

  Forty had already died from typhus, from beatings; some were suicides. Out of the Kishleh, nearly two hundred had been deported to Central Turkey, it was said, God only knew where. Among them were twenty-nine from the Shomer, nearly half the organization. It was rumored, Menahem said in his monotone, that they had been sent as labor conscripts to the front in Erzerum, near the Russian border. Motke from Petach Tikvah was among them—if indeed he was still alive. If there could be some way to find out …

  His eyes were fixed questioningly on Reuven. “No, such things I have no way to find out,” Reuven said. This mad brother-in-law of his could take it on himself to go all the way to Turkestan to search for them. “Max too may have been sent there,” Menahem said.

  “Max,” Reuven repeated. All their contentions, the deep plowing, the shallow plowing, the bitterness over his long futile experiments with the potatoes—all this seemed so trivial now. What right did he have not to risk himself? “If I went myself and asked Djemal Pasha—”

  Now it was Menahem who shook his head. “Reuven, you’re not to risk your position. We need you where you are.”

  The very next morning, with a legitimate order for thirty laborers, he presented himself at the Kishleh. There, making no sign of recognition, Reuven saw two well-dressed men, Menahem and Young Avram, being escorted obsequiously from the Commandant’s office, where doubtless another gold-filled cigarette pack had been left to be pocketed.

  In the mass cell he now entered, with the list Menahem had given him, there rose voices of broken men, pleading in hoarse whispers. The list had even the name of Professor Shatz, the museum builder, and only by his eyes did Reuven recognize the wraith that responded. Men lying on the floor clutched at his feet. “I’ll
come back for you, I’ll find a way,” he half-sobbed.

  At last Reuven led out the selected ones—a strange selection for laborers, feeble, tottering, feverish. He would have them sit far back in the garden, in the sun, with pruning-shears in their hands.

  * * * *

  The troops moved on, others came, cannon rolled through, planes streaked overhead; it was said the English had reached Jaffa, reached Petach Tikvah, that Jews were already returning to Tel Aviv, under British rule!

  The mayor of Rehovot came to Leah; a cultural pageant was being prepared, would she and her girls take part? In the British cavalry was a Rothschild, a high officer, and the town was inviting him to a feast of honor; he would visit the colony founded by his father, the Great Donor, Ha-Nadiv.

  “No, not his father, his great-uncle,” Masha Weiskopf corrected; she had become the liaison on all things to do with the British. “This one is an English Rothschild, the Nadiv was the French Rothschild.”

  “Nu, does it matter? A Rothschild is a Rothschild.”

  Yes, yes, gladly Leah would do it, and perhaps it should be for Chanukah, a festival for Chanukah? Indeed! the mayor agreed, and Leah began to think of it—it must be something surpassing, something wonderful. But each day she could only think—how far were they already? Almost to Kfar Saba, some said. And when would the troops of Zion come at last! A Rothschild, and other Jews, it was true, were among the British, but where were the troops of Zion? Would Trumpeldor come, she wondered. One day a caravan appeared from the south, a camel caravan without end, seeming to stretch back as far as Egypt, the animals in their unperturbed plodding appearing to have continued since the days of Joseph and the Ishmaelites. Only, instead of burdens of spices and silks, there shone from the side of each beast the reflections of petrol tins.

  In the field opposite Leah’s kvutsa, the caravan halted. Swarms of Arabs—no, these were Egyptians, even blacks from the Sudan —began to unload and pile up a mountain of tins, with shoutings, thunderous collapsings of giant pyramids, imprecations, laughter. And riding up, a neat, smallish Britisher in a sun helmet, carrying a swagger stick, quickly restored order. Suddenly the young Britisher shouted, “Leah! Shalom, Leah!”