Israel (35 page)

“Assuming I'm not killed.”

“Always assuming that,” Trumpeldor wryly acknowledged. “But consider this, Haim. If you stay in Palestine, you will have to knuckle under to Turkish authority.”

Haim nodded. “I have to discuss it with Rosie.”

“As I said, there's not much time.”

Haim felt no peace in the tack room after Trumpeldor left. He'd lied to the man. He had no intention of discussing Trumpeldor's offer with Rosie because he had no intention of accepting it.

He picked up his rag and resumed his work. He rubbed at the leather as if it were a magic lamp and by stroking it Haim could make a genie appear to solve the dilemma he faced.

Trumpeldor had seen through him. Haim despised
what the Turkish government represented in Palestine. If he were single, Haim would immediately have volunteered against the Central Powers just on principle, never mind what his efforts might accomplish for Zionism.

But I'm not single, Haim thought. I've already missed most of the first year of Herschel's life. He hardly knows me yet. How can I leave him for what might amount to years? I'd be a stranger to him. He wouldn't recognize me, and he wouldn't love me, and that would be exactly what I'd deserve.

And there was his darling Rosie. The year he spent apart from her had dragged for an eternity. How could he leave her again, especially having taken her from her family in Tel Aviv?

And what if I'm killed? he wondered. I know what it is to be an orphan. I was lucky enough to be taken in by Abe, but who would be a father to Herschel?

He rubbed harder and harder at the leather until his arm ached and it gleamed like new. Then he put it aside and started on another. As Haim worked he imagined Abe dourly smiling at him.

You alone understand the truth, don't you? he thought. You know I've gotten older, gotten to be very much like you. I've been lucky, and now I've come to think in terms of what's to be lost rather than what's to be gained.

He wanted to stay with his family. Haim finally had to accept the fact. He wanted to put in a day's work right here in Degania and come home in the evening to play with his son and make love to his wife.

In October the Turkish fleet, led by German commanders, staged a surprise attack upon Russian ports along the Black Sea. A week later Russia, England and France all declared war against the Ottoman Empire.

Rumors swept Degania. The Turks were going to imprison the Jews; the Turks would draft all able-bodied men. Their army offered horrors which, Trumpeldor was
quick to warn, would make the the Russian army look like a picnic.

“We'll be safe here in Galilee,” the anxious settlers of Degania assured each other. “The war will not touch us here.”

All across the settlement work increased. Gardens were dug, buildings begun and repairs made. Rosie applied for and got permission to paint a mural detailing Degania's history across one wall of the dining hall. She asked for help and was flooded with offers. Everyone, it seemed, was intent upon keeping himself busy and his mind off what no one could control.

In November Trumpeldor came to Haim. “It's time,” the soldier said. “Come with me to Jerusalem. Ben-Gurion and the others are there. They've submitted a prosposal to Djemal Pasha, the Turkish commander.” Trumpeldor's eyes were bitter. “They too wish to raise a Jewish army, but attached to the Ottoman Empire.”

“That is foolish.” Haim frowned. “The British have Egypt under a protectorate. It's almost a certainty that they will sweep through Palestine in a matter of weeks.”

“I totally agree. The Turks have no navy or artillery to stop them, and as yet no decent soldiers. And the population would certainly welcome the chance to overthrow the corrupt Turkish government.”

“Our fate should not be tied to that of the Turks,” Haim went on. “My father-in-law is English, and he believes there are strong sympathies for us in the British government.”

“Come with me, then, Haim. Together we'd have a chance of convincing Ben-Gurion and the others.”

Haim shook his head. “I'm sorry, but I believe my place is here with my family.”

“A pity, my boy.” A smile played across Trumpeldor's hawkish features. “I could have turned you into quite a soldier.”

“Joseph, know that I no longer blame you for what happened with Yol. I can also say that Yol himself never blamed you.” He shook hands with Trumpeldor. “Shalom.”

“Shalom means ‘peace,' and that I don't think we shall have, Haim, not for a long time.”

Walking home from that last meeting with Trumpeldor, Haim felt strangely hollow inside, also strangely settled. For the first time in his life he had put his responsibilities ahead of his desires.

Haim thought, how Abe would have approved.

On impulse he turned down a side path that led to the nursery. The children were playing in front of the building; Rosie, sitting on a bench with her sketch pad on her lap, watched over them.

Haim waved to his wife and called out to his son, suddenly seized with overwhelming certainty that he'd done the right thing.

Herschel ran toward him. The boy would soon be four years old. Haim watched Herschel's legs pump like pistons under his large, baggy shorts. The boy's pudgy arms windmilled for balance as he ran; he looked like a baby bird intent on getting airborne for the first time.

Haim hunkered down to catch Herschel up in his arms. The boy spoke to him in English. Rosie was teaching their son her mother tongue in addition to the Hebrew and Arabic.

“Say it to me in Hebrew,” Haim gently reminded Herschel.

“Papa, take me with you to work ?” the boy obediently piped.

It was not allowed; the principles of the collective overrode all things, even parental authority. “You will stay here with the other children.”

Herschel nodded and Haim ruffled his hair, as golden as the grain for which the settlement was becoming
renowned. He looked into his son's yearning upturned face, into his eyes, bluer than his own.

“We will play after the day is done,” Herschel offered. “Yes, papa?”

“I will be here.”

As the new year approached, Degania heard that the authority to muster a separate Jewish legion to fight alongside the Turks had at first been granted and then abruptly rescinded by Djemal Pasha. Jews were declared to be foreign traitors, and hundreds of Zionist activists—among them Ben-Gurion, Trumpeldor and Arthur Ruppin—were rounded up and deported to Egypt.

The people of Degania passed an anxious winter wondering when the British would come to rescue their country. The Turks continued to expel Zionist activists and slowly but surely looted Palestine to support the troops. The Jews were ordered to surrender any weapons they might have, and most did so, desperate to convince the Turks of their loyalty and survive the nightmare.

In Tel Aviv Dizengoff implored his eligible male citizens to enlist in the Turkish army to prove Jewish loyalty. Many brave young men did enlist, aware that they were sacrificing themselves as cannon fodder to appease the savage Turkish temper. Meanwhile they silently vowed to surrender their rifles to the British—if only they would come.

In the spring of 1915 the sinking of the
Lusitania
shocked and horrified the world. The Jews of Palestine were further rocked to learn that the Allies were making their assault at Gallipoli, a peninsula in European Turkey. Churchill, then First Lord of the British Admiralty, intended to seize the strategically crucial Dardanelles in order to enable the combined might of the Greek and English navies to sink the German-Turkish fleet.

That same year the first refugees were driven into Palestine's interior by the pillaging Turks. The war was coming to Degania after all.

In January Abe tried to contact Haim. It was a little over three months since the miscarriage and a storm cloud of sorrow had descended over Cherry Street. Leah was withdrawn and subdued. She was in mourning, leaving Abe to sort out his own grief as best he could.

He was not up to the task. He didn't know how to confront his own anger about what had happened. Leah had always been the one to reach out to him. Now that she wouldn't or couldn't, Abe was unable to cope.

He briefly considered swallowing his pride and going to see the rabbi. It would have been nothing but a gesture, though, to have to sit through the story of Job, to be told that God's will works in mysterious ways, that it is not for man to question. He was not religious enough to take solace in the assertion that God likes a good loser. Abe had lost too much as it was; he was sick to death of the taste of loss.

First the child and now Leah. Yes, she was lost to him, or at least her radiance was, and that was the aspect of his wife that Abe had loved the most.

She was still dutiful, accommodating her husband in their bed, but without passion; she still did her share of the work in the store, but the market no longer rang with her rich laughter.

Abe had depended on nothing since his childhood except the exuberance that Leah had brought to his life. Now the loss of that joy had left an awful void. Abe tried to fill it by locating Haim to persuade him to come to America and become a partner in the market. Of course if pressed Abe would admit that Haim was in his thirties by now and probably settled but in Abe's heart his ward was still the headstrong youth who needed guidance. Perhaps things had not gone well for the boy. Perhaps Haim was pining for him even now.

He went to the
Jewish Daily Forward
's offices with his idea. Perhaps there was a newspaper similar to the
Forward
in Palestine that would run an advertisement directed at Haim Kolesnikoff, asking that he write to Abe Herodetzky at the Cherry Street address.

The
Forward
's people did as much as they could, but they were busy putting out their paper and handling appeals from Jews looking for their families all across America and the world. It was two months before the advertisement in Hebrew was sent overseas along with the money to pay for its run.

Abe waited for an answer, but his hopes faded. The answer never came. Who knew if the advertisement had ever been published in the first place? The people at the
Forward
offered no guarantee. Anyway, Palestine was not the Lower East Side, where you could buy a dozen different dailies on any street corner. The editors cautioned that newspaper circulation was spotty outside the coastal areas.

In August, for their second anniversary, Abe presented Leah with a pair of gold earrings. She smiled faintly, kissed him on the cheek and refused to put them on. He also gave her another sheaf of papers, again drawn
up by Stefano de Fazio's attorney. These were applications for citizenship, Abe explained to Leah. For their anniversary he intended that they officially become part of America.

Abe's omnivorous readings had long ago acquainted him with the legislative process and civics in general, sufficient to pass the examination. Leah, on the other hand, was totally ignorant about such things. It soon became evident that long evenings of study would be required before she could answer the questions.

She didn't even want to try. Since the miscarriage she'd been nervous and unable to concentrate on anything for very long. Abe found that he had to make a game of the lessons to get her to pay attention to the dry facts. He made jokes and they found themselves laughing. It was the first time they'd laughed together since the loss of the child. Abe made more jokes; he did foolish things; he found himself courting his wife all over again, not to win her heart, but to rescue it from the darkness.

For two weeks they spent each evening drilling themselves for the test. No matter how hard Leah tried, she made little progress. The night before the hearing, more confused than ever, Leah burst into tears. It was no use. If she remembered that the number of United States representatives depended on the population and that there was a blessedly uniform pair of senators per state, she forgot that representatives served for only two years as opposed to the senatorial six. If she remembered who served how long, she forgot that the House and the Senate made up something called Congress. And what
was
the President's name?

“I give up,” she cried, exhausted. It was three in the morning. They'd been sitting at their kitchen table with their books and papers in front of them since nine. “Take the test without me, please. And I'll thank you very much—”

“Nope.” Abe crossed his arms and shook his head.

“They'll fail you too, if I go with you,” she warned. “I'm stupid and hopeless and there's no more time.”

“If you don't go, I don't go.”

“You want to vote, don't you?” Leah sniffled. “I don't care about it—”

“Women can't vote,” Abe said, distracted. “Anyway, we're doing this together.”

Leah swallowed her arguments and nodded. Since they began to study for the citizenship test she'd found herself forgetting about the miscarriage for hours at a time. Abe had been trying so hard to see to it that she passed the test. The work every night had been for her; he could pass the hearing without trying. During the days and weeks immediately following her stay in the hospital Leah had grown remote from her husband because she couldn't endure his pity. Now it occurred to her that she'd been mistaken, that what she thought was pity was really his attempts to let her know that he still cherished her even though he was sad.

“Who is the President?” Abe asked. “Not the Governor of New York,” he warned before she could speak. “The President of the United States, I'm asking you.”

“What difference does my being a citizen make to you?”

“It just does. Now, who is President?” Abe insisted.

“Because why? Is it such a big deal to go to the test alone?”

“I don't want to go alone. There's already enough things alone in our lives.” He hesitated. It seemed the time to say he loved her, but he'd always had trouble saying it, and the few times he had recently, Leah had pretended not to hear. It wasn't a husband's love that he wanted to communicate, or not just now at any rate. What he wanted Leah to understand about their relationship involved more than love. It involved the loss of their son,
and what happened with the store, and their future in America, and all the happiness and disappointments that life would throw at them, singly and together.