The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  “She wouldn’t come with you? Kati?” It had been hard to speak the name.

  Moshe considered, but briefly, as one who has already considered and only re-examines. “No. If it came to such a decision. She is so deeply Russian—and even when the revolution is secure, there is still the whole new society to build. You understand.”

  “Who understands better than we in Eretz?”

  “And I—” Moshe blurted with the touch of helpless admission that—oh, curse the ways of nature—was a lovable trait in him— “I want to do both.” Just as he wanted every woman that attracted him.

  All along the road were marks of war. Red Army units were moving, with long plodding lines of horses pulling supply wagons, each with a cannon attached behind. Or else there would be an encampment in a field. Petlura had been driven all the way out into Polish territory, Moshe said, resuming his other voice, the voice of a commissar, confident, contemptuous of the enemy. There were other nationalist bands not twenty versts away, but they and remnants of the Petlurists were just now busy fighting each other. All the better. Let the hyenas and wolves kill each other off.

  The automobile turned into a by-road, and not far before them Leah could see, reaching above the poplars, the pointed roofpeaks of a baronial estate house.

  “I’ll tell you where I am taking you,” Moshe now said with a kind of teasing satisfaction that she still had no idea, and as though this were the real answer to her last question. “I was able to requisition this estate as a training farm.”

  Startled, her heart suddenly became flooded with love, love after all; Leah gazed into his face for confirmation. “For our chalutzim?”

  He nodded. “You already have nearly fifty youngsters here, for your labor battalions.”

  What a conniver! The old Moshe! She glowed at him. He had really brought her on her mission! “Girls, too?” Leah asked.

  “Boys and girls.”

  “Oh, Moshe, Moshe, I see you haven’t lost your gifts!”

  He looked so pleased, and there was such an attraction in his pleasure, that Leah, startled by something happening in her body, blushed violently. It was as though the devilish Moshe could be aware of a throb that had come within her sex.

  From every direction they came hurrying—how eager, how young, with such good faces—see, despite all that had happened, there were real Jews here still! The girls were in blouses, peasant skirts and work boots—how on earth had they learned this was the way girls now dressed in the kvutsoth! And the boys—several of them had in their eyes that untainted idealistic look that Reuven had had, while a few others had around their mouths that bitter thin line of disappointed idealists who nevertheless saw no other way in the world; still others kept their heads cocked a little sidewise, like Dovidl judging you and planning.

  Without a moment to think out what to say first, Leah found herself in the salon of the estate-house, a large parlor with a huge glass chandelier and an ornate ceiling painted with naked cherubs flying about; there were red velvet-covered sofas, and in the corner stood a grand piano. And—startlingly—on the walls were banners inscribed in Hebrew with quotations from A. D. Gordon, from Borochov; and on a flag with the hammer and sickle embroidered inside a Star of David were the words Zionism and Socialism.

  Before replying to the storm of questions, some in hesitant Hebrew, most in Russian, she was trying first to find out a bit about the leader, whom Moshe had brought to her, a long-headed fellow somewhat older than the others, old enough to have been a soldier in the war. From Kiev, he was, as were perhaps half of the chalutzim; the rest were from Kamenetz, from Ooman, from shtetlach in the area. Yes, their leader said, he was in contact with a few other chalutz centers. What was needed was a united program, he himself had attended a meeting where Josef Trumpeldor had spoken of this—No, that had been six months ago, but recently he had heard that Trumpeldor had left for Eretz to find out about the possibilities for immigration. The difficulty in this area was that not everywhere was the training of chalutzim permitted—

  ’It’s an agricultural school here,” Moshe interrupted, “to bring back Jews to productive labor on the soil.”

  “Right here you see we are lucky.” The leader, whose name was Koba, grinned appreciatively at Moshe. “But if we had happened to get an old Bundist in the commissariat—Oho!”

  Then all at once she was standing behind a table to lecture to them, to answer their questions. Some were seated on tapestried chairs, which they handled most carefully; several girls sat on the floor at her feet, and in addition a few plain chairs and a roughly made bench had been carried in. Questions flew at Leah, and while Koba tried to control the meeting, sometimes, if it was an ideological question, a comrade would start answering for her, and cross-arguments would develop, and Leah had to cry out laughingly, “Nu, chevreh, it’s just like a meeting in a kvutsa at home—everyone talks at once. So now you know what life is like in Eretz!”

  —Was it really to be a Jewish state? Was there a democratic Jewish governing body as yet? Could the workers gain control of the future Jewish state—would this be possible under the British imperialists? Was it true that smoking was everywhere forbidden on the Shabbat? Were the women fully equal in their rights? What was the agreement between the Arab leaders and Chaim Weizmann? Would the Arabs really allow Jews to become a majority in Palestine? Could the British be trusted? What were the best crops to cultivate?

  Leah was talking in something of a jumble, she realized; if only someone like Dovidl were here to explain it all in orderly fashion. She had started by telling of when she had first arrived in Eretz, of the first kvutsa, of the family’s own meshek, of her sister married to a shomer and living in a collectiva, and the children, and also of another of her sisters married to a hotel owner’s son in Tiberias. To the upturned faces of the girls, she talked of her own training farm for chalutzoth.

  Was a kvutsa the same as a kolhoz? someone interrupted, and someone else answered, “You fool, in a kolhoz the members receive wages and live separately. We here are more like a kvutsa. You can see the difference—the moujiks of the village here are forming a kolhoz.”

  “No, I want to hear from the chavera herself—!”

  All Leah’s blood was warm, her energies streamed out of her, called forth by their eagerness. Just when she had left Eretz on this voyage, she told them, one of her brothers—the one who had fought in the Jewish battalions—yes, there had been Jewish battalions in the British army in Eretz—this brother and his friends were starting a new kind of settlement altogether, something between a kvutsa and a kolhoz. “We are experimenting with many ways, we are trying to find the right way for each person.”

  Were there Arabs in the kvutsoth?

  No, she said, but they must not misunderstand. “We would not refuse Arabs, surely not on principle, but it is not their way. They have their own way of village life, but perhaps some of their young people will want to change.” Her broad smile came back. “We have so many problems—this is all still to be. You too will help to work things out, when you come!”

  As in every group there would be one to whom you found yourself talking, one whose face seemed to drink in every word, and here it was a girl with a sprite-like face framed in short cropped hair; a girl who kept nodding at everything she said.

  —The kvutsoth were spreading, Leah kept explaining, but also capitalists and merchants were arriving in the cities, there was even land speculation in Tel Aviv, and there were the old schnorrers in Jerusalem—

  “But I don’t understand,” a young man interposed. He had a dense, troubled face. “What kind of country will it be? Socialist or capitalist? Religious or what?”

  “We don’t know yet how it will come out, because we are only beginning to make it. So when you come, you will take part in making it the way we want it, too.” That was why they were needed right away, to make it their kind of country, and not a land for speculators and exploiters, and that was why she had come to them …

&nbs
p; Until the meal and through the meal and after the meal, the cluster with its excitement and warmth was around her. The borscht was good—“What do you eat in Palestine?”

  Not borscht, she laughed.

  “Why not?” She hadn’t thought about this. “Yes, we grow beets. But we eat more—some of the crops of the land, lighter things for the hot climate, some things we learned from the Arabs.

  —Did it ever happen, a girl asked shyly, that a Jewish girl married an Arab? There was a bit of laughter. Had she nothing else to think about? “But why not!” the girl persisted, flushing.

  “Then why not an Arab girl and a Jewish boy?” one of the boys demanded, half-teasingly.

  “But seriously,” the chavera persisted, “I only asked on principle.”

  Well, Leah explained as best she could, naturally there were cases, more in the older cities perhaps, you heard of it now and again.

  “Just like intermarriage anywhere,” one of the boys answered for her.

  “But you see—” Leah tried again, “they have deep family customs, their matches are arranged between families—”

  “Like ours in the old days—”

  “We would like to bring them into the more modern way of life, but it will take time and it is not for us to push them. We have so much to do among ourselves—”

  By now the cycle of questions was being repeated over and over, and long after the meal they clung around her. Her presence, Leah saw, was at last proof to them that all they were preparing for really existed. That was the main thing. She was “from there.”

  Finally the group thinned, the youngsters going off to bed, and only the leader, Koba Lederman, sat with Moshe and Leah over a last glass of tea, discussing his problems with Moshe, chiefly problems with the moujiks who kept making claims on their fields. These were the fields that had once been reserved for the estate itself, and were now given over to the training farm.

  —Never mind, he’d settle it, Moshe assured Lederman. Those cunning Ukrainian peasants wouldn’t get anywhere with him. And Moshe rose.

  The sprite with the cropped hair had still been hovering about, bringing them tea—Manya she was called, and clearly she was Lederman’s chavera. Now she and Koba led them up the curving stairway and opened a door on a palatial bedroom, preserved untouched. This was for the guest from Eretz.

  No, no, Leah laughed, she would feel utterly out of place! But they insisted. She was putting no one out, they all had good beds, she needn’t fear—and she must not deny them the opportunity to honor a chavera from Eretz with the baronial bedroom!

  The enormous bed, piled high with a feather quilt, was covered with a crocheted spread, and above all was a regal canopy. Leder- man and Manya were backing out of the room. Of Moshe nothing had been said. True, there was a wide sofa by the window, also prepared with a pillow and a feather quilt.

  Leah went to the bed, tested it with her hand, and laughed, to cover her whirling uncertainties. In a way the regal bed was like an approval even from on high. And it would be hypocritical to pretend that this day could end in any other way. As soon as she had come into his presence, even before the explanation, in the automobile, she had known that no matter what she learned of his present life, she would have to extend herself into this experience, this final test, this release, whatever it would be. Perhaps simply a sexual luxury. This one night at least she would put out of her soul all the troublesome questions, and simply gratify her body. After so many years.

  And so Leah turned into his arms and filled her mouth with his. Let there be no talking while their hands began undressing each other. Then it needed a moment of separation to finish with the clothing, still in silence. She was naked first. Folding back the crocheted spread and the sheets, she lay, her body full and glowing in the lamplight, and silently watched Moshe’s last movements, half turned from her. As his buttocks became bare, her womb contracted within her, and as he quietly mounted and his face was over hers, and she felt Moshe entering her, the contracted womb relaxed, and the sigh of eleven years of abstinence was released like the first breath of a body coming into life, and at the same time as a heavenly surcease and a surmounting of all the lesserness of what a person did with his life. Even a light lewd thought, from a Yiddish word, came to her—all this long way she had been carrying her frauenzimmer to him, like a small sealed jewel box, and for Moshe alone it was opened.

  Even during the first interval they hardly spoke, except for a “Nu, Leah?” and a “Nu, Moshe?” their eyes gravely questioning how deep it might be with them, while their hands again slowly and luxuriously stroked in long smooth movements. Then the lamp guttered, and this made them laugh, and he entered again.

  In their repletion, in the darkness, it was Moshe who finally felt compelled to speak. “Don’t misunderstand me, and don’t be offended, Leahleh—but with you I feel even more as with a wife than with my own wife.”

  Her heart caught in a beat of ecstasy that momentarily erased all the errors of eternity. Yes, Moshe had felt the need to say this, to say something so good to her that it would seal the night of their reunion. And even so she must not allow it to have a meaning in regard to the rest of their lives. Not yet.

  Then perhaps in the same need to give assurance, the same desire to seal away forever this achieved and beautiful time, she responded, “Moshe, you asked me something before, and I didn’t answer. Moshe, I don’t want you to feel that I imagine what I say gives me some right to you. But the truth is, in these years—I never had another man.”

  He was quiet, and his hand sought hers and grasped it. “But you are a passionate woman, Leah. I—I simply feel—I feel honored by this, Leah. Yet surely you understood I wouldn’t have asked such a thing of you.”

  “It wasn’t for you. I suppose I have a high idea of myself. Or I was afraid that this—in the body—would cease to have a meaning. If I gave in simply to desire. I never in my thoughts imposed the same on you. I suppose it really is not the same with a man as with a woman, because with men—it doesn’t happen to you inside of you. It is something you release from yourself.”

  “Perhaps,” Moshe said. “As you say, in a man the desire for release drives him, sometimes it doesn’t matter where. And yet I believe such times haven’t destroyed in me—when I am in love, it is simply not the same as when I am only driven by the need of a woman.”

  “And how many times have you been in love?”

  “With you. With Kati.” Her heart stopped. “And I don’t pretend to you that Kati and I no longer love each other. It is not the same as in the beginning. But it is love.”

  “And no others?” She forced herself to keep on, though everything had been answered.

  “Well, there was one other,” Moshe said quietly. “The very first one.”

  “And what happened? It stopped?” Perhaps something from him would yet help her.

  “A person should always keep something for his own self alone.” Moshe’s voice was so removed, she didn’t know whether this admission had brought him closer to her, or made everything false. Was this why something within her had always felt that in the end he was unreachable?

  He resumed talking. “Leah, we are trying to make a revolution in man himself. A political revolution, to achieve freedom, yes, to free our whole selves. Here and in Eretz, it is really the same, it is the same universal revolution, isn’t it? To tear away all pretense and dishonesty, between men and women as well, so that people will be able to be what they truly are, and to be completely honest with each other.” Was he really being true now? or were these only words that he liked to hear himself say, to have a feeling of profundity? “So I can tell you, as a man, as a male, I don’t want to be a slave to a Czar, or to a capitalist, and I don’t want to be a slave to my own schmekel either. I don’t want to have to make pretenses or tell lies to some vain and stupid female just because my schmekel is dragging me on—but that is how it often is with a man. Maybe women aren’t dragged so much by their sexual demand. Right now
because women have equality, we say that they are the same as men and have the same force of desire as men, but really it doesn’t seem so to me.” What was he trying to tell her? Their moment of intense understanding seemed to be dissolving away into some kind of discussion … yet even this was not without comfort. It was the sort of talk that sometimes came in the kvutsa when you felt utterly comradely and honest, it was perhaps the sort of talk that happened between a man and wife, accepting each other as by nature different beings who cannot ever entirely be fused yet who entirely respect and love one another, and with this they drift off to sleep. She would let the problems go for the time.

  He was away early, gone back to his post, and all day Leah worked in the fields with the young chalutzim, mostly the girls, little crop-headed Manya never leaving her. All day Leah heard their life stories, Manya telling how her mother had cut her hair and dressed her as a young Hasid, her breasts tied flat—good they were small—and two curls left for payes, see, the ringlets were still there, though brushed back into her locks. And thus as a Hasidl she had escaped violation when Ataman Grigoriev’s brutes stormed into their town. Oh, he was the worst, worse than Petlura. Their house had been burned down, yet the whole family, hiding with a peasant, had survived, and then when Makho had driven out Grigoriev, they had emerged and gone to Lvov, but Petlura had come and seized Lvov. Again she had dressed as a young Hasid. Petlura’s men were drunk, wild. On horses they burst into every yard, but if you managed to hide, in a few days it was over and not so dangerous.

  “Like a pogrom under the Czar,” Leah understood.

  But fleeing again, they had fallen among the Whites. It was an army. You heard them marching into your street. Then they closed off the whole block. Then they marched to the first house and closed off the courtyard, and then mounted up each stairway to each door, soldiers with bayonets—and into each flat, into each room—they took everything, the bedding, the cooking pots—what they didn’t want, they smashed, the pictures, the glassware —if they felt like killing, they killed—they seized hold of a woman and three or four soldiers would hold her arms, her head, and then one after another, they changed places—