by Meyer Levin
Before dawn scattered firing could be heard. Suddenly the city was in jubilation. Arabs ran through the streets firing off rifles as in a fantasia. Riders galloped through, keffiyahs flying, shooting into the air and occasionally at some poor left-over Turk in a tarboosh as he darted into an alley. From a high small window, the Shalmoni family peeped out and saw a belated Turkish officer dragged from his horse and quartered.
Then came a clatter of cavalry. A roar arose, “Feisal! King!” “Feisal! King!” It became a chant that pervaded the city. The Bedouin chieftains with their wildly joyous followers were spreading through the avenues, riding horses into the shops.
Menahem stood behind the heavy street door to the courtyard. Singly, in pairs, the former Turkish officers, wearing civilian clothes, slipped up and gave the agreed-upon knock.
* * * *
It passed well enough. Among the Jewish notables from Jerusalem who had been confined to the hotel was one who had long been acquainted with the Hashemites of Arabia, and who managed to greet Feisal even as he paraded into the main square at the head of his warriors. Thus, in the general looting, Harat al Yahud was relatively unmolested. As prisons were burst open, Jews of Palestine along with Arabs were free to go.
Several hundred men had already been assembled at the warehouse. Only one subject was discussed—transport. Trains there were none. Every last donkey, every cart, had been commandeered by the evacuating Turks. Anything on four legs that had been hidden away was to be bought only with gold. All at once, impatient ones were declaring they would start off and walk!
The countryside was in wildest disorder; to be murdered on the road for a bundle of belongings, after all they had endured—no, it was not to be thought of, not to be allowed.
But if they all marched together? All at once, Young Avram was turning it into a plan, an exodus.
From the wealthiest families a few hidden vehicles were borrowed for the weakest, for the sick. With the conquering tribesmen, Menahem managed a triumphant trade of several ornate clocks for a dozen donkeys. Smashed carts were dragged from the streets into the courtyard, the wheels remaining on one transferred to another.
Who ever beheld such a convoy! All were delirious with the end of captivity, with the news of the whole Yishuv again united, with reports that a Jewish Commission headed by Chaim Weizmann was already on the way to found the Jewish homeland! Flags of Zion were prepared, and Shabbatai Zeira even painted himself a banner carrying the ancient Hebrew words that had been the secret oath of the first defenders of the Yishuv:
In blood and fire Judea fell,
In blood and fire Judea will arise.
Reuven was somewhat uneasy over this, but Menahem shrugged, “After all that he has been through, what can it hurt?”
Young Avram, a veritable commander, formed them up along the narrow lane of the Harat al Yahud. Many were missing. Avraham Halperin of Gilboa, known to have died, Tibor the Comical also, and Motke from Petach Tikvah, sent off to labor, who knew where, but see how many were here! Reuven had pulled his two-wheeled cart with the seedlings all the way from the palace garden. He was prepared to pull it by himself, marching between the shafts, the whole distance to Eretz, but at the Shalmoni house there came a godsend.
When Elisheva laid a lingering hand on her piano to take leave of it, her father could not bear her look of sorrow. “No! Take it with you!” he cried. “Take my carriage-horse—later on, Reuven can send it back.”
And so the carriage-horse, carefully locked away in the rear of the stable, was brought out and placed between the shafts of the cart. Menahem and Reuven and a whole crew of volunteers raised up the Bechstein and carried it from the house. The seedlings were momentarily set down from the cart, and now the men hoisted up the piano. Jehovah was still with the Jews, and the vehicle only shuddered, but stood whole. Between the massive piano legs and all around and atop the instrument, Reuven placed his burlap-wrapped seedlings, and Elisheva’s baggage. Then, in a last inspiration, Young Avram even made room for the piano stool, and with Elisheva seated at the keys, a Hatikvah such as had never before been heard burst forth from the throng on Harat al Yahud, starting their march to the homeland.
In jubilation, three days later, they marched over the bridge at Bnot Yaacov. From Rosh Pina the old settlers and their sons and daughters came riding, greeting them as heroes. From there onward the march was a festival: more and more riders appeared; carts, wagons, donkeys were fetched for the weary; garlanded children with flags of Zion led them into Tiberias, and only as they approached Kinnereth, was there one small untoward incident.
The entire kvutsa had come out on the highway before the gate; even the infants carried banners welcoming the homecomers. There, totally bald now, thin, but recovered, upright and beaming, stood Max Wilner, who had been smuggled home on the hospital train. And there was Old Gordon, striding at the head of the welcome party, his beard flowing. Suddenly he halted. He had seen the banner held aloft by Shabbatai Zeira.
“No! No!” the prophet shouted. “Not blood! Put it down!”
After all, it was but the Biblical slogan of the first defenders of the Yishuv. How many had spilled their blood! Shabbatai’s own young brother killed. And wasn’t it true that from blood and fire Judea was now arising?
“Not with blood!” Gordon shouted. “Not here in the kvutsa!” Planting himself before the gate, the old Tolstoyan declared, “Unless it is thrown away, I won’t let you in!”
Zeira at first only laughed. But he too was stubborn. The crazy old pacifist! Angered, the banner aloft, Shabbatai strode past the gate and continued on his way on the road.
Let him go. Almost all of the others turned in at the gate, at least for a respite, a refreshing meal. Already the chevreh had engulfed their own members returning. Reuven! Imagine, Reuven Chaimovitch at last with a chavera! Truly the days of wonder and joy had arrived!
* * * *
Pausing only to rest his mount, Gidon continued through the night. How he loved this horse! What a good-hearted animal, responding as though he understood why his rider hurried.
And in the morning, here, from the opposite height, this was how the Zbeh must have gazed on them, the gleaming tempting oblongs of cultivated fields on the other shore of the river, the two rows of houses and barns. How the trees had grown! So high were the cypresses, the eucalyptus rows, that he couldn’t even see the house itself. But he could make out a dark green rectangle among the field—the pardess!
And further up the river, the fields of Reuven’s kvutsa, and behind HaKeren a whole new cluster of buildings, a new commune, even two of them, and also Dagania—fields on fields!
Gidon drew a full breath, almost in apprehension of the longed-for moment that was upon him.
Riding down the escarpment, and across the ford, Gidon felt his heart bubbling.
It was just the time for the morning pause when the men came in for the full breakfast. Schmulik and Abba might be coming in from the field—but it was a neighboring Roumanian woman who first caught sight of the rider, gave a second glance, and cried out, “Isn’t it Gidon?”
The surprise was nearly spoiled, but only the excited tone of her cry, and not his name, had been heard in the yard. Mameh came to the door for a look. Then the whole household was upon him.
But they were all here as though awaiting him! The whole family! Sisters, brothers, wives and husbands, they kept tumbling upon him as though the surprise had been prepared from their side, not his! Leah was here—how could Leah have known he was coming? And Reuven came hurrying from the house, home from Damascus already, and not at the kvutsa, but here! Such a tumult, and so many arms clutching at him, while the girls let Mameh in closest—her whole face was trembling, the cheeks trembled, how she had aged! And oddly what she first said after clutching to make sure all his limbs were really there on him, both his arms, his shoulders, his chest, his neck and cheeks—and after pulling herself back to study his eyes, as he smiled into hers—Mameh blurted out, “Ach, Gidon, all my teeth are g
one.” As he hugged her, it came to Gidon that in all his grown life he had not hugged his mother.
The girls in turn seized him, kissed him on his mouth “for once!” It was true, he had not ever kissed his sisters either. Dvora was here from Gilboa, with her little children, and Menahem was here—it was like a great birthday party. Once he had been to such a surprise party in England where everyone had assembled in secret and then rushed out at the feted one when he arrived, shouting “Surprise! Surprise!”
The most diffident was Schmulik—a man! he hung back grinning and at once began taking care of the horse. And about Mati there was a joke—he had shot up so, that Leah had to cry out to Gidon, “You don’t recognize Mati!” And Eliza—no, Shula—she had changed her name just before he left but he hadn’t got used to it—here she was, a plump young mother, though the same beauty was there on her face, only rounder. “Now I know who Yoram looks like, he’s the exact image of Gidon,” she cried to Nahum, her husband! Already bewildered, trying to absorb in one gulp the changes in the family, Gidon saw a stranger come out of the house, a delicate-looking young woman who at once went over to Reuven, and Reuven introduced her as Elisheva, his wife. Reuven had a wife!
All soon became clear. They had really not all been gathered here waiting for him, though Leah declared she knew in her bones he would be coming today. “Didn’t I say to you—” she took Yaffaleh to witness—“I have a feeling Gidon will come today?” It was for Reuven and his bride they had all gathered; only yesterday Reuven had arrived with her at the kvutsa, from Damascus; a whole exodus had arrived of the prisoners at last freed from Damascus. Menahem and another chaver, Young Avram of Gilboa, had arranged the whole thing. In the tumult Mati began to tell Gidon a complicated story of how Menahem had hidden in the cave, and Gidon only then noticed his father standing in the doorway, with a true patriarchal smile behind his beard, standing there with a “Baruch haba,” and they went toward each other and embraced.
Who could help feeling then that they were all placed here to repeat what had been, long ago? The strength that went into his own hugging, the strength that came from his father’s arms, was like some utterance, breaking out from the deepest reaches, some enactment that spoke words they didn’t know how to say: son, father. Perhaps that was why words and prayers were from some ancient time written and made ready for you, the words to utter for each occasion. Gidon heard something smothered in the beard—it was surely Abba’s favorite Shehechiyanu prayer, thanks that they had reached and seen this day—and then he heard, “My son, my son,” and a shimmer of happiness rested like the Shechina, the religious would say, over the Chaimovitch yard. In spite of all, here they were. They had succeeded in staying alive, in remaining a family.
Gidon followed his father into the house; the old man picked up the cut-glass Sabbath decanter which had somehow lasted all the way from Cherezinka without breaking, and set out the tiny brandy glasses, saying “Nu, son, a schnapps.” It was the first time in his life that his father had offered him a drink, pouring a tiny brandy-glassful for himself also, and for Reuven, Menahem, and Nahum, and then for Schmulik and even Mati. “L’chayim!”
The family had been in the midst of the meal. “Fortunately there’s something on the table!” Feigel cried out, and what wasn’t there on the table, prepared for the eldest son and his bride, and now the second son had come home! All the delicacies Mameh kept sliding onto Gidon’s plate, while Yaffaleh brought him eggs scrambled with onions, and cucumbers in cream sprinkled with little green bits of parsley, and Mameh’s own warm bread—she must have been baking all night—and herring with boiled potatoes and butter—famished indeed he was, from the long ride and from the weeks of dry rations in the Mellallah. And where in all these years had he tasted such dishes? And in sputters Gidon told them of the Mellallah, the battle for the river crossing, all. Mati had run and fetched the Star of David from the Zion Mule Corps to show him—No, the battalion didn’t yet have a Jewish insignia, though it had been promised. A whole side-explanation to Menahem and Reuven about this, while he folded a potato latke with cream in the fold and stuffed the whole into his mouth—an old trick of his, that made Mameh swell with happiness just to see it again. Then Gidon demanded news of the cattle, the crops … “What have we to complain of, we lived through it!”
And as he ate on, he heard how it had ended here, the same story as everywhere, the wretched famished Turks suddenly running, and Mati told of a stray figure, a German officer begging for civilian clothes, he didn’t want to be taken prisoner, and they had given him some of Schmulik’s old torn clothes—then all at once one day, silence, stillness, not a soul in sight—and then a strange horseman on the ridge, joined by another, a whole troop riding down, giants with broad hats—the Australians had arrived. Only just a week ago it was, but already life had changed, a new world!
At once Gidon had to go out to see the barns, the fields! the whole Chaimovitch family trekked over their land. Here was the lemon grove that Abba had saved from the locusts, covering them with petticoats—the story was famous all over the Yishuv. This year the trees would bear fruit, the green nubs already could be seen forming on the branches. And wait! He must see what Reuven had brought back from Syria on his wagon—a date palm! Now at once, this was the moment to plant it, and the entire family turned back to the yard for the ceremony. Schmuel and Mati dug the hole, Leah pumped buckets of water, while Reuven carefully unwound the burlap from the roots, explaining it was the best species, from where the two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, had their confluence, and where the legendary Garden of Eden really might have been. In ancient times this species of date palm had flourished all down the Jordan valley, and if this tree took hold, then as soon as there was peace in the whole of the Levant, they must go back, beyond Damascus, and bring wagonloads of such date palms and plant them, for this was the veritable tree of life.
Now Reuven and his wife Elisheva put the tree in the ground, and at this moment Leah remembered with a broad smile to tell Gidon, “Aviva sent a big shalom if I should happen to see you. She’s gone back to Jerusalem, you’ll find her there.” Gidon flushed. He felt his mother’s eyes on him, and Yaffaleh’s, and Shula’s, then Dvoraleh’s too.
Reuven and his bride straightened up; Mati tramped down the earth, Dvora’s little Yechezkiel and Giora also jumped up and down on it, and Nahum even asked the old man to say a brocha. Everyone was glad Nahum had thought of it. How old was Abba now? Gidon studied his father, the beard was only streaked with gray. The shoulders were stooped, not in weakness but from labor. A real peasant, he looked. When they had first come to Eretz, Gidon remembered, he had already then thought of his father as an old man. Abba must be—what? fifty-five?
The entire population of Mishkan Yaacov kept circling through the yard—Reuven married, and into a fine wealthy Damascus family! And Gidon home, a fighter in the Jewish army!
In the afternoon, the young men went out to the furthest fields, Reuven, Gidon, Nahum, Schmulik, Menahem, and they let Mati come, as well. At one moment his brother-in-law Nahum led Gidon up the old rocks, he wanted to show him something. Mati did not stay behind—the whole day he clung to Gidon’s side.
Climbing quite nimbly, Nahum reached a viewpoint. Look! It was the view toward where the Yarmuk joined the Jordan, and there, just before the juncture, Nahum pointed out a small island, as though Gidon had never seen it. It was there he had cut timber for the lean-to for their first mules. “That’s my island!” he laughed to Nahum.
“Why not?” Nahum said. “Now it could be.” The island and the long stretch of wasteland beyond—they were jiftlik, Nahum said, Turkish crown property; doubtless all this would be taken over by the new British government. And the entire bend beyond, where the Jordan valley was joined by the great Valley of Jezreel, the wide area all the way to the ancient Beit She’an—imagine the whole of it cultivated with lemon and orange groves, and groves of Reuven’s date palms—all this! The British would surely take over all
this crown land, and, according to their Balfour Declaration, they were bound to encourage land settlement by Jews. And about all this, Nahum had something in mind. What were Gidon’s plans after the war?
He had thought a little, naturally, Gidon said, but as yet—“You’ll soon have to decide.”
“Who knows?” Many of the men, and it was Jabotinsky’s idea too, thought that the Jewish Brigade should be kept together, that the men should remain in the service so that it would be they who would be assigned by the British to establish order in the land.
“You want to remain in the army forever? Let others go in now, all the boys are volunteering. You, you’ve done your share, more than anyone. You have earned the right to start your own life.”
Nahum had pierced to exactly what Gidon had been thinking, even in the same words that were in his own mind. He had earned the right to start his own life. Well, still, first he supposed he would come home and help Abba and Schmulik with the meshek. How many years could Abba have left for such heavy work?
“Believe me, Gidon, it never is good when you are fully grown—and you may want to get married—to share with your father. I’m in my father’s business, and though we get along well, I know a grown man needs his own life. You want to be on your own. And you won’t be satisfied like Reuven to be part of a kvutsa.”
How could Nahum know his nature so well? “I thought first,” Gidon said, “of perhaps finishing my veterinary studies.”
“Perhaps. It is a good profession and will be much needed. But listen to me, Gidon, it’s limited. You can earn a decent living but—it doesn’t grow. And besides, big things will be happening here.”
Nahum had talked with German engineers who had come often to the Bagelmacher hotel. All the inventions, all the great strides, that had been made in the rapid production of war machinery, airplanes, motorcars, even the newest things, the tanks, all these would be turned to new uses in peacetime. The tanks would become tractors to pull farm implements, in the place of mules and horses. It would be a world of machines, even in farming. “Of course,” Nahum said, so as not to seem to be exaggerating, “a good veterinary will always be needed, for cattle and for poultry too—” Dvoraleh could tell of the wonders that were happening with poultry raising, especially in America where the incubators were turning into vast chicken factories.
