IN EVERY squad, since the mule-corps decision, half were missing; doggedly Trumpeldor re-formed the units. One by one, he explained to the doubters that in an army all were the same, there were cooks, there were messengers, there were artillery men who were far in the rear, and also sudden changes came about so that sometimes a transport unit turned into front-line troops. Certain of the recruits, he saw, even seemed pleased, believing that their chances of being killed would be less. Shrugging, Josef let them believe it.
The journalist received a cable and was gone, first urging them all not to lose heart, he would fight up to the highest in London, for the Jewish army as a combat force!
Among those who left the ranks was Araleh. To go and fight as a soldier, yes, he would leave Saraleh and their Dudu here—but not for the sake of an army mule would he leave his wife and child!
Yet presently there appeared a handsome British officer in a handsomely tailored uniform; he watched their drilling, went away, and next day returned, and made them a speech, translated by one of the Nissims. Just as they were proud Jews, he was a proud Irishman, and he considered it an honor to be assigned to be their commander. Indeed, to be the commander of the first Jewish troops since the time of Bar Kochba would be the greatest honor of his career, the greatest honor that any soldier could ask for!
Josef would of course remain as their Captain, but, since he scarcely knew a word of English, this regular army officer was assigned to link them to the service. And wasn’t that proof that the British took them seriously? And what had this Irishman not done? He had led troops in Africa and India, he had fought lions barehanded; if such an Irish warrior was ready to command a troop of mule transport, what was there to be ashamed of!
Soon the men received their uniforms and good strong shoes, and the women from Eretz sewed Stars of David on their caps.
Araleh and Saraleh had found Papa Zuckerman’s business friend, a Levantine Jew with a small pointed beard and a perennial smile; Judah Musara had moved them into a two-room apartment, and there Gidon carried his insignia, watching Saraleh’s smoothly combed head, bent over the sewing, and the flash of her teeth as she bit off the thread.
The Turks had indeed made a wild attack on the canal and been torn to pieces by waiting cannon. In headlong flight the survivors had flung away their rifles, and here now stood the Irishman over a cartload of weapons, declaring again that he felt like Moses about to lead the Jews from Egypt—imagine, an Irish Moses, he jested—and to each man he handed his gun. Gidon knew the weapon well, a heavy long-barreled musket such as Shabbatai Zeira used to buy for the Shomer in Damascus, paying the price of a camel for each one. And into his fingers, as he held the musket, the very moment returned when he had brought down two enemies. A slow solid determination now settled into Gidon that he was doing what needed to be done.
In full uniform with packs they marched, one blazing day, through the streets of Alexandria, the Shield of David on their caps, and their ancient rifles against their shoulders with bayonets to the sky. A full three miles they marched while little boys, Jewish and Egyptian too, ran along and cheered, and in the doorways of Jewish-owned shops stood their owners, paunchy men like Jewish shopkeepers anywhere in the world, and Gidon saw more than one of them wiping his knuckles across his eyes; on the balconies were women and girls, and even behind the harem grilles of Arab houses, one glimpsed the faces of women.
They marched to the great synagogue built like a Moorish mosque, and were blessed in Sephardic Hebrew by the chief rabbi who had a beard almost as long as his tallis. The next morning Araleh came running, he could not after all endure to stay behind. A whole flood of dandy young Nissims also appeared, with their red-sashed servants carrying their boxes of luggage, and one of them, after he had received his uniform, even placed his foot on his box for his servant to lace his boots. The Irishman watched, with that British smile of amusement; he let it be, and even solemnly dropped a wink to Gidon.
To the new recruits, Gidon explained their weapon. It was each time a thing of wonder to watch the look that came over the face of a man as he took his rifle like his own fate into his hands. The first feel of a weapon, declared Herscheleh the Newspaper, was like the first time with a woman—for some it was a joyous union of love, and for some it was a simple need of which they were half-ashamed. At times Herscheleh would produce such remarks, as from a wisdom-book of his own making.
For Gidon the matter of womankind was still a half-hated need. Even in Jaffa he had known which was the lane of the houses of shame, and many times had wandered through it, half-decided to enter and once and for all rid himself of the need. What had kept him back was a kind of fear of what it would be one day to lie with his loved one and have such memories intervening. All might be spoiled. And also there were diseases. Long ago Reuven had told him that most of the blindness one saw among the Arabs was caused by syphilis. Children were born with it, from the disease of their fathers.
And so he still suffered.
Here in Alexandria, Herscheleh would lead Gidon and a whole flock of the lads through the lanes of cribs, expertly evaluating each whore as from wide experience. But the waiting lines of British soldiers made a man’s heart mourn for himself and for all humanity. How man had defiled what was good in life, not only with killing but with whoring. These thoughts Gidon kept to himself while he joined with the others in filthy manly jesting.
Yet what was before him? His twenty-first birthday was approaching, it would come a few days before Pesach, and soon he was going into battle. He might be killed without ever having known what it felt like to enter a woman’s flesh.
One thing the British had taken care of. Soldiers were issued with little rolled-up sheaths of rubber to protect them against disease; in Eretz he had never actually seen such a thing. One night under his blanket Gidon used one and found that every sensation was felt through the thin covering. Now he remembered remarks of certain young men at home; this thing, then, was also used, even in free love, to make sure that the chavera did not conceive. Rising before reveille, careful not to have it seen, he dropped the little sack into the latrine.
In the evenings what was there to do? Watch the card-players? Roam the streets a bit with the Arab boys tugging at your jacket, offering zigzig with their sisters, themselves, or simply begging? With Herscheleh and Tuvia, a hairy-nosed maker of cement blocks from Tel Aviv, Gidon had formed a trio. Tuvia was open with his desires; they would be moving off in a few days now, that was clear from the sudden burst of activity in the harbor. A hole was a hole, he said, what did a hairy-nose like himself have to expect in life? All his life he had gone to whores, and a good whore was as good as some babbling chavera who made a great affair of it and led you on and you had to tell her you loved her—pah, a good whore was the best, but it had to be a decent show, not a line in a crib. Whereupon Herschel declared he could lead them to the real thing, real French girls—he had made the acquaintance of someone who knew.
Gidon did not tell his chums it was his twenty-first birthday. To have them know would have demeaned the occasion even further. Let it be only between him and himself.
At home, birthdays were celebrated only because of Leah. She never forgot. They were not big celebrations such as you read about if you read Tolstoy and Pushkin and all such, stories about nobility and birthday balls and sumptuous nameday gifts—something that was done among the goyim. But in the family there would be little gifts, a magnifying glass Leah had once bought him, and for the girls he always bought ribbons, and for Eliza even scents, in Tiberias.
Gidon had saved his pay and now told himself with a jeer at the world, if it happened tonight, let it happen, his birthday present to himself, a man of twenty-one.
Herschel led them first to a belly-dance cafe where they saw the usual fat women rolling their bare stomachs; there, an oily-haired young man sat down with them. Greek, even half-Jewish, he claimed—who knew what. The place to which he would now take them was not open to all comers. Indeed it was the secret dwelling of a pair of exquisite young French girls who were maintained in luxury by two of the wealthiest pashas of Alexandria. Since such men were fat and old and not free every night from their families, he winked, the French girls were eager for company … No, not expensive—indeed, if the girls took a liking to you—
And so they went.
It proved not precisely as the pimp had said, though at least it was no cribhouse with a waiting line. In a walled lane, behind the whoring district, a Senegalese opened the door, recognized their guest, and admitted them to a carpeted salon smelling thickly of incense. Presently a woman entered, her huge bosom half-bursting out of her spangled gown, her face heavily powdered. With inward resignation Gidon recognized her as what life offered to him—a madam, this must be—and after she had extracted orders for champagne from them all—the while Gidon calculated his funds—she spoke a few words into the hallway, in French, and then several scantily-dressed girls came into the salon. One was in a filmy chemise such as he had once secretly fingered among Eliza’s things, and another wore a loose open robe showing her black lace underwear, while a third wore a spangled ball gown cut so low that you could see the inner sides of her breasts, though not quite the nipples. At once, Tuvia put his hairy arm around this one and went off with her down the hallway. Herschel sat down with the first one, the one that wore the filmy chemise, and the one in the open robe came and sat on Gidon’s knee. At least she smelled clean and looked young. She called him chéri, and half in gestures, half in French words, conveyed that she came from Marseilles, even singing the refrain of the French anthem, laughing happily when he understood. And he? Palestina? “Yahud?” she cried, and deftly unbuttoning his fly, she took his member out, touching the circumcised tip and laughing triumphantly at her divination. Somehow, though still in the open salon with Herscheleh, he did not even feel embarrassed.
After a moment Gidon followed the girl to a small chamber containing a divan and pillows. She peered closely at his member, gave it a quick squeeze for disease, he guessed, and then lay down, motioning to him. It did not really matter that they kept their clothes on, for he could not have held back, even to undress. The sensation, the relief as he plunged into her was like the balm of the plunge into the Kinnereth when your body and head were at the end of endurance, suffocating and dazed with the pulsing heat of an endless hamseen.
The girl’s eyes were open and her face seemed to him to be dreamy. The pleasure—it was truly something entirely unlike what he had ever felt when ashamedly doing it to himself. But he could not prolong the pleasure and she laughed with a girlish knowingness, and rose. Then he saw her going behind a screen of arabesques; she must be washing her parts, and he had a moment of depressed bitterness, even a sense of filth. It came to Gidon’s mind that he had already brought down two men in death, before he entered a woman. And had those two died without knowing what this was? He had not even seen their faces, to know whether they were young or older.
And what was this after all? It was like when some men drank so as to make themselves feel less miserable, except—as Herscheleh might jest—instead of taking something into yourself, you let something out. Gidon did not want to think of it as like a poison that you let out, like the stuff of a boil that was burst. No, no, there must still be joy to be found in it, when it was different, when it was with a girl you cared for. Yet this relief, this was why, despite all, men went to prostitutes. Something in him mourned that such had been the first time for him, and also that he alone knew.
In spite of all, he was trying already to recapture the pleasure of it. The girl emerged; Gidon noticed she was carrying a basin, with a little towel; approaching, she bent and laved his penis with lukewarm water, smiling, it seemed to him, really naturally. Perhaps, as it was said, such girls really liked what they did. At least she was pleasant, and young, and careful of cleanliness. He experienced a lightening of heart; she looked at him and said, “Bon? Good?” as she dried him with the little towel. Instantly his member was erect and throbbing, and she laughed her girlish laugh as though this was a compliment to her. On impulse Gidon said, practicing his new-learned English, “It’s my birthday.”
“Birt-day? Oh, yes—birsday! You? Today? How many?”
“Twenty-one,” he said.
She repeated it on her fingers, twice, both hands, then a single finger, laughing. She gazed quietly into his face. Pointing to herself, the girl said, “I—twenty.” Again she put up both hands, twice. Then, setting aside the basin, she came to him and with one movement pulled the black lace chemise over her head and was naked. It was the first time Gidon had seen the whole nakedness, and this somehow affected him more than his blind thrust into her. Now she began to tug away his clothing.
Gidon flushed. “I—no more money.” He made a gesture of turned-out pockets.
“Birs-day present!” the girl laughed. And touching her finger between her breasts, “I—Nicole.”
He repeated her name. “Nicole.”
This time he did not discharge so soon, he continued carefully to make it last, and she made sounds of rapture and breathed heavily, and let out a great happy sigh at his climax.
When she was leading him from the room, Gidon gave her the few coins left in his pocket, and the girl said, “You come back. Ask for me. Nicole. Yes?” At the door she tipped up on her toes and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth. It was like the swift innocent kiss of a schoolmate, Miraleh, long ago in Cherezinka when he became Bar Mitzvah.
No, it wasn’t so bad with a whore. Gidon felt almost as though he had won to himself a woman’s affection. He wondered, could she have known it was not only his birthday but his first time? With a girl, a man could know for certain, Fawzi had told him, and even tried to show him with his fingers. If he got a wife, he would do that at once, Fawzi said, and if she was not a virgin, he would kill her, it was allowed! How could a man do that, put his fingers there, with a girl he had just taken to wife, and whom he loved? But of course with them it was different, they had tribal customs. Then Gidon wondered, could a woman also know it, of a man? If he ever found his true woman—and almost certainly, for the kind of girl with whom he would fall in love, it would be her first time—would he let her believe that he too came as a virgin?
Perhaps tonight something had been spoiled for him. What of Reuven? Could it really be that Reuven still kept himself pure? Now came a whole confusion of feelings, of thoughts, Gidon even thought of Saraleh, and if Araleh were killed, and should she come to love him, with a widow it would not be the first time, and yet in this, a man was not supposed to feel it mattered. Why was that so?
Herschel was waiting for him, smirking. Almost angry because Herschel seemed to know it was his first time, Gidon only grunted at the Newspaper’s eager “How was it? Did you know what to do?”
“All right. She was clean,” Gidon said, and wondered in himself if he would ever tell of this to a loved one, even his wife. Fortunately Herschel went on to give all the details, true or fancied, of his own whoring, and left Gidon to his silence.
Mules were brought in ships from Corfu, and again the men became certain it was in Palestine they would land, for these mules were particularly used to such rocky, hilly terrain; the rumors about the Adriatic were only a ruse. All day Gidon labored in the corrals at the call of the Irishman, sorting the animals, examining donkeys brought for sale by Egyptian fellaheen. Speaking Arabic, he haunted the souk with the commander for bridles, for saddles; he searched out carpenters to make frames for the water-tins to be loaded onto the mules. The time for sailing was near, the great enterprise had enfevered the entire city. Then oddly at their moment of going forth came Pesach.
Araleh and Saraleh would go to the Musaras, and offered to take him along, but Gidon found himself apportioned with Herschel and Tuvia and several other of the chevreh to the home of one of the Nissims.
A splendid, tall, red-sashed Senegalese—the brother, Herschel jestingly whispered to Gidon, of the servant in their French whorehouse—led them into a dining hall that combined Arabian and European splendors. Huge Venetian chandeliers hung from a ceiling of Moorish arches; along the sides of the room were little bays with nests of divans covered with striped silken sofa pillows, and a vast Persian carpet that Herschel assessed offhand at a thousand pounds sterling was spread over the tiled floor. There were carved high-backed chairs, and the table was a long white field planted with silver goblets and ancient silver candlesticks encrusted with rubies. There were Arab servants in a multitude, with soft bare feet and murmuring respectful voices.
Their host and hostess, parents of the Nissim, wore European dress, the woman in a gray silken gown with pearls everywhere, her hand smooth and soft as though it had no bones in it. A grandfather presided, wearing the long white robe that was traditional for the leader of the Seder, though his beard was fashionably trimmed and he spoke French with his family. There were small children too, a petulant-looking boy of Mati’s age who would say the four questions and who gazed on their uniforms with a curious sullen stare, as though he was not certain whether to resent them or be pleased. But it was the daughter who made Gidon sick at heart.
The mother he had seen before—was it with Jabotinsky?—coming to the barracks with baskets of good things, even brandy-filled chocolates for the brave Jewish volunteers. But now he saw the daughter, with her round sweet face echoing the mother’s, and inevitably the words from the Song of Songs resounded in his head—“dove’s eyes, thou hast dove’s eyes, and two breasts like roes in the field”—and such was not ever for him, the pure daughter of a fine house of aristocratic Egyptian Jews who were performing the mitzvah, as his father would say, of entertaining Jewish soldiers for the Seder.
“If these are the fleshpots of Egypt,” Herschel whispered, “no wonder so many of the followers of Moshe Rabenu wanted to return.”
As they were seated, with a servant behind each chair, Gidon suddenly felt as though he were already describing all this to his little brother Mati. What an upside down world it was, he would tell Mati: “There in Egypt, Jews now have Egyptians for their slaves.”
Ensconced among pillows of orange and green and saffron and purple on a throne-chair, the grandfather remarked to the guests, in a fluent Sephardic Hebrew, though to his family he spoke French, that although his descendants were only half-believers, he himself had had the good fortune of having been raised in a pious house. His ancestors, he mentioned, were Spanish Jews who had established themselves here in Alexandria long before the expulsion from Spain.
The Seder was long and meticulously carried out; the sullen boy, with just the proper degree of formal respect underlaid by a superiority to the ways of the past, rattled off the four questions. But what struck Gidon, with a secret feeling of shame as well as an impulse to share the jest with Herschel, was the moment when the beauteous daughter of the household arose from her seat to pass with a silver ewer and a little towel along the table for the hand-washing ritual. As his own turn came and she bent over so that the musk of her breasts reached him, the similarity with that laving ritual on his birthday night made him flush.
What sort of person was he being turned into? At home he had never had such cynical thoughts.
The mules were already being hoisted onto their transport vessel, kicking savagely in midair, their screams intermingled with shrill piping from the troopships, with steam whistles and braying boat-horns and military auto-horns in the port and with hoarsely shouted curses and commands. Araleh, checking a long list in his hand, called out “The saddles!” Trumpeldor himself hurried over to the Irishman, shouting above all the noise; the special saddles for the muleteers had not arrived from Cairo.
The commander seized hold of Gidon: “You come with me.” A translator might be needed—and they stormed up and down the railroad yard from one Arab dispatcher to another.
But it was Trumpeldor, galloping among the sidings, who suddenly caught sight of a carload of saddles being shunted from one train to another. Atop the heap sat a Sudanese guard, his rifle across his knees. “Ours!” Trumpeldor shouted, swinging himself by his one arm onto the moving train.
Letting out a jumble of shouts, the guard raised his rifle. Gidon caught a few words as he ran toward them.
“He says they’re for the British Desert Lancers.”
In the commotion, the engine had now been halted, while an immaculate Lancer captain sauntered up. “Saddles for the bloody Jewish muletenders?” he said to Trumpeldor. “My dear fellow, I’m requisitioning them for my Lancers. Your Jews can ride on their fat Jewish behinds.”
Josef’s face became stone. By now he understood English well enough. It was as though his entire body was about to explode from within. Leaping over the tracks, the Irishman was beside them, shouting. “Boody Jewish muletenders, are they? You’ll be begging them on your bloody knees for a drop of water. I command you, give over my saddles!” Though the Irishman’s was the higher rank, the Lancer captain drew his pistol. “Go command your rear-line sheenies. You’ve no command over me!”
Gidon was transfixed. Was this then how it was to be? Away from Russia, living in Eretz, he had indeed forgotten. Was it a great stupid mistake to believe that when Jews acted like other men, the Cossacks of the world would be changed?
The Irishman and the Lancer had faced each other down. Suddenly a staff officer hurried over, and settled the affair. The muleteers were to have their saddles.
As they returned to their transport, the Irishman seemed to feel he had to say something. Jews, Chinamen, golliwogs or bloody British dukes, all were soldiers to him, and the bloody Desert Lancers or the King’s Guard itself had no more right—
“It doesn’t matter,” Trumpeldor said stolidly, and at last Gidon felt he understood this habitual expression of Josef’s. “It doesn’t matter.”
Never had there been such an armada. As far as the eye could see, stretching like a metallic covering over the water, were the ships of their expedition. Surely, each man repeated in awe that he himself was here, that he was part of something so overwhelming, surely this was a day of historical fate.
Despite their direction out to sea, the old conviction again swept over the men of Zion—they were headed for a landing on the Palestine coast. Naturally there would be a deceptive sweep outward. No, really they were for Palestine.
And what of his brothers and sisters? Gidon wondered. Could they in some way sense his nearness?
At home, it was somehow known that a Jewish army was gathering in Alexandria. From messages written in minuscule script under postage stamps and sent through Switzerland, word had arrived in the Yishuv. Surely Gidon would not sit idly by, Gidon would join the fighters. And Mati was seized by a doomlike fear for his brothers. When the girls had lain down on their side of the room, Mati turned to Schmulik with the fear that tormented him. He saw them, on one side Reuven, who had somehow become a Turk in a tarboosh, and on the British side Gidon; they lay behind rocks, each shooting at his enemy, and suddenly Gidon leaped up in a wild charge and Reuven—Reuven must recognize Gidon at once, Reuven must stop shooting—
Schmulik laughed. Idiot. First, who knew for certain whether Gidon had joined the British, and second, the Turks anyway didn’t want Jews fighting in their army and Reuven was still at his kvutsa.
“Then who do we want to win?” This was Mati’s unending puzzlement. Even in cheder the melamed talked and talked about it, pretending that they were in the days of Zedekiah deciding whether the Jews should join the Egyptians against the Babylonians. “Remember the warning of Jeremiah! If you join the Egyptians, you bring Babylon down upon you!” And hadn’t Jeremiah proved to be right? Today it was the Turks and the British—
“They can all go to hell,” Schmulik said. “I’ll take the mules up to Gidon’s cave and hide them.”
And Eliza crossly demanded, “Keep quiet and let me sleep.”
They had become Ottomans. The Kaymakam made the men come to Tiberias to receive their papers, and rather than go by wagon and risk having the Turks seize his mules, Yankel set out by boat, together with a group from the kvutsa, Reuven among them. Each day, from Samekh, a boat sailed to Tiberias.
“So behold, a Turk already!” Tibor lifted the sweat-rimmed tarboosh from the head of the ancient Arab at the tiller and planted it on Reuven’s head. One more moment and the jester would have swept off Yankel’s hat as well—it was his Sabbath hat that Feigel had rescued from the sea—but Reuven intervened. “Tibor, let be.”
A Turk, a Russian, what could they change in a Jew? To Yankel it was as one. Perhaps the Ottomanization might at least make his landholding more secure.
Entering the black-stone compound, Yankel was seized by the same aversion that had always taken hold of him in Russia when he had to approach a government official. In the one-time fortress, the group of Jews waited. As the door opened to an inner room, they caught a few words in German, and two officers in finely tailored uniforms emerged. The few words were enough for Yankel: “… we need at least fifty pair at once.” Let cholera seize them! Instead of sitting here, he ought to rush home and hide his good pair of mules; Oved and Chazak were famous throughout the whole valley.
The Jews were called in. By some whim, the Belly wanted to hand them their Ottoman papers himself. The Kaymakam’s carpet Yankel estimated at the price of an entire harvest; no doubt his own taxes had gone into it, and part of the stolen flock had gone into the Belly as well. To the last inquiry submitted by the fawning Bronescu, there had not even been a reply.
While an Arab boy carried out the coffee-tray from the visit of the German officers, Azmani Bey peered at the group of prospective Ottoman citizens, his fat-pouched eyes like raisins in a round of Feigel’s dough.
“So it takes a war to make you want to become Ottoman,” he squeaked, but in good humor. “You Jews are indeed cousins of the Bedouin. You know what the Bedouin say, When the foreigners fight amongst themselves, first see who will win. Then join them.” He chortled. “So I suppose you Jews are now giving us a sign of confidence.” Lifting up a ready packet of documents, he remarked directly to Yankel, “As an Ottoman, who knows but what you might have had a better claim for your lost herd of cattle?” The mamser, he would stick a needle into his mother’s heart. And to the men from the kvutsa, showing he knew their thoughts as well, the Kaymakam remarked with amused malice, “When we defeat the Russians and your Czar falls, then everyone says you will have a revolution and socialism. But have you taken thought, chaverim, if you meanwhile have become Ottoman subjects, how will you go back to join your revolution?” His little eyes glittered and there was a giggle in his voice.
“Our life is in this land, no matter who rules Russia,” Max Wilner declared.
“—and your aim is to rule here yourselves!” The voice squeaked up to a higher pitch, but still with a tone of knowing jest.
“Haven’t we all requested to join your army?”
“Even your pacifists?” Oh, he knew them, he knew them every one. Then the Belly added, “But we have declared this war is a jihad. Only the faithful are called on to fight! So do you also want to become Moslems so as to join our army?” He chortled again. “But never fear, we will perhaps call on you for other services, now that you have become loyal Ottomani.” And he handed them the packet of documents, to sort out amongst themselves.
Soon enough the Kaymakam paid his visit to the area, arriving with an entourage of mounted officers, a few militiamen, and a pair of Germans whose polished boots remained miraculously immaculate in the dust.
When they really wanted to, everyone agreed, the Turks could suddenly emerge out of their indolence and disorder into fits of energetic activity, descending on you, as at tax collection time, with complete lists of men and beasts, plantings and reapings, with inflexible decisions where no baksheesh helped, at least at the start.
So it was now. In each village, Jewish and Arab, the commandancy made its halt. First they were in Dja’adi, and without even waiting for the second coffee-cup, Azmani Bey produced his list. Every son of the village was written down, those who were married, those who were unmarried, those married ones whose wives had no brothers to support them, and so through each category. Three militiamen started the rounds to gather the conscripts. Meanwhile a Turkish officer with a German at his side searched through the town requisitioning horses. Not the most heartrending plea, nor the cleverest guile, could turn them aside. As luck would have it, young Fawzi, Gidon’s friend, just then came clattering into the village with clusters of partridge dangling on both sides of his saddle, and at the sight of his spirited steed the German officer’s eyes opened in delight. Fawzi was simple and proud enough to praise her. The German even offered a good price rather than requisitioning, but Fawzi turned away with a gush of tears. His uncle Mansour the mukhtar, and also the ancient Ibrim, indeed every man of the village spoke at once for Fawzi, trying to save him his steed; then, though by the regulations he might have avoided conscription, Fawzi declared if they took his horse, let them take him too, if he could but stay with his steed. Here was the true love of the Arab for his horse! the German cried out, and took Fawzi along to care for the mount.
* * * *
At the first glimpse of the dust cloud raised by the Kaymakam’s requisitioning party, Schmulik had made off from the fields with Oved and Chazak.
“Two pair! two pair!” the Turkish officer howled in the Chaimovitch yard, striking the list in his hand. But one pair had been sold off, Yankel protested, explaining that since his son Gidon had gone to Jaffa he had no need of the added work animals.
Leaning from his carriage, the Belly, his eyes now like chips of basalt, screeched, “Oved and Chazak! You would sell your daughters first!” And then with his giggle, “Produce them, or my boys will take your daughters instead! … Where’s that big girl of yours, the she-ox, she’s enough to take care of a whole platoon!”
Choosing to ignore the vulgar taunting, Yankel repeated, “Look for yourself, all is open to you! The animals were sold in Jaffa!” Feigel came hurrying from the house with chopped liver for the Belly, and for the time being, Yankel managed to get out of the situation with only a command to report with his remaining mules and wagon to the station at Samekh to haul war materials.
To the triumph of Issachar Bronescu, who had advised against hasty Ottomanization, not a son of a Roumanian was conscripted for the labor battalions; only a few settlers with their mules were called to “work shukrah” at Samekh.
In the kvutsa, too, it was first the mules and horses that were commandeered, but then the Kaymakam demanded three labor conscripts to start with. They could choose the three themselves, he added, with his sly glint.
At once, Reuven stepped out of the assembled circle to volunteer. There had already been considerable discussion about what to do should this situation arise. A sum had even been set aside, enough to buy off two labor conscripts. And certain members had been agreed upon as indispensable to the kvutsa—if called, they must be bought out. Max as secretary was essential. Nahama’s Shimek, in charge of the dairy, also could not be spared. Reuven had been on that list as well, but nevertheless he now stepped forward.
A general cry of protest arose. “No!” And Max even cried out to Reuven, “It has been decided! No!” For a moment, Reuven was torn by the thought that the decision of the group was above his own. On the other hand, if the kvutsa itself had to pick those who must go, bad feeling was inevitable, there would be charges of revenge over old quarrels, of favored ones who were protected. And perhaps he was even being selfishly cunning, for who knew but that as the war progressed the Turks might decide to take Jews as fighters? Better to be in a labor battalion.
Old Gordon gazed on him, with the eyes that saw one’s inner motive, and came over and gripped his arm, muttering the traditional words of encouragement, “Chazak v’ amotz”—“Be strong and courageous.”
A hesitation could be seen around the circle. Several of the newer lads who had arrived during the year from Russia eyed each other questioningly. “Two more! Choose!” The Kaymakam was enjoying himself. Max turned his head. The will of the whole group seemed to point to a notorious lazy one named Feivel, who complained no matter what work he was assigned to. It was even doubtful if at the end of his year of trial, he would be voted a full member.
Before Max could speak his name, he cried out, “Not me! You can’t order me! I’m not a full member! I’m leaving the kvutsa!”
In the momentary confusion, the Kaymakam’s smile blossomed. The fat finger pointed. This young man would come, and as he was not even a member, he would not be counted in the quota. Two more please!
“Chaverim! Don’t give him the satisfaction of a dispute between us!” Shimek passed the word. A pair of excellent boys who had arrived together and bunked together now went over voluntarily, alongside Reuven. A pity to lose such hands. It was always the most decent, Nahama remarked loudly, who took the worst on themselves.
In the compound in Tiberias, Reuven found himself separated from the boys, and then sent with a rabble of roadbuilders up toward Nazareth. Encamped in winter misery on a field of mud and stones on the spur of the range, the conscripts were led out by mounted guards to be placed all along the roadbed, which mostly followed the old carriage track. In swarms so thick there was hardly room for them to squat side by side in the stone-breaking area, and without hammers for each, so that most used rock on rock, amidst quarrels, outbreaks of fighting, with the overseer galloping among them, his knout lashing down, and men tumbling over each other to escape the hooves and the lash, the mass of laborers, Bedouin prisoners, Christian Arabs, village Arabs, sullen, brutalized, were driven as though by sheer numbers alone they would instantly lay down a road here for the use of the huge motor cars of the German commander who had decided on a headquarters at Nazareth. The road was also quickly needed, Reuven saw, for the haulage of heavy, ancient Turkish cannon waiting to be placed on the heights, to destroy an enemy advance should British warships land an army to cut across the plain toward Damascus.
In one heaving pandemonium, beasts and slaves were already dragging up the artillery pieces. Frantic hands were barely given time to put down a bed of stones in front of the cannon wheels. To clear the way, others labored ahead with mules and drag ropes and wild outcries, pulling down trees from the wooded hillside. Only, Reuven saw, with the trees gone, the roadbed would soon slide away.
His own task, in this turmoil, was to chip stones. The food ration was a handful of rough-ground flour, with a few dried dates, each day, and the conscript laborer had to find some way to bake his flour. At mealtimes, Reuven got together with a few Christian Arabs, one a schoolmaster from Kfar Kana named Issa, and they made a small fire, to bake their flour into pittah. Inevitably he thought of the slavery in Egypt under the knout of the taskmaster, and in some remote way was satisfied that he was undergoing this too, though hardly another Jew was to be found here. The Jews had all bought their way out, the Arabs remarked, not without a touch of admiration. —And why hadn’t he?
At night they lay on the ground, their little group all together, the Arabs wrapped in their abayas; fortunately Shimek’s Nahama had run for a blanket and pressed it on him before he was marched off.
In only a few days, most of the fellaheen dripped with dysentery; the Turks whipped them, befouled, to their labor. Reuven had trained his body to need little, to withstand much, and now he did his utmost to keep clear of infection. In the labor too, he must save the strength of his arms, and he followed the wisdom of the fellaheen, minimizing his effort the moment the overseer had gone by. Yet how long could a man endure? In other times of hardship, as when they had first arrived at the Kinnereth, and all had gone through the fever, Reuven had noticed that there came a rock-bottom time when you either succumbed, or knew you had become rock and would endure. He felt this moment coming once more.
One day he recognized, by the mud-streaked remnants of a good shirt and trousers on a new arrival, another Jew. But—he saw—it was the youngest of the Aaronsons, from Zichron! The young brother of the famous agronomist! How did he come here? Despite all the past hostility over labor disputes in Zichron, Reuven could not deny in himself the bond to another Jew. Young Aaronson approached. He was barefoot—thieves had on the first night stolen the boots off his feet. Wanting to show the Turks the mettle of a Jew, he had volunteered to fight, but it had been his bad luck, the lad spat out, to fall under the authority of the mukhtar of Nablus, a bandit who had always made trouble for Zichron, and who had promptly thrown him into the labor battalion. If he could but get word to his family—his brother Aaron had high influence, even with Djemal Pasha himself—he would be saved. The next day, already sick with dysentery, young Aaronson came begging Reuven to escape with him—he had a plan, but it needed two.
The thought of escape had come to Reuven; if escape meant the preservation of life, it would be right, for this was a foolish and wasteful way to die. But stubbornly something required him to remain to the utmost with the wretched. Besides, of all the Aaronsons, this one was the most unendurable to him; the older brother, despite his wrong views on Jewish labor, was a man who justified his life with his researches for the development of the land. This one had never put his hand to toil, and it was almost an act of justice that they had sent him here.
As to joining in the escape, Reuven was spared a decision. That very afternoon, Aaron Aaronson himself appeared to ransom his young brother. On seeing Reuven, he called out, “But what are you doing in this?”
“Like everyone else,” Reuven said.
“You’d better get out while you still have your health.”
“When the fellaheen see a Jew caught here, no better off than themselves, they lose all respect for us,” the young brother remarked.
The retort that rose to Reuven’s lips he held back: “When they see every Jew buying himself out, they’ll have only hatred for us.”
Several more days he endured, until at last the feeling arose that even to this his body was becoming accustomed. With Issa and a few others Reuven had managed to form that simple camaraderie of men who even in the worst condition watch out for each other. An overseer, noticing that if given a portion of work to themselves they labored well together, and thus eased his own responsibility, kept much out of their way.
On the day of Reuven’s fate, their portion on the roadbed came as far as a certain tree, before which Reuven straightened up in awe. It was one of those ancient trees of Abraham, a tamarisk grown to an unusually broad trunk and spreading splendor, jutting out of the steep hillside overlooking the Emek, its roots partly arching out of the soil like great gnarled fingers gripping the earth. Standing just at the edge of the new roadbed, the tree was doomed. Already a noose lay around the upper trunk and a whole flock of conscripts labored to pull the tree down.
Involuntarily Reuven shouted to them, “Let it stand!”
Issa came up beside him and instantly concurred. This was a tree of legend, the schoolmaster declared; it was said to be from Abraham the father of us all, who from this very spot had gazed out upon the land-that his seed would inherit. And Abraham himself was said to have planted this tree to celebrate the pledge.
—It could not really be that old, Reuven reflected, but no matter. It would be a simple matter to deflect the road a bit and let the tree remain. Besides, to pull it out would open the way to erosion; already the soil around its bared upper roots had been washed away.
Oddly, the impulse to save the tree had spread amongst the whole crowd of conscripts, even those who were now bringing mules to haul it down. They hesitated, and he heard remarks among them, in awe, in superstition: this ancient tree was not meant to be brought down.
“No need!” Reuven called, and fell to work deflecting the roadbed, his mattock flashing in swift strokes, singing against the stones. A dozen men fell in with him; for half an hour and more they all worked together. Outbreaks of laughter were heard and bits of song. None noticed the approach of a mounted officer with a scimitar nose, brandishing a saber. Where they had swerved the roadbed, the officer reined up abruptly, mastering his rearing steed.
“What is this?” He was in the midst of them, roaring. On a swerve like this a speeding motor car could overturn! Straight! The road must run straight! “Who did this? On whose orders?” Then he noticed the tree, the ropes still around its trunk. Glaring as though he would push it down by the force of his own anger, he shouted, “If you can’t pull it down, bring axes! Where is the engineer? Who is responsible for this?”
“It’s the tree of Abraham, sir,” Reuven said, stepping toward the officer. “We wanted to save it.”
The same annihilating glare was now turned on Reuven. Tree of Abraham! Tree of the Jewish devil! A foul Jewish trick was here! A speeding army motor car could smash right into that cursed tree!
It was Reuven’s fate that he again tried to reason. —If the tree were to be pulled out, the roadbed could wash away into the gully, he said, pointing.
“Who are you? The engineer?” The Turk spat.
And again—sealing his fate—Reuven began to importune him. Worriedly the schoolmaster, Issa, edged up to the stubborn Jew—didn’t Reuven realize who this officer was? “Bahad” he whispered. Bahad-ad-Din, the notorious. But in Reuven, an uncontrollable urge was alight—the tree! It could never reach him that men might exist who were not moved by such a work of God; his heart still was filled with the joy of the way in which the simplest, the most wretched of labor conscripts had set to work to save the giant tamarisk. “But why kill such a tree needlessly?” he cried out. “We can save it!”
“Bring stones!” the Turk commanded. “Out with this damned tree, and block up the gully with rocks.” As for the Jew—he turned again on Reuven, and there lighted in his eyes that peculiar gleam that was known to all—the gleam that came when Bahad-ad-Din was inspired to some new cruelty. The Jew was so fond of Abraham’s tree, was he? Let him embrace it. Put his arms around it—at once! Bahad-ad-Din pointed his saber toward a pair of Bedouin in whose eyes he had already recognized an answering gleam to his own, and hardly knowing what was happening, Reuven found himself seized by this pair and pushed against the tree, his arms wrenched as far as they would reach to embrace the enormous trunk. He could scarcely keep his hold, his fingers searching for a grip in the ancient wrinkled bark. “Tie him!” the Turk commanded, now with amused satisfaction in his tone, as though he felt well disposed toward the victim who was helping carry out his clever thought.
If they tied him with the loop that bound the tree, then as they pulled it down Reuven would almost surely be cut in two. From the crowd of conscripts who watched now with almost sporting interest, only Issa’s eyes reached to Reuven, intense and strong, as though to support him through his last trouble. Then quickly, as the two Bedouin fumbled to loosen the noose around the tree, Issa threw them a second rope. Only this, Reuven felt, might save him. They were tying him under the Turk’s instructions, a knot around his left wrist, and around the entire tree trunk and then one around his right wrist, so tight that the skin was already torn. Then his ankles, then a length around his waist, pressing him into the tree, so that he had to turn his head, the cheek against the bark. “Tighter, tighter!” Bahad-ad-Din called. “Closer! Like love!” This brought a gust of obscene approbation. Some of the men took up the sport, “Find the hole, Jew! Stick it in! Up the ass hole of your Abraham the Jew!”
Dazedly, weepingly, his soul protested over what came upon mankind. And just before, they had cried out for Father Abraham as their own, too. And still something within Reuven calculated for survival—if the tree’s branches should break the fall, he might not be crushed. And if he should live, if his skull did not strike on a rock when the tree was brought down, oh then, he could even see these same devils helping him to climb out, and bringing him a gulp of arak to share the great jest with them. No, this could not be his death. His entire life was not calculated for this. This could not be his death.
Already a lusty roaring came, a cracked whip over the mules, a tremendous straining from below, and it seemed to Reuven that the ancient trunk shuddered against his flesh, and that something indeed from far back, from the birthplace of time itself, and onward through aeons of godhoods imprisoned in trees, something still imbedded in the upward urge of the sap, a secret, an almost-revelation that could yet come to him before he was engulfed in the timeless stream of the hereafter, made him one with the tamarisk.
With utter joy, with enthusiasm now, Reuven’s tormentor waved his saber, “Pull!” And then the entire episode halted. Bahad-ad-Din moved briskly out of Reuven’s field of vision. The circle of men, too, faded rearward, even Issa, the shouts from below halted, and Reuven remained there alone in his suspended limbo, feeling the pulse of the air, the pulse of the tree, and a rivulet of sweat that coursed down his armpit.
All at once, like some new act in a theater, a whole group of people strode into view—a tall, helmeted German, and with him a figure recognized from photographs, Djemal Pasha himself, with his oiled, curled, Assyrian-looking beard and his flashing eyes. From others not yet in sight, something was being called to them, and the Pasha suddenly became electrified, flinging out commands, rushing at first out of Reuven’s range of sight and then back in again, this time with sword drawn, coming directly toward the tree. Was this the death?
With one slash the commander-in-chief cut the ropes away from Reuven’s body. Blood had already gone from his feet, and his legs collapsed under him as he tried to stand on the earth; in his wrists, too, there came the needle pain of the returning circulation of his blood, and he heard a blur of half-explanations and commands all around him. Then Reuven saw, behind the Pasha, and as though not unexpectedly, the firm, round countenance of Aaron Aaronson.
“Joseph out of the pit,” kept echoing in Reuven’s mind, while he heard the agronomist, as one vaunting the accomplishments of a valuable slave, heaping praises on him: this Reuven had a gifted and expert hand with plants, such as was unequaled in the whole land; it was this Reuven who had cultivated the Garden of Eden that Djemal Pasha himself had only this morning inspected at the Jewish settlement called HaKeren, and this man’s only sin here had been that he was trying to save an ancient and beautiful tree—gaze on it!
The Pasha gazed. Now, in the way things seemed to happen with Reuven, it so happened that Djemal Pasha, too, was one of those men who have a particular response to trees. Perhaps there remains in them the response that caused men in ancient times to feel that certain trees, certain groves, were God-inhabited. Though this feeling would not prevent the Pasha from ordering entire forests cut down to provide fuel for his locomotives, he nonetheless was moved when he stood before a remarkable specimen of a tree. In a spurt of poetic language, Djemal Pasha declared that he was a lover of nature, of beauty, and that before them was the noblest of trees. Damascus itself had in ancient days been a city famed for its lanes of trees, its majestic gardens, and he would make it again the seventh wonder of the world; this gardener must come with him to plant the true Garden of Eden in Damascus! This man would plant him lanes of trees leading to the palace, and in the palace grounds there must be fountains, flowerbeds, far exceeding in beauty and luxury what he had beheld in the Jewish settlement.
Then Reuven listened as Aaronson explained to the Pasha how the entire valley that lay below them, the greatest part of it still a jungled marshland, could be cultivated to match the few patches that he saw at the foot of Gilboa. The entire army could be fed from the wheat of this valley! And when the road-inspection proceeded, Reuven found himself in the third motor vehicle, between Turkish and German officers, being carried off to his new fate in Damascus.
Removed from his post as Kaymakam of Jaffa after the international outcries over his deportation ship, Bahad-ad-Din had been made a special officer on the staff of Djemal Pasha himself, with the Jewish question as his province. First to be seized had been Nadina. Descending on Gilboa, Bahad-ad-Din had arrested this dangerous Russian woman. A few weeks later, Galil was seized and taken to Damascus. Meanwhile it was not known whether Nadina remained in prison in Nazareth or had also been taken to Damascus. At last her brother, Lev Bushinsky, the wealthy Haifa engineer, was called to an important task by Djemal Pasha, and thus was able to find out that Nadina was now imprisoned in Jerusalem. There Leah was sent.
At the top of the stone stairway, the door to Misha’s lodging and secretariat was sealed. Fruit vendors in the lane only shrugged; they knew nothing. Hurrying to the courtyard where Rahel still kept a room, Leah met her friend just returning home, dispirited. Avner and Dovidl too had been arrested; they were in the Old City prison, but she couldn’t get permission to see them, she had had to hand over a whole napoleon just to learn where they were held. The party journal had been closed down because of the article describing the deportations, and Misha was in hiding with the party records.
“Nadina, here in Jerusalem?” she repeated. This, even Rahel had not known.
After gifts of money and good Rosh Pina tobacco, they were at last admitted down a dungeon stairway, beneath the Old City wall, downward and downward until they stumbled into a tiny chamber that smelled of damp stone and centuries of urine. There Nadina was, her face thinner, undaunted. While Rahel recited all the news, Nadina carried Leah’s canister of soup to her cellmate; the poor Arab woman must eat of it first, she was pregnant. “She’s tubercular, something must be done for her, look at her eyes—” they were reddish under circles of kohl. Of Avner, of Dovidl, she was certain they would be deported, but who would act in their place? The cellmate was a prostitute, incarcerated for stealing a German officer’s watch—the woman didn’t even belong in this prison in the first place, Nadina indignantly declared—she belonged in an ordinary jail, and in any case she must be hospitalized, they must see to it.
Noting down the woman’s name, Rahel meanwhile kept talking of all their problems, of the paper’s being closed down. “It must be started again underground,” Nadina declared. Perhaps—she had a thought—a place the Turks would never suspect—there was a printer in the religious community in Safed. Avner would know. They must get to see Avner.
But how? Rahel had pleaded with Bahad-ad-Din himself for permission to visit Avner as his wife. The cunning devil had demanded if they were legally married, knowing they were not, and then had refused the visit. Suddenly Nadina changed to Russian. “I think she understands Hebrew,” she said of her cellmate, “and who knows why they put her in here? Leahleh—” and at last she asked after her child.
Sitting closer to Nadina, and glowing because of the surprise she had brought, Leah uncovered from the depths of her basket a small clay pot, in which there grew a red geranium. “Buba watered it herself before I left.”
“See what my little daughter has sent me!” Nadina jumped up, holding the pot before the Arab woman, who touched it with a longing smile. “Attiya too has a child,” Nadina said. And passionately, “You see now how wise it is, Leah, that the children belong to the whole kvutsa? If they should send me and Galil also into exile, she won’t feel so deprived of her mother and father.”
A lawyer with connections in Damascus had been hired by her brother and was doing his utmost to arrange that Nadina and Galil should be exiled together, Leah told her. “Then you can take Buba with you.”
“Leah, have you lost your senses! To take the poor child away from her home, from the kvutsa! I would never make such a selfish decision!” Her tone had gone back to the other voice, the voice of discussions in the movement.
Of herself, Leah knew she could never be so disciplined. That was why Nadina was a leader. In these last times the yearning for a child had come upon Leah, even in the midst of these dreadful troubles, the war, and the arrests, the danger that the whole movement would be utterly destroyed and even the whole Yishuv. At odd moments, at the mere sight of a baby clinging to a mother, this yearning came upon her. In one way this longing relieved her: somehow, strangely, it had replaced the longing for a man. She would return to Gilboa, Leah just then decided, and ask to work in the Infants’ House. The decision eased her. “Don’t worry, I’ll look after Buba myself. Perhaps the war will be over soon, it will be only a short separation for you.”
To Dovidl and Avner, too, with a whole succession of bribes, Leah and Rahel at last managed a visit. Already the two labor leaders were judged: it was to be deportation, but not to the interior of Turkey as with Galil; these two were to be expelled from the Ottoman realm. Gone was their new Ottoman citizenship, and their application to form a Jewish fighting unit had been flung in their faces.
In the underground warrens of the citadel, beneath what was called David’s Tower, there they sat, both pallid, the color of the stone walls, but in good spirits. While Rahel talked with Avner, Leah drew Dovidl to the other corner. Though as always she had an amused desire simply to hug him—the way he held up that large head of his—she started to impart all the latest news. But Dovidl knew everything already, it must have reached him through the stone walls, and he began a whole analysis of the entire world. Perhaps more account should be taken of the French influence in the Levant. Still, he felt that the party’s Ottomanization decision had been correct; what did she think? And he gave her telegrams to send to the Poale Zion leaders in America; urgent efforts must be made to secure ship passage for Avner and himself. Among the Jewish workers in the American needle trades the Poale Zion was strong, despite the opposition of the anti-Zionist socialist Bund, though among the furriers it was said, the Bund was entrenched. Still, everything could be changed once he and Avner reached America. Besides, a quick German-Turkish victory was not at all as certain as it had appeared a few months ago. With the possibility of a stalemate or even a negotiated peace, the status of Palestine might very well become an open question. The British had thrown back the Turks from the canal, and to protect their canal they might very well, if it came to a negotiated peace, work for a special status for Palestine as a buffer area. And then, in such a situation, Zionism might come in as a solution acceptable to both sides. What did she think? Or even in the event of a possible Allied victory—
Leah listened, agreed, put in a question, all the while wondering what would happen to Dovidl in America, where he would sleep, whether he would find himself a romance—
Suddenly the jailer was ordering her and Rahel to leave. “Yallah! Yallah!” One more coin. One more moment. Now Avner and Dovidl were enjoining the two of them. Should there be no more opportunity to meet, this was the program for the movement: two points. First, arms. Jews must prepare to fight for the land. Arm themselves, however possible. In the final resort rely on no one. “Only ourselves. Be ready to fight.” Under no condition should the Shomer or any settlement give up arms, as the sons of Zichron had already done, to their eternal shame! “But Bahad-ad-Din gave them one day, or he would seize their sisters.” “Ach, threats! Even if they try to seize our women, better to use the arms than to give them up!”
The second point, Avner said, was pioneering. Redemption of the land must continue, wars or no wars. Whichever side won, the land must be redeemed. As for himself and Dovidl, wherever they were sent they would work to train pioneers. They would enroll young people.
A whole new training movement must be started—in Russia, in America, wherever there were Jews. A Legion of Workers. Arms and labor! The girls must relay this to all the chevreh. This was the two-point program!
“Yallah!” cried the jailer.
Was it the parting? Rahel and Avner gave each other a hug.
Dovidl came to the iron door. “Nu, Leah. Shalom.” Impulsively she leaned down and seized his face, planting a kiss on his cheek. They laughed. “Take care of yourself,” she admonished. “Shalom, shalom.” How she loved him. This was pure, good love.
The next morning Misha the secretary came running. “Quick, quick, to the station—”
Somehow Leah and Rahel pushed their way through to the side of the train just as it began to move, Leah pressing a path through the clutter of vendors, of Arab women, of urchins crying baksheesh, Rahel darting forward and almost reaching the window where Avner’s head stuck out. They ran alongside, losing ground. The train had already passed the end of the platform and they still ran, keeping their eyes on the window; suddenly Leah collided full tilt with a Turkish soldier who nearly tumbled over, cursed, then regained his balance. His glare turned into a lewd grin as he called to a comrade, “The big one for me, the little one for you—their men are gone!” And in clumsy Hebrew he shouted after the girls great boasts of his prowess.