The Land Agent (4 page)

‘I know.’

Sammy smiled. There was a sweetness in the man that Lev loved. Even when Sammy was angry, the gentleness of his nature could not be hidden from his eyes, from bursting out of the rosiness of his lips. Which Sammy smacked together now in anticipation of what he was about to say. ‘I am delighted you took the initiative to learn beyond your duties of typing, filing and making tea.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Your apprenticeship has been served.’

‘What? You are dismissing me?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I am telling you that your time has come.’

‘My time for what?’

‘Time to be a proper land agent.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Take a look at this.’ Sammy passed him a file. ‘A
kibbutz
is after an additional plot in the Jordan Valley. It’s only about 250 dunams. I was supposed to visit them tomorrow. But I have a meeting with Those Bloody Zionists in Jerusalem. I want you to go and see what matters are like on the ground. The area is probably mostly swamp-land anyway. Find out who owns it, if there are any tenant farmers working on it.’

Lev read through the correspondence with the same excitement and concentration as if they were letters from his long-lost sweetheart. The name of the
kibbutz
was Kfar Ha’Emek. Village of the Valley. ‘Can I negotiate a settlement?’

‘Don’t run ahead of yourself. This is a reconnaissance trip only. Get a sense of whether the owners want to sell, an idea about price, how much the
kibbutz
needs this land in the first place. But keep your cards close to your chest until we know all the facts.’

Mickey clapped his hands together when he heard the news. ‘This is your big chance, my young virgin,’ he said with an inhale of one of
Madame Blum’s Russian cigarettes. ‘These
kibbutz
girls are like Jezebels. Sharing work, sharing food, sharing beds. Your one night in the Galilee will be a night of bliss.’

T
AKE THE MORNING TRAIN
on 25th from Haifa to Damascus. Descend al-Dalhamiyya. We will meet you. Rafi Melamud.

Lev had seen from a map that al-Dalhamiyya was a small Arab village but he now discovered that its eponymous station wasn’t a station at all. It didn’t even have a platform. Just a signpost in the middle of nowhere with its name scrawled in both Arabic and English lettering under the words ‘Palestine Railways’. But neither Rafi Melamud nor any of his comrades were to be seen. Lev looked around, shielding his eyes from the white light bouncing off the bleached earth, expecting to see the kicked-up dust of an approaching horse or wagon. Nothing. Just waves of heat blurring the horizon. He walked around the sign, finding it hard to believe this place could be a scheduled stop. He laid down his cardboard tube of rolled-up maps, stacked the crates that had been unloaded with him in a way that provided some shade, sat down on his small suitcase.

He was situated somewhere in the middle of the Jordan Valley rift. There were ranges of hills to the east and west of him but the immediate landscape was bare except for this railway track and a few hardy shrubs. Somewhere off to the north-east was the village of al-Dalhamiyya. Somewhere in between was the tiny settlement of his destination – Kfar Ha’Emek.

He scraped his fingers into the ground, dug out a handful of chalky dust, let the particles sift through his hand. Why would anyone want to live in such a place? Why here, when the breezes of the coastal plains were only
a few hours journey away by train? But he could already hear Sammy’s words of response in his head. ‘Land is land is land.’ He flipped the cap off his trench-watch, a gift to himself bought off a British soldier with his first pay packet. Rafi Melamud, if he were coming at all, was thirty-three minutes late.

He had felt so buoyant when stepping down from the train. After all, he was now a young man filled with responsibility and purpose, dressed smart in his freshly-ironed shirt and a fancy tie borrowed from Madame Blum’s late-husband’s wardrobe. But his self-esteem was deflating with each passing moment, as were the creases of his shirt as he roasted in the heat. He recalled a ruse his father employed with the customers at Mr Borkowski’s alcohol and tobacco store, pulling Lev back from his eagerness to serve. ‘Let them wait, son,’ his father advised through a stink of liquor. ‘Make them uncomfortable, let them know who’s in charge.’ His grandfather, on the other hand, took an entirely different view of tardiness. ‘According to Jewish law, to make someone wait is a sin,’ he told Lev. ‘For you are guilty of theft, guilty of stealing their time.’ Between his father and his grandfather, his upbringing had been a bundle of contradictions.

His time was being stolen now, yet he could not help but marvel at the silence. He closed his eyes. It had been a long time since he had experienced such a void of sound. He had to go back to his snowbound village when he and Sarah would go out to the edges of the forests, look back across the wintry fields, hold hands and hold their breath, listen to nothing. So unlike Haifa with its metal grinding of the seabed in the dredge of a harbour, the screeching gulls above the fish baskets, the shouts of the traders within the grain houses, the
muezzin
’s insistent call to prayer from the minarets.

He dozed in the swollen heat, then woke to slap away at the flies and the mosquitoes, took a sip of water from his canteen, shook the contents next to his ear. Less than a third full. He either stayed where he was and baked to death or found his own way to the settlement. He eased back against the crates, hands behind his head, brought to mind the location of Kfar Ha’Emek without having to unroll his map. He had a talent for that, conjuring up images of words and objects in his head. That was what
had helped his learning of languages, holding mental pictures of vocabularies before his eyes until he could learn them by heart. He pictured the geographical position of the settlement as being about a mile directly north along the railway track in the direction of the Sea of Galilee, then off to the north-east for another mile towards the hills lining the far-side of the valley. A forty-minute journey at the most.

He counted the railway sleepers as he walked. And as he built up a steady rhythm to his gait, he found himself thinking again of his grandfather. His
zeide
had been dead for more than five years. Zelda had been right. The wasting lungs had killed him before the winter was out. She had then gone into the village, found Mr Borkowski at his alcohol and tobacco store, dictated a letter for him to send to Lev at the headquarters of the Young Guard in Jerusalem. The envelope, adorned with a list of scored-out addresses, was eventually forwarded to him at the offices of PICA in Haifa. The message was short.
Grandfather dead. Where is my tooth?
He had forgotten all about Zelda’s dental request. Her tooth was not buried under some olive tree overlooking Haifa bay as desired but lay where he had tossed it, not far from his grandfather’s cottage.

After what he calculated roughly as a mile, he turned away from the railway line, leaving the tracks to head north on their journey to the Sea of Galilee, then all the way to the French sitting in Damascus. The distant hills that had been a shade of purple only twenty minutes or so before had changed to pink. The sun was at its peak now, he could feel it scorching his back as he walked. But it was an arid heat so that whatever moisture bubbled up from his body, evaporated as soon as it sweated to the surface. He began to feel dizzy. And in his heated imagination, he started to muse upon Sarah. Perhaps she had ended up at this very settlement. She could be feeding the chickens or hoeing the ground or draining swamps or sewing up holes in mosquito nets. She would look up from her task, wipe the sweat from her eyes as she observed Lev approaching and ask herself: ‘Who is that handsome young man? That prosperous-looking fellow who could be a lawyer or a respected land agent if only he were given the chance. That vigorous chap with a working knowledge of several languages and a decent amount of savings with the Workers’ Bank of Palestine. That young
man who reminds me of Lev Gottleib from my hometown, the only boy I truly loved.’ And as the figure grew nearer, her heart would drum faster against the damp cotton of her blouse at the dawning recognition that this young man was indeed the Lev Gottleib of her dreams, come to rescue her from the hardship of her life, from her misguided relationship with the lice-ridden Shaul the Great. A relationship that had been as parched as the land she had tried to eke a living from with her blistered fingers and aching back. ‘Here is Lev, come to save me.’

Lev stopped, put down his case. He was all worked up now. He poured some precious water from his canteen onto his handkerchief, bathed the back of his neck, then drank the rest. The heat on his body, the heat within his body, the heat within his imagination, he thought he might explode. He stamped his feet, kicked down at his sealed-up passion, waited until the fervour had subsided. Then all he felt was despair. This had to stop, these obsessive imaginings about Sarah. It had been over five years since he had last seen her. When would he cease to yearn for her? He picked up his case, stared off to the horizon as if it were a future free of his childhood love he was searching for. In the distance he saw what he thought could be rough signs of cultivation and civilization. Was that shimmering mass a plantation of young citrus trees? Was that vague row of bushes actually a line of tents? And that gust of dust hurtling towards him? Was that a wind storm? Or was it finally the horse and wagon of Rafi Melamud?

It was a horse and wagon. He waved his arms at its rapid approach. The dust cloud continued to move towards him. He watched and waited. The wagon pulled up beside him. It was not Rafi Melamud who sat at the reins. But a young woman. For a moment, he thought his obsessive desires had conjured up the real-life Sarah. But this was not Sarah. This woman’s features were narrower, her figure taller and leaner. Her hair was tied up under a head-scarf, she wore a sleeveless blouse, cotton skirt hiked up to her knees, her bare legs and arms deep-tanned, muscled and white-dusted. Her breathing still laboured from her exertions with the reins, her dark eyes flickered at him with impatience.

‘
Shalom
,’ he said, his first word for hours coming out hoarse and dry.

She leaned forward on the wooden plank that made up the wagon seat,
looked him up and down. Her horse, a compact, sweating beast, panted at his ear. She shook her head, said nothing.

‘Rafi Melamud was meant to collect me.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s not my business.’ Her own Hebrew was slow and deliberate. He tried to place the accent. It wasn’t Russian or German or Polish.

‘I am looking for Kfar Ha’Emek.’

‘For what reason?’

‘I have business there.’

‘It is far away.’

‘It can’t be far way.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘My map says…’

‘Maps can be wrong.’

He decided it was better not to contradict her. ‘You can take me there?’

‘You came from the train?’

‘Yes.’

‘There are boxes?’

‘Several.’

‘You left them there?’

‘What was I supposed to do?’ he said. ‘Guard them?’

‘That would be a good idea.’

‘They’re not my responsibility.’

‘Someone could take them.’

‘Who?’ he said, stretching his arms out to the empty landscape. ‘Who is there to take them?’

She ignored his protest. ‘Was there post? Letters? Packages?’

‘I didn’t see any.’

‘There must be post.’

‘I told you. I didn’t see any.’

‘There is always post.’

She spoke so harshly that he held his hands away from his body, as if she should search him. ‘Look, no post. Now, can you take me to Kfar Ha’Emek?’

‘First, I must collect the crates. Then I will take you.’

She slid to the side of her bench, indicated with a tilt of her head for him to get on board. He climbed up beside her, his suitcase and map tube by his feet, his hands grasping the plank. She yanked at the reins and they were off.

She didn’t say a word for the few minutes it took to get back to the station that was no more than a signpost. She didn’t look at him either, just stared straight ahead, her eyes squinting against the light and the dust, her lips sucked in tight in concentration. But he watched her from the edge of his vision. For although beneath the film of dust, the tired eyes and prickly demeanour she might not have been Sarah, she was still very beautiful.

As soon as they reached the station sign, she pulled up the wagon quick, jumped off, ran to the pile of crates. She checked the ends of each of them, until she found what she was looking for. Slid into one of the binding tapes was a pile of letters he hadn’t noticed before. She flicked through them, extracted a couple, tucked them into the waistband of her skirt. She waved the rest at him.

‘See?’ she said.

He dropped off the wagon, walked over to where she stood, tapped his foot against the side of a crate. ‘What’s inside?’

‘Necessities.’

‘What exactly?’

‘So many questions. Tools. Pick handles. Ropes. Perhaps some books.’ She pronounced the words slowly as if they were vocabulary newly learned. ‘Mosquito nets. And most important – quinine.’ She bent down, picked up one end of a crate. ‘Well?’

He helped her load up the crates onto the back of the wagon. With the letters received and the work done, she seemed more relaxed. They returned to their seats on the wagon bench. She offered him some water from her canteen, shook hard at the reins and they were off again.

He asked her name. She turned to look at him, scrutinized his face as if to assess whether he was worthy of such information.

‘Celia,’ she said.

He thought she wasn’t going to ask him his but eventually, as if she were doing him a great favour, she said: ‘And you?’

‘Lev.’

‘Lev what?’

‘Lev Sela.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

She glanced at him. ‘Lev Sela.’ And then in English: ‘Heart of stone.’

‘So you speak English?’

‘Of course.’

He noted her tone had softened slightly. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

‘Scotland.’

‘I know about Scotland.’

‘Oh yes? What do you know?’

‘It is near Manchester.’

‘Two hundred miles is not so near.’

‘Perhaps. But it always rains in Manchester.’

She gave a slight laugh. Which surprised him as he hadn’t meant the remark to be funny. He felt a desperate need to make her laugh again but as he tried to remember some more of Mickey’s English sayings, he noticed some tents up ahead, a few outbuildings, a livestock enclosure, smoke from a fire. ‘What is this place?’ he asked.

‘Kfar Ha’Emek.’

‘You told me it was far away.’

She smiled at him for the first time. ‘I needed help with the crates.’