Thieves in the Night (7 page)

At 12.30 P.M. Reuben's whistle sounded the end of the break, and out of the narrow strips of shadow behind the tents and huts the workers emerged and scrambled to their feet, tottering with fatigue. Soon afterwards the official visitors took their leave. As he shook hands with Reuben and Bauman—Mr. and Mrs. Newton were already inside the car—the Major expressed in a hearty and slightly embarrassed voice the hope that all would go well.

“We share your hopes,” said Reuben with a faintly sarcastic
smile. “The more so, as we have learnt to look after ourselves.”

The Major said nothing and closed the door of the car with a bang. They slowly jolted down the new track, followed by the Bren carrier. The party which had come with the second car decided to stay for the afternoon and go back with the convoy of the returning Helpers, before sunset.

Matthews had succeeded in getting rid of Glickstein and Co., as he called them to himself—they were animatedly conversing in Hebrew with old Wabash—and strolled alone through the camp. The barbed-wire fence was almost completed, and so were the five main dug-outs; but the trenches connecting them were in places still very shallow, and the sweat-glistening faces of the people working at them—mainly young and sturdy Sabras—became more dogged and sullen as the afternoon advanced. In contrast to them the carpenters who were fixing the plywood panelling of the dining- and living-huts whistled cheerfully, and the boys hammering away at the roof-girders and laths were in equally high spirits. The two huts stood at right angles to each other and, together with the watch-tower, formed a square in the middle of the site. The outward-facing walls of the huts were reinforced by a stockade of timber, block-house fashion, which had arrived in pre-fabricated segments; the gap between the stockade and the hut walls was partly filled up with gravel. Only partly, for there had been a hitch: the amount needed had apparently been calculated too low, and in addition one of the lorries carrying the gravel had broken down. They had signalled from the watch-tower to Gan Tamar for further supplies, but it was doubtful whether they would arrive before sunset; to Matthews' surprise nobody seemed to worry about it.

In the centre of the square stood three tents, huddled together between the protecting walls of the tower and the two huts. Outside the square, near the barbed wire, was the latrine, screened by a fence of pales and divided into two by a wooden partition; a few yards further they were fixing the pipes of the shower-bath, also surrounded by a fence but as yet with no
partition inside. Matthews made a mental note of this; he also wondered why these people bothered about a shower-bath before they had finished digging trenches. True, there were as many people digging as space permitted without getting into each other's way; but still …

The chap with the black leather jacket smiled at him from the platform of the watch-tower and Matthews climbed up, awkwardly lifting his heavy body up the ladder whose steps were set too wide apart. He noticed that even this slight effort drove at once the sweat through his pores and made the blood pulsate in his temples; and his respect increased for these fellows who had been working since sunrise—and who had chosen to live and work in this God-forsaken spot to the end of their days, provided they were not kicked out or bumped off.

“Why don't you take that bloody jacket off?” he asked as he arrived puffing on the platform. “Got the shivers?”

“It doesn't matter,” said Bauman with his broad smile.

Matthews divined that for Bauman his leather jacket was a kind of uniform and that he regarded it as a symbol of his authority as an officer of their famous illegal
Haganah
. Below them, at the foot of the tower, Glickstein and Co. were still talking in Hebrew to old Wabash, who, leaning on a spade which served him mainly for ornamental purposes, looked more than ever like a biblical prophet. “What is he saying?” Matthews asked Bauman.

“He is excited about the roofs,” said Bauman. “He would like to see them finished. According to Ottoman Law once a house had a roof on it nobody had a right to tear it down, even if it was built without the landowner's permission.”

“But is that law still in force?”

“No.”

“So what?”

“It was in old Wabash's time. In this country traditions have a thousand lives, like cats.”

“Do you believe the Arabs really care whether there is a roof or not?”

“No. But old Wabash does,” said Bauman, and his smile broadened.

Matthews let his eyes wander and take in the landscape from the height of the tower: all those arid and yet softly undulating hills, now ochre-coloured under the flaming sky; a silent landscape which bore the hallmark of eternity. With a sigh of regret he turned again to the messy camp. Twenty yards to their left, they were unloading the last truck; it contained slates for the roofs and some bales of barbed wire which were urgently needed to complete the fence. They were all slightly nervous and in a hurry now; some had torn their fingers in handling the heavy barbed-wire rolls without even noticing it. On the top of the truck stood Dina, in her khaki shorts and blue open-necked shirt, legs apart, handing down slates. Her palms were torn by the wire and from time to time she lifted them absently to her mouth; licking the blood off them. Her face, trickling with sweat, glistened like metal in the sun; her smooth brown hair was all over her face and shoulders. Bauman too was looking at Dina.

“That kid's a knock-out,” Matthews said. “To which one is she married … does she live with?” he corrected himself awkwardly.

“She lives with nobody,” said Bauman.

“But I guess most of them do?” Matthews had to force himself to go on. He hated nosing into these people's privacy, but after all it was his job to find out about the ways and habits of their community.

“Most of them do,” said Bauman laconically.

“Look,” said Matthews, “I guess you wish me to hell, but I would like to get this whole business straight.”

“It is quite straight,” said Bauman with his amused smile. Then, to avoid being impolite, he added:

“Dina is a special case. She comes from Central Europe and didn't get away in time. They did certain things to her. She hasn't quite got over them yet….”

He left it at that, rubbing his cheek. Matthews did not press
him further; Bauman had a quality of being frank and elusive at the same time. They all had it, these youngsters; they gave the impression of having nothing to hide, but lots of things they refused to talk about to outsiders. As long as they talked to you they did it with complete sincerity; but when they shut up, there was an air of finality about them.

The group which had been standing at the foot of the ladder was no longer there; Glickstein and old Wabash had climbed into one of the dug-outs and were explaining something to each other with sweeping gestures, squatting on their heels. Winter had disappeared, but after a while Matthews discovered him hanging on precariously with one hand to the roof of the dining-hut and with the other driving nails into the girders. “He will fall down in a minute,” said Matthews, pointing at him.

“Winter is all right,” said Bauman. “He used to be a slater in Tel Aviv before he became a Labour leader and member of the Executive.”

“And Glickstein?”

“Oh—he is in the Political Department….” He again left it at that and lifted the field-glasses to his eyes: they were signalling from the opposite hill-top. Matthews had a feeling of being unwanted and climbed down the ladder. He wandered about rather aimlessly for a while, then stopped near one of the trenches. The boys were working in the same dogged, sullen silence as an hour before. Dasha, the nice fattish girl, was walking along the row, handing them mugs of cool water from an Arab clay jug. They swilled the water round their palates before swallowing it and spilled the last drops over their handkerchiefs which they wore nightcap-fashion on their heads. Their faces were smeared with sweat and dirt, their lips dry and cracked; they worked with slow, automatic movements.

After a while something in the expression of one of the workers—a thin, narrow-chested, short-sighted boy with pimples on his face—caught Matthews' attention. He had slowed down in his work; presently his movements became
vague and tottering, as if he were drunk or asleep. Suddenly he stopped altogether, leaning on the swaying handle of his spade; his neighbour was just in time to catch him in his arms before the boy crashed into the trench. There was only a slight commotion while the boy was carried into the first-aid tent; and without quite knowing how it came about, Matthews had taken over his spade and place, and was shovelling earth and rubble out of the trench. His neighbours made no comment; they carried on steadily as if nothing had happened. The next time Dasha passed with her jar, he removed his cork helmet and replaced it by his handkerchief which Dasha wetted for him, her thick lips smiling pleasantly in her pretty and rather dumb face. Matthews felt elated and a fool. He worked on steadily, trying to be economical in his movements and to get into the rhythm of his neighbours. After a while he saw Dr. Lustig prowl with his Leica towards the trench, manoeuvring himself into position. Matthews managed to catch the right second to stick his tongue out and pull a face just before the camera clicked. Dr. Lustig put on a rather strained smile, but the boys in the trench grinned approval and Matthews felt that at that moment he had passed a kind of test in this tough and elusive community of Jew-boys.

By 5 P.M. the shower installation was finished; half an hour later the roof of the living-hut was completed, and a few minutes afterwards that of the dining-hut too. The putting in of the furniture took less than an hour. There were ten deal tables with forms for the dining-hall, providing accommodation for sixty people, and four mattresses for each of the six cubicles in the living-hut; the rest had to sleep in the tents.

At 6 P.M., shortly before sunset, the truck with the gravel arrived. The relief with which it was greeted betrayed in retrospect the anxiety which all had felt about its arriving too late. The gravel was dumped in two heaps in front of the stockades; and while the new settlers, who were going to stay, began filling the gravel into the gaps, the Helpers stacked their tools
at the tower and took their places in the waiting lorries of the homeward convoy. There had been some suggestion about speeches to be made before they went back, but they had worked on the trenches till the last possible moment and now they had to hurry if they did not want to be caught in the wadi by the darkness. Old Wabash looked disappointed; he had prepared a beautiful speech full of the suffering milliohnim. The boy who had fainted at the trench sat fast asleep in the seat next to the driver of one of the trucks. Matthews sat once more with his broad back squeezed in between Glickstein and Winter; the small private car looked like a toy in the file of heavy lorries. The farewells were hurried and, on the part of those who left, of a rather forced cheerfulness. They felt sleepy and exhausted; as they stood tightly crammed in their lorries while the engines started up, and bent down for a last handshake with the new settlers, they already looked like strangers to the place.

The first truck started with an abrupt jerk; after a few moments' interval the second followed; soon the whole convoy moved with painful jolts down the new track and vanished at the foot of the slope. After a while they came into sight again, considerably diminished in size, down in the wadi. By then it was already growing dark, and one after another the lorries switched their headlights on as they receded into the dusk. The hum of their engines and the farewell greetings of their horns could be heard until the last truck had disappeared round the wadi's bend, this time for good; and then the silence fell, and with it, the night.

There were five and twenty of them; twenty men and five women. The rest of the Commune, twelve more women and three babies, were to join them after the first week.

As a group, they had been in existence for five years—years of training and preparation. They came mostly from the youth
movements of Central Europe, with a sprinkling of Russians, Poles and Balkanese, and one young Englishman. The core of the group had been formed on the immigrants' ship from Trieste to Haifa. On arrival they had registered the group at the Hebrew Trade Unions' Agricultural Department. The Agricultural Department had entered them into the list of other groups waiting to be settled on land purchased by the National Fund. The funds of the National Fund came from the blue collecting-boxes in synagogues and Jewish meeting-places all over the world, and from private donations. Most of the land bought by the National Fund was derelict and consisted of swamps, sand dunes, waterless desert and fields of stone. All land acquired by the Fund became unalienable property of the nation and was leased to the settlers for forty-nine years, to be renewed in subsequent generations. The settlers drained the swamps, planted trees on the dunes, dug irrigation channels, carried the stones from the fields, built terraces and resurrected the land. They had no capital and needed none; they received equipment and credit from public funds and repaid them when the land bore fruit; while the rent for the ground went back to their landlord, the nation.

While waiting for their turn to be settled, the members of the group had worked as hired labourers; but already during that period of preparation they had paid their wages into the communal purse and had lived in common household. At times the group had had to split up: some of them went to work in the potash factory on the Dead Sea, while others found seasonal employment in the orange plantations of Samaria and a third batch went through vocational training in one of the older Communes of the Valley of Jezreel. At other times the whole group had been reunited; but whether together or not, they had regarded themselves as members of one family or order, with as yet no settled domicile. Their average age when they had come to the Land had been eighteen; now it was three and twenty. Couples had formed and re-formed during these years of preparation, and some of them had become stable
unions. A few had found partners from outside who had been accepted as members, a few others had left the group. At present the group consisted of twenty men and seventeen women, two-thirds of whom were regarded as living in stable unions; and of three children, all under the age of two.