Yaakov stood up. The Arab was lying spread-eagled on his back. There was a dark stain across the front of his robe. “Bastard!” Yaakov screamed. He kicked him. The Arab groaned and tried to roll over. Yaakov kicked him again. “He was torturing her!”
Yaakov knelt down and grabbed Rishou by the hair. “Can you hear me, Abdul?” he said in Arabic.
“Name’s . . . not . . . Abdul,” Rishou grunted.
Yaakov took out his knife. “We’re not like you,” he hissed. “We don’t do this for pleasure. But unless you tell me what happened, I can carve you up as well as any Arab.”
“You Jews . . . learn fast.”
Yaakov slammed the handle of the knife against the bullet’s exit wound in Rishou’s shoulder. Rishou screamed.
“No . . .” Sarah opened her eyes, tried to sit up. “No!”
Yaakov twisted around. “Sarah!” He hugged her again, sobbing with relief. “Oh my Sarah! Thank God in heaven! What did he do to you?”
“Leave him . . . was helping me . . .” Sarah said. She pushed Yaakov away.
“It’s all right now,” Asher said.
“. . . he saved my . . . life.” She reached for Rishou’s hand. “Help him,” she whispered, “help him . . .”
Rab’allah
Yaakov and Asher reined in their horses a hundred paces from the village. Rishou was slumped across the back of Asher’s stallion and his blood had seeped along the animal’s flank, leaving a sleek, dark stain that glistened in the feeble light of the moon.
“You’ll have to help him,” Yaakov said to Asher. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Leave him as close to the village as you dare.”
Asher hesitated, remembering Levi. He was the one who had alerted them but minutes after they had helped him down from his horse, he had died, an Arab bullet through his chest.
Yaakov read his thoughts. “You heard Sarah. This one showed mercy. Help him.”
Asher dismounted. He bunched Rishou’s robe in his fist and yanked him down from the horse. Rishou sank to his knees. Asher put Rishou’s good arm around his shoulder and hauled him to his feet.
Rishou groaned.
“What’s the matter, Abdul? A little pain never hurt anyone.”
“It’s just being so … close to a Jew. The smell is … overpowering.”
Asher dragged Rishou up the horse trail towards the village. Rishou held on to him, his left arm hanging useless at his side. “One day we’re going to settle with all you sons of whores,” Asher said. “Levi was a good man, a good Jew. He was worth twenty of your filthy fellaheen.”
“I do not know who … killed him. That is … the truth.”
“You would not know the difference between the truth and a pile of camel shit!”
“I know what camel shit … looks like. I have my … arm around some right … now.”
Asher pulled away and Rishou pitched forward on to his face. “You’re the one who worked in our orchard, aren’t you?”
“You have a … good memory.”
“The one Sarah had moon eyes for!”
“I loved her.”
“She’s my wife. You have another fifty yards to crawl, Abdul. With any luck you won’t make it.”
Rishou lay still, summoning his strength. After a while he heard the Jews’ horses set off back down the trail. When he was satisfied they were gone, he started to crawl up the path to Rab’allah. Sarah is a beautiful woman, he thought.
But I don’t think I will ever get on with her friends.
It seemed as if everyone in Rab’allah was crowded into Zayyad’s house. There was a mood of celebration. Wagil had been avenged; even Zayyad seemed pleased with the night’s work. The sobering consequences could wait till later.
Rishou’s mattress had been brought into the main room, so that everyone could gaze upon the bullet hole in his shoulder. It had passed straight through, but he was weak from blood loss and the women had packed the wound with a poultice of herbs to draw out the poisons.
But he was allowed little rest.
“Tell us the story again,” someone urged him.
Rishou sighed. They had all heard it a dozen times. “We made an ambush in the Bab el-Wad,” he told them. “Just after dusk we saw Majid’s car. They thought to sneak past us in the dark, like the cowards they are! Talbot effendi was escorted by a force of at least fifty British soldiers and three armored cars. But we decided to attack anyway, even though we were hopelessly outnumbered.”
It sounded ridiculous but the legend had been forced on him. When Rishou had staggered into the village the night before, Izzat and his Holy Stragglers had already recounted their story, and Rishou had been careful not to contradict it; he did not want to be questioned too closely on his own role in the night’s events. So he had merely added his own heroic elaboration.
Three of the Holy Stragglers were among his audience. They behave towards me as if we were comrades from a thousand battles, Rishou noticed. I would love to see their faces if they found out who was really shooting at them last night.
“I shot a Britisher through the heart at a hundred paces!” Tareq shouted.
“I cut out a liver with this knife!” another said, and held up a rather ordinary bone-handled knife for them all to admire.
“What happened after the ambush?” Zayyad said, on cue.
“We scattered them with our first volley,” Rishou recited, “but by then Majid’s car had disappeared towards Latrun.” Was this really the best story that Izzat could invent? Rishou wondered.
“On the way back to Rab’allah the Jews were waiting for us,” Tareq said, unable to hold back any longer. “They had machine-guns.”
“Izzat was wounded as we charged them,” another of the Strugglers shouted, and Rishou wondered if anyone had thought to ask how he took a bullet wound in his pimply ass while he was running forwards. He cursed himself for the poor shot that he was. He had been barely twenty paces from Izzat when he heard him call out, identifying himself among the running men. A good marksman would have drilled him through the middle, even in the dark.
“Tell us what you did then, Rishou!” someone shouted.
Rishou told them how he saw the Holy Strugglers carry the heroic Izzat off in their arms, while he decided to hold back the attackers with just his rifle.
“There were at least two hundred of them,” Zayyad said proudly, elaborating on Rishou’s own story, in which he had modestly claimed only a force of two dozen.
“We gave them a lesson they’ll never forget!” Tareq added.
One Izzat will not easily forget either, Rishou thought. Now he has two holes in his ass.
The effort of talking had tired him. He closed his eyes and slept. After a while the villagers drifted away to the coffee house, to relive the battle with the other Stragglers and to describe in detail to each other what they would have done if only they had had the good fortune to have been there.
Zayyad sat beside his son, saw the first flush of the fever bloom in his cheeks. He needed rest and good herbs. But he could not have either, not yet. He would have to get him out of Rab’allah, send him to hide among the Bedouin in the Negev. The British would come about the dead Jew. There would be questions, and anyone nursing a bullet wound was inviting a noose around his neck. Unless, of course, their uncle was on the Arab Higher Committee, like Izzat.
He wondered what had really happened last night. Perhaps he would never know. One thing he was sure of: whatever put the hole in Izzat’s buttock, it wasn’t a Jewish machine-gun.
The Place Where The Fig Tree Died
Rishou swayed in the saddle. It was as much as he could do to stay upright. But his father had impressed on him the need to get out of Rab’allah without delay. From the crest of the ridge he could see a tail of dust moving up the horse trail from Jerusalem towards the village. Probably Captain Mannion, he thought, or Inspector Cooper.
The two men with Rishou looked uncomfortable. If Rishou died, there would be no point in returning to the village. Zayyad wou
ld publicly absolve them of all blame and then come in the night and cut out their hearts. The previous night’s incident had restored to the old muktar all his former vigor.
“We must hurry,” one of them said.
Rishou’s shoulder ached unmercifully and the fever made him light-headed. He blinked away the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. “Let’s go,” he said, but still he lingered. Down there, beyond the vineyards and the orchards was the kibbutz. He wondered about Sarah. The Jews had good doctors. He was sure they would mend her leg.
He looked back at Rab’allah. At least two years, his father had said. Of course, he would miss Zayyad, as he would miss his two sons, Ali and Rahman. And Khadija - well, she was a good cook.
But he guessed he would not miss any of them as much as he had missed the Jewish girl who had taught him about love in those apple orchards. He would pay anything for one more night with her under the moon. But that was impossible. One day he would be muktar of Rab’allah, and he would have to face the realities of the new Palestine. He must never again put himself in the position of raising a rifle at his own brothers, even if one of them was Izzat Ib’n Mousa.
He would remember her often when the moon was full, or when the apple harvest was near. But he was a man now, and an Arab; and Sarah Landauer must be consigned to the secret places of the past, forever.
PART THREE
GERMANY, 1941-42
Chapter 6
Ravenswald
Herr Noldner made a point of informing all his customers that he had nothing personally against the Jews. Yes, he supported Hitler, after all the man had got Germany back on its feet again. But he, personally, was not anti-Semitic. He thought what was being done to them was a terrible shame.
A terrible shame, Netanel thought, but also a windfall for Herr Noldner, because Herr Noldner owned the pawnbroker’s shop. Once he barely scratched a living in Ravenswald - most of the town had at least one member of their family in employment at Rosenberg Fabriken and making a living wage - but now he was one of the bessere Leute. In fact, he had recently bought Herr Doktor Kohn’s house from his widow for the bargain price of thirteen thousand marks. Kohn had caught pneumonia at Dachau.
Herr Noldner’s personal fortunes had risen with Hitler’s; when the first Jews had started leaving Ravenswald in 1934, they had been forced to sell whatever they could not afford to take with them. When they could not sell privately they came to him. Later, when emigration restrictions became more strict, and Jews were allowed to take virtually nothing of value, Westphalian ham replaced bratwurst on Herr Noldner’s table.
But it was Kristallnacht that paid for Herr Kohn’s six-bedroom house on the hill overlooking the town. Legislation was passed in the Reichstag prohibiting Jews from owning valuable metals such as gold or silver, or even small luxury items such as wirelesses. The queues outside Herr Noldner’s shop grew longer and longer.
Netanel wandered through the ruins of his house collecting the silverware; the baroque cutlery, the silver coffee pot, the menorah and ornamental salver they used for the Passover, the candlesticks they used for the Feast of the Lights. He had packed it all in two leather suitcases and taken it to Herr Noldner who offered to pay him by weight of the metal.
“But most of this silver is antique!” Netanel shouted at him. “The menorah itself is over two hundred years old!”
Herr Noldner shrugged his shoulders. “I am sorry. What can I say? Personally, I have nothing against the Jews, but . . . well, you know how it is these days. Next!”
Netanel had taken Herr Noldner’s offer. The law said he had to sell, and no one else would pay more.
But the halcyon days had passed. There were just a handful of customers in his shop this morning. They were all Jews, and like Netanel they wore an armband, a black Star of David stenciled on yellow cloth. It was law. They could not go out in public without one.
They sat in miserable silence, waiting. One had a piece of old carpet, tied with string; another man - it was the shoe seller, Horowitz - had a phonogram with a broken handle. Such a cornucopia of riches!
A cold drizzle of rain misted the window.
“What have you come to sell?”
Netanel looked around. The speaker was a small man, with shiny black hair, thinning on the crown, like a monk’s tonsure. He had watery brown eyes, like a dog, and the creases on his face looked as if they were lined with dust.
“A piece of Meissen china,” Netanel said.
The man nodded, in sympathy with Netanel’s situation. He held up a brown paper bag. “Good leather shoes. But I never wear them anymore. So why not sell? I told my wife, what’s the good of shoes you never wear? Still, it’s not so bad for us, harder for you. You’re der Chef’s son, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” Netanel said, warily.
“I’m Amos Mandelbaum.” He put out his hand. “I used to work at the factory. You probably don’t remember.”
Netanel shook his head. “No, I’m sorry.”
They shook hands. “He was a good man, your father. A great man. It was a tragedy what happened to him. I said to my wife, ‘What they did to that man is a tragedy.’ When all this is over, they’ll build a statue to him right in the middle of the square. You’ll see.”
“They already have a statue. Of King Ludwig.”
Mandelbaum seemed not to hear. “Twelve years I worked at the factory. Every Passover, all the Jewish workers got a bonus. He was a good man, a great man. Still, we mustn’t be gloomy.”
I’m not gloomy, Netanel thought. I have a visa for Cuba for myself and my mother. It wasn’t the United States, but it was close. We catch the boat-train from München to Hamburg on December 23rd. So why should I be gloomy?
But it was also why he didn’t want to talk to Mandelbaum. He felt bad about it. He had the money to pay the bribes and the fares; they did not.
“I heard a joke the other day,” Mandelbaum said.
“A joke?”
“Hitler and Goering are arguing. Goering says to Hitler, 'You know, the Jews are really quite smart.’
“ ‘Prove it!’ Hitler says.
“So they go into the nearest china shop they can find and Goering picks out a tea-set. ‘Watch this,’ he says to Hitler and he points all the handles to the right. When the German owner comes over, he says to him, ‘I’m looking for a set of china just like this one, but I need a left-handed set.’
“The man says that it is the only one he has in the shop and he will have to contact the wholesaler to see if he can get another.
“So Hitler and Goering go to a Jewish shop. Goering does the same thing again. ‘I need a set of china cups just like this one,’ he says to the Jew, ‘but I need a left-handed set.’
“‘I’ll see what I can do,’ the Jew says, and he takes the tea-set out the back, turns all the handles round to the left, and comes back out again. ‘Meine Herren!’ he says. ‘You’re in luck! I have just one left! Shall I wrap it for you?’
“So Goering buys the tea-set. When they get outside he turns to Hitler and says, ‘See, I told you the Jews were smart.’
“And Hitler says, ‘That’s ridiculous. It proves nothing. The Jew was lucky. He had them in stock!”’
Mandelbaum rocked back in his chair, laughing. “Do you understand?” he said. “He had them in stock!" He laughed again.
Horowitz turned away from the counter, his face blank with despair. He pocketed the meager coins Noldner had given him and went out. Netanel watched him trudge away down the street, eyes down, careful not to attract attention to himself. A Jew looking passers-by in the eye was inviting trouble these days.
“Next,” Herr Noldner said.
Netanel went to the counter. Noldner studied him over the rims of his half-moon spectacles. The smile was benign, and a gold tooth flashed in his lower jaw. “How can I help you, Herr Rosenberg?”
Netanel took a package from his overcoat pocket. It was wrapped with newspaper, and tied with string. Netanel opened it
carefully. Inside was a porcelain figurine, a small boy in lederhosen sitting on a gate. It was one of a pair; its partner had been a blonde girl in a blue dress carrying a basket of flowers. She had been trampled underfoot by the storm troopers on Kristallnacht, but the boy had somehow miraculously escaped their attentions.
Netanel hated to part with it; the Meissen figurines had flirted with each other in the glass cabinet in their drawing-room for as long as he could remember.
“An ornament,” Herr Noldner said.
“It is Meissen,” Netanel corrected him.
“Are there any others?” Herr Noldner said. He knew more about ceramics than he pretended.
“The other was broken.”
“A great shame. If you had the pair . . .”
“I told you, it’s Meissen. Even alone it is worth something.”
Herr Noldner put the figurine on the counter and assumed the pained expression of a man whose hands are tied by circumstance. “I wish I could help you. I’ll give you five marks, to take it off your hands. After all, you have been a good customer.”
“Five marks!”
Herr Noldner held up his hands. “It’s a lot for a simple ornament, I know. But I want to help if I can.”
“You little shit!”
Herr Noldner took a step back from the counter. “I will not be insulted by the likes of you! Take it or leave it.”
Netanel looked around the shop. The other men had their eyes on the floor, studying the faded patterns on the carpet. What a pathetic sight we are, Netanel thought. The flower of European Jewry clustered in a pawnbroker’s shop, begging for coins.
He picked up the figurine and smashed it on the edge of the counter. He dropped the shattered halves on to the floor.
“Now it’s a pair,” he said.
It was the third winter of war, and it was dark by four o’clock in the afternoons. Children were ice-skating on the Ravensee.
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