Israel (5 page)

“What do we need the recruiter for?” Haim asked. “What can that corrupt bastard do for us?”

“I never told you this,” Abe chuckled, “but he once offered to get us across the border. Once we are in Austria or Germany, we can—”

“Why do we need to go there?” Haim cut him off.

Now it was Abe's turn to be confused. “To sail across the Atlantic,” he replied. “How else to get to America?”

The glow from the stove was far too feeble to see by, but Abe had known Haim too long not to be able to sense when he was troubled. “Little friend?” he softly called.

“How long ago you first called me that,” Haim sighed. “I was so small and thin you could have fit me in one of the boots you were making.”

Abe smiled in the darkness. “And now I could fit into one of your boots. But you are still ‘little friend' to me, Haim, so please tell me what is troubling you.”

“All this time you spoke of leaving Russia, I—well, I never thought to ask where you intended to go because for me the choice was always so obvious.”

“Yes? Go on,” Abe coaxed, feeding more wood into the stove and leaving the grate open for light.

“This is difficult for me,” Haim said. “I owe you my very existence.” He took a deep breath. “Abe, it never occurred to me that you did not intend to go to the Holy Land.”

“Palestine?” Abe gasped. “You thought we were to go to Palestine? Of course not! We will go to America—”

“No.” Haim spoke so firmly that Abe's heart broke at the sound. “You will go to America.”

“Don't do this, Haim,” Abe implored.

“For me there is no choice,” he continued impassively. “I must go to Eretz Yisroel.”

“Don't call it what it no longer is! Your so-called Promised Land now belongs to the Turks. My God, Haim, don't ruin your life—our lives—this way. The Zionist movement will come to nothing there. Even Hertzl, your movement's—”

“It is not just my movement, Abe,” Haim sighed, his tone partly forgiving, partly condescending. “Zionism benefits all Jews.”

Ungrateful upstart! Abe took a deep breath to calm himself. There was too much at stake to throw it away by letting his anger get the better of him. “Haim, I am sorry. Of course the Zionists mean well. But what I was trying to say was that even Hertzl, the movement's leader, has proposed that England's offer of Uganda as a refuge for Jews be accepted.”

Haim shrugged. “Hertzl is entitled to his opinion.”

“There is no such thing as a promised land—”

“And you are entitled to your opinion, Abe.”

“At least in America if you work hard enough they promise success.”

“Why not work as hard in Palestine?”

“America is the place for us.”

“At the moment there is no place on earth for us. Nowhere on earth are Jews more than tolerated, including your precious America.”

Abe stared at Haim's face in the flickering firelight, at his handsome features, animated by his passionate beliefs. He looks like one of God's angry angels, Abe thought, full of pride and love and the immeasurable pain of imminent loss.

“Since the Diaspora we have lived in ghettos,” Haim was saying, his voice kept low but imbued with righteous thunder. “In Russia we live in a ghetto behind a wall that separates
us
from
them
. We live according to others'
whims. We are tolerated, like poor distant relatives at an intimate family gathering that is the rest of the world. We have no place to call our own, and until we do, we shall be at the world's mercy. Do you understand, Abe? If the Jewish way of life is to survive it must develop roots in soil it can call its own. Only then will Jews be able to feel a measure of security and independence.” Here Haim paused and smiled. “Even if they themselves don't choose to live in Palestine, at least they will know there is a homeland awaiting them if they need it.”

“I don't believe I could survive in a desert like Palestine,” Abe said.

Haim nodded. “Then you probably couldn't,” he agreed. “As for me, I could not survive anywhere else.”

“It'll be a hard life—”

“What else is new?” Haim's voice grew soft. “What is hardest is saying good-bye to the man who raised me like a father.”

“Being your father helped me to overcome the loss of my own.”

“So you will go to America and become a rich man. You will come visit me in Eretz Yisroel and all my neighbors will be impressed with your importance.”

“Well, you will need money to go to Palestine,” Abe said. “I don't know how to advise you, little friend.” He frowned. “I don't know the procedure—”

“Don't worry,” Haim reassured him. “There have been pioneers before me. The Zionists here and in Palestine will guide me.”

“Did they say how much passage was?”

Haim gave him the figure. “Also something to live on until I know my way around a little, but all I'll take from you is the fare.”

“Don't be foolish.” Abe quieted him in a peremptory tone. “Maybe you do not need my guidance any longer,
but for food and clothing you'd do best to rely on me and not your fellow
halutzum.”

“But you will need money for your own journey.”

“In America a man can find work to make his own way. Who knows if there is any work in Palestine?”

“Of course there is work.”

“The kind that pays? Right here I could plant a crop, and that's work, but it doesn't pay until the plants grow. What would I eat until then, without money in my pocket to buy food?”

“Perhaps you are right,” Haim reluctantly admitted.

“Perhaps,” Abe chuckled. From the leather pouch around his neck he extracted a sheaf of worn rubles. “Take this.” He handed over the money.

“But this much?” Haim asked, astounded. “It must be all you have.”

“In the first place it is not mine but ours,” Abe said. “We earned it together. In the second place it is much less than half of our savings.” He winked. “I am six years older than you, so I should get the lion's share, yes?”

Haim laughed and then grew quiet. Both men watched the fire for a while, until Abe broke the silence.

“When do you leave, little friend?”

“There's a train to Odessa at seven this morning,” Haim began, then blushed, embarrassed at Abe's chortle.

“You are so anxious to leave?” Before Haim could say anything, Abe continued, “Do you know what I think? I think that probably I will not wake up until well after dawn. Before then you should go find your Zionist friends and begin your journey. What do you think?”

“I think that the thirteen years since I stood in your doorway, a ragged orphan boy, seems like only one day,” Haim murmured. “You really will not come with me, Abe?” He filled his voice with hope.

“I won't.” Abe wrapped himself in his blankets against the cool night air. There will be no way for us to write, he
thought. After tonight it will be good-bye forever. He looked heavenward to pray for Haim's well-being. The stars against the velvety sky seemed more brilliant than usual.

“Good-bye, little friend.”

“Good-bye, father.”

Abe had to smile. Never had the boy called him that before. He went to sleep willing the stars to be diamonds in Haim's pocket. He went to sleep with the blankets over his head to muffle the sound of his only family's departure.

Haim waited for Abe's breathing to become regular. He was either asleep or pretending to be. What difference did it make, anyway?

He had no idea what to take with him on his journey and so decided to take nothing. Whatever he needed he would get in Palestine or do without, like a proper pioneer. Already his head was full of wonderful visions of himself astride a horse—or perhaps even a camel—with a pistol on his hip and one of those—what, turbans? No, a kaffiyeh on his head.

Haim stared at Abe's still form. Why wouldn't he come? There were times when try as he might, he could just not understand what made Abe tick. Haim was ruled by his instincts and impulses. Emotion was everything to him.

Abe, on the other hand, always had to think things through several times before acting. He would ruminate on a plan of action the way a cow chews its cud. Actually, Haim thought fondly, more like a billygoat, which Abe somewhat resembled.

Then it occurred to him that there was one thing in the ruined cottage he had to have. He moved silently across the floor to a wooden cabinet stuffed with papers of various kinds. The mob had tossed the documents about, hoping
to find currency, family heirlooms, gold and silver jewelry.

Haim sifted through the untidy pile until he found what he had been looking for. It was still in the leather tube he had stitched up one afternoon both to protect it and to hide it from the tax collector.

On all things—matches, tobacco, schnapps, grain—whether bought, manufactured, grown or bartered for, there was a tax to be paid. When the tax collector came around on his fine horse, his bronze medallion of office hanging from his neck, he appraised all the peasant owned and announced the amount of the tariff. If the peasant could not pay, he had a choice of entering into a contract of slave labor binding on future as well as present generations or to surrender some of his wealth.

Haim and Abe hid the leather tube because they had no wish to lose the portrait inside.

By the light of the fire Haim carefully pried out the stopper and removed the rolled-up scroll of parchment. Last year a neighbor—an artist by proclivity, a farmer by necessity—had come to them with a proposition: three pairs of shoes for his children in exchange for a fine portrait of Abe and Haim. The cobblers agreed to the bargain and the artist produced a charcoal drawing that was astounding in its delicacy and accuracy. In Hebrew the man lettered their names, the name and location of their village and the date.

How the artist ever paid the taxes on three new pairs of shoes Haim could not say. In any case the tax collector, intent on tools, hides and thread, never discovered the drawing.

Haim gazed at the portrait and then glanced at Abe. He wished there were two drawings so each man could possess a memento, but there wasn't. There was only one, and Haim meant to take it with him.

Better it should be in the Holy Land than in America,
he told his conscience. Carefully he rolled up the parchment and slid it back into the leather tube. He pocketed the tube inside his coat, and holding it close to his heart, hurried off into the night.

Abe woke abruptly. At first he was confused. Where was Haim? Then he remembered and the immensity of loss threatened to overwhelm him.

The sun was just coming up from behind the distant hills, its radiance setting the forest on fire. By that glowing light Abe's eyes fell upon the wooden cabinet. He knew without looking that Haim had taken the portrait.

At first Abe was furious; then suddenly his anger lifted.

Guard the portrait and the memory of our life together, Abe wished to Haim. I've done my best for you.

A rooster, a mass of muddy mahogany feathers on scrawny legs the color of cheese rind, strutted past the gaping doorframe. It cocked its head sideways in order to eye Abe.

What do you see? Abe wondered. An animal concerned itself with external characteristics. To the rooster Abe was merely a two-legged thing like all the others in the village, no better and no worse. To the rooster he was the same as the tax collector or the czar.

I have lost everything in the last day—my shop and the only person I care for.

The absence of responsibility nagged at Abe; Haim had needed him, and that need was Abe's lifeline to humanity. For Abe responsibility was the only pleasure. He laughed only when it was important to cheer Haim. He had not entertained until it was clear that Haim needed friends.

The rooster flapped its stubby wings and threw back its tiny head to yodel in the new morning. Abe threw a
cracked shoe last at it and the rooster darted off, squawking in outrage.

Better you should view your life with the rooster's eyes, Abe decided. Think only of externals. Put your actions together the way you would cut and assemble a boot. Do not look inside yourself, not until your heart has had time to heal.

He took the leather pouch from the thong around his neck and counted his remaining savings. He had lied to Haim about the money and sent him away with over three quarters of their cash. Abe had saved enough to pay for two passages, but his budget was based on two men traveling to the same destination. The cost of food, shelter and bribes was not much more for two than for one. Separate travel changed everything.

It was a question of each man going ill-prepared for the journey or one going with proper funds and the other postponing his departure. Abe knew that Haim could never wait patiently until he could build up his savings. As soon as Abe set off Haim would have thrown caution to the winds and tried to go without money.

Abe made some quick calculations. With his shop and tools ruined he could not hope to earn as quickly as before, but earn he would, sooner or later. He had the patience and temperament to wait until he was relatively certain that he would get there. Unlike Haim, Abe had no taste for adventure. He liked knowing in advance how things were going to turn out.

Things quieted in the area for the next few months. Still, the village was crippled. It was harder than Abe had imagined to make a living. He found himself relying on the hospitality of others more and more, and his savings began to trickle away.

Far from the pale, the rapid industrialization of Russia in the first years of the twentieth century, bringing with it the usual problems of harsh working conditions and low pay, made many converts to Marxism among students and intellectuals. Within these socialist revolutionary parties was a small group of radicals who believed that change could come only through terrorism and political assassination.