by Meyer Levin
There was just time; the nearer horse had already pricked up his ears and would turn his head. Shabbatai had already raised his rifle; he would shoot first, they had agreed. Menahem watched Zeira’s aim, on the target on the left, and took the other one. He heard Zeira utter his brother’s name, “Aaron, achi,” before he heard the shot, and as he too fired, Menahem silently moved his lips to form “Yechezkiel.” In that very instant, the head he had fired on turned toward him so that the bullet entered slightly forward of the ear, toward the eye.
The horses, long trained to gunfire, in the first reaction showed only a muscular ripple. Then their necks arched; they moved sidewards as though to be mounted. In the stream of light, how perfect they were! Together they swung their heads down and gazed on their fallen masters, their nostrils flaring. Their heads turned now toward the parting reeds, toward the hunters coming ashore, and in the eyes of the nearer animal, Menahem believed he saw the widened pupils, here greatly magnified, of a woman who gazes in total comprehension, in accusation, in fatedness, on a conqueror approaching. Then, with a single movement, the two beasts, uttering a dreadful neighing, strangely like a woman’s ululation, bolted through the passage between the huge rocks.
He had not foreseen the horses bolting. Clearly he had left this out because neither he nor Zeira would have dreamed of taking them; that would be signing their action.
The mounts would be caught and traced back to this place, so much was certain—but how quickly? The shots too might draw someone in this direction, though, just as likely, imagining it was the bandits at work, a chance hearer would choose to ignore the echoes.
The rest of the picture resumed its movement the way he had envisioned it; Shabbatai was with him in every movement as though he too was repeating what he had seen many times. Leaping from the boat, Menahem remembered to raise away the seat-board, which simply rested on two slots in the gunwales so as to simplify the removal of a catch of fish.
Grasping the nearer body by armpits and feet, Shabbatai and Menahem swung it into the vessel. Then the other. They picked up the rifles. Together they pushed the bark away from the mudbank, then vaulted in, one on each end so as not to touch their feet to the cargo. Menahem fitted the seat back into the slots. When they sat to row, each carefully cramped his feet up the side so as not to touch what lay in the bottom.
Only with their rowing did the moment of the shooting return to Menahem. He saw now the Arab’s eyes for that fraction of an instant meeting his own, with a total hatred, and yet with a comprehension and even an acceptance of his death. It was as though in that fleeting measureless encounter, Menahem was accepted by the Arab as a man who lived and killed according to their own ways.
Now Menahem met the gaze of Shabbatai. Whatever had haunted it before had vanished. The eyes were intense and quiet, and looked into his own as though they expected the same quietude to come back in response. “It went off well,” Shabbatai said. And Menahem said, “Thus far.”
While Shabbatai rowed, Menahem set to work binding rocks onto the bodies. This proved more awkward than he had foreseen, for the two lay as one in the curve of the bottom, and the slight rolling of the vessel gave them movement so that in sudden gruesome moments an arm would be flung alive against him. He found himself avoiding any touch of the flesh, grappling and binding only where there was clothing. Around each pair of ankles he managed a tight knot, with a section of rope looped around a large stone. But something in him preferred not to bind a weight around the neck.
At last Shabbatai left off his rowing, stood, and again lifted away the seat so they could manipulate the bodies more readily. Placing them face to face with the heaviest rock in the middle between them, the avengers laced them together firmly as one entity. As he worked with Shabbatai, Menahem’s momentary abhorrence dropped away, and he and his partner handled the bodies in the same way as the stones, as parts of a task.
Once the binding was done, they replaced the seat and rowed together, further out to where the color of the sea was a shade darker with depth. Dusk now enwrapped the vessel. With the seat once more removed, Shabbatai stood up as one who throws a net, while Menahem crouched and lifted one end of the longish object against the side; then together they quickly rolled what was firmly bound into the sea. The bark righted itself and swayed while the men regained their balance. The Kinnereth had become choppy. But soon they regained Yankel Chaimovitch’s mikveh, and taking out all the rifles, those of the bandits added to their own, they turned the boat on its side and cleaned it well. Casting a final glance around to make sure that no sign remained of their work, the two walked away.
9
THE RENOWN of the Shomer had become so great that villages as far away as Rehovot signed contracts with the guardsmen, while young lads were so eager to be accepted into the Shomer that they trained for a year in advance before applying for the annual examination. One unfortunate boy from a well-known Jerusalem family who stood before the committee and was refused because he appeared unstable in temperament, it was told, went out and killed himself.
In Gilboa, the wave of new guarding contracts brought a wave of new babies. Now the construction of a new Infants’ House could be added to the budget. Much debate was given to the details to make it perfect. It would be built of cement blocks; each room would hold a “generation” of six. It was Nadina who argued for the figure of six as the correct number to occupy one chavera on infant-care duty, as well as making a good-sized group to grow up together.
Several meetings had to be held on the subject of infant care. The question was even raised by Shimshoni the Practical, who was also an idealogue: whether it was right, since they were building a new and just society, that the care of infants should always be by a woman. Should there not, for the effect on the child, be a rotation with men?
Impulsively Dvoraleh cried out, “Then there should also be a rotation in childbearing!” Dvoraleh didn’t often open her mouth at meetings, but when she did, everyone agreed, she was priceless.
Nevertheless the question of child care was a difficult one. The first crop of babies—four of them, born at irregular intervals—had been a great strain on the resources of the kvutsa, Nadina pointed out. As they all knew, the couples had made their own decisions on the subject of having a child, or even in some cases, she feared, the chaver and chavera had made no decision, but in so vital a matter had let matters happen by impulse or accident. The consequent babies, though loved by all, had been intensely cared for by their mothers in the first months, and in each case the chavera’s work time had been lost to the kvutsa. Besides, on principle it was doubtful whether such old-fashioned individual care was the proper thing for a child who was to be raised in a communa. She and her chaver, Galil, had as yet refrained from parenthood precisely because they felt that the settlement was not firmly established economically, and also because the subject of group child care deserved more study and planning. But now she and Galil were ready to enter the prospective parent group of six—or really twelve, Nadina corrected herself with one of her rare outbreaks of laughter that made her suddenly look girlish.
During Nadina’s recital, Dvora had experienced a moment of guilt, for she and Menahem had been among the selfish ones. But she still could not bring herself to discuss at an open meeting whether and when she should have a child; she wished she could be as modern as Nadina.
Already, Nadina pointed out, even with the unplanned infants, certain important things had been learned. Instead of giving the mothers alternating periods of duty in the infant-room, the kvutsa had learned to avoid emotional charges of favoritism and bitter scenes by assigning the care of the babies to a non-mother. They had improvised also such simple devices as the bell-call which permitted nursing mothers to work anywhere in the settlement, as each could now come to the baby-house when her signal rang out.
Dvora’s signal had been three rings, as she was the third to become a mother. Before her own baby Yechezkiel came, she had been amused with the rest of th
e chevreh to hear the strokes of the bell and see the chavera flying across the yard to feed her infant, but when her own time came, a different feeling developed. Hurrying across from the poultry house, Dvora had each time experienced a curious embarrassment. Why was it? The whole kvutsa was proud of her little Yechezkiel, the first boy born in Gilboa—though of course in a communa there was as much pride for a girl as for a boy. Yet when she ran to suckle the child, she felt self-conscious. Even her own mameh had shown no embarrassment in suckling a baby before whoever happened to be in the room; with newborn Mati at Sejera there had been a constant coming and going of Leah’s friends and her own. And here in the baby-house there was even no question of being watched as she bared her breast, since strict rules of sanitation kept the chevreh out of the room. There was only the embarrassment of being seen running to the bell. Perhaps she was backward, not equal to the new ways.
The worst had come after the first month, when it had been decided to follow the example of Reuven’s kvutsa, the earliest, and keep the infants even at night in the nursery room instead of with their parents. In that way the sleep of several sets of parents would be undisturbed, they would be fresh for their work, and also, Nadina had explained, they would develop no resentments against their own babies for waking them up with their howling. While Nadina now reviewed all this at the sitting before coming to her point—everyone knew it was useless to try to get her to skip a single step—Dvora recalled how, the first nights after her baby was not there beside her bed, she had lain half-awake listening for his cries from the infants’ room across the yard. She was certain she would recognize them, a boy’s, not a girl’s, though twice, running through the mud barefoot in her nightgown, she found herself wrong. The time that it was indeed Yechezkiel who howled, Nadina herself was on night duty.
“Don’t pick him up!” she snapped when Dvora rushed into the room.
Dvora halted. Suddenly tears gushed. “I can’t! I can’t!”
“Chavera Dvoraleh, it’s the only way. It’s for the children themselves.”—Did they want a generation of strong, self-reliant young men and women to grow up in the land? or even here, children on apron strings?
“I know, I know, but maybe something really hurts him—”
“He must cry himself out.” Instead, the two other babies awoke and joined in the howling. “Chavera!” Nadina sternly commanded, “go back to your room. I am busy here.”
“Can’t I help you, Nadina?”
“It’s not necessary. You’ve done your day’s work with the chicks.”
The next day Dvora had discussed the question with the two other mothers and found that already they did not feel as strongly as she did.
“You’ll see, in a few weeks you’ll stop listening at night. My chaver is thankful he no longer has to be awakened every time a baby cries. He’s always in a good mood now.”
But the chaverim of those two were on duty at the farm, while just now her Menahem was away all week. It would have been less lonely for her with little Yechezkiel in the room. And Dvora didn’t know what tormented her most, the feeling that her baby really was crying for her, that he knew by instinct, perhaps by the odor of her breast, which one was his own mother and cried for her to be near, or the dreadful thought that once he was picked up by no matter whom, the infant quieted.
“I know I am suffering from a primitive instinct,” she would say to Menahem when he returned, “and that we are making a new kind of life here …” “But why,” she would sometimes sigh when Leah visited, “why did it have to fall on us!”
She was not as strong in revolutionary ideas and matters of principe as Leah and Reuven the vegetarian. They were the ones who lived for ideals. Often she wished that Leah would remain here at Gilboa to guide her. At other times it came to Dvora that in her womanly life she had already gone beyond what Leah had ever experienced; she was a mother.
—It would be best, Nadina was explaining, to plan for the new group of infants to be born all in the same season, preferably in fall. And she began to read out the names of the comrade couples who had signified to Shimshoni, just now secretary of the kvutsa, that they wanted to become parents.
Again, and even though she herself was not involved, Dvora found herself flushing. “Pnina and Josef. Gavriel and Aviva. Ruthie and Yoshka. David and Shoshana.” After each pair of names it was almost as though Nadina waited for applause. And indeed heads turned toward those named, and smiles of many sorts broke out, some knowing, some joyous, some questioning, with laughing jibes, too. “Yoshka, you really think you can do it?”
“Chevreh!” Nadina sternly put a stop to such levity. With herself and chaver Galil, she summed up, that made five couples already in the group, and as six would be the optimum number …
“Suppose Ruthie and I have twins?” called out Yoshka, the irrepressible. Nadina ignored him. For a sixth she proposed that a couple who were already parents should take part, as this would add another dimension to the experience, the question of a brother or sister relationship—something they must inevitably approach. It would be the first opportunity to raise children so that all were as brothers and sisters, no different from those who were biologically so.
And before Dvora could think, she heard her own name and Menahem’s spoken by Nadina. Would they like to undertake the sixth? And a wave of approval was felt in the room, especially toward Menahem, she sensed, for everyone seemed to know that he had carried out some very difficult and secret mission, and was deserving of respect.
No matter how it had been decided, the prospect of becoming pregnant again was welcome to her. For Dvora understood now her own mother’s numerous pregnancies; despite everything, this brought a period of peace in a woman. She would gladly enter such a period again, for lately she was troubled for Menahem. His silences were heavier. True, even in their silences they communicated. When she had first become pregnant, Dvora had held back from telling him, yet before anything showed, it was he who had one night suddenly declared, “If it is a boy, we will call him Yechezkiel.” In that moment she had gratefully known that it was this same wish, already in her own thoughts about the baby, that had kept her from speaking of the pregnancy to Menahem. How she had loved him for relieving her. It was as though in the times of silence that came over them they were wandering each through some dark tunnel, but, by the miracle that was the proof they belonged to each other, they always came out together, in the same place. The fear in her was that some time it would not be so. On that night, so relieved had she felt that they had made love unceasingly and irrepressedly, as though to conceive their Yechezkiel all over again.
But lately Dvoraleh felt a bewilderment; she did not know where Menahem would come out from these new silences. He had done something that was needed, she knew, all knew, he and Shabbatai together, though no one must talk of it. Secret duties sometimes came to men of the Shomer.
If she became pregnant, she would feel Menahem’s absences less strongly. He had been sent down for a time to the furthest guarding place, near Gedera, and he came home to Gilboa only every second Sabbath.
But to have the prospect called out in this way, as though it were about eggs for her incubator! To feel that all the chaverim were watching, and that when she and Menahem went to their room, it would seem as though the watching continued through the cabin walls.
Shimshoni’s half-bald head was glowing as he bent over the sheet of paper, adding their names.
For weeks after the meeting jests were endless. When those of the selected fathers-to-be who were on guard duty at far-off villages left at the end of the Sabbath for their posts, chaverim and even chaveroth never tired of demanding, “Have you accomplished your home duty?” And endless were the jests over the distribution of articles for personal use, as Motkeh, in charge of such supplies, promptly struck the six future fathers off his list for preventatives.
“What will a man do when on duty away from home, if he is called in for the Shomer’s night time tea?” was a favorite
jest. Ever since the scandals about Zev the Hotblood, the “Shomer’s tea” in the middle of the night had become a byword.
“We’ll father a crop of little shomrim all over the land!” boasted Ruthie’s bright-tongued Yoshka.
To which Motkeh, the supply-man, would declare, “That’s my whole scheme.”
In Gilboa, following another pattern that had been started at HaKeren, the cabins were built with four chambers side by side, opening onto a common front porch, and in each room were two cots—sometimes three. When a chaver and chavera paired off, Shimshoni would manage to move people about so that they could have their two cots in the same room, without a third if they were lucky. A marriage bed such as parents used in the old country was unsuitable, for on separate cots a man and woman did not disturb each other with their different hours of rising for their tasks.
It had become a habit when Menahem was home that they would go to their beds separately, and then Menahem would come over to hers. Almost always, in that same reassuring sense that they emerged out of their tunnels to discover themselves together, he knew when she lay wanting him, and came over to her. And then, when it was done, he would return to his own cot. At times during her first pregnancy, Dvora had experienced a different kind of longing, so she would go over to him and sleep almost the whole night pressed against his back. They had discovered for themselves the pleasure of lying naked under the sheet, and when her abdomen grew round, a peaceful sleep, such as neither had ever known before, came to them when they fitted together, this time with his front against her back while his hand rested on the curve of her pregnancy.
Such a time now came again. A rotation was made of the guardsmen for the more distant settlements, and Menahem received farm duty for a time in Gilboa.