The Land Agent Read online

  ‘Ah yes, PICA,’ she said. ‘Your Anonymous Donor was here only recently.’

  Lev didn’t know if she meant here in Palestine or here in this house. ‘That is correct,’ he said, immediately regretting such a banal comment.

  ‘Of course it is correct. Mr Greenspan had some business dealings with him. My husband is in printing. There was talk of his firm producing labels for the winery. Are you connected with such matters, Mr Sela?’

  ‘I am a land agent for PICA, Mrs Greenspan. That is how I met Cel… Miss Kahn.’

  ‘Nothing to do with labels then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or the winery?’

  ‘No, madam.’

  ‘Or the glass bottle factory?’

  ‘Only land.’

  Mrs Greenspan went quiet after that, selected a piece of apple strudel from the top tier, sipped on her tea. Celia had produced a fan from somewhere and was gently cooling herself. Lev felt the tea beginning to make him sweat. A few more minutes passed in silence but for the clinking of tea cups on saucers until Celia stood up and announced: ‘I thought Mr Sela and I might go for a walk.’

  Mrs Greenspan shuddered herself into alertness. ‘I shall go and get ready then.’

  ‘There is no need, Mrs Greenspan. I am sure Mr Sela is quite knowledgeable about where to take a young woman for a stroll.’

  ‘I cannot possibly let you go unescorted with someone you hardly know. With someone I do not know at all.’

  ‘Mr Sela was kind enough to bring you flowers. Surely that speaks for the propriety of his nature.’

  ‘You are a guest in my house. I must insist on my responsibility to chaperone you.’

  ‘I reassure you, Mrs Greenspan, I am a modern woman quite capable of taking care of herself.’

  Mrs Greenspan pushed herself up from her chair so that she stood face to face with Celia. Lev decided this was an opportune moment to tackle the tongs and sweeten his tea. Mickey was right. The matter of courting was indeed a war.

  It was a war that Celia won, for within a few minutes the two of them were walking together down the garden path, the door closing perhaps a little too loudly behind them. Celia blew out a sigh.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to die in there.’

  ‘She did seem rather overbearing.’

  ‘The whole place is overbearing. Did you see that furniture? And the darkened room? It is as if they are trying to shut out the outside world. Keep themselves within their little England.’

  ‘What is her husband like?’

  ‘A fussy mouse of a man. I am so glad you came to rescue me.’ She linked her arm in his. ‘Now, where shall we go?’

  Lev took her down to the beach. It was a delightful time to be there, in the light breeze that always rose with the setting sun, the fishermen out on the rocks with their rods and line, the seabirds frantically searching out their night-time nests among the cliffs and the trees. They took off their shoes, the sand crunchy and warm, a salty tang in the air, their skin glowing, the pressure of her arm on his, feelings of affection unspoken, a sense of wholeness. Was this only his reality? Or did she feel the same? He looked across at her, her lips bitten into a thoughtfulness. A few grains of sand powdered her cheek, he would like to kiss them away. The fabric of her dress against the bareness of his lower arm, the sense of her body swaying beside him, he could walk on like this forever.

  ‘Let’s go up there,’ she said, pointing to the very same dune where he had once raced Amshel. ‘We can have a view.’

  They had their own kind of race to the summit, she dragging him back whenever he moved ahead, he doing the same to her. This physical boisterousness between them getting him all worked up, making him want to do things with her he had never wanted to do with a woman before. By the time they reached the top, he was hot, breathless, his skin tingling, his senses alive to everything around him. She sat down, motioned for him to sit beside her. Which he did. He took her hand, clasped it to him, her fingers folding around his own. They stared out to sea. The sun reddening now as it slotted down towards the horizon.

  ‘Scotland is out there somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘And so is Poland.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘There must be something, surely?’

  ‘We were hated there.’

  ‘What about family?’

  ‘There’s no-one left.’

  ‘You are lucky to have Amshel here then.’

  ‘Yes. Amshel.’

  ‘He is doing well on the kibbutz.’

  ‘I am glad to hear that.’

  ‘He works hard. The members like that.’

  ‘He was always good with his hands.’

  ‘He is a good storyteller too. He makes me laugh. Which is not easy these days.’

  Lev watched as a male bather swam in on the surf, scrambled to his feet, then raced along the beach. It was as if he had just witnessed the evolution from fish to man in the space of several seconds. He thought about sharing this observation with Celia, he thought about trying to make her laugh the way Amshel did. Instead, he asked: ‘Do you miss Scotland?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What do you miss?’

  ‘It’s a beautiful country. Very lush and green. Even in the city there are lots of parks.’

  ‘Do they hate the Jews there too?’

  ‘The Protestants and Catholics are so busy hating each other, there is no hatred left over for us. The Jewish community is prospering.’

  ‘So why did you leave?’

  ‘I told you once before. I wanted a new life.’

  ‘With Jonny?’

  ‘Yes, Jonny was part of my reason. But I was also attracted to the idea of communal settlements.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Let’s just sit for a while.’

  The sun melted away before their eyes, tainting the bay and the villas on the surrounding hills with a coral hue. The palm trees rustled their farewell to the day and a coolness entered the air. Lev remembered when he had been up here with Amshel, how they had called out to the camel drivers on their march up the beach. Where had they been going? Acre? Damascus? Beirut? Such exotic places. It was hard to believe this was his world now. He didn’t miss Poland at all. With its dark forests and harsh winters. He had never seen the ocean until he had set sail for Palestine. And now he had the Mediterranean Sea on his doorstep, this wonderful light that made everything shimmer with an unearthly glow. Celia sitting by his side.

  ‘I always feel sad when I watch a sunset,’ she said. ‘Sad but grateful.’

  He didn’t know what he felt about the sunset. All he knew was that he had never felt happier.

  Twenty-five

  LETTER 13

  Haifa

  My dear Charlotte

  I am writing to you from the seaside town of Haifa. You would love it here. It is such a pretty place settled around a sandy bay with white-washed villas and palm trees. I wish I could properly describe to you the blue of the Mediterranean, for I do not think such a colour exists in Scotland.

  I had forgotten what it was like to be by the sea, to have my lungs fill up with that invigorating air, to walk barefoot on warm sand. I have only been here one night and one day and I feel so much better already. I slept so soundly last night on a proper bed with freshly starched sheets and a pillow filled with down. I am staying with an elderly couple from London, Mr and Mrs Greenspan, who have a nephew on my kibbutz. They are pleased to host his comrades like me who are in desperate need of some rest. They do try to be strict with me, however, and the atmosphere in their house can be quite oppressive but it is only a small price to pay for clean bed linen and a soft mattress.

  I am so glad to be away from the kibbutz. The situation has become very tense in the Jordan Valley. Gangs of Arab bandits have been crossing into the area from Trans-Jordan, attacking Jewish settlements. Only last week, a man was killed in the fields at a kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee. All for a wood
en pick and some binding ropes. All of the members of my settlement must do guard duty now to cover four-hour shifts during the night. We have one rifle and one Webley revolver to protect ourselves, leftover relics from the Great War. We don’t even know if they work properly as we don’t want to waste the little ammunition we have in order to find out. Can you imagine me walking up and down our perimeter with my rifle staring into the darkness for sight of a marauder? To be honest, I am both scared and excited at the same time. We also have acquired an Alsatian dog that barks at every fieldmouse and spider, so we are always on constant alert.

  Here in Haifa, the situation does not seem so bad. There are many building projects going on here. Both Jews and Arabs have work. Where there is work, there is money to spend, people are happier. It is the same for Haifa, it is the same for Glasgow. Despite the lack of tension, Mr Greenspan has still warned me off wandering into the Arab neighbourhoods of the town.

  Lev, the land agent, came to visit me today. Do you remember him? He lives in Haifa so I asked him to call on me. His brother, Amshel, is presently living on the kibbutz, building a children’s house. He has done a good job. It is nearly finished with space for twelve children sleeping in bunk beds. We only have five children at the moment so this extra space is a symbol of our optimism. He is quite a character, this Amshel. We call him Amshel the Storyteller as he has so many tales to tell. I don’t know if half of them are true but I love the ones about the salt mines in Poland where the miners have carved buildings and statues into the salt. I asked Amshel why he didn’t stay on with us as he is a hard worker and the members obviously like him. He asks me why we should think ourselves such proud socialists when we live on land bought for us by our Anonymous Donor, one of the richest men in the world. It is a good question for which I have no ready answer. He wants to go to America as soon as possible to make his fortune. How he will manage to do this I do not know.

  I was telling you about Lev. We went for a walk together on the beach. Mrs Greenspan wanted to chaperone me but I told her I was a modern girl who did not need an escort. She was not happy about this arrangement and has scowled at me in disapproval ever since. I wonder how she thinks we men and women live together on the kibbutz. I also wonder if I should tell her about her precious little nephew. He is sharing a tent with a Hungarian girl who in the last week looks as though she could be carrying the sixth child of our settlement.

  Lev took my hand as we walked along the shore. He is not nearly as confident as his brother, who comes to my tent, stretches out on one of the other cots, reads his newspapers and smokes his cigarettes as if he owns the place. I could actually feel Lev trembling as we strolled together, which in turn made me quite excited. Oh, Charlotte, we women are such fickle creatures sometimes. It certainly was not unpleasant to be reminded what it is like to be desired as a woman. However, I do not want to fill Lev with hope, for him to fail to realize that a woman’s need for tenderness can be confused with love.

  The bad news is that Lev told me the land we so needed for access to the river has been sold to someone else. My comrades will not be happy. I am not happy. The failure of this land deal will have a huge impact on morale. I wonder if our little settlement will be able to survive in such circumstances. No water, no money, so much work, and now bandits as well. It is a very hard life.

  I must finish this letter, Charlotte, so I can take it to the Post Office before I catch the train back to the kibbutz. I fear I could be spending the entire morning there as I have a whole pile of letters and parcels to send on behalf of my comrades. No doubt there will be a huge amount to collect as well. Perhaps even one from you. Letters from home. They are the nourishment of our existence out here. Perhaps even more important than water. Please write back soon.

  All my love

  Celia

  Twenty-six

  THE SHUDDERING WOKE LEV from his dreams, almost tipped him out of his bed. He heard Madame Blum screaming: ‘We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die.’ He looked under the bed. Nothing there. Another judder. Another cry from Madame Blum: ‘Armageddon. Armageddon is here.’ Books fell out of shelves, a framed watercolour of Haifa swayed on its hook, crashed to the tiled floor. He jumped out of bed. The ground shook. Where was there to run to when the whole world was in spasms? Madame Blum again: ‘Where are my candlesticks?’ Mickey’s voice: ‘Get under the table. Under the table. It will pass.’ Lev at the doorway to his room, hands placed against the jambs for balance, under the lintel for protection, watermelons rolling around the hallway. Another tremor. Screaming coming from outside now, the smash of tiles off roofs, a glimpse through the window of palm trees swaying and bending, bunches of dates breaking, dropping to the earth with a hiss and thud. Then everything settling, rocking back into place. Lev held his breath, waited. Silence except for Madame Blum sobbing in the kitchen. An automobile horn. A generator starting up. Lev waited. Voices in the street. Mickey coming through to the hallway, saying: ‘It’s over. Don’t worry. It’s over.’

  Haifa escaped relatively unscathed. Madame Blum lost some dishes, picture frames, a lamp; Mickey some watermelons, a few bottles of vodka. Elsewhere, news of damage caused by the earthquake arrived sporadically. Communication systems were down in many places, only a few telegrams and telegraphs getting through. Landslides were being reported. The Jordan River was dammed up. Reports of many deaths in Nablus, also in Jerusalem and Trans-Jordan. Buildings collapsed everywhere. The famous Winter Palace Hotel in Jericho gone. ‘God is punishing us,’ cried Madame Blum, but for what she wouldn’t say. Mickey was more pragmatic: ‘What do you expect? The hotel was built with mud.’ Lev worried about Celia. The Jordan Valley had split in places. There had been casualties in Tiberias. But no information had seeped through about any incidents in the settlements.

  The next morning, Lev went down to the beach on his way to work. There were a few topless palms, trunks snapped, bunches of dates scattered across the sand like dead bodies, armies of ants carrying off the spoils. Other than that, everything appeared as normal. Yet, he still felt shaken, unsure, disorientated. The ground for his footsteps, once so secure, could no longer be trusted. His world, once so fixed and solid, was now a fragile place. If he could not rely on this Earth, what could he rely on? Who could he rely on?

  He certainly could rely on the Haifa Central Post Office. For here it was business as usual. The building could not afford to be otherwise, hosting as it did the daily sackloads of letters and parcels arriving on trains from Damascus, on boats from Egypt and England, in post-vans from Jerusalem and Jaffa, in the saddlebags of horses from outlying villages. Sammy, in particular, took advantage of this postal hub, collecting international stamps in several albums, carefully steaming them off the correspondence that arrived at the desks of PICA from all over the world. As for the domestic stamps of Palestine, the Arabs and Jews argued fiercely over their design and wording just as much as they argued over Jerusalem and everything else.

  On this day, the postal halls were particularly busy. As Lev waited in line, he watched the anxious customers crowding outside the few telephone booths to check for news of loved ones. Celia’s settlement had no telephone, he didn’t even know where the nearest one might be. But he had just seen the morning’s newspapers – still no reports of any casualties in the Jordan Valley. He collected the usual healthy stack of letters for PICA, flicked through the bundle, these postmarks from far-off places still giving him a thrill. There was even one from Australia, two or three from the United States. It wasn’t even seeing his own name that first caught his eye. But the slightly raised letter ‘v’ in the word ‘Lev’. It was a typewritten tic carried deep in his memory, the one flaw in that magnificent machine of his youth with the name ‘Kanzler’ scrolled in gold across the top. There could be only one source for this letter which he now held in his shaking hand.

  He ignored it at first. Buried the letter deep in the pile which he carried back to the office. He was surprised not to find Sammy already there
, waiting eagerly for the correspondence that would begin his day. Lev left the bundle on Sammy’s desk, extracted the letter addressed to him, went and sat in his own room. He took up his usual posture with his chair swung round to face the open window, his feet resting up on the sill. He looked at the envelope in his hands. ‘Ewa Kaminsky,’ he said to himself. ‘How is life treating you in America?’

  New York

  My dear Lev

  So many years we didn’t communicate. It was a great mistake. Your father and I thought you wanted a fresh start, that it was best for you to get on with this life of yours with Sarah in Palestine without the burden of all our previous tragedies. We were wrong. It was not good for a father and son to be apart like this, but Amshel broke your father’s heart by leaving, then the death of the two boys in the war, he thought it was best to let you go. And now this. Your letter. And this change of name. From Gottleib to Sela. How would we ever have found you?

  Your father is dead, Lev. He was killed more than two years ago in a stupid, stupid accident. He was run over by an automobile just outside our apartment. I heard it happen. The window was open, it was one of those hot New York summer evenings, still light outside. Your father never did get used to those automobiles. Horses and donkeys was what he knew. I rushed outside. He died in my arms. I am so sorry I have to write to tell you this.

  I want you to know we had a good life together here in America. For these few years, he was happy. We were happy. He had stopped drinking. Even if he had wanted to continue, it would have been difficult as it is forbidden to buy alcohol here. He was working in construction. There is so much building going on in this city. Bridges. Roads. Office buildings that scrape the sky they are so tall. Your father was a strong man, he worked hard. I also had work. As a secretary, of course. We had a nice apartment with electricity and an inside toilet. Outside in the streets, the sewers are buried underground in pipes. What a wonderful place this is.