The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  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 wh
o 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.

  23

  IT WAS the year of the golden harvest in Palestine. The grain was fat, the yield twofold, and this was the way of Allah, Sheikh Ibrim declared to Yankel Chaimovitch. Did Yankel not recall the flight of storks that had alighted after the plague of locusts was gone, covering the fields as with a white abaya? The fields were rich from the droppings of the storks that had feasted for days on the crawling larvae of the locusts; such was the way of Allah.

  And even though the Turkish military police came onto the fields and counted the sheaves, and even though the tax-gatherers watched the filling of the sacks on the threshing floor, and even after half the sacks had been delivered to them, there still came the merchants from Beirut with their leather pouches filled with gold coins hanging from their girdles, and after they weighed the napoleons into the farmer’s palm, and praised their Allah, even then a good farmer still could send a few wagonloads to Meir Dizingoff’s committee for distribution to the needy, let the price not be thought of, and still put away stores in the ground, for who knew how long the war would continue and what would yet have to be endured. Far into each night Yankel and the boys labored at their digging and their carrying and their hiding away.

  A second time they had attacked the Suez and been driven off; British warships standing in the canal itself had shelled and routed the Turks and Germans too, until they fled in disorder, staggering back over the wastes in the August heat, strewing their belongings all over the Sinai, casting away their rifles and their bandoliers of bullets, leaving broken wagons, dead mules and dead horses in their wake.

>   For the moment, as the summer ended and Rosh Hashanah approached, the war seemed to be in a pause, a molach ruminating, digesting all it had engorged, gazing about for other chunks of mankind to swallow. There was even a moment in the pause when the members of the Shomer gathered in Gilboa, and despite all that had befallen and in some ways because of it, young men flocked to be accepted. There was a new need everywhere for watchmen; from the defeat in Sinai gaunt, wild-eyed deserters were roaming about alone or in small groups. Every village needed redoubled protection.

  With the ranks replenished, Shimshoni at last succeeded in his plan for the new settlement at the northern edge of the land, at the foot of the Hermon. Though there were no funds to buy his dreamed-of flocks of sheep, though the Zionist office was closed and Dr. Lubin exiled to Constantinople, the members voted for his kvutsa to go up. In the last moment Shimshoni appealed to the Baron’s agent, Samuelson, who had long lived in the northern district, in Rosh Pina. The elderly manager took the task on himself, and went to a neighboring sheikh with whom he had had many dealings. The needed gold was dug out from its jar beneath the courtyard. “Do not concern yourself, my old friend. You will pay the gold back when you have it,” and on Succoth, Shimshoni’s settlers went up with their tents and their wagons and their new-bought flock and their friends to help in the Aliyah, Leah and Rahel among them—how could they fail to take part in such an event? Just as they had gone out years before, from HaKeren to settle Gilboa, so they went now from Gilboa to settle Har Tsafon.