by Yoram Kaniuk
A young Arab woman from the village of Marar cooked and laundered in Nehemiah's house. His fields flourished because of the help of his experienced friend Nathan. He now had a small dairy, a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, there was a quarry whose profits the farmers shared. In the nearby settlement bigger houses were built. The women played piano. The men drank tea or coffee and smoked cigarettes. The officials vanished, replaced by various committees and representatives of institutions. In the Jerusalem newspaper with a circulation of five thousand readers, they called the nearby settlement Little Paris. At night the girls sang a Puccini opera and an eminent man from Poland applauded so enthusiastically that everybody refused to join him for fear of offending him. He contributed money to the settlers to buy gramophones. The disease of music increased the appetite of the cows the Arabs milked in the nearby barns. Nehemiah's comrades, who heard him talk about the new "Hellenizers" in the nearby settlement, envied the inhabitants of the settlement and the delightful girls in splendid clothes and secretly brought fine fabrics from Jaffa, gorgeous abbiyas from Damascus, silk from Tadmor, carpets from Aleppo, and kerosene lamps from Gaza, and the mosquitoes, said Nehemiah contemptuously, now had to stick to choice silk, because they didn't like the sacks anymore. There were more Arab settlers who came from Egypt to spread rumors of the Jews' gold. As the way became harder, Nehemiah's love for that Land grew greater. Logic and facts of life had no place in his considerations. He grew roots at an alarming rate, and Nehemiah would give speeches that were not forgotten many years later. He would swallow quinine against malaria and see visions: behold, Rebecca stopped weeping and is bringing up an ancient Hebrew shepherd for him. Every week he would examine Ebenezer to be sure he didn't look like Joseph. Rachel Brin, who went to America with her son Secret Glory, wrote Rebecca a long remorseful letter. She told that she had divorced, married a shirt dealer from Long Island, moved to a place called Connecticut, and Secret Glory, now called Lionel, would go to an American school next year. Rebecca wept more bitterly when she read the letter and then she crumpled it up and rubbed her son's face in it.
Ebenezer didn't understand what was said to him. Because of the Hebrew, the Yiddish, and the Arabic that were spoken in the house, he seemed to doubt whether there really was any language that suited him and was silent in all three languages.
One night Nathan was arrested and nobody knew why. Nehemiah defended him and later, when he came back home, Rebecca had to take care of him. He said: Kiss your son, and she said: In America love your son, Nehemiah, and then Horowitz's brother returned from some distant village where they grew silkworms, and when he tried to interest Nehemiah in the big silk production that could be developed here with the ancient mulberry trees in the grove near the big cave, he was bitten by a sneaky snake and died, and then Nehemiah spoke in Roots about silk production. Rosy dreams of those who buy damascene silk, he said, and even spoke again about distress and hope, but because of Rebecca they expelled him and because of Ebenezer they pitied him and the child who grew up without a language would wallow in the fields, murmuring vague words that weren't like a human language, and Nehemiah kept fading while his love for his son grew with Rebecca's tears. An Arab woman raised his son. A screen of tears separated him and Rebecca. Nehemiah, who now spoke of a Jewish church and of masses of Jews coming on big ships, had to see his son grow up like an Arab dog with a cropped tail and mute. And then new Pioneers came to the settlement, whose coming Nehemiah wished for. They were quarried from a different rock, strong, desperate, and focused in their belief. They established two labor parties, and sought positions for their war. Since the only capitalist they could find who was even willing to wrestle with them was Nehemiah Schneerson, they went to foment the revolution in front of his house. Since they believed that the future was in their pocket, their obstinacy was dismal and deadly serious. In their eyes the Arab woman who worked in Nehemiah's yard was an exploited proletarian. When they yelled at his house: "Death to capitalism," "Long live the world revolution," and "Long live Hebrew labor," he came out to them in his tattered clothes, tried to stir yearnings in them for what he yearned for, and they thought he was trying to divert them from their righteous opinion. Rebecca, who never looked at them, had to drive them away because her Arab woman wanted to sleep, and in the nearby settlement a woman still stood with a parasol, but the official who had been under the parasol had gone. And the laborers tried to engage the Arab woman in conversation and explain to her in excited Russian how exploited she was.
When he went into first grade, Ebenezer was the worst student in the class. He refused to read and was bored with the books his father read him with desperate assiduousness. He'd chomp on vine leaves and gaze at the trees and fields for a long time and find a small measure of solace in them. Only when he started playing with the logs in the yard did the desolation vanish from his face. Then he started carving. He was eight years old. He carved a bird and suddenly he was quiet and happy. He learned to carve human faces and birds before he knew how to write the words bird and man. The Hebrew hero who would grow here on his native land found tranquility. He'll be a carpenter like that fool from Jaffa, said Rebecca between one tear and another.
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One night, after Ebenezer sat all day in the yard and carved a bird and sang, Nehemiah thought: Maybe my whole life was a mistake, Rebecca is weeping, my son is carving birds and can't tell the difference between see and sea. He put on his clothes, went outside, saw his son bent over a piece of wood, kissed him, hitched up a cart, and went to Jaffa. There he bought a plow and returned in the morning. Two laborers arguing fervently about Plekhanov's theory were sitting in his yard and eating grapes. Rebecca sat in a chair and tears covered her like a curtain. Nehemiah was covered with warts and sunburned and his hands were suddenly weak. Ebenezer was sleeping with his mouth gaping and looked like a bird he had carved the day before. Nehemiah walked in the fields and a full moon was hung in the sky and an intoxicating aroma of citrus blossoms filled him, he saw his mare and stroked her and let her gallop home and went on walking along the hedges of prickly pears and acacias. Suddenly he heard a rustling, saw his friend Nathan dressed in tatters and looking like a madman. In his hand he held a bottle of wine, which he offered to Nehemiah. Nathan was distraught, his mouth sprayed foam, and when he tried to talk he couldn't. Nehemiah didn't know what to do with the bottle in his hands and so he started drinking from it. When he drank he started thinking of Joseph Rayna, his songs, his hatred for him even before he knew who Rebecca was, he thought of the fifty-two sons Joseph begat with women he chanced upon. He thought about his love for Rebecca and more than he understood it, he felt for her that feeling like the beloved moth in the kerosene lamp. He thought he was thinking of Joseph out of loathing, but he also felt some admiration of a man betrayed and despised. Rebecca will never be mine here, he said to himself, this land is foreign to her and as long as they sing Joseph's songs here, she'll remain the lover of that noble pampered rogue and because of that I'll never be able to let her leave me, he said, and he understood the labyrinth of his torments as a circle with no exit.
Some time later, Nathan managed to say something that had been swallowed in his mouth a long time. He vilified himself, the settlement, Ebenezer, Rebecca, Nehemiah, the Zionist Committee, the Lovers of Zion, the new laborers, he looked at Nehemiah as if he had only now discovered him, kissed his face and vanished into the night. Nehemiah returned home. Rebecca stood tied to the mare, alarm on her face. When she saw him she went back to weeping the tears that had previously stopped on her cheeks. He went down on his knees and told her how much he loved her. He grabbed her by the waist, dragged her home with a force she didn't know was in him and she yelled: I thought you went to America without me! And then he locked the door and lay with her furiously, and the delicate man who was Nehemiah saw hostility in Rebecca's eyes, got up and started beating her and from her tears she burst out laughing. But she also loved the suddenly strong hands and his desperate embrace and t
hey lay together in silence and he stroked her and penetrated her like preservative and kindled in her some spark of children she had once buried in suitcases. Afterward, he sat naked and asked forgiveness and she said: In love there is no forgiveness, Nehemiah, I'm yours, and that's it, just let's leave here, and she stroked his face and kissed him and then they lay like two young people who didn't know what love was and talked and Nehemiah said to Rebecca: Our strange child, I love. And she said: Maybe you'll tell him, and Nehemiah said he couldn't. And she remembered how Joseph Rayna waited for his father who didn't come and in her heart she wept for the awful days in store for her son she couldn't love and her husband couldn't understand and couldn't get up and tell him how much he loved him. After he fell asleep, Rebecca looked at him and said to herself: We will leave here, my love, we'll build a life in a place where you can make a future and not only a made-up past.
His love for Rebecca intensified so much in those days that he had to scrunch up his face to recall the reason for the eternal quarrel between them that had made Rebecca weep for seven whole years now. Nehemiah almost stopped giving speeches, spent less time in the community center, wrote fewer letters to Zionist leaders, and didn't stop trying to seduce his wife, who looked at him with a delight that once alarmed her when she discovered it herself. Nehemiah would look at his son and think that maybe his son was happy in his ignorance and that shamed him. He was now working a few hours a day for a Hungarian who built wine barrels and was an expert in sawing trees, polishing them, and cutting them and mixing lacquer and other preservatives. Ebenezer was willing to lie around his place all day, refused to go to school, and the Hungarian would look at him through his pince-nez, laugh, and say: They want educated Jews, but only ignoramuses will build them a land! And he laughed. And at that time, after the Arab pogroms and the great theft of the Bedouins who emptied the barns came the Wondrous One on a noble white mare, with thin legs and a long delicate neck. He sat on a tufted saddle built like a kind of dwelling and was dressed like a high priest with a breastplate and emeralds and a silk gown and a sky blue kaffiyeh, he was girt with a sword and two rifles and belts of rifle bullets, and everybody was sure a distinguished Arab robber had come to the settlement. As they stood in tribute to his impressive appearance, the Wondrous One got off the mare, who whinnied and stroked his supple back with her head, and he said in an ancient Hebrew accent: Hear 0 Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One. And when everybody was stunned and even awestruck, the man said: Joshua conquered Canaan by sword and storm, you won't conquer it by planting vineyards. I live in the Arabian Desert. Who I am doesn't matter, I heard about Jews who came to renew a kingdom and I said to myself, I'll teach them war against the Arabs, you see the Bedouins and you don't know their dignity and malice and cunning, you fight the wrong enemy with sticks.
He pitched a tent for himself on the edge of the settlement and would cook his meals with his own hands. Women from all around came in carts to see the prince of the Jews. A new wind started blowing in the settlement, backs that had been bowed for years suddenly straightened up. Even Ebenezer's wood carvings stopped interesting folks. The Wondrous One taught them savagery and speed and surprise and night raids and aggressive defense and outflanking maneuvers. He taught smells and winds and seeing in the dark and how to tell an enemy horse from one that isn't by its droppings and how it creases the leaves and branches, and everybody became eager for war. And once again a light shone in the beautiful faces of the men who had come to the Land to build. The Wondrous One was cruel, fast, mysterious, and decisive, but after the training and fabulous nocturnal sorties he would close himself in his tent in silence. One night, when the men stayed in the fields on a test sortie beyond the settlement, only he and the women were left, the Wondrous One entered Rebecca's house, sat on the mat, politely dismissed the Arab woman, and the Arab woman fell on her face and wept to hear the flowery Arabic in his mouth and said that was the Jewish messiah, and left, and then the Wondrous One drank a cup of coffee Rebecca served him and told her she was a beautiful woman and belonged to the desert. And for the first time in seven years, Rebecca stopped weeping. Long afterward, Boaz, Rebecca Schneerson's grandson and son sat, and his yellow-green devil eyes will stare at her with a wicked smile and will scold her serenely for reciting Psalms in the war and saving him from the death he deserved more than Menahem Henkin, Yoske, the naked Nahazia, and Yashka, and would ask again as before what the Wondrous One said that night the old people had been telling about for fifty years now, and she will say: Nothing, Boaz, it's all legends, he wanted me to come with him to the desert, they're all like Joseph Rayna, words, words.
After he left Rebecca's house, the Wondrous One went to his tent. And after the men returned, he blessed them, spoke of future wars, tried to hint at the essential missions, packed up his tent, and at night he vanished and nobody knew when or where. The next night, the Bedouin herds came onto the fields that had just been planted. On the Sabbath morning a man came to the synagogue and yelled: Herds in the fields! The rabbi wasn't in the settlement that Sabbath and an argument broke out about whether war against the Bedouins was a life-saving act that canceled the Sabbath. Nehemiah jumped up, mounted his mare, and started galloping. When the others saw him, they also mounted their mares and donkeys and still wrapped in prayer shawls, they dealt the Bedouins a crushing blow, as they had learned from the Wondrous One. After that, Nehemiah never went back to the synagogue. Then Rebecca started coming to the synagogue. Malicious rumors spread, but Rebecca sat in the women's section and smiled at the Ark of the Covenant as if she were conversing with the Holy One Blessed Be He. The tears were seen again in her eyes. She didn't pray but sat and stared at God in the Ark of the Covenant and was silent. After she returned from the synagogue she saw Nehemiah pulling up crabgrass. Bitterness filled her. Nehemiah tried to kiss her but she slipped away from him. So beautiful she was in the morning light! Ebenezer sat in the corner of the yard and carved a bird's face. And then the sound of the locusts was heard. Everybody ran to the fields and made bonfires. Some tried to get rid of the locusts with prayers and others by banging on cans. One of the bonfires spread and burst into a conflagration that reached Nathan's cowshed. Rebecca, who saw the fire, ran and stumbled into a pothole. An Arab galloping by her whipped her. She tried to pull the whip and bring him down from the horse, but the whip slipped out of her hand. She was hit in the face and covered with blood. There were no paved roads and water flooded from the gutter. The roof of Nehemiah and Rebecca's house burst and a week later, when the first rains of the season began, the strongest the Land had ever known, the roof Nehemiah tried in vain all night long to reinforce with a pole collapsed. The clothes in valises in mothballs, waiting to go to America, were flooded, everything turned into pulp in one downpour and Rebecca saw all the tears she had hidden among the clothes and they melted right before her eyes. Your tears have brought destruction upon us, said Nehemiah bitterly, but she didn't think he deserved a reply. The cows were terrified by the torches, the horses whinnied, and Nathan's donkey burst into the house and crushed the ladder Nehemiah was standing on and holding up the roof. The Arab woman fled in panic and five days later the cracks took on a brown-yellow tone and Rebecca sat and looked at the destroyed house and at Nehemiah, whose body and spirit were broken and then suddenly, he turned pale, dropped, and shut his eyes. A few days later, the doctor was called from the nearby settlement. He examined Nehemiah and brought another expert from Jaffa who came riding on a brown horse and the two of them told Rebecca that Nehemiah wasn't suffering from any disease they knew. Rebecca knew what Nehemiah's disease was, but didn't think the doctor would understand. As far as she was concerned, her husband's shriveled face, his shut eyes, his burned skin, and his broad forehead constituted authentic proof of the disease of despairing love that Rebecca, as somebody who had never loved except through somebody else, knew well. For many days, Rebecca sat at Nehemiah's bed and nursed him in his illness. And Ebenezer, the first Sabra in the settlement, wou
ld carve wood and be silent and Nehemiah woke up one day, stared wearily and dully at his son and his wife and whispered: Stop weeping; extinguish the tears, you won. We'll do what you want!
She didn't know how you think about going to America without tears. There was a heat wave and a strong wind blew and people seemed to be walking like shadows seeking a foothold in corners that were like shade, but didn't stop the wind. The sky was heavy and brown. An intoxicating smell of thistles rose in her nose. She pitied Nehemiah for not leaving her and now he had to pay the price of her stubborn war, but she didn't know how to tell him that. When he recovered from his illness, Nehemiah looked like a different man. A puerile rashness seized him. He put on a light-colored suit he had bought from Hazti who came every week in a cart loaded with luxuries, and something that had always been stormy in him was now appeased. He'd walk around the settlement like a hopeless lover of it, talking with his neighbors, making new plans, preparing an irrigation system, a new community center, a paved street, planting almond trees, building a sanatorium for asthmatics. His friends looked at the man whose fields and farms were failures, whose citrus groves suffered more than others, whose wife had been weeping nonstop for eight years now, whose son carved wood, and recalled the stormy nights on the threshing floor, the dreams he tried to inspire in them and were so in love with him that they were forced to invent in their common past things that never had been and never were, to increase his image and love even more. In Nathan's house a few people gathered to celebrate Ebenezer's ninth birthday. The boy sat in a corner and didn't want to talk, just looked at them and showed them a carved bird and when he laughed he looked like a jackal. Rebecca rubbed her face and was silent. Nehemiah looked outside, drank a little wine, raised his glass and said: To a hundred and twenty Ebenezer, looked outside and through the window he saw the darkness descending, lovely roofs, citrus groves, vineyards, ornamental trees, cypresses, cowsheds, chicken coops, a suppressed smell of hay stood in the air and he told them how much he loved them and added: Doesn't Ebenezer look like me? And Nathan said he doesn't look like you, Nehemiah, but thank God, he doesn't look like anybody else either. At night, Nehemiah said to Rebecca: Let's leave Ebenezer with Nathan and go on a trip. Rebecca put on a yellow dress and wrapped a scarf and in the autumn of nineteen nine, nine years after they came to the Land of Israel, Rebecca and Nehemiah left riding on two donkeys to part from the land of Nehemiah's dream. They rode along wadis and ancient riverbeds, met groups of young Pioneers quarrying rock in remote places and living on farms in the mountains. Nehemiah said: They will succeed where we failed. They yearn less for the past and more for the future. They would conquer the Land because it's theirs, they didn't come to ask for pity but to rape the Land. In Jerusalem, Rebecca prayed at the Western Wall and Nehemiah watched her from the distance. They crossed the Jezreel Valley, rode among desolated swamps, toured the Galilee, and after a journey along the Jordan, they came to the Dead Sea, lay there on their backs, and the salt bore them and the mountains around were a shadow of something that didn't exist at all. Rebecca said: I'm looking into a mirror, and she laughed, and he loved to hear her laugh. At night, they slept embracing. Never had they loved one another so much. She almost forgot her body's longing for Joseph. Nehemiah's courtesy was only salt poured on the violent and seductive sweetness. Something is dying in him, she said to herself, and something else is maybe lit. She began to be filled with hope and regret at the same time.
