Thieves in the Night (25 page)

Sunday

Simeon has been transferred from the “infectious” ward, so yesterday at last I could go and see him in the Hadassah Hospital in Haifa.

With his face flat on the pillow he looked more than ever like a sick falcon. His black eyes fastened on me as soon as I entered the ward and seemed to pull and steer me on my way round the other beds to his side. His face is emaciated and so are his long, loose-fingered, nicotine-stained hands. The blanket on his bed was neatly tucked in and his pyjamas buttoned up to the neck; there was nothing undressed about Simeon in bed. The blanket, bedside locker and even the pillow were littered with papers and newspaper cuttings.

I sat down on a chair by the bed, and grabbed his hand which lay flat on the blanket.

“One shouldn't touch me—I may still be infectious,” he said, but I could see that he was pleased. “Well, how are things on our ivory tower?”

“I am to marry Ellen and to be made treasurer for outside work,” I blurted out.

“No!” he exclaimed in frank and naïve amazement. He seemed excited by my news like a schoolboy being told what had been going on in the class during his absence. Simeon did after all look more human in bed.

“You don't say….” He laughed, but after one or two chuckles started to cough. “By God, Reuben has got his dialectics right…. But it is a good thing,” he continued. “You are the best person for the job. And otherwise you would have quitted—sooner or later.”

So Simeon too had noticed how much adrift I had been. They all seem to have noticed it—except myself.

It was visiting hour, and each of the four patients in the room had one or two relatives sitting at his bedside. They were all absorbed in their own conversation and created a neutral, relaxed atmosphere in which each bed with its locker,
chair and screen formed a little island of privacy. Simeon lay on his back, his eyes gazing at the ceiling. “Tell me more about our ivory tower,” he said.

“Gaby is marrying the Egyptian and Moshe has twins—but this you probably know already.”

He nodded. “What else?”

“We bought a mare from Ein Hashofeth for twenty pounds.”

“How old?”

“Three years. Ash-coloured. Rather nice, but showing too much rib.”

“What is she going to be called?”

“
Alliyah
”

He gave a short, bitter chuckle. “Immigration,” he repeated. “Symbols, symbols and nothing behind it.”

An old fat nurse waddled past carrying a bedpan. Despite her neat uniform she looked more like the wife of a rabbi disguised as a nurse.

Simeon was silent for a while, then he cleared his throat and asked in a casual voice:

“And the saplings?”

“Judith is looking after them. Since the rains they have grown almost an inch.”

“Any duds?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“The last row towards the corner of the veg-garden needs some extra watering.”

“I'll tell Judith.”

He gazed at the ceiling and gave a shrug. “What's the difference, anyway….”

“When will they let you out?” I asked.

“In about a week.”

“You'll have to share a room with Mendl and the Dr. Phil.”

“I won't.”

“It will be difficult to find another arrangement. We are expecting a new graft in a fortnight.”

Simeon said nothing, and after a while I asked:

“They'll send you first for convalescence to Sichron?”

“I expect so.”

“And when will you be back home?”

“Never.”

I stared at him and he looked at the ceiling, then slowly turned his head to me.

“It doesn't really surprise you, does it?”

My heart was thumping.

“
Habibi
,” I said at last. “No. No, I won't believe it.”

He smiled. “The funny thing is, I can't yet really make myself believe it either.”

More than anything that he could have said, this convinced me that arguing was useless. Without Simeon the image of the Place in my mind's eye had suddenly become a shade darker and greyer—like a scene on the stage with the lights gradually being shut off. It was perhaps even worse than if we lost Dina. A Commune is not simply a crowd—it is a pattern, a mosaic figure, and if a piece breaks loose it leaves a gap for ever.

“But why, Simeon?” I asked.

His smile became ironical. “Ask yourself and you will find the answer.”

I kept silent, for Simeon made me feel not only miserable, but guilty—just as during our last talk in the tree-nursery. I had avoided him ever since and, to tell the truth, his illness had been rather a godsend to me. But there it was now—and I could no longer escape it; just as I could not escape that other question centred round Ellen.

It is no good running away from things—they move slower and steadier, and in the end they always catch up with one.

Simeon had propped himself up on his elbow, searching among his papers. He was very weak, and his thin neck with the skinny Adam's apple trembled slightly with the effort. The fat nurse waddled excitedly towards us. “I told you you are not allowed to sit up,” she cackled.

“Go to hell,” said Simeon quietly. She gaped at him but
he went on searching among his papers, ignoring her completely, and after a few seconds she turned on her heel and walked off, with a red face, and without another word.

“Read these,” said Simeon, thrusting the bundle of newspaper cuttings into my hand and letting himself fall back on the pillow. The cuttings were neatly labelled and held together by a clip. I read:

“
According to a statement issued by the Government of Northern Rhodesia, the elected members of the Legislative Council have unanimously opposed any immigration of Jewish Refugees. The acting Governor, therefore, felt unable to advise the Secretary of State that the matter would be proceeded with further at the present time
….”

“
It is stated that mass immigration into Portuguese colonies is strictly forbidden
….”

“
President Vargas of Brazil has issued a decree … fixing the annual quota of immigration at two per cent of the total number of immigrants of the same nationality during the last fifty years
….”

“
A memorandum urging the prohibition of foreign immigrants into Cyprus has been submitted to the Municipal Council by local professional corporations
….”

“
Refugees from European countries will not be encouraged to emigrate to New Zealand, according to a statement made last week by Mr. Nash, the Minister of Finance
….”

“
It is understood that the Government of South Africa is unwilling to contemplate any modification in the stringent provisions of the Aliens Act, which makes Jewish immigration virtually impossible
….”

“
It is reported that the Uruguay Government has instructed its Consuls to refuse visas to Jews who are emigrating for racial or political reasons
…”

Simeon looked at me with his bitterly hypnotic eyes. There was a fluid poison in them and I understood why the fat nurse had not answered back.

“Observe,” he said, “that these are cuttings taken from one English newspaper only, and that they all appeared during the last three months. I have the decrees of about twenty more countries on my list—decrees prohibiting admittance of the lepers with the yellow spot. And now read this….”

“
It is reported from reliable sources in Germany whose origin cannot be disclosed, that for some time experiments have been carried out in state orphanages for the painless physical liquidation of children incurably crippled, insane, or of undesirable racial heredity. The methods applied are phenol injections into the aorta, intravenous air injections to cause thrombosis, and lethal chambers filled with carbon monoxide gas
.”

Simeon watched me. “It may be exaggerated,” I said after a while.

“You think so? No, you don't. It's the Englishman inside you trying to close the shutters. And now read this.”

It was the previous day's paper, which had not reached us yet in Ezra's Tower. I read:

“LONDON,
December 8.—The Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, Colonial Under Secretary, appreciated the moving appeal for the admission to Palestine of 10,000 Jewish children whose parents had become victims of persecution in Germany, but pointed out that His Majesty's Government was unable to accede as they must consider the danger of prejudicing the Round Table Conference on Palestine which is shortly to assemble in the capital
.

… It was further pointed out during the debate in the House of Lords that the Government's decision to turn down the Palestine Hebrew Community's offer to receive the children was equivalent to robbing them of the prospect of escape
.”

I handed the cuttings back. “What are you collecting this stuff for?”

“I have been asked to edit a pamphlet.”

“By whom?”

He paused, then said, looking at me with an ironic smile:

“By the Bauman Group—and those connected with it. Don't pretend again that you are surprised.”

“No,” I said. Then I added:

“So that's why you are going to leave us.”

Simeon wiped the sweat from his face, unfolding a neatly pressed handkerchief.

“Is that all your comment?” he said. “I thought you were going to call me a fascist, a killer, an outcast and whatnot.”

“No,” I said. “I won't.”

For a while none of us spoke, but all the time Simeon was watching me and I knew that every expression on my face would be stored away in his memory as if on photographic records. Then he said:

“Things are moving quickly now. In a few months or weeks our group will have to go underground. The Government will start arresting and deporting us. Then we will start to shoot—and believe me, we'll do it more efficiently than the Arabs. We have a few technical surprises ready for them.”

He spoke with the self-assurance of a man with an army behind him.

“Where will the stuff come from?” I asked.

“The arms? We have plenty, and there is more coming.”

“Where from?”

“From abroad. You will hear about that in due time. You will hear a lot more to surprise you.”

I said nothing. Everything Simeon said sounded boastful and fantastic—everything except the way he said it. The lure was in his self-assurance. It sapped the resistance of my judgment. His contact always acted on me in the way of communicating vessels: it emptied my critical faculties and filled me up with faith. It was an immensely comforting sensation. All that was needed was to take the plunge and one would be rid of all
doubts and filled with inner certainty and the boons of blind obedience—like on the first night when I was shooting under Reuben's orders.

“… But the time for you has not come yet,” said Simeon, and I felt as if he had deliberately cut the contact. “They need you at our ivory tower. Moshe is right about carrying on with the job as long as there is a possibility. When we need you we shall let you know.”

“I haven't said yet that I agree,” I said. But Simeon merely smiled:

“Do you think I would have told you the things I did, if I didn't know that we can trust you?”

The visiting hour was drawing to its end and all over the ward people gathered themselves up and lingered by the beds in the elaborate process of leave-taking. Simeon seemed to shrink again to a sick man in a hospital bed dreading to be left alone. I felt pity for him—the pity for the strong which is more painful than pity for the weak.

“Oh, Simeon,” I said, pressing his damp yellow fingers, “why can't we stay on in our ivory tower? You with your saplings and I with my old boots and Pepys. Is that too much to ask?”

He withdrew his hand. “Ask from whom?” he said drily. “From God or from the British?”

“Time, please,” called the fat nurse—but she dared not come close to Simeon's bed.

“What will you live on in the town?” I asked; and only now did it occur to me that after altogether six years' work with the Commune, Simeon was to leave us without a shilling or a spare shirt of his own.

Simeon shrugged. “I shall be a professional killer,” he said. I couldn't even make out whether he was joking or not.

“Time, please,” called the nurse, looking at us.

“Remember one thing, Joseph,” said Simeon. “A phrase which you yourself once said to me. ‘It is the deed which counts
and not its inner shadow.' Each of our acts goes on record. It is weighed on objective scales and not on the individual balance.”

“Time, please,” called the nurse. I was the last visitor in the ward.

(1939)

“Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews. Do you know why?”

“Why, sir?” Stephen asked.

“Because she never let them in,” Mr. Deasy said solemnly.

JAMES JOYCE, “Ulysses”

“
And the king of Babylon smote them, and slew them at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away out of their land. And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia
.”

(Kings and Chronicles)

“
Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying: The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he has charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him and let him go
.