“Sure. But they still plow and plant the way Abraham did. Mostly they follow their herds and flocks around over their lands and let them graze. I don’t see why they should kick. They can get better fruits and vegetables from us than they can raise themselves, and they’ve still got most of the land.”
“Do any of them follow our methods?” Simon asked interestedly.
“Oh, a few here and there. We tried to show them; we even took our tractor over. They got a kick out of running the tractor and sure caught on quick. Still, they don’t seem to do much different than they did. They claim we’re stealing their prosperity, when all we’ve done is make the land work for us.”
“That’s funny. They seem lazy but they’re not. They keep their horses and their camels in excellent shape—they think nothing of moving their whole village several times a year—they ride hard and are by no means weaklings. No, they aren’t lazy—they just don’t like changes.”
The bus gathered momentum as we neared the valley floor. We were entering the green oasis and ahead of us was the white wall topped by its several watchtowers. Silence fell upon us again. Tears were in our eyes as belief in the reality of this haven blossomed where hopes alone had not quite stilled the doubts. Without a contribution as yet to what we saw beyond, already there was the thought that we were really home, that nothing, nothing would ever make us leave.
I looked out at the fruit hanging heavy on the boughs and thought proudly that none of the other orchards had been as heavily laden with such beautiful oranges! Nor had the white walls of those other villages been as clean as ours or the roofs so red! I could not imagine anyone not being satisfied with this home, although I had not yet seen inside the big gate which was now opening to let us through.
Perhaps to others our clean, new village was bare and unlovely. To me, who had spent months inside dirty factory walls with rags for a bed, crowded tightly against endless rows of others, the big rooms with their airy smell of cleanliness was like coming to another world. It seemed impossible that Paul and I were really to have the room assigned to us for our very own.
I loved the simple but comfortable furnishings and spent all my spare moments cleaning and polishing. My mother was not so content. She missed her bright cushions and cherished embroideries, her little knick-knacks which had crowded her other home with cheery confusion. Perhaps in time I would come to those things, too. As mother gradually began to add bits of handwork and colorful little things to her room it reminded me a little of the old home. My hands were clumsy when I tried to embroider, and there was little time.
It was wonderful to slip away from the big dining room into the privacy of our own room, but once there we did not sit idly. We had scarcely become accustomed to our new home before Paul had been sought and the first woman who had been waiting his coming relaxed and ceased her waiting! I watched and did what I could and every spare moment was given over to my education. I do not know that I would have chosen nursing as my career if it had been left to me, but under Paul’s simple, thorough instruction I began to enjoy it. In this commune we learned early that many who had studied for totally different jobs before coming had found that they were assigned certain tasks. A designer became a pruner in the vineyard, a store manager worked in the machine shop, yet they were content and did not complain. Perhaps the designer saw the beauty of design in the fragrant green grape-vines he was pruning; maybe the store manager had been frustrated in his desire to get dirty when a youngster—at any rate he was dirty most of the time now, yet always smiling and happy. There was singing and laughing. Everyone worked long hours and ate with real hunger the nourishing but simple meals prepared by my mother and others in the big sanitary kitchen. If like myself, they also slept the sleep of real exhaustion, in which there was no room for dreams either pleasant or disconcerting. It was a happy, healthy and good place yet there were a few who were not content.
Such a one was Lilah who had come only a few days after us. She was from America and brought with her many beautiful and unnecessary things. The girls and women working in the fields wore short-sleeved loose shirts and shorts. I loved and envied them their evenly bronzed legs and arms, their grace of movement. Their garments lightened the work in the laundry and wore well even after countless washings. When Lilah came it was as if a small storm had descended upon us.
Her first morning, as ours had been, was spent in exploration and becoming acquainted. She sauntered about with the air of one who had only come to see, with no intention of staying. Work had barely halted for us as we had gone about the smoothly running little community. There had been brief greetings and explanations; then the workers we had interrupted had gone back to work. Not so when Lilah came! Her startling beauty was upsetting to the young men and the young women. The young men had forgotten that girls looked like she did—the girls had remembered, but, until she came, it had not mattered that there was no money for trifles like the bright scarf wound in her shiny black curls or the scarlet lipstick that made a bright and inviting slash of her lips. The young men clustered about her. They seemed to find it more difficult to explain everything to her at once or quickly. Perhaps it was her witty by-play that distracted, making it necessary to repeat, to go back to her many times. The girls tried unsuccessfully to work and not notice. There was not much real work done the day of her arrival. Old Simon heaved a sigh of relief as he came to chat a few minutes with Paul before retiring to his own room.
“That new one will not fit in so easily with our life here,” he announced. “She should have stayed back there in America where she had comfort and the things she will be wanting. This should be for those who are homeless.”
“I lived there, too, Uncle Simon,” Paul chided gently. Though he said it lightly, I felt a sudden spasm of fear at my heart. “I lived there and already had a good practice, yet you gave me no peace until I promised to come here to try it.”
“There was need for you. A need not so easily filled by those who have been deprived of things for so long. But what will she be able to do that another who needs us could not do?” Simon asked.
“Well, she looks as if she might add life and excitement!” Paul laughed, but I wondered if his laughter was not more with her than at her. And I kept hearing what he had said—that he had promised “to try it,” and that she added “life and excitement.” Of course he had been used to life and excitement in America. I had loved to hear him tell of the things he had done and had seen, but to me they had seemed so distant, so unreal that I had not realized that perhaps he might miss them. I had heard, too, of those who had come for the trial period and had gone as soon as it was ended. Yet it had not before occurred to me that perhaps Paul would not stay.
In the days that followed I found much to add to my new uneasiness. There had been something electric in the meeting of Paul and Lilah. She had been laughing as she came into the clinic room, as Paul called it, but the laughter had stilled on her lips and I had seen the quickening interest in her eyes as she appraised him.
“Well, do you like it?” Paul chuckled while giving look for look.
“Who wouldn’t?” she answered and let her lips part in a smile that showed teeth as even and white as I had ever seen. She seemed perfection and a slow aching hurt began to grow within me. It needed only Paul’s bantering, “You’re not bad yourself!” to give impetus to its growth.
It was Paul who won her to accept the assignment given her in the work and life of the village. The whole community had vibrated with her refusal to take her place with the other girls in the field where they were needed. She had studied law, economics, history, all the things that could give food to a keenly active mind; she had no intention of working with her hands! In vain the older men had talked with her. Not until Paul took her aside and talked with her did she agree, shrugging with amusement, to take her assigned place.
“Whew, what an atomic explosion she turned out to be,” Paul said in returning to the privacy of our room, but there was admira
tion in his voice. “She sure puts life in our quiet village!”
The lessons that night were disconnected and confused. He interrupted every now and then with a chuckling comment about Lilah. True, he chuckled and threw affectionate glances my way, but there seemed a difference which I could not name. The twinkle in his eye for me was almost the same as when he lifted some youngster in his arms. There was a brighter gleam when he spoke of Lilah.
It was difficult for me since for days I had known that at last I had grown up. I resented his treating me as if I were a child given into his protection. My little bursts of temper at my inability to voice my feelings were met by him with tolerant teasing. That set me back with the children.
How could I tell him that I loved him? To him I was no more capable of love than the little Jimmie or Sara who adored him with their childish hearts. Shyness had kept me silent at first, then the passing days and repeated stilling of the impulse to blurt out my new-found love wove a restraint which was daily more difficult to overcome. With the coming of Lilah and the first hint that there might be an end of Paul’s sojourn after the trial period, I felt new reluctance. What if he should find the life here not quite so satisfying as he had hoped? What if he would want to break away from the land and return to America? What if he would wish he had not made his contract with me? Surely I was patterned along the lines of the quiet contentment found in this new life, and I had seen how his eyes shone with enjoyment at the vivid Lilah. What if he could see in her the love he would have chosen but for his kindness to me?
The little place settled back into its quiet routine and we were kept busy with the little hurts and ills of the almost miraculously healthy village. I forgot Lilah and let myself hope again. When one day I came across the picture in the new magazine I thrilled with the certainty that I had found a way to unfold my heart to Paul without words. It was a simple yet a significant illustration. I knew that its meaning would not escape the wise and interested eyes of Paul. It was a picture of Rebekah crossing the field to a waiting Issac. With trembling fingers I cut the page from the magazine and hid it away in my huge nurse’s bag.
“Wool-gathering again, my little Tanya?” Paul shook his head in puzzlement at me as the afternoon drew to a close. I had been so filled with dreams and happy wishing that with difficulty I had heard his demands, or hearing them followed them. My eyes kept wandering to the slowly moving hands of the clock. Soon we would leave the white, spotless clinic room and gather with the rest of the workers in the big dining hall; but oh, after that, we would be free to go to our own room! I would hurry ahead and when Paul should come the picture would be hanging where the last rays of sunlight would strike it, where he would see it and would know what it was saying for me!
The window of our room was wide to the soft evening breeze as I stood examining the walls to see where would be the best place to hang this portrait of my heart. Paul’s voice reached me first as they came around the corner of the building just beneath our window.
“I will see if Tanya is in our room. She ran away so quickly that I did not have time to tell her.”
“Perhaps she didn’t go to your room. After all your sister might—”
“My sister!” Paul’s laughter rang out before he added, “Tanya is my wife!”
“Your wife! Not that child? Oh, Paul!” I felt my heart jump within me as she collapsed on the steps to let her mirth sway her slender form. But it was Paul’s rueful words and subsequent joining her in laughter that really shattered my dreams,
“Yes, she is a child—”
“But I would never have guessed it—your wife! You act, well, certainly not like a husband and wife! I’ve never seen a more brotherly husband in my life!”
Suddenly Paul seemed to remember that they were beneath our window. I heard his embarrassed “sh” then their footsteps going away. Straining I listened until no longer I could hear, though Lilah’s lilting laugh broke out briefly again. A vagrant breeze rustled the picture in my hands and recalled me to the coldly barren room.
Slowly, slowly, torn bits of paper fluttered down onto the floor. The picture was torn across, across and across again. There was no place for it in our room after all.
6
THE BLACK TENTS
SO BUSY HAD BEEN OUR DAYS that I had quite forgotten the black tents on the hill. It seemed, indeed, we had come to a land of peace and plenty. If I heard anxious speculation as to the reason for the prolonged absence of trouble, I paid no heed. Sometimes I saw the watchmen go into the towers and even armed guards go with the workers into the fields, but they seemed an unnecessary precaution to me. Even the encounter in Haifa had lost its meaning in this valley of peaceful contentment.
I felt no great fear when word came from one of the towers warning that a lone Arab was coming across the valley and was fast approaching the gate. We had been about to go in to dinner but stood outside to learn what was bringing the visitor. I wondered at the paleness of some faces. Surely people were not afraid of one lone man!
“Maybe it’s a neighborly visit.” Paul commented lightly, but even his face was grave.
“I doubt it.” An elderly man shook his head. “Not that we haven’t been friendly at times, but not recently. Still, it does seem queer that there is just one rider. Could be a trick.”
Paul straightened as sounds coming from the gate indicated that the rider was there. A long harangue followed but it was unintelligible from our distance so we began to move toward the gate. The gateman was watching the man in the tower; he showed no inclination to open it. Suddenly one watchman saw Paul and beckoned, calling his name.
“Now what?” Paul did not hesitate, but quickened his pace. Then I saw him pause. As he comprehended the words of the watchman, he turned to argue with the gateman.
Reluctantly the lock was released and Paul slipped through a small door, which closed quickly behind him. He was gone but a few minutes and the Arab was with him when he came back. The gateman showed his displeasure, but Paul beckoned for entrance and led the man right on through. He strode swiftly toward the clinic with the tall stranger close at his heels. I saw Paul’s eyes take in the grumbling onlookers; then guessing that he was looking for me I ran after him.
“Oh, there you are, Tanya. There’s serious trouble in the Arab village. I’m going over there. Get me a stomach pump and some purgatives. I’ll get the other things. Abdul here will help carry them.”
“What shall I take?” I asked innocently.
“You won’t be coming.” Paul shook his head decisively.
“Let her come. There is sickness among the women, too.” Abdul spoke softly. For a moment I thought Paul would take issue with him, then he appeared to think better of it and gave me time to run back to our room for coats and two blankets.
“It will be chilly before morning. We won’t get much sleep but we don’t need to chill ourselves. Wait.” I started to run out to get the wraps. “Better get some sandwiches from the commissary and a thermos of coffee if they have it. Poison perhaps in more food than they think.” So that was it! Poisoned food! But how? And wouldn’t it be more natural that they suspect us whom they hated than that they should ask our aid? Abdul answered my unspoken thought.
“Only the one pot of food was luckless. The careless one had wit to remember that she had used the wrong box in but the one pot.”
Nevertheless I brought two thermos bottles and a bag of sandwiches from the kitchen, where I found time to explain the reason for our going to the curious ones and to still somewhat their doubts, as mine had been stilled.
It was my first trip outside the walls since we had come. It gave me a queer, unsettled feeling to leave walled security behind. But my confidence in Paul quelled any fear as we followed our guide across the valley and approached the black tents. Paul had taken the small farm jeep and never would I hope to have such a ride again! A horse could pick his way around the stones and the holes, but the jeep found and tried them all! When we came to a jolting halt
near the first tent I climbed stiffly down and looked with uncertainty toward the fearful quiet abode. Surely the sick must all be dead! Not a groan or a moan disturbed the chill evening air.
I shivered, and the coat that Paul threw about my shoulders did not reach the shiver which began way down inside and crept up my spine. I had seen death many times, but it seldom had been silent like this. Then, I heard Abdul’s voice calling; immediately voices answered in a bedlam of sound. They spoke in their Arabian tongue which neither Paul nor I could understand. We could understand the gesture that told me I should go into one side of the heavily curtained tent. I shrank back for it dawned upon me that I would have to go in to the women alone. But I couldn’t! I didn’t know how to diagnose or to prescribe—faintly Paul’s voice came to me so I forced myself to listen.
“This is going to be rough going, my little Tanya.” And, as always, I thrilled to the affectionate pronouncement of my name. “But I have taught you how to use the stomach pump—you helped use it once. Try the emetics first. If they don’t bring results immediately don’t be afraid to use the pump! The dosage is given on the package—you can read, can’t you?” At that I drew myself up indignantly. Of course I could read, but then I caught his encouraging grin and I knew that he had said that to snap me free of my dread. I took the packets and pump and turned toward the tent. I did not want to go in, but until I did Paul would not go to his task, so I lifted the curtain to step inside. A smoky oil-lamp like Aladdin’s own threw weird shadows upon the huddled figures of several women. No sounds came from their lips, but the tenseness of their bodies, the spasms which shook first one then another told me that these women were very sick indeed. They must depend on me with my meager knowledge, my inexperienced hands to give relief, perhaps to save their lives!
Those hours will always stand out in my memory, also the black clearness of the goat hair tents. They might well be counted a milestone in my life, for at last I was to learn to be of help to others, to be glad that I could help, to resolve to keep learning so that I would not have to fumble and to nearly weep over my inadequacies.
The Lost City Page 6