THROUGHOUT ALL the Galilee, and as far as Gedera in the South, there had spread the tale of the battle of Mishkan Yaacov, the tale of how the Chaimovitch boy, Gidon, alone on the ridge, had saved the evacuated village from total destruction. A young man like that was made for the Shomer, that was certain.
But Gidon was not certain he wanted the life of a shomer. One sundown he had a serious talk with his brother-in-law Menahem who, after the disaster, had been sent by the Shomer to take over the night rounds from Zev the Hotblood. During his free hours in the day, Menahem had come over to help the family cut a last field of forage. It was a brazen day, the heat not even lifting in the late afternoon, and when the rest of the family drove homeward, collapsed on the high-piled hay wagon, Gidon chose to go down and dip himself in the river.
Menahem walked along with him, not only because it was still unwise for Gidon to move about alone, but because the time had come to talk out Gidon’s plans. Of his being welcome in the Shomer there would be no question, and besides the Shomer could send him out of the area, at least for a time, and this was desirable. So after their first life-reviving plunge in the stream, Menahem brought up the subject. “Have you given some thought, Gidon, to life as a shomer?”
Gidon stood still, letting the feeling of the water’s freshness seep all through his body. His brother-in-law’s sinews were like strips of dried meat; Menahem brushed off the clinging droplets of water, a thing done. Sometimes Gidon wondered whether Menahem savored anything in life.
Everyone, Gidon knew, expected him to join the Shomer. And how could he say to Menahem, himself a watchman, what he thought of such a life, spent riding the rounds on the lookout for thieves in the fields? The riding itself, if the mount was good, and in the freedom of the night, could doubtless bring times of wondrous satisfaction. But where was the accomplishment in catching some miserable thief loading sheaves onto a donkey? Or even in firing at some marauder sneaking toward a stable? In order to have the satisfaction of planting and working the land, Menahem himself gave the free hours of his afternoons to labor in the field. “I’ve thought about it,” Gidon said to Menahem. “The Shomer is important. But to me—I like to work in the stable, in the fields …”
With his dark penetrating glance, Menahem seemed to have read Gidon’s unspoken thought. “True, riding the rounds doesn’t give a man the satisfaction of direct productivity,” he said. “That is why the Shomer has built its own settlement at Gilboa, so that we can alternate our duties, and take part in productivity as well.”
“I know,” said Gidon. But this aspect too, the cooperativa, did not strongly attract him. “One has to be that kind of a person,” he said, “and I don’t think I am that kind of a person. I am not so much an idealist as Reuven and you others. I want to have my own place.”
“I am not so much an idealist myself,” Menahem shrugged, with that shadowy tight-lipped smile of his. “For me, the kvutsa is a practical way.” But there were also members of the Shomer who kept up their own farms, he reminded Gidon—like Shabbatai Zeira in Sejera. Gidon nodded; that was true—and yet …
Menahem was still studying him, measuring him, as though deciding how much more to say to him. Dipping under the water, Gidon let himself soak until the freshness penetrated all through him, and when he came up, he saw that Menahem too had dipped under and was aglitter, even smiling with freshness and well-being. “And then,” Menahem continued, “you know that riding watch is not all there is to it.”
Gidon knew. He knew there was something more, something mysterious, secret … he even felt he understood what it was, though he would not have been able to explain it. So he nodded seriously, sensing that now his brother-in-law would speak of these important things.
Menahem did, and he didn’t. First he repeated what everyone took for granted; yet by naming these matters, man to man in nakedness, there was a trustful acceptance of Gidon as one who had earned his initiation into manly responsibility. —The Yishuv was growing at last, Menahem reminded Gidon. The workers were becoming stronger even though they were still seriously split amongst themselves. One day, who knew how it would come about, the Jews would become a nation here. The whole world was on the brink of an explosion, perhaps war, perhaps revolution, and in this upheaval an opportunity might come and the Jews must be ready to seize it.
Here in the land the best men, the most determined men, must stand banded together, alert and disciplined. And wise. For this reason some of the most able chaverim had been sent to study in Constantinople. This was why a brilliant and educated man like Galil, who was a doctor of jurisprudence, had become a shomer, and why Galil and an educated woman like Nadina remained as simple members of the cooperativa—to be part of the movement. And Gidon must remember that a network of watchmen spread out and working all over the land was an ideal instrument for keeping in touch with all that was happening everywhere, so that when the time came it would be they who were prepared and could take control.
Gidon nodded automatically; naturally, this was something he had always understood. Only a second later, from the sheen in Menahem’s eyes, it came to him that this was the whole secret.
It was like what had happened when he was still in cheder in the old country, and the melamed had one day started talking about the hidden meaning of the words of the Bible, the code of gematria which used the number-value of each letter in a word to make other words. Every boy knew that there was a cabbala and that skinny half-starved talmudists went about hinting that the power of the universe was secretly known to them. But if they were masters of such power, why did they live such miserable lives?
Something of this, Gidon felt toward Menahem, who when in the mood could weave fantastic tales of his adventures all over the world, always with those glowing eyes of vision. How could a handful of watchmen one day seize control of the whole land? From whom? From the Turks?
“—and remember,” Menahem added, as they emerged now from the water, and pulled on their clothes, “it is not as though we are unopposed even in the Yishuv itself.” Others too were planning to be the leaders of a future Jewish nation, and the entire, all-important question of what kind of Jewish nation would some day be built in the land was perhaps to be decided now, in the beginning. Around Zichron, doubtless Gidon had heard, the sons of the Baron’s settlers had organized a secret society, meeting in a cave. The young brothers of Aaron Aaronson, the famous agronomist, together with Avshalom Feinberg the poet and a few more do-nothings, were setting up their own patrols, they galloped around on Arab steeds to protect the flower of Jewish maidenhood, it seemed—
“The Sons of Nimrod!” Gidon laughed. He had heard.
“It is not entirely so simple,” Menahem said. Their element, the sons of the well-to-do planters, imagined it was their natural right to become the leaders of the Yishuv. These offspring of the Jewish effendi, the Aaronsons, the Feinbergs, and their cousins and their friends, they would establish a capitalist, landowner class and make joint cause with the rich Arab effendi to keep the land in a state of medieval feudalism. This was really what was at stake.
But then Menahem’s whole cabbala, Gidon reflected, was simply the ancient quarrel between the old and the new elements in the Yishuv, between the grove owners and the chalutzim. Had he not heard this argument ever since he came to Palestine? From Reuven and Leah, unceasingly: What kind of land will we build here? Still, his brother-in-law spoke as though tomorrow or the next day a whole nation was ready to rise into being. Gidon had never thought of the problems in such an actual way. But it could be true—things did have a beginning, and the thinkers and planners who caught hold at the beginning could guide the way that things would be. Now he was ready to take his place in life, he must perhaps choose and become part of a movement, as Menahem said, to create one kind of land or another. There was more, there was so much more to a man’s life than raising his crops.
“I’ll tell you, Menahem, I am not such a thinker as you and Reuven and Galil—I don’t so much like to read and discuss. I know, if it comes to matters like what kind of country this will be, I know I am with you. But for myself—” he stood still, and gazed beyond Menahem over the fields. Was he the sort of fellow to be participating in secret, far-reaching plans and therefore in the responsibility of guiding the fate of a whole people? “For myself, maybe I will just stay here.” Already Abba was consulting with him about the plantings, the stable, as though to say one day the meshek would be his. “I feel the best for me,” Gidon repeated, as he and Menahem walked soberly, their bodies cool and comfortable now, over the stubble, “the best is to stay a farmer.”
—Yes, perhaps, Menahem agreed, that was the best. Such young men, solidly grown to the soil, were the ideal. Only just now for a time it was not quite safe for Gidon to remain here; the Mukhtar of Dja’adi had himself hinted at it. There had been too much talk of Gidon’s remaining behind alone. Even though the Zbeh had made off with the entire herd, and had their blood revenge, they could still be murderous. Moving freely about, Gidon could be a tempting target. In the opinion of the Shomer, he should go elsewhere for a time. During the winter months, at least.
Leah too had been prodding him. The village was moribund, especially since the troubles. And in Jaffa, in Rehovot, he might meet a girl.
—He could learn something of orange growing, Menahem suggested, for here too, with irrigation, as Reuven insisted, there might be crops of gold.
—Perhaps, Gidon laughed, but he couldn’t really see himself as a wealthy pardessan! But he had indeed been thinking he might go off to learn something, perhaps to learn about animal diseases as Reuven had suggested. He had been thinking of working for a time for a veterinary.
As Gidon and Menahem reached the farmyard, with a feeling of richer understanding between them, a figure appeared, riding on a horse Gidon recognized from a distance. It was a tired mare that Reuven’s kvutsa had used for years to haul the water-barrel wagon; now that a pump had been installed, it was everybody’s riding horse. But the rider was neither Reuven nor any of their chevreh. Wearing breeches, boots, and a Russian cap, he sat erect as if on the finest mount. Though Gidon saw him for the first time, he was sure who this must be, and indeed Menahem called at once, “It’s Trumpeldor.”
Who did not know of Trumpeldor! The soldier-hero who had once and for all shown the Russians what Jews were made of, demanding to go back and fight even after he had lost his arm in battle, at Port Arthur. The first Jew to be made an officer in the Russian army. And then, despite the invitation of the Czar himself to remain in the army and rise higher, he had refused, so as to come as a chalutz to Eretz Yisroel. One heard of Josef Trumpeldor laboring at Migdal, attending Zionist congresses, appearing at workers’ assemblies to call for labor unity—and lately he had been staying and working at Reuven’s kvutsa, HaKeren.
Even in the sound of his “Shalom,” Trumpledor’s heavy Russian accent could be heard. It was to have a look at this very young man, Gidon Chaimovitch, that he had come, Trumpeldor declared, and he sat stiff-backed, gazing on Gidon, looking him over from head to foot, like a general reviewing troops. But on his long, serious face there was a small self-permitted smile—it even had a certain sweetness.
Already the entire family stood in a fringe by the gate, and Feigel was bustling the girls back into the house to make tea, to prepare the table—see what a guest! Eliza and Yaffaleh went inside, but Leah stayed a while with the men.
He had not particularly looked at her. In the talk, naturally, Trumpeldor included her, a chavera.
As every unwed woman toward every unwed man, Leah had instantly made the additions and subtractions—could she help it? That he stood fully as tall as she, as soon as he dismounted she had measured with her eye. Moreover, she had already known he was tall, she had read descriptions of the hero, she had heard talk of him among the chaveroth. How was it that although he had already been in the land more than a year she had not yet encountered Josef Trumpeldor? First, he had been with his own kvutsa, the group that had come together with him from Russia, and there, as everyone knew, Trumpeldor had his loved one, from his university days after the Russo-Japanese War, a doctoress who had joined him in St. Petersburg. But the kvutsa had not endured—there had even been a suicide among them—and the love affair too had died; the doctoress had gone back to Russia.
Despite, or perhaps even because of, his lost arm, many girls were said to be in love with Trumpeldor. He was indeed handsome, a noble-looking man. Once, Rahel had encountered him at a meeting and she had spoken about him to Leah—Josef Trumpeldor could be of great use to their movement, Rahel had remarked. Out of normal curiosity Leah had guided Rahel’s talk to the personal side, about his arm. One quickly forgot about it, Rahel said, while Leah was thinking: of course if a woman loved a man such a thing wouldn’t matter. But even to Rahel she hadn’t dared utter her real wonderings, about whether at night, with an artificial arm—was it taken off or was it kept attached? She was ashamed of her speculation.
With his single arm he did the hardest work in the field, the chevreh said. He was a vegetarian too, she had heard—just like her brother. Purposely Leah had refrained from going to HaKeren lately. Let fate arrange it, if anything was to be.
In every smallest detail, the hero now questioned Gidon about the attack; as Gidon was modest, there were moments when others in the family put in the answers for him, but Trumpeldor would hold up his hand for them to allow Gidon himself to explain. The military man’s questions were so precise that Gidon became very lively, talking more freely than ever before, even drawing lines with a stick on the ground to show exactly what had happened; they were like a pair of good workmen discussing a piece of construction. It was gladdening to watch and hear them. And presently, straightening up from the map on the ground, Trumpeldor declared to Gidon, “You did well. Excellent.”
It was a final judgment. The whole family glowed.
Leah had moved closer, and as Trumpeldor straightened, she saw for certain that he was even a touch taller than she, but of course he was in boots and she was barefoot. He spoke directly to her now, declaring, “Such are the young men we need.” And yet in that same moment her heaviness came upon her. He hadn’t seen her. He had made his remark the way one does to anyone nearby in a meeting, and as they moved toward the house he continued to speak in phrases one heard over and over at meetings, only it was as though these thoughts had just come to him. He discoursed on the need for self-defense, on the need for personal labor on the soil; he declared that while a laboring family was an excellent unit, he himself preferred a cooperativa. He had reflected much about the principles of communism and the principles of nationalism, and had concluded they were not in contradiction; they went together, for just as each communa could become a unit in a nation, so each nation could be a unit in a world of nations. Hence the ideal of internationalism, of a unified world, could come only through the perfection of nations. But the first task here in the Yishuv was to create unity, unity among the workers’ organizations.
And as they sat down to the table, Leah sorrowfully concluded within herself that the spark was not there between them. Despite all that would have been right, despite their belief in the same ideas, and his tallness, she must not expect anything to happen. He was a man closed from others. Women had loved him, it was true, but perhaps this remoteness was why he was still by himself. Perhaps it was indeed because of the severed arm, for while he made a point of doing with his one arm all that everyone did with two, Trumpeldor became offended, she had heard, should anyone attempt even in the most natural way to give him a hand—as by putting a dish within reach of his good side.
While Menahem and Trumpeldor carried on the discussion, and while she herself even put in an occasional remark, such as a comment about the role of the woman in the Yishuv, and while Trumpeldor praised Mama’s blintzes—Leah suddenly perceived there was one who was indeed falling in love, totally, touchingly and absurdly, with the Captain.
It was little Yaffaleh.
Though everyone at the table hung on his words, Yaffaleh turned with his turning, breathed with his breathing, her every movement an echo of his every movement, as though she were in some way part of him. And when she was still, she watched him, transfixed, as are all creatures when the spell comes upon them.
Leah saw it, and because of the fantasies she had allowed to run so far within herself, what she saw in Yaffaleh gave her a pang of anguish, for even the most grotesque attachment was something real. How pitiable it was, not to be an ordinary, pretty girl like Eliza! Eliza would never have to worry whether she could attract the man who moved her. But to be too large or to be an ungainly lump—oh, what a stupid trouble the body was in a woman’s life!
Though Yaffaleh was to everyone still the little goose-girl absorbed in her flock and her flower garden, she had grown to a woman’s form, with heavy breasts unbalancing her short body. She had the full lower jowls, nearly without a neck, of her mother. At times, when she led her flock down to the river, Yaffaleh’s solid, firm body with its stocky legs, appeared to Leah to have its own beauty of movement, but she knew that her little sister thought of herself as ugly. And just now Leah saw that their mother too recognized what was suddenly taking place in the child. A glance went between them, a flash of consternation yet of tenderness and even amusement, for this was still a child. Why then did Leah feel a stabbing premonition for Yaffaleh? She knew the girl’s poesy, and precisely because of her secluded nature, because of her unattractiveness, even from so premature a dream, pain might come.
From the stove, Feigel called to the child and gave her more blintzes for the visitor, and Yaffaleh served him, quietly, without trembling. When he looked up to thank her, in his well-mannered way, Leah saw an illumination come into Yaffaleh’s face that dispelled all heaviness and made her momentarily even beautiful.
Now the conversation among the men turned to mules and horses, and as they spoke the Captain kept looking to Gidon for his opinion. Clearly, Trumpeldor was drawing Gidon out, and Gidon’s love for animals, his knowledge of their ways, showed at once. With relish he told the tale of Klugeh, the clever cow who had fed the orphan calf.
“You know what I think?” the Captain remarked to Tateh. “Your son should study for a year with a veterinary.”
“But that was just what we were talking of, only today,” Menahem interposed.
“I myself studied veterinary medicine in Russia, in preparation for coming here,” Trumpeldor went on. What had he not studied! First dentistry, then jurisprudence, it was known, and now it became clear that he was also an accomplished veterinary! More easily now, more humanly, he spoke, and so deftly did he manage his blintzes and his tea that all at once you noticed that you had no longer been noticing. Also, he was the sort of man who, once an idea came to him, went on to think of every detail connected with it. There was an excellent horse-doctor in Jaffa whom he knew, a Dr. Gustav Mintz, and he would send Gidon to his friend with strong recommendations. In that way Gidon would be out of reach of a stupid reprisal here, and at the same time he would be developing his natural inclination and learning something that would always be of great use, whether or not he chose to follow it as a profession.
Then, at once, the hero turned to a consequent problem. Could they manage the farm without Gidon? He gazed around the table and his eyes stopped on Leah. At last he was really looking at her. “I hear you are equal to any man in the field,” he said.
Even so she flushed. He knew of her.
Schmulik intervened. “I’m already bigger than Gidon was when he started to help Abba, and I can do everything. I can plow, I can keep up in the reaping.” Now even the youngest, Mati, announced, as though the Captain had taken command here, that as for Schmulik’s work around the barn, he could do all of it.
“School will be starting,” Eliza reminded Mati.
“Then what? What is school, what do we learn there?”
“You’ll go to school!” the Captain decreed, and as Mati’s mouth opened to protest and suddenly closed, everyone laughed. “But every morning before school,” Trumpeldor consoled him, “you will water the animals, and after school you can help in the fields.”
Mati looked from the man to Leah and then back to the man again, as though it was between these two that things were decided. How tantalizingly the world was made, Leah felt—so as sometimes to give you a glimpse of how good and right things could be! The voice of a man to a child, a family in warm agreement around a table—But only because it could be good, you must not let yourself believe that things would fall out that way. Yet you must not believe that they couldn’t.
Menahem had the news first, from a fellow-shomer who passed, riding north; the war had broken out, there in Europe. An Austrian archduke had been assassinated somewhere. Austria had declared war on Serbia, Russia had declared war on Austria, Germany on Russia, France on Germany: the whole applecart was upset, armies were spilling forth in all directions.
Now least of all could Leah remain tied to the homestead. In this remote village, torpid under the oppressive heat of the summer’s end, her entire being strained to catch some hint of fate from the outer world. It was like the women waiting outside the cabin at the yearly secret meeting of the Shomer, for some hint of what was being decided among the men behind the closed door. And how would it affect each woman’s fate? And wanting to burst in and take part. So it was with the great nations there in Europe; surely the Jewish fate too was being decided.
All day now she worked in her vegetable garden near the house so she could see any wagon that drove into the village. Sometimes a driver even had a recent newspaper. But how to interpret the news? Menahem had gone to Gilboa for discussions. Even if she picked up a scrap of news here, with whom could she weigh its meaning? With her mother, only such items as might have a direct bearing on the family. First, the sons. A blessing from the Above One that they had left the Czar’s land! For otherwise Reuven and Gidon too would now be conscripted! And then Feigel worried over her brother Kalman who had remained in Cherezinka, and for his son Tuvia, who would surely now be seized for the Czar’s army.
How could Leah discuss with Mameh the thoughts that kept pounding, not so much in her mind as in her heart? Surely this was the revolution! The war would bring the Russian revolution. In some fated and mysterious way it would be the end of czardom. The revolutionists exiled in Siberia would rise up and from Siberia the revolution would spread! She did not dare name him in her thoughts or relate it all to her own fate, for this was too great a thing, too momentous for the entire world. A secret, inspired belief was in her that once the revolutzia had swept through Russia, it would inundate all Europe, and in some way it would also reach to this land. The Jews, Jews like her own Moshe—for in this new turn of events she could allow herself to think so of him—it was such as they who would bring the revolution here, so that in some way when the upheaval was over, there would be Palestine, a socialist land, open and shining and free, the chevreh like some great perpetual committee sitting in Jerusalem, a sanhedrin of chalutzim, and even the fellaheen would enjoy their entire harvest from their own fields, without landlords, without moneylenders seizing the largest part of their crops, and the Arab children, clear-eyed, free of trachoma, would go to schools in their villages, and Arab villagers would live alongside their Jewish neighbors as in a perpetual sulha.
Toward the end of the day, when the men brought in their oxen and mules from the fields, there was more of a lingering now on the town’s single street. But the Roumanians asked each other only for word of Roumania, turned to Leah to ask only if there was news of Roumania, sighing with relief that their homeland was still out of the battle. It would soon all be over: the Kaiser was strong, they declared. With whom could she talk seriously? If only she could hear the views of Dovidl, of Avner.
When her father finished his stubborn solitary evening prayer and came to sit down at the meal, there was little to be said, for Yankel Chaimovitch had only one declaration: to him all the goyim were equally evil, let them kill each other off, and let every Jew stay out of their war as best he could.
“In each country Jewish sons have to go into the army,” the mother sighed. “In the battles it is Jew against Jew.”
—Yes, Yankel admitted, that was a bitter thing, but still the French and English Jews were hardly Jews to him, or the Germans either, for that matter; it was only the Polish and Russian Jews who were really Yehudim, and for them he suffered, and yet, if they had had sense and followed God’s command and taken themselves up and come here to build up the land—
“But, Tateh, the war can also bring great changes for the Russian Jews,” Leah offered. “Out of the war may come the revolution.”
“The revolutzia! What revolutzia? The czars and the kaisers will send all your fine revolutionists to the war and kill them off!” It had always been left as though Tateh knew nothing about her Moshe, and Leah even believed that what he said now was without thought of Moshe or the pain this might still give her. —And what good was their revolutzia to the Jews? Yankel went on. It served only to make them forget they were Jews, and become godless. He spat on them all, with their wars—Czar Nicholas, Wilhelm the Kaiser, and all the revolutionists— “May the cholera overtake the lot of them!” It was the time of Babel again! Any Jew who ran to take part in their wars was a fool. “Look at your fine hero Captain Trumpeldor!” he cried. “He ran to fight the Japanese for the Czar. What for? To show that a Jew could fight. A patriot. What did he get? An arm cut off. And are there any fewer pogroms in Russia because of Trumpeldor?”
Leah caught a quick glance from her mother—let it pass, Tateh would soon stop his ranting. And on Yaffaleh’s face she saw a trembling.
* * * *
On Shabbat at last she could go over to HaKeren to hear an intelligent word. Lately the discussions there were livelier, as three young men from the first graduating class of the Herzlia Gymnasia in Tel Aviv had come to HaKeren to have a taste of working in the fields and of communal life. They were a bit too young for her, but to hear them argue with Max Wilner and Josef Trumpeldor was a pleasure. They were the brightest, at the head of their class, and they had organized a club to devote themselves to the future of the Yishuv. Each had been assigned his life task. One was being sent, like Dovidl and Avner, to study Turkish law in Damascus—he was the son of Shertok, the Jewish manager of that Arab farm where she and Rahel had once stopped on the way to Galilee. Another, a solid youth named Eli, was among the three sent to learn life in a kvutsa. He was in love with Shertok’s sister. They were bright Tel Aviv youth who were not Marxists, but who had visions of building “the just society” here in Eretz. Old Gordon often agreed with them, and Reuven too, but Trumpeldor said the youngsters of the Yishuv didn’t understand world politics.
As it was the week of the High Holy Days, Leah put on the long white abaya-dress that she had made for herself at the time Bialik came to visit Mishkan Yaacov. The chevreh, also in their Sabbath clothes, were sitting on the patch of grass that Reuven had grown in front of the cheder ochel, and, remarkably, as she approached, Trumpeldor was discoursing about some of the very things that were on her mind. Leah squatted down beside Reuven. In his clumsy, half-Russian Hebrew, Trumpeldor was declaring that without question in Russia the war would lead to the revolution. Either with victory or defeat, the revolutzia must come. “First of all, Siberia will be emptied.”
And with that word, her foolish heart leaped away. It was as though she saw Moshe coming toward her on the wagon-road. She was a hopeless case. Leah heard Trumpeldor’s voice and saw him sitting there simply as any other speaker at a meeting, an interesting man, but with no personal call to her. Still wrapped in the fantasy of the returning Moshe, she heard Reuven saying that the quickest way to socialism was for all workers everywhere to declare a peace strike. As he spoke, his face had that impractical, idealistic look that made her feel toward her brother as a mother must feel toward a little boy.
Josef Trumpeldor answered that unfortunately the masses of workers were still too backward to realize they should refuse to fight. Therefore all true revolutionists must go into the war alongside the toilers, making ready for the proper moment to turn them from the war to revolution. Only if the revolutionist fought alongside Ivan would Ivan trust him. And this was particularly true for the Jewish revolutionary leaders and therefore eventually for the Jewish cause. For after all the heart of the revolution was in Russia, and the heart of Jewry is in Russia, and there the movements must join—
“Then we should all lift up our feet and run to join the Russian army, which we came here to escape,” declared Tibor the Comical, and, leaping up with a mock flourish, he cried, “Lead on, Josef, I follow!”
An odd expression passed swiftly over Trumpeldor’s face—an expression of anger, of uncertainty—he didn’t understand such humor. He had not come to Eretz to escape military service, he declared. Actually, in the final analysis, he counted himself a pacifist—
“Except in times of war,” the irrepressible Tibor taunted, and there was a burst of laughter. Trumpeldor reddened, but meanwhile a stern voice broke in, “Chaver, about fighting, about war, men should not make jests!” It was Old Gordon who frowned on Tibor, while he lectured all of them like a teacher before forgetful pupils. “What have we here to do with violence, with slaughter, with conquests and wars? The only revolution we seek is within ourselves. We have come here, renouncing their civilization of murder and massacre and Moloch. Only when man returns to his true relationship with God in the world of nature in which God has placed him, only when man restores the balance …”
To listen to the words of the sage was always entrancing, and Reuven, Leah saw, sat in smiling enjoyment, while Old Gordon’s thin shoulders swayed back and forth as though he were praying in a shul. But from Max Wilner under his breath she heard a scoffing word to Tibor, “Our vegetarians.” And then Max began in his hard-headed manner. All this was well and good, but what were the factors that applied here and now? In his mathematical way he recited: the Turks, even though not officially at war, had already closed the Dardanelles, so the gateway out of Russia was locked. Last year’s flood of chalutzim was shut off. Whatever was to happen here would have to be faced by those who were already here.
“Exactly!” broke in the youthful Eli from Tel Aviv.
And before revolutions and before wars of the great powers, Max went on, came the basic need of the Yishuv to survive. The movement here would have to survive on its own strength alone, and this was the problem—
On all sides arguments broke out. Nahama’s Shimek declared, “Wait. As workers and socialists our fate is bound up with the revolution—”
“Our fate is bound up with our land,” cried young Eli.
“But in the end we must join hands with all our brothers—”
“But chaverim, if Turkey enters the war tomorrow, what measures should we take here and now?” Eli persisted.
The talk spread into confusion. Some said Turkey would never conscript Jews. “No, first they’ll slaughter us!” Others said conscription was certain, and even if not, the men should volunteer.—But then they might find themselves fighting their own brothers from Russia! Nahama declared it was already known that Jews would be conscripted into labor battalions. Reuven said that this would be better than having to go and kill people. Another chaver argued that the Turks might yet even join the British rather than the Germans.
A chavera said it was wrong to take the attitude that there was no difference between one side and the other: The British and the French were more democratic.
A young newcomer scoffed, “Excuse me, chavera, but the social democratic movement is a thousand times further advanced in Germany than in England.”
Side-arguments broke out. Trumpeldor had become silent.
Leah had a longing for the voice of Avner, of Dovidl—they would know what to think. Where were they? And Rahel? Scattered in France, in Constantinople. Would they even be able to come home? What would become of them?
How could Leah sit still by the Jordan? The very next day she took herself up, boarding a wagon that had suddenly appeared from Jaffa—Kalman the Drayman had come to buy wheat, Jaffa’s warehouses were already empty. And banks were already without currency, he recounted. Merchants were accepting only gold, and there wasn’t a napoleon to be had anywhere. Ships were ceasing to sail.
Running back into the yard where Eliza was hanging out the washing, Leah said, “Tell Mama I have been called to an urgent meeting of the Women Workers.” For even as a full grown woman Leah was unable to deceive Feigel to her face. It was not that she was such a moralist—to avoid hurting a person’s feelings, she was ready to tell a small lie—but in her mother there was such an intuition that Leah would blush like a child if she tried even the most innocent deception. “Tell Mama I’ll bring back Gidon from Jaffa for Succoth,” Leah added.
In Jaffa it was as though she had been summoned. For even as the wagon neared the town, Leah could see a vessel arriving in the port, with the little Arab boats going out to meet it. On impulse—there might be news—she hurried directly to the harbor, and so it appeared as though she had come expressly to greet Rahel, who leaped out of the first skiff into her arms.
“Have you heard anything of Dovidl? of Avner?” each blurted to the other, and then Rahel cried, “How did you know I was coming on this ship—not a soul knows! I didn’t even telegraph my family. Have you seen them?”
“I went to Gilboa last week especially to ask for news of you. Everyone is well.”
“But, Leachka, how did you know I was coming on this ship?”
“You see I knew!” Leah laughed. “In my heart something told me!”
And they hugged each other, and in blurts and both talking at the same time, each told and asked what had happened, what would happen, would the war be short or long.
Rahel had not forgotten to bring a gift for Leah, and then and there she opened her valise to find it, a most wonderful book of drawings of the dancer Isadora Duncan, “She reminded me of you!” And in the midst of the port, as Leah studied the pictures, oblivious to pushing and jostling, Rahel gave her an account of the dancer’s recital she had seen in Paris. “Oh, Paris, such theater, such culture, such art!” And the socialist spirit! On their Fourteenth-of-July holiday, Rahel had followed the great Socialist leader Jaurès, and in the vast mass of people she had heard him call out for the workers of the world to stage a universal strike for peace!
“This is exactly what Reuven was saying!” Leah cried.
But Rahel went on, “And now Jaurès is assassinated, and they have started their war!” Rahel clutched Leah’s arm. “Leah, it’s a world of assassins we live in!”
Rahel had to go at once to Jerusalem, perhaps there was word there from Avner. Her thesis was accepted, and she now held a degree in agronomy, but she was still ignorant, she confided—she still couldn’t grow a tomato.
“We will have to begin to grow things, in time of war it is necessary. Leah, I thought it all out on the boat: If the war comes here, we women must grow vegetables—you will have to take charge and show everyone how!”
She would go to Jerusalem by the first train—she had just enough money left for a ticket, for Leah as well—Leah must come with her to Jerusalem.
Just as they were climbing the stone stairway to the abode of Misha, the party secretary, over by the Old City wall, Leah heard the news shouted by Misha to a chaver who was just starting down: a telegram at last from Avner and Dovidl! The pair of them were on the way back from Constantinople. In a few days they should arrive.
But a week went by without a sign. German submarines, it was said, were already sinking ships in the Mediterranean. Rumors came that, although the Turks had not yet declared war, in Constantinople they were arresting Russian subjects. Who first? Russian Jews. In Jerusalem flour was to be had only in secret, and sugar was ten times its former price. Then one afternoon, when Rahel and Leah had gone to Misha’s place to help him put out an emergency issue of the paper, there, climbing the outside stairway, the pair of lost travelers suddenly appeared, carrying huge roped-up suitcases. For once Rahel fell so completely into Avner’s arms that Leah’s heart choked up. As though her own Moshe had walked in from Siberia. After all, between Rahel and Avner too perhaps something had gone wrong—they had been separated for nearly two years. But see—once in each other’s presence, everything was swept away.
In the midst of the first rush of questions, Leah and Dovidl paused to share a good laugh at the “unsentimental” reunited couple. Then Dovidl was demanding: How bad was unemployment? What was the situation in the grape harvest? How quickly could a sitting be called? And in Galilee, Leah? What was the situation in Galilee? But he looked so haggard and half-starved, she rushed first to Misha’s larder to fix him some food. Two weeks the pair had been on the sea, for a three-day journey. Only by half-words could the events be dragged out of them.
“Nu, what does it matter what happened, we got here!” Dovidl said. It had been a Russian ship, and first it had made a stop in Smyrna. “Listen, we must hold a unity conference. At once, of all the workers’ parties. Try to get Max Wilner to come to Jerusalem—”
“A Russian ship?” Rahel repeated, alarmed. “But Germany is sinking Russian ships!”
“We sailed the day they declared war,” Avner remarked. “It was also the Ninth of Ab.”
“We had two hundred Hasidim from Bessarabia, and from their howling you would have thought the Temple had fallen for a third time!” Dovidl said.
His plan was to establish a massive united workers’ organization while allowing each group to retain its own membership; because of the crisis, even the stubborn Max and his followers might now join. But before the unity conference, they must hold a caucus of their own leaders to decide how far such autonomy should go. What he had in mind was an overall central committee with two from each party and perhaps one independent, perhaps Josef Trumpeldor—
“He is at HaKeren,” Leah offered. “But then, from Smyrna why did it take you so long to get here? What happened?”
“The Russian captain refused to move out from the Smyrna harbor—there were two German battleships running around there somewhere—”
“We heard, even on my boat we heard about them, the Goeben and the Breslin, oh, they were terribly dangerous!” Rahel cried as though the men were still in danger.
“Ach!” Dovidl made his contemptuous little lip movement, like someone who would spit except that it is beneath him. So their terrified Russian captain, nothing but a drunken Ivan, had locked himself into his cabin with a whole wicker basket of vodka bottles, and the ship lay at anchor in Smyrna. At night the vessel was black as the sea, not a match could be struck. The Hasidim in the hold kept crying out their lamentation like at the Wailing Wall.
“I told them, Yidden, why do you need to go to Jerusalem? You carry your own wall with you!”
And in another human heap in the hold were Moslems from Turkestan on their way to pray at their black stone in Mecca, and all they did night and day was to repeat “Ya Allah Il Allah.” Finally Dovidl and Avner had got together with a few Syrian students who were hurrying home from Constantinople to Beirut. One of them had a revolver—a nationalist, with this he was going to raise a revolt against Turkish rule—but meanwhile they had used it to persuade their Captain Ivan Ivanovitch that the Smyrna harbor was the most dangerous place of all for a Russian ship, since the Turks were entering the war against the Czar and would therefore at any moment come and seize his vessel. “Nu—” as if that was the whole of it—“on the third day we got him to sail on.”
“But why did it take so long from Beirut, then?”
Oh, the captain hadn’t at once put in at Beirut. They had given the simpleton such a scare that he was afraid he would be seized in the Beirut harbor as well, and so he had sailed straight down to Port Said. There, with the Czar’s allies, the Royal British Navy, all around him, Ivan felt his ship was safe, and he went back to his vodka.
“Then how did you get home?”
Making his little shrugging movement, Dovidl absorbed himself in the printer’s proofs for the emergency issue they were getting out. The leading article must be changed, there should be a unity proclamation …
But Leah knew Dovidl, he would tell his story, it amused him to tell it this way. How good she felt here with her old friends again, in Misha’s room, the headquarters. How she loved them all, how much better was such love than the tormenting love that was liebe. “So what did you do then, Dovidl?”
“Do?” They held a unity conference on the ship, the pair of them with an orange grower from Rishon Le Zion who was also on the boat. “That bandit Zukofsky, he never hired a Jewish worker in his life, he used to bring in Arabs even from Syria.” And there were still the Syrian students who had to get back to Beirut. Everyone gave up his last grosh for bribe money, and with a considerable sum they had managed to rouse the captain from his drunken stupor. “He went around the port and found us a small Greek cargo ship.” It flew a Persian flag and seemed safe from German attack, so the Russian had chartered it and crowded everyone aboard, Hasidim and all. Since it was only a short trip from Port Said to Jaffa, he had taken on no food or water, and having no money left, they themselves had made no provision, either. But the moujik of a captain had not forgotten his basket of vodka bottles, and thus he had lingered for three days along the Sinai shore, while they starved. The Russian was in terror that if he approached the Jaffa port, the Turks would take him prisoner. Suddenly he had decided to sail them back to Egypt.
To make the story shorter than the trip, Dovidl concluded, he and Avner, together with the Syrian students, had staged a little revolutzia, and at pistol point the captain had finally brought the ship to Beirut.
“But Jaffa is on the way …”
“The Syrians had the pistol. Let that be a lesson to us.”
The Arab students disembarked; they were home. But as for the Jews, being Russian subjects none were permitted to land.
Just then, Avner interrupted with a whole discussion about the Arab students. The two nationalists were intelligent young men, from his own law classes in Constantinople. Their movement was small and secret, but serious. They saw the war as their opportunity to win Syrian autonomy from the Turks—
“But we had one on our boat as well!” Rahel broke in. “From Damascus. A doctor who had studied in Paris, from one of the high Arab families, Nuri el Khouri was his name. We can work with them, in the end I am convinced they will understand our movement. The Arabs will have all of Arabia. The first thing is for all of us to work together against the Turks, to win autonomy.”
—But how could this be done? asked Misha, with the blinking puzzled look he had when anything was not in order. When Turkey entered the war—all of them here were surely not about to become traitors?
“Ach! We are speaking as socialists! In the long run—”
“But you just said the first thing,” Misha repeated.
“It is a historic necessity,” Rahel explained impatiently.
“But then how did you get here from Beirut?” Leah persisted.
“What does a Jew do? He looks for another Jew,” said Avner. Zukofsky the pardessan—even such a bandit can have his uses—paid an Arab to get a message to the leader of Beirut’s Jewish community, a wealthy importer belonging to an ancient family there, and this Jew had found a French vessel in the port and got them transferred to it, Hasidim and all, and thus, on the twelfth day of their voyage, they had come to Jaffa. The Beirut Jew through his connections with the Turks had already opened the way so that they were allowed to debark.
Already, word of the arrival of Avner and Dovidl had spread, and the door kept opening every second. Soon Misha left it open altogether, and chevreh halfway down the stairs were calling up greetings and relaying questions. Constantinople, Avner said, was swarming with German officers; Turkey would unquestionably enter the war at any moment now on the German side. And at that moment, every Russian Jew here in the Yishuv would be regarded as an enemy. “They will round us up. They may deport us. Who can tell what the Turk will do?”
There was only one solution that would enable them to stay in the land and protect what had been built up. “All those who still hold Russian nationality—” and this meant the great majority of the chalutzim—“must at once become Ottoman subjects.” There was not a day to lose. The announcement must be proclaimed in this very issue of the paper.
A tumult began. Why—then a man could be conscripted to fight for the Turks! Was there no other way?
“That is exactly the point,” Dovidl called out. “We should not even wait to be conscripted. We should volunteer. We should begin at once to organize a Jewish volunteer corps.”
Had he gone mad on that ship? Did he perhaps want to become another Shabbatai Zevi and turn himself into a Moslem as well?
But on the boat the pair of them had thought it all out and come to this decision. Even before leaving Constantinople, they had examined the possibilities with the head of the Zionist bureau there. The reasoning was plain. Not Turkey but Germany was the power. Through Syria and down through Palestine was the way for Kaiser Wilhelm to Suez. Already his generals were planning to strike down, through the Sinai. The chances of victory in the war were with the Germans; if the Jews in Palestine supported their side, the Zionist position would be strengthened. After all, wasn’t the World Zionist headquarters just now in Berlin?
Murmurs and doubts arose. The Germans had already been halted, they had not reached Paris, and if their first thrust failed, they might not succeed at all. And what of the British fleet? And Russia’s unlimited manpower? Suppose Germany and Turkey should lose the war? Why let the Zionist fate hinge on the victory of one side or the other? There must be a full discussion. There must be instructions from abroad—
“Chevreh, we have no choice!” The moment Turkey entered the war, Avner pointed out, they became either enemies or patriots. What the Jews in the rest of the world did, did not matter so much. “Even if the Kaiser should lose the war, the Russians and the British and French could not blame us for having fought on the side of the country we live in, just as their own Jews will fight on their side. But if we hold back from fighting, both sides will despise us. And meanwhile the Turks would be capable of destroying the entire Yishuv.”
There was not a day to lose. Dovidl caught hold of Leah. “Leahleh, it’s a good thing you’re here. You must go back at once to Gilboa and explain the program.” She must go to Nadina and Galil—best that Galil himself should come at once to Jerusalem, or even better—they should all meet in Tel Aviv for a sitting, in the little house on the sand; she must leave word also in Yavniel.
And what about Josef Trumpeldor? Shouldn’t Josef be asked to come? Leah suggested.
The Russian war hero, to join the Turks? In Dovidl’s shrewd eyes she could almost read the lightning of his reasoning. Trumpeldor to head an all-Jewish fighting unit for the Turks! What a stroke it would be! But wait, Dovidl decided, first there must be a conference only for the party leaders. Then—
To become an Ottoman. There was something absurd in it. To be a Russian Jew seemed natural; even here in Eretz as part of the Yishuv, Leah had thought of herself as Russian. Tolstoy and Dostoievsky and Chekhov were somehow like Jewish writers, and the Russian revolutionary movement also was like something Jewish. But the Turks—with their indolence and cruelty—she felt a kind of revulsion in her flesh, as though pressed to lie down with a man who was repulsive to her. And suddenly the notion came, if she should one day have a child—a little Turk with a tarboosh on his head! And then it even came to Leah that in taking the Turkish nationality she would in some peculiar way be still further separated from Moshe.
But as Avner explained, it would not really be the Turks but the Germans they would be joining, and even in Herzl’s time, Avner pointed out, this same German Kaiser had been in favor of Zionism. On a diplomatic visit to Palestine, Kaiser Wilhelm had met Herzl in Mikveh Israel and spoken good words for the Zionist movement, though at the time nothing had come of it.
Still, Leah felt, the Jewish masses were in Russia—no, it was all like some complicated chess game, and she had never had a head for chess, there were too many things to take into account, and at least one of the possible moves you were sure not to see. A world of brotherhood … perhaps it would indeed come after the war, and then it wouldn’t matter what the government was named, so long as you lived your life. Just as here, even with the Turks, they had managed to restore Hebrew and build their own way of life in spite of all.
Turkey entered the war. Already there was a proclamation: enemy nationals must become Ottomans or face deportation. From Rahel in Jerusalem, Leah received a heavy package of forms that the chevreh had at once printed up. Though who knew what sort of papers the Turks would require, these forms were to be signed at once to show the desire for Ottomanization. Leah was to go to every house in Mishkan Yaacov and also in Tiberias. Every man must sign an application.
Her Roumanian neighbors balked. Roumania was still neutral, why should they sign? Once Ottomans, their sons would be taken for the army. Bronescu himself spread the word, don’t sign any papers. Wait. There is always time to sign. Nor were the two other Russian Jewish families in the village in a hurry to sign; they accepted the papers and said they would see—none had sons of military age.
In Tiberias, Leah even penetrated the narrow byways to the courtyards of the pious, who had thin, pallid sons with long payess, as in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem. Never had she been in these houses. With his head turned so as not to be looking at a strange woman, a Talmud sage explained to her—already he knew every twist. The best was to arrange for Austrian nationality; with a small payment it could be arranged with the Austrian consul in Safed, and then your son was safe. Others said a conscript could be bought out for a thousand francs, a vast sum, but money must be found; rather than go about with papers to sign, she must go about collecting funds. Leah even found herself at the gate of a yeshiva where the master, unusually young-looking, again keeping his eyes turned away, rapidly inundated her with examples from the Talmud and the commentaries; at the end of his dissertation, she realized that, although he pronounced himself in agreement with her, he had proved that while Jews must everywhere follow the law of the land, even the Ottomans could not seize rabbinical students as conscripts. He snatched a bundle of her applications, as though to throw them away, yet carried them inside.
In the south, trouble had already begun. On the Sabbath, the chief shomer of the region, Motke, brought back tales to Gilboa: a new Kaymakam had appeared in Jaffa and at once issued a ukase forbidding Jews to be watchmen. No Jew could carry arms. Some of the planters were listing their Jewish watchmen under Arab names. Turks were commandeering horses, mules, wagons from the settlements. Sometimes they took drivers with their carts, saying they would be paid a day-rate—shukra, it was called. It appeared that all sorts of supplies were being hauled to Beersheba, surely for an assault on the British canal. In Rehovot, a German and a Turkish commander had appeared together in an automobile, stopping only to order the mukhtar to deliver ten thousand sacks in twenty-four hours! Sacks? Of what? Of nothing! Empty sacks! At least, a blessing from heaven, it was only empty sacks they demanded! They intended to fill them with sand in the desert and throw them into the canal, to block it up! A clever plan of a Turkish general! Where would you find ten thousand empty sacks overnight? Galloping from barn to barn, the mukhtar of Rehovot had made everyone empty out their sacks. He had sent a wagon to Jaffa to buy up all that were available. In the town hall children were set to counting; they became befuddled, but in the end it didn’t matter, as the Turks never returned to collect the sacks, but instead, Motke the shomer told them bitterly, a band of Arab laborers came and began to tear away irrigation pipes, hauling them off on camels toward Beersheba—for a water-supply into the Sinai, it was said, though later the pipes were seen rusting alongside a camel-track.
Returning home with all the news from Gilboa, Leah, with Schmuel and Mati, helped Tateh dig a large pit under the barn, where they hid all the grain that remained. And then she was on the way again, to Jerusalem. There, Rahel had a whole new stack of naturalization forms; this time they were official, and Leah must go back and have them filled out. But now there was a tax on each head, and each day the price was being raised. If not—deportation!
Dovidl and Avner already had fifty volunteers for a special Jewish militia in the Turkish Army, and for this too Leah must find candidates in Galilee, pointing out to them that in this way the Jews would fight as a unit. That was of greatest importance. Already the plan was being proposed to Djemal Pasha, the new commander in Damascus—a whole Jewish brigade in the Turkish Army.
But also from Rahel, Leah heard a terrifying story. When Rahel had gone with the papers into the Old City, where the narrow lanes of the Jewish quarter were twisted up with the lanes of the Armenian quarter, she had been told of frightful whispers among the Armenians. How the news came one hardly knew—there were no letters any more—some said that word had been brought by a priest. But in the Armenian area that lay between Russia and Turkey, ghastly massacres were taking place. The Turks had always hated the Armenians, Moslems hating Christians. Now they were destroying entire villages. Worse than pogroms. They took away all the men except the old ones—who knew where to? nothing was heard—then they hanged the elders, burned and looted the houses, raped the women, and finally drove women and children out onto the roads to the desert to die. It was a barbarity not to be believed. If this was what was meant by deportation, then at once, every Jew must sign and become Ottomanized!
In Tel Aviv an emergency council had been formed by the mayor and other town notables; they had taken over all the stocks of flour, they were printing a kind of scrip to be guaranteed by the banks, they had sent cables to important American Jews for emergency help. By good fortune the American Ambassador to Turkey was a Jew, a millionaire named Morgenthau who had only a few months before himself visited the Yishuv; he had even been in HaKeren and had complimented Reuven on his Garden of Eden. This American Jew would intervene with the Turks not to deal harshly with the Jews.