by Meyer Levin
But the best plan, in Nahum’s view, was not to shut oneself into a small farm or into a profession that wouldn’t grow. Now with the British, great things were going to happen here in this land, and here they were at the very beginning, and the best would be to be among those who made the great things happen. To seize hold from the very start.
Gidon didn’t quite understand what Nahum was getting at, though he knew of course Nahum had always been clever. Now his brother-in-law explained his plan. Suppose they were to acquire large tracts of land, not only the government lands, the jiftlik, but lands that could be bought. And over all this area they would develop vast banana groves and citrus groves and date-palm plantations!
“But it takes years for trees to yield fruit. Who has so much money, to wait?”
“American Jews.”
Nahum had worked out a complete plan. He would sell the plantations by sections, to American Jews and to English Jews; they would send money for the development, and when the trees bore fruit, everyone would profit. “Every Jew outside of Eretz should want his little piece of the Jewish homeland. Why should schnorrers collect pennies in little tin boxes for the Keren Kayemeth? Instead of coming to American Jews as beggars, we’ll come with a business proposition. That’s the way to do it!”
Glowingly Nahum explained each detail—he had it worked out with land costs and labor costs and the price of fruit and the profit to the Americans as well as to the company. “But suppose the British don’t let us have the jiftlik lands?” Gidon asked.
“All this part you can leave to me,” Nahum said, smiling confidently. What he wanted of Gidon was that he should undertake to manage the plantation. They would be partners.
It seemed far too large a thing to think about as yet. But Nahum went on, disclosing even greater visions. Did Gidon know how great a drop there was in the Jordan waters, just below them?
“A hundred and forty-six meters,” Mati interposed.
—This little sprout was clever, he carried everything you wanted in his head! Nahum exclaimed. The German engineers had studied the entire question of building a hydroelectric station there, and generating power. Of course it was not the first time it had been thought of. But now all these things would be possible. From that one hydroelectric station here you could light up the whole of Palestine. The entire country could be modernized and industrialized—a Switzerland! This was, Nahum reluctantly said, a plan beyond his own scope, it would have to be carried out by a government or by great capitalists, but, even so, it would open wonderful possibilities. The irrigation ideas that Reuven had had for intensive cultivation of the area could easily be carried out with electric power for the pumping of water. Men and machines would pour into this valley for such a giant construction scheme as a hydroelectric station. Tiberias would be the nearest city, and Tiberias would grow. Huge modern hotels would be needed—nothing like the little Bagelmacher pension. He himself in his own right already owned a wonderful hotel site, near what had been the Kaymakam’s residence. He had a headful of plans. The Tiberias hot springs themselves could be developed into a world-famous health resort, a fashionable watering place like Baden-Baden or Karlsbad. Indeed it was because of these hot springs that the Roman Emperor Tiberius had first built a palace here, and given the name of Tiberias to Lake Kinnereth.
When Nahum went abroad to sell sections of their plantations, he would also raise capital to build a new palatial bathing establishment over the hot springs. Just as soon as the war was finished, he would travel to London, to New York; he would make a study of the fine luxury hotels of Europe and America—
Under Nahum’s spell, Gidon began to see the entire Jordan valley studded with giant factories like in England; below them would flow lighted roads, motorcars, tramways. Why not? Hadn’t Reuven too always pictured the valley as densely populated, a vast, scientific Garden of Eden?
From the hydroelectric plant, Nahum said, the Kinnereth’s fresh water would be pumped into irrigation channels as far as Jericho. Even the hellish wastes of the Mellallah, as Gidon had described the place, could be made to bloom. “Think about it. Get out of the army as quick as you can. We’ll go to work!”
35
BEHIND THE Jerusalem railway station Gidon found the compound to which Herscheleh was to have led their convoy of prisoners, a flat stretch of open ground already muddy from early rains, like some immense garbage dump on which clumps of human refuse had been left, with hardly a wire around the area to mark it off. At the gate there was no record of the convoy. As well—they had not yet arrived. So as to avoid complications over the convoy, he had remained at home only a single day, even though Herscheleh would have known how to handle things.
A half-hour’s ride down the Jericho road, he encountered the column, with Tuvia in charge. “Good you came.” This morning Herscheleh had been unable to get to his feet—dysentery combined with another malarial attack. “I took him in the wagon to the field hospital.”
The hospital itself had proved hard to find, but at last Tuvia had discovered some Red Cross tents near Rachel’s Tomb. Tuvia’s eyes told enough—with Herscheleh, it was bad. He had not been able to stay with Herscheleh until a doctor came, because here he had left their two thousand prisoners resting by the roadside with no one in charge; should an officer have passed by and asked questions, they would all have been in the soup. He had only just now come back.
The whole way had been bad, Tuvia said. A sudden freak shower had come, just when they began moving up from Jericho. Chilling nights. On the climb, prisoners had given out and been left behind. Others had fallen dead, a few dozen. Herscheleh’s fever had returned.
Tuvia’s dry dull tone made Gidon feel frightened over Herscheleh, and guilty. If anything happened to Herscheleh, it was his fault. But what could he have done more than Tuvia? Still, if he had not left …
Wheeling back up the steep ascent he had to lash his tired horse. Once they reached the vast stretch of hospital tents, it took some time to find Herscheleh. There was no field hospital facility, the clerk insisted, for Patterson’s Force, whatever that was. The Londoners didn’t belong here, either. “We are attached to Chator. Oh, damn it, go look around for yourself if you want.”
Toward the far end of the camp, in a long, gloomy tent where sick men lay in their blankets on the rain-damp ground, he found men from the 38th. Didn’t they even have cots? Had anyone seen Herscheleh? “For cots you have to go back to Egypt,” a voice croaked, “that’s where they sent our cots. To our Palestine volunteers.” It was Herscheleh. At least, if he could still joke, he wasn’t dying.
But as Gidon knelt by his friend, his dread returned. Herschel’s face was bloodless. The forehead glistened, but the eyes, after that first gleam, were lusterless. A stale odor enwrapped him.
There was no doctor for this section. Their own doctor was back at camp. There was not even a nurse. A few of the men who could move about brought water, rations. Alongside many of the sick, their rations lay uneaten on the tin plates on the ground. Herscheleh’s, too.
Gidon hurried back to the administration hut. A doctor? “My dear fellow, we’re helpless,” a subaltern told him in an Oxford accent. “We’re overrun. If you can find a doctor anywhere, do let me know.”
Where could he turn? He must do something, do something. Never had Gidon felt such an anguish of helplessness. Find a doctor in some other detachment and bring him here at gunpoint? Hurry to Jerusalem and seek among the streets, among Jews—where is there a doctor for a Jewish soldier? Meanwhile Herscheleh might die here, untended, on the wet ground.
Gidon hurried back to the tent. “Listen to me, Herscheleh, I’m going out to bring a doctor.” His friend’s hand fastened onto his as though clinging to life; Gidon feared to take his own hand away. There was no strength in the handclasp and the skin was astonishingly hot.
Then Herscheleh began to talk, clearly, calmly, as though he had no trace of fever. He asked all about Gidon’s visit home, asked about each sister and bro
ther, about the farm, and said, “I can imagine what a feed your mother made for you!” He was interested in the tale of Reuven’s marriage and of the piano brought the whole way from Damascus. And then, when he heard of Nahum Bagelmacher’s ambitious plans, “It’s an idea,” Herscheleh said, even with a trace of his old irony. “Why not? Every American Jew should have his orange tree in Eretz. A very good idea. What do we need socialism for? Why didn’t Ber Borochov think of something so simple and practical? So you had a good visit home.”
—He’d better hurry up and get on his feet, Gidon admonished, so as to take his own turn to go home.
“No,” Herschel said calmly. “Anyway, it’s not so important.” All Gidon’s fright returned.
For all they had gone through together, Gidon knew little of Herscheleh’s family except that he had relatives in Chedera.—Next to nobody, he had there in Chedera, Herscheleh now said—a farmer he had worked for who had been decent to him, and who was from the same shtetl in Russia, maybe even a remote cousin.
Then, without a change of tone, Herscheleh was saying things Gidon could not quite follow. “If you believe in the theory of a fixed amount of energy in the universe, never destroyed but only changing in form, then it must also be from the inanimate to the animate—the inanimate is also a repository, a source of life energy …”
As he rambled, Herscheleh’s voice became urgent, delirious. Now he was saying his father had been an anti-Zionist, and a landlord, a moneylender, so he had run away from home. His words merged back into Yiddish. “Tsion,” he said, “you know what it means?” And he repeated with a feverish cackle, “Tsi—ohn” as one said in Yiddish, for trying on a garment, pull it on. And at his own jest, he remained silent for a moment, as though indeed trying on the meaning. Then he quoted, in mock-Oxford English, “How odd/Of God/To choose/The Jews,” and began a rambling discussion in bits of English, then Hebrew, then Yiddish, then a phrase in Russian: how could anyone pretend to be an atheist, or even an agnostic, and yet be a Zionist? “Everyone of us here has the soul of a yeshiva bocher. We only substituted the concept of history for the concept of God. What are we doing here otherwise?”
Herscheleh’s hand seemed to be slipping away. Gidon began to talk urgently of the ideas that had come up among the men for a settlement of veterans, not necessarily a kvutsa, but not a simple smallholder’s village, a moshav, either. “Your idea, Herschel, a cooperative, half like a kvutsa, but where families would live each in their own house with their own children … Have you written out the plan yet? We must present it as soon as possible. Listen, we can ask the government for land, for jiftlik. Three-fourths of the whole country is jiftlik, did you know? I never thought it was that much. My little brother knows the figures exactly, he knows everything, that one—Mati. Listen—” Gidon couldn’t tell if Herschel was hearing him, but he went on. For such a plan, they’d have to find girls, get married … Remotely Herschel’s voice came, “I never found anyone. You found someone at last.”
“You had that girl in England,” Gidon said, to say something more, anything, anything.
“Gidon, Gidon—remember that time, the schneider on the rifle range that said, ‘And then you shoot him in the tarboosh, God forbid!’ Oh, our Yidlach. Oh, I love the Jews.” Then, intimately, in his old knowing way, he whispered, “I know the best places …” Then after a long exhausted pause, “So much to be done …” he lapsed into silence.
His eyes had closed. But there was a thread of pulse. He lived. Was it a coma? Sleep?
Could he leave Herschel even now and go search for a doctor, or should he give up and only sit here waiting for the death? Gidon squatted there on the ground, fearful that if Herschel awoke and found he was gone, it might make the final difference. And where would a doctor be found? In the depths of the hospital tent, Gidon caught sight of Simon the typist, still on his feet. “Watch over him. If he wakes and asks for me, say I’ll be right back. I’ve gone to find a doctor.” Simon nodded, and added with a weary shadow of a grin, “Ever see so many Jews and not a doctor in the lot?”
Whatever it was, Simon’s feeble quip, or even some despairing need in himself to get out of the dreadful tent, Gidon hurried away, riding toward the Old City’s Jewish quarter. It was closest. And there he had Aviva’s address—who else did he know in Jerusalem? Her people would help him find a doctor. With the army it was impossible; he’d have to force his way up to headquarters itself, the devil knew where.
The lane lay close against the Old City wall, and there when he asked the name, “Yerushalmi?” a boy with ear-locks pointed to a wooden door to a walled courtyard. It was locked, but Gidon found a cord to a bell that tinkled within; at once he heard quick steps coming across the stones. Aviva’s, he was certain, and she opened the door and pulled him in with a swift delighted kiss on his cheek, then fleetingly across his lips—the first time. At this moment he could not feel the joy of it without guilt over Herscheleh, though he kept his arm around her. “Aviva, I have to find a doctor at once,” and he explained.
The courtyard was crowded with flowers around tiny vegetable beds; Aviva had learned well from Leah, he could not help noticing. At the rear was a narrow house with an outer stair of worn stones; at the landing, a toddler was already trying to come down to them, eying Aviva with a half-frightened, daring grin as he wobbled down the step. She rushed up and caught him, “Amnon! No!” with a hug; the mamser couldn’t be left alone for an instant—she was tending him, their mother had gone back to teaching. The doctor—it would be difficult, he was overwhelmed, the only one left in the Old City, but he was a good friend of her father’s—“I’d better go with you.” Amnon couldn’t be left, she’d have to take him. And she had to write a note for her little sister who’d be coming home from school. The room was walled with books, and on the floor stood several large glued-together jars, finds from her father’s searchings.
He’d better tether the horse in the yard. The child trotted between them holding a hand of each; as they turned into a more crowded lane, Gidon hoisted Amnon up on his shoulders. The doctor’s flat was just inside the Jaffa gate and at least he was there. The waiting room was filled, Jews, Arabs, some squatting on the floor. But they let the soldier through; Aviva knocked on the inner door and called, “Dr. Plotzker, it’s Aviva Yerushalmi. Excuse me—an emergency.” In a moment the door opened; a stout Jew with a skullcap on his bald head peered at Gidon.
Aviva explained. “It’s his chaver, he’s dying.”
“They won’t let me into the camp without a pass,” the doctor said. “I’ve already been turned away by your British lords. Get me a pass, I’ll come.”
“But with me, I’ll get you in—”
“They’re strict. It’s no use wasting my time. Get me a pass.” To Aviva he added, “Regards home,” and closed his door.
Then came another tormented half hour, trying to find the right place to secure a pass. Aviva with little Amnon he sent back. At the military civilian administration, crowds, queues, and then in sheer luck, from behind the barrier, Gidon heard his name called, and it was Fawzi, from home, from Dja’adi, laughing at the encounter. “Gidon! By my life!” Pulled behind the rail, he was pummeled, embraced.
Though hardly in the mood, he had to exchange complete news of home. “Your sister Leah, the big one—” A few years ago, Fawzi laughed, he had encountered her here in this very office when he worked for the Turks. Oh, yes, because of his reading and writing they had given him a good job, and besides his cousin from Jerusalem was high in this office. Also now with the British. Fawzi was learning to read and write English, he was to be an interpreter. Maybe his grandfather would again reward him with a fine horse!
At last Gidon was able to mention the pass. At once! Fawzi would get his cousin Haj Amin to sign it. “I’ll say it’s for an uncle of yours.” Good luck for Gidon’s friend. They must meet again, and go hunting in the Huleh like in the old days. Soon he was going to take a party of English officers there—they loved to hunt wild
pigs. They did it in India, they said; only, could Gidon imagine, the mad Englishmen, they would not hunt the boar with guns, only with spears!
Pushing his way through the thronged lanes, half-running, he at last got the doctor. On the way to the camp the doctor told him, with interposed strings of Yiddish invective, how efforts had been made at least to send volunteer nurses into the field hospital to care for the Jewish soldiers. Refused. Incredible. A scandal. He could not fathom the military mind. Naturally one had to be grateful to the British for deliverance, and perhaps in time when the military administration was gone … But Weizmann himself after only a few months had given up and left; with the military in charge, there was nothing he could do. No use. Then suddenly the doctor emitted a heavy sigh and echoed his own last words, as a summation of philosophy. “Against certain forces in human society, as in nature itself, it’s no use.”
And when they arrived in the long tent, so it proved. Herschel had not awakened, Simon told them. Shaking his head, the doctor stooped, opened Herscheleh’s eye, closed it, shook his head again, glanced at Gidon. “Don’t blame yourself. You did all you could. It would have been the same in any case.” From all sides there were calls to him. “I’m really not allowed—” but he hurried from one man to another. A few he gave pills from his bag, muttering the whole time, a shame, a scandal.
Gidon made his way back to the convoy to tell Tuvia. They led their stumbling mass of prisoners to the compound.
Later, Aviva’s whole family was at home: a brother of fourteen in the youth movement who eyed Gidon with respect and was shy about asking questions; a little sister who tried not to stare at him; the father with gold-rimmed glasses and a thick gray-speckled mustache, who said Gidon must come on Shabbat for a walk and, just outside the Old City wall, he would show him what he believed to be the real site of David’s citadel; and the mother, compact, energetic, not old-fashioned like his own Mameh, and yet a balabusta, he could see, and making him feel already as one of the family. To the father he spoke of the ruins that Reuven had found above the Kinnereth, and the teacher became excited—now it would be possible to go to the Kinnereth again! He wanted to meet Reuven.