The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  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 hi
m 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.

  22

  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.