The Land Agent (20 page)

L
ETTER 16

I
T WAS
A
MSHEL WHO
pulled back the flap. He wore a tattered grey vest and a pair of shorts, a cigarette hung damp from the corner of his mouth. There was the faint stink of aniseed about him too. Like a disinfectant, Lev thought.

‘You,’ his brother said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I want to see Celia.’

Amshel flicked his cigarette into the darkness, moved reluctantly to the side. Lev could feel his brother tense up as he squeezed by. A couple of candles lit the interior, the mosquito nets were rolled up. There was a stench of sweat and dirty clothes. Celia was seated at a small table, a sheet of writing paper in front of her.

‘Lev,’ she said, standing up to hover awkwardly in front of him. ‘You came.’

He wasn’t sure if he should embrace her or hold out a hand. It seemed she didn’t know what to do either. In the end, he just smiled at her. She looked exhausted, her face thinner than he remembered, her eyes smudged dark and deep above the glow from the candlelight. Amshel had gone to sit on one of the beds. There were only two cots in the tent now, rather than the three he recalled from when he had last visited. Hanging off a peg on the centre pole, the jacket Madame Blum had given Amshel from her husband’s wardrobe.

‘Why did you come?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Why did you come?’ Amshel added, his hands beating out a fast rhythm on his thighs.

‘I brought guns.’

Amshel laughed, showing his once perfect dentures now stained and chipped. ‘What do you know about guns?’

‘Mickey and I. We’ve come with six rifles. Ammunition too.’

Amshel smacked his lips, then leaned under the cot to bring out a bottle of
arak
. He poured some into a glass on the floor, held it up to Lev. ‘To my little brother. Our saviour.’

‘That’s enough,’ Celia said sharply.

Amshel ignored her, knocked back his drink, poured out another.

‘He does this to annoy me,’ Celia said.

‘I do it because I have guard duty.’ Amshel put his glass down, started again with his palms drumming away on his thighs. ‘All the men do. We never volunteered to be soldiers.’

Celia gave Lev an exasperated look. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she said. She started clearing away her clothes from the other cot. ‘Two brothers together.’

‘Our happy family,’ Amshel said.

Lev turned to Celia. ‘Is this where he sleeps?’

She stopped what she was doing, folded her arms against his question. ‘Yes, he sleeps here. Where should he sleep? The nights are cold now.’

‘But here? With you?’

‘I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared.’

‘What about the other women?’

‘There are no other single women here.’

Lev went over to stand in front of his brother. ‘Why do you keep doing this?’ he said.

Amshel stopped his drumming, looked up at him. ‘Doing what?’

‘Destroying everything for me.’

Amshel snorted a laugh. ‘You just need to trust me.’

‘How can I trust you when you do this to me?’

‘I’m not doing anything to you. I’m protecting her, Lev. Don’t you see that?’

‘No, I don’t see that.’

‘I’m protecting her… for you.’

The crack of a rifle shot. Followed by the awful whinny of a terrified horse. Celia let out a yelp like a trodden-on puppy. Amshel, in his effort to get to his feet, knocked over the bottle of
arak
. Lev turned, ducked outside.

He ran and ran, sucking in the cool air, pumping his limbs as hard as he could, just glad to be out of that tent. He sped past the dining room, then along the avenue of young date palms he had once helped plant, until he reached the rear of the settlement. There he could see the cluster of lanterns, several figures standing by, others stooped around a body lying on the ground. A riderless horse pawed the ground, snorting and shivering.

Lev recognized the injured man immediately. Zayed’s son, Ibrahim. Mickey was in a crouch beside him, Moshe was holding up a lantern, Jonny was pressing his hands over Ibrahim’s body.

‘What happened?’ Lev asked.

‘He rode out of the darkness straight at me,’ Mickey said, then to Jonny: ‘Will he be all right?’

‘He’s not going to die from any bullet,’ Jonny said. ‘It’s the fall off the horse that’s hurt him.’

‘Thank God.’ Mickey looked up at Lev. ‘How was I to know? How was I to fucking know?’

‘He came to warn us,’ Jonny said. ‘He says bandits are moving down here from the north. Let’s take him inside.’

Lev helped Mickey and Jonny raise him, then they half-walked, half-carried him into the dining room, sat him down on a bench. Jonny stripped off the man’s jacket and shirt, re-examined him again for any broken bones, asked him to concentrate on the pass of a finger in front of his eyes.

‘Doesn’t seem to be any concussion. Rib area is very bruised though. Could be a few fractures in there. I’ll strap him up. Nothing else to do here.’

Ibrahim shook his head, tried to focus on those in front of him, pointed at Lev. ‘You promised us…’

‘I need you to sit still,’ Jonny protested, pushing down Ibrahim’s outstretched arm.

The Bedouin ignored him. ‘You promised us the land would be ours. Why did you betray us?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Lev countered. ‘It was
you
who betrayed us.’

‘That is crazy talk.’

‘You claimed the land through
Mewat
. Then you went behind our backs to Khaled Al Hamoud.’

‘I don’t know any Khaled Al Hamoud.’

‘Khaled the Broker. In Damascus. You sold him your land. Then he sold it on for the power station.’

‘We sold the land to no-one. It was the British. The British just came and took it.’

‘The British?’

‘Yes, the British.’ Ibrahim grimaced as Jonny drew the bandage tight. ‘A captain came with his men, read out the orders. Our whole tribe must move now, further south, south of Beisan. What do we know of such a place? It is not our land. We have lost our home. We have lost everything. Why did you do this to us? Our lives were fine until you came.’

D
ESPITE HIS INJURIES
, Ibrahim insisted on riding back to the encampment. Someone then went to wake up Rafi who came rushing over, tried to placate the Bedouin before he rode off, to reassure him the
kibbutz
knew nothing of the British involvement in the displacement of his tribe. Ibrahim didn’t respond. He looked like a man defeated as he turned away, galloped off. Lev and everyone else who was left on the settlement assembled to see him go, no-one straying from their watch of him until rider and horse were sucked up into the night. Lev felt as if all Sammy’s hopes and ideals had ridden off with him.

‘The bandits are coming tonight,’ Rafi said to his depleted community. ‘Thanks to Lev and Mickey, we have rifles. But if anyone wants to leave, they should go now.’

No-one moved.

The air was warm, clouds shaded the moon, only a few stars shone through. A baby was crying in one of the tents, the crackle of gunshot came from somewhere out in the darkness. Lev looked around at the others in the group, the lantern light hollowing out strange shadows on their anxious faces. How had he ended up here at this time, in this place, in this danger, with these people? Was it purely by accident? Or fate? Or was it because they were all Jews? Or was it because of their desire for their own land? Or for their ideals? Or for the love of another person? He found he had a desperate need to remember who they were, each and every one of them. His beloved Celia, his brother Amshel, his old friend Mickey. Standing across from him, Rafi, Jonny, Amos, muscle-man Barak.
The cook Shoshana had gone to look after the children but her husband Yossie was there, a short bald man from Yemen with a huge moustache. Beside him stood Moshe the Russian farmer, Dudu a young Polish man from the Zionist Youth, Shlomo a former seminary student whose family had lived for generations in Tiberias. Then there were the Grün twins, also from Poland, who rarely spoke except to each other. Finally, Benny Matsas, a Greek Jew from Salonika, an expert in olive growing, who was always smiling, even now.

‘Forget about tonight’s rotas,’ Rafi continued. ‘Everyone is on guard duty. Except Shoshana who’ll stay with the children. Celia, I want you to run the perimeter with the ammunition, anything else that’s needed. And be ready to help Jonny with any wounded. Now who can handle a rifle?’

Amshel was one of those who stepped forward.

‘Good,’ Rafi said. ‘Everyone else pair off with those who are armed.’

Lev stepped up to stand beside his brother.

They quickly built a rough look-out point at the side of the cowshed. Amshel tossed out the bales from the shed while Lev stacked them. It was just like old times when they used to construct hide-outs in the woods to spy on the boar, the memory and the combined effort of their task dissipating the tension between them. This look-out faced north. If an attack was going to come, it would be from there. The east was protected by the ridge, the west by the road from Tiberias to Beisan, the south was behind them. About fifty yards to the left was Amos and Barak. Mickey was off somewhere to the right. Lev sat down with his back to the wall of bales while Amshel peered over the rim with his rifle.

‘What happened back there with Ibrahim?’ Amshel asked.

‘The British have taken his land.’

‘I thought they didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Chaim Kalisher was behind everything. I thought he only tipped off Sverdlov but he must have told the British as well. He then put together a secret deal for a power station using a broker in Damascus as a middle man.’

‘Why use a broker at all?’

‘I imagine the British didn’t want to be seen favouring the Jews over the Arabs for such an important project. So they used him to stay anonymous. Sammy must have discovered what happened. That’s what drove him over the edge. Not just Kalisher going behind his back. But knowing the Bedouin had lost their land too.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you, little brother? People are only out for themselves… What was that?’

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘Shhh.’

Lev held his breath while Amshel stared out into the night. The moon and stars had clouded over, difficult to make anything out at all. Amshel gave the agreed signal, a four-note whistle that asked if everything was all right at the next guard post. An echo of the same notes came back at them from both directions. Lev could breathe again. Amshel checked his rifle. He had five cartridges already loaded. Lev held onto the clips holding the other twenty.

‘Remember how we used to do this back home?’ Lev said.

‘The two of us hiding out in the woods, hunting for hogs.’

‘I was just the look-out. You were the hunter.’

‘Papa wouldn’t let you use a gun.’

‘It would have helped me now if he had.’

Amshel smiled. ‘It’s strange how life can bring you round in full circle like this–’

The sound of several gunshots strafed the night. Amshel was back at his post, Lev crouched low against the bales, ready with the cartridge clips.

‘I can see flames,’ Amshel said.

‘Where?’

‘North-east.’

‘What’s over there?’

‘An olive grove.’

‘The bandits must have set fire to it.’

‘That’s still a good half-mile away.’

They waited in silence for a few minutes, then again the exchange of whistled signals. They relaxed.

‘What will you do after this?’ Lev asked. ‘If we survive.’

‘I’m off to the United States.’

‘Still with your dream of America.’

‘I’ll go back to Poland first, sell our grandfather’s land. Then try to buy my way in. You could come with me. That stepmother of ours would probably sponsor you. What do you think? The brothers Gottleib in America. In the land of opportunity.’

Lev tried to imagine it. Buildings that scraped the sky, streets as wide as the broadest river, Ewa Kaminsky with carmine on her lips. What had that old woman in Damascus told him? New York is the Jewish state we dream of. With its
kosher
restaurants and stores run by Jews, Yiddish theatres and newspapers. He would ask Celia to come with him. He could buy and sell land, they could own an automobile, perhaps even an apartment. They could go to fairgrounds and dance halls and movie theatres.

‘What time is it?’ Amshel asked.

Lev peered at his trench watch. ‘Nearly midnight.’

‘If they come, they will come soon. In the deepest part of the night.’

‘They won’t know we have rifles.’

‘That will make them confident. But careless.’

The sound of more gunfire. Lev felt the churn in his stomach, the tremors running down his legs. ‘They’re getting closer,’ he said.

‘It sounds like it.’

‘Aren’t you scared?’

‘Of course I’m scared. I just hope it’s a band of thieves we’re looking out for. A few rifle shots should see them off. If it’s an angry Arab population on the rampage, we’ll have a proper battle on our hands.’

Lev thought they would come on horseback, riding out of the night like Ibrahim. But instead, they approached on foot, slipping behind whatever object might protect them. An olive tree. A wagon. A fence post. Through a space between the bales, Lev could see their grey shadows, ghosts in the night, swooping here and there. He wondered if all this compacted straw could stop the penetration of a bullet. Someone to his right – Amos or
Barak – stood up, fired a shot into the darkness. Everything went quiet, only the smell of cordite lingered. Amshel slipped down beside him. ‘I can’t see a damn thing.’

A whistled request from Mickey, Lev barely managing to find the breath to whistle back. No-one hurt. Amshel creeping back up until he could look over the top of the bale.