Only Yesterday (50 page)
saken the land, because we have forsaken the land,
that’s the greatest confounding of all, and about that, the lamenter is lamenting. Tell us a little of your father’s deeds, Yankele.
Yankele blushed and was silent. Brenner put his hand on his shoulder and looked at him with great affection. Yankele’s heart was filled and he said, I didn’t know Father. When the yellow fever began bringing people down, they took us out of Hadera and brought us to Zikhron Ya’akov. But one thing I did hear. Once they asked my fa-ther, Are you satisfied, Reb Israel, with living in the Land of Israel? Father answered, I could be satisfied, but one thing I lack. Outside the Land, when I went to pray, I would encounter city policemen and other wicked Goyim, this one slapped my face and that one spat on my beard and another one looked at me with loathing, and I knew that we were in Exile, and when I prayed, I prayed with a broken heart. And here, Jews are sitting on their own land, no policeman and no Exile, and my mind gets proud and I am ashamed for my Creator to stand before him with an arrogant heart. Brenner fell on Yankele’s neck and began reciting,
Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord
.
And when our comrade Yankele mentioned the village where he was born, he started telling how much territory was in Hadera. A space of thirty thousand Dunams it was, and of them, three thousand five hundred Dunams are swamps full of mold, that brought plague and pestilence, yet the people of Hadera didn’t leave their place, but said, We came to establish a settlement, and as long as there is breath in our bodies, we won’t budge. The Baron took pity on them and sent to drain the swamps. They took the women and children out of the settlement, only the men remained to gather their harvest. They brought three hundred Egyptians who were used to the work of draining and were accustomed to malaria. There were nine of the members of the settlement who wanted to show that a Jew isn’t afraid of any danger and they urged the supervisor to let them stay in the settlement. The supervisor agreed and let them. They stomped around up to their knees in mire eight hours every day for nine months. A miracle from heaven that not one of them got sick. They drained the swamps and planted twenty-five thousand eucalyptus
trees, and planted another twenty-four thousand eucalyptus trees, until they surrounded all of Hadera with a wall of trees, so the plague wouldn’t reach the houses of their settlement. And needless to say, all the saplings they planted—Jews planted with their own hands. And when the trees grew, they went on planting, until Hadera be-came a flourishing settlement unlike any other in the whole Land. And when little Yankele told that tale, he also told other things. Some bitter as wormwood and some sweeter than honey.
The night was fine and the sea was fine and Brenner’s conversation was fine. The things Brenner said most of our comrades had thought about in days gone by, days when they didn’t give us work and we were idle and didn’t see a piece of bread. Now that there is work and a person works and makes money, our comrades were like the one who regretted that his heart wasn’t broken. And yet every single one thought of his own affairs, this one about making new clothes and that one about bringing his girlfriend to the Land of Is-rael, this one about saving for travel expenses and going Outside the Land to study at a university. And our comrade Isaac, what was he thinking about? Our comrade Isaac was thinking about Shifra.
Night Thoughts
I
The second watch of the night passed. The voice of the sea changed and its waves donned foam. A chill wind began blowing and furrows began bursting and raising water. Brenner looked at the sea, striving to grasp some of the splendor of its force. He dropped his hands and grasped Hemdat’s hand, as he grasped his pen when he strove to conjure up an idea that wasn’t completely clear to him, and said, The time has come to sleep. Said Podolsky,
Ye, m’ darf geyn aheym
(yes, we better go home), and emphasized the word
heym
and laughed, for there is no man here who has his own
heym
. Brenner responded with a melody and said,
Kinderlakh, m’darf geyn aheym.
When Brenner withdrew from the group along with Hemdat, everyone felt weary. They parted from one another and went their way, this one to his room, and that one to the corner of his bed in the cheap hotels in Neve Shalom.I
A small lamp stood at the bed of one of the guests of the hotel who was sleeping with his face covered with a sheet of
Ha-Or
. Isaac picked up the lamp and took a copy of Lunz’s almanac he had found in the hotel. He put the lamp near his bed and put the almanac on his pil-low to read before he went to sleep. When he lay down he forgot the almanac and put out the light.
Isaac lay on his bed and thought about everything that came into his mind, about Sweet Foot and about that day when the artisans in Jaffa made a banquet and made him drink a lot of wine and Isaac brought him to his room and lay him on his bed and they had
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become friends. They never mentioned that deed, but their friend-ship didn’t cease. From Sweet Foot, Isaac came to Jacob Malkhov, and from Jacob Malkhov to Reb Zerakh Barnett. Brenner disparages those houses and the neighborhoods they’re building in the Land of Israel because he’s a pessimist.
With no connection, his mind came to Arzef. A lot of stuffed skins Isaac had seen at Arzef’s, but the stuffed skin of a dog he hadn’t seen. It’s a bad quality in dogs that they bark and stop and bark again. If they barked incessantly, we would get used to their barking. Since they bark and stop and bark again, they confound the heart.
Blurry thoughts that came in a jumble confounded his soul. He fluttered his eyelids hoping to evoke the figure of Shifra. But Sonya came and then Reb Fayesh, lying in bed and both eyes crusted over like turgid ice peeping at him, at Isaac, and the bed was covered with a blanket on which the figure of a dog was embroidered with a stick in its mouth. Isaac was stunned, if Reb Fayesh slept in a bed, how was the bed covered. Isaac fluttered his eyelids. The stick in the dog’s mouth fluttered and he barked, Bow-wow.
Am I sleeping? Isaac asked himself in his sleep. Am I dream-ing? Isaac asked himself in a dream. For that dog is on Sonya’s blanket, so how did he wind up at Shifra’s father’s house? Shifra came, beautiful and handsome, and different from Shifra. And her hair wasn’t gold, but black. And it was flat on her head and smooth, as if an iron were passed over her hair, and her cheeks were reddish, and a dark glow gleamed on them. Such beauty isn’t found in every girl. But her tongue was thick and filled her whole mouth, and her nose bent down toward her upper lip. She asked him, Do you love me? He wanted to take her in his arms, but his hands were slack because he was hugging Sonya.
A dream or not a dream? Isaac asked himself in his dream. This couldn’t be a dream, for I hear my roommate sneezing. Who’s here? A statue of the High Priest Mattithiah. But you don’t look like Mattithiah. And if you look like anybody, pal, you look like, for instance, Professor Schatz. But Professor Schatz dressed in a Bedouin cloak, but the sword in your hand is stabbing.
Isaac woke with a start from a mosquito sting. He rubbed his cheeks and thought about his dream. A bad dream or a good dream? In any case, I did well to come to Jaffa. Here is society, here is life. It would be nice if I knew how Shifra was. In fact, I should write to her, but what will I do since I promised her I wouldn’t write? And even if I do write to her, how will the letter reach her? For I don’t know her last name. Yankele, why don’t you say Kaddish? Bloykof hired a man to say Kaddish, and you are cruel to your father and don’t say Kaddish for him. Who is this who appeared to me? Isn’t that Lydia, sec-retary of the director of the seminary? The director of the seminary doesn’t behave nicely. A Hebrew seminary he made in Jerusalem, so they had to increase Hebrew studies there, and in the end, they cram the students with German literature and its history, and rumor has it that Reb Yehiel Mikhl Pines teaches Talmud in Yiddish, but when guests come, he teaches in Hebrew. How come I haven’t seen Orgelbrand? Mapku, tomorrow, we’ll go to Orgelbrand. But before we go, we’ll shut our eyes and doze off.
How did I climb up these steep steps? Lo, they’re from the Hungarian houses, their Talmud Torah. One hundred twenty students sit there, crowded and packed together and the teacher sings to them, I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob. What can my sisters do here? Would I let my sisters be like those seamstresses and milliners who live in the convert’s house. I see that the cisterns lack water, if so, where will we drink? The well of Job is emptied and the waters of Shiloh, says Lunz in his almanac, are not good for drinking, and aren’t brought to the city, and even in a drought year, the waters of the Shiloh are used only for cooking and other household needs, and my neighbor pours a full jar of water on his head. Good morning, said his neighbor to Isaac. Good morning, Isaac answered his neighbor and turned over onto his other side.
Between Jaffa and Jerusalem
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Isaac got out of bed. He washed his face and hands, but he didn’t go to the sea, for it was already noontime, and in those days, we didn’t go walking at the sea in the afternoon on hot days, except for Doctor Rekhnitz, who used to hunt for seaweed, and now that he has left for America, you don’t see a person at the sea in the afternoon.
After he put on his clothes, he ordered himself a cup of tea, even though it was already time for lunch. Isaac thought, like all our other comrades, that drinking something hot after sleep was obliga-tory. They brought him a cup of tea and sugar and a round cake, one of those cakes of dough and cinnamon that are found in Jaffa in every hotel and every restaurant and every teahouse, and we thought at the time they were good, for we had already forgotten the taste of the cakes we ate in our father’s house. He drank and sliced himself a slice and thought about all kinds of people he had come across yesterday. And once again he said to himself, I did well to come to Jaffa, now let’s check how much money I have left and how long I can stay here. He took out his pocketbook and started counting his coins, like Simon his father. But while Simon his father counts over an empty heart and sighs, Isaac counted his coins over cake and a cup of sweet tea, for sugar is cheap here, and you can put as much as you want into a cup, but nature gave a limit to sweetness so that a person won’t eat too much of it.
After he drank and ate his cake, he asked himself, And now what shall we do? Now we’ll eat lunch and we’ll lie down in bed and we’ll read the almanac of the Land of Israel. Afterward, we’ll go perhaps to Hemdat. And even though he wrote on his door, “I’m not in,”
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so that guests won’t interrupt him, he welcomes a guest and makes him coffee. And if we don’t find Hemdat, we’ll go to Orgelbrand. A sad man, Orgelbrand, but the sadness in him isn’t depressing. How beautiful were the walks we took in Sarona and the Saturday evenings we spent in Petach Tikva. I really should put on my work clothes and look for work, for if I stay here, I need money. Our best critics are used to seeing Brenner as a pessimist, for they judge from his books and they don’t know his laughter. A letter from Father has certainly come and is lying around in Jerusalem. There certainly isn’t anything new in it, and if there is something new in it, it’s only added to the old troubles. And Shifra doesn’t write anything and I don’t know anything about her. Isaac recalled days when he would come to her house and bring food with him, and the two things, that is what she lacked and what he lacked combined into one sad thing. Isaac regretted he had agreed with Shifra not to write to her, and that he didn’t ask her to write to him. Avreml, the carter, didn’t write to his father because he didn’t know how to write, perhaps Shifra doesn’t know how to write either. In school, she didn’t learn, and her father certainly wouldn’t hire teachers for her. Once Wilhelm Gross re-proached one of the dignitaries of Jerusalem for not teaching his daughters to write. That Rabbi told him, Why should they learn to write? He told him, When they are betrothed, they will want to write a letter to the bridegroom. Said he, I’ll get them bridegrooms from Jerusalem and they don’t have to write letters. That Rabbi got bridegrooms for his daughters from Jerusalem, which isn’t true of Shifra, whose bridegroom is in Jaffa. And will that upholsterer, that Hungarian who is a neighbor of Shifra’s, tell her he saw me? He doesn’t know that she knows me. I hope he didn’t know, because if he did know, he would tease her. What did I hear about him? They say he is going to divorce his wife because he set his sights on Sweet Foot’s ex-wife. Now it’s time for lunch. I’ll eat first and then I’ll consider my return to Jerusalem.
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When he had eaten and drunk, he stretched out on his bed and went back to ruminating at the point where he was interrupted. But the
Between Jaffa and Jerusalem
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brain which is wont to be tired after the midday meal, when the shut-ters are drawn and the heat is pressed in the room, the brain is too lazy to think thoughts. On the other hand, the eyes which are wont to be shut at that hour, were filled with valor and began wandering from Jaffa to Jerusalem. He saw what a person sees on sunny days in Jerusalem. A flaming dust covers the eye of the city, its walls and its houses and its inhabitants. Even a bird in the sky, even a dog in the street are covered with dust. You may have heard that the people of Jerusalem wear clothes of various hues, but their color cannot be seen because of the dust on them. And if that is true of normal years, how much truer of a drought year. From Jaffa Gate to Mahane Yehuda a pillar of dust ascends to the heart of the sky and covers the eyes of Jerusalem. And every house is like a box of dust. People walk around wrapped up, wiping their bleary eyes and groaning parched groans, like that parched earth of Jerusalem. A person takes one step and sinks into potholes and ditches of dust, he lifts his eyes up, a dusty sun dries the mucous in his eyes. The roads are full of pits and pocks, cracks and grooves, dirt and stones, and desolate lawns extend here and there. If not for carcasses of cats and dogs and reptiles and in-sects, Jerusalem would be like a desert and a bad smell bubbles up from the carcasses and all kinds of flies and mosquitoes swarm among the carcasses and they are wrapped in dust so you won’t recognize them, so they come upon you suddenly and sting you. And the walls of the houses turn dark with excoriations, a boycott on secular schools and a boycott on libraries, a boycott on this one who excommunicated that one, and a boycott on that one who excommunicated this one. A person brings plasterers and plasters the walls of his house, and as soon as he pays for their work, all the walls are once again covered with excoriations. We thought that most of the excoriations were those of Reb Fayesh, and when Reb Fayesh got sick and his hands don’t obey him, we know that his students have gone be-yond him.
