Israel

by Fred Lawrence Feldman

At Um Jumi winter gradually mellowed into spring. The cold rains turned the roads between Tel Aviv and Galilee to impassable mud. No supply carts could arrive until the sun had the opportunity to bake the sticky earth dry, and no carts meant no mail.

  Haim could only wonder about Rosie. Had she carried to term? Had she come through all right? Was it a boy, a girl? Was there a child at all?

  The others watched him, fascinated by his stoicism as he stubbornly maintained a cheerful manner. He was the first to volunteer for a work detail, to risk his own health nursing fever patients. For every bucket of water the others carried from the turbulent Jordan back to the huts and dining hall, Haim carried two.

  The others watched and when he was away nodded reluctant approval. Maybe the capitalist from Tel Aviv wasn’t so bad after all.

  Of all the halutzim at Um Jumi only Yol understood Haim. He knew his old friend was throwing himself into his work to avoid thinking about Rosie and the baby. Yol knew it had been Haim’s way not to brood but to lose his sadness and worry in hard labor.

  The Arabs of Um Jumi were employed by an absentee landlord who had sold a portion of his land to the National Fund. At first, the fellahin assumed the Jewish newcomers would themselves be landlords, hiring others to do the work. When they saw the Jews—men and women—providing for themselves, they respected them for it.

  However, there was still a great deal of mistrust between the ethnic factions of Um Jumi. Most of the blame for the tension lay with the Jews. The halutzim were strict Zionists; they were well educated and could not help looking down on the Arab peasants. During their meetings in the dining hall they assured each other of how happy the Arabs would one day be under Zionist protection.

  One night Haim approached Yol after the meeting disbanded. Popovich looked drawn. He had been up most of the night on guard duty.

  Lately there had been an increase of nomad robbers from the Transjordan menacing the village. The two members of Hashomer, the professional watchmen, had left Um Jumi long before Haim arrived, after training the halutzim in the use of firearms. Now the men, in addition to their regular duties during the day, took turns on guard. It meant standing in the dark, tightly gripping one of the three twenty-year-old Lee-Enfield rifles provided by the National Fund office in England.

  Haim had also received firearms instruction and took his turn. At first he found it fun. At last he was a soldier in the Jewish cause.

  Then late one moonless night he heard a sound like a hornet buzzing past his head. A split second later a sharp cracking sound reached Haim’s ears. He’d been shot at, he suddenly realized. Oh please, no, he wanted to cry out, not until I know what happened with my Rosie. Not until I see my son.

  But he kept silent, taking shelter in a ditch. The next bullet never came, and he was never shot at again on watch. From then on, however, being a warrior ceased to be fun, and the heft and scent of the well-oiled rifle failed to bring him pleasure. He also understood why Yol no longer proudly brandished his pistol.

  “What is it, my friend?” Yol asked as the last of the halutzim left the dining hall.

  “It’s no good, our dealings with the fellahin,” Haim exploded. What he wanted to say had been pent up in him for a long time. “I accept the fact that I am a newcomer to Um Jumi—”

  “So far I have nothing to add to this conversation,” Yol observed.

  “But about living with Arabs and profiting from the relationship I do know a little something,” Haim continued. “I know it from my time as a factory owner in Tel Aviv.”

  “Stop a minute.” Yol held up his hands. “I know what you’re intending to say and I agree with you. We’ve made a mess of things with the people living here.”

  “So?”

  Yol shrugged. “Our coworkers don’t know Arabs the way we do. To them the Arabs are merely a nuisance to be coped with, like the mud in winter and the snakes in summer. They can’t even speak with the Arabs.”

  “You have the language,” Haim pointed out.

  “I know, I know, but with all my other responsibilities as the damned patriarch of this project, I simply have not had the energy to convince our comrades that we ought to negotiate with the villagers and then actually do it.”

  “Poor old Yol,” Haim said. “You hardly laugh anymore. You’ve had to grow up very quickly, haven’t you?” He gazed at his friend, lost in thought. “Tell you what. I’ve got the language to talk with the fellahin. I’ll go see their mayor tomorrow.”

  “No. First we must discuss it with the others.”

  “We don’t yet know what to discuss. Please, leave it to me. I’ll bring back something we can vote on.”

  “It’s risky,” Yol warned. “The workers here are just starting to accept you.”

  Haim pondered it. When Rosie finally came, she too would be afforded a trial period, and then the others would vote to accept or blackball them.

  “Remember what you told me, Yol, that all this bickering and jealousy was the way of it in a real family? Well, I think I’ve been here long enough to speak up for myself. At tomorrow night’s meeting, assuming I have a profitable talk with the mayor, I’ll present what I’ve accomplished. If the haluztim refuse me—if they see night and I see day on the issue—then I’ll know I’m so different from them that this isn’t my family after all.”

  Yol smiled thinly. “Go on then. Have your visit. I have just two bits of advice. Don’t wear clean clothes, for there are lice in those huts, and do make a big thing of refusing all gestures of hospitality once or twice. The rural fellahin are far more traditional than those who live in the cities.”

  The next day after his morning chores were done, Haim walked over to the Arab sector. He did not manage to get very far before he was surrounded by a flock of gawking children who wore only flimsy rags despite the coolness of the day. They were all pitifully thin and most had open sores on their nut-brown skin.

  The mayor’s house was a small stone cottage in an out-of-the-way part of the village. Adult male Arabs passed Haim, giving him hard looks, but none stood in his way as he opened the gate, threaded his way past several scrawny goats grazing in the yard and knocked on the door.

  An old woman with two blue dots tattooed on her forehead listened intently as he explained why he’d come and then left him on the doorstep while she relayed his message to her husband. As Haim stood waiting, he felt countless eyes drilling holes into his back.

  Presently the old woman returned and ushered him inside. Haim found the mayor reclining on grimy cushions in the dark, stuffy low-ceilinged living room of the cottage. The village mayor looked to be in his seventies. He was bald and wore a white goatee. His belly was big enough to be obvious. He did not stand to greet his guest.

  “You are welcome,” Kareem al-Hassad said in Arabic, smiling. “Jews were welcome when they came unasked to Um Jumi, land of our ancestors, and you are welcome now that you have come uninvited to my home.”

  “I am in debt to your kind hospitality,” Haim said meekly. The old man, he noticed, was wearing a threadbare caftan and was missing three fingers of his left hand. There was a bubbling hookah at his side.

  “Sit,” al-Hassad said as the old woman reappeared with two tiny cups of coffee on an ornate lacquered tray.

  Haim sat cross-legged on a cushion, repeatedly refused and finally accepted the thimbleful of thick black brew, sipping it and pronouncing it delicious. At the same time he took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. He did not smoke, but he had to go through the motion. The mayor would be offended if he thought the cigarettes had been brought purely for his benefit, as an act of charity. When he was finally persuaded to accept a smoke, Haim was careful to place the packet halfway between them.

  Haim had snitched the cigarettes from the cupboard in the dining hall. Tobacco, like everything else, was stored in a communal supply. There were only two packs left. Haim hoped his taking the cigarettes wouldn’t poison the others’ objectivity when he presented his case at tonight’
s meeting.

  “Yes, then?” the mayor asked, waiting.

  Haim thought back to his beginnings with the shoe factory. During those days he needed fellahin workers as much as they needed jobs. Like most people, their pride grows with the depths of their poverty, he thought. He mused upon the Arabs’ ragged clothing, their primitive farming implements, the sickness among their children.

  “Sir,” Haim began, “I’ve come to ask you to help my people.”

  That night at the meeting, when Yol asked if there was any new business, Haim raised his hand.

  “You are recognized, comrade,” Yol said.

  Haim nodded respectfully and got up to move toward the front of the hall as he announced. “I was in the Arab quarter today. I had coffee with the mayor.”

  Normally the halutzim spoke from their places at the long benches, but Haim’s work in city planning during his Tel Aviv days had made him savvy. He wanted the front of the hall, which would lend authority to what he was about to say.

  “I went there to see if we could come to some agreement of cooperation with the Arabs.”

  “We didn’t vote to authorize this last night,” Deborah Felicks called out. Her stony-faced husband Jack sat beside her, nodding agreement.

  “Haim has the floor,” Yol interjected.

  “Here is what I’ve worked out, subject to everyone’s vote, of course,” Haim said brightly. “As you all know, we’ve been carrying our own water. The Arabs will rent us some mules, which can carry water cans, saving time as well as our backs.”

  “The National Fund office is sending us mules this spring,” one of the workers pointed out.

  “That’s true,” Haim said, “but now we can tell the fund we’ve figured out a way to save the money. The Arab mules are already here. It is within the spirit of socialism to use what is available. Also, these mules thrive in Galilee. Better to stick with them than bring in new animals that may not thrive in this difficult climate.”

  There were no objections, and Haim quickly continued. “The Arabs have a boat on the Jordan. They’ve agreed to let us hire it on occasion. This means that once we have freight to ship, we can send it by river. Our potential market for surplus products will double, and in the winter, when the roads are closed, we’ll be able to maintain trade links.”

  There was a table behind him. Haim perched on its edge. “There’s one final benefit we will get from cooperation with the fellahin,” Haim announced, letting his eyes make contact with his audience. “We will begin to understand them as our neighbors in this land. If we are here to become one with Eretz Yisroel we must also accept the Arabs.”

  “So far you’ve told us what we’ll get from this new partnership,” Isaac Nemoy called loudly, looking like a stern sea captain with his black beard and no mustache. “Please inform us what we must do for them.”

  “I will,” Haim nodded. “One thing is teach them agriculture. These poor devils are still farming the way it was done in Biblical times. If we lend them our plows and our harvesters when we aren’t using them, what’s the harm? Another thing we can do is heal their sick children. All of us keep ourselves clean and eat correctly. True, we suffer from fevers, but we have none of the diseases the Arab children have. Our medicines sit on the cupboard shelf. They grow stale, useless. Let’s heal the children. The more Arab youngsters who grow up trusting Jews, the less our children will have to fear Arabs.”

  “What you’ve so far asked of us is not very much,” Isaac admitted after a pause. “Is there anything else?”

  “Only that we stand guard duty over the villagers as well as ourselves,” Haim answered. “You see, the fellahin are even more fearful of the Bedouin robbers from Transjordan than we.”

  “I still maintain that you were wrong to approach the Arabs without taking a vote,” Deborah Felicks insisted.

  “For that I apologize,” Haim told them all, “but no harm has been done. My agreements are tentative, depending on your ratification. Nothing has been lost except for my time and a few cigarettes.”

  “You took cigarettes?” came a howl of outrage from the rear of the hall. Skinny, hatchet-faced Moses Pool jumped to his feet, wagging a trembling finger in Haim’s direction. “Stealing from the cupboard is a serious breach of rules.”

  “Wait, now. There’s an interesting point of contention here,” Jack Felicks, a lawyer, spoke up. “Haim does have a right to a share of the tobacco—”

  “He doesn’t smoke,” Pool snarled.

  “So?” Felicks shrugged. “Just because he doesn’t smoke—”

  “If Haim isn’t ill, can he still claim medicine?” Pool scoffed.

  Others began to shout their opinions on the matter until Yol called for order. “It’s late,” he said. “I suggest we all think about what Haim has presented and vote on it tomorrow night. This meeting is adjourned.”

  Haim, all alone in the dining hall, found himself unable to sleep. His bedding was rolled in one corner of the building, but he had no desire to lie down.

  Maybe it was being all by himself in the cavernous, utilitarian hall. When the rest of the halutzim were about, the place took on a warm, friendly, familiar glow. Now the rough, bare planking, the long hard benches, wobbly tables and dark corners seemed to intensify Haim’s feelings of estrangement. How he missed Rosie, and some sort of home of his own. And when would he know about his child?

  How can I have come so far in my life and still be an orphan? Haim wondered during the early hours of the dawn, when his only company was the ticking of the building settling and the piercing wail of the wind blowing down from out of the hills. When will my comrades accept me? When can I sleep the night through with Rosie back in my arms, where she belongs?

  The next night during the meeting the agreements Haim had made were approved unanimously. There was little debate, but Moses Pool did insist that it be duly recorded that Haim Kolesnikoff had been reprimanded for improperly requisitioning one pack of cigarettes.

  It was a warm sunny day in May when the first supply cart made it through to Um Jumi. There were plenty of long-awaited goods to be unpacked, but this time the dried fruit took second place in interest. All the halutzim formed a circle around Haim. He tore open the long-awaited letter from Rosie and scanned it quickly. Then he threw back his head and roared his happiness.

  “It’s a boy!” Haim shouted. “Born the seventeenth of January, a healthy ten-pound boy with blue eyes and light coloring.” He paused, astounded by the realization. “My God, my son is four months old already.”

  “His name?” Yol demanded, eyes aglow.

  Names had been decided before Haim left Tel Aviv. Rosie got to choose the first name; she wanted to honor the memory of her departed Aunt Harriet, who’d been very kind to her when she was a child. Haim got to pick the middle name.

  “His name is Herschel Abraham.”

  “Herschel Abraham Kolesnikoff,” a fellow grinned as he stood beside his pregnant wife. “It’s good our little one will have someone to play with.”

  That day was declared a holiday. Yol miraculously produced several bottles of wine, and in the spirit of sharing fostered by Haim, sweets newly arrived on the supply cart were distributed to the Arab children. The Arabs watched and laughed delightedly as the Jews danced the hora; a few even joined the circle.

  And for the first time since Haim arrived, all the halutzim made it a point to embrace him. They shook their comrade’s hand in congratulations, in welcome.

  Chapter 13

  New York, 1911–1912

  Leaving the Allen Street sweatshop marked a new beginning for Abe Herodetzky. Abe was not of a philosophical bent. He believed that self-examination was a time-waster bordering on the obscene unless it took the form of castigation and led to self-improvement. Accordingly, it did not occur to him that those few weeks during which he scoured the neighborhood for a property suitable for his as yet undecided-on business constituted his honeymoon with the future.

  All he knew was that he was hu
gely enjoying himself, that he was no longer drinking and that the transformation of his dream into reality was imminent.

  On Cherry Street Abe found what he needed, a vacant storefront with a big plate-glass window and an available apartment just above it. A back staircase led up to the three-room railroad flat, which although small had its own water closet in the kitchen, tucked between the pitted enamel sink and the cast-iron bathub.

  The landlord was glad to sell the storefront’s existing fixtures—shelving, a scarred wooden front counter and a dented cash register—for twenty-five dollars. He also offered Abe a lengthy renewable lease at a reasonable rent for both the store and the apartment.

  Abe signed the papers that same day. How proud he felt as he scrawled his signature on the dotted line.

  His new address housed a jumble of different nationalities on its six floors. The various families reached their apartments via a rickety, ill-lit staircase that led up from a separate side entrance. Abe considered the mix of nationalities to be a good omen. It had been Russian Jews and Polish and Italian Christians who contributed the money to give him his start, and so it suited him to have varied clientele.

  Of course before there could be customers, there had to be something in the store for Abe to sell. The tenant before him had run a hardware store. There were still two stacked rows of empty open bins along one of the walls. Once they’d held nails, screws, bolts and so on. Abe hadn’t the slightest notion what to put in them. He couldn’t run a hardware store; he knew their most valuable commodity was advice, and he didn’t know enough to offer it. Besides, the previous owner had been unable to make a go of that business and it made no sense to repeat a failure.

  He had already vowed never to return to cobbling, and his years as a presser had instilled in him similar aversion to lapels and suit linings.

  For a few days he mulled over the problem as he busied himself furnishing his apartment. He bought the bare essentials from a rummage store on Ludlow Street. Up until that point he’d been taking his meals at cafes and sleeping on his shabby overcoat spread out on the hard wooden floor. Now that he had a bed to sleep in and a kitchen table, he went out to shop for food.