Authors: Cynthia Freeman
In the darkness Chavala said, “Come, let’s wash him from our hands.”
With the help of everyone, Dovid was brought home and laid on Avrum’s bed. Chavala was grateful that the strong cherry brandy had dulled his senses so that he felt very little of that short journey. She sponged his body and spoon-fed him broth and that night she lay on the floor mat next to his.
What seemed to Chavala a miracle not to be questioned, the next afternoon Dovid awoke to full consciousness. She would not ask what happened, it was unimportant. Leaving him in Sheine’s care, she and Moishe went to see what they could do to help the bereaved. Except for a few houses all had been burned to the ground. The Chevra Kadisha, the ritual baths, the yeshiva and the
shul
were all in ashes. The cemetery had been desecrated, with many bodies dug up and scattered. The wounded lay in the roads and alleys. Yankel the milkman and his sons were heaping the dead into his cart to be taken up the hill. It was a devastation beyond all comprehension. Not even the devil could have invented such revenge. Manya’s family had all perished. Her eyes had been put out and her two youngest babies thrown from the attic to the ground. Rabbi Gottlieb’s beard had been torn from his face. He had been beaten with clubs until he lay beyond redemption. Those few who remained helped to bury the dead, whether theirs or not, as though the deceased belonged to them all, as indeed they did. The land of Canaan, from where they had all come, bound them together, one circle without beginning, without end.
Then those same who had survived rent their clothing, sat on the ground and recited the Kaddish, mourning the dead, yet praising God all the same….
C
HAVALA’S APPREHENSIONS GREW. SHE
expected the locusts to come hunting for the buried, but she had kept her fears from Dovid. Dovid’s health was returning, and thanks to his inherent strength he had sustained the beating. Her Dovid was a lion.
This morning she could no longer put off telling him of the great danger that hung over their lives. Sitting on the edge of the bed she took his hand in hers. “Dovid, I must tell you something, something I never thought myself capable of … the day of the pogrom … I killed a man …” And she told him every detail, right up to the point where she and Moishe had buried him. “We can’t stay … I only hope you’re well enough to travel.”
He would try to absorb what she’d told him about the killing later. It was no little thing to take in about your wife … a woman not like others, no question about
that
…
“How could I be otherwise with a wife who coddled me like little Chia?”
“I know we must leave. One day he will be discovered, they’ll come back looking for him …”
“All right, darling, but to get to Palestine is no easy matter.”
Palestine? Chavala hadn’t thought of going to Palestine. Why had she thought that what
she
so wanted was all that Dovid wanted too … So her dream that had looked to America was quieted. She knew her father’s wish had always been to die in Eretz Yisroel, and if for nothing else she would have to set aside her own hopes … but after he was gone and she had done her duty, well,
then
she would feel free to speak out. But she knew that talking against going to Palestine while still in Odessa was pointless … the devotion to Zionism was complete in Dovid now. She was sure … hopeful… that once Dovid found out the reality of that land he would want America as much as she. Dovid was, she honestly believed, being seduced by an impossible dream. He would have to see that…
“Right now there’s no way for us to go—”
“Yes, there is… we have the money.”
He looked at her. “We have the money? From what?”
“From my mother’s diamond earrings.”
“
No
, that’s the legacy she left you. It’s my place to provide. I am your husband…”
She didn’t want to argue that, but this was playing with their lives. “Listen to me, Dovid. I know that they will be back, and I can’t eat or sleep for thinking about it. But even if they don’t come back because of him, they will come back. Please, let’s not be here when the pogroms start again. You’ve heard what is happening in Kiev, in the Ukraine and in the settlements, you know the violence and burnings that are going on. No, Dovid, we can’t wait. Next time we might not be so lucky. That you’re alive is a miracle …”
Dovid looked at his wife. Actually he’d wanted this for a long time, and it was Chavala that was making it possible, arguing for it … he only hoped he could make it up to her. “Chavala … I never knew a man could be so lucky … you, my darling, are no ordinary woman…”
“How much do you want for these?” the jeweler in Odessa asked.
Chavala stood nervously as the jeweler looked through his loupe examining the small diamond earrings, wondering how these tiny gems had come to a peasant Small they were, but perfect and blue-white. “So how much do you want?”
How much? Quickly Chavala tried to figure what it would take them to get to Palestine. “Tell me what they’re worth to you, if the price is right, I’ll take it, if not, I’ll go elsewhere.”
He inspected them once again. “Ten rubles.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind, but give me back my earrings—”
“Fifteen. I should have offered only twelve, but… for a pretty—”
“I shouldn’t take less than fifty, but give me forty and they’re yours.”
He laughed, “You’re crazy … I can buy them in the marketplace for—”
“Thank you, but these are very valuable. I know what they’re worth.” She, of course, knew nothing of the kind.
“My final offer is twenty-five.”
“Thirty.” Fire was in her eyes, terror in her heart.
The man laughed, shook his head. Counting out the money he said, “You should be a diamond merchant. To bargain, you know how very well.”
With the rubles securely in her hand, she said, “And you know how to cheat.”
Turning on her heels she walked with high dignity out the door, slamming it behind her.
As she hurried along the street the echo of the
gonifs
words rang in her ears. “You should be a diamond merchant …” A possibility? Well, a small pair of diamond earrings was buying their freedom. Diamonds meant money and money meant freedom, the power to be free, at least to challenge the world. The words would live with Chavala … “You should be a diamond merchant …” If they had lived to escape the tyranny and near-death a few short weeks ago, perhaps anything was possible…
When she returned home it was with the steamship tickets they needed for steerage. But her greatest pleasure was handing Dovid one gold napoleon that she was able to convert from the rubles she still had left even after the tickets had been purchased.
Chavala took some heart that at least geographically they were in the right place. Odessa was within walking distance and on the Black Sea. Since Jews had never been able to own property, that was a problem they didn’t have—there was nothing to dispose of. As always, Jews left with only what they could carry.
So on the twenty-second of May in the year 1906, the Rabinsky-Landau family closed the door behind them. There was nothing to look back on in fond memory, except, perhaps for that small sanctuary marked by a blanket, Chavala and Dovid’s universe.
Moishe wheeled Dovid’s handcart filled with their bedding, clothing, cooking utensils and little Chia’s crib. Raizel carried one basket of food, and Dvora another. Sheine insisted she would be the custodian of her own belongings, which she had meticulously packed in a paper carton.
Dovid and Chavala walked side-by-side, she with the baby in her arms, Dovid holding the rope for the goat to follow.
Avrum clutched his holy books to his chest.
Soon the small assembly was lost from sight, as Yankel the milkman wiped the tears from his eyes and blew his nose on the rag he had taken from his pocket. He stood in the middle of the road long after they disappeared, wishing their journey could have been his own.
When they reached the port in Odessa they were far from being alone. Theirs was hardly an isolated departure … from the small towns and hamlets of the Ukraine and the Russian-controlled parts of Poland hundreds of young men and women were packing their meager belongings, and with tears of good-bye to their parents, leaving for, they hoped, something better. Some merely ran away from home when fathers accused their sons of heresy. Zionism was a forbidden doctrine among many of the rabbis and the most devout. Their departure was met with family denunciation …
God will send the Messiah
was the watchword that rang through the religious of the
shtetl
, wait, wait But the youth of that day was the same as that of any other … it could no longer hold to the misguided rabbis and the devotions of their fathers. A new time was at hand, and the young were moving with the times. If the Messiah had not redeemed them in two thousand years, then they would redeem themselves. Through Zionism.
On rusting, battered, listing freighters they left Odessa. Some would embark at Trieste, or Constantinople, or Port Said, where they would change to slow cargo vessels to the promised land. The Rabinsky-Landau clan’s ancient freighter was bound for Jaffa.
Chavala and the children found space belowdecks, where they prepared their bedding on the floor while Dovid went to make arrangements for the goat. Avrum went up on deck, took out his
tallis
and wrapped himself in it, then swayed back and forth with the ancient rhythm and intoned:
Hear me, Jacob.
Israel, whom I have called:
I am the one.
The beginning and the end.
My own hand founded the earth
and spread out the skies.
Thus saith the Eternal One.
Who created the heavens and
stretched them out.
Who made the earth and all
that grows in it, who gives
breath to its people and spirit
to those who walk on it.
The food supplies were rationed by Chavala. The baby had colic … the goat’s milk had soured. Dvora had dysentery. Raizel seemed to manage the discomforts without complaint, and Sheine became acquainted with a
chevraman
from Galicia whom Dovid distrusted almost as much as the Russian
moujiks.
So far as he was concerned, the Galicianers were selfish
gonifs.
Knowing how difficult things were for Chavala, Dovid was reluctant to mention the change in Sheine, so he assumed a fatherly role on his own … “Sheine, I want you to stay away from this
chevraman.
I don’t like the liberty I saw him take with you on deck last night, putting his arm around you—”
“You’re not my father. I don’t have to listen to you.” There was anger in her eyes, when of course it was love she wanted to show. She had allowed the Galicianer to hold her for Dovid to see, to let him know how desirable she could be to a man. Chavala wasn’t the only one. If she’d had. the jewels he’d given his wife and the black silk dress with the white lace collar, well, she too could look like a queen—
“Sheine, you’ve changed so I hardly recognize you,” he said, shaking his head.
“Oh? You noticed I changed? Did you, Dovid … well, good. I’m a woman, I’m thirteen and—”
“I know you’re a woman, Sheine. But at the risk of sounding like a boring pedant, I’d like to point out that being a woman doesn’t make a person a lady—”
“You have one lady in the family already. I want to be a woman.”
Spoken like a true thirteen-year-old, he thought.
She turned and ran until she reached the place that led her to their dark hold below, where she lay down and cried herself into exhaustion.
When they came into the Mediterranean people ventured on deck. There was music from a concertina, a violin, a tambourine, and the dancing lasted until dawn. Still, this night seemed impossible for Dovid. His worry about the future seemed to eat him up, and the festivities above only grated on his nerves.
As they neared Palestine the sea became calm and the air almost stifling. Although he had never mentioned it, in spite of the tightly bound cloth Chavala had made for him his ribs were far from healed and tonight they ached badly. He watched his wife sitting with the other women as she held little Chia, and wondered why still she hadn’t conceived. A dark thought passed through his mind …his beloved Rivka seemed to have had the same nature; she had conceived late in life, and when he thought of her and her awful death he almost hoped he and Chavala would be childless. After all, there were the girls to raise, and they were like his own. Little Chia would think of him as a
tateh
, and—his thoughts were interrupted as a young man sat down next to him, took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. The shock of dark hair receded, although Dovid would have guessed them to be the same age.
“In a few days well be in Eretz Yisroel. What do you think of that?” the stranger asked.
“What do I think? I think it’s a miracle—”
“Ah … the miracle has just begun. Where are you from?” The stranger was short, stocky.
“Near Odessa. And you?”
“Plonsk. What do you do for a living?”
“Make boots. You?”
The stocky man laughed. “I’m a sort of builder … of dreams … some people say visions …”
Dovid looked carefully at this man. “What’s your name?”
“David Grien.”
“Mine is Dovid Landau.”
The two men shook hands, and Dovid, taken by the man, asked him about himself.
David Grien’s mother had died when he was very young, and his father and he proceeded thereafter to have huge disagreements about their beliefs. In the end David defied his father and announced without preamble his departure to Palestine. That was as far as David wanted to go on about the saga of his life. It was as though the rest of his past were nonexistent, no longer of any consequence. “The past is prologue, as Shakespeare said, I come into this old, new world with very little, yet so much. I bring to Palestine young and healthy arms. The love of work, an eagerness for freedom to live in the land of our forefathers, and a willingness to be frugal. If we are to be redeemed, Palestine must be built with our hands. There we will create a model society, based on economic abundance. But above all, political equality.” He went on and on, like a missionary … with a passion that seemed to Dovid to be seared into his soul. One day, he said, the Jews of the world would rise up, not with arms, not with violence, but with one universal voice … “Let my people go, let them live and multiply in the land of their heritage. The land that was their portion when King David brought the Ark to Jerusalem …” No question, the man was a spellbinder, and totally convinced… and convincing…