Or Uri.
Look, just like Dushkin, I have a tear In my eye. Suddenly I, too, am a Samovar. It is not sadness at my death, you know that, it's sadness for the people and their children and for the mountains all around. What will happen? What have we done, and what shall we do now? Yes. Angst. Don't smile like that.
Friday night. In every kitchen now they are cooking chicken necks stuffed with groats, stuffed intestines, stuffed peppers. The poor people have cheap sausage with mustard. For me, of course, only raw vegetables and fresh fruit. Even the quarrels, the insults hurled every now and again from balcony to balcony, are in Yiddish: Bist du a wilde chayye, Mister Menachem, du herst mich, bist du a meshuggener?
That is how it is in Jerusalem.
They say that in Galilee, in the valley, in Sharon, and in the remote parts of the Negev a kind of mutation in taking place: A new race of peasants is emerging. Laconic. Sarcastic. Single-minded. Dedicated.
I don't know.
You're the one who knows.
For two and a half years now, you have been wandering among the kibbutzim, dashing from place to place in their dusty trucks, making notes, interviewing, drawing comparisons, in khaki trousers and a man's shirt with large breast pockets, compiling statistics, sleeping in pioneer huts, sharing their frugal fare. Perhaps you can even speak to them in their own language. Perhaps you even love them.
A tough, spartan woman, uncompromising, strolling around those camps without the least embarrassment, collecting material for an original piece of social-psychological research. Stubbing out your cigarette as if you were pressing a pushpin into the table. Lighting up again at once, not blowing the match out but waving it almost violently to and fro. Entering the details of the dreams of the first native-born generation on little cards. "Patterns of Behavior and Normative Ideas Among the Products of a Collective Education." Mina, I am prepared to give my wholehearted admiration to those children, and to their pioneering parents, the enthusiasm, the silent heroism, the iron will, and the graceful manners.
And to you.
Mina, I take my hat off to you.
That is to say — forget it. A Viennese gesture. There, I've already regretted it.
As for me — what am I?
A weak Jew. Consumed by hesitations. Dedicated but apprehensive. And now, in addition to everything else, seriously ill. My modest contribution: here, in Jerusalem, in a neighborhood of lower-middle-class immigrants from Russia and Poland, I have put up a fight, as long as my strength lasted, without counting the hours, even working at night sometimes, against the dangers of diphtheria and dysentery.
Moreover, there are my chemical interests. Homemade explosives. It is possible that Uri can already see what I refuse to see. Perhaps a formula is really taking shape in my mind for the large-scale production of homemade explosives. Or at least I may be able to suggest a starting point to the Hagganah. In this area, at any rate. In the early hours of this morning, I devoted some thought to the salts we possess in relative abundance, such as potassium chlorate and barium nitrate. Any porous substance, such as chalk or charcoal, can be saturated with liquid oxygen. I must stop recording details like these. My heart is heavy because I do not want to devise formulas for explosives or to contribute to wars, but Uri is right, and so I am obliged to do so. But the sadness, Mina, how great it is. And the humiliation.
I have tried to resist this obligation. I have even taken certain steps. I refer to the poignant conversations I had at the beginning of the summer with an Arab friend, a colleague, a doctor from Katamon, Dr. Mahdi. Need I go into details? The abyss that divides two doctors of moderate views, who both abhor bloodshed. My pleas. His pleas. The historical argument. On the one hand and on the other. The moral argument. On the one hand and on the other. The practical argument. On the one hand and on the other. His certainty. My hesitations. I must try again. I must appeal to him at this late hour and ask him to arrange for me to meet the members of the Jerusalem Arab Committee and make them think again. I still have an argument or two left.
Only the heart says: It's all in vain. You must hurry up. Uri is right, and so is the Underground broadcast on the short waves: "To die — or to conquer the mountain."
I will not deny it, Mina: as usual I am very frightened.
And I am also ashamed of my fear. Let us not be halted by the corpses of the weak, as Bialik says, they died in servitude, may their dream be sweet to them, onions and garlic in plenty, bountiful fleshpots. I am quoting from memory. My copy of Bialik's poems is in the bookcase some five or six paces away, but I don't have the strength to get up. And anyway, I strenuously reject the line about the dream of onions and garlic. Insofar as it concerns me, you know full well what is in my dreams. Wild, even rough women — yes. Murderers and shepherdesses from the Bedouin — also. And my father's face with his lawyer, and sometimes longing for river and forest. But no onions and no garlic. There our national poet was mistaken, or perhaps he merely exaggerated so as to rouse the people's spirit. Forgive me. Once more I have trespassed on a domain in which I am no expert.
And you are in my dreams, too. You in New York, in a youthful dress, in some paved square that reminds me of Moshavot Square in Tel Aviv. There is a jetty there, and you are at the wheel of a dusty jeep, smoking, supervising Arab porters who are carrying cases of arms for the beleaguered Hebrew community. You are on duty. You are on a secret mission. You are throbbing with efficiency or moral indignation. "Shame on you," you reproach me. "How could you, and at a time like this? Disgusting." I admit it, fall silent, recoil, and retreat to the far end of the jetty. Reflected like a corpse in the water, I hear distant shots and suddenly agree with you in my heart. Yes, you are right. How could 1.1 must go at once, just as I am, without a suitcase, without an overcoat, this very minute.
The shame is more than I can bear. I wake up in pain and take three pills. I lie down again, wide awake and alarmed, and hear outside, just beyond the shutters, on a branch, at a distance of perhaps two feet from me, a night bird. It is uttering a bitter, piercing shriek, in a kind of frenzy of wounded self-righteousness, repeating its protest over and over again: Ahoo. Ahoohoo. Ahoo. Ahoooo.
Jerusalem
Saturday evening
September 6, 1947
Dear Mina,
It will not be easy for me to wean myself from this child.
He spent the whole morning here, painstakingly copying facts out of the gazetteer and sketching a military plan for the capture of the mountain ranges that command Jerusalem from the north. Then he marked on his map the crossroads and the strategic points. On a separate sheet of paper, he allocated storm troops to each of the key buildings in Jerusalem, such as the central post office, the David Building, the radio station, the Russian Compound, the Schneller Barracks, the YMCA tower, and the railway station. And all the while he did not disturb me as I lay resting on the sofa. He is a thin, fair-haired child; his movements are abrupt, embarrassment and aspirations shine in his green eyes, but his manners are impeccable. Twice he interrupted his game and made me some coffee. He straightened my blanket and replaced the sweat-drenched pillow under my head with a fresh one. It was almost noon before he apologetically asked me my opinion of his work. Despite all my principles I praised it.
Uri said:
"I've got to go home soon and have my lunch. Please rest so you'll be strong enough to do the experiment tonight. I'm leaving a Matosian cigarette pack here, Dr. Emanuel; inside there are four live bullets we can take the gunpowder out of. And in my sock I've got the pin from a hand grenade. It's a bit rusty, but it's all there. I found it, and I've brought it for you. From our roof I counted nine British tanks in a shed in Schneller. Cromwells. Is it true, Dr. Emanuel, that a tank is finished if you put some sugar in the engine?"