WHOSE STORY does not become entwined with history? With some, as with the Aaronsons and Avshalom Feinberg and all their tragic band, it becomes history itself. And then all who were at one time or another touched by the fated ones feel even more insistently the mystery of a chance connection, a decision made, that led to some seemingly fated end.
And so the Aaronson band entered history, and scarcely a family of the Yishuv but was to be touched, and some even destroyed, by the dilemma invoked by their choice. For who in the Yishuv, shrinking and becoming more interdependent each day, did not know someone who knew someone, who had not at some given moment had to decide whether to reveal or to be silent, whether to give shelter to the hunted and abhorred, or to keep the door closed? So ridden was the Yishuv to become, so profound was the moral shock of betrayals and counter-betrayals, that for half a century afterward these questions would be shrouded in avoidance.
To the Chaimovitches as well, virtually to each in a separate way, to Leah, to Reuven, to Gidon again, to Yankel, even to the boys, the question had to come.
As he had announced to Gidon, Avshalom Feinberg was brought back by Captain Walters’ patrol boat, and in the moonless night rowed to the rocky cove of the Crusader ruins at Athlit; with all his baggage of gifts from men of the Mule Corps and from others in Alexandria, he clambered ashore, carrying also—in his head—a code of smoke signals that would be given by the vessel each time it passed, so that information that had meanwhile been gathered might be brought down and transmitted when the ship circled back at night.
All this in elation Avshalom Feinberg related to Aaron Aaronson, in the upstairs laboratory of the agricultural station. And then began their adventure, with its hiding places under the floor, its secret repositories in the walls, both here and in Aaronson’s cottage in Zichron, across the courtyard from the family house. There came the growing chain of informants, first, two cousins of Avshalom’s in Chedera, romantic boys as he was, who worshiped the young poet, and then another cousin in a settlement below Rehovot, also in awe of Avshalom, and then a few trusted Sons of Nimrod; and from Aaron Aaronson’s side, a Jewish doctor in the Turkish army, and through this one, another, and so the chain grew. It was to have its name, later, at the height of its activities: the Nili, the group called themselves, putting together the first letters of each word of a Biblical line, Netzach Yisroel Lo Yishakareh, that is, literally, “The Lord of Israel Will Not Lie”; but “lie” is not the real sense of the phrase; perhaps it should be “misuse” or “betray” or “fail” us. And so they believed.
With the gifts and messages from Egypt, Avshalom was so reckless that he would seem to have been straining any promise of protection from the Lord of Israel. On the wrapping paper of the elegant box of loukhoums which he brought as a gift from Gidon to Shulamith, Nahum found printed the name of a noted Alexandria sweetshop, Groppi.
Yet who could find fault with such a messenger, one who had seen and spoken with Gidon and could describe to Mama how well and strong her son looked, and assure her that he had come out of the long battle unscathed and would now be safe! Feigel fingered and stroked the French-made crocheted shawl brought as his gift, and even longer she caressed the insignia with the Shield of David that Gidon had taken from his uniform and sent for Mati. From hand to hand this went, with Mati nearly bursting before it came at last to him, and only Menahem, in the family assembled to hear news of Gidon, was quick enough to stop the boy from rushing out to show the emblem to the whole village.
“Idiot!” Schmulik scolded him; Schmulik would have wanted the badge himself, though to him Gidon had sent an actual photograph of the whole group, his squad in the Zion muleteers, standing side by side with Josef Trumpeldor.
Only later was Avshalom able to manage a serious talk with Menahem. Now that he had made the contact in Alexandria, things would develop. What was needed first and urgently was information, to show the British Intelligence officer what Jews could accomplish. Most essential was information about troop movements, and Avshalom had already thought out a plan. Every rail movement into Palestine passed through Fuleh. Someone selling refreshments at the station could easily keep track. And Gilboa was close by. One of their women? Menahem was already shaking his head. The whole matter had been decided the first time Avshalom approached them, and the decision would not change; it was not even wise to bring up the question again, since secrecy was essential.
And what about Menahem himself? He agreed with that policy?
“Our task is to defend the Yishuv, as best we can. Not to place it in further danger. With that I agree, completely.”
But Avshalom was not done. Something unsaid passed between the two men. Somewhere, at some point, Menahem must feel in agreement with the purpose and the plan. Menahem himself moved about a great deal, he might come upon useful information …
In the end there was this much: If ever there was something that, for the safety of the Yishuv, it was urgent for England to know, Menahem would make a personal decision. No, he wanted no codes, no encounters, no secret connections. “If anything of this sort should happen, I’ll find a way to get it to you.”
Already the information they had collected seemed urgent and vital. From one of the Herzlia Gymnasia graduates who had been made a Turkish lieutenant and was stationed as an interpreter in Damascus, Aaron Aaronson learned of a violent disagreement between Djemal Pasha and the German commander, Kress von Kressenstein. Fearing intrigues and revolt among Arab tribes, Djemal wanted to reinforce the outposts of the Ottoman Empire in Mecca. The German insisted on using all their forces in a massive second assault on the Suez Canal, with all possible speed. New squadrons of German fliers had appeared and were stationed in Dagania. Gaza was being fortified with heavier artillery—Avshalom had even obtained the details of the emplacements, the size of the guns. All this was coded and the papers wrapped in a package sealed in oilcloth, ready to hand over; day after day they watched the sea, but no smoke signal came. The time for two sailings went by. Surely something had gone wrong. The information would not keep. Suddenly Avshalom rode off and was gone.
On a smugglers’ track south of Beersheba, the rider was stopped by a Turkish patrol. The local commander was unconvinced by the tale of a renewed locust invasion, and sent Avshalom under guard to Beersheba, presently to be turned over to the Germans; he might have been summarily hanged had not Zev the Hotblood, now a watchman in the area, heard of the arrest, galloped with the news to Aaron Aaronson in Athlit, and returned with gold, so that matters were at least delayed.
In this time, as long afterward became known, the contact ship’s smoke signal had been changed. The British captain sent word of the change to his Arab agent in the port of Sidon who was to bring word of the change to the Jews in Athlit. But the message had not been delivered; perhaps the Arab had not wanted a rival among the Jews. In Alexandria, receiving no response from the eager Jewish lad who had seemed so bright and promising and who had even scorned the offer of money for his undertaking, Capt. Walters decided to make one more attempt at the contact. There was a growing urgency. It was becoming clear that a campaign would have to be undertaken into the Sinai to forestall further attacks on the canal. Specific intelligence was needed.
Among the Palestine refugees in Alexandria, or perhaps better, among the veterans of the Zion Mule Corps, someone must be found who was a good swimmer and who was familiar with Athlit.
Soon the proposal came to Gidon. Josef was not against it; it was Josef himself who had indicated Gidon, among a few others, to the British captain.
The Zion men were now completely demobilized, most of them housed again as refugees in the Mafrousi Barracks where their stay had begun. Herscheleh had found a dwelling of sorts, a large room over a cafe owned by a Greek Jew, and with Tuvia they all moved in, still using some of their back pay; Josef did not want to leave for England until his men were settled together in a British army unit, but many were holding back. Discussions were endless. To join up they had time. At least as long as the Russians let them alone here. Who knew whether there would ever be a Jewish unit?
“You join an army, it’s like a marriage,” Herscheleh said. “Jacob was promised Rachel for his bride and he woke up in the arms of Leah.”
“Don’t forget he got Rachel, too,” said Tuvia.
The proposed mission was at least a chance to break away from their endless, repetitive ruminations, from the sense of uselessness. One thought troubled Gidon, however. Once he touched the land, would he have the courage to leave it and come back here? Or suppose he should make his way inland across the Emek, home, to disappear, simply to stay there and go back to his work on the farm, keeping out of sight of the Turks?
Like so many of the lieutenants and captains to whom Gidon had carried supplies in Gallipoli, this Captain Walters seemed surprised that a man understood his instructions the first time; the captain repeated them with many mind you’s. At once Gidon saw there was no question of the dreamed-of landing of troops. It was information about the Turkish offensive with which the British were concerned. From Bedouin in the Negev had come tales of masses of Turks arriving, numerous as the sands in the desert. “Mind you, your Bedouin seem to imagine the larger the number he tells us, the more gold he can demand for his information.”
“We have a saying, he tells you what he thinks you want to hear.”
“Right you are.” But accurate and dependable information was urgently required. No point in keeping masses of troops sitting here waiting for a Turkish attack when they were needed right now on other fronts.
The captain had his nose in a dossier. A chap had appeared over a month ago, “One of yours”—meaning a Jew. They had arranged for him to go back to Palestine to send on information, but the signal had been altered, apparently he had not received the new code which was to have been brought to him by some bloody camel-driver. Gidon, then, was to deliver this new code to this Avshalom Feinberg, or Aaron Aaronson, whichever he could find, and bring back whatever information they had meanwhile collected. The new code was simple. A prolonged trail of smoke. That meant the boat would circle back and rendezvous the same night.
Though Gidon could not reveal to Araleh exactly what it was, Araleh advised him to take the mission. The pay was good, he needed the money, and the risk, from what Gidon said, was not great.
The vessel was battered-looking, a small freighter like the Greek tramp ships that carried lumber and iron and all manner of cargo around the Mediterranean. Only, its cargo space was half taken up by a large new engine; the vessel raced along the coast.
A young lieutenant gave him an oilcloth-covered bundle of clothing, a rubber-encased pistol, a knife. In a pocket of the trousers there were false papers; should he be picked up, he was an ordinary laborer. But in his few hours ashore, and at night, there would be little chance of his getting caught, so he was not likely to need the identity.
Every two weeks the Lieutenant made this coastal voyage; yes, he’d seen a good deal of rainfall this winter over Palestine. —Then the crops must be doing well, Gidon thought. If only the war would move quickly to an end, so that the Turks would not be there to seize the next harvest.
Enormous, solid clouds, like strangely shaped earths, rolled heavily in the night sky. The vessel was running in landward, and as in that distant night of long ago, Gidon could sense the density of the nearing land, the bulk of the Carmel, a great arm spread along the shore.
The engine only murmured now. The lieutenant stood by the rail and held out a whisky bottle. For politeness, Gidon took a swallow. Then he climbed down into the tender. They would row him as close as they could. He stripped off his clothes and tied the waterproof bundle on his head.
Now he saw the ruin emerging, blacker than the atmosphere. In those ancient times too the English had ventured here. It struck him all at once—what a strange thing for them to have done, those Crusaders. What had they needed to come here for? With Jews it was different.
There were rocks, half in, half out of the sea. The oarsmen were holding the bark steady for him to climb over. Gidon lowered himself; the water, though cold enough, gave him no shock. One hand still clung to the boat. To let go was to be alone. But swimming to Eretz—would they at home somehow feel he was near, that his foot had touched the land?
He swam easily, but the distance was greater than he had expected, and in the silence and aloneness, the black water and the black sky were one. He could not keep his head high enough to make out the bulk of ruined wall, and when a wave rolled over his head, Gidon even had to fight back a sense of panic, of being dragged back into the measureless void of tohu v’bohu. “No, I am not like that,” he told himself. He did not have such imaginings, such fears. And thrusting about with his foot, he scratched it on a jagged rock and soon found bottom.
The rocks were slippery with moss; his hands gripped an edge of what must once have been a sea wall, and pulling himself out of the sea, Gidon, without resting, undid his pack and put on the shirt and trousers. Gazing back out to sea, below the clouds, he could discern a blot that moved—the ship going away, to return at dawn. He stood up and turned to the dark land.
Below his feet was a tangle of thistles and broken stones; briars came waist high and scratched and clung. In Gallipoli, when at times he had gone on a lone mission with supplies, there had been at least his mule. And here in Eretz that time he had remained behind on watch over Mishkan Yaacov, there had been his horse with him. The howl of a jackal was welcome to him now.
Moving steadily, Gidon stood now against the single, jagged high wall that, as he recalled, was all that remained of the ruined fortress, though in the night the form of the wall was unfamiliar. Behind it would be a neck of land, to the left a shallow beach, on the other side the salt marshes. He must be careful there. Like that time with Fawzi in the Huleh marshes, a man could sink in. Behind the marshes, a few hundred feet of wasteland, and then there passed the main highway from Jaffa to Haifa, cutting across the fields of the agricultural station. On the other side of the highway, Aaron Aaronson’s double lane of palm trees led to the station itself, where someone should be on watch in the laboratory on the second floor.
Not a lantern, not a sign of habitation.
Then, as he moved onto the fields, a sound came to Gidon. He stood entirely still, holding back an involuntary movement of his hand toward the pistol. A pistol against an army—what use! For what he had heard he identified now—it was the murmurous movement of troops, the long scuffling beat of an irregular march, marked with hoofbeats and wheels creaking, and as he came closer, the conglomeration of sounds was interwoven with scattered voices.
They were already here then, from Gallipoli. Almost, he could see that dead Turkish soldier with the bayonet between his teeth, risen and marching to get at his killers. The British had come away by sea, the enemy was moving down by land. Here they were.
Carefully, treading in a furrow of plowed earth, Gidon moved closer. A dog might discover him. Yet, compelled by the soldierly demand in him, Gidon could not but move forward until, even in the night, he might make something out.
Off the plowed field in an outcropping of rocks he found good cover. A stretch of the highway lay unobstructedly before him, and he made out the blur of a column. How easily now, with a few machine guns here in ambush—had Avshalom’s crazy landing been made—they could have cut down hundreds!
But then? The numbers were unending. Sometimes when Gidon thought the end had passed, and gathered himself to dash across the road, a few horsemen would ride up, and after them he would hear the tramping resumed from the north. Again the forces would come, light artillery rolling, and kitchens, and wagons of supplies, and after another gap, files of men. At least a division he must have watched passing by. And in the night—for secrecy and also for haste. And this was only one night and one route.
He moved laterally until he was opposite the palms. But there was bad luck. A tent was set up beneath them, a checkpoint. Gidon drew back into the field and considered. To outwait them? To fail his rendezvous with the ship and remain the two weeks until it would pass again, emitting its signal? He could see himself in a day’s walk crossing the Emek; it would be better to go by day, a simple worker in the land, and by nightfall reach Gilboa, Dvora, Menahem, safe among his own, and the next day on a horse, home.
But if caught he would endanger them all.
It pulled, pulled on him. If he sat here until it was too late for him to reach the vessel. He had only to sit, not to move. At a certain moment it would be too late. Then the choice would have passed by, it would be too late. He could continue in his life only for himself.
But what he saw here was in itself important. He had come upon information and must report it—that was urgent. It could not wait two weeks.
And his mission, the signal for Avshalom?
There on the field, close by where he sat, a plow had been left. Someone would come to finish the field, one of Aaronson’s Arabs. If a message was left, tied to the handle of the plow … The fellah, unable to read, would take it to them in the station. It must be worded so that they would understand, but no one else.
Over this, Gidon puzzled for some time. How could he explain about the code?
In his pocket they had put a stub of pencil; everything they had thought of—even a box of Jaffa cigarettes, taken from a Turkish prisoner at the Suez. The British were clever at this work. Tearing off the lid of the box, he wrote on it in Hebrew: “Avshalom! Passed by but missed you. I’ll pass again in a few weeks, and we can sit down for a long smoke.”
With his poet’s imagination, Avshalom would certainly understand about the signal. Gidon signed, not his own name, but “Walter.” He managed to fasten the bit of cardboard to the plow-handle. In the doing of all this, the pull of the land had somehow fallen away; he was engaged in a task. Yet as he made his way back to the ruins, there remained in Gidon a powerful wish to leave some kind of mark that he had been here; it was like the thought a man sometimes has: if he passes from the world, will there remain any sign that he once lived and was present in it?
Before the vessel appeared to pick him up, he had a bit of time, and he scratched with his knife the name Gidon on a stone of the ancient wall, among other names that had been scratched there over many years. One day perhaps he would show it to Mati.