Only Yesterday (10 page)

The first watch of the night burned down and Isaac’s eyes closed. The host saw that he wanted to sleep, consulted with Gorishkin about where to lodge the guest, for Rabinovitch’s bed was too narrow for two. And even if he makes a bed for himself on the floor and gives the bed to the guest, he probably wouldn’t find rest in it, for it is wont to fall apart and drop whoever is lodged in it. They went over the names of several of their comrades, the teacher whose home was open to guests and the laborers who were taken to the hospital in Jaffa and their beds spend the night without their lodgers and are ready to receive guests. Rabinovitch tapped his forehead and said, Didn’t Yarkoni leave at dawn to go Outside the Land and they haven’t yet rented his room, let’s take our guest there and he’ll sleep on a re-spectable bed in a fine room, for Yarkoni is from a rich family and his flat is the finest one of all our comrades.

The host extinguished the fire and took Isaac. The three comrades left and entered the village. The houses were concealed among the barren trees and the fruit trees, and between the trees water pipes sprouted and watered the orchards. The summer harvest gave off an aroma and the smell of scorched brambles mingled with the fragrance of roasted manure bubbling up from the Arab villages surrounding the Jewish village. Sometimes you could hear the sound of jackals’ howling and sometimes the sound of a cow from the barn. Sometimes the sound of a wild animal dominated and sometimes the

sound of the cattle of the human settlement, and between those sounds, the sound of water in the pipes was heard irrigating the earth and making the trees grow.

The whole village slumbered, some on down and some on straw, some slept the sleep of repose and some slept the sleep of toil. The villagers weren’t concerned with politics or other unsettled is-sues that don’t concern the settlement, but everyone minded his own business and slept when it was time to sleep and woke up when it was time to work. There were no quarrels there, aside from the small squabbles found wherever there are human beings. Sometimes the zealots in Jerusalem wanted to spread their influence over the village and there were mischief-makers who were drawn to them. But every squabble stopped as soon as it started, for the earth doesn’t allow its workers to get involved in nonsense. About two thousand Jews dwelled there at that time. Owners of fields and vineyards made a liv-ing from their grapes and the produce of their fields, and owners of citrus groves made a living from their citrus groves. And anyone who left his fields uncultivated hired himself or his livestock to others, and anyone who had money in hand made a living from the money in his hand, and artisans made a living from their trade. And they also stood on the ground, some worked their land by themselves and some used others. Aside from them, there were about thirty or forty shops in the village, which made a living according to the place and the time.

The comrades soon came to Yarkoni’s room. Yarkoni’s room was bigger than Rabinovitch’s room and pictures from French journals hung on the walls, and nevertheless it didn’t deserve all that praise. His comrades stayed with Isaac to get him accustomed to his place. They looked at the pictures and talked again about all the things we used to talk about. That night Isaac learned what he hadn’t learned all the years, for all the years he had seen the new Land of Israel as one body, and that night he learned that it too was split into many sections.

Isaac lay down on the bed of laborers and covered himself with the blanket of laborers. The bed was made of many boxes be-side boxes, the kind they bring tins of kerosene in, and on it was a

layer of straw and stubble. Isaac was tired from the wanderings of the day, and when he lay down he dozed off. When he dozed off, he was shaken, sometimes by the buzzing mosquitoes who caroused on his face and sometimes by the loathsome crunching of the mice prom-enading back and forth. He hit his face and beat all around with his shoe until his hands grew slack and he fell asleep. Meanwhile came the Lord of Dreams and scared him with his dreams.

Isaac was waiting for light. As day began to dawn, sleep descended on him and he dozed off. As he dozed off, all the donkeys that came with the Arab men began braying and the chickens the Arab women brought to market began clucking. Isaac covered his face up over his ears. If the blanket hadn’t been full of holes, he might have been saved from the noises, but since it was full of holes, the noises permeated and punched holes in his ears. All of a sudden, the whole room was filled with sun and speckled on his eyes. He tossed and turned in his bed until Rabinovitch came and said, Let’s get up and go, maybe we’ll find some work.

In the Labor Marketplace

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Our two comrades, Isaac Kumer and Yedidya Rabinovitch, set off to hire themselves out as laborers. The air was pure and the earth was neither hard nor raked, and the trees were shining with the morning dew, and a good smell stretched from one end of the village to the other. The firmament had been white and was starting to turn blue and warm up, and birds and butterflies were flying in the heights and singing. Isaac forgot all his torments, and expectation and hope rejoiced his heart.

Isaac and his comrade came to the marketplace where farmers come to hire laborers. Masses of Arabs came shouting and shriek-ing, like enemies who come to lay siege to a city. But the tools on their shoulders indicated that they came not for war but for work. Shriveled in their torn clothing stood a few of our comrades, each of them holding a small basket, with half a loaf of bread and two or three cucumbers. Some of them stood with eyes completely indifferent to everything. While the sad eyes of others bubbled with hope and fear. Hope of finding a daily livelihood and fear that the Arabs might get there before them.

The firmament turned blue and the sun grew warm. The birds were still heard, but their voice was weary and wearisome, and flies and mosquitoes and gnats were humming and fluttering on the green pus in the eyes of the Arabs and on the baskets of food in the hands of the fellows. Finally they traded places. Those who had surrounded the bleary eyes came and surrounded the food and those that had surrounded the food came and stood on the bleary eyes.

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Fat Victor came, his heart as thick as his flesh, riding on neighing Fatma, a fine and graceful mare, the finest and smartest mare in the village, and a tropical hat sat on Victor’s head shading his fat eyes and leaving just a crack of laughter, and he’s wearing cloth garments and holding a leather whip. The whip rises on its own and its shadow runs to and fro, the air recoils and flees for its life, uttering a kind of moan, like a person flogged and moaning. The fine and smart Fatma stands still and doesn’t budge, for Fatma knows her owner’s soul that he doesn’t mean her but those human creatures who forgot today what happened yesterday, and she savors a bit of that joy when her master tells those ragamuffins, Don’t you see that I don’t need you, and they stand ashamed and embarrassed, as they stood yesterday and the day before yesterday.

Nahum Teplitzki comes up, a short man with his shoulders hunched and his greenish eyes dripping because he can’t stand the light, he shuts an eye and opens an eye and clasps the shanks of his donkey, and bites his thin lips out of envy and hatred. Hatred for the ragamuffi who see themselves as the élite of the nation, and envy for that fat guy who knows how to deal with them. Once upon a time Nahum too was one of the ragamuffi and went out to the market like one of us to hire himself out as a laborer. All of a sudden, his mother’s brother Spokoyny acquired an estate and made him the steward. Nahum Teplitzki rides on his donkey and whip in hand, shouts Yal-lah, Get a move on, and many of our comrades are terrifi of his voice.

Behind him came two others, riding on mules with patched whips in their hands. Not because they are old are they patched, but because they use them a lot to break them in. The four employers stand, one of them is the representative of a veteran Zionist in Jerusalem, and three come on their own behalf, and opposite them stand our comrades their eyes beckoning to them to hire them as laborers and they will make a daily living.

The fine Fatma stands and ponders. Do those beasts who came with their owners know what is going on here? But, even though the mules were endowed with too much sense of hearing, they stood still as if they didn’t hear. And the donkey too, with his long ears, as if those ears were created in vain. But in truth nothing

escaped them. And the donkey stood and pondered, It would serve that bastard riding on me right if I threw him off, but if I throw him off here the ground is loose, and it’s not worth all the blows he’d give me afterward, but I arm myself with patience, and when we get to a rocky place, I’ll throw him down, yet I fear he will never get his pun-ishment, for when we get to a rocky place, he gets down and goes on foot. The donkey began braying in despair and breaking wind. The mules smiled and dropped their dung.

Victor looked here and there, and in their imagination it seemed he cast a favorable eye on our comrades to hire them as laborers. But imagination is like a passing shadow that has no reality at all, and like flying dust, you can’t sow on it or bring forth bread from it. While their imagination entertained them, Victor lashed the whip in his hand until the air was divided into several airs. He turned to the Arabs and hired some of them. And among those that Victor left, Nahum hired; and among those that Nahum left, his two comrades hired.

Embarrassed and ashamed, we stood on this earth we had come to work and preserve, and if yesterday and the day before yesterday we didn’t find any work to do, we still hoped to sustain our hungry soul with work we will get today, whether a little or a lot. And once again
we were slung out as out of the middle of a sling
because of the great evil and disgrace, our strength left us and we didn’t open our mouth.

But our comrades, who at first didn’t seem to care about anything, suddenly were shaken and a fire was kindled in their eyes, until we were shocked and retreated. They cast their baskets to the ground and returned to the earth its petty produce and began rebuking the employers. In their rage, their words got confused and it was impossible to understand a word. Their hands grew slack and they said, Wretches. Not about themselves, but about those who were given the Land and kept us away from it. Victor looked at them and his fat, yel-low eyes danced in their sockets like eggs in a skillet. He wanted to answer our comrades with the same kind of confused and stammered words they threw at him, but his laziness weakened his heavy tongue. He raised his whip languidly and said, Don’t you see, I’ve already got

all the laborers I need. And his three comrades used the same words as Victor. And in fact they did have all the laborers they needed, since of all the Arabs that were there, not one remained. How the fine Fatma rejoiced when she saw Isaac’s face. And if not for her excessive pride, she would have shared her joy with the other animals. Fatma looked with one eye, peeping and examining whether those bearers of humans sensed what had transpired here. Soon, the whole marketplace emptied out and only our comrades were left, covered with the dust of the Arabs’ feet.

The sun began to blaze in the firmament and heat up the earth. The trees grew warm with that warmth that weakens the heart and relaxes all the limbs. The grass of the field began to shrivel and the flowers in the gardens lowered their heads. The dry nettles burst and emitted a sound of desolation. For a while, our comrades stood and looked at the earth that absorbed the footsteps of their rivals for work. At last they shaded their eyes from the flaming sun, and at last this one returned to his house and that one to his bed. Rabinovitch put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder and said, Come, let’s drink some tea.

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Our two comrades, Isaac Kumer and Yedidya Rabinovitch, went off to drink tea. And a few of our comrades joined them and went with them, for every single one of them lacked something to make tea, ei-ther a wick for the kerosene stove or a piece of sugar for the tea or tea for the sugar, while Rabinovitch is a host who’s got all those things and his hand is spread out to slice a piece of bread for those who don’t have any, just as their hand would be spread out to slice the bread if they had had any.

Rabinovitch put on the kettle and spread a sheet of
The Young Laborer
on his upright box, like a person spreading a cloth on his table. He took out bread and olives and tomatoes, and anyone who had a piece of bread in his basket or cucumbers took them out and put them down. Our comrades sat themselves down on the host’s bed and on the floor of the house and ate and drank. When they had eaten their fill and quenched their thirst, they began discussing that

issue they found it hard to resolve all those days, how to make the farmers realize how much evil they were causing themselves and all of the Children of Israel when they reject the Hebrew laborers and nod their head at the Arabs and shake their head at the Jews.

While we’re on the subject of the farmers’ deeds, we should assume that the laborers spoke angrily. After all, we came to build the Land and in the end they won’t let us stand our ground because of an imaginary profit, for the employers mistakenly think that the He-brew laborer is expensive and the Arab laborer is cheap. And they don’t see that everything a Hebrew laborer earns returns to them. He rents himself a room in the village and buys his groceries in their shops, while Mahmoud and Ahmed take their wages from the village and spend it in the Arab cities and not a penny that goes out from Jewish hands returns to them. According to the farmers’ deeds, the laborers should have spoken angrily. But in fact, they spoke as a lover who appeals to his friend’s integrity. And this is what sustained them, shifting their eyes from themselves to the good of the community. Moreover, they called on their brothers in Exile to ascend and come to work the Land with them. And their words were not in vain. There were those who heard the call and came. And if some of them went back, some did settle in the Land. And if the times betrayed them, they did not betray the Land. They added villages and settlements and strengthened the workers, and provided the lips for Hebrew speech, and restored a bit of our honor that had been exiled. Because of them, the first immigrants began to raise their head, and because of them, all who came after them could stand tall.