by Meyer Levin
Here everything was ready for going up to the land! Aliyah! Didn’t she know? Within the week! She had arrived just in time! A whole ship had been procured by chaver Menahem. Three hundred chalutzim and chalutzoth would be carried direct to Eretz!
When Menahem appeared, he greeted her with that dark smile of his eyes that was for things well done in spite of all difficulty. He knew already all she had been through. And only little by little, mostly from others, Leah put together the story of his own journeys in these months, even the story of how he had been arrested in Red territory and sentenced to be shot, and how he had been rescued by a squad of young Zionists dressed in Red Army uniforms, arriving with false papers for his transfer to another jail. All this Menahem shrugged off as adventurism. But all the way as far as Rostov he had revived the movement and gathered chalutzim, and in the Crimea he had picked up news of Josef Trumpeldor. “He went across to Constantinople, with his own kvutsa, about a dozen, on a small Greek cargo boat, not long ago.”
And still there fluttered through her foolish heart—as she well knew it to be—that old, never entirely dismissed possibility that one day, with Trumpeldor …
“You saw your Moshe,” Menahem remarked. And it was enough, nothing more had to be said, her brother-in-law’s glance was a complete understanding, as though he had squeezed her hand in sympathy. Nu! There was much to be done! He was over his head with the problems of chartering a ship—the whole affair was one of Menahem’s complicated accidents. He had espied the vessel lying in the harbor, a derelict of war, the ownership hard to trace, but, by a chance meeting with an acquaintance from his old days as a seaman, Menahem had made a connection—and the end of it was that he had raised money amongst some of the staunch old Odessa Zionists—Odessa, after all, was the heart of the prewar activist faction—and so the vessel was leased, and repaired and painted, and would be carrying Jews to Eretz! Even more, in London there had been pressure put by Chaim Weizmann through high members of the British government on their military government in Palestine, and official permission was as a result actually in hand for the immigration to begin! The chalutzim would arrive in this new era with valid entry papers in their hands!
And so they boarded the ship, with flags and amidst orations, sent off by Bialik himself, who vowed he would soon come, and with the giant activist Ushishkin and all the staunch Odessa leaders sending them on their way, and promising that a great wave of immigration would follow for the building of the homeland.
Not only their own youthful labor brigade was on the ship; there were also entire families, like her own family on their Aliyah, and there were several Jews from Eretz who had been back in Russia and been caught by the war. They were now returning home, and, arriving at the last moment from the Caucasus, there was even Motke the shomer from Petach Tikvah! The Turks had sent him to the far Russian front in the region of Ararat, and Motke had escaped to the Russians by crossing the mountains in the snow; he had reached them half frozen, and his right leg had had to be amputated, but here he was, alive! Going home!
The voyage was one continuous song of joy. But impatiently Leah longed for her girls, for Mati, for the whole family, and she worried about how things were with Yaffaleh. How different this voyage was after all from that first time, with Reuven, the two of them virtually alone among strange people in a fetid Turkish vessel, uncertain even if they would succeed in entering the land. Fourteen years of her life had gone by and only now, perhaps, was she grown to womanhood, coming home to the land that was freed, and she too had been freed within herself.
This time her real life would begin.
38
—THERE! There, already!—Leah pointed out, her young immigrants crowding around her, thronging the rail—there it was already, the large building looming into view like a castle on the sands, that was already the Herzlia Gymnasia of Tel Aviv! And as the ship moved closer, they could even see, there, along the beach, there, the hut with the red flag flying—that was the workers’ place, the center of their own Poale Zion!
Several young chalutzim even cried out they would leap over the rail and swim ashore to be a moment sooner in the land. All along the sand children ran, accompanying the ship, dancing, waving little stick-flags of Zion.
From Jaffa harbor the Arab boatmen came as always, plunging outward in their barks; instead of the ancient terror, what a homecoming joy to see them! Speeding in advance came a motor boat flying a British flag; on the dock, amidst more flags of Zion, a delegation stood—Leah could already make out the lanky form of Avner, and Rahel was beside him.
But even across the remaining stretch of water there came to Leah something disquieting from Rahel—from the way she stood, and, in the growing nearness, from her face itself, though she smiled.
With the second breath of their embrace, Rahel spoke. Only five days ago, at Har Tsafon in the north, an attack. Josef Trumpeldor was dead, and among the five others—
—Not Gidon!
—Yaffaleh.
And so with the tumult of welcomings and orations around them, Leah and Menahem listened to the explanations of how the defenders had fallen, while in Leah’s mind a whole other sequence of events had to be pressed back, the dark sequence of deaths that seemed to pursue those she touched, those she loved. No, no, she must not succumb, she must fight off such a fantasy, there was so much of death in man’s world, it came everywhere, it touched everyone, no one brought it on.
But the accusation kept returning. In some way it had been Yaffaleh instead of herself who fell with Trumpeldor. “She loved him,” her words broke out to Rahel. Why she was telling this, out of all her grief, she couldn’t think, but she told of that moment long ago in Mishkan Yaacov when Josef had come by, and Yaffaleh, then only a child, had served him at the table, “and I saw it happening in her, oh, Rahel, as sometimes you see it happening in a little girl, she fell in love.”
And so it must have remained all secretly within herself, and so it must have been that Yaffaleh had gone up with a group of young people answering the call sent out by Trumpeldor for reenforcements when the disorders grew acute up there at Shimshoni’s settlement in the north.
The whole of the tragedy Leah heard, sitting in a corner of the Poale Zion hut, from Gidon’s friend, Nathan the Red, who had fought in the battle and made his way back. A month before, Nathan had received his discharge from the British, though Gidon still waited. With a few others of the newly discharged men, Nathan too, uncertain what he was going to do with himself, uncertain whether to go back to England, had gone up in answer to Trumpeldor’s call, printed in the workers’ journal. Even, Nathan shrugged, with the thought of trying life and perhaps remaining there in the kibbutz.
Quietly, no longer with the biting anger she remembered in him, Nathan related the events—not as one resigned or removed, but as one who has at last met the full depth of his people’s circumstance, and accepted the challenge to share it. Only two months ago, Nathan said, Trumpeldor had managed to reach the Yishuv from Turkey, coming alone while his kvutsa waited in Constantinople.
Already the trouble had started up north, and there was much discussion among the different parties and the Yishuv leaders as to whether Shimshoni should not evacuate. The troubles had started not distinctly between Arabs and Jews, but between the British and the French. The former allies were already at loggerheads over this area, and their strife had fallen on the Jews. It was now known that from early in the war there had been secret treaties between the British and the French to divide the entire Levant when Turkey was defeated. Each was to have political and commercial control of a certain area. The borders in Palestine had not been too clear, and now the French were pressing their claim to the whole of upper Galilee, to be ruled from Beirut. They had occupied Metulla and planted guns on the hills.
The British had not entered the area, but certain sheikhs who had been in their pay during the taking of Damascus had begun to raid the French outposts. When the French retaliated by shelling a few Arab
villages, a rumor spread that their observers were stationed in the Jewish settlements. The Arabs became threatening.
Since Shimshoni’s two settlements were isolated, they could not be defended except by considerable reenforcement, and where was the strength to come from? The Shomer was broken. The best young men of the Yishuv had volunteered for the Jewish Brigade and had not yet been released. Just as the Yishuv was trying to organize itself, with the old dispute raging anew between the two labor parties, the Marxists and the non-Marxists, there had come the question of the evacuation. Arriving in the land, Josef Trumpeldor had issued a passionate appeal for unity among the workers, and then gone up to take command of the defense of Har Tsafon.
Again and again the Arab chieftain, Khamil Effendi from Halsah had appeared at the lower farm, claiming that French officers were hiding there. He had been allowed inside the compound and had found no one. Yet tension grew. Twice, men of the settlement were fired on as they plowed. Arabs in the area had been heard angrily declaring they would destroy the settlements. They had been excited and restless ever since last year’s capture and plundering in Damascus.
Josef had sent out his appeal for reenforcements, but even Jabotinsky had argued that the outposts had to be abandoned. With a few other veterans, Nathan had decided to go up. They had found the spirit strong, but supplies dangerously low. For a few weeks things were quiet. From the kibbutz of Ayeleth HaShachar, a day’s journey below in the valley, food and some ammunition arrived. The old colony of Metulla had suddenly been evacuated by the French, and Josef had moved in a small detachment to protect the settlers there. A messenger had got down to Ayeleth HaShachar with a new appeal for reenforcements and this time a youth group had come, marching in singing, Yaffaleh among them.
Yes, Nathan said, she had been in good spirits, happy. He had often been on guard duty at the lower farm, at Tel Chai, where she had worked in the fields and in the kitchen.
Then, anew, a plowman had been shot at in the fields and wounded. One of the chevreh, running to his help, had been killed. The flocks were brought into the compound; every defense post was manned.
The next morning Khamil Effendi had ridden up to the gates of Tel Chai together with several of his sons and nephews, all in full fighting regalia, with rifles, bandoliers and Damascus daggers, once more demanding entry to search for French officers. Lower on the slope, ominously, clusters of villagers could be seen. When the guard refused to open the gate, calling back for instructions, Khamil had drawn his dagger. One of the defenders had fired a signal shot, and from the upper farm, Josef, at breakfast, had rushed down with a few men, Nathan among them.
“Khamil was still shouting at the gate. Another Arab kept cursing, yelling, that the Jews had hidden a spy there once before, he himself knew it, and we were surely hiding enemies again.”
—That had been for Zev, then. Leah did not bring it up.
“Trumpeldor talked to Khamil and agreed to let him inside alone. I myself was posted behind the house, in the barn.” Altogether there had been hardly a score of defenders.
The sheikh had mounted the outer stairway to the small chamber on the roof; three men and two girls, among them Yaffaleh, were there in the room, sorting ammunition.
Trumpeldor waited at the foot of the stairs; suddenly from the upper room came a cry from one of the girls, “Josef! He’s taking my revolver!”
“Fire!” Trumpeldor shouted. A moment later, Khamil had thrown a grenade and fired his pistol into the room. The five were killed.
* * * *
Of Josef Trumpeldor’s death, too, Nathan told. Struck in the abdomen as he ran to close the gate, he had been hit twice again before he could be pulled into the dwelling. “I saw him hit, Leah, it was as though he shrank together.”
From his first wound, his intestines pushed out; Josef himself had pressed them back in and supervised the bandaging. “These are my last hours,” he had said, appointing another commander. All day while the battle continued, Josef had remained conscious and given advice.
From the upper farm, a last handful of men came running, managing to disperse the crowd of villagers who had surrounded Tel Chai. Under a white flag the Arabs had been allowed to remove their dead from the field, but the truce was broken when one of them picked up a rifle and firing began anew. An attacker hurled a flaming bundle of straw onto the roof, but Nathan and a comrade managed to crawl up and fling it off, throwing several grenades after it into the crowd of attackers. With this, the attack was broken. Silence came.
“Only then we went into the upstairs room and found the dead. She died from pistol wounds—it must have been quick, Leah, she couldn’t have suffered long.”
So it had been. With his old bitter irony, Nathan added, “It was my first real day of battle. What was in the Brigade was different.”
At the upper farm there was a doctor, and he had come at nightfall. Trumpeldor still lived; they had put him on a cot and started toward Metulla in the hope that the doctor could operate there, but on the hill halfway between the two farms, Josef began to gasp, they had to halt.
A convulsion went through him; he gasped a Russian oath, and his favorite phrase, “It doesn’t matter.” There on the hill the dead had been buried, the men in one grave, the two girls in another, alongside.
Nathan had finished. Leah was thankful he didn’t attempt to console her. After a time, she told him about Russia.
* * * *
Never before had the house been so filled with life, even at the beginning when the children were young and their beds in the second room had circled the walls. Except Yaffaleh’s, Yankel recalled. Feigel had made a bed for her near their own. Both Yaffaleh and little Mati had slept with them in this room.
Once more today bedding circled the walls, and little ones bounded underfoot, though trying to keep a quiet and solemn air because they knew there was a death. The soul of Yaffaleh, as Feigel said, had called together the whole family again.
There were the three children of Menahem and Dvorah, Menahem at last returned, together with Leah from Russia, and Shula’s little one was walking and climbing everywhere while she carried her new baby in her arms. Reuven and his Elisheva would return to the kvutsa to sleep, and Gidon would stay with his Aviva in the old hut by the river; for a death in the family, the British had given him leave.
Yet though the house was filled, Yankel felt their departure already; after the Sabbath they would all leave, dispersing over the land; and another thing he knew, a thing they had been discussing amongst themselves: when they left this time, they meant to take his youngest with them. His yingel, Mati. He and Feigel would be left virtually alone, with only Schmulik the ox. And wasn’t Schmulik too only waiting to get married, to become the master and take over the farm, and be the one to make decisions while his father stood to the side?
So it would be, so Yankel felt it coming, and was no longer stirred up by the thought to struggle against it, for the last blow had taken his strength. Of Yaffaleh he was the one who spoke least, though what did any of them know of a father’s thoughts and feelings? Of all the girls, she was the one who as a little child would put her hand in his without wanting anything of him.
When all were gathered after the meal, Reuven brought out and placed on the table the little notebook of her intimate thoughts and her little writings that Gidon’s army comrade Nathan had found there in the house of the battle and brought home to the family. They talked about Yaffaleh: how sensitive, even how gifted she had been, and when all were hushed, Gidon’s Aviva recited the poem that Yaffaleh had written the day when Gidon returned in the train with the Brigade: The whole world, even the insects, even the snails, seemed to be singing to Yaffaleh, “because today my brother is coming home.” Never before had Yankel heard these words of hers; they had not thought to tell him a thing like this at the time, his children did not know his heart.
The lines were true poetry, Reuven’s Elisheva said in her clearly studied Hebrew, and, leaning across to the n
otebook in Reuven’s hand, she read out another poem Yaffaleh had written:
When dark falls, there the hut sits
squat and heavy, a lump on the earth.
It seems ugly and repels me.
Then a lamp is lighted within,
And all is changed …
Elisheva’s voice caught in her throat, and across the table Yankel saw Leah’s large cheeks beginning to break into twisting movements, the way even as a little girl her grief would first show, before the tears came.
“It is she, it is Yaffaleh herself.” Shula’s Nahum was the one to say what had come to all of them about the poem.
Heavy, a lump on the earth. Yankel knew the child had thought of herself in that way, and time and time again at night before sleep came, he and Feigel had talked worriedly together of their unfavored youngest daughter, and what could they do? A father perhaps does not show much of his thoughts to his daughters; perhaps they imagine he does not know of their inmost feelings and worry about them; but from their mother he knows all that is happening in each one, and all this weighs on his heart. In Russia a Jew had often to go on his voyages, a merchant, to bargain for timber or for horses, and on his return he brought a little fur muff for this one, a headscarf, a ribbon, for that one, and with the gift and a kiss on the head, Tateh was home again. But how had he and Feigel not worried about their large-grown Leah, and how had they not discussed and weighed and feared before they let her go off with Reuven to Eretz? Perhaps she had thought it was of no concern to her Tateh? And here in the years when Feigel and Leah had discussed what should be done for Yaffaleh, had he not known from Feigel every word, every fear, about Yaffaleh’s dark moods and her friendlessness? All at once, the image returned to Yankel of Yaffaleh standing before the great poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, with the bouquet of flowers, and, just as she had written in her own last little poem, Yankel again saw the illumination that had been in her then, a lamp lighted in the squat little house of her being.
