It is Manfred’s way to help Henrietta with the daily chores. So much so that when she goes into town, he does the dishes, keeps an eye on the kerosene lamp, takes the laundry off the line, and, needless to say, watches the baby and chases the cattle sent into the garden by Arab shepherds, which exposes him to Sacharson’s monologues, designed to prove that Arab hostility is not directed against Jews in particular, for his garden is invaded too, although everyone knows he is thoroughly Christian. Whatever Herbst does is done, not out of actual will, but in an attempt to keep himself at home. Were he to go into town, he would stop at Shira’s, and he doesn’t want to stop at Shira’s. What does this mean, he doesn’t want to? Not an hour passes without his thinking of her. Still, although he can’t control his thoughts, he can control his feet. And, as long as he can control them, he keeps them at home, despite the fact that, were he to go to Shira, he and his conscience would be clear: if a man’s wife doesn’t offer him comfort, he has the right to do as he likes.
Henrietta doesn’t offer Manfred comfort or intimacy, and Manfred no longer attempts to be intimate with her; she, because of her concerns, and he, because she has trained him not to bother her. Twice a day they eat together, discussing their relatives in Germany, the university, the students and teachers. At the core of the conversation are their daughters, who no longer need them. Zahara lives in Ahinoam. She is accepted by everyone and seems to feel she belongs there. When Zahara first said, “I’m going to a kvutza,” her parents laughed and said, “When you see the privation and hard work, you’ll come running home to Mama.” But she didn’t come home to Mama. She works hard — in the fields, in the garden, anywhere — enjoying her work and eating what she produces, and even her parents benefit from her labor. She sends eggs from the kvutza, each one the size of an ostrich egg. She sends tomatoes whose equal cannot be found in any Jerusalem market and flowers that charm the eye, give off a lovely scent, and have such sweet names. In our textbooks, flower names are translated from Latin, French, and a variety of other languages. Children in the kvutza give them Hebrew names, which I’m inclined to believe go back to the third day of Creation. Zahara has even found herself a young man in Ahinoam. We don’t know who he is — either that tall Avraham whom they call Avraham-and-a-half, who carried her in his arms when she sprained her ankle, or Heinz the Berliner, who manages the kvutza’s business, or yet another one of the young men who live there. When Henrietta met Manfred, she linked her soul to him for the rest of her life. In this time and place, a young girl doesn’t know to whom to cling. So much for Zahara.
Tamara still hasn’t finished her studies. She plans to live in Tel Aviv until she gets her certificate and a teaching job. When does she study? We wonder about that; one more wonder to add to the seven wonders of the world. In the summer? She spends all day at the beach, swimming, sunbathing, exercising, sailing, doing all sorts of delightful things on land and sea. In the winter? She goes hiking, to get to know the length and breadth of the land. When she’s in Tel Aviv, she sleeps all day. As for the night, she spends most of it in one of the cafés. Tamara and Zahara are sisters, with the same father and mother, yet they are not related in looks, height, or dress. But they do resemble each other. I will tell you something that happened to me in this connection. Once, in the winter, I was in Kfar Ahinoam, where I met Zahara. That summer I went down to Tel Aviv to bathe in the sea, where I happened to meet Tamara. I said to her, “I saw you in Kfar Ahinoam.” She stretched to her full height, laughed her bronze laugh, and said, “I grew two heads taller in the interim.” I looked at her, saw my error, and laughed with her. I have related all this to demonstrate that, though they seem dissimilar, they are actually alike. Not only these two, but all of the country’s youth: our young men and women are all alike. When you and I were young, we studied in one room, in one school, from one Gemara text, hoping to resemble our fathers and teachers. But, in the end, we were different from them and different from each other. Here, the schools are all different, the texts are different, and the students end up resembling one another.
I will get back to the heart of my story. Actually, I have nothing new to add. Everything is in order in the Herbst household. Henrietta deals with her concerns, and Manfred deals with his. They eat together and converse with each other. When she is free from her chores for a while, he reads the news to her and adds details excluded from the paper. Many things are happening. Every day Jews are killed in secret as well as in public, and every day there are black borders in the newspaper. At first, when we saw a black band in the paper and read that a Jew had been murdered, we left our meal unfinished. Now that there is so much misfortune, one sits at the table eating bread with butter and honey, reading, and remarking, “A Jew was killed again, another man, woman, child.” We sit with folded hands, yielding to murder, proclaiming, “Restraint, restraint!” They murder, kill, incinerate, while we exercise restraint. As for the authorities, how do they react? They enact a curfew. Our people are contained in their houses. They don’t go out lest they be struck by an arrow, for those who shoot the arrows roam freely, unleashing their weapons anywhere. You can’t say the authorities aren’t doing their job, nor can you say we’re not doing ours. We exercise restraint and show the world how beautiful we are, how beautiful the Jewish ethic is: even when they come to kill us, we are silent.
Manfred sits with Henrietta, reading her the news of the day, explaining England’s strategy, along with the importance of the Arab factor, listing all our disappointments from the Balfour Declaration to the present. Manfred and Henrietta are not politically knowledgeable, and I doubt if Herbst has read a single book about English policy, not to mention Henrietta, who doesn’t even read the newspaper. But since the riots of 1929, even they pay attention to what is going on in the country. With Jews being murdered every day, anyone who lives in the Land of Israel hears his brother’s blood crying out to him from the earth, and he too cries out. The Herbsts, who were remote from politics, began to dabble in them, like every other Jew, when the trouble became more constant.
Manfred and Henrietta are sitting together. He reads and she listens; she questions and he responds, stimulating her with his responses, so that she asks further questions. Manfred says to Henrietta, “You think those who hate Jews love Arabs and those who love Arabs hate Jews. But, in fact, when they denounce Zionism, they denounce us, hoping to win the Arabs.” Manfred, whose ideas lead to memories and whose memories lead to ideas, recounts earlier history, written and unwritten, provocative newspaper articles and virulent sermons delivered in mosques, inciting Arabs against Jews. Henrietta marvels at Manfred’s ability to fathom politics and to put things together. Henrietta accommodates her opinions to his and makes his thoughts hers. If Henrietta understood Manfred in other areas as well as she understands his remarks on the delusions of politics, they would both be better off.
The Herbsts’ position among their Arab neighbors in the Baka area began to deteriorate. Before 1929, Baka was settled by Jews who lived with Arab neighbors in peace and harmony. They rode in the same buses, the same pharmacists filled their prescriptions, and good wishes winged their way from a Jew’s mouth to an Arab’s ear and from an Arab’s mouth to a Jew’s ear. When a Jew greeted an Arab, he greeted him in Arabic, and when an Arab greeted a Jew, he greeted him in Hebrew. It was not mere lip service but a sincere, loving exchange, so that there were those who prophesied that Arabs and Jews would become one nation in the land. How? This could not be spelled out, but what reason doesn’t accomplish is often accomplished by time. The power of time exceeds the power of reason, even of imagination. Suddenly, all at once, came the riots of 1929. Jewish blood was spilled by Arab neighbors who had lived alongside them like beloved brothers. Fear of the Arabs fell upon the Jews, and anyone living in their midst ran for his life. All the Jews who lived in Lower Baka or Upper Baka fled and never returned to their homes in Arab neighborhoods.