Israel (25 page)

Haim had snitched the cigarettes from the cupboard in the dining hall. Tobacco, like everything else, was stored in a communal supply. There were only two packs left. Haim hoped his taking the cigarettes wouldn't poison the others' objectivity when he presented his case at tonight's meeting.

“Yes, then?” the mayor asked, waiting.

Haim thought back to his beginnings with the shoe factory. During those days he needed fellahin workers as much as they needed jobs. Like most people, their pride grows with the depths of their poverty, he thought. He mused upon the Arabs' ragged clothing, their primitive farming implements, the sickness among their children.

“Sir,” Haim began, “I've come to ask you to help my people.”

That night at the meeting, when Yol asked if there was any new business, Haim raised his hand.

“You are recognized, comrade,” Yol said.

Haim nodded respectfully and got up to move toward the front of the hall as he announced. “I was in the Arab quarter today. I had coffee with the mayor.”

Normally the halutzim spoke from their places at the long benches, but Haim's work in city planning during his Tel Aviv days had made him savvy. He wanted the front of the hall, which would lend authority to what he was about to say.

“I went there to see if we could come to some agreement of cooperation with the Arabs.”

“We didn't vote to authorize this last night,” Deborah Felicks called out. Her stony-faced husband Jack sat beside her, nodding agreement.

“Haim has the floor,” Yol interjected.

“Here is what I've worked out, subject to everyone's vote, of course,” Haim said brightly. “As you all know, we've been carrying our own water. The Arabs will rent us some mules, which can carry water cans, saving time as well as our backs.”

“The National Fund office is sending us mules this spring,” one of the workers pointed out.

“That's true,” Haim said, “but now we can tell the fund we've figured out a way to save the money. The Arab mules are already here. It is within the spirit of socialism to use what is available. Also, these mules thrive in Galilee. Better to stick with them than bring in new animals that may not thrive in this difficult climate.”

There were no objections, and Haim quickly continued. “The Arabs have a boat on the Jordan. They've agreed to let us hire it on occasion. This means that once we have freight to ship, we can send it by river. Our potential market for surplus products will double, and in the winter, when the roads are closed, we'll be able to maintain trade links.”

There was a table behind him. Haim perched on its edge. “There's one final benefit we will get from cooperation with the fellahin,” Haim announced, letting his eyes make contact with his audience. “We will begin to understand them as our neighbors in this land. If we are here to become one with Eretz Yisroel we must also accept the Arabs.”

“So far you've told us what we'll get from this new partnership,” Isaac Nemoy called loudly, looking like a stern sea captain with his black beard and no mustache. “Please inform us what we must do for them.”

“I will,” Haim nodded. “One thing is teach them agriculture. These poor devils are still farming the way it was done in Biblical times. If we lend them our plows and our harvesters when we aren't using them, what's the harm? Another thing we can do is heal their sick children. All of us keep ourselves clean and eat correctly. True, we suffer from fevers, but we have none of the diseases the Arab children have. Our medicines sit on the cupboard shelf. They grow stale, useless. Let's heal the children.
The more Arab youngsters who grow up trusting Jews, the less our children will have to fear Arabs.”

“What you've so far asked of us is not very much,” Isaac admitted after a pause. “Is there anything else?”

“Only that we stand guard duty over the villagers as well as ourselves,” Haim answered. “You see, the fellahin are even more fearful of the Bedouin robbers from Transjordan than we.”

“I still maintain that you were wrong to approach the Arabs without taking a vote,” Deborah Felicks insisted.

“For that I apologize,” Haim told them all, “but no harm has been done. My agreements are tentative, depending on your ratification. Nothing has been lost except for my time and a few cigarettes.”

“You took cigarettes?” came a howl of outrage from the rear of the hall. Skinny, hatchet-faced Moses Pool jumped to his feet, wagging a trembling finger in Haim's direction. “Stealing from the cupboard is a serious breach of rules.”

“Wait, now. There's an interesting point of contention here,” Jack Felicks, a lawyer, spoke up. “Haim does have a right to a share of the tobacco—”

“He doesn't smoke,” Pool snarled.

“So?” Felicks shrugged. “Just because he doesn't smoke—”

“If Haim isn't ill, can he still claim medicine?” Pool scoffed.

Others began to shout their opinions on the matter until Yol called for order. “It's late,” he said. “I suggest we all think about what Haim has presented and vote on it tomorrow night. This meeting is adjourned.”

Haim, all alone in the dining hall, found himself unable to sleep. His bedding was rolled in one corner of the building, but he had no desire to lie down.

Maybe it was being all by himself in the cavernous, utilitarian hall. When the rest of the halutzim were about,
the place took on a warm, friendly, familiar glow. Now the rough, bare planking, the long hard benches, wobbly tables and dark corners seemed to intensify Haim's feelings of estrangement. How he missed Rosie, and some sort of home of his own. And when would he know about his child?

How can I have come so far in my life and still be an orphan? Haim wondered during the early hours of the dawn, when his only company was the ticking of the building settling and the piercing wail of the wind blowing down from out of the hills. When will my comrades accept me? When can I sleep the night through with Rosie back in my arms, where she belongs?

The next night during the meeting the agreements Haim had made were approved unanimously. There was little debate, but Moses Pool did insist that it be duly recorded that Haim Kolesnikoff had been reprimanded for improperly requisitioning one pack of cigarettes.

It was a warm sunny day in May when the first supply cart made it through to Um Jumi. There were plenty of long-awaited goods to be unpacked, but this time the dried fruit took second place in interest. All the halutzim formed a circle around Haim. He tore open the long-awaited letter from Rosie and scanned it quickly. Then he threw back his head and roared his happiness.

“It's a boy!” Haim shouted. “Born the seventeenth of January, a healthy ten-pound boy with blue eyes and light coloring.” He paused, astounded by the realization. “My God, my son is four months old already.”

“His name?” Yol demanded, eyes aglow.

Names had been decided before Haim left Tel Aviv. Rosie got to choose the first name; she wanted to honor the memory of her departed Aunt Harriet, who'd been very kind to her when she was a child. Haim got to pick the middle name.

“His name is Herschel Abraham.”

“Herschel Abraham Kolesnikoff,” a fellow grinned as he stood beside his pregnant wife. “It's good our little one will have someone to play with.”

That day was declared a holiday. Yol miraculously produced several bottles of wine, and in the spirit of sharing fostered by Haim, sweets newly arrived on the supply cart were distributed to the Arab children. The Arabs watched and laughed delightedly as the Jews danced the hora; a few even joined the circle.

And for the first time since Haim arrived, all the halutzim made it a point to embrace him. They shook their comrade's hand in congratulations, in welcome.

Leaving the Allen Street sweatshop marked a new beginning for Abe Herodetzky. Abe was not of a philosophical bent. He believed that self-examination was a time-waster bordering on the obscene unless it took the form of castigation and led to self-improvement. Accordingly, it did not occur to him that those few weeks during which he scoured the neighborhood for a property suitable for his as yet undecided-on business constituted his honeymoon with the future.

All he knew was that he was hugely enjoying himself, that he was no longer drinking and that the transformation of his dream into reality was imminent.

On Cherry Street Abe found what he needed, a vacant storefront with a big plate-glass window and an available apartment just above it. A back staircase led up to the three-room railroad flat, which although small had its own water closet in the kitchen, tucked between the pitted enamel sink and the cast-iron bathub.

The landlord was glad to sell the storefront's existing fixtures—shelving, a scarred wooden front counter and a
dented cash register—for twenty-five dollars. He also offered Abe a lengthy renewable lease at a reasonable rent for both the store and the apartment.

Abe signed the papers that same day. How proud he felt as he scrawled his signature on the dotted line.

His new address housed a jumble of different nationalities on its six floors. The various families reached their apartments via a rickety, ill-lit staircase that led up from a separate side entrance. Abe considered the mix of nationalities to be a good omen. It had been Russian Jews and Polish and Italian Christians who contributed the money to give him his start, and so it suited him to have varied clientele.

Of course before there could be customers, there had to be something in the store for Abe to sell. The tenant before him had run a hardware store. There were still two stacked rows of empty open bins along one of the walls. Once they'd held nails, screws, bolts and so on. Abe hadn't the slightest notion what to put in them. He couldn't run a hardware store; he knew their most valuable commodity was advice, and he didn't know enough to offer it. Besides, the previous owner had been unable to make a go of that business and it made no sense to repeat a failure.

He had already vowed never to return to cobbling, and his years as a presser had instilled in him similar aversion to lapels and suit linings.

For a few days he mulled over the problem as he busied himself furnishing his apartment. He bought the bare essentials from a rummage store on Ludlow Street. Up until that point he'd been taking his meals at cafes and sleeping on his shabby overcoat spread out on the hard wooden floor. Now that he had a bed to sleep in and a kitchen table, he went out to shop for food.

It amazed Abe to find that with the exception of Breakstone's Dairy up the street, there was no place to buy provisions on Cherry Street. True, the pushcart vendors
sold spoiled produce, stale bread and fly-blown mounds of fish, but decent food was available nowhere in the vicinity. The nearest grocery was several blocks away. Abe saw that it had no push cart competition, for carts could not match a store's variety, nor could heavy tinned goods be wheeled around.

With growing excitement he hurried back to his own store and scrutinized the place. The shelves that had once stocked hardware could just as easily display canned goods, and the wooden bins would do nicely for potatoes and onions, sugar and flour. Someday the rear of the store could house a meat cabinet, Abe mused. To kosher Jews he could never sell, but on Cherry Street only a small number of his customers would be kosher Jews . . .

He skipped up the back stairs to his apartment and hurried out to the front fire escape. Staring like an owl from his iron perch, Abe watched Breakstone's Dairy. The customers left with loose-cut butter and cheese and milk ladled into their own containers from huge drums. If Breakstone could make his fortune selling comestibles on Cherry Street, so could he.

From then on he spent his nights making long lists of inventory and sketching floor plans on scraps of paper. Days he spent scrubbing. He was quick to welcome all his curious neighbors. Despite his heart-stopping shyness, Abe boldly implored them to patronize his business when it finally opened.

His days found him at the provision wholesalers and the Washington Street produce markets. It did not take him long to learn where the best deals were.

That he knew nothing about the business on which he was about to embark did not faze him. He trusted his own natural shrewdness and his almost mystical devotion to the idea of commerce.

At first the clerks in the wholesale food markets considered the scrawny fussbudget of a Jew to be a joke,
but gradually they began to respect him. When Abe examined what they sold he used all of his senses. He sniffed, prodded and tasted their samples—including the smoked and salted hams and pork sausages—as if he intended to eat them himself.

It gave him pause to taste pork. Even during Abe's stint in the czar's army he'd managed to avoid eating unclean meat. Often he went hungry, but he did it.

Now he was willingly tasting sausages and hams. He just hoped God understood that he was doing it for the store.

He opened for business at six-thirty on a Tuesday morning in June. His hardwood floors and polished wooden shelves glowed richly beneath milk-glass light fixtures. These were a treasure he'd found buried beneath the rubbish in the back storage room. Three of the four glass bowls were broken and all were coated with dust and grease. Abe cleaned them all—every shard of glass—and painstakingly glued the shards together.

It took two days and a night to repair the fixtures, but it was worth it. The milk glass floated like white puffy clouds over Abe's inventory.

He set up his waxed and buffed, but still worn, scarred wooden counter near the entrance. Here Abe put his cash register and a high three-legged stool. Near it were displayed the more popular patent medicines, needles and thread, cigarette papers, loose tobacco and matches, hanging from cardboard sheets on the wall. On the far end of the counter he kept three glass jars filled with peppermints, licorice and horehound to tempt the children when their mothers came to shop.