There is a street in Szibucz that is called Synagogue Street, after the synagogue that was in that street before Chmielnicki destroyed the town. Now there is neither synagogue nor Jew in that street except for Yeruham and his wife, who have made their home there among the Gentiles.
As I entered, Rachel jumped up to meet me and affectionately pressed my hand. Yeruham bent down, opened the door of the stove, and put in a few pieces of wood. Then he rolled up his sleeves, took hold of both Rachel’s hands, looked at me with one eye, and asked me, “Perhaps we should dance a hora with her?” Rachel pulled her hands away from his, examined the table, and said, “He hasn’t even set a chair for the guest.” Yeruham took a chair and set it in front of me, while Rachel removed the cloth with which she had covered the oranges she had arranged on the table, and went and sat with her husband on the bed.
Yeruham took an orange and peeled it, in the special way of the Land of Israel. First he passed the knife around it and took off the top. Then he made six marks and folded the peel inward and put the orange in front of me whole. Rachel watched his every movement, as one who sees a fine thing and admires it.
I took the orange and recited two blessings over it: the blessing for fruit and the blessing “Who has sustained us to this day.” Then I divided it in two, taking half for myself and giving the other half to Yeruham. Yeruham reddened and said, “You are giving me the piece of orange that you should have given me when I went up to the Land of Israel.”
I said to him, “Now the account is settled. From now on we turn a new leaf.” Rachel looked at her husband’s face and at mine and asked, “What kind of accounts do you have and what secrets are you hiding from me?” We explained the whole matter to her, each of us in his own way.
Rachel said to her husband, “Now the affair is settled, you have nothing more against him.” “Certainly Yeruham has nothing against me,” I said to her, “but I have something against him. There is a song of mine in his possession, and I claim the song from him.”
Yeruham looked at me and said, “What song do I have in my possession?” Said I, “Those rhymes about God above and Jerusalem for thy love. I will not let you off until you recite them.” Yeruham examined me with both his eyes and saw that I wanted to hear them. He stood up, passed his hands over his curls, and recited the poem aloud:
“Devotion faithful unto death
I’ve sworn to thee by God above,
For all I have in Exile here
I’ll give, Jerusalem, for thy love.”
I said to Yeruham, “Is that all? Surely you used to know another verse.” Yeruham went on:
“My life, my spirit, and my soul,
O Holy City, for thee I’ll give–
Awake and dreaming all my joy,
My feast and Sabbath while I live.”
“You are cutting it short,” I said to Yeruham. “Have you finished all your rhymes? If I am not mistaken, the poem has two more verses.”
Yeruham went on, and recited:
“Though your King be gone and your people poor,
Eternal City, lofty Shrine,
The Lord has made thee all our hope,
From ancient days to the end of time.”
And here he took both hands of Rachel and raised his voice and sang:
“And though the tomb may close me in
With all the dead beneath the ground,
In deepest pit thou art my strength,
O fortress city, world-renowned.”
I looked at my watch and said, “The time has come to rise and go.” “Why?” “To have my supper.” “Even at the hotel they will not give you olives,” said Rachel, “so you can eat with us. Everything is ready for supper.” Yeruham fixed his eyes on me and said, “Eat with us, eat with us. If you are afraid we will feed you pheasants in milk, you should know that I do not eat meat either.”
Rachel rose and brought bread, butter, eggs, a dish of rice, and tea. We sat and ate and drank and talked. What did we talk about and what did we not talk about? About everything that arose in the heart, about everything for which the lips found words: about the Land and its beauty, about Jews and Arabs, about the people and about their opinions, about kvutzot and about kibbutzim. What did we talk about and what did we not talk about? Rachel sat glued to her chair and listened, her face growing paler and paler. Once and twice her husband told her to go to sleep, but she did not obey.
Yeruham rose and put some pieces of wood on the stove; Rachel rose, brought us some tea, and sat down again and peeled herself an orange, taking off the top and making marks in the skin — she had taught herself to peel in the way we do in the Land of Israel. The fragrance of the orange was pleasant, and the room was tranquil and content. Behind the window and the door stretched fields of snow, but the light of the stove made us forget their terrors.
Rachel sat and ate the orange quietly, a piece at a time. For many years, neither Rachel nor anyone else in Szibucz had seen an orange, and suddenly she found herself with a crate full of them.
The sweet sun of the Land of Israel, which has concentrated itself in the oranges, shines out of Rachel’s eyes. It cannot be said that Rachel is angry with Yeruham for having left the Land of Israel, for if he had not left, it would not have turned out that he should marry her. In any case, she is surprised at him.
Rachel is a clever woman and does not reveal what is in her heart. She is attached to her husband and attached to her thoughts, and does not seek to bring them together when it is better for them to be separate. So she sits and tries to put one knee on another and hear what her husband tells.
Yeruham tells about our comrades in the Land of Israel. He does not say that he is like everyone else, and even if he said so, you would not believe him. But when he tells about our comrades in the Land of Israel you might imagine that there before you sits a Jewish family man, weighing the deeds of others, cheerful, merry, and laughing. First, because Yeruham is in a good mood at this time, and second, because every person in the Land of Israel is different from his fellows — and if there is one who is not different, he is different because he is not different from everyone else.
Does Yeruham long for the Land and his comrades? One might say Yeruham has put the past out of his heart. And one might also say that a young man in the first month of his marriage has nothing but his wife. But if he could make a hole in heaven and look through there to the Land of Israel, he would watch and observe it.
Rachel sits silent, her head hunched between her shoulders. Sometimes she half closes her eyes and her eyelashes quiver, as if she wishes to grasp with them everything the eye cannot catch, and sometimes she opens her eyes and looks at her husband. Yeruham notices her eyes but pretends that he does not see; he raises his hand toward his curls, pushing them this way and that, and goes on telling. Rachel puts her hands over her heart, like the myrtle, whose leaves cover the stem. And I look on in surprise. I had always thought that Rachel’s chief charm was her upright carriage, and now she shows us that even when she sits bent she is full of charm.
Let us return to our subject and listen to the words of Yeruham our comrade. Or perhaps I will tell all that I heard from Yeruham, and I hope you will be all ears.
Even in his childhood Yeruham wanted to go up to the Land of Israel, although he did not belong to the society of the Szibucz Zionists, who were older than he was. Or perhaps because he did not belong to the Zionist society he understood by himself that talk without action is worth nothing. Or perhaps a thought of this kind came to him later and he ascribed it to that time. Be that as it may, all of Yeruham’s thoughts were about the Land of Israel, and it was these that made him angry all the time because the Holy One, blessed be He, was in no hurry to increase his height so that he could go up to the Land. Once and twice he ran away from his benefactors’ house and they brought him back from the roadside. Finally he realized that this was not the way that would bring him to the Land of Israel and he was sad, depressed, and angry. Suddenly the war came and he was carried away to Vienna. “And here,” said Yeruham, “I must confess that while the whole world was sad I was happy. First, because I had reached the city of Herzl; and second, Vienna is on the way to the Land of Israel.” But he was mistaken. This war made the countries more distant from each other. Only the arrows of death united them.