His love for Rebecca intensified so much in those days that he had to scrunch up his face to recall the reason for the eternal quarrel between them that had made Rebecca weep for seven whole years now. Nehemiah almost stopped giving speeches, spent less time in the community center, wrote fewer letters to Zionist leaders, and didn't stop trying to seduce his wife, who looked at him with a delight that once alarmed her when she discovered it herself. Nehemiah would look at his son and think that maybe his son was happy in his ignorance and that shamed him. He was now working a few hours a day for a Hungarian who built wine barrels and was an expert in sawing trees, polishing them, and cutting them and mixing lacquer and other preservatives. Ebenezer was willing to lie around his place all day, refused to go to school, and the Hungarian would look at him through his pince-nez, laugh, and say: They want educated Jews, but only ignoramuses will build them a land! And he laughed. And at that time, after the Arab pogroms and the great theft of the Bedouins who emptied the barns came the Wondrous One on a noble white mare, with thin legs and a long delicate neck. He sat on a tufted saddle built like a kind of dwelling and was dressed like a high priest with a breastplate and emeralds and a silk gown and a sky blue kaffiyeh, he was girt with a sword and two rifles and belts of rifle bullets, and everybody was sure a distinguished Arab robber had come to the settlement. As they stood in tribute to his impressive appearance, the Wondrous One got off the mare, who whinnied and stroked his supple back with her head, and he said in an ancient Hebrew accent: Hear 0 Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One. And when everybody was stunned and even awestruck, the man said: Joshua conquered Canaan by sword and storm, you won't conquer it by planting vineyards. I live in the Arabian Desert. Who I am doesn't matter, I heard about Jews who came to renew a kingdom and I said to myself, I'll teach them war against the Arabs, you see the Bedouins and you don't know their dignity and malice and cunning, you fight the wrong enemy with sticks.
He pitched a tent for himself on the edge of the settlement and would cook his meals with his own hands. Women from all around came in carts to see the prince of the Jews. A new wind started blowing in the settlement, backs that had been bowed for years suddenly straightened up. Even Ebenezer's wood carvings stopped interesting folks. The Wondrous One taught them savagery and speed and surprise and night raids and aggressive defense and outflanking maneuvers. He taught smells and winds and seeing in the dark and how to tell an enemy horse from one that isn't by its droppings and how it creases the leaves and branches, and everybody became eager for war. And once again a light shone in the beautiful faces of the men who had come to the Land to build. The Wondrous One was cruel, fast, mysterious, and decisive, but after the training and fabulous nocturnal sorties he would close himself in his tent in silence. One night, when the men stayed in the fields on a test sortie beyond the settlement, only he and the women were left, the Wondrous One entered Rebecca's house, sat on the mat, politely dismissed the Arab woman, and the Arab woman fell on her face and wept to hear the flowery Arabic in his mouth and said that was the Jewish messiah, and left, and then the Wondrous One drank a cup of coffee Rebecca served him and told her she was a beautiful woman and belonged to the desert. And for the first time in seven years, Rebecca stopped weeping. Long afterward, Boaz, Rebecca Schneerson's grandson and son sat, and his yellow-green devil eyes will stare at her with a wicked smile and will scold her serenely for reciting Psalms in the war and saving him from the death he deserved more than Menahem Henkin, Yoske, the naked Nahazia, and Yashka, and would ask again as before what the Wondrous One said that night the old people had been telling about for fifty years now, and she will say: Nothing, Boaz, it's all legends, he wanted me to come with him to the desert, they're all like Joseph Rayna, words, words.
After he left Rebecca's house, the Wondrous One went to his tent. And after the men returned, he blessed them, spoke of future wars, tried to hint at the essential missions, packed up his tent, and at night he vanished and nobody knew when or where. The next night, the Bedouin herds came onto the fields that had just been planted. On the Sabbath morning a man came to the synagogue and yelled: Herds in the fields! The rabbi wasn't in the settlement that Sabbath and an argument broke out about whether war against the Bedouins was a life-saving act that canceled the Sabbath. Nehemiah jumped up, mounted his mare, and started galloping. When the others saw him, they also mounted their mares and donkeys and still wrapped in prayer shawls, they dealt the Bedouins a crushing blow, as they had learned from the Wondrous One. After that, Nehemiah never went back to the synagogue. Then Rebecca started coming to the synagogue. Malicious rumors spread, but Rebecca sat in the women's section and smiled at the Ark of the Covenant as if she were conversing with the Holy One Blessed Be He. The tears were seen again in her eyes. She didn't pray but sat and stared at God in the Ark of the Covenant and was silent. After she returned from the synagogue she saw Nehemiah pulling up crabgrass. Bitterness filled her. Nehemiah tried to kiss her but she slipped away from him. So beautiful she was in the morning light! Ebenezer sat in the corner of the yard and carved a bird's face. And then the sound of the locusts was heard. Everybody ran to the fields and made bonfires. Some tried to get rid of the locusts with prayers and others by banging on cans. One of the bonfires spread and burst into a conflagration that reached Nathan's cowshed. Rebecca, who saw the fire, ran and stumbled into a pothole. An Arab galloping by her whipped her. She tried to pull the whip and bring him down from the horse, but the whip slipped out of her hand. She was hit in the face and covered with blood. There were no paved roads and water flooded from the gutter. The roof of Nehemiah and Rebecca's house burst and a week later, when the first rains of the season began, the strongest the Land had ever known, the roof Nehemiah tried in vain all night long to reinforce with a pole collapsed. The clothes in valises in mothballs, waiting to go to America, were flooded, everything turned into pulp in one downpour and Rebecca saw all the tears she had hidden among the clothes and they melted right before her eyes. Your tears have brought destruction upon us, said Nehemiah bitterly, but she didn't think he deserved a reply. The cows were terrified by the torches, the horses whinnied, and Nathan's donkey burst into the house and crushed the ladder Nehemiah was standing on and holding up the roof. The Arab woman fled in panic and five days later the cracks took on a brown-yellow tone and Rebecca sat and looked at the destroyed house and at Nehemiah, whose body and spirit were broken and then suddenly, he turned pale, dropped, and shut his eyes. A few days later, the doctor was called from the nearby settlement. He examined Nehemiah and brought another expert from Jaffa who came riding on a brown horse and the two of them told Rebecca that Nehemiah wasn't suffering from any disease they knew. Rebecca knew what Nehemiah's disease was, but didn't think the doctor would understand. As far as she was concerned, her husband's shriveled face, his shut eyes, his burned skin, and his broad forehead constituted authentic proof of the disease of despairing love that Rebecca, as somebody who had never loved except through somebody else, knew well. For many days, Rebecca sat at Nehemiah's bed and nursed him in his illness. And Ebenezer, the first Sabra in the settlement, would carve wood and be silent and Nehemiah woke up one day, stared wearily and dully at his son and his wife and whispered: Stop weeping; extinguish the tears, you won. We'll do what you want!