Thieves in the Night (2 page)

Joseph began to chuckle.

“What is the matter, you fool?” asked Dina, sitting up.

“I'll tell you when we arrive.”

“Tell me now.”

“It might upset you,” said Joseph, giggling irrepressibly.

“Nothing can upset me if this truck doesn't turn over.”

“But that is just the point! Look …”

He grabbed her hand and led it with his own to the edge of the canvas. “Do you feel something?”

“Wood. Crates.”

“Yes, but I know these particular crates, I have only to feel
round their edge. They are those with our home-made eggs.”

Dina too began to giggle, though somewhat forcedly. Nobody had great confidence in their self-made illegal hand grenades; they had a reputation of going off at the wrong moment. “Typically Jewish grenades, over-sensitive and neurotic,” an English Police officer had called them.

“You know,” said Joseph mirthfully, “they are packed in sawdust like real eggs. And you are brooding over them like a hen waiting for the chicks to come out.”

A jolt of the truck bumped their heads together. “Oh, Moses our Rabbi,” said Dina, “I wish you hadn't told me.”

The invisible driver underneath them had turned the headlights full on. The white beams quivered on the desolate, stone-littered earth.

“I wish you two could be quiet for a minute,” said Simeon, without turning his head. “We are almost there.”

So far, in a seemingly leisurely, almost casual way, everything had gone according to plan.

Three hours earlier, at 1 A.M., the forty boys of the Defence Squad, who were to form the vanguard, had assembled in the communal dining-hut of Gan Tamar, the old settlement from which the expedition was to start. In the large, vaulted, empty dining-hall the boys looked very young, awkward and sleepy. They were mostly under nineteen, born in the country, sons and grandsons of the first settlers from Petakh Tikwah, Rishon le Zion, Metullah, Nahalal. Hebrew for them was the native tongue, not a precariously acquired art; the Country their country, neither promise nor fulfilment. Europe for them was a legend of glamour and frightfulness, the new Babylon, land of exile where their elders sat by the rivers and wept. They were mostly blond, freckled, broad-featured, heavy-boned and clumsy; farmers' sons, peasant lads, unjewish-looking and
slightly dull. They were haunted by no memories and had nothing to forget. They had no ancient curse upon them and no hysterical hopes; they had the peasant's love for the land, the schoolboy's patriotism, the self-righteousness of a very young nation. They were Sabras—nicknamed after the thorny, rather tasteless fruit of the cactus, grown on arid earth, tough, hard-living, scant.

There was a sprinkling of Europeans among them, new immigrants from Babylon. They had gone through the hard, ascetic training of Hekhaluz and Hashomer Hatzair, youth movements which united the fervour of a religious order with the dogmatism of a socialist debating club. Their faces were darker, narrower, keener; already they bore the stigma of the things to forget. It was there in the sharper bend of the nasal bone, the bitter sensuousness of fleshier lips, the knowing look in moister eyes. They looked nervous and overstrung amidst the phlegmatic and sturdy Sabras; more enthusiastic and less reliable.

They all sat round the raw deal tables of the dining-hall, heavy with sleep and silent. The naked bulbs suspended on wires from the ceiling gave a bleak, cheerless light; the chipped salt-cellars and oil cruets formed pointless little oases on the empty communal tables. About half of them wore the uniform of the Auxiliary Settlement Police—khaki tunics which were mostly too big for them, and picturesque Bersaglieri hats which made their faces look even more adolescent. The others, who wore no uniform, were a section of the
Haganah
—the illegal self-defence organisation whose members, when caught defending a Hebrew settlement, were sent to jail together with the aggressors.

At last Bauman, the leader of the detachment, arrived. He wore riding breeches and a black leather jacket—a relic from the street-fighting in Vienna in 1934, when the malignant dwarf Dollfuss had ordered his field guns to fire point-blank into the balconies, lined with geranium-boxes and drying linen, of the workers' tenements in Floridsdorf, crossing himself after
each salvo. Bauman had received his leather jacket and his illegal but thorough military training in the ranks of the Schutzbund; he had the round, jovial face of a Viennese baker's boy; only in the rare moments when he was tired or angry did it reveal the imprint of the things to forget. In his case there were two: the fact that his people had happened to live behind one of those little balconies with the geranium-boxes; and the warm, moist feeling on his face of the spittle of a humorous jailer in the prison of Graz every morning at six o'clock when breakfast was doled out in the cells.

“Well, you lazy bums,” Bauman said, “get up; attention, stand over there.”

His Hebrew was rather bumpy. He lined them up along the wall dividing the dining-hall from the kitchen.

“The lorries will be here in twenty minutes,” he said, rolling himself a cigarette. “Most of you know what it's all about. The land which we are going to occupy, about fifteen hundred acres, was bought by our National Fund several years ago from an absentee Arab landowner named Zaid Effendi el Mussa, who lives in Beirut and has never seen it. It consists of a hill on which the new settlement, Ezra's Tower, will be erected, of the valley surrounding it and some pastures on nearby slopes. The hill is a mess of rocks and has not seen a plough for the last thousand years, but there are traces of ancient terracing dating back to our days. In the valley a few fields were worked by Arab tenants of Zaid Effendi's, who live in the neighbouring village of Kfar Tabiyeh. They have been paid compensation amounting to about three times the value of the land so that they were able to buy better plots on the other side of their village; one of them has even built himself an ice factory in Jaffa.

“Then there is a Beduin tribe which, without Zaid Effendi's knowledge, used to graze their camels and sheep each spring on the pastures. Their Sheikh has been paid compensation. When all this was settled, the villagers of Kfar Tabiyeh suddenly
remembered that part of the hill did not belong to Zaid, but was
masha'a
land, that is communal property of the village. This part consists of a strip about eighty yards in width running straight to the top of the hill and cutting it in two. According to law
masha'a
land can only be sold with the consent of all members of the village. Kfar Tabiyeh has 563 souls distributed over eleven
hamulles
or clans. The elders of each clan had to be bribed separately, and the thumb-prints of each of the 563 members obtained, including the babes' and village idiot's. Three villagers had emigrated years ago to Syria; they had to be traced and bribed. Two were in prison, two had died abroad, but there was no documentary proof of their death; it had to be obtained. When all was finished, each square foot of arid rock had cost the National Fund about the price of a square foot in the business centres of London or New York….”

He threw his cigarette away and wiped his right cheek with the palm of his hand. It was a habit which originated from his experience with the humorous jailer in Graz.

“It took two years to finish these little formalities. When they were finished, the Arab rebellion broke out. The first attempt to take possession of the place failed. The prospective settlers were received with a hail of stones from the villagers of Kfar Tabiyeh and had to give up. At the second attempt, undertaken in greater strength, they were shot at and lost two men. That was three months ago. You are making to-day the third attempt, and this time we shall succeed. By to-night the stockade, the watch-tower and the first living-huts will have been erected on the hill.

“Our detachment is going to occupy the site before dawn. A second detachment will accompany the convoy of the settlers which will start two hours later. The Arabs will not know before daybreak. Trouble during the day is unlikely. The critical time will be the first few nights. But by then the Place will be fortified.

“Some of our cautious big-heads in Jerusalem wanted us to wait for quieter times. The place is isolated, the next Hebrew settlement eleven miles away and there is no road; it is surrounded by Arab villages; it is close to the Syrian frontier from which the rebels infiltrate. These are precisely the reasons why we have decided not to wait. Once the Arabs understand that they cannot prevent us from exercising our rights, they will come to terms with us. If they see signs of weakness and hesitation, they will first fleece us and then drown us in the sea. This is why Ezra's Tower has to stand by to-night.—That's all. We have five minutes left; single file into the kitchen for coffee.”

At 1.20 A.M. Bauman and the forty boys got into three lorries and drove with dimmed headlights out through the gates of the settlement.

For a while the huge dining-hall remained empty in the blaze of its electric lights. Lazy night insects flew from the darkness into the close wire-netting of the windows. Cockroaches crept busily over the cement flooring, and now and then a rat made a dash across the white surface.

About 2 A.M. Misha, the night watchman, came in to fetch hot water from the kitchen boiler for a glass of tea. Then he went off to wake the cooks and dining-hall orderlies. They began to drift in about a quarter of an hour later, their faces still swollen with sleep but nervously alert from the shock of the cold shower-bath. They had got up almost three hours before their usual time to provide breakfast for the new settlers who were to depart in an hour. The cooks disappeared into the kitchen; the orderly girls, in shorts and khaki shirts, began methodically to lay the tables.

At 2.30 A.M. Dov and Jonah stamped in in their rubber
gumboots. They were in charge of the cowshed and started work half an hour before milking began. Leah, one of the orderlies, put a big wooden bowl of salad before them, mixed of tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, spring onions and olives, the whole seasoned with lemon and olive oil. They chewed it in silence, between bites from thick chunks of bread. Dov was blond, with a narrow face and blue, short-sighted eyes; his frail figure looked lost in the heavy oilskin overalls like a diving suit. He was twenty-five, came from Prague, and was one of the founders of the Commuhe of Gan Tamar. Though he had been in charge of the cowshed for the last three years, he still couldn't get accustomed to getting up before dawn; it was torture crystallised into routine. To go to bed at nine in the evening, as he was supposed to do, would have meant exclusion from the Commune's social life—the meetings, lectures, discussions and the orchestra in which he played the'cello. He also reviewed once a fortnight modern poetry for the
Jerusalem Mail
, and was translating Rilke into Hebrew.

“Listen,” he said to Jonah after five minutes of silent chewing, “I would like to go out with the convoy of the new ones.”

“
Tov
,” said Jonah, “All right.”

“I shall be back to-night.”

“
Tov
.”

“Do you think you can manage alone?”

“Yes.”

“Miriam is due to calve some time to-day.”

“Yes.”

Jonah was not yet a member of the Commune; he had arrived three months ago from Latvia and worked as a probationer. He was a good worker, slow and reliable. He beat all records in taciturnity; Dov could not remember having heard him utter one complete sentence. He was rather a puzzle to the community of Gan Tamar, who couldn't make up their minds whether to regard him as a philosopher or a moron.

Leah brought them white cheese, porridge and tea. She lingered at the table, trying to catch Dov's veiled, sleepy eyes.

“Going out with them to the new place?” she asked, propping her elbows on the table beside him.

Dov nodded.

“They are quite nice kids, the new ones,” she said, in a tone which implied: But we, the old-timers, were of course of a different sort. Leah too had lived in the Commune of Gan Tamar ever since its beginnings seven years ago. She was about Dov's age but looked older. Her dark, sharp-featured semitic face was not without beauty, but it had matured precociously and wilted early, as happened to many of the girls in the Communes. She wore tight khaki shorts and socks like all the others, and her athletic thighs were curiously dissonant with her unyoung face.

“They will have a hard time at first,” she said, and added with a little shudder: “God, I wouldn't start again at the beginning.”

“I don't know,” said Dov, considering the matter while he went on chewing bread thickly spread with cheese. Leah was always fascinated by the contrast between his dreamy look and enormous appetite. They both thought of the hardships of the first years—the physical exhaustion caused by the unaccustomed work, the malaria and typhus; the heat, the irksome discomfort of tent life with no water, no lavatories, no sanitation; the dirt, the mud, the mosquitoes and sand-flies…. Looking back from the relative comforts of Gan Tamar in its seventh year of existence, those early pioneer days appeared like a heroic nightmare.

“I don't know,” said Dov in his slow way. “We were all different then. We used to dance a lot of horra….”

“There was always something to celebrate,” said Leah. “The first calf. The first crop. The first tractor. The first baby. The water pump. The diesel. The electric light….”

Her mood, always narrowly balanced between extremes, had already transformed the nightmare into romance. She leaned
with her elbow on Dov's shoulder. “Shall I get you another plate of porridge?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I must be going,” he said, rising from the table. Followed by Jonah, he tramped out of the dining-hall and towards the cowshed, his flapping oilskin overalls enveloping him in stable-smell and rusticity.