by Talbot Mundy
“I know a way to persuade the Jews,” he said. “They no doubt have the fire-gift and they shall return it tonight. Leave the Rabbi and his friends here. I’ll see justice done!”
“Good boy!” Grim muttered. “That young Crep has gall and guts. Couldn’t be better! Now we’ve got the Rabbi with the wind up where he can’t talk back and can’t refuse! Oh, good!”
CHAPTER IX. “I am Rabbi, not governor!”
CROWDS in those latitudes gather and disperse as suddenly as storms and, like the storms, leave a change of atmosphere behind them. In a sense they resemble waterspouts, destructive as the very devil if allowed to boil along unchecked — always fooling themselves that they are doing good, and hiding their real motive from themselves under a noisy pretense of moral purpose. And they can be handled in much the same way as a waterspout, with pretty much the same result. If you can sever the nexus, as it were, between the clouds and the sea — remove the connecting link between a mob and its desire — all’s calm again; or, if not calm, then at any rate much safer. There are typhoons, too, that have to be ridden out.
The nexus in this instance was the Jews and the underlying motive, loot. Ever since the heel of the Turk had been lifted the Moslems of Hebron had been aching to loot somebody. Turkish governor after governor had wrung from them in fines and taxes every piastre that he could and given nothing at all in return for it. So they were poor; and if the Jews weren’t rich, they were supposed to be.
Not even the Hebron crowd that prides itself on thieving will lay plans to loot a whole quarter of the town and cut three thousand throats without establishing a moral issue first to stalk behind. All humans act that way in the mass and if Hebron is not thoroughly human it is nothing. So old Ali Baba and his fire-gift had come, like many another apparent miracle, in the nick of time to salve the public conscience.
I never found out just to what extent Ali Baba had been opportunist. He may have planned the whole thing with a view to looting; but I think not. I think he only boasted of having planned it, after receiving instruction in the cave from that Egyptian devil; for Ali Baba and all his sixteen sons and grandsons were too childish and direct to have thought the thing out in the first instance. It takes Egypt to invent such a dark scheme.
But whoever invented it, Grim saw through it. He knew Hebron too intimately not to be sure that the Jews would be in deadly danger whenever any sort of uprising occurred anywhere in southern Palestine. Given loyal troops enough, anyone can suppress a mob; but the trouble had come at a moment when all the troops were occupied elsewhere, so the solution demanded genius. And genius is always simple, although it has a way of seeming subtly baffling to the onlooker.
It would be absurd to pretend that I, or any one but Grim himself, saw until afterward the thin thread of principle he followed to the final solution. But you can see it now. He established a clear issue. Without once showing his own hand, he pinned the Moslems down to a definite claim against the Jews.
All that remained after that was to get the Jews to pay the claim. Even a fanatically angry mob that receives what it demands needs time in which to formulate a new cause; and time meant the arrival of Sikhs and their machine guns.
But the Jews of Hebron are a cagey, self-reliant and suspicious crew. Anyone who had survived among Moslems under Turkish rule in that place would have to be. They no more trusted Grim and de Crespigny than Aaron Cohen, whom they despised as a renegade; and to get them to see the point and play Grim’s game until troops should come was about as easy as getting Scottish Highlanders to invest in foreign loans.
The crowd dispersed sulkily, shepherded by the lone policeman gamely parading his authority, and leaving the Rabbi and his friends in the Governorate, where they crowded the hall full and noisily abused de Crespigny for having permitted their Chief Rabbi to be outraged. They seemed to think, or pretended to think that the whole affair was his sole fault, and that he could restore order in a minute if he chose to.
We went and fetched Cohen from the hospital and thrust our way through their midst into the sitting-room, where Grim sent for the Rabbi at once. He refused to come in alone, but brought three friends with him, so we made a party of eight, facing one another across the table; and the din in the hall was so prodigious that whoever spoke had to bellow in order to be heard. Have you ever noticed how the need to shout at a man makes for rising temper? There was not much love lost at that session.
The Rabbi began by refusing point-blank to have anything to do with the fire-gift. He consulted his friends in Spanish, which none of us could understand; and they agreed with him. You would have thought we were asking for a loan of money on poor security to see the look of scandalized disapproval on their faces.
Asked by de Crespigny why he should refuse to countenance a plan that had been devised for the safety of himself and his people, the Rabbi answered that he had nothing to do with politics and refused to interfere.
“Suppose we were to refuse to interfere and just let you get massacred?” de Crespigny retorted.
“But that is your business!” said the Rabbi. “You are the governor. You receive a salary to keep the peace. I am Rabbi, not governor!”
“Have you any alternative suggestion?” de Crespigny asked him.
“Give us rifles! We will defend ourselves.”
“In the first place,” said, de Crespigny, “I haven’t them.”
The Rabbi looked utterly incredulous.
“There’s one each here for the police and the jailer, two or three revolvers and a pistol. That’s all. There’s hardly any ammunition. What other suggestion can you make?”
Grim was sitting back watching faces. I don’t know whether he had a solution in mind or not; it looked like an impasse.
The Rabbi turned and talked in Spanish with his friends.
“It is your business,” he said at last in Arabic. “We are not able to do anything. If we are attacked, we shall defend ourselves to the last. If you wish to prevent a massacre you should send for Sikhs.”
“There’s no knowing when the Sikhs can get here,” said de Crespigny. “You’re asked to help us gain time by pretending to return that fire-gift to the tomb of Abraham. Surely that’s not much?”
“Ah! It will be said afterward that we took liberties with the Moslem religion. It will only be a further excuse for a massacre.” We must have made a strange picture arguing the point over that table with its near-art cover and the flowers between us crammed into two brass cartridge cases that the Germans had left behind. De Crespigny and Cohen were the only men in modern costume. The Rabbi and his friends were dressed pretty much as the Pharisees were in Bible days, and bearded in keeping with it. Their faces wore the ivory pallor that comes of ghetto life, and were blanched beneath it with fear that has already passed through all the panic stages and is obstinate at last. They were minded to commit themselves to nothing, those men; skeptical of all promises; incredulous of any man’s good-will.
De Crespigny began to lose his temper. It is bad enough at twenty-six to have the lives of thousands on your hands, without being regarded as an enemy by the men you are trying to save.
“God damn you, Rabbi! Don’t you see that your refusal means a death sentence for us all?”
“Tch-tch! I sentence no one! I am not responsible for this. I will take no part in it!”
De Crespigny glanced at Grim hopelessly.
“I pass, Grim. Can you say anything?”
Grim nodded.
“Cut loose, Cohen. Tell ’em your views.”
I don’t know whether Cohen took Grim by surprise or not. He surely astonished the rest of us. I’ve never seen a man handle a meeting with half such passionate wrath. He grew suddenly red in the face as if he could command his rage to order; stood up; threw off his jacket on the floor; rolled up his shirt sleeves, and sat down again. Then he brought his fist down on the table with a crash that upset both vases and, as Grim had suggested that he should, cut loose.
Arabic wa
s the speech he used, with occasional bursts of English when expletives failed him; and he reeled off a list of the faults of the ancient Jewish race with a completeness and fervor that would start a riot if set down in print.
“You old moss-backs!” he fairly yelled at last. “You silly old suckers! You think I care, perhaps, if you all get your throats cut! Guess again! You’re dummies, that’s what you are! Marionettes! You’re goin’ to be used! Who’s goin’ to use you? Me! Yours truly!”
Then back into Arabic again, reeling out abuse until he gasped for breath.
“Gimme a drink, some one! Now, you left-overs, listen to me! You haven’t a word to say! You’ll do izzactly as you’re told! This plan’s all thought out, an’ you’ll fall in with it! That fire goes back tonight — see? I’m the feller that takes it back — I take the risk, too! I’ll show you — watch!”
He sprang to his feet again and stripped himself naked to the waist; then seized the lamp on the side-board, jerked out the wick arrangement, poured kerosene into his hand and rubbed it on his stomach. Next he struck a match and set it alight. “There! That’s what!” He smothered the fire with his hands again.
“Tonight I go to the Ghetto. Ali Baba breathes on me and I burn like the Fourth o’ July. I’m a Jew, and you’ll acknowledge me! Two hundred Sephardim will come along behind me in procession to the tomb of Abraham, chantin’ hymns, an’ doin’ it all in first-class style, or I’ll take the fire an’ throw it in your face, and tell the Moslems to go get it from you! D’you believe me? So help me God, I’ll do it!”
“And that would be the end of every living Jew in El-Kalil,” said Grim, quietly approving.
“You are a bad man to talk that way!” the Rabbi objected.
“Bad man? Sure, I’m a Hell of a bad man! Throwin’ fire in fellers’ faces is meat to me! D’ye see this young officer here? He’s a decent feller. D’ye see these others? They’re friends o’ mine — bad men — bad as me — worse! D’ye think I’m goin’ to stand by an’ see them get their throats cut without makin’ sure that you goody-goodies get yours first? Huh! If there’s goin’ to be a massacre tonight it starts in the Ghetto, an’ the Rabbi is goin’ to be number one for the knife! So suit yourselves, only make your minds up quick!”
“We shall stay here — here in this place!” the Rabbi announced suddenly.
“Not you! I’m goin’ to kick you out into the street five minutes from now!”
“The governor must protect us!”
“Must he? You try him! Here he is listenin’ to what I say! I happen to know izzactly what he’ll do; soon as I’ve kicked you out, he’ll call for his cops to chase you down to the Ghetto where you belong! No; you’ve got your last chance; take or leave it! Who’s got a watch? Clock ’em, some one. Give ’em three minutes to decide!”
Grim pulled out Cohen’s own gold watch that had been the means of introducing him to all the trouble and laid it on the table ostentatiously, face upward.
“Time starts now!” he announced.
Cohen proceeded to put his shirt on, as if he always made a point of doing that before committing acts of violence; he looked something like a gladiator fitting on his mail — a muscled, beefy man, perfectly able to carry out his threat.
The Rabbi looked imploringly at de Crespigny for any sign of weakness, but was met by a smile whose enigmatic corners suggested anything but that. He tried to consult with his friends, but they thrust back the responsibility on him with shrugging shoulders and something vague about making complaint to Jerusalem later on.
“Thirty seconds more!” announced Grim and Cohen started for the door to open it.
“It is a scandal; but you compel me!” said the Rabbi, throwing up both hands, palms upward.
“Compel nothing!” Cohen retorted hotly. “You choose!”
“I have no choice. I am in the hands of determined men; what can I do?”
“Do you agree to the proposal?” asked de Crespigny. “I must!”
“No side-stepping!” said Grim. “We want a definite affirmative. Will you or won’t you?”
“Very well, I will. But there should be a writing — something in writing to prove afterwards that I am not responsible. This is none of my doing. I must not interfere with Moslem prejudices. I cannot accept the blame for it. You must absolve me.” Grim’s eyes met de Crespigny’s curiously across the table.
“How about it, Crep? If the old bird wants to be nasty afterward they may have to make an official goat of someone.”
“Oh, what’s the odds? I’ll sign it.”
“Don’t you!” broke in Cohen. “I’m the guy that forced him. Let me sign it! No reason why you should lose your job for this. The worst they can do to me is fire me out of the country. Come on, write him out a paper and I’ll sign it.”
“You’re a good scout, Aaron,” Grim answered, “but we won’t let you do it all. Rabbi, you write your own acquittal and I’ll put my name on it. I’m responsible for this.”
CHAPTER X. “We must score the last trick with the deuce of spades!”
COHEN took charge of the training of the Rabbi and his men; not that they would not have preferred almost anyone else, for their scorn of him was marrow-deep. He had a certain amount of kindly feeling for them; they none for him whatever. Those timid old last-ditch conservatives had clung to their orthodoxy in the face of worse calamity than Cohen had ever dreamed of; and the pride that accompanies all conservatism had fossilized their humanity to a point where almost nothing mattered except form and ritual.
Most of them traced descent to ancestors who had been driven from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella and so added to a natural pride of race and creed an unnatural, exotic arrogance copied from the Dons.
But Cohen was for that very reason exactly the man to handle them. He had just enough sympathy to understand them and know what verbal shafts would surest sting them into obedience. He knew enough to threaten — too much to strike; to mock their pride and yet play up to it. And his business brain was working; he had grasped the extent of the possibilities and was keener now on making the most of the situation than on saving his own skin and ours.
I suspect that at the back of that bull-necked head of his he already had a scheme for making money out of the adventure somehow; if so, I am equally sure he abandoned it afterward, because, although a man of his parts might build up a business with the Hebron suk, the same amount of energy and intrigue expended elsewhere would bring at least ten-fold return. But he went at the training of those “Orthodoxies,” as he called them, with the zeal of a man who sees money at the other end.
That left Grim free for equally important things and he took them in proper order.
“Crep,” he said, “will you be a good fellow and go to the Mosque — don’t send, go yourself — and bring the Sheikh here. I’m going to curl up and sleep until he comes.”
“All right. In a hurry to see him?”
“No. My guess is that the more parading about the city you do the better. You and Jonesy and the Sheikh might do worse than interview the notables. Get the crowd so keen on tonight’s show that they’ll have no time to think of much else. Time’s the main thing, remember. We must gain time. Every minute of delay brings the arrival of the Sikhs a minute nearer. Better time the affair for ten o’clock. That may mean that some of ‘em’ll be too sleepy afterward to care for anything but bed. Dawn may see the Sikhs on the road. Bring the Sheikh here when you’re good and ready — any time before dark will do. But for the love of Mike, Crep, don’t tell him who I am — yet!”
“Your name means something in this place.”
“Maybe. But if he learns in advance that I’ve been in his mosque in disguise with a Jew and another American he’ll get rabies! Afterward it won’t matter; we’ll have the goods on him afterward! You keep up the fake about my being a messenger from Seyyid Omar of El-Kudz, or we’ll have the whole nest of wasps about our ears yet!”
So de Crespigny rode horseback into the city, a
cting on the well- established principle that however clumsy and inconvenient the horse might be in narrow streets, the man on his back looks like personified authority and commands more respect from the crowd than a man on foot.
That is particularly true in the case of Arabs, who think more of a man on a horse than in a motor-car. No mechanical appliance less than a machine gun makes much impression on their minds; the gun means power; the horse means dignity; most other modern trappings either excite cupidity or else contempt.
Grim curled up like a dog and slept on the window-seat as soon as de Crespigny had gone — unconscious almost the moment that he closed his eyes. That trick of sleeping like an animal whenever you so choose is only a forgotten gift; most men can pick it up again, like the sense of smell, that belongs to men as much as to the beasts and is far more valuable, really, than sight or hearing.
A deaf and blind man can still smell his way along, and know more of his surroundings than the ordinary man with eyes and ears intact, who hardly uses them. And as for that trick of sleep, it makes you independent of the clock and furlongs in the race ahead of others, who have to go to bed at stated intervals. It is one of the great good things that living in towns has stolen from us.
But Grim was not destined to sleep long. At the end of about an hour Jones came in looking worried and sat down to write a letter to his girl in England. That was hardly a good symptom. Grim came out of his sleep one eye at a time, the way a dog does exactly, without apparent cause, and lay still for about two minutes watching Jones’s back.
“What’s wrong, Jonesy?” he asked suddenly.
“Oh, you awake? We’ve a chance left — one! You couldn’t get much for it!”
“What’s happened?”
“News from Jerusalem. A couple of men got through on foot with word that the Moslems there have been pretty thoroughly suppressed. They say the administrator has taken the part of the Jews and the Jews are crowing about it. So the Moslems cornered Crep in the city and demanded permission to march on Jerusalem and help their co-religionists. He refused, of course; and they don’t want to miss tonight’s show — they’ll wait for that. We’d better spin it out, because as soon as it’s over they’re going to put us out of business and cut loose!”