Strangers with the Same Dream Page 18

  But what David heard was something else. In the words “I won’t” lay the opposite: I will. If I choose to.

  And worse: You can’t stop me.

  —

  David went to look in on Ruth, both to see how she was and to steady himself after the conversation with Levi. When he saw his child’s crumpled figure, he scooped her up into his arms. He crossed the kibbutz holding her against his chest, taking slow breaths to steady himself. At the water tap, a number of halutzim had gathered; they were turning on the tap and splashing each other with the spray. It was high noon, working time, and it irked him to see them there frolicking like a bunch of children.

  “There are brambles to be cut at the bottom of the yard,” he said when he reached them.

  The halutzim looked up, surprised, as though they had been caught smoking the hasheesh that sometimes came to the Arabs from the Syrian fields. Several of the girls stood, brushing the grass off their skirts. The boys began to gather their things.

  He knew the fact that he was carrying Ruth lent him additional authority. He was a father, a serious adult in more ways than one. But Yitzhak was a serious adult too, and he approached now, his shirtsleeves pushed up. Like David, he had heard the childish play at the water tap, the squandering of scarce resources. There was a look on his face that David recognized from years of group discussions and debates; Yitzhak had smelled blood. David shifted Ruth in his arms; he felt something clench in his chest, like a nut on a machine being tightened.

  “I don’t need you here,” he said briskly, so only Yitzhak could hear.

  He meant that he had the situation under control, but his tone conveyed his deeper resentment—what was Yitzhak doing here at the new place at all? Did nobody—at the Agency, at Kinneret—trust David’s judgment?

  Yitzhak caught the whiff of aggression in David’s voice and bristled. The frustration that had a moment ago been directed at the young halutzim changed direction like a sail in the wind.

  “We’re going to cut brambles? in planting season?” he asked David, but loudly, so everyone could hear.

  Ruth made a noise but kept sleeping.

  David knew he could still step away. But instead he snapped back, “You could clean the toilets if you preferred.”

  Yitzhak’s eyes widened. But he was quick on the draw.

  “In planting season?”

  He had always liked a fight.

  David remembered how Yitzhak had fought on Hannah’s side about her first pregnancy, and how they had lost. Perhaps that decision still accounted for the rage simmering in each of them.

  “The tractor is broken,” David said. He resented being forced to say it, as though it was his own personal failure.

  Yitzhak was silent, but in his silence was a sullen refusal to be dominated by David. The other halutzim had paused in the gathering of their belongings and were watching to see what would happen.

  David squinted. He felt dizzy and wanted to sit down. “There’s a whole work crew waiting,” he said. “What would you suggest?”

  “I’ll tell you what I would suggest,” Yitzhak said. He cracked his knuckles. “I would suggest we send men to work at the factory to make money. We purchase proper machines. Poof! The field is down. Then threshers, then wagons to carry the sheaves, then done. That’s what I would suggest.”

  The two of them had been through this a thousand times before, but the halutzim didn’t know it. It gave David a perverse kind of pleasure to perform it for them, to ignite one of the old classic debates in this new group. To take the land using Jewish labour alone? Or to allow Arab labour? And what counted as labour exactly? These were questions with so many angles. All the actual working made less room for conversation about working which was, if he was honest, the part he really enjoyed.

  He asked, “Is that why you think we are here? To recreate the capitalist machine with the few precious resources we have?”

  Yitzhak said, “I think we are here to make a homeland for our people. However we are able.”

  David had an argument for what Yitzhak had said, and he knew what Yitzhak’s argument would be in return. The truth was that he could argue either side of this debate—Eretz Yisrael at any cost, versus Eretz Yisrael by Jewish labour alone. But before he could trot out either side, a boy jumped in: “Forget the factory. Let’s just steal the Arab’s wheat!”

  The boys began arguing, some of them yelling, about the thresher, their Arab neighbours, the timing of the planting and the harvest, the pros and cons of sending the men to work at the factory in exchange for money. David took a step back, clutching Ruth, who was somehow sleeping through the uproar, against his chest. He found himself strangely satisfied that the halutzim who had, moments ago, been like children running through a garden hose, now seemed to care so deeply about their cause. He saw the German twins coming toward him. Selig leaned in to whisper in his ear, and David instinctively drew back slightly, not wanting another man to touch him in this way. But he listened. “I have a solution,” Selig said, bashful.

  “A solution to what?”

  “The broken tractor.”

  He spoke in his bad Hebrew, looking to his brother to translate, but Samuel shifted away, like he wanted no part in this. David nodded to show he understood Selig, that the boy should continue. He expected the solution would involve hiring Arab labour, something that had been tried before and led to chaos and disaster, and he was happily surprised when Selig said, “I have something we can sell.”

  David felt Ruth adjusting her position in her sleep, and thought again of when she was a baby. It occurred to him that maybe Hannah was right, that maybe it would do them all good to feel the bright new life of an infant again.

  Selig held open a satchel, produced from behind his back. David peered into it and saw a frayed brown pillow with stuffing escaping from the seam. He looked up, questioning.

  “Sorry,” Selig said, and jostled the bag to shift the contents. David looked again; there were two beautiful candlesticks, tall and silver, engraved with the Sabbath blessing.

  His mouth opened. “Where did you get those?”

  Selig averted his eyes and cleared his throat. “My mother sent them to me from home.”

  David was surprised; he’d thought the twins had no mother. And there had been no delivery recently from Chaim. Still, here the objects were, and they looked valuable.

  “They’re candlesticks,” Selig said in German, and then translated, to show David he did have some Hebrew. “Pamotim.”

  Without delay, David turned to address the group. He must not forfeit the opportunity to be the bearer of good news. He cleared his throat, noticing only then that Samuel was standing very close by, as though he wanted to tell him something. David stepped away from him. He stared into the group of halutzim, willing them to quieten; he felt impatient.

  “Shalom everyone!” he cried out. “I have news!”

  They looked up from the fight, interested, but also unhappy to stop their own shouting.

  David said, “We have some valuable candlesticks we can sell!”

  There was a long pause. Then, all at once, a cheer went up. The haltuzim were still so enthusiastic, thought David; they still took any chance to cheer.

  At the roar, Ruth wriggled in his arms, a worm on a hook. She tried to lift her head. He could feel her struggling to speak, forming a sentence against the heat of her fever. When she managed to finally raise her head, her cheeks had two almost perfect circles of pink on them. Her eyes glassy, like marbles.

  “Those candlesticks are Ida’s!” she said.

  Her voice was high and clear, and the halutzim turned to stare.

  Under their scrutiny, a strange feeling came over David. His girl was speaking nonsense, obviously, as she could not help herself from doing because of her age. But there was some kind of truth in her words. David had been formulating a theory about exactly this, the way in which things could be both true and untrue, if not factually then essentially. There was a seed
of truth in some things even if their content was false.

  It was a theory that served him well in his relations with his wife.

  Ruth wriggled more, clamping her legs around his waist, and seemed to be trying to say something else. But David placed a hand on the back of her head, lowering it down to his shoulder again. She submitted, and rested against him, and was fast asleep in two seconds flat.

  Yitzhak, he saw, was watching Ruth closely. He believed, David knew, in the uniquely perceptive capacity of children.

  David felt suddenly exhausted. He needed to lie down.

  “We will sell the candlesticks and see what they bring in,” he said, to end the debate. He turned to go, to take Ruth back to bed. He was almost at the infirmary when I put the image in his mind, the gentlest of reminders, which is all I am capable of anyway: the brown pillow in the bottom of Selig’s satchel.

  David turned abruptly, Ruth still in his arms, and walked back to where the halutzim had mostly dispersed. The tap was running, precious clean water spilling onto the earth. David turned it off. Selig was still standing there, his hair sticking out at odd directions, the knees of his pants worn through until you could see the hairy kneecaps beneath.

  “You have my daughter’s doll!” David said.

  Selig made a noise that David couldn’t read, then opened his bag. He looked in.

  “It seems that I do,” he said. His voice was calm, almost bland, like he was commenting on something that had nothing to do with him.

  “May I have it?” asked David, for some reason tentative, like he was asking for a favour.

  Selig looked at the doll. “What if I want to keep it?” he asked.

  There was no threat in his voice, only a mild curiosity as to how David would answer.

  Selig said, “I gave you the candlesticks. What if I need the doll in return?”

  “I can assure you my daughter wants it more than you do,” David said.

  “What if your daughter gave it to me?”

  “I highly doubt that,” David said.

  Ruth made a sound in her sleep, a little cry that sounded like the word “truth,” or maybe “thief.”

  “What if I need it more than she does?” Selig tried. He inserted a finger under his blue suspender and gave the strap a little snap.

  This was the rationale behind the distribution of goods on the kibbutz; those who needed most were those who received. Medicine, clothing. A whistle. A revolver. Selig was trying something, pushing a limit, but David could not quite discern the shape of his request or the little experiment he was conducting.

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” David said.

  He expected Selig would raise some further objection, but the boy all at once capitulated, whatever game he had been playing come to its final conclusion.

  “Very well,” Selig said. “If you think it’s better.”

  He fished in the bag and handed Salam over. He seemed satisfied, a bright new smile on his face. David looked down at the doll. There was a new stain on the markings that stood in for eyes, and a rip in the miniature headscarf. But David was able to lower a curtain in his mind. He did not ask what he couldn’t see. And I didn’t push him.

  Soon enough that curtain would open.

  David took the doll and boosted Ruth higher on his hip. She was getting heavy; his arms were suddenly sore from holding her for so long. He knew that he should take Ruth back to the sick tent, but a wave of exhaustion was cresting over him. He did not want to walk the extra fifty metres. He barely made it back to his own tent before collapsing with Ruth beside him. His eyelids were heavy as though weighted down with coins. An intense gratitude came over him, that he had a mattress, a bed, a place to rest his body. It took just a few seconds for the rope of consciousness to slip its knot, for his body to start to drift out onto the black and heavy ocean, but a scratch on the tent canvas flipped his eyes open. He was immediately awake and alert; he knew who it was.

  He had told her not to come here.

  Ruth was snoring at the foot of the bed, her leg puffed out and held apart from the rest of her body, but the doll Salam was still in David’s arms. He had been drifting off to sleep with it clutched to his chest.

  He shoved it under his mattress so Sarah would not see.

  She was carrying a kerosene lamp even though it was only late afternoon.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in a whisper. She opened her mouth to answer and he put a finger up to his lips. Ruth was tossing in her sleep. It was true that Hannah wasn’t there, but she might have been.

  It did not occur to him to wonder where she had gone.

  He stood up slowly on wobbly legs and let Sarah lead the way. He was powerless to her pull. He could have no more resisted than he could resist the force of gravity. The weight of his whole life piled onto him—his sick girl, who seemed to be getting sicker, his own endless sweating, Hannah’s sad face, Yitzhak’s accusing face, the broken machinery, the field lying thick with wheat they could not bring down. He watched Sarah’s behind as she walked in front of him. The swing of her hips, her small and smooth bottom, so young and taut compared with his wife’s.

  Behind the shed he bent her over the hollow of an overturned wheelbarrow. He jerked her dress up roughly. He unzipped his pants and took himself out and thrust into the fabric of her white undergarments, unable to stop and take the two seconds to pull the cotton to the side. When he finally slid into her he thought he was going to finish right away. She was there all around him, hot and tight. He slipped in and out and covered his cock in her wetness. When he exploded it was like he was giving her all of his problems and she was saying, Yes, yes, I will take them.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE FOLLOWING NIGHT there was a light at the edge of the field. It was shifting and changing against the shadow of the mountain. David realized it had to be a person carrying a flame. He saddled Lenin, for distances were deceiving here. What appeared close, within easy reach, was often far away.

  The donkey had been used to pull the water-barrel wagon back at Kinneret; once they got a pump, the animal was free for more adventurous pursuits. It pulled at its halter now and thrashed its tail, but David looped the reins tightly in his fist. He was not trying to sneak up on the torch-bearer, but neither did he want to announce himself too loudly. Still, the old Arab saw him approach. He was holding his flame high in the air and it threw shadows on his face, making the shiny taut line of his scar stand out more brightly.

  “What have you come for?” David asked.

  “Salam,” said Habib in greeting. He was showing he was the civilized one, the one to say hello before accusing another man. The horse beside Habib was lean and muscular, with a wide chest and flared nostrils. It had saddle tassels and baubles, matching the tasselled headscarf Habib himself wore.

  “Shalom,” David conceded.

  He was trying to be more like Yitzhak, not just because it was the right thing to do but because it yielded better results. But Habib took a deep breath, and released it audibly. When he spoke it was in slow, clear Arabic. “Your wagons are turning on our fields.”

  David snorted loudly. “What fields?”

  He shouldn’t have said this, but he couldn’t help himself. What could their Hebrew wagons possibly want on the swampy muck the Arabs called fields? This was obviously an excuse for Habib to come spying. He did not say what was rising next from his throat: that soon it would not be an issue anyway as the Arabs would have to relinquish their land.

  Around them was scattered the detritus from the halutzim’s day’s work. David watched Habib’s eyes fall on the thresher—it was broken, but Habib did not know this. The sacks of grain were plump like Russian babushkas and David saw Habib observe this too, and the loaded wagons, and he saw a look creep into Habib’s eyes. It was envy, which David understood, and a kind of disgust, which he did not.

  “I would ask you to stop doing it,” Habib said.

  “Stop—?”

  “Turning
your wagons on our field.”

  David stayed silent. He would not give him the satisfaction.

  The quiet lengthened. David heard the cracking of the fire on the end of Habib’s torch. The Arab stuck it into the earth now, like an explorer’s flag claiming new ground. Except the ground was already his. David could see the thought on Habib’s face and for a moment felt an intense rush of remorse; he wished it did not have to be this way. Were they not both the beloved sons of Abraham? But the Jews had lived here two thousand years ago. They were reclaiming what was rightfully theirs.

  And no one else in the world wanted them. In his mind, David listed the long history of Jewish expulsions, the countries that wanted nothing to do with the Jews. Where else were they to go?

  The men looked at each other, neither wanting to be the first to turn away.

  “I’m thirsty,” Habib said finally.

  David almost laughed out loud. In Habib’s comment was everything he tried not to believe about the Arabs: they were simple. Unteachable. They thought only of their immediate needs. They had lived on this land for so long, and what they had done with it? Almost nothing. The fields Habib referred to yielded hardly enough for the villagers to feed their own families. Their houses were made of mud. In the rainy season they brought the goats inside to sleep beside their children. David had seen this with his own eyes.

  His gaze settled on a fence post nearby. Balanced on it was a jar of drinking water that the halutzim had left behind after their day’s labour. In Habib’s declaration of thirst David understood that he was being tested; and yes, he wanted to demonstrate the goodwill that he knew was crucial to things going well. To allow the Arab to drink from this water would show his humanity, his compassion. But the counter-argument rose up inside him: it would also show submission. The two impulses tumbled around inside him, his yaetzer tov and his yaetzer harah, an angel and a devil wrestling for dominance.

  “There’s water in the barrel,” he said, finally.

  Habib’s head flicked up, like someone had jerked his neck on a leash. The water in the barrel was for the livestock. Habib knew it, and David knew he knew it. It was murky and green. Little specks made visible by moonlight floated on the surface.