The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  “Don’t speak of it any more.”

  “I saw it. I saw it.”

  “I know, I know.” And Leah taught her how to move along the ground with least effort in a squatting position so as not to be bent over all day while weeding.

  Moshe returned at dusk.

  Presently she went with him to a meeting he had arranged with the peasants of the village, and Leah listened with admiration as Moshe explained and cajoled, reaching behind the suspicious eyes of the older ones, even salting or sweetening his words with Ukrainian proverbs, as needed. The situation was far from easy: their grain had been requisitioned; though they had been paid, the price had been set by the Soviets and they were discontent. Yet somehow Moshe turned them to discussion of a school; of course the teaching would be in Ukrainian.

  “What of the manor? Put our school in there!” a stolid young man demanded. “It was promised to us.”

  “You’ll have it. The Jews won’t be there forever!” He said it with such good humor, as one who understood them, indeed as one of them, that she did not resent it, especially as he added, “The Jews want to go, perhaps even more than you want them to leave!”

  It was all a kind of playacting, she could see it was necessary, and when the meeting ended and they came away, Moshe explained that the situation here was still very delicate, a few—like that young man—were good communists and therefore had to be taken seriously, as the rest of the village was still honeycombed with Petlurists and every other brand of Ukrainian nationalist. Therefore he had had to emphasize Ukrainian culture. He was deep in the problem, and Leah told herself that of course Moshe had to speak of the young Jews as “they” and not as “we.” In the situation anything else would be absurd.

  Moshe must have known how the moment troubled her, for now he said “we.” “Leah, do you realize how we need you here?” In this single day she had restored the morale of the entire training farm, which had been slackening—indeed a number of chalutzim had left. The old, Bundist arguments were making headway again. Jews would simply be a cultural unity within the revolution. But not separatist nationalists. Now, for these youngsters, she was the answer. She must be the one to clarify things. She must go through the entire district—he would arrange a mission for himself so that he could open the way for her. They would go to Zhitomir, even up to Minsk. Yes, at this junction in history it was here in Russia that she could be most useful.

  And as they walked, Moshe expanded his thoughts without any allusion to their personal relationship, but only in the excitement of the cause they shared. For they must look at it in the largest perspective, not only from the Palestine scene but from the situation of the whole Jewish people.

  “How many are we, Leah? Despite all that were starved and slaughtered, and our young men killed in the war, we are nearly five million here in the old Jewish Pale. And in the entire world we Jews are perhaps fifteen million. In our greatest dream, even with the most intense development of the land, four, at most five, million can be supported in Eretz. Then what happens to the remainder of the Jews? Will they be lost to us? Will they all assimilate in different lands in a generation or two?”

  But this was an old question; from the earliest discourses of Ahad Ha’am it had been debated. The answer was that the Jews of the Yishuv, of the Jewish state that would now soon arise under the British—they would be the core of Jewish life. Not the old Russian Pale of Settlement but Palestine would be the heartland of Jewry, and from there the new kind of Jew would go out to the Diaspora, to teach, to fortify—

  “Exactly. And you are the first emissary—you are already here! You saw the effect that you have on the youngsters?”

  It was not yet a dismay that was creeping up in her, but a curious uncentered doubt. This was a discussion in which they both seemed to have the same honest passion—the very purpose of their lives. And what Moshe said was true. She would dispatch kvutsa after kvutsa from here to Eretz. She would win their tongues back from Russian and Yiddish to Hebrew. And even if there was a touch of cunning, even if there was a breath of opportunism, in this for Moshe, even if it enabled him not yet to have to make a decision about his own life, indeed even if it made it possible for him for a time to have two lives, two wives, one in Kiev and one to travel about with, why should she not, in the very nature of a woman, seize every circumstance to win her man—yes, win him from the other woman, from the other, the non-Jewish life? If such was the condition into which events—or history, as they called it—had put her?

  This was not like herself, not like the self Leah had always seen as herself. But perhaps she had been wrong, naïve, unfinished, still a romantic idealistic girl despite her brief early experience with Moshe. Now, the reunion had proven that the bond—some sort of powerful inexplicable bond—still held, with him as with her. His plan she could understand—Moshe always found a way! His plan was to give himself time to search out, to test, his full relationship with her, for Moshe’s case was more difficult than her own; Moshe had a child now that he would have to leave. Yet Leah felt that his union with her and with Eretz would prove to be the true one, it would grow stronger; like every plant, it had a full right to be nourished and given its natural growth, and one day it would bear its fruit.

  Down the lane of trees as they walked back, lights awaited them—how like it was to approaching the kvutsa late at night long ago, in those weeks when they would go out into the field to lie together, and return for supper, famished. Moshe had the same recollection, for he took her hand and said in Hebrew, “Remember the time Araleh was the night watchman and nearly shot us?”

  Tonight too they were challenged by a guard; one of the young chalutzim started up at their approach and called out in Russian, “Who is it?” Then the boy quickly murmured, “Oh, excuse me, comrade” to Moshe, and, with a winsome knowingness said goodnight in Hebrew to Leah, “Layla tov, chavera.”

  All Moshe had suggested continued to ferment in her over the next few days. It was true she must go on to all the other training farms, perhaps even prolong her mission. Here, the youngsters were already excited about starting on the way to Eretz, and long sittings were held every night. Should the entire group leave in a body? No, the farm must not be given up, but kept as a training center, constantly replenished. Then came arguments as to who should go in the first group? Lederman and his Manya wanted to go, but wasn’t he indispensable here, to train the next kvutsa? Manya had already changed her name—Leah helped her to find just the right Hebrew word—Mayana it would be, springing from “water”—a water sprite!

  And as for herself, before going north, Leah worried—shouldn’t she first report back to Menahem? —Why consume time traveling back and forth, Moshe argued; she could send her report to Menahem with the first group, and meanwhile, he and she could go on to some of the other centers. That was what was most necessary. “Besides, running back and forth from here to Odessa is dangerous. Who knows where the Whites will be tomorrow?”

  They were upstairs in their vast bed, but they had been conducting the discussion as though it were impersonal. Only at the last, about her staying on, his voice changed with a tinge of selfishness, and a little wave of gratification went through her.

  “No, I really ought to go with them,” she repeated, and her body turned to his as though already to store up love against their temporary separation.

  Moshe covered her; then, just as he began to enter her, he said playfully, yet masterfully, “You’ll see, good old schmekel will convince you to stay!”

  And in that instant everything broke.

  Her body reacted involuntarily and thrust him out. His own word, the coarse word that in the playful reaches of love was only a further intimacy, a laughing mark of joy and freedom, this word had now thrust itself into her as her enslavement. Not by the schmekel would her life be decided. Not by the demand of her sex.

  “But, Leachka, what is it?” Moshe said, as though he didn’t know. He was still lying over her, she could feel his thigh
muscles taut, and his member almost touching her sex lips; she could even feel its throb, and in astonishment, even grief, as over some tragic revelation, Leah knew she must not allow her lips to draw it back in. Instead, by an act of will, she made her hips pull away from him. No. Moshe was not an honest man within himself, he was a conniver, a twister, she had always known this, but now she must pay attention—he was a man who deceived even himself about his final beliefs.

  At her pulling away he reacted with masculinity. “Don’t be foolish!” and thrust himself in, his force pounding insistently within her to master her. Instead an agony augmented in her, a cry in her soul, “It’s not him, it’s not him—after all, he is not really the one.”

  Her body rolled from side to side, as much through agony at her discovery as to avoid him; her shoulders rolled as in the keening of sorrow, and her head rolled away from the driving pressure of his mouth. The words repeated themselves within her and in the sway of her mourning, they emerged half-muffled, as from a delirium, moaning to the man, “It’s not you. After all, Moshe, it’s not you.” This was the true answer to what she had come here to find; the first answer had been one of a seven-year hunger.

  Now he altered his movement so that uncertainty came creeping back in her. Moshe lifted his weight from her, slowly withdrawing, not in the way he had used to do so as to give her the greatest, the most unbearable pleasure, the slow withdrawal almost to the very end while her inner lips throbbed and waited in exquisite suspense for the instant of reprieve, when instead of going completely out, the withdrawal would at the very last tip of contact turn into a wild thrust reaching through her to her very heart. No, Moshe withdrew carefully as though he were respecting whatever strange notion had come over her, and did not want her to feel his movement, did not want to take this sexual advantage to influence her decision.

  And at the very tip of contact he was gone; his might did not come down on her again, nor his sex thrust back into her; this was perhaps the dissolution forever, it was perhaps the immeasurable emptiness that a chavera had described to her after an operation in which the womb had had to be removed. And now he was lying, off of her, in careful separation so that no part of his skin touched hers.

  What had altered? Perhaps she was entirely mistaken about him; but all at once Moshe had appeared to her as a person somehow sinister. That he was clever and adaptable and able always to find a way to arrange matters, she had always known, and it had seemed a resourcefulness, even a good quality in him. But now it suddenly appeared as of a low order in human morality, close to hypocritical, akin to his readiness to flatter and even deceive a girl, some orange-grower’s daughter, or any creature with breasts and a vagina, that he momentarily craved, in order to get inside her. All at once Moshe no longer seemed a strong personality, but ap- peared to her as a man of weak character, puzzled that his “final argument” had this time failed.

  Yet another, womanly part of her argued back that she herself was at fault, that in full womanhood this itself—the discovery of a loved one’s shortcomings and even weakness of character—was part of what made him endearing. Did her mother not love her father despite all the absence of joy that was between them? Never in Leah’s whole life had she thought there was an absence of love; her mother knew his irascibility, his narrowness—and look at this clumsy body and the potato-face behind the untrimmed beard; yet her mother, Leah was certain, felt a full tenderness and respect for her man.

  And so perhaps she herself was at fault that a great wave of compassion did not rise in her to engulf the very weakness that she had suddenly felt in Moshe, a compassion to carry her beyond what had been a blind girlish attachment, and a lust, and even something of hero-worship, to a profound and all-embracing womanly understanding.

  But a new thought came and caused her to recoil from herself in shame. Was not this the deep understanding that his wife Kati felt for him?

  Moshe had remained silent; all that was unsaid throbbed between them. Yet when he spoke it was not on a wave of these thoughts, and did not help her. For he carried on from the moment before all this had happened in her and had caused a watershed in her life. “After all,” Moshe said, “I myself was sent here on such a mission as yours, even before the war, and I suffered for it in Siberia, but I am continuing this mission now in whatever way I can manage. Then what is wrong with your remaining here, to join in it? That is all I suggested, and if you think it was only out of selfishness, so that I can live two lives, believe me, Leah, you can remain and carry on your work without seeing me, and I will still help you all I can. What is between us as man and woman is another question.”

  Even this, which should have touched her, now left her with suspicion. Could Moshe truly mean it, or was he deceived by his own ruse? Poor Moshe, he wanted it both ways. And the only true test would be if she went back home, and then, should he come to recognize it was the Zionist way he wanted and that she was his woman, then he would come.

  This thought too instantly tormented her as being perhaps a woman’s wile: to go away to make herself more desired. Perhaps the more honest way would indeed be to give themselves more time here to be together, until he could decide which was his true wife. And why was it necessary that the true wife should turn out to be the one who was bound to the way of life he most desired, whether in this land or Eretz? Perhaps there too was a profound tragedy between men and women: that a person’s life partner, and a person’s life did not always go together.

  She was already losing that clear vision of Moshe that had come to her, and slipping back into the illusion, seeing him as a man tragically torn between ideals. Leah arose from the bed. She stood undecided, there in the large luxurious room, and slowly her eyes became accustomed to the dark, as must his; he must be looking at her naked body standing there. So she reached and drew on a petticoat, feeling his puzzled gaze on her all the while. Then she went and lay down on the couch-bed by the window.

  It was strange, but she dozed off and didn’t know how much time had passed; in her troubled consciousness, she lay in something like the nighthaze that you felt when you had to get up for the milking, but still half slept; the pre-dawn light would then come brushing like a veil of dew over your body, and she felt it now, the tenderest caressing on her skin along her thigh.

  His lips moved there; Moshe was kneeling alongside the couch, and his head moved along her bared thigh, and gently his hand raised her slip. Languorously Leah felt his lips brushing over her belly and beneath the curve of her breast. Her entire body burned and trembled while she yet pretended to herself to sleep, until his mouth touched her nipple, and she gasped.

  “No, no it’s not right, it’s not fair to do this to me! No!” Leah moaned, while the hollows of her hands ached to stroke the black curly hair on his head, and in anguish she seized his hair and put his head away from her, his mouth away from her breast.

  Then Moshe went over and sat on the edge of the large bed. She arose and dressed, and Moshe dressed too.

  37

  FOR SUNDAYS, Moshe went home to his wife and son in Kiev —by Friday this week he had left, and for a few days Leah knew she would not confront him and could in some measure of calm examine her feelings.

  But in happy excitement the chalutzim were trying to organize their own trip to Kiev for a remarkable cultural event. It swept up Leah as well. The dancer from America, the same Isadora Duncan, the one in the book Rahel had brought her from Paris—this dancer had come to Russia to offer her art for the revolution, and on Saturday night she would dance at the great opera house, now the Palace of Culture, in Kiev.

  The head of the training center’s culture committee, Siomka, had gone to the city, and had managed, by sleeping all night in front of the ticket bureau, and by every manner of connivance, to secure twenty places, actual seats, and seven more standing places, which some wild street child had somehow got hold of and had sold to him at double price, snatching his last rouble and running away, even before Siomka was sure the tickets
were valid. He only prayed they weren’t counterfeit.

  It would take four hours each way by wagon; two full wagons were going. Wild arguments broke out over the allotment of tickets. Some had been bought with private money. The chaverim even took to hurling insults at each other, “son of a bloodsucking landlord!” “work-shirker!” “pampered bourgeois!” At first Leah kept from intervening so as to see how they would manage with such a problem, but now Lederman turned to her. How were such things decided in a kvutsa in Eretz? In a real kvutsa, she told them, even if a chaver received money from home as a gift, or even if he worked outside for wages, as did the members of the Shomer, it was all given into the common fund and used according to what was decided by all. In a situation like this, there would be a lottery for the tickets.

  Mayana and Koba Lederman were already writing names on slips of paper, and Leah was asked to draw out the lucky ones—twenty-six names.

  —Hadn’t they made a mistake? There were twenty-seven places in all.

  “A guest is not subject to lottery!” Lederman decreed. And Siomka added, “And don’t tell us that is how you treat your guests in Eretz, or we’ll remain here!”

  Leah had already written her name on a slip, but Mayana pulled it from her fingers and tore it to bits. Tears of love came to Leah’s eyes, and giving in, she reached down into the bowl for the first name.

  Little Mayana was one of those who had given her private ticket into the pot, and at the end, when her name hadn’t been drawn, she could barely hide her anguish. Trying to make light of it, she put her hand in the bowl to see what might have come out next, and read out “Mayana!” But somehow the sheer bad luck of it made her feel better instead of worse—now she could really blame a malevolent fate! “Leah, you have to dance every dance for us when you come back!” she demanded, remembering Leah’s account of Bialik’s visit.