The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  And there it was the soldier who came forward with a political answer. Why shouldn’t they? he demanded. On the contrary! If the British were worried that Russia might fall out of the war, they would welcome his proposal to awaken the millions of Russian Jews, inspiring them to win their own land. They would help keep Russia fighting.

  “Ach, you are only hungry to go back to Russia and see the revolution. You’re still a Communist!” Jabotinsky cried, half exasperated, half in sympathy.

  Long after their chief had again left for London, the men were still at it: What the Russian Social Democrats would do, what the Cadet party would do, what the Bolsheviki would do, if this, if that, what the English would do if this, if that. The devil take them all, Gidon thought. Why couldn’t Jews do what Jews had to do, and an end!

  Then—hardly a week had passed—another great new thing. America! If Russia was falling out of the war, America was coming in! The sky had opened. With every Tommy in the camp you had to drink to the Yanks. The Hun was finished now for sure. Once the great giant from across the seas planted his feet in Flanders, it was all over for Fritz. It might still take a bit of a while for the Yanks to get over here, granted, but all that was needed now was to hang on, and it would be the Kaiser they’d be hanging, in Berlin!

  In the new, excited discussions, the schneiders had already added an American Jewish army to their ranks. In their enthusiasm they saw enormous troopships filled with Jews already on the way across the Atlantic. Trumpeldor’s Russian Jewish army too was embarked, crossing the Black Sea, sailing through the Dardanelles, never mind about Gallipoli, the straits would be con- quered as he sailed toward Eretz Yisroel! And they themselves were afloat, crossing the Mediterranean on British war vessels. Converging, these invincible Jewish armies would march up to Jerusalem, and plant the flag of Zion atop the Wailing Wall.

  24

  EVEN A glass of tea had become a rare luxury. The familiar Wissotsky packets had disappeared from the shops, as had all else except for scant supplies of chick peas rationed by the committee of notables. Even olives were kept in the rear.

  With her girls, Leah raised mint for tea. First they supplied the weak and the sickly. Everyone was gaunt; Leah herself had grown thin, and on her last visit home Shula had joked that, as with her own Nahum, it had taken a war to make Leah beautiful.

  And Leah added to the jest, “Yes, and just when there are no men.”

  Who could be concerned in these days over romance, over personal matters? The entire Yishuv was shriveling, dying. In the cities only half were left. Some had escaped to Egypt, some even to Damascus, but the rest had died, who knew from what, from disease, from starvation.

  Among the Arab villages it was not as bad, but bad. The fellah who had a bit of earth to till still managed to hide away enough grain for his pittah, but the wage-workers now wandered about with hard, sometimes frightening, looks in their eyes. More and more of the orange growers had abandoned their groves; they had no benzine for their irrigation pumps, and where, to whom, would they sell their oranges?

  Even here with their vegetable farm inside the village a night watch had to be kept over the growing cabbages, and each night the girls went out two by two. One night, dashing Dov the paymaster made a hurried stop, awakening Leah to leave not only two more British rifles that Bedouin had sold him, but a wondrous gift, a package of English tea that had been bartered along with the guns. When Dov left, Leah took it into her head to bring out a jug of real tea to the girls on watch—tonight it was Rahel who watched with Zipporah. So as not to come on them suddenly and give them a fright, she marched boldly on the gravelly path just inside the lane of cypress. Suddenly she heard a shriek such as she herself had let out on a famous night on watch long ago in the Aaronson vineyard in Zichron, when she had heard scraping sounds, and caught a pair of Arabs loading clusters onto their donkeys. Running forward now, the tea half spilling from the spout, Leah was brought up short by Rahel, holding the famous little pistol that Avner had left with her, with Zipporah behind her with a rake.

  “Oh—it’s only you!” Zipporah cried.

  “I almost shot,” said Rahel. And then, in relieved anger, “Leah! I’ve begged you a thousand times! Why must you wear those men’s shoes!”

  It was the sound of the hobnailed boots that had frightened them.

  “And I spilled half the tea. Real tea.”

  The incident became a watchword with the girls whenever anything frightened them. “Don’t worry. It must be Leah in her hobnails, bringing tea.”

  For Chanukah Leah decided to have a party. “Why should life be so grim?” Zipporah kept insisting. Hunger, war, fear, loneliness—enough! There were several young men in the village, after all, a few farmers’ sons with exemption papers, and even a few chalutzim who had good hiding places. Two of the girls had their sweethearts among them and saved food for the boys, who slipped over to stand with them in their turns on guard. A system had even been established—one couple on watch, the other “resting.” That still made two on guard, didn’t it?

  But most of the girls were lonesome, and if word of Leah’s Chanukah party were spread to Rehovot and Beer Tuvia, surely more young men would appear.

  Though there were no potatoes for Leah’s celebrated latkes, she had saved a little oil and promised to make eggplant pancakes that could not be told from the real thing. There was no sugar—who had seen sugar in a year? But they held back from the marketing cooperative a portion of honey from their hives. And on the morning of the party a farmer’s wife, Rifka Belman, astonished the girls by bringing a full crock of milk. It tasted of oranges, for her husband was one of those who at least made use of part of his wasting crop by feeding oranges to the remaining cows. Rahel brought a few bottles of wine from Rishon, and they had dates and figs, enough to make a show on the plates, and really heaps of almonds from the grove.

  When the time came to dress, Rahel, who from nowhere had produced a gown with Yemenite embroidery, plagued Leah—for once!—and sat her down and arranged her hair in an upward billow such as she had seen in Paris just before the war. Then, for what to wear, Rahel pulled out the old suitcase from under Leah’s cot, and, underneath a torn sweater that even Leah could no longer put on, she found the long, loose white-wool abaya made years ago for Leah’s swan dance.

  “But what’s this!”

  “It was for the visit of Chaim Nachman Bialik,” Leah blushed.

  They made her try it on. Studying the effect, Rahel pulled off her own embroidered belt and tied it around Leah’s waist, high under her breasts. All the girls gasped. Suddenly it was a fashionable gown. “C’est la mode Empire!” Rahel pronounced, and Zipporah fetched a glittering Spanish comb to put in Leah’s hair.

  Now the whole little kvutsa began adding ornaments and rings and bracelets to beautify their Leah. “Oh, she’s a queen!” a tiny one, Pnina, cried out. “Oh, I’m going to sew myself a gown just like hers!” Leah kept protesting, laughing, but they held up a hand mirror for her to look into, and Zipporah insisted on putting kohl around her eyes: “Sit still!” The girls were having such a happy time, she submitted to everything.

  Finally, perfection achieved, the girls commanded her to parade up and down for their approbation. Already hoofbeats were heard—men were coming!

  Before they could even see who had alighted there burst in Zev the Hotblood, crying “What! A party, and you didn’t even invite me!” He had come along with a boy from the next village, the round-faced, red-cheeked Naaman Belkind, son of one of the early Bilu families. “And I brought my cousin too,” Naaman said, with a mixture of shyness and pride, as his cousin was Avshalom Feinberg. And with Avshalom there had to be the Hothead, for since Zev had saved him in Beersheba from being hanged as a spy, they were seen everywhere together.

  Before Leah, Zev halted agape. “By my life!” He made a sweeping bow of homage to beauty. “Avshalom, speak! Even in Paris has anyone seen such as this?”

  “Why Paris? Not even in Jerusalem i
n King Solomon’s day!” responded Avshalom.

  All the girls were gawking at him, and the first remark from his lips did not disappoint them. This night would be bright. There would be glowing words, and feelings would rise and flash between men and women, and at least for tonight they would not be only girls making their shrill liveliness amongst themselves; already there was heard that lower womanish laughter that holds promise.

  More young men appeared, a harmonica and an accordion played, several couples were in the yard and a few were wandering down the cypress lane, where Avshalom, with Naaman clinging to him, was the center of a small group around a stone bench. Avshalom was singing a song in French, and Rahel was joining in: “Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y dan-se, l’on y dan-se—” Inside the house, another group had somehow got to singing Yiddish songs—“Oif’n pripitchik” they were singing, and passing on to Hebrew songs of the chalutzioth. Soon the hora would begin out there in the yard; Zev the Hotblood had already received a few slaps on his roving hands, and at one point Leah even asked Avshalom to take away from Zev the bottle of arak he had brought, from which he kept taking swallows.

  Avshalom poured some of the liquor into a tumbler and, mixing it with water, watched it grow cloudy. Did she know this was also a favorite drink in the cafes of Paris, he said, particularly with artists and poets, though there it was made with absinthe and was even stronger than here? And he recited the praise of absinthe by a French poet, Baudelaire.

  Now they were sitting together talking. Leah knew very well that nothing was likely to happen between them, for many reasons, not really his lack of height, but rather, that Avshalom was betrothed to the youngest Aaronson girl, the one who had been sent to America for safety. And also he was said to be in a deep entanglement with Sara. Everyone knew there had been something between him and Sara even before he fell in love with little Rifka; it was even said Sara had married and gone to Damascus so as to free him for her sister. But now it was said Sara had come home not merely on a visit, but had really left her husband. Not only Rifka was gone from Zichron; Aaron Aaronson was mysteriously no longer to be seen—he had gone to Berlin, it was said. Thus Sara and Avshalom were much alone together at the agricultural station. Everyone talked of them. Sara was no girl now but a mature woman. Even Rahel didn’t keep back from this bit of gossip. In the course of her flitting from place to place, she had not long ago gone to work with her agronomy diploma in Aaronson’s laboratory in Athlit on the classification of plants; but no sooner had Aaron gone off on his voyage than Avshalom had dismissed her from the station, as though he wanted no strangers there.

  Slightly as she knew Sara, Leah could not imagine her as a woman who took love lightly. Sara was of a strong and serious nature and Avshalom too, despite his flamboyance, was of a serious nature. Though he liked to pose as a man of extravagant experiences, and would often remark enigmatically that he had enjoyed everything that was to be found in Paris, such things were only what was expected of a handsome and dashing poet. His true self, she felt certain, was profound, and passionate. It could not be said of him, as of her own Handsome Moshe, that he lightly set out to break women’s hearts, that he misled young girls. Here in this room every girl would tell you, yes, she could fall in love with Avshalom Feinberg! But it would only be like innocent, excitable girls chattering to each other over the picture of a famous actor. And that was all that Avshalom would reveal of himself—an image.

  This was also why Leah felt that nothing could happen between Avshalom and herself; his soul was hidden, it was pledged, whether to Rifka or Sara or both. Alongside him she felt a joyous excitement, not particularly sexual, but a great stimulation, a meeting with a person who raised her out of her day-to-day life—a poet, an artist. Others too had been to Paris, even to America. Rahel could speak of Paris, the museums, the theaters, but Avshalom really belonged inside that world of culture, of art, of a living civilization. Sometimes Leah’s heart longed for it, with a longing almost as strong as her longing for a man.

  “You knew her!” she cried out as Avshalom happened to speak of the famous dancer, Isadora Duncan, of her sitting near him amongst a circle of young artists and poets at a cafe. “Oh, what is she really like?”

  “Why,” he gave her a measuring look, the way Yosi the sculptor had once done at the Bezalel school, “Why, she is just like you!” he laughed. “When I came in and saw you in that dress, I felt something like a recognition, and that’s it! Yes, Leah! She even wears a gown like this, she had it made in Greece!” He chuckled with pleasure. Leah ran and brought him the book Rahel had given her with drawings and photographs of the dancer, and Avshalom quoted lines that a French poet had written about Isadora, and translated them for her into Hebrew, and gazed again on Leah, crying out how much alike they were, and this seemed to carry her a little distance into that other world.

  “You long for it, don’t you?” he perceived. “You hunger for that world of art and civilization.”

  “Ah,” she confessed, “and then I put on my heavy shoes and go out to work in our fields. To our generation it fell to begin from the beginning and remake ourselves. Later perhaps we can come to such things.”

  “You still go on repeating all this!” he cried. “And I—I am not of the same generation? My father was a Bilu. Thirty years ago he spoke the way you do. I know, I know that our families are already supposed to be the bourgeoisie in Eretz. Ach, Leah! Sacrifice is wrong! Everyone should live out to the last urge what is in them! Leah, after the war everything will be possible here, even civilization. The Turks will be gone, the country will open up, what a land we will build! Not only another Jerusalem, but another Athens, another Paris, another London, another New York! That is what we must make here, and not a land of peasants. Why don’t we all work together, Leah, your people and ours?”

  He was agleam with excitement, his entire being glowed, his fire was leaping across to her, yet it was not the flame of a man-and-woman union. She knew—who did not know, how long could it be before the Turks would know?—the dangerous way that he and the Aaronsons had taken. About the details she had not wanted to know. Now out of a sudden fear for him and out of love, too, Leah asked, “What brings you here, Avshalom?”

  “—And a caravan of Ishmaelites took Joseph on the way to Egypt,” he quoted, his mouth remaining partly open, his eyes dancing like those of a child bubbling to cry out his secret.

  Her heart fell. Of his mysterious trip of nearly a year ago to Egypt, everyone pretended to accept the tale that it had been a love tryst, that Avshalom had managed to reach Alexandria to see Rifka before she sailed to America, and that he had made his way back on a fishing vessel. That was when he had brought so many gifts and greetings. But then why, only a few weeks ago, had he been caught in the desert in what must have been an attempt to cross the lines and reach Egypt again? Only Aaron Aaronson had been able to save him from being shot as a spy. And now? Was he mad enough to try it once more?

  Leah had put her hand to the scarab Avshalom had brought her from Gidon in Alexandria. “But for you we wouldn’t know what had become of my brother,” she remarked.

  “Soon I’ll be able to tell you more.”

  “Avshalom. Why, why? This time if you’re caught, they’ll hang you.” Aaron Aaronson wasn’t even in the land to help him if indeed any help would then be at all possible.

  No, he would not be caught. This time it was not so far to go. The British were already partway up the coast, near Raffa. He had to reach them. He had secured the entire plan for the defense of Gaza. There were heavy German guns. He must warn the British—their attack should be by way of Beersheba, not Gaza. Around Beersheba the defense was light. Besides, he had to establish regular contact with them. The contact had been broken off. A signal had been arranged for a ship to stop at night at Athlit—

  No, no, why need he tell her of this? But he tumbled on. The British had left a note on a plow, about a new signal, but it was already a long time and no ship had come. Therefore h
e must go to them, he must reach them, he must show them that the Jews had not failed them.

  She felt terrified for him.

  Did Sara know he was going?

  “She’s worried to death over Aaron. We haven’t heard a word since he left. Perhaps I can find out something there.”

  “There? From the English?” Leah was puzzled.

  “Where do you think he went?” His gaze was triumphant.

  She couldn’t speak. It was all somehow wrong, wrong. He tumbled on. His old plan—a British landing, an uprising. Her group must join. He knew they were gathering arms—

  —No, no, he didn’t understand. How many times had it been decided, the arms were to defend the Yishuv, it was not for the Yishuv to enter the war. Suddenly she seized his hand—why must it be he, Avshalom, who should take this deadly risk? Just now he had spoken to her of the mistake people could make with their lives, of the wrongness of turning everyone into a chalutz—let the peasants be peasants, let the soldiers be soldiers, let the poets live as poets—then he too! let him live his own role in life!

  “But it is, it is my role!” Avshalom cried, so vehemently that a few heads turned to look at them in their hushed discussion. “It is exactly for me, Leah. Action is the poetry of life. The most concentrated, the most daring action becomes poetry.” He spoke of Byron, a British poet who had fought for the liberty of the Greeks, and did she know the great French poet Rimbaud? “Rimbaud flung himself into the world, he vanished into Africa, among smugglers, among brigands—he was living his poetry.”

  “Sara doesn’t know you are going,” she said.

  Avshalom’s face became quiet. He shook his head; his eyes grew pained. All was without pretense now before her. And a dark intuition came to Leah; this was perhaps the very cause of Avshalom’s flinging himself into such danger. Both Sara and Avshalom were driven souls, and if doom did not come to them, they would pursue it.