But with quivering lips and pale face she repeated, almost beseechingly:
“I can’t do it! Don’t you see, I can’t do it! I have seen so much of it. Don’t make me!”
Then he made the mistake of saying:
“Lives were risked to bring you here. Doesn’t the existence of Israel matter to you?”
“Nothing matters to me!” she screamed. “Please let me go.”
“Very well,” he said coldly. “Anna, bring the bandage.” He motioned Grete gently forward and tied the bandage round her eyes. “I’ll send you back to your room,” he said softly, but there was a deep note of disdain and chagrin in his voice.
She turned her pale face to him and said:
“Listen, I’m sorry if I… but he cut her sentence short abruptly, saying:
“There is no need to be sorry. You’re clearly a very egotistical person, and we don’t want people like you. Ours is a voluntary organization, so please don’t imagine that I’m going to press-gang you. Anna, take her.”
And as he turned away, she heard him calclass="underline"
“Cross Grete Schiller’s name off the roster.”
It seemed like a black mark against her, and she bit her lip furiously and said nothing.
A few minutes later, she found herself standing on the river bank by herself. The figure of Anna, foreshortened by distance, stumped off into the surrounding field. Grete made a half-gesture, as if to restrain her or to call her back. Then, a sudden impulse overtook her. She turned and ran towards the administrative building where Peterson sat doing accounts. Grete burst in on her breathlessly.
“Pete,” she cried, “I’m no good, I’m no use to you at all. You must send me away somewhere. I shall only disgrace myself and prove my uselessness if I stay. Already they are beginning to hate me.”
“Pull up that chair,” said Peterson sternly, after a pause. She pushed a box of cigarettes across the table. Grete refused. She burst out vehemently:
“Oh, I wish it was different! Perhaps I am an egotist, perhaps that’s what it is! David is probably right.”
“Of course he’s right! You couldn’t be a woman without being an egotist, any more than you could be a man and not be an opinionated ass. David’s a fool. What’s he been saying to you?”
Grete shook her head. “No, he’s right,” she said. “I care nothing for Palestine. It means nothing to me. All I care about is to see my child again.”
A girl came in and brought cups of tea. “Drink this,” said Peterson and, taking a little tube of pills from an attaché case beside the desk, she dropped a couple into Grete’s cup.
Peterson stared at her for a long time without saying anything. Then she said:
“Of course I can send you away, and perhaps I shall have to. We can’t carry too many pairs of idle hands and large appetites around here. We already have a share of old people whom we look after and who contribute nothing to the work.”
“I’m ashamed of myself,” murmured Grete.
“That,” said Peterson, “is the final egotism. I’m going to give you one more chance before sending you away. If you can’t get on with the grown-ups, we’ll see if you can help with the children. How do you feel about that?”
Grete stood up and said: “Thank you, I will try again.”
“Good. Then you can take night duty, tonight,” Peterson said. “I’ll have you called.”
As Grete turned to the door, Peterson added:
“Grete, the worst of all our weaknesses is self-pity.”
Grete turned to her and replied:
“I see, you are beginning to hate me too.”
“On the contrary,” said Peterson. “You can count on me.”
But Grete shook her head sadly, and went down the staircase in a deep despondency, head bowed. Halfway down, she met David coming up. He hesitated and opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, then changed his mind. He looked away, and passed her without a word.
He found Peterson standing at the window and smoking. She did not turn round when he came in.
“Pete,” he said, “we’ve done our shoot, but I’ve had to cross that wretched Schiller girl off the roster. She’s an uncooperative prig and a true-blue hysteric. It is infuriating that she is as attractive as she is.”
“She also happens to have spent her last eighteen months in a German officers’ brothel.” She turned and faced him, and they stood staring at each other for a long time without saying any more.
Peterson was as good as her word, and that evening Rose Fox came over to Grete’s table at dinner.
“I hear they’ve posted you to night work with the children. I’m glad and I hope you are too. There is a lot to observe and a lot of them who are sympathy-starved.” Her own two boys were among the inhabitants of the children’s camp. Grete liked her immediately, and together the two young women finished their dinner, gossiping lightly before traversing the gardens which the children themselves had planted and were working, as part of their education.
“Here,” said Rose, “the future farmers of the settlement are making their first experiments with flowers and vegetables. As you see, some are lazier than others. But no one could accuse David’s son of laziness.”
“David’s?” asked Grete with surprise.
“You know David,” said the girl Rose. “David Eveh…
“I had no id… idea… stammered Grete, “that he had a… child.”
“Well, all these trees are his work,” said Rose, pointing to a clump of eight young peach trees.
Rose whispered about the sleeping children; they came to a cubicle with four beds in it. The psychologist pointed a finger and whispered to Grete:
“That’s David’s son.” An exceptionally handsome boy about eleven or twelve years old, bearing a marked resemblance to David, lay asleep. One hand protruded slightly from under the pillow. It held an imitation pistol of wood. The doctor quietly removed it and put it on the shelf.
“Like father like son,” she said, and added: “Now I’m going to leave you. Call me if there’s any need. This bell rings above my bed.”
But neither that night nor on the succeeding nights of that week did it prove necessary. For the first time, Grete began to feel that she had found a sphere in which her efforts could prove useful. The work was not only rewarding from the point of view of psychological interest, but because the hours were long and her duties tired her sufficiently in order for her to sleep well.
The children were very various in background and education and temperament. They were treated already as budding farmers and, apart from tending their personal cottage gardens with a fervour bordering on religiosity, they played quite a part in the adult settlement. They sometimes stood in for old Karam, the shepherd from Yemen, and grazed the settlement flocks on the rich water meadows by the border. They harvested the apples and the potatoes with the grown-ups. All this activity was quite apart from their regular school hours, and Grete played a role in most of these activities with them. Though the night duties appealed to her most because of the silence, and the time to reflect, in the practical field she found she had a lot to learn from the children themselves. They proved kindly and spirited instructors. They treated her a little patronizingly, and at the same time took an almost paternal pride in her achievements through their teaching. Paul, David’s son, a mischievous good-looking small version of his father, a self-appointed teacher in matters military and agricultural when it came to showing off either to her or to her charges, found her one day digging in the vegetable patch. He approached her nonchalantly, his wooden pistol tucked in his Arab belt and his American tee-shirt emblazoned by a sheriff’s star.