Leon Uris (33 page)

“God, I don’t know.”

“You mean you haven’t talked yourself into it yet.”

“I mean I don’t know.”

“So which side do you want me to take?”

“You could stop acting like a worldly Buddha looking down on the poor tormented mortals. And you could stop sniping at me, Mark.”

Mark dropped his feet from the window sill. “Go on ... go to Palestine. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?”

“I still don’t feel right around Jewish people ... I can’t help it.”

“You feel fine around that girl though, don’t you? Does she still remind you of your daughter?”

“Not really, not any more. She is too much of herself to be anyone else. But I love her and want her, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’ve got a loaded question for you, Mrs. Fremont ...”

“Go on.”

“Are you in love with Ari Ben Canaan?”

Love Ari Ben Canaan? She knew that he affected her whenever he was near or spoke or looked at her or even when she thought of him. She knew she had never met another man exactly like him. She knew she had a certain fear of his dark quietness and his tremendous power. She knew she admired his daring and courage. She knew there were moments she loathed him as she had never loathed another human being. But love ...?

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “As much as I cannot walk into it ... I can’t seem to be able to walk away from it and I don’t know why ... I don’t know why.”

Later, Kitty spent over an hour with Karen in the hospital ward that had been set up on the second floor of the hotel. Karen had made a remarkable recovery. In fact, the doctors were amazed with the near magic effect the two words “Eretz Israel” had on all the children. It was more potent than any medicine. As Kitty sat with Karen she looked out over the faces of the children in the ward. Who were they? Where did they come from? Where were they going? What strange, strange people ... what a strange, strange obsession they carried.

There were long periods of silence between Kitty and Karen in which neither of them dared broach the subject of her coming on to Palestine. At last Karen fell asleep. Kitty stared down at the girl. How lovely she was ... how very lovely. She kissed Karen’s forehead and stroked her hair and Karen smiled in her sleep.

She walked out to the corridor where Dov Landau was pacing back and forth. They both halted, stared at each other, and Kitty passed on wordlessly.

The sun was setting as Kitty walked out to the quay. Across the street Zev Gilboa and Joab Yarkoni were supervising the loading of materials aboard the salvage tug. She looked about quickly to catch a glimpse of Ari. He was not in sight.

“
Shalom
, Kitty!” they called to her.

“Hi!” she called back.

She walked on down the quay toward the lighthouse. It was getting chilly. She put on her sweater. “I must know ... I must know ... I must ... I must” she repeated over and over to herself. Out on the edge of the sea wall sat young David Ben Ami. He seemed lost in thought, looking out over the water and flipping pebbles.

She came up alongside him and he looked up and smiled.

“
Shalom
, Kitty. You look rested.”

She sat beside him. For several moments they admired the sea.

“Thinking of home?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Jordana ... that’s her name, isn’t it ... Ari’s sister?”

David nodded.

“Will you see her?”

“If I am lucky we will have a little time.”

“David.”

“Yes.”

“What is going to become of the children?”

“We will take good care of them. They are our future.”

“Is there danger?”

“Yes, there is great danger.”

Kitty was quiet again for many moments ...

“Are you sailing with us?” David asked.

She felt her heart skip a beat. “Why do you ask?”

“It is beginning to seem natural to have you around. Besides, Ari mentioned something or other about it.”

“If ... if Ari is interested then why doesn’t he ask?”

David laughed. “Ari doesn’t ask for anything.”

“David,” she said abruptly, “you must help me. I am terribly puzzled. You seem to be the only one who understands a little ...”

“I will help you if I can.”

“ ... I haven’t been around many Jews in my life. You people bewilder me.”

“We bewilder ourselves even more,” David said.

“Can I say something honestly? I feel so much like an outsider ... “

“That is not at all strange, Kitty. Most people do. Even those few we call “friend,” even though they have a loyalty bordering on fanaticism. Some, I believe, feel guilty for all the crimes committed against us. Others want to be Jews ... although Lord only knows why. We are a confusing lot.”

“But a man like Ari Ben Canaan. Who is he? Who is he really? Is he a real person?”

“Ari is quite real. He is the product of a historic abortion.”

They began walking toward the hotel, for it was suppertime. “It is difficult to know where to begin,” David said. “I suppose to really tell the story of Ari Ben Canaan we must start with Simon Rabinsky in the Jewish Pale. The Pale was an area in southwest Russia that included the Ukraine. I suppose we’d have to start before the turn of the century. I think the year of the great happening was 1884.”

Z
HITOMIR, RUSSIA, 1884

Simon Rabinsky was a bootmaker. His wife’s name was Rachel. She was a good and a devout woman. Simon had two sons who were his greatest treasures.

Yakov, the younger, was fourteen years of age. He was a fiery lad with a whiplash tongue and a quick mind. He would argue at the slightest provocation.

Jossi, the older of the brothers, was sixteen. Jossi’s appearance was distinctive. He was a powerful giant who stood over six feet tall and had a head of flaming red hair like his mother, Rachel. Jossi was as mild as Yakov was wild. Jossi was quiet and meditative and gentle; in fact, Yakov’s fertile brain in Jossi’s powerful body could well have created a superman.

The Rabinsky family was extremely poor. They lived in that part of western Russia which included Bessarabia, the Ukraine, the Crimea, and parts of White Russia and which was known as the Jewish Pale of Settlement. The boundaries of the Pale were established in 1804 as the only place in Russia where Jews could reside. It was, in fact, one enormous ghetto, with Moscow and Petrograd off limits except to those few wealthy Jews who could bribe their way into sending a son or a daughter beyond the boundaries.

Establishment of the Jewish Pale was merely one event in a long history of discrimination. Jews first settled in Russia in the Crimea area as far back as the first century. The Khazars who ruled in that area were so taken with Judaism that they adopted it as their own religion. The Khazars’ kingdom was, in fact, a Jewish state. By the tenth century the Russians in the north had ascended to power and they swept down on the Khazars, dispersed them to oblivion, and began a sordid record against the Jews.

As Russia came to power, the flaming sword of Islam came up from the south. During those periods when the Moslems held parts of Russia the Jews knew their greatest times of peace and prosperity, for Jews had been a potent factor behind the rise of Islam.

With the final defeat of the Moslems, full power over all Russia went to the Czars and to the Greek Church. Jewish “heretics” were burned at the stake by the hundreds during the Middle Ages. The ignorant peasantry was well instructed in the fable that these Jews were magicians and witches and used Christian blood in their rituals.

Centuries of unrelieved abuse reached a climax during the reign of Catherine I. A series of pogroms—anti-Jewish riots—was unloosed against those who would not accept the Greek Orthodox religion. But attempts to convert the Jews failed utterly, so Catherine I expelled a million Jews from Russia. Most of them went to Poland.

After this came the era of war and conquest in which Poland was conquered and reconquered, partitioned and repartitioned. Catherine II inherited a million of the Jews who had previously been expelled by Catherine I.

These events led directly to the establishment of the Jewish Pale. In 1827 Jews were driven ruthlessly from the smaller villages into the already overcrowded Jewish quarters in the larger cities. In the same year the Czar instituted a quota of Jewish youths to be turned over each year to the army for twenty-five years of military service.

Simon Rabinsky, the bootmaker of Zhitomir, his good wife Rachel, and his sons Yakov and Jossi were prisoners of the Pale and of a unique way of life. There was no social and very little commercial contact between these Jewish communities and the rest of the Russian people. The only regular visitor from the outside was the tax collector who might make off with anything from sacred candlesticks to beds and pillows and shoes. Frequent but less regular callers from the outside were the wild mobs of Cossacks and peasants and students who screamed for Jewish blood.

Divorced from the greater society, the Jews had little or no loyalty for “Mother Russia.” Their spoken and written language was not Russian but Yiddish, which was a bastard German. Their language of prayer was ancient Hebrew. The Jews even dressed differently. They wore black hats and long gabardine coats. Although it was forbidden by law, many of them wore side curls, and it was a great sport among the Russians to catch a Jew and cut off his curls.

Simon Rabinsky lived the way his father and his father’s father had been forced to live inside ghetto walls. Because they were so poor there was endless haggling over a few kopeks. Yet, despite the desperateness of their daily existence, Simon and all other Jews adhered to rigid codes of business ethics inside the ghetto. No man was allowed to infringe on the livelihood of his neighbor or to cheat or to rob.

Community life pivoted around the Holy Laws, the synagogue, and the rabbi, who was at once teacher, spiritual leader, judge, and administrator of the community. The rabbis of the Pale were all great scholars. Their wisdom was far-reaching and their authority rarely questioned.

Within the ghetto the Jews organized their own government under the over-all leadership of the rabbis. There were a hundred different lay offices and wardenships. There was a score of Biblical and Talmudic societies. There was an organization for the care of orphans and a society to pay the dowries of the poorer girls. There were societies to care for the sick, the aged, and the lame. There were administrators of marriage contracts and an elected synagogue summoner, as well as a dozen other synagogue posts. There was an ecclesiastical court, there were psalm readers, and administrators over the ritual baths. Indeed, the community moved as one for the existence of all.

The poor donated to the poorer. The poorer—to the poorer yet. Charity was the eleventh, the unwritten commandment. Leading scholars and religious leaders had to be cared for. Nothing was allowed to interfere with the pursuit of wisdom.

Many people said that Simon Rabinsky, the bootmaker, was second in wisdom only to the rabbi himself. In the Pale where nearly everyone was destitute the measure of a man’s wealth was his knowledge. Simon served as a deacon of his synagogue. Each year he was elected to one or two other high offices in the community. It was Simon’s dream to fill his sons with the wonders of the conquest of the mind.

Jews called their Talmud a “sea.” They claimed it was so vast that one could read it and study it for a lifetime without ever looking at another book and never swim from one side of the “sea” to the other. The Rabinsky brothers studied this great collection of laws and customs, which contained information on everything from social behavior to personal cleanliness.

In addition to studying the Talmud the Rabinsky brothers spent hours learning the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses which make up the Torah and were considered the holiest of all works.

They learned the Bible. They learned the oral laws of the Mishnah. They learned the folk legends, wise sayings, and commentary on the Bible of the Midrash. They learned the Cabala, the book of mystics, and they learned the prayers and songs and customs and holidays.

Jossi and Yakov studied the great post-Talmudic scholars—Moses Maimonides and Rashi.

Although the Rabinsky family lived a grim existence it was not entirely a life without hope or joy. There was always talk and debate, a tempting scandal to discuss or a wedding or a death or a confirmation or a birth to celebrate. There were the holidays to look forward to. The matchmakers were constantly busy and there was the Sabbath.

On one night each week, Simon Rabinsky and every other ghetto Jew became a king. The traditional horn would sound in the ghetto, and Simon would lay down his tools and prepare for his day with God. How he loved the sound of the horn! It was the same sound that had called his people to prayer and to battle for four thousand years. Simon would go to the ritual bath while his good wife Rachel lit the Sabbath candles and recited a benediction.

He would dress in his Sabbath finery, a long black silk coat and a beautiful fur-rimmed hat. He would walk proudly to synagogue with Jossi on one arm and Yakov on the other.

At home there was traditionally a family poorer than his in to share the Sabbath meal. Over the candles and the blessed bread and wine he spoke a blessing and a few words of gratitude to God.

Rachel served stuffed fish and noodles and chicken broth, and in the evening they would stroll through the ghetto calling upon the sick or receiving visitors in their shop, as they had no parlor.

On Saturday, Simon Rabinsky prayed and meditated and spoke with his sons and reviewed their lessons and learnings and discussed religion and philosophy.

As the sun set ending the Sabbath, Simon sang the song of the ghetto with Rachel, Yakov, and Jossi: “Rejoice to Israel ... banish despair.”

With the day over he returned to the realities of his bitter life. In the dingy cellar he called home and shop, Simon Rabinsky would crouch over his workbench in the candlelight, with his wrinkled hands drive a knife deftly through leather. Simon then said the same lament that had been said by Jews since their captivity in Babylon....