One warm spring day, on my first visit to Jerusalem, I decided to make an automobile trip to the Dead Sea. My hotelkeeper recommended a private chauffeur well known in the city as a good mechanic and, particularly, as a capable guide for the road between Jerusalem and the Jericho environs. Within half an hour I heard a resounding baritone in the corridor asking for the American tourist, and immediately after a young man appeared in my door, about thirty years old, tall and straight, with gray smiling eyes and a strong, frank, glowing face. A blood-red scar ran diagonally across his right cheek from the temple to his clean-shaven upper lip. Although the scar marred the fine contours of his face, it lent him a virile charm. A hidden light seemed to suffuse his countenance; it was hard to tell whether it was his light gray eyes or the glowing red scar that illuminated his face.
“Are you the Mister who wants to go to the Dead Sea?” he began directly in broken English, clipping each syllable.
“Yes, I am the Mister,” I replied.
“And I am the chauffeur!” he introduced himself, bowing with a comic theatrical air, and immediately switched to Yiddish. “I must warn you, Mister, that I am not on such intimate terms with the English language as you may imagine. If you have any intention of conversing during the trip, you’ll have to talk simple Yiddish to me.”
“Very well,” I replied, “if necessity demands it, we’ll talk simple Yiddish.”
“Because, naturally, in America the Almighty has probably kept you safe from the Holy Tongue?”
His manner of speech, his frank glowing face, and his theatrical conduct all seemed very quaint to me, and I retorted in the same tone.
“How should Hebrew come my way?” I replied. “Is it manna which pours from the skies?”
“I thought so from the start. One can tell a duck by its feathers. . . . What is your business, over there in America? A wealthy cloakmaker? A big shopkeeper with a hundred workers sewing on buttons?”
“Look here, young man,” I said to him, “do you want to know everything at one shot? We’ll have time to get acquainted—there’s a long trip ahead of us.”
“Well, all right!” he said in American fashion. “Where is your suitcase?”
When we left the hotel and approached his trim and shiny automobile, he called out to me: “Would you like to cut down on your expenses? I could try to get another passenger, a lady companion for you.”
“Who might the lady companion be?” I asked.
“A very nice young female. I brought her here from the Emek—the Valley of Jezreel. A Jewish girl from Czechoslovakia. Her name is Edna.”
“Edna?” I repeated. “Is that a Czech name?”
“A pretty name, isn’t it? I love it!”
“And the girl?”
“We needn’t say anything about the girl,” the chauffeur answered crossly, giving me a dark glance, whether in jest or earnest I could not determine. “She’ll be going back home to Prague in a few days. A happy journey to her!”
“Very well,” I said, “we’ll see what a Czechoslovak girl is like.”
The chauffeur took his seat behind the wheel, jauntily tossed his thick mop of hair, and started the automobile. He sat at the steering wheel easily, gracefully, as one might sit at a piano fingering the keys. The car, obeying his slightest motion, slid lightly and softly over the hilly streets of Jerusalem. In one of the narrow alleys our road was blocked by a party of Bedouins, crawling along on their overburdened mules. The chauffeur shouted at them in perfect, rhetorical Hebrew: “Ho, you people who are likened to a donkey, clear the road! Do you not see who goes here? An American capitalist! Morgan’s partner! May the wind enter your grandfather Ishmael’s broad pantaloons!”
The car entered a new garden suburb behind Jerusalem and stopped in front of a small stone villa surrounded by slender young cypresses. The chauffeur jumped out of his seat and said in Hebrew, as if to himself, “Here she dwelleth. Let us go and see whether she hath not given her love to another chauffeur.”
In a few minutes he was back, beaming happily and carrying a small suitcase. He was followed by the passenger, who wore a light traveling coat and was putting a brown leather hat over her cropped hair. I stole a glance at her. Yes, the name Edna suited her fine oval-shaped head, her dark sensitive face, and her youth, which bespoke the first bloom of womanly beauty. She looked about twenty years old.
“Where am I to sit?” she asked in German as she approached the automobile.
“Here, next to me,” the chauffeur replied in German, pointing to the seat next to the driver. “The seat of honor!”
“But I’m afraid of the thick dust,” the young passenger hesitated. “After we left the Emek I had to wash my hair three days in succession.”
She peeped shyly into the automobile, greeting me with a nod.
“But the Herr Kapitalist is a man who seeks solitude,” the chauffeur started to protest, and a little cloud passed over his face.
“Will I disturb you, sir?” the girl asked me in English.
“Please,” I said, “there’s room enough even for three.”
The girl got in and huddled in the opposite corner. The chauffeur looked at both of us blankly. He seemed to be greatly disappointed. For a moment he hesitated, mercilessly scratching his forehead, and then sighing deeply jumped into his seat and said loudly in Russian, “Hoopla! Woe to my cart and all its four wheels!” and started the car with a long angry honk which startled the quiet street dozing in the heat of the day.
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After we left the city and came out on the glistening white road, the chauffeur turned his head in our direction, cast an injured glance at the girl who sat huddled in the corner, and said in Hebrew, “Ah, Edna, thou knowest not how much pain thou hast caused me this moment!”
The girl reddened slightly and did not reply. The chauffeur worked his wheel, keeping his eyes on the road, and continued speaking in Hebrew, in his deep baritone “Edna, how thankless art thou! I remember thee, in the kindness of thy youth, when thou wentst after me in the Emek, in the land of Jezreel, and when I came to the house of thy aunt to take thee with me to the Dead Sea on our last farewell journey. And suddenly thou hast despised me and preferred to warm thyself next to American capital, next to a bagful of dollars. . . . I look upon thee and wonder—is this Edna? And is this the fruit of thy two weeks’ visit with the young men of Galilee and the Emek?”
He fell silent for a few minutes and then resumed speaking in his highflown manner: “Think not, Edna, that thou shalt escape from me with the excuse that the dust of the road disturbeth thee. It is not the dust of the road, but the dust of gold—American gold—that hath this day estranged thee from me. All of Europe, grown impoverished and humbled in its old age, now prostrates itself before wealthy and corrupt America. . . .”
I listened with growing curiosity to the young man’s words, to his precious and yet jocular Hebrew style, which he used with the facile expressiveness and deep pathos of an experienced orator. I stole a glance at the girl to see what impression his words had made upon her. She returned my glance, as if with the same intention, smiled, and said in English, “That’s a habit of his, talking too much. . . .”
I was very anxious to discover whether the girl also considered me ignorant of the Hebrew tongue. But before I had a chance to say anything, as if guessing my thoughts, the chauffeur called from his seat, gazing straight into the road:
Too clearly have I heard the opinion thou hast expressed of me to thy companion, Edna. Thou hast said that I am a born magpie. I suppose thou fearest lest he be offended by my stern words. Fear not, Edna. Thy American companion, at whose right hand thou hast elected to sit, is, alas, a perfect dolt. He understands not a word of the language of the prophet Isaiah, nor of Bialik, our great poet. We can talk to each other undisturbed.
A few minutes later he continued:
Marvel not, Edna, that I speak so harshly of the American. I do not care for our American brethren. Firstly, because they look down upon the Land of Israel, instead of looking up to it. Second, dost recall what is written in the Song of Songs? Love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave. . . . It was my hope that thou wouldst sit at my side for several hours, before departing for thy fatherland, and wouldst be a comfort to my lonely heart. I would gaze upon thy dear visage, feel thy sweet proximity, touch thy delicate arms. . . . But came Beelzebub in the guise of this American monster and robbed me of the poor man’s lamb. . . . Cursed be the Land of the Dollar, cursed be the Golden Calf!
And suddenly he turned to me and asked in Yiddish, “Mister, would you like to see the tombstone of Mrs. Lot?”
“Who was Mrs. Lot?” I inquired.
“An American tourist. A very fat Jewish lady. She passed here in an automobile recently. She was overcome with the heat and melted in the sun. Her husband, Mr. Lot—quite a souse, they say—erected a tombstone of salt over her grave—the same salt you find in the Dead Sea.”
“Very good,” said I. “When we pass it, you’ll point it out to me.”
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“All Right,” he said, and went back to talking Hebrew, in a louder voice: “Well, Edna, hast thou not heard? Dost thou see with what a creature the Almighty hath paired thee in these last hours, ere thou partest from me forever? He has not even read the Bible. . . . I could swear that he has never heard the name of the famed Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, who drove the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah into the historic vale of Siddim that was full of slimepits. But we shall soon be there, Edna my dear one.
“Ah, Edna, Edna, how well do I know all the places which we are now passing—as well as I once knew the roads of my native city in the blessed and cursed Ukraine. . . . A hundred times have I traversed the length and breadth of this small desert land, from Dan to Beersheba, on the wings of my blue eagle. . . . Edna, with all the power of my sad heart do I love my light-winged machine in which is invested the last of the inheritance I received from my poor father who had martyred his life in the name of the Lord. My machine is my comfort and my joy, the only soul which understands my soul.
“Edna, my comrades in the Emek were angry with me—they looked on me as an adventurer. . . . Six months did I labor with them, with plough and with shovel, and on the seventh month I rose in the middle of the night and fled to the four corners of the sky. I could not bear the eternal stillness of the rocky mountains around me. I could not bear the dark serious faces of my comrades who had vowed never to smile like human beings until their ancient fatherland was liberated from its withered stones. Even the stormy Hora dance could not still the storm in my breast. What meaning could I find in dancing, feet pounding on one spot, when my soul yearned to pass into the freedom of eternity, to be tossed from one end of the world to the other, torn between my unquenchable longing for the soft dark fields of the Ukraine—may it be wiped off the face of the earth!—and my burning love for the white deserts of our wonderful fatherland. . . ? Edna, Edna, I shall confide a secret to thee! I love the lofty resounding word, the expansive echoing cry of the soul, the clear shrill laughter which rolls over the distant desert with an echo that replies from all the ends of the skies—ha-aha-ha-ha!
“But I know the weeping, too, Edna. Not the soft weeping that is choked into a pillow between the narrow oppressive walls of a room—but the high wailing that rends loneliness into shreds, shakes the soul to its foundations, makes the heart tremble to its depths. Sometimes, Edna, there comes a night, one of those marvelous moonlit nights of Jerusalem, our city of beauty, when I cannot find peace. Then I rise, I harness my light-flying chariot, and I ride out into the empty wastes of Jericho to make my midnight lamentations. I let my blue eagle loose; I fly like a spirit over white weird deserts, and wail aloud the deep sorrow of my heart, which is deeper than the seas. And my weeping accompanies the heart-rending weeping of hungry jackals howling for prey.
“Ah, Edna, Edna, young sister of mine! Once thou asked me what of the red scar on my cheek. What is the meaning of the bloody mark on my face—is it a mark of Cain, or a mark of heroism? And I then told thee that perhaps a day would come when I should tell thee what weighs upon my spirit. And now thou art leaving me. That day has not yet come, and what weighs upon my spirit will be revealed to thee, Edna, sister of mine, never, never!”
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Here he suddenly turned to me and asked in Yiddish: “Mister, how many millions of dollars did the American Jews contribute to the victims of Ukrainian pogroms?”
To this odd question, which seemed to follow ironically on the heels of the strange chauffeur’s thoughts, I did not reply. I had been sitting quietly, overwhelmed by his hot, tumultuous words. Through the rapid flight of the automobile over the white chalk road, they rang in my ears as the extraordinary confession of an extraordinary human being, the outpouring of a profoundly shaken soul. What sort of fellow was this? Who was he? Where did he acquire his rich vocabulary, such a power of expression? And who was this girl out of a foreign land who was sitting in the corner of the automobile as in a dream, listening silently all the while, except for a smile and a flush over her gentle dark profile? Where had these two met, and what had passed between them that they were now parting for ever? . . . I was so lost in these speculations that I did not notice we were approaching the hot circle of the Jericho steppes, and hardly noticed the imposing desert vista which, as far as the eye could reach, glistened beneath the fiery skies like a field of snow.
The chauffeur also lapsed into silence, as if exhausted. From time to time he turned to me, naming the places we were passing, now no longer jocular, but with all the earnestness of a chauffeur-guide performing his duty. Now his face looked sad and withdrawn, and the red scar, filled with some secret content, glowed in the sunshine with a dark flame. He no longer turned to the girl; it was as if he had forgotten her.
Some time later, after we had passed through Jericho, lying, with its green palms and thick leafy banana trees, like a dark shadow across the bright expanse of the desert, and after we had turned off the highway onto a broad, crumbly chalk lane and seen from afar, in the transparent blazing air, the deep blue of the Dead Sea shimmering against the dreamy, misted Abarim mountains, the chauffeur, as if starting out of a dream, turned again to me and said in his bright jesting tone, “Mister, if you want your money’s worth of pleasure out of the Dead Sea, you better take your coat off. We are now entering that famous furnace which is inscribed in history under the name of The Cry of Sodom.”
And he again began to talk in Hebrew, his face turned toward the desert.
“Woe, woe to The Cry of Sodom! It is a fearful place. Dost thou remember, Edna, the story I told thee of late about the warmhearted maiden whom wild Bedouins attacked somewhere in this vicinity, stripped naked, smeared with honey, and dragged up to the roof of a house, leaving her there to be devoured by bees? This folly was perpetrated in bright daylight, several thousands of years ago, and to this day, when I think of it, my hair stands on end. I could tell thee a story even sadder than that, and one which took place in our day, in a country not so very distant from this wild desert. But enough for today! I will not mar thy journey. For soon we come to a place where the divine beauty of our little fatherland reaches its climax—the beauty of death and eternal stillness. And thou didst long to see it even when thou wast in the City of Jezreel, when we were both sitting on the veranda of the inn, over an intoxicating glass of soda water. . . .”
We stayed at the Dead Sea until evening. The energetic chauffeur at once began busying himself with his automobile. He peered into every cranny of the car; with great tenderness he caressed it, like a horseman stroking a beloved mare after a hard ride, examined the engine and tires, dusted the car, and at the end it shone as if new. Edna walked over to the empty inn standing alone beside the sleeping sea. I sat down in the shade of a four-posted shelter thatched with withered palm leaves, intoxicated by the violent tropical heat that breathed fire into all my senses, overwhelmed by the beauty of this unbelievable stillness which seemed to carry one to the verge of Nirvana. The Abarim mountains, framing one side of the sea and bathed in a radiant bluish mist, shimmered in the distance, as from the other side of life. I got up and began to walk, as in a dream. Coming back, I found the chauffeur and Edna swimming in the sea. They cut through the thick salty blue water with their young shoulders, vying with one another. The low sun was reflected in Edna’s laughing eyes, on her slender naked arms and the blue bathing cap that lent her young sunburnt face a peculiar repressed, mischievous charm. As he gazed at her, the wet scar on the chauffeur’s cheek glowed hot and red.
When they came out of the water, their wet bathing suits clinging to their bodies, they delighted one’s eye with their strong slender figures, like the children of one mother. Edna’s fresh wet face smiled brightly as she ran toward the inn. For a moment the chauffeur gazed after her, with gray laughing eyes, then he shook his thick mop of hair at me in a friendly way, said, “All right!” and followed after her to the inn.
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At sundown we were again in the car, each in his place, on the way back to Jerusalem. No one spoke a word until we reached Jericho. Each was living over the impressions of an extraordinary day. In Jericho, night fell suddenly. A fiery east wind began to blow, the desert was transformed into a dark and burning thing. The chauffeur turned on his lights; a bright beam pierced the sea of darkness, feeling ahead along the road to some distant shore. As the car flew on silently, one heard from time to time from afar the mournful crying of jackals.
“Mister,” the chauffeur suddenly said in a kindly tone. “Are you frightened?”
“Why?” I asked. “Have you a remedy against fear?”
“Don’t be afraid, dear Mister! I travel through these places almost every week during the night. Both the hungry jackal and the poor Bedouins who graze their sheep in this desert are my close friends.”
He was silent for a few minutes; then he began to talk in Hebrew.
“Hearest thou, Edna, I truly repent that all day long I’ve kept cursing our poor innocent American in front of thee. This evening I watched him walking along the seashore in sadness, and I said to myself: No! No rich cloakmaker could have such a melancholy countenance. It is not impossible he is a cloakmaker, but rich he certainly is not. . . . I have not done well to take a double price from him for the trip. . . .”
He was silent for a space and then continued.
“Edna, the cause of it is stupid jealousy. I was vexed at his having robbed me of my last opportunity to be close to thee. But now that we have both bathed in the sea, my heart has softened. Edna, the bathing has drawn us closer, bodily and spiritually, and I will not forget it to my last hour. . . . This was the first time, Edna, my pure one, that thou hast cast off thy garments before me in all the purity of thy young body, and I saw how well it suits thy noble face and stainless soul. I saw thy young shoulders, thy lovely arms, thy delicately carved limbs. Thy breasts, Edna, made me catch my breath. I could look upon them no more than I can look upon the bright sun. . . . Edna, God hath made thee to walk in perfect beauty, and when I think that thou art going hence to the ancient city of Prague, to the city of the famous Golem, and that there thou wilt wed a Golem famous for nothing who will rule over thee, my heart weeps softly. Who will be thy spouse, Edna? A banker, doctor, lawyer? Whatever he be, wilt thou remember, on thy wedding night, upon thy bed of love, that mad chauffeur of Jerusalem whose heart thou didst conquer from the start? Ah, Edna. . . .”
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Driven by an irresistible desire to solve the riddle that perplexed me, I lit a cigarette and held the match up to the face of my young neighbor. She sat huddled in the opposite corner of the automobile, her eyes closed, and it seemed to me that on her lips I saw a sweet mysterious smile. The light made her open her eyes. She smiled at me and said softly in English, “He lulls me to sleep with his chatter . . . his pleasant voice. . . .”
The chauffeur turned his head to look at us and said angrily, “What secrets are there between ye, Edna? It is impolite for passengers to whisper secrets behind their chauffeur’s back!”
And then he turned back to the road and continued: “I beseech thee, Edna, do not hold it against me that I was unable to control myself and spoke harshly to thee. My heart is in a dreadful turmoil this evening. . . . I look into the dark destiny of my life, as into the darkness of these desert fields before me. . . . Who knows, perhaps it would be better if I sat with thee within the carriage, and not alone in the front seat as thy chauffeur. Do not imagine, Edna, that I despise my work. Heaven forbid! I am proud of my chosen role—the role of chauffeur. I have not limited my work to a fixed spot of land, nor confined it to four hand-lengths. The whole country is mine! I serve my country in flight. In the space of a single day I conquer all its mountains, all its valleys, all its forsaken corners and all its bright spots—I and my machine, I the chauffeur!
“True, my father and mother little dreamt the day would come when I would be a coachman in the holy City of Jerusalem. Those pure souls who now shelter in God’s shadow sincerely believed that I would become a doctor, or a lawyer, or perhaps even a banker, like that Prague Golem of thine. . . . And in my younger days I did try to write verses . . . only our great poets, Jehuda Halevi and Chaim Nachman Bialik, outdistanced me. And a little sister I had who was handsomer and cleverer than I—she was as bright as the sun. But how many times have I told thee, Edna, that all these things must be forgotten, forgotten, forgotten. . . .”
And suddenly, in the darkness of the desert, the chauffeur began to sing, in his deep baritone, the ancient sorrowful melody of Lamentations:
Lament, O Zion and thy cities,
Like a woman in labor,
And like a maiden, girdled with sackcloth
For the husband of her youth. . . .
And immediately cutting the song short, he called out to me in Yiddish, “Mister, have you ever heard this opera in America?”
He did not say another word the rest of the journey, until he brought me to my hotel in Jerusalem.
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A week later, strolling one evening on the seashore at Tel Aviv, I ran into the chauffeur. He was standing in the wet sand, close to the water’s edge, shading his eyes with his hands and peering intently at the horizon flaming red with the sunset. I walked up to him and touched his shoulder.
“Ah, Mister!” He turned his beaming face to me. “Haven’t you gone back to America yet?”
“No,” I replied, “but the other day I was in the port of Jaffa and saw Edna boarding a ship to Trieste.”
“I know,” he said, “I brought her there from Jerusalem.”
“Then why weren’t you at the port to see her off?”
He stared at me.
“See her off?” he echoed. “Am I a relative of hers?”
“But. . . .” I said, “what about the things you said to her during our trip?”
“And just what did I say to her?” he asked, and the scar on his cheek suddenly darkened. “Why? . . . Did you understand?”
“Every word.”
He looked at me awhile with an astonished and embarrassed smile.
“Really? . . . Well, what do you think of that! It never struck me. . . . So you understood all my chatter?”
“I didn’t think it was chatter.”
“Of course it was chatter!” He spoke firmly, with annoyance. And suddenly he seized my hand, stared at me for a moment, and then asked fearfully, “Wait a minute, Mister. . . . Maybe she also understood?”
“Who? Edna?”
“Not Edna—her real name is Henriette. A foolish German name which doesn’t suit her at all. . . . But . . . but, wait a minute, maybe she also understood! If they understand Hebrew in America, isn’t it possible that they understand Hebrew in Prague?!”
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