Джеймс Миченер - The Source

But later the voices calling him had changed to Yiddish, the hard, tough voices of small, tough men: “Gottesmann, we’ve got to ship these refugees to Eretz Israel. Rent a boat at Taranto. I don’t know where you’ll get the money. Get it.” And the voice of Teddy Reich, who was even tougher and smaller than the others, all brain and sinew: “Gottesmann, you’ll take this dynamite to Tiberias and wait till the lorry …” Just before the suitcase exploded a British voice had cried with agonizing despair, “My God, Gottesmann! What have you done?”

It had been while hiding from the British after this dynamiting that he had been smuggled into Kfar Kerem, where he had made his way to the home of Netanel Hacohen. Tapping softly on the door he had aroused a tall, square-jawed Jew, who said gruffly, “If they’re chasing you, come in.”

“I met your daughter in Jerusalem.”

“She’s not here. But you must be Gottesmann and I suppose you blew up the lorry. Welcome, son.”

That night he had seen for the first time the haunting portrait of little Shmuel Hacohen, his left shoulder protruding as if he wanted to fight, his eyes flashing with notable vitality. “He was killed by Bedouins while fighting to protect this land,” Netanel explained. “When the first trouble started the others wanted to give up the vineyards and retreat to the walls of Tiberias, but Shmuel preached, ‘We’ll build walls greater than any Tiberias has seen. Out of our love for the land!’”

“Preached?” Gottesmann interrupted. “Was he a rabbi?”

Shmuel Hacohen’s son laughed. “Shmuel? A rabbi? When he died he was fed up with rabbis. There were no rabbis in this family. The Jewish state will be born when enough men like my father take enough guns and shoot down the bastards who are threatening us. When my father was fifty he organized his own little army to protect this settlement and he bought himself a donkey so that he could ride from one watch station to the next, firing his men up. The Bedouins announced to the whole countryside, ‘We’ll kill the little Jew on the donkey, and the others will run away.’ So they killed him. When we recovered his body it had nineteen bullet holes. But his faith had been so strong that no one dared run away, and after two or three battles the Bedouins left us in peace. Gottesmann, to hold this land we had to fight for it. If we want a state for the Jews we’ll have to fight for it. You did a fine thing when you blew up the lorry.”

“I asked about the rabbi business because I saw these volumes of the Talmud,” Gottesmann said.

“Those?” Netanel laughed. “Somebody sold them to my father and he kept them for good luck. Shmuel Hacohen … you could sell him anything. His preaching was simple, Gottesmann, and you remember it. No state is given on a silver plate. You buy with blood. Rabbis and governments and fine ideas will not win this land. Guns will. You get the guns, you’ll get Israel.”

And then one day, as Gottesmann lay hiding, Netanel hurried into the room, explaining, “You’ve got to get out of here. My daughter’s coming home from university,” and Ilana appeared, somewhat thinner than when he had seen her in Jerusalem, lovelier when she smiled but more serious and totally dedicated to the ideal of a Jewish state. When she saw Gottesmann packing she said, “Don’t go,” and later, when he recalled that first meeting, he remembered principally the great tenseness of her mind and body. She stood forward against her toes, not back on her heels. Her chin was held forward too, like her stubborn grandfather’s in the picture, and her eyes, unlike those of girls Gottesmann had known in other countries, were marked by lines of concentration. Above all, he remembered her tough, rounded knees as they popped out from beneath her very short dress, and he recalled how delightful it had been, in his hiding, to touch those knees and to feel this vibrant girl, so eager for life and the day’s challenge, pressing against him.

Now he laughed easily as he heard her banging about the kitchen in her last stages of preparing his evening meal. She was a dreadful cook, a typical Israeli she called herself, burning her thumbs and the meat, and she slapped food on the table as her ancestors must have slammed it on the wooden boards in their tents four thousand years ago in this very spot, when returning from their sheep in the wilderness. How excellent a human being she was, this Ilana, how strong in her resolves, and how desperately her husband wanted to stay away from the war that was engulfing him … how he longed to stay with his wife among the vineyards.

Yet in his longing Gottesmann had to admit that not even under the humane law of Moses Rabbenu was he excused from this war, for although he did have a new house and a new vineyard, he did not actually have a wife. He and Ilana were not married. In the tempestuous fashion of the day she had simply moved in with him, announcing to the settlement, “Gottesmann and I shall live together.” He had expected some kind of protest from her father, but tough-minded Netanel had summoned two witnesses before whom the lovers recited the ancient formula: “Behold, thou art consecrated unto me according to the law of Israel,” after which Netanel boomed, “You’re married. Have lots of children.” Certain cautious neighbors had suggested that perhaps Gottesmann and his girl would like to have a rabbi from Tiberias authenticate the marriage, but Ilana had cried contemptuously, “We’re through with rabbis and all that Mickey Mouse crap.”

The phrase had struck Gottesmann as inappropriate to the discussion at hand and he had asked Ilana, “Where did you pick up the words ‘Mickey Mouse crap’?” and she had explained, “When you go to the movies and watch the cartoons the hero gets into all kinds of trouble, but at the end, when terrible things are bound to happen, Mickey Mouse swings in from nowhere and saves the world. Gottesmann, it doesn’t happen that way. And for sure it’s not going to happen that way in Israel”—Ilana always spoke as if her new homeland already existed—“because nobody is going to come swinging in from anywhere, not God nor Moses nor some rabbi. So let them keep that Mickey Mouse crap to themselves. Fifteen thousand Arabs are going to come down out of those hills some day, and we’d better be ready.” Her eyes flashed and she repeated, “We’d better be ready. Not Mickey Mouse. Not some rabbi wringing his hands and wailing, ‘Israel is lost. Israel is being punished.’” Recalling that outburst Gottesmann looked down at his folder and smiled.

Behind him the door banged open. There was a clatter of feet. A tray was banged onto the table and a chair was squealed backward over the stone floor. “Food!” a husky-harsh voice shouted, and supper was served at the Gottesmann home.

Ilana Hacohen was twenty-one, not tall, not plump. Her big white teeth sparkled as ever, and as usual she looked quizzical. She obviously loved the security and repose of living with a man and she took pride in her new home. With heavy yet loving hands she pushed the crockery about the table and splashed a generous helping of food onto her husband’s plate. It was meat and vegetables, cooked as if by accident, and it made him long even for the food of English restaurants. “Eat it all,” she said, “I’m saving some for Teddy Reich.” Then, on the impulse of the moment, she leaned across the table and kissed her tall, serious-browed husband.

“You worried about Safad?” she asked.

“For every Jew in Safad there are 11.1 Arabs,” he said glumly.

“If they’re the right Jews,” she reflected.

“And the Arabs hold all the favorable positions.”

“They always do,” she said.

“And in honest fighting strength they outnumber us forty to one.”