Israel (34 page)

Degania, he told them, was the first land to be truly owned by Jews, and now Jews could be proud of that ownership.

On June twenty-eighth Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. The murder and subsequent outbreak of war in Europe were closely followed by the Jewish community of Palestine. Many of the most influential people, property owners in Tel Aviv, for example, argued that the Turks would stay out of the war and that if the Ottoman Empire did fight, it would be on the side of the Allies. Many Jews in Palestine had taken Turkish citizenship and now loudly proclaimed their loyalty to Turkey no
matter which side that country took.

It was Joseph Trumpeldor, anxiously perusing the stacks of tattered weeks-old newspapers brought in on the supply carts, who understood the significance of the widening war. For fifty years the storm had been brewing. Now it was just beyond the horizon. Trumpeldor's warrior bones told him that the rain was about to fall.

Haim was in the tack room caring for the saddles and the leather harnesses for the mules when Trumpeldor came to talk with him. It was the end of September but still blazingly hot. The sky was bleached white. Here in the Jordan valley the earth had baked hot enough to raise a blister on the bottom of a bare foot—except for the feet of the Arabs, and the children of Degania.

Haim liked working in the tack room. It was relatively cool and pleasantly lit. The harsh sunlight filtered golden through the burlap curtains, bringing a rich sheen to the burnished leather.

He took each harness from its peg and carried it to the worktable: He scrubbed the tack down with a rag soaked in saddle soap and then waxed the leather. He polished each bit of leather and brass until it gleamed, the simple, soothing work carrying him back across the years to his apprenticeship in Abe's cobbling shop and their little village in the pale.

Next year would mark a decade in Palestine. Ten years! So much time passed, miles traveled, money earned and given away. He had cut stone, run a factory, helped build the first Jewish city and the first kibbutz.

But for all that no work satisfied him as much as when he cut and molded the leather, affixed the brass and polished the piece until it glowed.

“You made of me a fine shoemaker,” Haim remarked to Abe, whose presence seemed to hover amidst
the cut hide and pungent tins of soap and preservative. It was in the tack room that Haim could best remember Abe. Since Yol's departure seven months ago he had begun anew to long for Abe's company.

In the tack room, through a kind of meditation brought about by the simple but soul-satisfying work, Haim found that he could talk to Abe. He could describe what had happened to him so far in his eventful life, and he could talk of Rosie and of his pride and joy, his son Herschel. As Haim worked he found himself better able to remember conversations with Abe.

His work in the tack room had taken on such a private significance that Haim considered it an intrusion when Joseph Trumpeldor barged in, a creased newspaper in his right hand. Haim had done his best to avoid Trumpeldor since that terrible night last fall. He—admittedly irrationally—blamed the Russian for Yol's misfortune.

“Read this.” Trumpeldor thrust the newspaper in front of him.

Haim glanced at the front page as he continued with his work. “It is in English, yes, Joseph? I do not know English.”

Trumpeldor nodded. “It's a British-funded paper out of Tel Aviv. It just arrived on the cart. I'll read it to you.”

Haim listened as Trumpeldor rambled on about a battle at a river called the Marne, near Paris. The French and some English—the British Expeditionary Force—had won a decisive victory over the Germans.

“The Kaiser's forces will fall back now,” Trumpeldor continued. “The Germans' strategy of crushing the West so that they can turn all of their might against Russia is finished.”

Haim was unclear if Trumpeldor was still reading or was offering his own opinion. He carefully ran his saddle-soaped rag the length of a harness rein, making sure to clean the edges of the leather as well as both sides.

“There's no question now that a long and costly war on two fronts is unavoidable for Germany,” Trumpeldor went on.

There was a horsefly buzzing figure-eights around the tack room, occasionally thudding against the slanted whitewashed ceiling. Haim wished that both the fly and Trumpeldor would go away and allow him to work in peace.

“Joseph, what is the point you are trying to make?” As Haim spoke he scrutinized the harness. “I don't quite see the significance of this Marne,” he absently murmured.

“Perhaps if you gave me your attention, I could help you to understand it,” Trumpeldor curtly replied.

Haim set down his polishing rag. His work in the tack room was special. He would not spoil it by continuing while another person—especially Trumpeldor—was nattering at him.

“Here is what I can deduce from the newspaper,” Trumpeldor began, folding it in half and shoving it into a pocket. “With two fronts going the Germans will want to give the Allies a little more to think about. The Kaiser will redouble his efforts to get Turkey to ally itself with the Central Powers.”

Haim shrugged. “If you say so, Joseph, for you know far more about military matters than I do, but I've heard people say that Turkey is leaning toward the Allies because of French investments in that country. I've heard that many Turkish ministers are pro-Entente, or at the very least neutral.”

Trumpeldor's stern, hawkish features relaxed into a thin smile. “You're wrong, my boy, but at least you've begun to think.”

“I'm not your boy,” Haim glowered.

Trumpeldor's smile turned into a smirk. “Sorry.”

“You may disagree with me, but don't say I'm flat-out wrong, Joseph.”

“Actually, I will say that, and here's why.” Trumpeldor's fingers hammered the tabletop as he made his points. “Number one, the Turkish army has recently been restructured by a German general. Number two, there are leaders of the Young Turks Revisionist Party, War Minister Enver Pasha among them, who have taken on the Prussian style. I suspect they'll be taking fencing lessons and sporting monocles before very long. Third, there is long-standing animosity between Turkey and Russia over the former's claims to ancient territory now held by the Russians. The Germans will bewitch the Turks with glorious tales of what could be. The Turks would rather listen to such promises than face reality. Already we've seen which way the Turks are leaning. Consider the events of just a few weeks ago, when those German battleships evaded their British pursuers by entering the Dardanelles—”

“Everyone knows that story.” The German cruisers had been immediately “purchased” by the Turks and the German sailors issued fezes. “And everyone has an explanation for the Turkish action. It could have been that the Turks wanted to teach the British a lesson for having seized those two battleships being built for Turkey in British shipyards—”

“Or that Turkey wanted to put pressure on Russia to cede those territories,” Trumpeldor scowled. “The immediate motivations are far less important than the result, which will be Turkey's entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers.”

Haim feigned a yawn. “Whatever you say, Joseph. There's nothing we can do about it. Now please, may I get back to my work—”

“Damn you, listen to me!” Trumpeldor barked. “I know you blame me for your friend's troubles on that night, but put aside your grudge for the moment and listen. Believe me, that war is coming here. Believe that I have lived through enough war to know how it can—” He
hesitated, his arm impotently sawing the air as his mind groped for the right words to express himself. “I've seen how war can accelerate the course of history—”

“You're a soldier, Joseph. To you war is the solution to every problem.” Haim grimly shook his head. “That's why I can't trust your interpretation of events.” And that's an outright lie, Haim thought. Why am I frightened to confront him with my feelings concerning Yol? He's already brought it up.

“I am a warrior, it is true. But above everything I am a Zionist. When Turkey enters the war the Allies will have to divert forces to defend Egypt. They will need help. There are eighty thousand Jews living in Palestine at this moment. How the Zionist movement aligns itself in the immediate future will affect the likelihood of establishing a Jewish homeland for generations to come.”

“You were right, you know,” Haim heard himself admitting. “What you'd said before, concerning Yol, you were right. I do blame you.”

He expected Trumpeldor to make a face, to shout, to belittle the accusation. He even expected the hard old soldier to ridicule Yol for carrying on like an old woman over the incident. If he does that I'll smack him one, Haim vowed. Never mind his one arm and the fact that he's a hero.

What Haim did not expect was for Trumpeldor to nod, looking suddenly very grey and tired, nor to see compassion in his brooding hunter's eyes.

“I don't question you for blaming me, because I've already blamed myself,” Trumpeldor said. “You don't know how often I've wished it were you I'd left to watch over the mules.”

Haim nodded sullenly. “Thanks very much. Then the shooting would have been on my conscience.”

“Perhaps, but then again perhaps not. Perhaps you
wouldn't have shot so quickly, Haim. You're not like Yol.”

“Yol is a good man, Joseph,” Haim began in tones of warning. “Don't you—”

“Oh, stop it,” Trumpeldor implored. “Yol is totally unsuited to be a fighter. It's not a question of whether he is a good man or a bad one. He simply isn't cut out for the job. For one thing, he has far too much imagination. A head full of ideas is an asset for a jokester, a detriment to a man who has to face an armed enemy in the dark. Believe an old soldier, Haim. You may think that when it comes to war I am like a drunk clutching his bottle, but the truth is that I do not enjoy killing or watching my comrades being killed or maimed. It is simply that I have a talent for the military.” He paused, his dark eyes intent upon Haim. “And so do you, you must realize, so do you.”

“Joseph, I'm confused.” Haim stared at Trumpeldor. “I was terrified that night.”

“I was watching you. You did well. I saw what you were made of. If it had been you who shot the Arab, you would have gotten over it. Unlike Yol, you would have come to realize that such accidents are unavoidable during wartime.”

“We're not at war.”

“But we are,” Trumpeldor insisted. “Now we fight the Bedouins. Soon we will fight the Turks, and someday we will be against all the Arabs. Believe an old soldier, Haim. There is only so much land. If we are to have some of it, we will have to fight for it.”

“We have Tel Aviv right now,” Haim argued. “Degania is ours; we have the papers to prove it on file at the National Fund office.”

“We have only illegal status in this country, which allows us to build and turn wasteland into farmland because we pay the Turks. We are no better off than the serfs in Russia. They pay the landlords for the right to improve
and work the land. A bribe is a bribe, Haim, and paying it is not the way to earn a homeland.”

“There aren't enough Jews in Palestine to defeat the Turks,” Haim said. “We must cooperate, get them to trust us—”

“They never will,” Trumpeldor said flatly. “They will use us if they can, but they'll never accept us. We've paid baksheesh far too long, and most of us are from Russia, their enemy in this war. Our only hope lies in an Allied victory, especially if we can help to bring it about. Our leaders must bargain with the British and the French: Jews to fight against the Central Powers in exchange for a homeland after the war. I intend to organize and lead those volunteers, and I want you with me, Haim.”

“But Joseph—” Haim was flabbergasted. “Why me? I'm a poor farmer and a better leatherworker, but hardly worth my salt as a soldier. Why not recruit the Hashomer?”

“They are good at fighting Bedouins,” Trumpeldor replied, “but I wouldn't want to be the one to tame those wild men into a disciplined military unit. The Hashomer will have their place in the struggle, but what I have in mind is to form a model corps of regular troops. Don't forget, I got my experience fighting against the Japanese. I've trained many men in my day, and I'll take ordinary fellows with raw talent any time over undisciplined toughs who can't follow orders.”

“What good could so few men be to the Allies?” Haim asked.

“Every man counts. On the other hand, you're right, so few men are certainly not going to win the war. That doesn't matter, you see. The volunteers will be a symbol of the Jewish presence on the Middle Eastern-Palestine front. ‘Here are some men to help you fight,' the World Zionist Organization can tell the Allies, but what they'll really be saying is, ‘Here is the support of Jews all over the world.'”

“Any Palestinian Jew who comes out against the Turks could be hanged for treason,” Haim warned.

“Eventually, but not until that Jew has sworn his loyalty to the Ottoman Empire.” Trumpeldor grinned ferally. “Anyway, they have to catch you before they hang you.”

“That's the other part of it.” Haim seized the point. “We'd have to leave Palestine. It's easy for you, Joseph, but I have my family to consider. If I went with you, there could be reprisals—”

“You know better than that. The administration in this country has kept no records on us. They don't know who you are or if you're married. When you entered this country, you paid your bribe and that was that.”

Haim sighed; it was the truth. “When do you need to know?”

“Hard to say,” Trumpeldor replied. “There's some time, but not very much.”

“Well, I can't give you my decision right now.”

Trumpeldor nodded. “You have a difficult time ahead of you, my boy. Come with me, and it may be years before you see your wife and son again.”