The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  Araleh!

  What didn’t Araleh have to relate to her! The veils of destiny were drawn aside at last! Instantly, the news of Saraleh and the baby—two now. Well and safe in Alexandria. See, he had photographs. And Gidon? Through the whole of Gallipoli, like brothers! Safe, whole—yes, thank God this much she had known, Gidon had sent a message with Avshalom, poor Avshalom Feinberg. The Nili had been caught, she related; Sara was dead, Zev was captured, hundreds were in prison. Yes, Araleh knew, he had heard in Alexandria. —But Gidon? In England. England! Yes, for nearly a year. And had Araleh heard from him? Now and again a letter. Gidon was well, she had nothing to fear, he might even soon be in Eretz, he was in the new Jewish regiment—Then it was true! A Jewish army!

  —Wait, wait! With a quieting up and down movement of his hand, Araleh motioned her to be calm. His lips in a twist of skepticism, he related how it was with the British. Trumpeldor’s men of Zion had been wanted and not wanted, they had been soldiers and not soldiers; under fire they had proven themselves, only to find that they were auxiliaries, porters—their wives not even entitled to aid if they were killed. But never mind. Perhaps in England it would be different than in Egypt. Two years it had taken to win the right to have a Jewish force. Trumpeldor had wearied and gone back to Russia to raise a Jewish army there—

  “Is he coming?”

  Who knew? But from England it was at last said the men were coming. The same commander, the Irishman of the Zion Mule Corps, would be leading them.

  Then Gidon would be coming! It was as though at any moment her young brother would be standing before her.

  “Ah, not so fast,” said Araleh. They would have to come through Egypt. That the commanders in Egypt would send the Jews to capture Jerusalem—of this he had his doubts. With the British—though it was promised the unit was for Palestine, the Jewish soldiers would still be lucky if they did not find themselves fighting in the trenches in France. “The first time, too, we thought we were sailing for Palestine, and found ourselves in Gallipoli.”

  Still her spirits were so joyous, Leah could only laugh at his doubts. —And he himself? After all, here he was!

  Ah, said Araleh, he had learned his lesson, written in stripes across his back.

  —No!

  Yes, to her he could reveal it, though Saraleh still did not know and must not know. Then Araleh told her his tale. He had learned; and henceforth to no power would he swear allegiance, “only ourselves.” Now, he was a contractor. They needed him, his Arabic was good, they paid him well, but no one could lay a rod on him. He was his own man and could leave.

  Still, nothing Araleh said could dampen her joy. He had always been a difficult one, even in the early days of the kvutsa. And Jewish fighters were coming, it was true!

  —And his in-laws? Araleh asked. The Zuckermans, she was certain, had been in Petach Tikvah among the refugees. Araleh rode off to look for them.

  Where, how, could they join the Jewish army? In each village young men hurried after every British officer who rode through the street. They gathered and discussed marching in a body to the British commander. No need to wait for Jewish troops from America and England—here they were, on the spot! In Rehovot they flocked to the house of Smilansky the writer; despite his age he would be the first to join, he declared, and names were taken down. All of Leah’s girls demanded to be put on the list to be nurses, even to be fighters!

  A sitting was being held to determine how to proceed, and Leah hurried to the workers’ house on the Tel Aviv shore. “My mother is free!” Rahel greeted her. Just before the flight of the Turks, a message had come from Young Avram, who was in Damascus trying to help the prisoners. It was because of Zev, Rahel related, that her mother had been freed—at least one decent thing he had done. “They brought her before him to be identified. What do you want of this old woman!’ he cried out. ‘This is not Rahel, it’s her mother. She had nothing to do with anything. She knows nothing. Let her go!’ And they let her go, she is free in Damascus!”

  Then Zev was still alive. They hadn’t hanged him?

  “They hanged him a few days ago. With Naaman,” Eli said.

  Leah turned her head away.

  Then, just outside, she saw a British officer, hesitating in the doorway, an immaculate, refined-looking man, wearing glasses. “Sholem Aleichem,” he said, and stepped in, introduced himself: “Captain Ned—well, Nathan Hardin.” He apologized if he was interrupting.

  In a formal, Biblical Hebrew, such as had been used here years ago, at the beginning, the Captain explained that he was a barrister from London, and that his task in the military service was civil administration; though he realized he was somewhat beforehand, as few Jews has as yet returned, he had not wished to delay his first sight of Tel Aviv.

  Soon they became at ease with him, and more flowed from this refined British Jew. A good Zionist, he knew everyone—Weizmann, Sokoloff, Zangwill, Jabotinsky—the whole struggle for the Jewish army he related to them, and with him Leah even felt free to ask about the hints Araleh had given that in the high command there was no liking for Jews. Smiling with a tinge of regretful but civilized tolerance, the Captain assured them—not really at the very top. Of course, everywhere there were bound to be some who didn’t like Jews—yet after the Declaration, how could the British be doubted!

  The Declaration?

  The Declaration of the Jewish National Home! Palestine! At their dazed faces, the Captain caught himself up. But of course it was quite natural that in the midst of the fighting it hadn’t yet been made public here. Very well, perhaps he was indiscreet, but he couldn’t keep from sharing it with them. And the Captain quoted, having apparently memorized every word. “ ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people …’”

  Messiah! In their own days! They were living to see it! Rahel too, Leah saw, was weeping. If Avner were only here! And Dovidl. But surely they knew. Surely in America they knew.

  “The whole world knows!” the Captain assured them, beaming.

  If Sara Aaronson could have known, Leah thought. And Zev, before they hanged him.

  “A Jewish nation could protect this side of the Suez Canal,” Eli observed. “A great political stroke, too, for the Allies. To win the help of every Jew in the world.”

  —Exactly, and the point had not been overlooked, Captain Hardin agreed. And just as Jewish wealth and influence all over the world could help, so the Arabs too were being drawn into the British orbit with pledges of a vast kingdom. Just as the Jews looked to Jerusalem, the Arabs looked to Mecca, and the direct descendants of Mohammed, in Mecca, led by British officers, were already raiding the Turks, across the Jordan. Oh, he smiled in pride, the British were clever statesmen. And a certain amount of idealism must be counted into it, as well.

  Why not? Could there not be good, as well as evil, in politics? Why was it more realistic to doubt than to believe? Leah asked herself. Why shouldn’t she believe, and be happy?

  Perhaps it would be best for the moment, Captain Hardin added, not to talk of the Declaration, not to raise excitement, until it was officially announced. Doubtless the General was holding the news back for a great occasion, such as the capture of Jerusalem.

  On that very same day, when Leah returned home to her girls in Rehovot, glowing and bursting with the great news but managing to keep it within her, there was Araleh just returned from taking petrol supplies to the commander’s headquarters. And there he too had heard a momentous piece of news. In St. Petersburg a second revolution had taken place, the real one. Armed workers, commanded by the Bolsheviki, had seized power!

  Instantly Leah saw her Handsome Moshe among them. Free!

  Oh, these were truly Messianic days!

  * * * *

  Every few days, some of Reuven’s men were changed for others, to breathe a bit in the open. Each evening in Menahem’s room lists and plans were made. Young Avram and Menahem managed to be received by a certain
Kadi, a whole box of chocolate-covered gold pieces was presented, a plea was made on religious grounds, and lo! they had permission to send in kosher food to the Jewish prisoners. In a warehouse belonging to the Shalmoni brothers, a kitchen was opened. Elisheva came to help, and there Reuven saw her, a kerchief around her head, stirring huge tubs of soup. “You look like a real chalutza!” he said.

  Tables with benches were set out in the warehouse, and each day now, when Reuven led his men there for a full noon meal and even an hour of rest, he lingered in the kitchen and spoke with her. How good it was, he told her, to see even the most emaciated of the men in the prisons coming back to life, as decent food was brought to them.

  Then, more even than the food, it was a piece of news that imbued everyone with new force. Young Avram came upon it in a German newspaper only a few weeks old that he bought at the stand in the Ottoman Palace Hotel. Great Britain, it said, had made a desperate political gesture, in the form of a proclamation in favor of Zionism. A so-called Jewish National Home was to be fostered by the British in Palestine!

  Oh, if they could shout aloud, dance in the streets! Mama Gelman, working in the kitchen, flung her arms around Young Avram, and then Elisheva flung hers around Reuven. It was their first embrace.

  No matter that the article went on to sneer at the crude British effort to secure the help of world Jewry by promising them Palestine while they did not yet possess it and were being thrown back with great losses. Here was Herzl’s dream, a great power supporting Zionism. And not a word of this Declaration had the Turks allowed to come out! Clearly they were afraid of its effect. The Homeland would come to be!

  Each day, while the men rested, Reuven and Elisheva sat together in a quiet corner they had found behind sacks of supplies. Reuven felt in a state of repose with her now, as when a delicate plant could be seen to have taken hold, and to be growing. The story that she was engaged was not true, Elisheva revealed to him; she had let it spread, she admitted with a mischievous sparkle, because it made a protection around her. A protection from whom? Oh, men and their devices.

  Another day she said quite seriously, with a real effort as though she had made up her mind to overcome something in herself that was a barrier between them—that engagement tale—in a way it was not entirely untrue. No, she was not betrothed. But some other thing had happened with a man, and because of it, she had wanted to protect herself from men. Then, as one half-scornful of her naïve self, she told of how she had once fallen in love in Paris—of course in Paris a girl had to fall in love—

  For a moment Reuven feared it would be the common tale, the Paris seduction, and he even began in his heart to be ready to love her nevertheless. If she had once given herself out of love to a man, it was as his own sister Leah had done.

  But it was something else she wanted to tell him. “It seemed that all the while he was courting me and telling me his love, he would go home to sleep with his mistress.” Elisheva uttered a rueful laugh over her own foolishness, and yet her eyes questioned him with uncertainty about all men, even himself. “You see, I knew the ways of Paris, but it seemed to me that a—he was from our own, from a fine Jewish family—it seemed to me that Jews didn’t behave that way …” Her self-conscious laugh, begging him. What was she really trying to explain to him? “Of course I know they do. Here, my own brothers. I was silly to be so upset. Oh, perhaps nothing would have developed, and I would not have married him in any case as, aside from a girl’s infatuation in Paris, there really wasn’t anything to hold us together, he wasn’t even musical …”

  Momentarily Reuven’s heart fell, what did he himself know of music? But she caught it up—“I don’t mean educated in music, that’s not important, but responsive—” This he was. And she returned to her story: “The idea that this way of behavior was so natural for a man, that he wasn’t even ashamed of it—it made me ashamed. I—I’m not one to have many confidantes. But you remember poor Sara. She was in Europe then, and we were friends, and she laughed at me and said the man didn’t exist who was like what I wanted. Pure. So—” Elisheva stopped, and then as one who decides to complete a confession, no matter what the embarrassment, she said, “I told Sara I would wait until I found such a man.” In that moment, Reuven almost shouted out to her, “Yes! Yes!”

  Elisheva had mustered the strength to look into his eyes. “If this was my condition, Sara told me, I would be an old maid. And that’s what my mother thinks is happening to me. She keeps inviting all these handsome young men to the house. I know what they are like, what they all do about women. So I let them believe I am engaged.”

  Still Reuven sensed there was more. He must wait for her to reveal herself, before he too should reveal. It was not that she was so strictly moral, she said. Nor was it that she disdained the physical act, but—on the contrary—and it came in a half-whispered outburst—it was because such men had made something dirty and diseased of it.

  Was it only this? Was her search for a pure man nothing more than a fear of disease?

  “Oh no, no, Reuven, you must believe me, if I loved a leper, I would go to him without thinking of contagion. But when—when a disease comes from a degraded act of love, then it is really unpardonable, loathsome. And so, when you said—what you once said, when we discussed equality of women, about respecting your future mate—” There were tears in her eyes. They could do no more in this corner than reach their hands to each other and they let them remain clasped. In a moment Elisheva lifted her head resolutely and said, “Reuven, you know, my own uncle, Leon, the one who was born blind? Only after I was away in school, in a class in physiology, did I realize it was syphilitic.”

  Now a tenderness rose in him, a reverent sense of something growing between them that was altogether personal, that had no relationship to the war or their stations in life or even to Eretz. Still, her troubled sense of purity too was somehow linked to all the other plagues that were nourished by man’s good impulses turned evil, to all that he himself wanted to heal in the world. Just so her great-grandfather in the Damascus blood libel had been a victim of another human pestilence, born of the perversion of religion. Reuven felt that his entire being was growing, that with Elisheva he would enter into complexities he had never admitted into his life as a chalutz, and that this was part of the wonder of love that was at long last opening to him.

  Her hand was moist in his. Was it possible for two people together to refuse the self-degradation and pestilence of the world of man? “People laugh at idealists,” Elisheva said, “but why shouldn’t idealists too have a right to live in their own way in this world? Even in the midst of war, Reuven—you grew gardens.”

  His very soul was touched and rejoiced. “You don’t believe that I have been a coward?”

  “A coward! You, Reuven!”

  He shivered at how close he had come to never finding her, how he had failed several times to recognize his bride who sat there by her piano waiting for him. A Hasidic tale came to Reuven’s mind, the tale of the Jew who for year after year sat before the gateway to the palace of the King, waiting to be admitted for an audience. At last, grown white with age, the Jew asked the guard, “When may I go in?” And the guard replied, “But I am guarding the gate from others. For you, this gate has always been open. This gate was made for you alone to enter.”

  * * * *

  Now the image came to Leah, for the festival. Eight girls in white, she would have, for the candles, and the ninth, the torch-lighter, would be weaving in and out in a pattern of flame. Oh, she would make something beautiful.

  But on the days before the event, news was bad. The Turks had ceased their flight and established a strong line; the Yishuv was cut in two; none could pass to the Emek, to the Galilee—every contact was severed. Heavy rains fell, and Araleh appeared again, unshaven, exhausted. The battle was desperate in the hills. His camels were useless, slipping and breaking their legs on the wet rocks. The British cavalry was halted, he could not bring up enough water to them for their horses
; the Turks had cannon high on the ridge at Ramellah and were slaughtering the attackers. A Rothschild had fallen, Major James, the one for whom the mayor had planned the feast.

  Then, on the very eve of Chanukah, an awesome thing happened. Late in the afternoon, a motorcar appeared, filled with British Jewish officers, Captain Nathan Hardin among them. They came from the commander’s headquarters, and they brought news of the capture that very day of Jerusalem.

  Jerusalem, on Chanukah!

  Who could cope with such a strange event?

  The heart nearly burst with the wonder of it.

  Streaming to the synagogue, the pious and even half-pious cast glances of triumphant scorn and pity, too, on the doubters and godless ones, the apicoiresim encountered on the way. So great was the joy that numbers of these atheists even came to the shul, standing at the edge of the crowd of worshipers.

  —Did Abba know, Leah wondered. Surely such news must be carried on God’s wind to the pious. Jerusalem, on Chanukah!

  Yet it was as though God had allowed an imperfection to remain. Had Jerusalem been freed by Jewish arms on this day, could even the worst atheist retain a single doubt?

  Still in a kind of puzzled, muted awe, Leah clothed her girls in the candle-sheaths. The entire population now, in Sabbath clothes, was gathered outside the shul. Long and eloquent were the discourses over the miracle. None failed to describe the symbolic sacrifice of the fallen Rothschild, surely the Yehuda Maccabee of our own time. And though willingly Jewish blood would have been given in place of each British hero who had fallen, surely by the design of the Unnameable there had been blood from men of far-off lands, of races from all the world, from India, from Australia, from Scotland: was this not a sign? Since the nations of the world had again and again destroyed the Holy City, as they had again and again carried off the people of God to slavery and exile, was it not a symbol of the coming of Redemption that soldiers from many far nations of the world had been brought here to open the way for the restoration of Jerusalem?