The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  A high-pitched shrilling from the fat one reached him. “You still have nothing to tell me?”

  “Gottenu, ratteveh mir!” came from the Jew.

  Yankel did not know it when the guards dragged him back to the dungeon, to haul out some other Jew.

  When his soul returned to him, Yankel heard the talking around him. Some said it would be done every day until the Jewel was found. Others said they would all be sent to rot in Damascus.

  Then they were singing again. Deep in the night a madness seized them. Their torn feet tramped on the stones. In a candle-flicker Yankel saw the old one, Gordon, his beard tilted to the Above One, leaping in their hora. “Chai! Chai!” they chanted. “Am Yisroel Chai b’li dai” Alive! Alive! The people Israel lives without end!

  Nahum had decided on the best way. Placed in a velvet-lined jewel box of Shula’s, the gift was dispatched that same evening by an Arab servant to the Kaymakam residence, high up on the ridge overlooking the sea, not far from the site Nahum himself had purchased for the future. Around the timepiece was a note from Nahum saying he had only now returned from Nazareth where he had seen this in a shop, and he was hastening to send it on for Azmani Bey’s collection, so that not a moment of enjoyment might be lost.

  The next morning Yankel was called—the first. He had just completed his prayers; to his surprise a minyan had formed, Gordon among them. Thus, Tibor, the bitter humorist, declared, should any of them die, he could even expect a fine Kaddish.

  Somehow, Yankel managed to walk on his feet before the two tormentors. The other prisoners watched him with apprehension, and Gordon even touched his sleeve and said, “With God’s help.”

  But Yankel Chaimovitch was not brought back to them in the crowded stone-walled room. Already another had been called out, and the men feared for Yankel. Then, from outside, through a grating, they heard his voice, “Jews! Be of good heart!”

  —A favorable sign for all of them, Gordon declared. And he took Yankel’s tallis and tfillim in his care, to bring back to him as soon as they were all free.

  * * * *

  For three nights Leah had taken the night watch on herself; this much was not unusual. But how long could he be protected? He had emerged from his fever and lay drained and limp. Yet, Zev talked. His words began before she had even fixed the door back into place, and between swallows of water he talked, and as he chewed his food, Zev poured out his life, his triumphs, his wrath, returning to go over each detail if he had omitted the smallest item; he poured his life out to her as though he were leaving it in her keeping.

  His shame at certain things he had done, women he had misled. Even the disease of shame he told of, though while it was on him, he swore he had abstained from Jewish girls. And his boasting. In Alexandria he had sat with the highest, the strategists of the war. On their secret ship he had been carried from Athlit to Alexandria, they had sent for him, and there among the highest in the Intelligence, with Aaron Aaronson himself, he had given advice to their generals. Thus he could tell her each step the British would soon take. With Aaron he himself had planned the attack, marking for the British on their map the site of each Turkish encampment. An odd Britisher was there, a pipsqueak who wore Arab clothes, and came and went with camel saddles filled with gold for the Arabs of the desert. It was said that he had led some Bedouin tribesmen in blowing up a few Turkish trains that had high officers riding in them. Ah, Zev had told them, he could send them word when there would be a train with Djemal Pasha himself riding on it! And so he had done. The train was exploded, and but for a stroke of luck Djemal would have been killed. How did the British know that Djemal was on the train? Ah, a pigeon flew!

  What to believe, what to half-believe, what not to believe, it did not matter to Leah; there had indeed been rumors that poor Sara Aaronson had been caught because of a pigeon she had sent off with a message, a pigeon that had come down in the wrong place, in a police officer’s dovecote in Caesarea. And thus she had been caught. Though others said it was because of poor Naaman, caught searching for Avshalom. To all these tales Leah gave only half an ear; what did they matter against Sara’s death itself?

  Or, it would be of his childhood Zev would speak, how, already a boy with urges of manhood, he had spied on his aunt and uncle….

  And so she let him pour out his fevers.

  But soon among her girls whispers and giggles spread; when she went out on watch, an impudent one whispered, so Leah could hear it, “Why does our Leah keep taking the night watch? Do you think she could be meeting someone?”

  It would not be many nights before one of them would slip out after her.

  When she warned him that it could not endure much longer, Zev himself declared he had already thought of this. And his plan was ready. He was well. He had but to make the last stage of his journey, and just as he had passed worse dangers, so he would pass this one; she need not fear for him. “Leah, you must bring me a keffiyah and an abaya.”

  A keffiyah she had. But an abaya? If she were to start asking for an abaya among the Arabs who worked in the village, suspicion might be aroused. Then Leah had a thought: there was her white gown, flowing like an abaya.

  The next day a newly disturbing thing happened—the horse disappeared. Doubtless it had been stolen by a deserter.

  At night when she fetched Zev the keffiyah and the abaya, and told him of the theft, he became highly upset. It was bad luck. He would go at once, he would go on foot as far as Nebi Rubin in the sand dunes. There, with Sheikh Abu She’ira, he would be safe until the English came. Many arms he had bought from the sheikh. And that clever Arab would understand it would be well for him, when the English arrived, to have harbored such a friend.

  In the garments, he looked a true Arab. At the door, Zev’s face suddenly became grave. “All I said to you, of us, Leah, I said knowingly. The fever only helped me to say it.”

  “I understood, Zev,” she said and made him a smile, but without assent.

  He would return to her, Zev insisted. —What need at a moment such as this to deny him, to gainsay him? She kept her face quiet. She must not fear for him, he insisted again; two bullets had not killed him when Avshalom fell. And in the north the executioner’s bullet had not killed him either.

  Yet Leah saw death in him. She saw it with heartbreaking certainty. And she let him speak, and let him strengthen himself against his fear, while she held back tears, and trembled with the same tender dreadful pity as on the night of his arrival here when the man’s fevered body lay against hers.

  Carefully, Zev replaced the lock on the closed door behind them. Then he stood erect, still not quite able to move off into the night, and in the terrible pity she hid in herself, Leah saw that the white abaya was also like a shroud.

  Zev mistook her trembling because she smiled to him. With the wide sleeves of the abaya engulfing her, he cupped her head in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. It was a tender kiss, a kiss of love, and from her despairing heart Leah returned the tenderness.

  She too had brought him a loaf of bread.

  When Zev’s form was swallowed in the grove, Leah’s old dread superstition returned over her, that like one who unknowingly carries the germ of a disease, she carried death.

  By evening it was known. The entire village was in the street as though released from quarantine. Everywhere Leah heard them making gallows-jokes. The fugitive had been seized as he came in sight of the tents at Nebi Rubin. Before he could even call out for Abu She’ira, two young tribesmen recognized him, rushed upon him, felled him, took his gold, stripped him naked, tied him, and carried him triumphantly to their sheikh, crying out, “The reward on his head is ours!”

  Bound and trussed, wrapped in sacking, the Bedouin delivered Zev the Hotblood to the Turks in Ramleh and received their ransom; in chains he was taken to Jerusalem where Bahad-ad-Din himself awaited.

  * * * *

  The hunt seemed ended, true; in Zichron the elders who had been locked in the synagogue as hostages were r
eleased and allowed to go home; in Tiberias the dungeon was opened and Old Gordon led out the prisoners, singing. But Max Wilner and Tibor were not among them; they had been taken to Damascus, and of the hundreds more imprisoned in Damascus there was not a word. Not one shomer had been released, not Shabbatai Zeira in Nazareth, not Motke, not Shimshoni. Every shomer in hiding must remain in hiding.

  Rumors came that Zev, revenging himself, had named the entire Shomer to Bahad-ad-Din as accomplices of the Nili, gathering arms to open the land to the British. Other tales from Jerusalem had it that, on the contrary, Zev had named no one. Who had harbored him in his flight through the entire length of the land? No one. He had hidden himself in the fields. He had bought food from Arabs. Beaten to tatters, some said, Zev had spat out his teeth in blood at Bahad-ad-Din and defiantly cried that the whole Yishuv awaited the coming of the British like a bride awaiting her bridegroom! And the Turk had shrieked, “Let the groom come! He’ll find no bride for the wedding!”

  A great battle was coming, everyone was certain. An oppressive fear spread. Even deserters were hardly to be seen—many had been shot on the byroads, even in the fields. Dov in his paymaster’s wagon did not appear. Leah could no longer endure it; she must unburden herself, she must find Rahel. One morning she set out and walked the whole way to Petach Tikvah.

  Motke’s Bluma opened the door, with only a sour, mumbled Shalom. Of Motke there was no word, nothing. This was the doing of Zev, that beast should never have been left to be taken alive. Finally Bluma sent her little girl to show Leah the hiding place of Rahel.

  Again, a hut in an abandoned grove, the ground overgrown with weeds. And what would you expect, finding Rahel? There at an upended crate she sat over an open English dictionary, copying out words for when the British would arrive! “To learn English is now of the first importance!” she burst out, even before all the heavy problems flooded out between them.

  “No, no, don’t blame yourself,” Rahel declared after Leah’s unburdening. “Leah, I too was unable to judge him.” Suddenly Leah began to weep, in great, uncontrollable shudders, her shoulders, her breast heaving, her large face twisting, while she tried to stifle the sounds. How could she have come here to add on her foolish sorrows to Rahel’s when Rahel’s own mother was among those taken off to Damascus? Her friend was holding her, Rahel’s small hands and arms around Leah’s big hulk, and Leah felt more foolish still, but it was just everything, everything, no longer even knowing what love was, and perhaps total destruction coming, and Rahel kept soothing her, “Na, na, Leatchka, it will soon be over—”

  “So—alone—” broke from Leah’s throat.

  All at once Rahel too had given way and was weeping. For a long, long moment, without any effort to control themselves, the two of them let the tears flow, and it was such a good cry, such an easing, until they were able to look at each other, still sniffling, and then like silly schoolgirls half-laugh at each other’s red face. Jumping up, Rahel cried, “Listen! I found wonderful news! Avner and Dovidl are coming!” Running to her cot, she seized a magazine, thrusting it, open, before Leah; there, underlined, Leah saw the names of Dovidl and Avner. In German. The Zionist magazine was still appearing in Berlin, and this issue had arrived half a year ago to a subscriber here in Petach Tikvah! And Rahel had come upon this item: the Poale Zion leaders, it said, naming Dovidl and Avner, were busily organizing a chalutz labor brigade in America.

  —Didn’t she see what it meant? Rahel glowed. A brigade. It meant they were organizing fighters! America was now in the war, on the side of the British. They would organize fighters, exactly as had been agreed upon, the night that Dovidl and Avner were expelled from the land. The two-point program. To organize pioneers, and fighters. This was a clear message for those who knew of the plan. A message from Avner and Dovidl! Who knew but that Jewish fighters were already in the south with the British, already coming near, already before Gaza!

  —Then Gidon, too, would be coming! Yet under Leah’s excitement there stirred again that sense of something deeply, profoundly wrong. “Then, Rahel,” she said, troubled, “then it was they who were in the right—Avshalom, Sara—the Nili—and Zev? And we who made the wrong decision?”

  Momentarily Rahel was taken aback. “Ours was the right decision at the time. For here, for the Yishuv,” she said slowly.

  “Yes.” Her other voice, the sharp, confident voice of a well-prepared student reciting, repeated it. “In every decision, time is a decisive factor.” And Leah felt her throat again choking up with that awful feeling of helplessness, of the cruelty and stupidity of events, and of human sacrifice.

  29

  —IN LIVERPOOL, Herschel read from the English newspaper, angry Tommies had beat up a number of Russian Jews.

  Gidon was sick of the whole thing. He would as soon go out and beat them up himself. The schneiders were not joining.

  Then one fine day the Irishman appeared in the barracks, in blooming health, slapping the backs of his veterans, damn right he remembered each one! Herschel, the old rumormonger! Gidon, the old reliable! Yes, here he was, to take command of their Jewish regiment! Definitely on the way! No mules this time—real soldiers! “You lads are mules enough in yourselves!”

  In rapid-fire order now came official decrees. Conscription of aliens was at last a law. Either or. The schneiders would have to enroll for service with the British or the Russians. A few days later came the military decree forming a Jewish regiment.

  Hinting about even greater pronouncements to come, Jabotinsky rushed to London. Instead came a new hullabaloo. A delegation of highborn British Jews, headed by Lionel de Rothschild, had called upon the Minister of War himself. How, they asked, could the fighting reputation of forty thousand true British Jews, present in all the British forces, be allowed to depend on the dubious quality of the reluctant Russian-Jewish tailors now being pressed into the so-called Jewish regiment? Nor, they objected, should there be any special Star of David insignia! British Jews were British, they wanted no religious or racial designation! It would be like wearing the yellow badge!

  Finally, they objected, why should such a unit, if created at all, necessarily be sent to Palestine, instead of being available like any other fighting force for any front on which the High Command saw fit to use them?

  Jabotinsky returned dejected. These British Jewish Lordships had had their way. No, the Jewish force was not totally erased. But the word “Jewish” was to be erased. Nor would there be any Star of David insignia. At least not for the present. One day, if they distinguished themselves in the field, it would be forthcoming.

  Then what was left? What were they?

  Herscheleh saw the notification in the message center. “You know what we are?” he brought the news, announcing it with an exaggerated British intonation, “we’re the Thutty-Eyeth Lohndun Fuzzileahs.”

  And he saluted smartly.

  Yet the schneiders were arriving now. An official recruitment office had been opened. The great Yiddish playwright, David Pinsky, had composed a fiery pamphlet, which was sent out by Jabotinsky to the War Office’s list of 35,000 Russian Jews. Some came, preferring to be with Jews rather than to be conscripted. Some came, admitting they were tired of the cold British stares in the streets. A number had received white feathers in plain envelopes in the mail. One recruit cried, “What could I do? My own mother chased me out of the house!”

  No one had yet been deported to Russia. Nor, despite the overthrow of the Czar, were the schneiders eager to go back. After one of the recruitment meetings, Gidon came again upon his long-nosed friend Pekovsky, who laughed, “We’re not in a rush to go back to be popped into the army there, either. The true revolution is against the war, comrade. So far what they have there is a fake revolution. We just intend to sit it out. Nobody will force us, you’ll see. The Russian commanders don’t really want a shipment of Jews—real anti-war revolutionists, at that.”

  And yet, in spite of the erasure of “Jewish” from its name, the news of a J
ewish army being formed had spread to the ends of the earth, and volunteers began to appear from all corners of the Empire, even from as far away as Singapore. The newspapers reported that American Jews, too, were forming their own regiment, and were already training in Canada. Then one day Jabotinsky brought word from Trumpeldor in Petrograd. He had won the approval of Kerensky’s war minister, and was raising a Jewish army of a hundred thousand!

  In the midst of all this came reports of a big new campaign in Palestine. A new commander had been sent out, and this time Gaza would be taken.

  A fresh panic seized the veterans from Eretz. They would arrive too late!

  Sometimes, as he trained his sewing machine operators, Gidon thought that might be just as well. Perhaps those British Jewish lords had been justified in their fears about the fighting quality of the schneiders. When it came to bayonet drill, his recruits turned green. In Yiddish, in Russian, Gidon howled at them, “The Turks would rather drive in a bayonet than a bullet. You’d better get your own in first!” Mercilessly he made them lunge into the dummy and twist the blade. “All right, you can look at me as if you want to do it to me, I don’t care. But learn!” Herscheleh, now also an instructor, had his own system. “What’s a bayonet? Only a big needle. Push.” It didn’t work, either.

  Even on the rifle range they had scruples. The Irishman had a special target made with a red tarboosh that moved up slowly into sight. “Look,” Gidon explained, “when it comes up, like from a trench, you take aim at the lower rim of the tarboosh and hit him in the head. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “So repeat what I said.”

  “When it comes up, I take aim at the bottom of the tarboosh, and I hit him in the head—God forbid!”

  Jews!

  Then, at the low point of discouragement, came the Declaration. From the Orderly Room, a schneider came running out to the rifle range, waving the Jewish Chronicle. Palestine for the Jews! A Jewish National Home was backed by the British government!