IN THESE same days Sara Aaronson passed through Damascus, and there Reuven encountered her in the house of the Shalmonis in the Harat al Yahud. They were a wealthy family who traced their origins back to the time of the Dispersion, and their house was open, particularly on Sabbaths, to the scattering of Jewish officers who found themselves in Damascus. There was a daughter, whose fiancé, a captain, was posted far off in the forces in Yemen. An educated and refined girl, she was almost always seated at the piano—she had studied at the conservatory in Paris. Often some of her young women friends were there as well, but Reuven did not aspire to these daughters of wealthy families, and besides, they were always taken up by the clever and dashing types. Reuven came by of a Sabbath afternoon simply to be able to talk a while in Hebrew and to hear news from those who had lately been in Eretz.
This time, as it happened, there were only a few Sabbath visitors—troops were on the move, everyone was busy. And Elisheva Shalmoni was seated not at the piano but in an alcove with another young woman, talking intently, while her mother served tea to the few other guests. Half-starting toward Elisheva and her friend, whom he seemed to recognize, Reuven halted in hesitation.
The visitor had raised her eyes. “Yes, we know each other,” she said, just as he blurted— “Sara Aaronson.” And, “Excuse me, I—your married name—”
With a fleeting, odd expression she said, “It doesn’t matter, I’m Sara Aaronson.”
Except for the burnished hair and the blue eyes, there was nothing of the plump, saucy girl who had brought him the botany book from her brother’s library when he lay ill in their watchman’s hut. The young woman’s face was strained, pale; it soon came out that she had been an entire month on the way from Constantinople with endless breakdowns and requisitions of trains for the military so that long stretches of her journey had been made by carriage and even horse cart. But there are times when an explanation of physical strain does not erase an impression of suffering, of crisis, and so it was here. She must be pouring out her heart to her friend Elisheva; Reuven felt himself an intruder, and yet Sara Aaronson seemed eager for him to sit with them. She and Elisheva had known each other in Europe during their studies, she said. Had he lately seen her brother Aaron?
—Didn’t Aaron know she was coming?
No, nor her family; it was a surprise or they would have stopped her.
Aaron was well, he was very active, he assured her.
Something seemed to be troubling Sara about her brother. “From his last letters” … she said, and broke off. When had Reuven last seen him?
It had indeed been nearly a month, and the incident was one Reuven did not feel he should relate to her. He had happened into Djemal’s outer office just in time to hear the Pasha shouting as Aaronson emerged from his presence, “Don’t come to me again! I have enough of your interference! Perhaps next time I’ll hang you!”
Aaronson, as the one with the best access too Djemal, had come to plead for the return of the wheat that Bahad-ad-Din had seized in Jaffa from the relief ship sent by American Jews to the Yishuv. In Jerusalem the highest community leaders had pleaded with Bahad-ad-Din—to no avail. They had turned to Aaronson, asking him to intervene with Djemal Pasha. Though Reuven later heard that half the wheat had been returned, he had not seen Aaronson in Damascus since that day of Djemal Pasha’s threats.
Ironically, he heard Elisheva just then telling Sara, “Aaron has the greatest influence with Djemal Pasha.”
“Oh, yes,” Reuven said, “I even owe my being here to him—he actually saved my life,” and he began to tell of the incident.
Sara Aaronson seemed to become more distraught, though he tried to make light of it, but suddenly she broke out, “Oh, they are so cruel! How can human beings be so cruel?” and then there poured from her things she had seen on her journey: the roadside littered with corpses still lying unburied, dead children with their little legs like dried sticks. She had seen entire Armenian villages burnt, empty. In Constantinople they had known and not known. All year she had been wracked by the tales. A whole million of people, it was said, a whole people destroyed, could such things be? And there she lived in luxury in the city and heard these tales, and her husband became richer in his war dealings and people said it was all exaggerated, war horror stories. But why? why? her eyes were dilated; she was talking to Elisheva, but her eyes spoke to Reuven, and he began to feel shame that he was in Turkish uniform and wanted to explain to her that he did nothing for their war, that he was a gardener.—It was not only the usual hatred of the Moslems for Christians; the Turks envied the Armenians. Sara was answering her own question: the Armenians were a thrifty people, their villages looked richer, so now they were to be destroyed. Turkey was to be for the Turks—one people, one religion, one land. And the Jews would be next, everywhere it was said the Jews would be next. That was why she was coming home. “It was as though I were being called, I couldn’t stay away—you understand me?” If anything should happen, she wanted to be with her family.
Elisheva soothed her. It was dreadful, it was a cruelty beyond belief, but between Turks and Armenians, it was an old bitter hatred, and while there had always been anti-Semitism here, she would not minimize it—how long was it, only a generation or two since the terrible Damascus blood-libel in which one of her own family had been among the accused and had died in prison from their torture—still, today, even on the Turks there were restraining hands. Their own allies the Germans would never let such a massacre take place, and America too had a great influence, and besides, Elisheva was certain that the effect of the Armenian mas- sacre throughout the civilized world was so ghastly that nothing of this kind could ever happen again.
For a moment Elisheva was drawn away to other guests, and Sara Aaronson, once more self-possessed, turned to Reuven. “And you, Reuven? It is a pity you have to waste yourself here. My brother had a high opinion of you as a horticulturist, I remember.”
—Oh, he was fortunate, Reuven said, he did not have to take part in the war, and he was even carrying on his own work. Indeed, he had lately found something he wanted to show to her brother, perhaps she could take back a few samples? And he told of the pistachio grove he had discovered. The way she listened, a woman asking intelligent questions—after all, the sister of Aaron Aaronson—a balm, even a touch of Sabbath peace was returning around them.
“And you’ll bring seeds back and plant them at home one day when this is all over,” she said.
Something in this young woman drew him profoundly; whatever it was with her husband there in Constantinople, the husband of whose riches she had spoken so scathingly, she had had the courage to undertake this frightening journey by herself. She was running away, he now understood, to return to her people, and this moved him. A sense of love rose in Reuven—no, not in the man-and-woman way, but as sometimes for a chaver or chavera at home in the kvutsa who undertook some extra task not required of them.
Sara was worried about how to continue her journey, since all the trains were entirely taken over for troops. The next morning Reuven happened to encounter a pair of German officers who were going by special carriage as far as Jaffa and said they would be delighted to escort a Jewish lady. When he came to tell her of it, Reuven brought a twist of paper with some pistachio nuts for her to take to her brother, and in a lighter mood, Sara put one of the nutshells between her teeth and cracked it open.
“I may eat them all before I get home!” she said, almost gaily.
Only after her surprise arrival, in fashionable traveling costume in a carriage with two gallant German officers, and after the tumult of reunion and Sara’s assurances that all was well in Constantinople—that the war was making her husband richer than ever, she had but to hint at a new luxury and he bought it for her—and only after the meal of good things that her mother spread out “in spite of everything,” was Sara Aaronson able to mount a horse and gallop down to surprise Aaron at his agricultural station.
He was not there. His overseer, Salim, greeted her, seeming not even surprised at her coming. Her brother had gone on urgent business to Jerusalem. Salim seemed to be hesitating whether to tell her something more; then he brought out the note that had meanwhile been found on a plow in the field. Perhaps it was important?
—Walter? Who was Walter?
Salim knew of no such name. Sara thought it odd, a Jew named Walter—more likely a German. And why was it addressed to Avshalom? For a time she waited for Aaron; then she decided Aaron would now more likely return directly home to Zichron, and rode back.
He came toward evening and leaped from the carriage in surprise at seeing her, but through all the warmth of greetings, Sara felt her brother’s tension. Perhaps it was because of her, perhaps he was not pleased that she had left her husband and come back to be one more problem for him? They crossed the courtyard to his own small house; she chattered a bit more about her journey, but still they were not completely united as in old times. Then she told him about Damascus, even brought out the little packet of pistachios from Reuven Chaimovitch.
Aaron was pleased. “He’s right, it’s a discovery! I’ve never seen such a tree in the whole region! What a fellow! Ten wars couldn’t stop him.”
But still Sara felt some barrier between them, and she suddenly slipped down with her head on his knees and let everything pour out. She would never go back to that stifling, meaningless life—she had debased herself, debased her body in marriage to a man who was nothing to her, whom she mostly despised—it was even unfair to him, to that spiritless well-meaning nothing; she could endure it no longer and had returned to live her life here. She wanted to be of use, she wanted to help Aaron; whatever he was doing, he was doing important things for the Yishuv. She had felt something in his letters—whatever it was, he must take her to help him.
Still he was silent.—Was he angry with her for coming? No, no, it would be good to have her near him, Aaron said. She was perhaps right in leaving her husband if all she said was true. But they must take time to think, and meanwhile he must go on urgent business to Damascus. When he returned—
With a puzzled instinct, Sara drew out the message that Salim had found in the field. Her brother studied it, and seemed to be drawing even further away from her.
—But who is Walter? And why to Avshalom? “Avshalom doesn’t smoke a pipe,” she laughed uneasily. And how was Avshalom? What was he doing? “You wrote he was helping you in your work?”
Just now Avshalom was in Beersheba, Aaron said.
Beersheba? What was he doing there? What was the mystery? And all at once Sara broke out; she was no longer a girl, she was a woman now, and she had taken her life in her own hands, and he need have no fear if it was about her and Avshalom—
Brushing his hand across his forehead, her brother said, No, it was nothing so romantic. Very well then, he would tell her. Avshalom was in prison in Beersheba. He had made a fool of himself in their work. The note from Walter was a note from the British —and the whole of it came out.
“Against the Turks? Good, good!” she cried. “Anything against the Turks, no matter how dangerous!” She had known it in her soul, this was surely why she had come!
But in Jerusalem today he had failed, Aaron said. Even the Jew with the highest connections there, old Ehud Yeshayahu, could do nothing to free Avshalom because the case had been turned over to the German military. The only chance was in Damascus.
She would go with him.
No. She must remain at the laboratory. In case there was an urgent message. Or if they came from Beersheba for more money. He needed someone trustworthy there, he did indeed need her help. Good she had come. From the family he had kept all knowledge of this work. In Damascus he would somehow find a way—her damned Avshalom was brilliant and courageous, but he was always getting himself arrested.
Reaching Damascus, Aaronson did not at once go to the palace; he was uncertain just how to proceed. To approach Djemal Pasha and plead directly for intervention for Avshalom was a great risk, it would be trusting Avshalom’s life to the devil’s capriciousness. Stopping at the Palace Hotel, he refreshed himself. A way must be found to minimize Avshalom’s danger. The solution must exist, it was somewhere around him, he felt its presence as sometimes with a scientific problem when he stood in his library knowing the response was there—he had just to reach out his hand to the right book.
And coming from his room, he passed a small group speaking Hebrew. In his deep preoccupation, Aaron might have avoided them, but one caught his eye—it was Reuven Chaimovitch in his shabby uniform; and the scientist automatically turned back to greet him. The others were mostly from the labor settlements, but there was also the planter from Rehovot, Smilansky, who cried out, “You are just the man we need!”
They had been summoned by Djemal Pasha. He was demanding an impossible tonnage of fodder and grain crops for the coming summer, he even threatened to raze all the orange groves to make fields for growing animal fodder. Aaronson must speak for them!
Suddenly he saw his solution. He would be summoned. “If I appear before Djemal without being called, it will rub him the wrong way,” he said. Reuven, however, might mention that luckily Aaronson was in Damascus and would surely be able to help about the fodder.
It did not take long. Reuven came running, and they hurried to the Residence.
“He was screaming at them,” Reuven said. “He demanded a final figure on wheat, and they said they didn’t know. He started screaming again, to bring someone who knew, and then I spoke of you. Djemal drove them all out and told me to bring you at once.”
The first words the Pasha uttered were, “You’re in Damascus and didn’t let me know?”
“Last time you said you would hang me.”
“Next time!” Djemal laughed, and demanded, “How much wheat and fodder can your damned Jews turn over to the army, if they don’t hide it or smuggle it to the enemy?”
A huge new fodder crop, Aaronson suggested, could be raised in the orange groves themselves, between the rows of trees; this would not deplete the soil. Already Djemal’s eyes were gleaming. “And this also,” Aaronson said, “will release many fields now used for fodder to grow grain.”
“How many tons of wheat? How many tons of barley?”
To compile such a report rapidly, Aaronson smoothly replied, he needed his chief assistant, who kept all his records. “Unfortunately, when I sent him south to survey the Negev for barley crops, your brilliant German friends arrested him as a spy. They are about to hang him, and so I fear I can bring you no report.”
The Pasha bolted upright in his chair. One could virtually see the current of his fury diverting itself into this newly opened channel. The stupid, interfering Germans! The Ottoman army could starve, but the Germans had to discover spies in the desert! When the war was won with Turkish blood, it was the Germans who would try to take all the spoils. Djemal flung himself over his desk—already he was scribbling a telegram, his pencil nearly tearing through the paper. What was the name of this assistant?
“Avshalom Feinberg.”
Reuven had remained standing near them, silent yet in some way included, hoping only that Djemal Pasha might not turn to him with questions, and that he might not unwittingly spoil Aaronson’s purpose, whatever it might be. At first he thought the purpose was to gain time, but the mention of Avshalom Feinberg was like a shade raised, and Reuven inadvertently turned away his face so that Djemal might not see the emotion come over him. For Leah had managed, through a refugee family that had bought permission to stay in Damascus, to send him a note about Gidon. The Son of Nimrod, she said, had been in Joseph’s land and had seen Gidon, and it was true that Gidon was with The Hero in the narrow place. The Son of Nimrod had even brought back gifts from Gidon for the family.
In terror that what he now knew could be read on his face, Reuven only wanted to get out of that room, yet he stood, astonished at the dry way in which Aaron Aaronson went on to discuss agricultural matters with Djemal Pasha, who was now in an excellent mood.
Even when they were safely away from the palace, Reuven did not open the dangerous subject. Instinctively he felt it was well not to know more. Let Aaronson think that he, like the Pasha, had found believable the tale of Avshalom Feinberg’s agricultural mission in the desert.
It was Aaronson who broke what was becoming an embarrassing silence. First, he complimented Reuven on his discovery; Sara had brought him the rare pistachio samples. Remarkable! Reuven said he was happy Sara had arrived safely. “I believe we have you to thank,” her brother replied, “for finding her the transport and the gallant escorts.”
It was only a piece of good fortune, Reuven said. As he had now been given an officer’s rank, he sometimes found himself in their canteen.
Ah—it was good that he could move about among them, Aaronson remarked. The two had entered a public square that Reuven had laid out, and half deprecatingly, yet proud of the colorful effect, he showed Aaronson his floral design of the Turkish flag with its crescent and star in thick clusters of white carnations, and, surrounding the flag, a box-border cut in arabesques.
Abruptly, Aaronson sat down on a stone bench and motioned Reuven beside him. “You understood about Avshalom?”
“I have heard he was in Egypt. He even saw my brother.”
“As for discretion, it is a quality lacking in him. He’ll yet manage to get himself hanged. Except for your having me called in by Djemal, it would have happened this time.” Then he discoursed, as when he discoursed about plants and soil, in the tone one takes with a colleague who has equal devotion, is equally absorbed in the same cause in life. Surely, like his brother Gidon, Reuven must understand in his heart that the only hope for the Yishuv lay in an Allied victory.
“I can only say this,” Reuven replied, as one who owed a master full candor, “I am satisfied that what I have to do in my role in the war cannot in any way affect the military situation.”
“Perhaps it could,” Aaronson said. But to begin with, he wanted Reuven to understand that he was in no way under obligation to help. Indeed, Aaronson said, he had refrained until now from speaking to Reuven about this subject since he had not wanted to risk Reuven’s feeling obligated because of the accidental service he had been able to do for him. Yet matters were now at so crucial a stage that they must overcome this scruple. As Reuven well knew, there were military tasks where the work of one man was worth that of hundreds, even thousands, in the field. Here in Damascus it was relatively easy for one who moved about freely in official circles to hear of strategic plans, of movements—
Already Reuven’s whole being had tightened. “I cannot. I cannot. Don’t ask it of me.”
Aaronson halted.
“Don’t think I suggest that what you may do could be wrong,” Reuven blurted. “I—it’s probably the highest bravery.” Aaronson showed no reaction. “It is not that I would not want to help. Only there are some things a man knows he cannot do. Believe me, if it were that there was fighting in Eretz, that we had to protect our people, believe me, I would come, one way or another, and take up a gun.” Sadly he added, “Though I am a pacifist.”
Aaronson turned to him now with a curious smile compounded of understanding and respect, yet with something of pity too, as for an unfinished man.
“What little I did today, to help someone,” Reuven stammered, “even had I already known the truth of the mission, I would still have done what I could.”
“That will have to suffice for us then,” said the scientist. “Perhaps such a situation will arise again where without actively joining us you can be of help.” Aaronson stood up.
“I’ll remain here a bit,” Reuven said. “I want to do a little weeding.”
“It is a superb formal garden, Reuven.” Aaronson complimented him again, and with his brisk energetic stride, walked away.
“Good job!” their Captain Walters cried out gaily as Gidon ended his account of the troops marching southward. To these British, it really seemed a game. The captain jumped up with the notes he had made, so Gidon also arose. “Perhaps we’ll call on you again.”
Did he want to go again? For a week, two weeks, Gidon waited uncertainly, nervously, and then quite by chance in a cafe he saw the young Haifa Arab whom he had encountered in Captain Walter’s office, before going on his “swim.” Had the ship brought back any news from their friend Avshalom, Gidon asked.
Faud looked at him sadly. “Oh, bad luck.” The little ship had been torpedoed on the very next run. Captain Walters himself had decided to make that run and had been on board. “We don’t know whether he is alive or not. We just don’t know.” No, he did not think there would be another ship sent out.
Each day Sara sat for hours by the laboratory window, watching. The signal would appear, Aaron insisted. “They need us.” Had not the British themselves sent a messenger who left that note on the plow to resume the contact?
Meanwhile the metal box hidden under the floor-tiles was filled with reports. Avshalom, freed, was ceaselessly on the road gathering material. Even in the prison in Beersheba he had learned things; Zev the Hotblood had smuggled reports to him, locations of encampments, and the numbers and units of the men, all of it in a Hebrew prayerbook. Now Avshalom and Zev were everywhere. With what spirit, with what joy, Avshalom recounted their escapades when he came to Athlit with his material. And Sara too must join in the adventures. He would take Sara to Jerusalem, to the Hotel Fast. She would flirt with a high officer, learn what was needed, and at the crucial moment—Avshalom imitated some slavering colonel about to take her up to his room—he, her “husband,” would appear and whisk her away.
Urgent material came into the hands of Aaron himself. Returning from a trip to Damascus, he declared he must quickly get word to Alexandria. German troops were being brought in for the Suez attack. It was planned for August.
And still the ship did not appear! Something surely had gone wrong again with the signal. There was only one solution, even if it seemed the long way around. Aaron himself must make contact with the British Intelligence. The contact must be established firmly, on the highest level. He must somehow reach England. From there, he would get himself stationed in Alexandria. Only then would the operation be certain. What they would send he would receive. Already he had worked out a code for Sara. She would use the watchman’s hut on top of the hill in Zichron, in the vineyard. When there was material to be picked up she would hang a sheet to dry. It could easily be seen from a distance at sea.
Already Aaronson had planned how to reach Europe. Djemal Pasha was just now pleased with him, for hundreds of tons of fodder had resulted from his plan to plant between the trees in the citrus groves. He would ask Djemal Pasha for leave to go on a scientific mission to Berlin. It was even true that he needed to consuit an expert there on the extraction of oil from the sesame plant. From Berlin he must reach a neutral country—a scientific conference perhaps—and from there he could escape to England. For the work at this end, Avshalom would be in charge.
In Berlin, Aaron Aaronson learned of the presence of an American rabbi on a relief mission to German Jews. By happy chance, Rabbi Judah Magnes was a member of the sponsoring committee for Aaronson’s agricultural station. Perhaps the only one of the committee who would have done anything so decisive, Magnes arranged to spirit Aaronson into his own cabin aboard a ship returning to America.
The British, alerted, halted the ship in the Orkneys for a “routine inspection,” and Aaronson was taken off under seeming protest, and delivered in London. There—a Jew from Palestine who offered an entire information network behind the Turkish lines—he was questioned and questioned.
Even from the deployment that he himself had seen on that single night ashore, it was clear to Gidon that British troops in Egypt must soon be needed to fight in Palestine, and so now he urged the Zion men to enroll at once in a British regiment. After lengthy meetings, they entered the Londoners in a body, nearly two hundred of them, the best that had been hardened in Gallipoli. But Captain Trumpeldor, with his one arm, was refused. Never mind. When the Jewish unit was finally created, he would surely be given special dispensation. He left for London, to join Jabotinsky in the campaign for the Jewish Brigade.