—Yes, sir. That’s it in a nutshell. I do believe the weather’s cleared for good now. The desert air will dry us out and bring us a sweetly golden Jerusalem afternoon. I feel in a dreadful dither, sir, for having bored you like—
—In a word, sir, my guidelines are clear and entirely in accordance with the Handbook of Wartime Jurisprudence, section 10, paragraph 3. In time of war, in occupied territory, when the defendant is a British subject who has engaged in espionage resulting in loss of life, the prosecution must demand the death penalty, which the court is authorized to inflict without right of appeal ... However...
—Yes, sir, I understand that...
—Yes, sir.
—Those were my very words, sir!
—Quite.
—I see, sir ... which would imply...
—I am surprised, sir.
—Colonel...
—Of course, sir ... that would make it an entirely different matter...
—Exactly my feeling, sir ... it’s the only way...
—Excellent, sir ... it will just take a bit of thought...
—Thank you.
—It did all come together, didn’t it? Then I have succeeded.
—I’m most grateful...
—I’m greatly moved, sir, and most grateful for your patience in giving me a hearing. The fact is that when I was informed at headquarters that you were coming from Egypt to preside at the trial, I had a most sinking feeling. And when I walked into this room two hours ago, sir, I was shaking, because I knew in whose presence I was. Your name, sir, has been on the lips of every officer for several days now: the hero of the Marne! And when I saw you sitting in this dim room with those dark sunglasses, with your empty sleeve on the arm of the chair and all your scars, I was alarmed and almost in tears. I had never imagined you were so badly wounded, and I thought, hang it all, the panther and the cobra have been joined on the bench tomorrow by the wounded lion! I could not know what lust for vengeance you might be harboring inside you; and here was a heinous case of wartime espionage resulting in loss of life; and the culprit was a ruddy Jew who refused all counsel and was quite prepared to be hung as long as he could give his ruddy speech that would cause the very devil of a row among the populace of this city; and once the trial began there would be no stopping it until it reached its bitter end, which it was my duty as prosecutor to pursue without quarter ... Was this, sir, the way British history in the Holy Land was to begin, with the hanging of a Jew in Jerusalem? And yet I had to ask myself if I would be understood; and whether, if I talked candidly enough to make myself understood, I would be suspected of divided loyalties. You see, sir, I’ve never sought to hide my Jewishness as have certain other officers in this division, nor could I hope to do so given my name, my appearance, my eyeglasses, my low and protuberant rear end, and my presumptuous literary garrulousness that even an aristocratic Cambridge mumble has been unable to dispel. It’s all quite distasteful, to say nothing of prejudicial, especially since I had to assume, sir, that you were anti-Semitically disposed, if only in a sociological sense, as a member of your class and the circles in which you move. And so I was quite resigned to failure, perhaps even to a severe reprimand; but I remembered what my mother always told me; “Never give up, son,” she said, “never be afraid as long as you know your intentions are pure”; which is how I put my case before you, sir; not merely as a soldier obeying orders, but as a subject of Great Britain, of the empire that rests assured of its approaching victory, of the war’s end, and of the glorious era that awaits us and the entire Commonwealth...
—Sir.
—Sir.
—Sir.
—Sir.
—I’m quite ecstatic to have earned your trust.
—Do you really think so, sir?
—Why, of course, sir. Were he not a British subject, the prosecution need not ask for death, and he would then be a national of the territory under occupation.
—Most irregular, sir. I fail to see how such naturalization could be valid, the British passport notwithstanding.
—If we make a point of it, sir.
—His grandfather, sir, came from Salonika, which was in Turkey at the time and is presently in Greece.
—Why, of course, sir. We can definitely say Greece. But can we be sure they’ll take him if we banish him?
—Then you think, do you, Colonel, that the islands would be best?
—Of course, sir. Every westward-bound ship from Jaffa calls on them ... Crete, perhaps ... he can have his pick...
Biographical
Supplements
LIEUTENANT IVOR STEPHEN HOROWITZ served out the war with Allenby’s forces, with which he entered Beirut, Aleppo, and Damascus, and was even present at the final assault on Mosul, before the armistice with Turkey in October 1918. After the surrender of Germany on the eleventh of November, he was re-leased from the army to attend the spring term at Cambridge. He took a first class degree in Law in 1920 and chose, after being called to the bar in 1921, to work in the Crown Prosecutor’s office in Manchester. He did not remain in public service long, however, but soon joined a well-known chambers and eventually married a Jewish partner’s daughter. While continuing his practice he went on to get his doctorate, writing his dissertation on the judicial aspects of wartime espionage. This study was extremely well received and opened the way for an academic career. Dr. Horowitz joined the law faculty of Manchester University, and several years later, in 1930, moved with his wife and two small children to London, where he was appointed senior lecturer in Law at the University. In London he was active in the Zionist Federation, serving as its volunteer legal adviser. His academic career was highly successful and he was considered a spellbinding lecturer. In 1957, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, he visited Israel; subsequently, he returned several times and met with various Israeli leaders, among them David Ben-Gurion. A grandson of his even settled in the country, on the kibbutz of Revivim. He died at the age of seventy-six in London, in October 1973, after a brief illness following a stroke.
COLONEL MICHAEL WOODHOUSE served through the remainder of the war and then continued to sit on military courts throughout the British Empire. Since his vision grew steadily worse until he became completely blind, the army assigned him a personal aide who accompanied him on his judicial missions to Malaya, Burma, India, and Ceylon. In the mid-1930s he was knighted by King George V. Sir Michael’s reputation as a judge spread far and wide and was only heightened by his blindness. He presided at the trials of many British officers in the colonial service and was known for the originality and depth of his approach. Although when World War II broke out he was serving in Kenya, he insisted on returning to England at once to take part in the war effort. He was killed during an air raid on London in June 1941, at the age of sixty-four, and had a military funeral in his home village.
FOURTH CONVERSATION
The country estate of Jelleny-Szad
near Cracow, in Galician Poland
Friday night and early Saturday morning,
October 20 and 21, 1899
The Conversation Partners
DR. EFRAYIM SHAPIRO a twenty-nine-year-old bachelor, born in 1870 on the estate of his parents, Sholom and Sarah (née Pomerantz) Shapiro. Until the age of ten, Efrayim was taught Jewish subjects and a bit of arithmetic by private tutors; subsequently, he continued his education at a small Jewish school in a nearby town. Despite his humanistic tendencies, his parents convinced him to study medicine and helped arrange his enrollment at the famous Jagellonica University in nearby Cracow, where—although he showed little enthusiasm for his studies and was considered no more than a mediocre student—he finished the seven years of medical school. All of his vacations, no matter how brief, were spent on his parents’ estate.
In 1895 Efrayim Shapiro received his license to practice general medicine. Since he wished to live with his family, he declined an offer to acquire a specialization while interning in a Cracow hospital and chose to open a pediatric prac
tice in his native district.
Efrayim was a tall, slender young man with the perpetual hint of an ironic smile on his face and a melancholic disposition. He was not particularly attached to the local Jewish community and attended synagogue only on the High Holy Days. Much to the displeasure of his parents (who had put a wing of their house at his disposal, in which he maintained his small clinic), he liked to spend his evenings in long conversations with the Polish servants, sometimes joined by his younger sister Linka.
In 1898 Efrayim’s father, Sholom Shapiro, traveled to Basel to attend the Second Zionist Congress. He returned brimming with impressions and experiences and firmly committed to the new movement, for which he helped organize Zionist soirees that he went to with Linka, since his wife Sarah’s health did not permit her to travel. In 1899 Sholom Shapiro planned to attend the Third Zionist Congress as the official delegate of his district; at the last minute, however, he had to cancel his participation as a result of his wife’s poor health and to send Linka and Efrayim in his place. When the Congress was over, the two of them decided to forego a planned two-week vacation at a Jewish boardinghouse in Lugano and to visit Palestine instead. They ^returned home to Jelleny-Szad two months after leaving it.
SHOLOM SHAPIRO was born in Vilna, in Lithuania, in 1848 to an extremely poor family. He studied in a heder and a yeshiva and was an outstanding pupil, but his family’s economic hardship forced him to stop his schooling without obtaining his rabbinical degree and to find work tutoring arithmetic and religious subjects in wealthy Jewish homes in the province of Pinsk. From there he wandered westward to Galicia, where in 1867 he was hired by Meir Pomerantz, the owner of a large flour mill in Jelleny-Szad, to tutor his daughter Sarah, who was three years older than Sholom. The two were married in 1869, when Sholom was twenty-one, and their eldest son Efrayim was born in 1870. The birth left Sarah confined for a long period and her recovery from it was slow. Meanwhile her father died, and Sholom Shapiro took over his father-in-law’s mill. He proved to be a gifted and resourceful businessman who within a few years expanded the family’s holdings, buying up more mills and acquiring the lumbering rights to several local forests while maintaining a reputation for fairness and reliability throughout the area. Although his son Efrayim was a joy to both parents, Sarah’s ill health kept her from having more children. Nevertheless, the Shapiros persisted, and in 1879, when Efrayim was nine, their daughter Linka was born. Yet although the family’s happiness was now complete, the birth damaged Sarah’s frail constitution even more.
From its inception in 1897, Sholom Shapiro was greatly interested in the new movement of political Zionism. He attended the 1898 Zionist Congress in Basel and was highly excited by the debates and new ideas he heard there. He also had the experience of being introduced to the Zionist leader Dr. Herzl and of chatting with him briefly in German. Shapiro planned to attend the 1899 congress as well, but had to ask his son Efrayim to take his place. Besides wishing him to see for himself what Zionism was, Sholom Shapiro secretly hoped that Efrayim might meet a nice Jewish girl at the congress, since he was increasingly troubled both by his son’s bachelorhood and by his avoidance of Jewish circles. Linka, who was twenty at the time and an ardent Zionist in her own right, pleaded to be allowed to go along. At first her parents had grave doubts about the matter, but at Efrayim’s repeated urgings they agreed.
Sholom Shapiro’s half of the conversation is missing.
***
—Over here, Father.
—Here ... behind the commode, next to the sofa...
—No ... just idling away the time ... I was having myself a smoke...
—Hiding? What for?
—Ah ... perhaps so ... hiding, eh? I rather like that...
—No. I am not tired. It is agreeable here in the dark. The forest—the croaking of the frogs—how dear our native land is! And meanwhile winter has set in with a vengeance. I declare, you haven’t left a leaf on the trees...
—I have had quite enough to eat.
—No, Father. I am absolutely sated—and besides, Stefa has brought me a samovar and some cakes. You should see how she cried and crossed herself and shook all over at the sight of me! And how she bent to kiss my hand ... what on earth, my dears, were you so worried about?
—My word! Is it that, then?
—So that’s it! It had not occurred to me.
—That is certainly so ... I can’t deny that they have a claim on it too...
—Well, Father, I simply had no idea what the great fuss was all about. Mrazhik actually went down on his knees, doffed his cap, carried Linka in his arms from the railway car to the carriage, and covered us with wraps like royalty...
—Church bells?
—So I do ... what a simpleton I am, dearest Papa! And here I was convinced that it was a sign of how much they missed us ... of how much they loved us...
—No doubt. But not enough to make them carry on in such a fashion.
—Lights in the village? Why, so there are...
—My word ... I declare...
—Of course. It is their Holy Land too—there is no denying that—you don’t know how right you are! Jerusalem and all the rest of it ... I am quite willing to grant them their fair share of it ... but still—such excitement—why, they even tried kissing the tails of my coat...
—No, Papa, I don’t feel the slightest fatigue anymore. It has dissolved quite away in this damp clime of ours, this swamp air ... How cozy it is by the fire! The trains are not heated, you know; the people on them are supposed to warm each other, but you have to expend a great deal of warmth before you get any back ... which is why this undemanding fire is so wonderful—the whole last leg of our trip I kept myself going by imagining coming home to it—you are looking at a happy man...
—Yes, happy. When the train pulled out of Cracow, and I knew that we would soon be home, and the sun began to dip through the branches, and the fields stretched away to the horizon beyond the railroad tracks that converged from all directions, and I saw the wooden sign of our village pointing toward the black waters of the Vistula ... upon my soul, I felt as if I had emerged from a dark tunnel into freedom, as if I had returned from a journey through the earth...
—Through the earth ... I remember that when we were children, after Grandfather passed away, you once told us a story about the dead ... about how, at the End of Days, at the Resurrection, the Christians would rise from their graves where they were, but we Jews would crawl through underground caverns and come out in the Land of Israel ... which is just what I’ve been doing these past few days, but in the opposite direction—from there to here—cavern-crawling and turning over in many graves—as though traveling not upon the globe but deep beneath its surface—with the coaches groaning and the locomotive wailing and smoke and soot and great showers of sparks by night—from tunnel to tunnel and from one remote station to another—each time the same flicker of gas lamps, and the same onrush of blackness, and then the same total nothing—and wherever you looked in the foggy distance, our flour mills standing like titans—talk of resurrection! I am happy, Father; why, we nearly came to grief...
—To grief...
—I mean just that.
—No, you are exhausted, Father. You look drawn. Go to sleep now. Just fetch me another cigarette before you do, and here, in this corner of my childhood, beside the old sofa, I will wait for the dawn. I know myself well enough to know I can’t sleep—I’ll wait for you right here, and whenever you are ready, the trial can begin...
—I mean the accounting that I owe you.
—An accounting. Are you very angry?
—You have every right to be ... every right...
—Undoubtedly ... every right—until I make you understand—if you can understand—because I fail to understand myself...
—As you wish ... are you quite sure? You can stop me whenever you want. Mother has already told me what you have been through these past few weeks, after our “oriental silence” set in ... poor
Mama! She does not look well. I bit my lips to keep from saying an unnecessary word—one that might betray the fear felt by the doctor in me. What happened, Father?
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