Authors: Anita Diamant
Zorah slipped her arm through Esther’s as they approached the road, where Tedi embraced
them as though they had been lost for months. When she noticed Jacob’s sandals flop-ping
against the Palmachnik’s chest, she asked, “Does he have another pair of shoes? Leonie
is barefoot. Those might fit her.”
“Not for him,” Esther whispered, “but wait.” She plunged her hands into the seemingly
bottomless pockets of her coat and pulled out a pair of pumps with ankle straps. “They’re
red,” she apologized.
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.” Tedi grinned and hurried back to where Leonie
was sitting in the dirt, cradling her battered feet in her hands. Tedi got down on
one knee and held out the shoes as though she were presenting them to a princess in
a fairy tale. And, just as in a fairy tale, they fit.
Tedi tried to get Shayndel to come celebrate the miracle of the shoes, but she would
not move away from her spot near the ranking Palmachniks, who were planning their
next steps.
“Why isn’t Sergey here?” someone asked.
“He said he wasn’t going to wait for the trucks. He took a bunch straight up the mountain.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, well, you know Sergey: ants in the pants.”
“We can’t pull that kind of stunt with all these kids here. We have to wait for the
trucks to arrive.”
“When the hell will that be, Yitzhak?”
“Shouldn’t be too much longer now,” said Yitzhak—who had been the last man out of
Atlit.
“We waited for so long, some of us weren’t sure we’d see you again tonight,” someone
teased.
“The inside team did a good job,” he said, reaching for the cigarette that was being
passed around. “But it was weird. The place was lit up like Tel Aviv on a Saturday
night, but quiet as a cemetery. Not a soul in sight. The Brits were all in their beds,
sound asleep. I could hear them snoring, so help me.
“Then, just as I was about to leave, I found myself face-to-face with a ginger-haired
little guy in a British officer’s uniform.
I was close enough to punch him, which I was about to do. But he blinked and walked
past me, like I wasn’t there. I didn’t recognize him, but he had to be one of our
guys.”
“Must have been.”
“What do we hear from the others?” Yitzhak asked. “Are you in touch with the walkie-talkie?”
“Worthless piece of shit,” said one of the men, pointing at the boxy pack beside him.
“I got nothing but static all night, and the damn thing weighs as much as my grandmother.”
“That’s no joke,” someone snickered. “I’ve seen your grandmother.”
The sound of engines somewhere in the dark silenced all conversation until two trucks
and a small bus pulled up with their headlights switched off. The Palmachniks started
helping people onto them almost before they came to a stop. Some of the men tried
to talk the refugees out of bringing their belongings any further. “There is no room,
sweetheart,” someone said to a woman with a bulging satchel. But when he tried to
pull the bag out of her hand, she slapped his face with enough force to be heard up
and down the line.
“Enough,” said Yitzhak, tossing the valise into the truck. “It’s all they have, poor
creatures.”
Shayndel winced at hearing herself called a “creature” and ignored the hands extended
to help her climb into the first truck, which she had chosen after seeing that the
men in charge were crowding into the cab. Leonie, Tedi, Esther, and Zorah pushed their
way up beside Shayndel and settled together on the floor, with Jacob squeezed among
them.
The convoy crept along slowly until they turned left, away from Atlit and east into
the mountains. After another hard turn that threw everyone off balance, the headlights
came on, illuminating a narrow gravel road, and the driver put his foot down on the
accelerator.
As they gained speed, the girls’ hair flew up so that they almost looked like they
were underwater. Zorah threw her head back and closed her eyes. Leonie held her hand
out over the side, fondling the breeze. Shayndel had the urge to start singing.
As the truck started to climb the side of the mountain, Tedi inhaled the tang of pine
and the mulch of fallen leaves and a dozen other scents: tree sap and resin, pollen
from six kinds of dusty grasses going to seed. The soldiers up front added dark notes
of leather, tobacco, onion, whiskey, sweat, and gunpowder. It was a wild mixture,
the aroma of escape. She caught Leonie’s eye and grinned. “It smells like heaven out
here.”
The roads became rougher and in the back of the truck, the refugees banged into one
another and tried not to cry out. They slowed to a crawl as the incline grew steeper
and the convoy negotiated one hairpin turn after another.
“It would be faster to walk,” someone muttered as the initial giddiness began to subside.
When the truck lurched to a sudden halt Shayndel jumped up and saw that they had come
to a fork in the road.
The driver and two soldiers hurried out of the cab and immediately started arguing.
“Turn right,” said Yitzhak, who was holding a flashlight.
“I don’t think so,” said the driver.
“What do you know?”
“More than you.”
“Yes, but I’m in charge.”
When they started out again, the driver turned right so sharply that everyone in back
fell over.
They inched along what seemed like a footpath where overhanging branches raked the
tops of their heads. Esther held Jacob’s face to her chest to protect his eyes. After
a few more minutes, the driver hit the brakes again. The other men in the cab swore
at him and Yitzhak shouted, “Back up.”
“Too dark,” said the driver. “Too steep.”
By now, men from the two other vehicles had arrived and joined the argument. The walkie-talkie
crackled to life, but no amount of fiddling with the dials brought in a signal. Yitzhak
finally switched off the machine. “Never mind that. I know where we are,” he said.
“Beit Oren is a couple of kilometers up this hill. It’s a climb, but we’re close enough
to make it. Pass the word: we’re walking.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” muttered the driver.
There were no smiles as the refugees were helped from the trucks, but everyone felt
the urgency of the situation and within minutes, all 150 of them—refugees and Palmach—were
on their way.
As they headed into the forest, the darkness thickened, both shielding and thwarting
them. A narrow path led through uneven, rocky ground that seemed to reach up and trip
someone every few moments. No one spoke, but the sounds of panting and gasping grew
louder as they climbed.
Shayndel stayed near the front of the line, close to Yitzhak and his flashlight. Leonie
and Tedi scrambled to keep up with her, but Leonie’s feet were on fire as the shoes
rubbed through the blisters on her bruised heels and swollen toes. Tedi’s lungs ached.
Zorah hated being separated from Shayndel, but she would
not leave Jacob and Esther, who lagged behind. Esther’s fur coat, now heavy with moisture
and mud, slowed her down, and Jacob stumbled beside her, dazed by exhaustion.
With the loud crack of a gun, the rescue turned into a hunt. The Palmachniks pushed
everyone to the ground as another shot echoed through the trees over their heads.
No one moved or wept or breathed a word as they waited, pressed against the forest
floor. The quiet that followed the second blast continued long enough so that Yitzhak
picked up his head and gestured for a couple of his men to crawl forward and join
him. “It’s going to be daylight soon,” he whispered. “I want you to go up ahead and
see what kind of defense the Brits have mounted around Beit Oren. The order is to
get these people to safety, not to fight. If there are too many of them, we may have
to wait here until tomorrow night.”
God forbid, thought Shayndel.
The two men ran out of sight and Yitzhak sent word back down the line: keep still.
People found places to sit and huddled together for warmth. Some rested their foreheads
on their knees. Jacob slept with his head on Esther’s lap, his legs draped over Zorah’s.
Leonie and Tedi looked up nervously as the night sky showed the first dim traces of
morning. Shayndel crouched, eyes wide, listening for another gunshot.
It wasn’t long before two dark silhouettes scrambled into view. “The western slope
is damn near empty,” Shayndel heard one of them say. “We have to stay as far from
the road as possible, but we can enter safely on the far side of the kibbutz.”
Kibbutz. The word echoed in her head, suddenly unfamiliar and unlike an ordinary noun
like “pencil” or “soup.” More like “justice,” or even “unicorn.” Not so much a thing
you could put
a hand on; a kind of fairy tale or dream—a nice idea, a noble goal, perhaps. Not a
real place like the one these men were talking about—just out of view.
Yitzhak got to his feet. His men lifted children onto their shoulders, picked up suitcases,
and set out at a brisk clip. Everyone felt the pressure of the coming dawn and walked
quickly. Tedi caught the cold steel smell of anxiety around her. Zorah held branches
back for those with bundles and babies in their arms. Leonie bit her lips as she hobbled
on the outer edges of her feet. Shayndel shivered for the first time all night, suddenly
aware of how cold she was.
“Look,” someone whispered. A yellow glow, haloed in mist, blooming in the darkness,
not sixty yards away.
Shayndel tried to remind herself that this was no miracle, merely the energy pulsing
through wires. Just electricity, no different from the power that had lit her days
and nights in Atlit. And yet, these wires and bulbs made her ache with the need to
shout and laugh out loud and sing praises and simply say the word: kibbutz.
It was only a few dozen yards between the edge of the forest and the settlement fence,
where people were waiting, holding lanterns aloft. The escapees raced across the clearing
and were met with bear hugs and blankets. Leonie fell to her knees, weeping with relief.
Esther covered a stranger’s face with kisses. Tedi lifted Jacob and swung him around.
Zorah panted and gasped, suddenly starved for air after a night of holding her breath.
The kibbutzniks and the Palmach rescuers cut the celebration short and led their guests
over a dim gravel pathway and into a brightly lit dining hall. Mugs of hot tea were
pressed into their hands. “Shalom and welcome,” they were told, again and again. “Shalom
and welcome.”
Leonie sat down beside Tedi and asked, “Have you seen Shayndel?”
“The last I saw her, she was running through the fence. She must be here somewhere
or maybe she’s already talking to the kibbutz president; you know, giving him the
full report and telling him what to do,” Tedi said. “Now have some tea. You look frozen.”
Leonie kept an eye on the door. After she drained her cup, she slipped outside and
found her way back down to where they had entered the kibbutz. A man with a gun was
on patrol near the fence, which showed no evidence of having been the scene of their
arrival a few minutes ago.
She stepped off the path into a stand of tall pines, feeling that she had somehow
found her way back in time, into a darker, chillier hour of the night.
“Shayndel?” she called softly. “Shayndel? Where are you? It’s me.”
Shayndel was barely twenty feet away from her, her forehead pressed against the trunk
of a young tree, mourning her brother.
Noah had been in love with the idea of the kibbutz. He would stretch his arms over
the backs of the chairs on either side of him—he had such long arms—and provoke silly
arguments with his friends, just to prolong the conversation about what kibbutz life
would be like. “You can pluck all the Hebrew-speaking chickens you want,” he said.
“I’m going to be an architect and create a beautiful kibbutz, not merely a utilitarian
one.”
He laughed when they called him bourgeois. “We’re going to need buildings, right?
And I see no reason why we shouldn’t build cottages and classrooms and, hell, even
chicken coops that will be the envy of the rest of the world.”
Why not? thought Shayndel. But why aren’t you here?
Leonie followed the sound of muffled weeping and put her hand on Shayndel’s shoulder.
“
Chérie,
” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“I was never the brave one,” Shayndel whispered. “In the forest, comrades were the
heroes. I was a terrible shot, and after they died I was worthless. And my brother,”
Shayndel wailed. “My brother should be here.” Leonie turned her around and held her
tight. “We were supposed to be here together,” Shayndel cried. “It was Noah’s dream.
I tagged along after him, and he was the best, the most wonderful …”
“You never told me about a brother,” said Leonie, stroking her hair.
“He was so good, so smart. I’m sure you would have liked him,” Shayndel said.
“I would have loved him,” said Leonie. “How could I not?”
The light filtered through the pine needles around them. The dew drenched their feet.
Shayndel pulled away gently and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “The worst thing
is,” she started, and turned to avoid Leonie’s eyes. “I don’t even know how to say
this, but we lived for this, Noah and me. We were so sure we would be happy here,
but now all I feel is afraid. He would have been ashamed of me, but the truth is,
I have never been so afraid in my whole life.”
“What are you afraid of?” Leonie asked. “I’m not sure,” said Shayndel, her eyes brimming
again. “And that frightens me, too.”
Leonie nodded. “Maybe you are just afraid of what is going to happen next.”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. No one knows. Even you, who
dreamed about life on a kibbutz in the land of Israel, even you can’t know how it
will turn out. Everything that has happened to you, to me, to everyone who came with
us … it all proves that nothing is certain. That it’s all a blank page.”
“But surely all of our work will …” Shayndel began.
“Yes?” Leonie said.