by Peter Watt
Saul was billeted in a one-roomed stone house with Ivan as the Russian could speak enough English to explain the workings of the community. The following day he was taken on a tour of the moshava. The two men walked the dusty and almost silent lands to the top of a craggy rise overlooking a depression of reedy swamps.
‘We get this land from Arabs,’ Ivan said as they surveyed the large tract of swamp. ‘Land no good to Arab, so he sell to us.’
‘Not much you can do with a swamp,’ Saul agreed. ‘But it would be good land if you could drain it.’
‘How we drain?’ Ivan growled. ‘I think Jakob not so smart buy this land.’
‘Back home we find that where gum trees grow they just naturally drain swamps. You blokes ought to be planting a few around here. It looks like the climate will take to gums okay.’
‘What is gum trees?’ Ivan asked, scratching at his beard.
‘I think you call them eucalyptus trees, or something,’ Saul answered, staring down at the swamp. ‘Kind of miss them a lot,’ he added wistfully.
‘Maybe you talk to Jakob about this thing,’ Ivan suggested. ‘Maybe Jakob know about gum tree.’
‘Maybe,’ Saul mused.
After a midday meal of bread, goat cheese and green olives the two men continued the tour. It was sundown by the time they finally returned and Saul first saw the population of the village gathered. In the short time he had been in the community he had only fleeting glimpses of the younger men and women going and returning to the fields. But this time they were gathered around a bonfire at the edge of the village.
‘What’s going on?’ Saul asked Ivan.
‘What you say, celebration. First baby born in settlement. People happy.’
‘Good enough,’ Saul smiled. ‘You don’t happen to celebrate with beer, do you?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No beer,’ Ivan responded. ‘Vodka and wine.’
‘That’ll do,’ Saul sighed. ‘Better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.’
Ivan glanced sideways at the Australian. He presumed poking people in the eye with a stick was something they did where Saul came from. It didn’t sound like a good pastime – not as good as drinking copious quantities of vodka.
Ivan generously shared his supply of precious Russian vodka with Saul that night as the young men and women sang and danced by the flickering light of the bonfire. It was rather subdued compared to similar gatherings Saul remembered from his past. On the rare occasions that the stockmen came together in his part of the world it usually ended up in a drunken brawl.
Saul sat with Ivan, admiring the graceful movements of the young women in their long, peasant-style skirts. One girl stood out from the rest. Unlike the majority with their olive-hued skin, dark eyes and hair, this girl had striking blue eyes, fair skin and blonde hair. Saul was entranced by her swaying movements as she linked arms with the other girls to dance in a graceful circle around the bonfire.
‘Who is that girl by the fire?’ Saul asked Ivan. ‘The one with hair the colour of the desert.’
Ivan blinked and turned to see at who Saul was pointing. He squinted and then frowned. ‘That is Anna, she is what you say, sister of mine.’
Saul looked with surprise at the huge man beside him. ‘Your sister!’
‘Da, little sister,’ Ivan confirmed.
Saul was wise enough not to point out that the graceful young girl looked nothing like her brother.
‘All boy chase Anna,’ Ivan continued. ‘I break neck of boy chase Anna,’ the big Russian grunted.
Wisely, Saul did not pursue any questions about the bewitching girl who stood in the shadows of the fire. Ivan swigged from the almost empty bottle before passing it to Saul, his new friend’s question already forgotten.
‘Time we dance,’ Ivan said lumbering to his feet unsteadily. ‘All dance,’ he repeated, hauling Saul up and partly dragging him to the circle where Saul found himself beside Anna. Ivan said something to his sister and she laughed softly as she took Saul’s hand. Her eyes levelled on his and Saul registered a strange feeling he thought had died forever with Karen.
‘I am Anna,’ she said slowly as she smiled up at Saul. The sound of her voice was as sweet as the scent of the gum trees Saul so much missed.
Saul learned that Anna was Ivan’s only living relative. Their family had escaped Tsarist Russia after a pogrom against their village, but Ivan’s parents had died on the terrible trek across the seemingly unending Russian steppes to Europe.
Prior to the pogrom, Ivan had been a cavalryman in the Cossacks until he was revealed to be a Jew, although he had never felt religiously committed to his parents’ beliefs. Most of his friends had been the Orthodox Christian boys of the village who respected Ivan for his physical size and strength. He had eventually left the village in search of adventure and had joined a Cossack regiment stationed at St Petersburg. He had been happy as a soldier for the Tsar until his past caught up with him and he had been forced to choose between burning predominantly Jewish villages or deserting. He chose the latter after a troop of Cossacks forced his family out of their home and it was he who organised the exodus of the survivors to seek a new home in America. But he did not get that far. His aged parents had died in the snow, and when they reached Budapest in the Austro–Hungarian Empire, he and his sister had heard the rumours of a new land being forged in Palestine for the scattered people of David and Abraham.
Anna was now sixteen and had at first been confused by the war waged against her village in Russia. She was after all more Russian in appearance than Jewish, but this did not matter to the villagers she thought she knew. They had turned on her family as if they had been complete strangers. So she had left her homeland with mixed feelings.
‘You like me,’ Ivan would often tell Saul during a bout of drinking. ‘You soldier, not farmer. I get you job working for me,’ he added and continued to talk about his past. Sometimes he would tell Saul a little about his beautiful sister and Saul would listen to every scrap of information. Then Ivan would burst into a sad folk song, tears running unashamedly down his weather-beaten cheeks into his bushy beard. When that time came, Saul would ease himself from Ivan’s company to allow him to mourn privately for what was lost.
The strong bond forming between the two men was reinforced when Jakob came to Saul to suggest that he might be better employed working with Ivan to provide an armed guard for the village. Armed with an old French military carbine, Ivan currently worked alone, patrolling the moshava’s perimeter on horseback. There had been incidences of theft in the past as well as harassment by gangs of roving men from a nearby Arab village, although nothing of great consequence.
But Jakob still worried. With only three old rifles, two pistols and a limited supply of rounds, the settlers were vulnerable to any organised attack should the nearby Arabs choose to retake the land they had purchased from them. To date they had only sneered at the European Jews who had come with aspirations to make the worthless land fruitful. They had sold the new settlers the swamps and rocky fields and left them to learn that Allah had ordained the land to be barren. But slowly the settlers were actually redeeming what the Arabs considered worthless, and now their sneers were changing to expressions of greed.
‘There will be a time when they turn on us,’ Jakob had warned at the meetings of the moshava council. ‘A time when we will have to defend ourselves.’
‘But we are not soldiers,’ many had argued. ‘The Ottomans will protect us.’
‘The Ottomans are Muslim,’ Jakob cautioned. ‘They will be like the Europeans, and turn a blind eye, as the French have with Captain Dreyfuss.’
The situation kept Jakob awake at nights. He had an idea but it would require money and the right men to carry it out. Saul Rosenblum came to mind.
Saul had taken to the often boring and lonely task of patrolling the hills and valleys between the moshava and the surrounding scattered villages of the Palestinian Arabs. Astride a horse and with a rifle at his hip, Saul fel
t he had at last a meaningful role in the community. He was a soldier and knew his job. Sometimes he would be accompanied by Ivan and in the distance the Arab goat herders would watch the armed men on horseback. It was a tiny show of strength but it seemed to be working. The incidences of theft and harassment ceased.
On night patrols Saul sometimes took up a position close to the Arab village and observed how they went about their routine. He would look for signs of any parties of armed men leaving the village or anything else that might indicate that a threat was emerging. But nothing unusual happened and Saul often had time to sit under the desert stars gazing into the night. It was little different, he reflected, to the life he had left behind in South Africa as a soldier.
Between patrols, Saul would find excuses to seek out Anna’s company. He would go to the fields where the young men and women removed stones from the fields before ploughing and was able to engage Anna in conversation while working alongside her. During the midday meal break they would sit in the shade of a scraggly olive tree and talk. Anna displayed an interest in the land of Saul’s birth. The other young men and women would cast knowing looks in their direction, the girls giggling while the boys smirked. But these were the only times they had the opportunity to be together as at night Anna would remain in the company of the village girls and Saul mostly with Ivan, whose fractured English was increasingly tolerable the more vodka he consumed.
A month after Saul had been living in the moshava a letter arrived via a tortuous route from Africa to inform Jakob Isaacs that his remaining son, David, had been killed in the fighting in South Africa. Jakob’s mourning was private and when he reappeared to the villagers he seemed a bent and beaten man.
‘I have nothing,’ he told Saul who went to offer comfort. ‘God has asked more of me than he did of Abraham.’
‘The people need you,’ Saul said, watching the bowed head of the man he had grown to know as if he had been his own father.
Jakob was a quiet and decisive figure who the moshava leaders had come to rely on for his organisational skills. After a discussion with Saul, Jakob had ordered the eucalypt seedlings and when they arrived in the village Saul had supervised their planting in the swampland. They were thriving and every day Saul would observe their progress. When the sun and wind were right, he could actually get a whiff of the distinct scent that reminded him of home.
Saul found life hard but pleasant as he worked to establish this tiny foothold in the Holy Land for a dispossessed people. Anna had shown no romantic interest in him and Saul sometimes felt that he may as well have been her older brother. But he was patient. Sooner or later the girl would grow to understand that his feelings for her were as strong as any he had ever experienced before. Saul had fallen in love with this sweet, golden-haired angel from the steppes of Russia. All she had to do was recognise his love to give his life meaning once again.
THIRTY-EIGHT
With the weekend drawing close, Patrick found that he was experiencing an almost youthful apprehension about the unknown. Deborah was expected on the Friday night and Patrick had briefed Davies and his wife, who was Patrick’s cook, to prepare for her visit.
‘Very good, sir,’ Davies had replied and went about airing the guest’s room.
Mrs Davies had pedalled to the village to purchase something special for the weekend and was quick to inform the butcher that none other than the famous Miss Deborah Cohen would be staying.
When Friday arrived, Patrick returned from a vigorous walk to be met by a familiar face waiting for him in the drawing room. It was not Deborah.
‘John! What a pleasant surprise, after all this time,’ Patrick said to the uniformed man standing by the fire. ‘I thought you were still in Sydney.’
Colonel John Hughes stepped forward to take the offered hand.
‘Got back a fortnight ago, old chap,’ Colonel Hughes said with a broad smile. ‘Heard you were staying up at the family estate and decided to pop in while I was in this part of the world. Your man was kind enough to let me in to wait for you.’
‘I hope he offered you a drink,’ Patrick said as he moved to the warmth of the fire to rub his hands.
‘As a matter of fact he did,’ Colonel Hughes replied. ‘But I thought it would be awfully rude to have one without you. I am sorry that I did not send my card ahead, but I ran out of time and decided to fall on your colonial lack of formality by just dropping in.’
‘Why is it that I sense you are not here just to say hello?’ Patrick asked.
The officer shifted just slightly. ‘I hope that we have the opportunity to do a little fly fishing on my estate after I finish my current assignment with the intelligence chappies,’ Colonel Hughes said. ‘But you are right, Patrick, I need to solicit your assistance in an ongoing matter we originally discussed in Sydney.’
‘It’s Martin, isn’t it?’
‘I am afraid so. It seems that he is now linked to a group of Irish killers planning to assassinate a British subject of some importance to the war effort.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Patrick queried.
The colonel could see that the man he had soldiered with in the Sudan was attempting to hide his annoyance.
‘The police have informants amongst the Irish population of Liverpool and they passed on the information to us. But I cannot tell you any more than that, old chap. I know you will understand, being a commissioned officer in His Majesty’s army.’
‘I am an officer in the Australian army nowadays,’ Patrick said with a wry smile, ‘or haven’t they told you yet that the colonies federated to become a nation?’
‘Just a mere formality,’ John Hughes returned with his own smile. ‘You will always look to Mother England for your foreign affairs.’
‘No doubt, John. But what of Martin?’
‘As far as I know he is in Ireland and in contact with some rather shifty locals from the village of your ancestors,’ Colonel Hughes said, as if delivering a briefing. ‘I was hoping that you might once again find a reason to pop over and visit the old sod.’
‘I haven’t been back since ’86,’ Patrick said wearily. ‘It is not a place with fond memories for me anymore.’
‘I heard,’ John Hughes said gently. ‘I’m sorry, old chap. You have not heard from your wife then?’
‘No,’ Patrick said moving away from the warmth of the fire. ‘Not even when I was wounded.’
‘I know what I am asking may bring you into contact with your wife,’ Hughes said sympathetically. ‘But we are both soldiers for the Empire and what I can tell you is that contacting your cousin is no less important than the surrender of one of those damned elusive Boer generals. We need you to persuade him that we are onto his every move and if he knows what is good for his Church’s reputation he should desist.’
‘Why don’t you get someone else to tell him?’ Patrick asked. ‘Why me?’
‘Not as easy as it seems,’ the colonel coughed. ‘Martin too is as elusive as De la Rey himself out there on the African veldt. I suspect that he would reveal himself to you out of a sense of family.’
‘You know I will do it,’ Patrick conceded. ‘Because I suspect that if I don’t something untoward might happen to him.’
Hughes did not answer but turned to look at the flames in the open hearth. Patrick knew he was right. He and Martin had shared so much as young boys, growing up in the loving environment of his Aunt Bridget and Uncle Frank’s hotel in Sydney. Patrick had always stood up for his once gentle and scholarly cousin against bullies. But this time the perceived bully was the whole British Empire.
‘Ahem!’
Both men turned to the door where Davies stood discreetly.
‘Miss Cohen has arrived, Major Duffy,’ he said. ‘Shall I show her in?’
‘Miss Deborah Cohen?’ Colonel Hughes asked with a raised eyebrow.
‘You should know, John,’ Patrick said with an edge of disapproval in his voice. ‘I have no doubt that the army has been keeping my life under scrut
iny since I am related to a Fenian.’
‘Not I, Patrick,’ the colonel said as he reached for his cap and swagger stick on the mantelpiece. ‘We have been friends for too long. But there are those who might. When this dreadful matter is out of the way you and I shall do that spot of fly fishing. Davies can show me the way out. You are a lucky man, old chap.’
Patrick felt himself blushing. But part of the flush was caused by the thought that John Hughes was first and foremost a soldier for the Empire rather than a loyal friend. Patrick knew that he was indeed suspected by those in Protestant London of harbouring papist loyalties. Ancient sectarian animosities had not died with the new century.
He heard muffled voices from outside the room and realised that the colonel had introduced himself to Deborah in passing. Gathering his composure, Patrick turned as Deborah swept into the drawing room as a queen would into her court.
‘Patrick, it is so good to see you,’ she said. ‘I had the brief pleasure of meeting Colonel Hughes. What a charming man. Will he be visiting again this weekend?’
‘I am afraid not,’ Patrick said with as much sincerity as he could muster. ‘The colonel has to return to London.’
Deborah removed the feather-adorned hat from her head with the flourish of an actress and dropped it on a chair. There was something slightly unsophisticated about the gesture that Patrick liked. Perhaps it was a reminder of his less than formal colonial roots. ‘I am delighted to have you as my guest,’ he said. ‘I will have Davies show you your room, and when you are ready, we can sit for dinner.’
‘Is something wrong?’ Deborah asked, moving closer to Patrick. ‘Did Colonel Hughes bring you disturbing news of some kind?’
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Patrick quickly replied. ‘It was just a military matter of no real consequence,’ he lied, ‘but it is forgotten now that you have brought some brightness to this house. One could say a little bit of that Queensland sunshine I vaguely remember from my visits north.’