Only Yesterday (7 page)
I
Isaac strolled about, up and down, and looked hither and yon. A high sky stretched above his head and a great sea opened beneath his feet, and between sky and sea travels this ship we’re sailing to the Land of Israel. And like that firmament above, the sea below is all a mighty blue, that keeps breaking open at the bottom of the ship and raises white waves, and the white waves curl up, turn dark, and sink. Sometimes a white bird descends from the sky and hovers over the ship, then rises back to the firmament and disappears in the blue mist, and sometimes a sailor passes by Isaac and blurts out a strange word. Once or twice one of the lords of the first class emerged, came and stood with his lady next to Isaac and said something to him. When they saw that his conversation wasn’t likely to shorten their voyage, they left him and went on their way. Once again he was alone between sea and sky. And he didn’t know that on that same ship were other Jews who were also going to the Land of Israel.
As he stood there, two people, an old man and an old woman, appeared. Isaac looked at them and was amazed, for he had thought there were no other Jews here but him. And they too were amazed, for they had thought there were no other Jews here but them. The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and greeted
Isaac, while the old woman nodded fondly at him. The old man asked Isaac, What are you doing here? Said Isaac, I’m going to the Land of Israel. The old man was amazed, Was it usual for a young man to go to the Land of Israel? Said Isaac, I am going there to work its soil. The old man began to be even more amazed. Wasn’t the Land of Israel all made of synagogues and prayer houses? Wasn’t the Land of Israel designated for prayer, and what did working the earth have to do with the needs of heaven? He concluded that that fellow belonged to the cult of Zionists who want to strip the Land of its holiness and make it like all other lands. He began fulminating at Isaac, like old Jews of that generation, who looked at us as if we came, God forbid, to turn the world into heathenism. He began arguing with Isaac. Isaac wanted to answer him as he had been taught. But he changed his mind, Why should I argue with an old man who is going to add another grave in the Land of Israel? When the old man started
scolding him, Isaac countered his argument with prooftexts from the Torah, quotations he had found in Zionist pamphlets. The old man grew angry and said, You are twisting the Torah. By the time they parted from one another, they had become enemies.
People traveling together on a ship, even if they have something against one another, since the Lord-Who-Is-In-Every-Place has brought them together in the same place, they overlook their princi-ples and treat each other amicably. And so it was that when that old man saw Isaac again, he removed the wrath from his heart. And to keep from falling into a quarrel, he let go of everything controversial and talked with him as a person talking with his friend.
The old man asked Isaac, Do you have any relatives in the Land of Israel? Said Isaac, What do I need relatives for, all the Children of Israel are comrades, especially in the Land of Israel. And the old man smiled and said, In the Sabbath blessing, say that and we shall answer Amen, but on all other days it’s hard to make it without a relative, especially in a new place you don’t know. Isaac asked the old man, And you, who do you have in the Land of Israel? The old woman answered, We’ve got a daughter in Jerusalem, married to one of the prominent men of Jerusalem, and, Thank God, they also have a daughter. And as the old woman mentioned her relatives, she started singing their praises.
Isaac looked at her dismissively, These people the old woman was praising, who are they? They too came only to add dust to the dust of the Land of Israel. Isaac is an expert in the deeds of those who eat the bread of the Distribution, who come from all lands to Jerusalem and study Torah in idleness and run from grave to grave, until they flicker out and die and add graves upon graves. And between one thing and another they create quarrels and stir strife and put Jerusalem into shame and disgrace. And surely that Reb Fayesh, the old couple’s son-in-law, is one of those. As for Isaac, all the peo-ple of the New Yishuv are related to him, if not by blood, then by heart. Is there anything that brings hearts together like a mutual idea? And aren’t all of Isaac’s thoughts like their thoughts, to work the Land and to restore it from its destruction? Look at Isaac, his hands are del-icate as a maiden’s, but they are eager to do any work. And when the
ship reaches Jaffa, he’ll go to a village and pick up a hoe and work. Too bad his ship doesn’t hurry as fast as his heart.
The old woman asked Isaac, How come we don’t see here on the sea the big crocodiles that run after every ship to swallow it along with its passengers, and therefore sharp knives are attached to the ship to cut up the crocodiles so they won’t swallow the ship, and here there are no knives and no crocodiles? A lot of questions that woman has, as is usual with those who travel the roads and sail the seas, who see new things they have never seen before in their lives, or who don’t find on their way all they have heard about, and they are puzzled and ask questions. But our comrade Isaac took his mind off the sea, as if he were already in the Land of Israel and already see-ing himself hobnobbing with the notables of the New Yishuv, whose pictures embellished the walls of his house. Today their memory is lost and their names are forgotten. But in those days, when we ascended to the Land of Israel, all mouths talked of them and all newspapers were full of them. Today those newspapers themselves are forgotten. But blessèd are the chroniclers who grant them two or three lines in their books.
Meanwhile, the old people had arranged for their journey and rented themselves a private cabin from the sailors and ate and drank and slept and enjoyed the journey, unlike our comrade Isaac who, in his excitement about the Land of Israel, didn’t arrange for his journey and didn’t prepare enough food and didn’t rent himself a bed and wallowed on the deck and all the people of the ship leaped over him if they had to and if they didn’t have to.
I
The food Isaac bought for the trip turned bad, and when he got up on the third day, he found his bread moldy and his fruit rotten and the rest of his food was not fit to eat. So Isaac went without food until his knees buckled with hunger, and he was ashamed to ask the old man, for Isaac was the son of fine citizens who would rather die of hunger than ask for charity, and here the sea air stirred his appetite more than on all the days when he was on land. He hoped for a miracle that would restore his food. But the food thwarted his hope and
wasn’t restored, on the contrary, it grew even more rotten. And when he tasted it again, he was about to vomit up his mother’s milk. He was assailed by such despair that he feared the hunger would drive him out of his mind, since the sea air and the smell of cooking from the kitchen piled appetite on top of his appetite, and along with the yearning for food he was assailed by thirst. Then he cast out his shame and went to the old man. Isaac said to himself, I won’t ask my-self, but if he gives—so much the better. He found him reciting the blessing after food and “the slice of bread for the poor” was set before him. Isaac saw the slice of bread and began devising stratagems to get it into his hand so the old man wouldn’t notice anything. Indeed, he could have taken the bread and the old man wouldn’t have seen, for the old man was sitting with his eyes shut, as pious Jews do when they devote their heart to their Father in Heaven, and he surely wasn’t thinking about his bread, but Isaac’s hands went slack and he could-n’t stretch them out. And he returned from the old man with his soul much hungrier. So he dropped his body in the aft part of the ship and pondered the slice of bread that could save him from hunger. He de-cided to go to the chef or to the waiter, maybe they would sell him something to eat. He took his teapot and came and stood in the door-way, as if he were requesting hot water for tea. The assistant cook saw him and filled his teapot, for the cooks are accustomed to ship’s passengers coming and asking for hot water and giving them a tip for their trouble. In those days, there weren’t many passengers on the ship and the cook didn’t have anything to do, and was glad to chat with a person. He recognized that Isaac was hungry, brought him bread and cheese, and from then on the cook gave him food and drink all the days of his journey. And Isaac was not ungrateful to his benefactor and gave him a gift of a vest of hides that you wear in winter over a shirt and under a coat. It was the garment Father had given him before he set out on his journey. And the assistant cook wasn’t ungrateful and protected him from the crew who treated him with contempt. And Isaac wasn’t ungrateful and returned his favor, and when the assistant chef was about to paint the kitchen furniture, Isaac helped him. And that was good for Isaac, because the long journey on the sea bored him, and all the pamphlets and journals he
had taken with him became alien to him, and the books he could have borrowed from the old man were far from his soul, for what were an old man’s books, the Law of Israel and the Mishnah, and The Way of the Righteous, and The Hebrew Heart, pious books that a fellow like Isaac wouldn’t look at.
And so Isaac spent his time with the chef and the chef was good to him. But as he was good for his body, he was bad for his soul, for when he heard that Isaac was going to Palestine, he started speaking evil of its Arab inhabitants. Isaac pleaded their cause, that they were sons of our uncle Ishmael, and Ishmael is the son of Abraham and the brother of Isaac. And the more the other man slandered them, the more he praised them. And the more he praised them, the more the other man slandered them. And from his slander of the Arabs, he came to slander the Jews, for it is known that the uncircumcised hate the circumcised. Sometimes they hate the Ish-maelites, and sometimes they hate the Israelites, and sometimes they hate both of them. But he did treat Isaac well in all matters of the body, for the Gentiles still treated the individual Israelite well, even if they hated the Israelites in general.
I
For ten days, Isaac shook on the waves of the sea. It was springtime, comfortable days for those who travel the roads and sail the seas. Every day the sun shone and every night the moon gleamed. Sometimes the sound of a bird was heard soaring in the air and sometimes another ship was seen, for more than one ship was traveling on the sea. Some were going to the Land of Israel and some were returning from the Land of Israel, and some were going to other places. Sometimes a silhouette of a human settlement was seen in the distance and sometimes other things appeared. For even though the sea is only water, it is not empty of other things. Every day Isaac would talk with the old man and the old woman, and every day he would get his food from the kitchen. Four times the ship made a stop, unloaded and loaded, let people off and took people on. People whose like Isaac had never seen came on board, some came from Bosnia and some came from other countries. Some were going to Alexandria in
Egypt and some were going to the Land of Israel. Some on their own business and some to serve God. Isaac didn’t understand their language and they didn’t understand his language, for they were Sephardim and spoke Spanish and he was an Ashkenazi and spoke Yiddish. And when he started speaking with them in the Holy Tongue, and they replied in the Holy Tongue, they didn’t understand what he said and he didn’t understand what they said, for he spoke the Ashkenazi dialect and they with a Sephardi accent. But when their heart was full, they would point to the East and say, The Land of Israel, and kiss their fingertips.
Between one thing and another, the ship got to Alexandria in Egypt. And when we got to Alexandria the whole ship filled with men, women, and children. Some had lots of clothes and some had lots of belongings, some had been wandering far and wide and some were returning to the Land of Israel. Some were happy and some were sad. Some were happy that they were returning to the Land of Israel and some were sad that they were leaving all the good things Outside the Land. Out of love for the Land of Israel, Isaac ran about and served them, tied and untied their packages and brought them hot water and played with the babies, gave his finger to a crying baby to suck and helped the mothers of the babies to dress them and put on their shoes. Meanwhile, they took his place and didn’t even leave him room to rest his bones, or needless to say, his belongings. He had put down his sack and his valise in one place and found them some-place else. He thought they were in the first place and found others in their place. He went to look for his belongings and found them scattered about. And his mind too was scattered and his spirit was broken. His soul was weary and he wanted nothing but rest. Rest we didn’t find, but only weariness. And if not for the weariness, our heart would have become empty. At the end of ten days, the ship reached Jaffa.
I
Our ship reached Jaffa, the gateway to the Land of Israel. A Jew arrives in the Land of Israel, leaps off the ship and kisses her soil, in the joy of weeping and weeping for joy. Isaac showed neither joy nor
weeping, but spread his lips in a grin, and didn’t jump out of the ship, for until a doctor came to examine the passengers of the ship, no one was allowed to leave.
The crew tied ladders to the ship. Strange people climbed up on board. Some pushed on top of others and some in front of oth-ers. Some were half naked and their faces were dreadful and their loud voices went from one end of the ship to the other. Even in a dream they would have terrified us. The ship’s crew stood and looked at them, some laughing and some contemptuous. Men and women and their belongings were snatched up and disappeared in little boats standing near the ship. Isaac stood still in this turmoil. His lips parted, but his grin had been removed. Wherever he turned there was noise and crush. He wiped the sweat off his face incessantly, and when he wiped his face he seemed to be wiping away his sweat with a hotter sweat. The ship’s crew pushed and were pushed. They blurted out curses and ran. Their faces turned dark from the soot of the smoke and the coal dust. When will the noise stop and when will we get out of here? A thousand times he is pushed from place to place, and he no longer feels his feet. It seems he has recoiled and is crawling on his belly. The doctor came and examined the papers of the ship’s passengers. And some new people dashed around, searching among the ship’s passengers and looking here and there. Suddenly they fell upon the immigrants, some weeping for joy and some in the joy of weeping.