Israel (20 page)

Haim was gradually phasing in young Jewish trainees at his factory. He was also attending weekly planning sessions at the Jewish National Fund office. Unlike the private get-together he'd just had with Dr. Ruppin—Haim was no longer obliged to deal with an assistant to the director—these weekly sessions were attended by all the community's business leaders.

Haim, feeling stuffy in suit and tie, would sit with these men, all of them far older than he. Dizengoff would preside and Dr. Ruppin would sit in, now and then quietly offering his comments. Important business would be discussed. Baksheesh for the suspicious Turkish authorities was arranged in the attempt to ensure that the tenuous relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the first Jewish city since Biblical times did not further deteriorate. They also worked out agreements with the Anglo-Palestine Bank to see to it that the newly arrived working-class halutzim could borrow to establish themselves.

When he wasn't participating in city planning, Haim was at his factory. At the end of the long day his back ached, not from honest physical labor but from bending over ledgers and endless sheaves of orders and bills. With
wealth came responsibility, and Haim cared for neither. In Russia it was Abe who wanted wealth and who took pleasure in seeing to the accounts.

Haim frequently found his mind wandering during the workday. He would look at his hands, holding them up to the light to see if they still showed any of the calluses he'd built up when he cut stone. He would daydream about those days in Jerusalem when he and Yol worked together, strong and tanned beneath the hot sun. True, the work was grueling, but Haim had been the equal to it. In those days he could rightly call himself a halutz. No, it was not money that he needed but hard work and comradeship.

Haim paused as several workers stepped from a doorway into his path. There were no cafes in Tel Aviv, for the rabbis had forbidden them, but there were innumerable workers' clubs where a man could get coffee or a glass of wine on credit. The men blocking Haim's way were just leaving such a club, rowdy with happiness over the end of the day. They were laughing over a shared joke, but their raucousness quickly faded as they noticed Haim behind them. They began to fall over themselves to get out of his way. “Excuse us, Mr. Kolesnikoff.”

“Nothing to excuse,” Haim said heartily. “A little fun is natural after a hard day's work.”

“We were careless not to see you,” the speaker insisted, not listening to Haim. The worker was big, about Haim's height, though not as broad in the shoulders. He wore an open-necked cotton shirt with rings of sweat in the armpits and a leather-visored cloth cap, which he doffed. “If you'll excuse us now, sir, we'll be on our way.”

Haim watched them hurry off. How he longed to invite them back to the club so he could buy them all more coffee and bask in their conversation.

Such madness, he reproached himself. He gazed inside the club. The place was dense with blue cigarette smoke and redolent with the aroma of fresh coffee.
The bare wooden tables were all ringed with halutzim enjoying each other's comradeship.

If he entered, all conversation would end. The proprietor would clear a table for him and he would sit all by himself staring into his coffee as the halutzim filed out in groups of two and three, muttering to themselves and shaking their heads.

It was no use trying to pretend he was still one of them. He could shed his jacket and tie, but much more than his attire separated him from the workers. The halutzim who came to Palestine were socialists, just as he had been—and still was in his heart—although he blamed none of the working class for scoffing at that. After all, he owned a factory. That made him an exploiter, benign or not. At twenty-eight he was far more like Meir Dizengoff than like any of the young men in that workers' club.

Haim felt miserable now, estranged and lonely. He was willing to trade everything he had except Rosie once again to count himself among the pioneers. The point of coming to Palestine in the first place was not to grow rich but to help establish a homeland.

Yol Popovich had recently come to Tel Aviv for a fortnight's visit with Haim and his wife. Rosie warmly welcomed him. Yol, gloatingly eyeing her obviously pregnant state, slapped Haim on the back.

The friendship between the two men was as strong as ever. A steady stream of letters flowed between them, so there was none of the awkwardness that often attends such reunions.

Yol looked gaunt and beneath his tan his skin had a yellowish cast to it, since he had contracted malaria very soon after he got to Kinnereth.

“Of course at Kinnereth malaria is merely a nuisance, hardly a debilitating disease,” Yol boasted, swaggering about Haim and Rosie's front parlor in his red Arab shoes
and baggy cotton work clothes. On his head was a kaffiyeh, held in place by a leather thong and draping loosely over his neck and shoulders. “So despite my fever I planted trees and dug ditches, and in between I ate perfectly loathsome food and drank no schnapps, not even a little wine. Well, what do you two say? Am I a mensch or what?”

Yol told them the initial experimental project at Kinnereth had gone so well that Dr. Ruppin at the National Fund decided to hand over a tract of land for them to develop with no fund supervisor present. They were given three thousand dunams—seven hundred fifty acres—on the east side of the Jordan River. The settlement was called Um Jumi, from the name of a nearby Arab village. The workers who took it on, Yol included, were among the most experienced in the country. Their goal was not to settle permanently at Um Jumi, but to make a start of it and then hand it over to another settlement group in a few months. The original pioneers would then go on to tame another tract.

Late one night after Rosie was in bed, Haim and Yol sat up talking. Yol fetched his valise; packed inside were his cartridge belt and revolver. Haim was enthralled with the weapon and with Yol's anecdotes of his self-defense training among the Hashomer, the closest thing to a Hebrew warrior class since the time of Masada.

“And what do I have to show you in return,” Haim moped out loud, “my ledgers from the shoe factory?”

Yol, usually flippant, grew serious. He studied his friend and then softly asked why he wasn't happy. “Remember, you knew marriage would mean you'd have to share your dream.”

Haim protested that he'd never once regretted marrying Rosie and that he looked forward to their first child. He then told Yol about Rosie's promise that if he allowed
her to complete her work as Dizengoff's secretary, she would give him his chance to do what he wanted to do.

“I would join you in an instant,” Haim said, longingly hefting Yol's revolver, then shrugged in resignation. “But I fear it is too late.”

“Maybe not,” Yol murmured. “Haim, fetch us a drink.”

Haim brought to the table a bottle of wine. By the time the flagon was dry, they had hatched their plan.

Haim turned the corner onto Herzl Street. He opened the whitewashed picket gate in front of the blue two-story cottage that was his home. The front lot was still nothing but sand, but from the back yard came the musty odor of composted soil. Haim arranged for the stuff to be carted in so that Rosie could begin a flower garden under her mother's tutelage. Miriam Glaser supplied her daughter with seeds, bulbs and incidentals, including a servant to do the heavy work. Rosie diligently puttered around the seed beds, but it would be at least another season before the garden's promise was realized.

Haim walked the side path around the cottage into the back yard. Rosie, seven months pregnant, was seated in a wicker chaise lounge with a sketch paid on her lap. She wore a heavy scarlet muslin caftan and had a grey wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders against the slight breeze. During her pregnancy she chilled easily during the evening.

Haim stood quietly for a moment. Rosie, engrossed in her drawing, had not yet noticed him. He loved to watch her like this; it allowed him to study her every feature. If he tried to gaze at her while she was aware of it Rosie would start to fidget, blush and finally scold him.

Now he had the chance to notice how the last rays of the setting sun brought out the glinting coppery highlights in her golden hair. He smiled at the way her perpetually
sunburnt nose wrinkled and her lips pursed as she pondered her work.

She took her painting and drawing very seriously. Some of her work had gone to her father's agent in London, but none had yet been sold. Nevertheless, Rosie kept at it. She meant to surpass her father's artistic success. Haim wondered out loud why that would matter to her if she enjoyed the work, and Rosie just smiled and kissed him.

Moving silently, Haim was able to approach unnoticed. His wife, intent on her sketching, was deaf and blind to the outside world. Finally he was close enough to tickle her bare brown toes.

Rosie's sable eyes widened with surprise, and then she grinned. “You're home late. Everything all right, love?”

Haim nodded, coming around to perch on her armrest and give her a hug. Rosie rested her head against him for a moment, shutting her sketch pad.

Haim noticed her action, but he had long ago learned not to take offense. Rosie could not bring herself to show her work before it was finished. Often she sent it off to London via her father without showing it to him at all. Maybe she would gain some confidence when something of hers finally sold.

“Would you like me to go inside until you're done drawing?” Haim asked, nuzzling the top of her head.

“No, I want to be with you. The light's gone, anyway,” she added, squinting at the twilight sky. “What I'd like for you to do is to continue to kiss me for a while,” she murmured, “and when you've grown tired of that—”

“That's not likely—”

“You can help me out of this chair. Your child has seen to it that I can sit down easily enough, but getting up is quite another matter.”

By the time they were ready to go in, it was dark enough
for the first stars to be seen. In the quiet between day and night they could hear the Mediterranean crashing upon the beach and then the cough, clatter and momentary roar as the city's lone generator surged into life. Haim considered it an interesting novelty, but like his neighbors, he had no desire for one in his home; they made too much mess and stink. Tel Aviv's residences still depended on lanterns and candles for evening light.

Rosie started dinner as Haim went upstairs to change his clothes. When he returned to the ground floor Rosie called out, “What was so important to talk about that we couldn't go to my parents this evening?”

Haim entered the kitchen and Rosie turned from the stove. “Well?” She looked at him quizzically. “Haim, are you well? You look pale.”

“Leave what you are doing and come sit with me a minute.”

“Dinner will burn.”

He moved the pot from the fire and led his wife to the kitchen table, already set for dinner. “Sit. We must talk about the future.”

Suddenly suspicious, Rosie shrugged. “What's to talk? This is our future.” She patted her big belly. “Our children, the factory—”

“Rosie, tomorrow I am putting the factory up for sale.” He picked up a teaspoon and tapped it in his palm.

She stared at him a moment. “Maybe I'd better sit down,” she muttered, taking a chair. “Husband, please explain to me.”

Haim stared at the tablecloth. “It's been years already since your work with Meir—”

“Barely two.”

“About a few months I don't want to argue.”

“Then what?”

“Rosie, that night on the beach when I proposed to
you, you made me a promise.” He slid the blade of his knife between the tines of a fork and wiggled it.

She shrugged. “I have not forgotten. So what about it?”

“You said that when your work with Meir was done—”

“Please don't quote me back to myself.”

Haim stubbornly plodded on. “That when the work was done, you would leave Tel Aviv and go with me where I wanted to go.”

“Please tell me what is on your mind.”

Haim nodded, his blue eyes anxiously searching her face, the cutlery forgotten. “You heard from Yol all about Um Jumi. Remember, he said the original pioneers would turn the settlement over to permanent workers. Well, that transfer will soon take place. I've talked about it to Yol and with Dr. Ruppin, who controls the project. I've requested that we be allowed a place at Um Jumi and today Dr. Ruppin agreed.”

Rosie stared at him aghast and then broke out laughing. “Don't frighten me so with your jokes.” She trailed off as she realized he was serious. She smiled at him almost condescendingly. “Haim.” She shook her head. “You are my husband, whom I love and respect—”

“So you will come with me?”

“Darling, listen a minute, please. You have been in Palestine for five years, but I was born here, yes? Perhaps, if you'll excuse my saying so, I know a little more about the land than you. It is barren wilderness in Galilee. In winter, when the Jordan is in flood, it is difficult even to get to Um Jumi. It is swamp there in the spring and fall and in summer nothing but scorched earth. There are vermin and fever.”

“It is part of the homeland and it must be colonized.”

Rosie wearily rested her chin on her hand. “What could you do in such a place?”

Haim shrugged. “Whatever is needed. I'll dig ditches, plant trees, farm; it is not up to me to decide what to do. I'll be told.”

“You'll break your back.”

Haim's blue eyes began to glint with anger. “I was a stonecutter in Jerusalem and again right here in Tel Aviv, you'll remember, young woman. My back did not break then, nor will it in Um Jumi.”

“Enough, Haim. You are talking nonsense. You have responsibilities right here. What will happen to the business?”

“The business is for sale,” Haim stolidly repeated.

“And what about me? You sit like a stone and make your pronouncements, but what about me? Am I to be sold as well?”