Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “Now you are a woman! How old are you? Twenty? You’re a little younger than Marinna, aren’t you? And you are still as beautiful as ever,” Samuel said, in spite of Aya’s blushes.

  Dina insisted that he eat some of the pistachio cake she had just made.

  “I’ve got a better idea: Come to Hope Orchard with me. I would like nothing more than for us to celebrate this moment all together. Also, I want you to meet Mikhail. And he wants to meet you. You know how important you all are for me.”

  They all grew a little tense. Dina bit her lower lip, Zaida pretended that she had to go and look for something, and Ahmed stared straight at Samuel.

  “You know that . . .”

  Samuel would not let him continue.

  “Yes, Marinna explained everything to me, and it was she who advised me not to delay my visit here a moment longer. I cannot celebrate my return without all my friends present, so I hope that you will come with me. Of course, nothing would make me miss Dina’s pistachio cake, so why not bring it and we’ll share everything among ourselves.”

  Although it was the last thing they wanted, they didn’t know how to refuse, so they all went along with Samuel back to Hope Orchard.

  If Mikhail had thought that Marinna was a beauty, Aya astonished him, with her black hair and cinnamon-colored skin, and the promise of a curvy body hidden underneath her large colored dress.

  Everyone was too fond of Samuel not to force themselves to try to enjoy the evening, and not much time had gone by before they were swapping laughter and stories as they did justice to Kassia’s improvised supper and Dina’s pistachio cake.

  It was a happy night and Samuel even managed to forget about Irina.

  He fell asleep with one thought on his mind—that Mikhail would fit in at Hope Orchard. It wasn’t easy to move from a bourgeois apartment in Paris to a communal house where there was practically no privacy and all tasks were equally shared by all.

  “Three days, no more, then you’ll have to start helping out again,” Kassia said, when Samuel spoke of his desire to visit some old friends and show Mikhail the Old City.

  His first visit would be to Abraham Yonah’s family. He had been good friends with Yossi, Abraham’s son, who had now taken over his father’s patients.

  They walked into the city through Herod’s Gate, which opened into the Muslim Quarter. Mikhail opened his eyes in surprise and, as was his custom, would not stop asking questions. Samuel led him along the Via Dolorosa to the Christian Quarter, where they approached the Holy Sepulchre. A few minutes later they reached Abraham’s house in the Jewish Quarter, close to the Wailing Wall.

  “Please, let me see the Wall before we go visit your friends,” Mikhail asked.

  They stood for more than half an hour at the foot of the Wailing Wall. Samuel was surprised that Mikhail appeared to be on the verge of tears. He said nothing.

  Raquel Yonah, Abraham’s wife, embraced Samuel and invited them in. She was very old and found it hard to walk, and her eyes had lost their former sparkle.

  “My husband always had the greatest respect for you, I thought that you would not come back, but he said you would. Come, I’ll call my son and his wife. Judith helps him with his patients.”

  “And your granddaughter?”

  “Yasmin is our pride and joy. During my husband’s last days she wouldn’t leave his side. She spent hours reading to him. She’s grown up now, and says she wants to be a doctor like her grandfather and her father. Can you imagine!”

  Yossi and Judith were pleased to see him again and were friendly toward Mikhail.

  “So, you are a virtuoso. I hope you will invite us to hear you play the violin some time. Some of the new immigrants are musicians like you, and they are talking of forming an orchestra. Of course, that’s some way off for now, the people who have come have no option but to work the land. But I’ll introduce you to a pianist, who seems like an extraordinarily talented man, he’s named Benjamin, and he came here from Thessaloniki recently. He is a Sephardi, like my mother and my wife.”

  They spend quite some time talking about what was new in the city.

  “The major families of the city are joining with the Arab nationalists. There are always more and more secret clubs being formed, although here a secret doesn’t last very long. As far as the sultan’s policy toward us is concerned . . . you know how things are here. A bit of oppression, a bit of corruption . . . But there are more and more people in Constantinople saying that the Jews should not be allowed to settle in Palestine, should not be allowed to buy land. Have you heard of Ruhi Khalidi? He was vice-president of the Ottoman Parliament. The Khalidi have never been nationalists, but . . . Apparently he proposed in Parliament that the Jews should not be allowed to buy a single acre more of land.”

  “But the immigrants are still buying land, aren’t they?” Samuel asked.

  “Of course, and it is the large families who sell it to them, as always. Feelings and business don’t sit well together. You know this anyway, you bought Hope Orchard from the Aban family.”

  Samuel promised to come back so he could meet Yasmin.

  “God has not blessed us with more children, so we spoil her,” Judith said as Yossi shrugged his shoulders.

  “She is an exceptional young woman,” Raquel insisted.

  Once they were out in the street, Mikhail said to Samuel:

  “Rachel seems more Arab than Jewish.”

  “It happens a lot with the Sephardis, they dress the same way, and they even look the same, with their dark hair and eyes.”

  They spent the rest of the morning wandering through the city. Mikhail was overwhelmed by almost all that he saw, and regretted the appearance of some of the Jews that they passed.

  “I never imagined they would be so poor!”

  Samuel took him to see some other friends. The afternoon was drawing to a close when they reached Jeremiah’s house. He had not wanted to go earlier. He knew he would meet Anastasia, who was now the quarry owner’s wife. Every now and then he blamed himself for having slept with her, as he felt that he had taken advantage of her without taking her feelings into consideration. But she had never said a word against him and she had accepted their separation without a single tear.

  Jeremiah was washing himself when they arrived. Anastasia was friendly when she met them but showed no sign of happiness. She was not surprised to see him, neither did she seem to have any curiosity about Mikhail. She let them into the house and offered them a cup of tea while Jeremiah finished his ablutions.

  Samuel looked sidelong at Anastasia and was surprised by how thin she was, even after bearing three children. The oldest was four or five, and the younger two, twins, were almost two years old.

  The little boys ran around and played and paid them no attention, and the older daughter looked at them with curiosity although she was very shy and hid behind her mother’s chair. When Jeremiah appeared he seemed happy to see Samuel.

  “So, you’ve decided to come back. It was the right decision, the Jews should be here and should make this land our homeland once again.”

  He told Samuel he had been an active member of Hapoel Hatzair, but now he was a member of Poalei Zion. “They are better organized,” he said. Samuel asked about how Ahmed and his nephews were doing at the quarry, as well as Igor, the son of Ruth and Ariel.

  “Igor is strong and works well. As for Ahmed, he’s still the foreman, I have no grounds to complain about him. He’s always ready to do more than is asked of him, and never misses a minute of work. I did right to follow your advice and keep him in the post when I bought the quarry. He knows the men there well and manages to get the best out of them.”

  Jeremiah spoke to Mikhail and offered him a job. Samuel thanked him, but would not allow Mikhail to take the offer. He still did not know what the young man could do with his life, but he was sure that he didn’t wa
nt Mikhail to give up his music. Although he knew all too well that musicians were not what Palestine really needed at that moment.

  On the third day after his arrival, Samuel was up at the crack of dawn, ready to get to work with the rest of Hope Orchard. Kassia told him that Mikhail had gotten up even earlier, and was milking the goats with Ariel.

  “You’ve set him to work pretty quickly,” complained Samuel.

  “He insisted. He wants to be one of us. Let him be. I understand what’s worrying you, that he has a gift for music and he mustn’t let it go to waste, but he also needs to decide if here is where he wants to live.”

  “Mikhail has never done anything apart from study,” Samuel protested.

  “And what about you? And what about Jacob? We couldn’t live if we weren’t working the land. Music will come later.”

  “Do you know what it has taken for him to become a good violinist? He didn’t have time to play even when he was a child, he practiced for hours and hours without complaining. He’s a prodigy.”

  “So why did you bring him here?”

  “Sometimes fate does not let you make your own decisions. Mikhail needed to leave Paris, and also needed to understand what it means to be a Jew. He feels Judaism not as a part of his identity, but rather as a burden that he never asked to carry, but that he can’t put down.”

  “So, the same as happened with you.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Well, you can let him decide for himself. He’s not a child.”

  “He barely knew how to walk when he was orphaned . . .”

  “Which one of us has not suffered? That’s why we came to Palestine, to try to be free to be ourselves. Also, who has told you that we don’t need musicians? Do you think we don’t need to feed our souls as well as our bodies?”

  Samuel was surprised to find that the little hut he had converted into a laboratory was still as he had left it when he went back to France. Kassia had kept it as it was and had not allowed Ariel to use it as a storeroom.

  Samuel went back to his old routines, worried about how he would help Mikhail find his place in Palestine.

  “There’s more than enough space in my laboratory, you can practice there as much as you want without bothering anyone.”

  Mikhail tried to adapt to the routine of these strange people on their farm, but it was not easy for him. He missed Paris. They spoke about socialism and the harvest and little else on the farm. Music was not a priority for them, although they were friendly enough and every now and then asked him to play them something. It was only Jacob and Marinna who appeared to truly enjoy these moments of music. Ariel shifted impatiently in his chair, while Ruth and Kassia seemed to concentrate exclusively on their sewing.

  But here he was, and he was not going to give in so quickly. He would go back to Paris, but not so soon that Irina would take his return as a failure.

  Marinna suggested that he give music lessons to the children of rich people in the city.

  “Jerusalem is a misleading city. There are people here from every country of the world, and the larger families have many children, and there are even some rich Jews.”

  Marinna helped out at a primary school, and convinced some of the mothers there that their children needed music lessons. In a very short while, Mikhail had a dozen students.

  “We all need to work the land, but there are other things we need to do as well. My father pushed me to leave Hope Orchard, and I found this job through Abraham’s family.”

  “You all think that farming is the most important thing.”

  “Yes, it is the best possible way of finding our past. And . . . Well, I want to ask you a favor, do you think I could learn music from you as well? I am always so moved when I watch you play the violin. If I could . . .”

  “Of course you can! I’ll teach you.”

  On June 28, 1914, Samuel went to Yossi Yonah’s house to take him some syrups he had made. Yossi, just as his father Abraham had done before him, trusted in Samuel’s capacity to make these remedies.

  Nothing was further from their minds than what was happening in Europe, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand had just been assassinated by a Serbian terrorist.

  “My father said you were a good pharmacist, that you didn’t just stick to what you had been taught, but that you liked to perform your own experiments.”

  “Yes, but it has only been during these last few years in Paris that I have really learned the job. Doctors diagnose the disease, and we provide the cure. You couldn’t do much without us pharmacists.”

  “That’s right, we need each other and should work hand in hand. You need to know about sickness, and I need to learn which plants are curative.”

  After this, the conversation moved to more personal matters. Yossi was worried about his mother, the now aged Rachel.

  “She has scarcely left the house since my father died. She says there’s nothing left for her to do; I think that if it were not for Yasmin then she would let herself die.”

  Samuel had noticed Mikhail’s interest in Yossi’s daughter. He was always ready to go with him when they went to Yossi’s house. Mikhail found the young woman’s beauty almost disturbing. She was dark and tall and satisfyingly filled-out, and it was impossible that she would be unnoticed wherever she went.

  “Your daughter is almost a woman.”

  “She is still young, but she seems older, and that worries me, my friend. Jerusalem isn’t really a pious city.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Neither my mother nor Judith my wife allow her to go anywhere by herself. I want her to get married,” Yossi said.

  “And what about you, Samuel, aren’t you thinking of finding a wife?” Judith asked.

  Samuel smiled but said nothing. If it were not for his age—he had turned forty-three in 1914—he would be thinking about getting married. But the idea now seemed ridiculous. He had been so in love with Irina that it had almost become an obsession, and now that he had been freed from these ties he knew that he was too old to start a family. Anyway, what could he offer a woman? To share the work on a farm with other people who weren’t his relatives? He had never felt the urge to have children, but sometimes he asked himself how he would feel if he ever did have one.

  That afternoon, neither Samuel nor Yossi could have imagined that war was soon to break out all over Europe, still less how it was to affect their lives. It was not until a few months later that they became aware of what was going to happen, when autumn came and Turkey, which had sided with Germany, also entered the war.

  It was Louis who brought the news to Hope Orchard. Louis turned up unexpectedly, and it took Samuel a moment to recognize him in his Bedouin garb.

  “They said that you were back. I would have liked to have come sooner but it was not possible,” he said as he enfolded Samuel in an embrace.

  Kassia scolded Louis for his prolonged absences.

  “Can you tell us why you didn’t come sooner? You know we are worried about you.”

  “My dear Kassia, you are going to have to worry about something much more important, which is that our dear sultan, Mehmed V Reshad, has declared war on Great Britain, France, and Russia. I know that they are going to declare a jihad from the al-Aqsa Mosque . . .”

  For a few seconds no one knew what to say. Each of them thought about how that terrible word, “war,” would affect them.

  “And what will happen to us?” Marinna asked, breaking the silence.

  “To us? We are not on such bad terms with the Turks, so we are also at war, my friends,” Louis stated.

  “So you continue supporting the Turkish empire,” Jacob said, without bothering to hide his opposition.

  “You don’t understand, it is not a question of supporting the empire, it is just that we are here, on our ancestors’ land, building our future, and it is a future
that we cannot build apart from the Turks. Let’s be realistic.” Louis was not prepared to give in.

  “I am Russian and to all intents and purposes half French, I don’t know why I have to support the Germans and the Turks,” Mikhail protested.

  “Yes, and so is Samuel. But you are a Jew and you are here; Palestine is where we make our home, so this is your war as well,” Louis replied.

  “I don’t agree,” Jacob said to everyone’s surprise.

  “You don’t agree? And what do you intend to do, then?” Louis asked mockingly. “Let me remind you that there are Jews in the sultan’s army.”

  “This war will bring us no good,” Ariel said.

  It was late when they went to bed, all but Samuel and Louis, who stayed up to smoke a cigar.

  “So you are in Hashomer.”

  “Yes. It’s best for us to be the ones who protect ourselves.”

  “You don’t offer yourself to the world as an altruistic Jew; as far as I know, Hashomer charges the farms protection money,” Samuel replied with a smile.

  “They used to pay Arab vigilantes. Also, you have to think about the future,” Louis said seriously.

  “Of course you have to think about the future, but I don’t see why the Jews should have the monopoly on protecting Jewish farms. In the end it’s about property, nothing more.”

  “And nothing less. I should tell you, just for your own peace of mind, that there are vigilante groups composed of both Arabs and Jews. But I look even further, to the future. One day we will need to have a force capable of protecting us from whatever threats there may be.”

  “Who are our enemies? You yourself say that we will have to accept being vassals of the sultan. So the only thing we can protect ourselves from is banditry.”

  “My dear friend, don’t lose sight of what is happening around us. I think we are safe in the Ottoman Empire. We have not been persecuted for our religion, the Turks have always been tolerant and they have let us build synagogues and live as just one more group of subjects; as you well know, there are a lot of Jews who have occupied important positions in the sultan’s court. In centuries gone by, the Europeans persecuted us and threw us out of their countries, whereas the various sultans welcomed us and allowed us to live as we wanted.”