Джеймс Миченер - The Source

AMERICAN: You try to argue that history never changes. America proves that history does change. What happened in Mallorca bears no relationship to what will happen in America. We are free, and our freedom is assured. The whole constitution of our society confirms that freedom, and I trust it.

ISRAELI: I do too, Zodman. Until the day when China becomes a major power and humiliates you in some way. Until the day when A.T. and T. drops to forty and you have another economic crisis. Until Senator McCarthy’s successor comes along. Those days will be the test. Some time you should talk with the secretary of this kibbutz. Last year he went back to Russia on a visit. For forty years Russia claimed that it was the new paradise for Jews, and many Jews agreed. You know, when he got to Russia last year not one of his relatives would even speak to him. They looked at him and slammed the door. They paid a trusted friend to visit him in the hotel. At great risk. To tell him, “Go home. Tell no one that you are related to us. And when you get to Israel, put nothing in the paper against Russia or we will disappear and never be heard of again.” Don’t you suppose that if Russia allowed Jews to emigrate, millions would fly to Israel?

AMERICAN: I must believe in the goodness of my country. I want Israel to be here, for others. I want the Vodzher Rebbe to have his synagogue, for others. And I’ll pay to keep his synagogue going. But my home, my entire future, must be in America.

ISRAELI: But your spiritual home will be here.

AMERICAN: I’m not so sure. The decisions of your rabbis on cases like my divorce will probably drive us further and further apart. We’ll have two Jewries: the spiritual one here, the great effective one in America, and between them little contact.

ISRAELI: No job is more important for each of us than preserving that contact.

AMERICAN: Now Vered and I must leave…for the best home the Jews of the world have ever had.

ISRAELI: And when the trouble strikes, Israel will be waiting.

This final exchange took place one night as Schwartz lingered at the table to listen, and when the conflicting points of view were neatly tied into gentlemanly packages, as in a formal debate between men dressed in black ties, he startled the group by voicing the hard truth of the matter they had been discussing: “You talk as if the future were going to be like the past. It’s all changed, Zodman. You live in a much different world. So do you, Eliav.”

“What do you mean?” Zodman asked.

“Just this. A couple of years ago a lot of synagogues were bombed in Florida. Remember?”

“What has Florida to do with me?”

“And it looked as if a strong anti-Semitic wave was beginning. My group here in Israel followed it very closely. And it may shock you to know that if those bombings had continued one more week we were prepared to smuggle armed volunteers into Florida. To train the loca? Jews. And to shoot it out … for keeps.”

Zodman gulped, Cullinane leaned forward to ask, “You were going to invade Florida?”

“Why not? Germany killed six million Jews and the world has never stopped asking, ‘Why didn’t somebody fight back?’” He rubbed his forearms and for the first time Cullinane saw that each had been badly broken. “I fought back. So did a lot of others. They’re mostly dead now. But if the good people of Miami, or Quebec, or Bordeaux decide some day to liquidate their Jews, I personally shall appear in that city to fight back again.”

A shocked hush fell over the room as Zodman and Cullinane tried to apply this challenge to America, but they were unable to do so because Schwartz was speaking: “You won’t fight back, Zodman, because your kind never does. You didn’t in Berlin or Amsterdam or Paris, And you won’t either, Cullinane. You’ll pray and you’ll issue most moving statements and you’ll regret the whole mess, but you won’t raise a finger. And Eliav as a trained seal of the government will announce, ‘The responsible nations of the world really must do something,’ but he won’t have a clue as to what.” With contempt Schwartz looked at the three men and said, “But no one will ever again have to ask, ‘Why didn’t the Jews do something?’ Because my group will be doing just that.”

He moved to Zodman and said, “So when trouble starts in Chicago and you’re positive it will go away if Jews keep the governor and the chief of police happy, nobody expects you to do anything, Zodman. All we ask is this. If in that time of trouble you see me on the street and you realize that I have come over from Israel to lead the Jewish resistance, don’t betray me. Look the other way and pass on in silence. Because I shall be there to save you.”

He nodded brusquely to the three men and left the discussion, a hard-disciplined man who cultivated an unemotional view of the contemporary world. He was a man whom Cullinane had grown to respect and actually to like, a tough-minded man who stood ready to take on the whole Christian church, the united Arabs, the diffident Jews of Florida, the vacillating Gentiles and anyone else who wanted to break into the act. It was reassuring to know that such men populated the new Israel, and Cullinane offered a benediction to Schwartz’s self-contained arrogance: “If you can harness his courage, Eliav, you’ll build a great land here.”

Zodman said, “If I ever meet him walking the streets of Chicago, first thing I’ll do is call a cop,” but Vered said quietly, “You may think differently, Paul, after we’ve talked awhile.”

The following morning Zodman, the American Jew, took Vered, the sabra, to Cyprus, where they were married by a Church of England minister who made a lucrative business out of uniting couples who were honestly in love but who, under Jewish law, were not permitted to marry. He was a wizened little man with ill-fitting teeth, and when he blessed the Zodmans he said, “Tell all my good Jews not to be disturbed about this monkey business. Years ago my church used to have the same kind of silly laws, which made people run away from England to get married in Gretna Green, but we got over it. Bet you didn’t know Gretna Green was in Scotland.” He made the marriage a deeply tender thing, a true religious ritual, and at the end he asked shyly, “Since there is no one to give away the bride, may I be permitted to kiss the beautiful lady?” He was barely as tall as Vered.

The unpleasant manner in which Zodman and Vered departed from Makor left a residue of bitterness, and it was Cullinane who observed, “In 70 C.E., after General Vespasian captured Makor, his son Titus captured the symbols of Judaism and hauled them off to Rome. Today Zodman buys them for immediate transshipment to America.” Eliav added glumly, “Maybe he was right. Maybe the leadership of Judaism will pass to American hands.” And the unhappiness of the two men was so depressing that Cullinane was relieved to invent an excuse for running off to Jerusalem. Explaining to no one he banged out of his office, calling over his shoulder, “You fellows better start boxing up the papers,” but Tabari, aware of Eliav’s gloom, thought: It would be a lot better if Cullinane stayed here and let Ilan get away for a few days.

The thoughtful Arab therefore scouted around for some fresh work to divert Eliav’s attention from Vered, and one morning as he stood on the bedrock of Trench B, under which there could be nothing, he chanced to notice that at the northwestern end of the uncovered rock there was a barely perceptible dip to the west, and taking a small pick he began gingerly to undercut the perpendicular west wall of the trench, finding, as he had suspected, that the falling away of the rock continued in the direction of the wadi. Satisfied on this basic point he sat in the trench for some two hours and did nothing but look at the massive rock; and as he visualized the various settlements that had occupied the tell he was constantly left with a mystery. Where had the original well stood? And he began to direct all his speculation to the earliest settlement—Level XV, about eleven thousand years ago, as man was just beginning to farm—and he came again and again to the conclusion that the original families must have lived somewhere off the face of this gently sloping rock and closer to the fugitive well, wherever it was. His thought processes were not entirely conscious: as a member of the Family of Ur he had a keen sense of land and he somehow felt that the earliest farmers must have sought fields at the bottom of sloping land, so that what rains fell would irrigate their crops and bring down each year fresh sediment to serve as fertilizer for soil which would otherwise be quickly depleted. Near the rock of Makor, where would such land have been?