Only Yesterday (8 page)

Isaac forgot why he was standing here and what was in store for him. Next to him stands that old woman who traveled with him on the ship, hugging another woman in her arms, and weeping over one another. And when that other woman stopped weeping on her mother’s neck, she grabbed the old man’s hands and wept over them, as he stroked her and said, There there, hush. Isaac assumed that this was the daughter the old people had talked about on the ship and he envied them, for as soon as they entered the Land, they had a loved one. If he hadn’t been ashamed, he would have approached her and wouldn’t have been so orphaned. He began imagining that the old people were telling him, Come with us, and that woman was letting him stay in her house, and he found rest from his wanderings on sea

and on land, for he had been on the sea ten days and three days he had traveled on land. But events are one thing and imagination is another. By the time the imagination spun its imaginings, the people he was with descended with that woman into a small boat and Isaac remained orphaned many times over.

Then two or three people came, one snatched his sack and one took his valise and another one pulled him. Isaac assumed that they had been sent for him to ease his entrance into the Land of Is-rael, and he said to himself in rhetorical figures, Our Mother Zion sent her sons to greet their brother who has returned to her. He wanted to show them the letters the dignitaries of Galicia had written about him so they would know that they weren’t mistaken about him. But before he could take them out, he found himself sitting in a small boat rocking between cliffs and rocks.

The boat rocks down and up between the terrifying waves, and foam, turgid white and green-and-white, rises upon them, and salty water strikes his face and his hands and stings his eyes. The sailors lead the boat by its nose, and curses and cries rise from boat to boat. The sailors strike their oars and conquer the hard water, as they curse and shout back and forth to one another. Mighty rocks rise erect from the sea to butt the open boat and she dodges them and they get angry and roar, go down to the sea and lie in wait for the boat, and go back up and spray their foam on the boat and its passengers. But the boat keeps on rowing, and before Isaac knew if he would get out of it alive, a sailor grabbed him and hoisted him up onto dry land.

N E
A Delightsome Land

On the Soil of the Land of Israel

1
I

Isaac stood there on the soil of the Land of Israel he had yearned to see all the days of his life. Beneath his feet are the rocks of the Land of Israel and above his head blazes the sun of the Land of Israel and the houses of Jaffa rise up from the sea like regiments of wind, like clouds of splendor, and the sea recoils and comes back to the city, and does not swallow the city nor does the city drink up the sea. An hour or two ago, Isaac had been on the sea and now he is on dry land. An hour or two ago, he was drinking the air of other lands, and now he is drinking the air of the Land of Israel. No sooner had he collected his thoughts than the porters were standing around him and demanding money from him. He took out his purse and gave them. They demanded more. He gave them. They demanded more. Finally, they wanted
baksheesh
.

When he got rid of the Arabs, a Jew came and took Isaac’s belongings. He led him through markets and passages, alleys and yards. Trees with abundant branches rose up, and strange cattle were chewing their cud. And people wrapped in turbans mock in their own tongues. The sun is blazing above and the sand is burning below. Isaac’s flesh is an enveloping flame and his sinews an ardent fire. His throat is hoarse and his tongue is like parched soil, and his lips are dry and his whole body is a jug of sweat. Suddenly a light breeze blew bringing life in its wake. But as suddenly as it came, so it disappeared. And once again he seems to be inside a case of fire and a pool of boiling water. He looked in front of him and was stunned. His escort had brought him to a yard and taken him into a dark house full of sacks and bundles and belongings and packages

I
39

and baskets and crates and boxes, and told him they were setting the table and would soon call him to dinner. Isaac rummaged around for those letters our leaders in Lemberg had written for him to show the landlord that he wasn’t mistaken about him.

The landlord wasn’t mistaken about Isaac, but Isaac was mistaken about the landlord. This house was an inn and the landlord was an innkeeper and all his efforts with Isaac were simply to be paid for room and board. If Isaac had gone with others who had attached themselves to him on the boat, he wouldn’t have had to wind up in this hos-tel where the food was thin and the bedbugs were fat, the bugs sucked his blood by night as their owner sucked his blood by day. Or maybe those who attached themselves to him fi were also innkeepers whose affection was all for the sake of money. Isaac justifi the judgment meted out to him and accepted everything lovingly. Isaac said, Tomorrow I’ll go out to the fi and I won’t need this fortune I brought from Exile, and it didn’t matter if they took a lot from him or a little.

Isaac spent that day and all that night in the hostel. He drank a lot and slept a little and waited for dawn to go to a village. When day broke and he wanted to go, the landlord said to him, Eat first and then go. When he had eaten and got up to go, he said to him, Where are you going? He told him, To Petakh Tikva, the Opening of Our Hope. The landlord said, The wagon’s already gone. He wanted to go to Rishon LeTsion, the First of Zion, and he told him, Today the car doesn’t go there. He wanted to go to some other place, and he told him, Arabs attacked that place and destroyed it. And so with every place Isaac wanted to go to, the owner of the hostel found something to delay him. At that time, the hostel was empty, had no guests, and when a guest wound up in the hostel, the innkeeper held on to him until his money ran out. Isaac fathomed the innkeeper’s mind, and he got up and went to find himself a cart.

2
I

Isaac went out to look for a cart. As soon as he took one step, both his feet sank in the sand. This is the sand of Jaffa that digs underneath you to swallow you up. As soon as you stand on it, it runs out and turns into holes on top of holes.

The sun was strong in its dominion and beat down on Isaac’s head. His eyes were filled with salt water and the fire lapped it and boiled it. His clothes are heavy and his shoes are blazing like coals. The ironed shirt he donned in honor of the Land sits on his heart like a soaked Matzo, and the hat rains salty dews down on his face.

Shapeless houses are strewn over the sand, which rises above their thresholds and rubs into the walls. The windows are closed and the shutters gleam in the sun. No sign of life is evident in those houses, but puddles of slops standing full and smelling foul indicate that human beings dwell there.

Isaac walks around in the wasteland of Jaffa. No man on earth, no bird in the sky. Only the sun stands between sky and earth like a dreadful being that won’t bear any other being in its presence. If he isn’t burned in fire, he will dissolve in sweat. Isaac no longer feels his clothes and shoes, for he and they have become one single mass. In the end, even the sense of himself was stripped from him, as if he were removed from himself.

God took pity on him and he didn’t lose his head. Isaac knew the road he came from and knew that he could go back to the hos-tel. He made his heart obstinate and didn’t return. He said to himself, Today I’ll get to the settlement and I’ll go into the forest and dwell in the shade of a tree and no sun in the world will overcome me. An imaginative man was Isaac and he imagined that the people of the settlements had planted forests to dwell in their shade.

Soon after, Isaac left the desert of sand and reached a dwelling place. Camels and donkeys and mules loaded with wares were standing around as if they bore no burden. Nearby sat a few Arabs with long, multicolored tubes in their mouths, and their eyes were raised to the sky. Nearby stood a few Jews and debated with the Arabs.

Isaac encountered one fellow. He said to him, “Pray, my lord, where might I find here a vehicle going to one of the settlements of the Jews?” The fellow held out his hand and greeted him. He wel-comed him, saying, A new man, a new man. Isaac nodded in reply and said, I arrived yesterday, and now I want to go to Petakh Tikva or Rishon LeTsion. Does my lord know where I might find a vehicle?

The fellow replied, “Does my loydship see dose green trees standin in a line? If it may please my loydship, he’ll toyn toyd dose green trees; and dere my loydship would please to find de carriages my loydship is seekin, both dose dat journey to Peysakh Tikvoy and dose dat journey to Rehoyvis and to Rishoyn-le-Tsioyn, and dose dat journey to de udder dwellins of our brudders, children of Isroyel, who dwell on de holy soil in de Holy Land.” All that to make fun of him for talking in his Ashkenazi Hebrew of the Exile. Isaac got into conversation with him, and in the end they went into a coffeehouse to drink lemonade.

When they entered they found a group of young men, sitting both silent and slovenly. They raised their weary eyes to Isaac and looked at him. One of the group stretched out his hand and greeted him and said, A new man comes, hissing as if he were hushing his thoughts and calling Hush hush. Isaac returned his greeting and said, Yesterday I was fortunate enough to ascend to the Land of Israel. And as he spoke, he waved his hat like a fan and blew a breeze on his face, he wiped his sweat and said, It’s hot here, hot here. Someone ex-claimed in amazement, The springtime isn’t over yet and he’s already hot. And another one looked at Isaac’s clothes and said, The sun gets hot from patriots like you.

Isaac ordered lemonade for himself and his companion and the companions of his companion. He drank and didn’t quench his thirst, and drank again and didn’t quench his thirst. As soon as the beverage entered his body it came out on his face. He held his glass and wiped his sweat, wiped his sweat and drank some more. At first that drink is sour and sweet and finally it scratches your guts and leaves an insipid taste in your mouth. His companions ordered black coffee to get rid of the taste.

One of them asked Isaac, What’s new in the world? Isaac, who thought there was no world except for the Land of Israel, replied, I’m a new man in the Land and haven’t yet heard anything. On the contrary, perhaps I shall hear from you what’s new in the Land. One of them answered, News you want to hear. Well then, hear. This place what is it, a coffeehouse, right. And this man talking to you what is he, a laborer in the Land, right. And this day what is it, a day

like any other day, right. If so what is the laborer doing in the coffeehouse on a weekday? Except that he pursued all the Effendis in the settlements of the Land of Israel and didn’t find any work. And why didn’t he find any work, because their work is done by Arabs. And why doesn’t he turn to construction work? After all a Hebrew school is being built here in Jaffa with money from a Jewish donor supported by the committee of the Lovers of Zion in Odessa, and they surely need workers. But the building supervisors turn us down and say that they have already given the construction work to contractors, and the contractors turn us down, because it’s easier for them to work with foreign laborers, since the foreigners cost them less. And since they won’t say that they’re turning us down because, by their accounting, we cost them more than what they need to make a profit, they slander us, saying that we don’t know the work. It’s not enough that they take away our livelihood, but they also dishonor our name. Why are you looking at me? Don’t you understand a human language?

Isaac understood yet didn’t understand. He understood that they were building a Hebrew school, and didn’t understand the actions of the contractors. He understood that that man walked through all the settlements, but didn’t understand that he couldn’t find anything. And why didn’t Isaac understand, after all he did know He-brew, but that man spoke with a Sephardi accent, and mingled Russian and Arabic curses with words that had been invented in the Land. How much Isaac loved the conversation of that man, held in Hebrew and in the Land of Israel.

Another man added, The officials of our national institutions, some of them get the salary of a governor, and complain about us laborers that we want a salary of two or three Bishliks a day. And they, who are no wiser than we are, think they have some superior wisdom and they made themselves patrons of the Yishuv, and they placed themselves in offices and write memoranda, while we pull the skin off our bones and take a leading part in all troubles.

Someone pointed at Isaac and said, Why are you scaring him? Said the one who spoke first, Shall I compose an idyll of the Land of Israel for him? And the other one said, That I leave to the

poets and the tourists, and I ask you all, are you the only ones suffering? Aren’t there people here who came before us, and if we tell all the troubles that befell them, time would run out. They came to a wilderness, a place of harsh malaria, and gangs of highwaymen, and harsh laws and evil governors. If they built themselves houses, the king’s officials came and destroyed them. If they sowed, their neighbors came and threw their beasts on the grain. If they drove them out, they went to cry to the government that the Jews attacked them. And if some of the harvest remained, they didn’t know if they should sow it next year or use it to bribe the clerks not to twist their laws against them. And what they rescued from humans was taken from them by Heaven. But they didn’t despair and they endured all the troubles and they maintained the Yishuv through their suffering and turned the deserts of the Land of Israel into homes and vineyards and fields. And as he mentioned their suffering, he told of their heroism, and as he told, his companions told more and even more. Thus they sat and told tales about afflictions and tales about heroism, about those in the plain and about those in the mountains, about those in the sands and about those in the swamp. About those who eat the harvest of their fields and about those who are eaten by the Land. It is small, our Land, and how great are its troubles. And since they were telling about the settlements, they told about their founders. And as they were telling, they were amazed at themselves that they hadn’t noticed the heroism of those founders before now.