Israel (29 page)

“God forgive me,” Abe muttered hoarsely, “but I'll crack your skull to keep what's mine.”

Joseph nodded and backed off, heading for the door. “All right, you win. I'm not prepared to have my head broken over this matter, Abe.” He turned the key to let himself out, and as he pulled open the door, he looked back and smiled. “No hard feelings, right? Maybe I misjudged you.” He was gone.

Abe was still clutching his club and still shaking as Leah ran down the steps to embrace him.

“How wonderful you were!” she told him, her tone
and eyes overflowing with relief and tears. “How brave to stand up to that bully!”

Abe nodded a trifle uncertainly. He was panting for breath and his blood burned due to the excitement. What had he been prepared to do? He realized he was still holding the club and dropped it to put his arms around his wife. The warmth and softness of her beneath his exploring fingers, her scent as he pressed his face into her dark thick hair, made him dizzy.

Why should her touch be so unfamiliar? he wondered sadly. Why am I so afraid to hold her—to reveal my feelings, be they love or anger? I stood up to Joseph, didn't I? There is nothing to be afraid of.

“Leah,” he said thickly, “if it hadn't been for you—I would also fight for you. . . .” He held her at arm's length, staring earnestly into her eyes. “You understand that, don't you?”

He hesitated then. The anger had vanished—no, it was still surging within him, but it had been transformed into desire for Leah. He wanted to cry out with the intensity of it. He felt changed, renewed by his earlier fury. He felt as giddy as he had in the whiskey-drinking days.

Leah was gazing up at him, a look of yearning in her dark eyes. “Husband,” she murmured, leaning against him, “all the excitement—I feel dizzy. Help me upstairs.”

Abe, his arm around her waist, led her toward the back staircase. His own limbs had turned rubbery. The adrenaline was draining out of him now, but he still felt clearheaded and invigorated.

Just like being drunk, he thought, like being drunk and walking outside in the frosty winter air.

“Leah, I love you,” he whispered to her at the foot of the stairs. “I do love you, you know.”

“Come upstairs.”

In their bedroom only a single candle flickered. Abe watched mesmerized as his wife disrobed. He had never
seen a naked woman before. He gazed awestruck at her breasts, at the soft swell of her belly, her hips, her thighs, the thatch at her center.

I am so afraid . . . he thought as he began to undress, and then he remembered how he'd just stood up to Joseph.

Naked, they stood face to face, tentatively discovering each other's body, at first smiling and then giggling as they elicited in each other sensations neither one had ever before experienced. Finally Abe led his wife to their bed. Leah drew the coverlet up over them and leaned over Abe, unpinning her braids, shaking them free, so that her long tresses cascaded over him like a soft, gleaming waterfall.

When Abe slid into her at long last, they both cried out, rejoicing in each other. Their celibate time together was impossible to fathom, even to imagine.

They loved each other until daybreak. There was no such thing as exhaustion. Each satisfaction only led to desire that was stronger than before. When they finally fell asleep, their slumber was deeper than either had ever known.

The next day in the store they could not look at each other without breaking into blushing giggles, and the customers all thought the marriage was off to a good start. At last they were behaving like newlyweds.

There was usually a lull in business during the midafternoon. Leah told Abe she wanted to shop for material to make curtains. She'd be back before things got busy again around five o'clock.

She headed west to the Hudson, where the slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants lined Washington Street. It was a long walk and the day was very warm, with the sun shining in a clear, deep blue sky, but Leah was far too full of happy energy to sit still on a trolley. As she walked her eyes drank in the colorful pageant that was Manhattan on a September day, while her mind languidly replayed the exquisite
pleasure of last night. As she walked she felt a slight twinge between her legs. How delicious to know that womanly ache at long last!

Leah got to her destination just in time. It was four o'clock and the slaughterhouse was releasing its workers for the day.

When Joseph appeared she waved, catching his eye. He waved back and angled across the street to where she was waiting.

“Well?” he demanded. “Tell me.”

How tired he looks, Leah thought. Joseph's clothing and even his beard were glistening with fresh blood. He stank like the carcasses he spent his days hefting on his back.

“Everything I won't say,” Leah smiled demurely.

“That well it worked, eh?” Joseph threw back his head and roared. “You have turned into a witch, little Leah. I must say, when you came to me saying, ‘Joseph, you must pick a fight with Abe,' I thought you'd gone mad. Then when you told me why, I was ready to give up on both you
and
your meshugga husband.” He laughed again. ‘Come to the store,' you begged. ‘In the evening come, just before we are to close. Tell Abe you expect a partnership and that you intend to be the boss. Make him mad, make him lose his temper.'”

Leah grinned like a cat full of milk. “It worked,” she said smugly.

Joseph, laughing so hard the tears rolled down to wet his beard, put his arm around Leah to hug her. She endured his embrace despite his awful stench, for she was very fond of this fierce-looking fellow who was really so compassionate and kind. Not once had he mocked Abe when she told him about the trouble. Not only had he helped her, he also kept it a secret from Sadie.

“You'll come home with me for supper?” Joseph suggested. “I know Sadie would like to see you.”

“I can't. The store gets busy at five. I'll be late if I don't hurry back. Another time Abe and I will both come.”

“Another time,” Joseph nodded agreeably. Then he eyed Leah. “You think Abe will ever talk to me again?”

“Of course. He's already told me he hopes you'll make up with him. He likes you better now that he's stood up to you.”

“This is too mixed up for me,” Joseph complained. “One thing I do know: That husband of yours has got plenty of guts. He didn't know I was fooling when I chased him around the store.”

“I'm glad you've forgiven him for threatening you with that club,” Leah sighed, relieved.

“Big deal, a club,” Joseph snorted. “What else should he have done against a man three times bigger than him? Right here at the slaughterhouse there are strong men who do not stand up to me. Yes, your husband is all right, I'm glad to say.” His smile gradually faded. “Except that he thinks too much.”

Leah shrugged noncommittally. “I've got to go. Thank you, again, sweet Joseph.”

He waved her off, calling, “Don't ask me again; Abe will murder me.” The last Leah heard of him was his laughter, booming deep as thunder.

As she hurried home she considered what Joseph had said. Abe thinks too much, does he? Well, maybe so. He can do our thinking and I'll do our feeling, and between the two of us we should prosper, God willing.

The sun was lower in the sky; it burnished the tall buildings and splashed orange and crimson fire against the high windows. As Leah walked, she thought about all the nights of love to come. Just when, she wondered excitedly, will I feel our first child within me?

Rosie Kolesnikoff waited until fall to take her son to the kibbutz by the Jordan. She longed to rejoin her husband and present him with his son, but her own desires were overshadowed by her maternal instincts. She would not risk Herschel's health. There was less chance of contracting fever in the cooler weather of the fall.

The Galilee settlement of Um Jumi was quite a different place than when Haim arrived nearly a year ago. For one thing there were many more people. Some of the newcomers applied for membership, but most were itinerant volunteers, ready to lend a hand and then move on to the other frontier outposts springing up in Palestine.

Over the summer a new, permanent site six miles from Tiberias had been chosen. Thanks to Haim's agreement with the fellahin of Um Jumi, building materials could be brought in by boat. The membership was eager to impress the sponsoring National Fund, so the long, dry summer days were taken up with construction as well as agriculture. With the extra help the settlement quickly raised a barn, a new, larger dining hall—with a roofed
porch—a kitchen, and a cistern to hold water. Private cottages were erected for the married couples and a barracks for the unmarried and transients.

Everybody was very busy and a new face was no longer a novelty, so Herschel and Rosie's arrival caused very little excitement. Herschel was not the first child at the settlement. That honor belonged to another baby boy. With two around the rule against having children was ignored. The wives began to announce their pregnancies to great applause during the nightly meetings.

It was the meetings that most astounded Rosie. How so many people could meddle in one another's private affairs and how so many different personalities could ever decide on a specific course of action always amazed her. If they weren't voting on an issue, they were discussing it—and they discussed everything from what color to paint the walls to where the settlement stood concerning global affairs.

One night she had to gnaw her lip to keep from laughing as the membership bitterly debated over whether they should draft a formal letter of support to the
London Times
, endorsing the Triple Entente, which had last year chased a troublesome German gunboat out of the Moroccan port of Agadir.

Sitting beside Haim with Herschel on her lap, she would listen quietly as the arguments droned on. To her the entire idea of committee rule was ludicrous, but she kept her opinions to herself for Haim's sake.

She had only to see the gleam in his eyes as he sat basking in the nightly tumult to know how happy he was. In Haim there was a hollow place where the memories of his lost family should have been. The closeness and commotion of the kibbutz, the angry shouts and raucous laughter nourished Haim's hunger for brothers and sisters, a mother and a father.

For Haim's sake Rosie struggled to gain acceptance.
Gradually she made friends by working hard and never complaining. When the other women flaunted their seniority to avoid the lowly jobs, Rosie cheerfully cleaned the chicken coops and shoveled out the livestock stalls. She honed her cooking and sewing skills and learned how to milk a cow and coax a stubborn mule into its harness. Her hands grew calluses and her back ached from hauling her year-old son in a swatch of canvas tied around her hips. She dug irrigation ditches, cultivated vegetable gardens and even attempted a bit of carpentry.

She rarely knew what she was doing, but at Degania—the membership had chosen a new name, which meant “cornflower,” for the settlement—inexperience was the norm. All of the work being done by both the men and women was accomplished through trial and error. Roofs leaked, food was scorched, crops failed, saplings withered, animals died. If things didn't work out, have a good laugh or maybe a cry. At Degania spirit was what mattered.

Gradually things did improve. Crops were harvested, trees took root, egg and milk production was increased. A flower garden was planted. Rosie crawled on her hands and knees with the others, carefully burying the bulbs. One night despite the fence wild boars managed to penetrate the flower beds. The next morning upon discovery of the ravaged garden Rosie found herself weeping as if for lost children. One step forward, two steps back—Degania managed to exist, and that was progress.

One day while working in the laundry Rosie realized she'd been at the settlement for almost a year. It was not a very long time, but already her previous soft life in Tel Aviv was a faded, distant memory.

She found herself growing angry. In a few months the kibbutz would vote on her membership. I hope they blackball me, she thought.

Life here was so drab, so primitive. She belonged in Tel Aviv, where she could paint and give parties and have
servants. If she was blackballed Haim would have to take them back to civilization. She hated this life. She hated Degania and voting on everything and eating in the communal dining hall, and most of all she hated the danger.

The permanent settlement had attracted more attention from the Bedouin robbers who struck from across the river. The men in the fields had been shot at, but none, thank God, had taken a hit.

Someone will be killed eventually, Rosie warned herself. All of us know it, especially the women.

In Galilee violence could descend like sudden rain. On the nights when it was Haim's turn to stand guard over the settlement, Rosie lay awake mewling with terror. Six hours until he's here beside me in bed, she'd think. Five hours, four, three . . .

Once when he was out patrolling the fence, she felt a chill and for an instant was certain that a robber had crept up behind Haim to plunge a dagger into his back. On that terrible night she fought back the impulse to run and find him. When he came home, tired but safe, she merely kissed him, never letting on what she'd been through.

It was always that way after Haim's tour of duty—a kiss, a hug, and then dark, dreamless sleep for the hour left before the dawn. They never made love on those nights. Haim was always far too weak with nervous exhaustion, and the smell of the gun on his hands made Rosie choke.

Thank God shots never seemed to be fired during Haim's watch. On other nights, when shots were heard, Rosie could never fall back asleep. She would look at her husband and son, sound asleep, and wonder how they could lie undisturbed by the gunfire. Then she would silently pray that it was Jews doing the shooting and that if the watchman had a wife, God was somehow comforting her.