CHAPTER 9 - Avshalom and Sara at the Station at Atlit and the Baron's Purim Ball

Sara & Avshalom at Dor/Tantura

Yes, it was the Hamsin, that brought them together in the first place. A howling wind reveals Sara on her horse on the rocky shore. She watches as Avshalom, in billowing Bedouin-style robes and keffiyeh, rides bare-back on his mare. A circle of barefoot local children run along the shore cheering him with the curious epithet: “Sheikh Saleem!! Sheikh Saleem!!”

Avshalom canters up to Sara, holding the reins with one hand, and stops in front of her in the sand.

    “Why do they call you that? Sheikh Saleem?”

    “ I’ll show you if you will you come with me.”

Sara stares at him, his ardent and impetuous nature finds an instant echo in her own heart and off they gallop along the curling sea in that furious wind, chased by the group of windswept children, until the little urchins can no longer keep up.

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Arab Village Tantura

Our protagonists in the nearby village of Tantura. Goats and chickens wander about, doors are painted green with handprints to ward off evil spirits. It is very poor, but Avshalom is known here. 

Women with Little Ones Peer from Behind their Veils

In the background women peer from behind their veils, little ones hiding in their skirts are covered in sand and flies. The Sheik gives them coffee and children stare at Sara. Perhaps they have never seen so pale a woman, so close up before?  In wonder one child touches her hair which has come loose on the wild ride.

Avshalom brings out a bag of fresh pecan nuts and offers it to the children

    “Shukran Sheikh Saleem!” they yell, grabbing handfuls of nuts and running off before their mothers can scold them.

    “Saleem, because they can’t say 'Avshalom' ”, says the bearer of that name.

He shows Sara an old, stone olive press where a woman in a work-stained, cross-stitched, kaftan is pressing the hard green fruit, oil squirting out of in a long, golden stream.

Sara’s radiant serene face reflecting the gold light. Avshalom watching Sara. He is smitten.

****

Avshalom in the Red Room

It is night. The moon comes in through the open window. A narrow room at the top of the tower - Avshalom‘s room. The walls are painted red. Outside, the wind is still howling. Avshalom lying on a sofa covered in a red cloth, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. On the desk his blue-bound, leather notebook, pen, ink and books in Hebrew, French, Yiddish and English, including George Elliot’s ‘Daniel Deronda’, Walter Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe’, Mr. Keats, Verlaine and Baudelaire’s poetry. Avshalom rolls over, flinging the cigarette out of the window. At the desk, we see him furiously writing in his notebook, he tears out the page, much crossed out and rewritten and starts again.

A Thousand  Kisses - Absa's Poem

He reads aloud: “Elef Nishikot - A thousand kisses to you, my love. But first, I‘d like to put a kiss on your forehead, like a little love knot - ”

He puts the poem in an envelope, addresses it to Sara at Farmer’s Street, and kisses the sealed flap.

And when he receives no reply, he writes again:

‘I want to find this spring and put my lips to it, to glue my mouth to the spring of light and drink my fill, and that would be the thousandth kiss. But the sky does not favour my sinful eyes, the light does not favour my impure, earthly, drunken lips, and therefore this impossible kiss will burn my lips forever and trouble my wanting breast to the last breath.’

     ****

Romantic, sentimental, florid, love struck, that letter would confuse many later historians and biographers. An article entitled ‘To Whom Did This Spy Dedicate His Legendary Love Letter?’ would appear in your own time in the blog of the Israel National Library and would continue to tackle the subject of the ‘many contenders’ for the title of what has been called - ‘recipient of the most romantic love letter in the Hebrew language’. A letter that inspired many books and a much beloved, if schmaltzy song. Undeniably, the letter was first written in October 1910, just after Avshalom returned from Paris, and before he was about to leave for the research station in Atlit to join Aron. He had already met Aron’s sisters. Perhaps he was already in love with Sara, though he may also have had his eye on her sister little Rifka who was eighteen at the time. At any rate it appears that he rewrote the letter many times. And this particular one was for Sara.

Avshalom the Poet

A portrait of Avshalom at that time, reveals the romantic lover in all his Byronesque glory, dark, brooding, moody, his slightly hooded eyes reveal depths of passion and emotion which might turn the heart of any girl, his lips full and resolute, speak of his true guiding passion: Love. Love for his country, certainly but it is also certain that he fell in love with many young ladies in his brief time on earth. He was, after all, only twenty seven on his death. An age which in your modern day is associated with infatuation, youthful and extreme behaviour and in Avshalom this was compounded by his love-sick fantasies and hopes and what he sometimes referred to as his ‘brain fever’. The writer of the above article, mentions another possible rival, the clever, converted Raïssa Maritain, with her madonna-like grace and delicate kiss-curls who Avshalom had met in Paris;  but by Avshalom’s own admission, although he was ‘in love’ with her, they were never lovers. Miriam Kavshana, a young nurse of striking beauty is claimed as another possibility.  She worked as a nurse at the hospital in Jaffa where, as she would tell her family much later, she met Avshalom and cared for him in the hospital. After his return from Paris, Avshalom’s neuropathic symptoms had returned with a vengeance and he certainly spent some time in a clinic for nervous diseases. A poem Avshalom dedicated to a certain ‘Miriam’ - was kept by her family.  Not the greatest example of his oeuvre, perhaps, but another indication of his wild and passionate heart. It begins: ‘It has been several days and several nights that I have been lusting to see you Miriam…’

A year after Avshalom’s return, his supposed paramour, Miriam had moved to Yavniel, near the Sea of Galilee - the Kinneret - with her soon to be husband, Haim Yaffe. And so we are left with Rifka and Sara. Avshalom’s letters to the sister are overflowing with emotion and tender, sentimental expressions. Sometimes, he wrote to both sisters in the same note, calling them ‘my girls’ and ‘my darlings,’ but it was ‘To my Sara’, that he wrote his most intimate missives. They were, it seems, soul mates before they were lovers.

‘Oh! If I could only have flown yesterday before you and lined the whole path with beautiful flowers, placing a kiss on each flower in the hope that your feet would be good enough to touch them, how happy that would have made me.’  so writes the Poet to Sara in July 1911.

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Sleeping Rifka tosses and turns in the bed adjacent to Sara’s. Sara wide awake, her hair spread on her pillow, seems to hear Avshalom’s voice -

    “And then, I would whisper - two short sweet secrets that would go all the way to the centre of your heart..”

Whose heart exactly? we may continue to ask, but the evidence certainly points to Sara.

**** 

Sara in the Bathroom, Aron's House

Sara in the famous bathroom, wrapped in a towel, looks critically at her face in the misted up mirror. She drops the towel - Turkish cotton - and regards her full-breasted, pear-shaped body with an ironic shrug and a little smile.

Avshalom still at his desk in the research Station, crossing out, then rewriting, as dawn breaks.
                        
Sara at the mirror with Avshalom’s voice over: “ - and with my lips, I’d straighten your lashes - And place two quick kisses on your eyelids and then, your beautiful mouth - ”

   **** 

Early Morning in the Jezreel Valley

It is early morning in the Jezreel Valley. A beautiful sight. It would not be too far-fetched to describe those soft curves and deep hollows as being like a woman’s full-breasted, pear-shaped body. Mist curls over the valley like the steam in that bathroom mirror, revealing patches of white mustard, shocking-pink cyclamens, crown daisies, fiery orange, field marigolds and deep red anemones, which blow in the gentle wind as far as the eye can see. A goat-herd climbs the slopes with his flock and their tiny bells peel and tinkle in the wind. 

Arab Goat-Herd

A field expedition. Aron in his khakis and his trademark, battered felt hat, loyal Goliath, at his side, Avshalom in his long robes - he prefers the freedom this mode of garb offers - drinking coffee from tin mugs. Abu Farrid tidies up the breakfast they have eaten at the camp fire. The roaming goats climb a craggy tree, an amusing sight. At least Goliath thinks so, wagging his tail happily as he wanders through the petal-strewn grass to relieve himself on a flowering Judas tree.

Absa & Goliath

Avshalom lights a cigarette.

Aron regards him: “What do you think of my sister?”

Avshalom smiles and draws deeply on his cigarette: “She’s very beautiful. And very intelligent.”

Aron: “She shares all our dreams.”

Avshalom gives nothing away as to the intensity of his own particular dreams - and the protective brother quickly concludes the conversation with: “But take care. She’s not right for you...”

Absa raises his eyebrows but says nothing. 

This little warning coming as it does just before the annual Purim party - a festival that celebrates a beautiful, brave woman and a massacre averted - serves only to stimulate the would-be-lover’s already over-active imagination.

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Sara & Rifka at the Purim Ball

The Baron’s annual Purim ball is held in the beautifully decorated winery. Rifka dressed in virginal white with a small gold coronet, is Esther. Though there are others. She plays the violin with a quartet of drum, flute and klezmer fiddle. Her curls spill across her radiant face, her little crown slipping awry, every now and then. Candles burn and elaborate paper decorations flutter, giving an air of romance and glitter, so at odds with the colony’s more usual quotidian life. Waiters with red fezzes and white kaftans serve trays of cordials - lemon and mint for the ladies - and estate wine  and whisky for the gentlemen. Baron Edmond and Baroness Adelaide are wonderfully bejeweled and magnificently accoutered, though somewhat incongruously - as King George V and Queen Mary of England. If we know our Bible well, we may identify, the Baron's Agent, as a misguided, Egyptian Pharoah, the Mayor is Ahashverosh, King of Persia, Dr. Yaffe in his usual garb - though with the addition of a rather sinister Venetian mask, the Doctor’s wife, Rivka, in a sugar-pink confection which seems to owe something to a Moulin Rouge, Marie Antoinette. Sara in plain, white muslin with a garland of wild wheat on her head. If anyone had asked, she was much maligned first wife, Queen Vashti, that independent-minded woman who refused to submit to male wishes. But no one asked. 

Zvi and wife Sara Hinda, peasant farmers, complete with hoe and rake in hand, making it well nigh impossible to join the crowded dance floor without doing themselves or someone else, an injury. Aron, a vigilant Mordechai, in Eastern cloak, a hero who refuses to bow down to anyone, cynical Alex, a wicked looking Haman in Turkish Officer’s uniform with villainous moustache dyed a menacing black, Avshalom, naturally, a romantic Sheikh in his trademark flowing robes. Despite neither Sheiks nor Arab dress having any part in the Purim story.

Baron Edmond

The quartet stops as Baron Edmond raises his hand for silence: “My friends, mes amies, I want to welcome back, our own Aron Aronson, who he has impressed even those Americans who doubt our love for this land. A man, who will help achieve our grand agricultural revival and our Return to the Land!”

Aron bows, as always, a little self-conscious, acknowledging the applause.

Baron Edmond continues: “And to give gratitude to our benign rulers with whom we live in safety and harmony. ”

The brothers have their usual difference of opinion.

    “Benign - as in a tumour!” snorts Alex.

Conventional, cautious Zvi responds: “You’re wrong Alex, the only way forward is with cooperation - We need the Turks and they need us.” 

An altercation looks as though it is about to break out but luckily Alex is summoned to one side by the Baron's Agent who is attempting to corall a number of women and a few men in fanciful costume to pose for a photograph. There are Pierrot clowns, including a delightful Toba, Arabian princes, sailors, warriors, fairies and even a bride with a cascading veil. All have their human counterparts and Alex captures their ephemeral images in all their quick fading splendour.

Over a finger supper of French and Mediterranean hors d'oeuvres the ladies spar over places in the queue - and matters sartorial. The Doctor’s wife with a laden plate, looks the sisters up and down:

    “What adorable dresses,” she says before hurrying off to enjoy her bountiful platter.

Sara smiles. Is this a compliment or an insult?
                
Rifka sniffing into her sleeve: “She makes me feel like a peasant!”

Aron steps in: “Don’t be upset Rifkale, you look like a queen!”

But Rifkale is upset and rushes outside for some air.

The Agent mutters to no one in particular: “These Romanians! So melodramatic! So primitive!”

Sara & Absa at the Purim Ball

Avshalom in his Arab dress comes up to Sara, and takes her hand and kisses it.

    “Sheik Saleem,” she declares: “I recognised you despite your disguise!”

    “When you laugh at my suffering, I show you my tear-stained cheek...” Absalom response is teasing, he mimics tears running down his cheek, but he is deadly serious.    
    
Sara recognises the quotation: “Judah Halevi the Andalusi? You’re a poet as well as a botanist?”

    “I’m not actually a botanist, but Aron has taught me well and life seemed too short to chose only one option - ”
                        
Aron noticing the interaction, quickly interrupts: “You don’t mind? ”

He whirls Sara off for a dance while Avshalom watches - only Sara.

    “He’s a silly boy, Sarati.”

    “I thought you liked him, Araleh?”

She calls him by his pet name, one used between brother and sister.

    “I do. He’s a fast learner. But he’s unreliable. A romantic. Impetuous. One minute this way the next the other. Anyway, I have other plans for you.”

Sara is intrigued: “Romantic ones?”

    “That depends,” he says.

Sara meets his gaze with an inquiring look.

    “We must find you a husband my dear. One that can be useful to our cause.”

Sara  ripostes with a raised eyebrow: “And one who is not entirely repellent to me, I hope?”

****

Rifka & Sara in the Main Street Zikhron Ya'akov

Sulky Rifka with her parasol in a new tea-gown with pretty buttoned shoes, promenades with Sara along the main street conversing as sisters do. It’s clear Rifka is head over heels in love with Avshalom and none too pleased with Absa's attention to Sara.

    “ What’s wrong, darling girl?” asks the older sister.

    “ I saw the way he looked at you,” says the younger.

Sara seeks to reassure her delicate sibling with a small amount of dissembling: “ Oh no, I am certain it was you he was looking at.”

    “ Oh. Do you really think so?” The little sister is not sure but her eyes light up in fervent hope.

Dr. Yaffe and his stylishly dressed wife, carrying prettily wrapped boxes, emerge from the café and cross the little cobbled street. Dr. Yaffe lifts his hat in polite but distant greeting. The Doctor’s wife cannot resist another cutting comment aimed at Sara:

    “ Miss Aronson! I hardly recognised you last night. What an outfit you wore! And that crown of wheat! You made it yourself? How clever. You could compete with the great Sarah Bernhardt herself! And your little sister Rifkale, has grown into quite a young lady!”

She regards Rifka's budding breasts with a knowing, sideways glance.

Rifka blushes and musters a crooked smile but clearly she feels slighted and can barely keep the tears back.

The Doctor’s wife flounces past with her parcels, pulling her husband with her and whispering loudly into his ear: “ Mark my words, I can see marriages on the horizon.”

Sara: “ And there can be no higher praise, than that of the Doctor’s wife!”

Rifka takes out a lace handkerchief and sniffing noisily into its perfumed linen says:​

    “ No one takes me seriously and I'm sick of being just your little sister!”

  ****

Aron & Sara on Horses Atlit

The sun is going down in a blaze of fast fading crimson.

The thunder of hooves and the roar of the surf below the Atlit Station. Aron and Sara ride along the seashore. They see a horseman approaching - it is Avshalom. The three of them ride on together over the sand, racing to see who can outdo the other.

Aron can’t keep up. Avshalom stops his canter. Sara draws up alongside him and strokes her sweating horse’s nose.

Avshalom: “Pity the forlorn one, fasting and weeping, waiting for the manna of your favour.”

Sara responds with some impatience: “Oh, don’t be so dramatic!”

Aron draws up breathless, his face reddened by exertion and heat: “Bloody horse got her hoof stuck in some bladder wrack.”

Avshalom and Sara exchange a glance, then burst out laughing.

Aron is offended: “What’s so funny?”

Sara replies: “Avshalom was just reciting a silly poem for me...”

   ****

Dancing the Hora

A full moon, the young people of the village dance. 

A musician plays the fiddle, bottles of home-made wine and glasses lie on a striped Bedouin rug. Zvi, handsome Alex and a pretty, very young village girl are amongst the the young men and women dancing on the beaten-mud, threshing-floor.

Sara stands apart, Avshalom approaches her. In the background Rifka waits desperate for a partner.

    “Will you dance, pretty Sara?”

Although it costs her greatly, she replies in the negative: “Ask, Rifka - she loves to dance. And I hate to see her looking glum.”

Avshalom raises his eyebrows: “Don’t mock me, Sara!”

Sara turns away: “I’m deadly serious.”she says. “ Please go and dance with her.”

Avshalom bows deeply and obediently goes.

Sara watches as he dances with tiny Rifka - whose smile is enormous.

Avshalom, his head close to Rifka’s: “You look like Rembrandt’s Saskia.”

     “Who is Saskia?” she asks, bewildered.

 

Avshalom declaims in a mock theatrical voice: ‘Who is Sylvia, what is she? That all our swains commend her?’

Rifka looks blank.

    “Sylvia is Shakespeare and Saskia is Rembrandt’s wife.”

Rifka looks down embarrassed. Avshalom’s intellect and joking presence overwhelm her and make her feel stupid.

   ****

Arab Fishermen at Tantura Bay

The curved crescent of beach and ancient harbour wall at Dor/Tantura. Arab fishermen and fishing boats moored on the shoreline. A rug at the water’s edge. Sara sketches the scene - a watercolour of the sunset bay - Rifka tidies the remains of a picnic. Avshalom - glass of wine in his hand, clearly enchanted by both the sisters.

    “This must be as close to heaven as possible,” he says, leaning back on one elbow.

Sara answers carefully: “I don’t know anything about heaven. I only know what I see and feel and hear.”

Avshalom to Rifka: “What do you think, little sister? ‘When I ask for the nectar of her lips, she blushes like the setting sun.’”

Rifka: “Is that by Shakespeare too?”

Avshalom: “A lesser poet by far, I’m afraid.”

Rifka blushes deeply. She is out of her depth:  “I’m afraid, I don’t know poetry.”

Dusk at Dor Beach

Dusk falls making the little bay glow orange. From the shore Rifka watches wistfully, as Avshalom in sleeveless, bathing suit, and Sara in a modest, muslin gown, reaching from neck to knee, have a race in the foaming water.

Sara is a strong swimmer but Avshalom wins by a head.

Sara dries her hair on a cotton towel her damp, white over dress, revealing the contours of her full breasts and soft body.

Avshalom pours a glass of wine as he watches her, and the sun disappears into the sea. 

****

If he doesn't marry me, I'll kill myself!

Rifka sitting on her bed holding a small nail scissors, cuts two thin lines, one on each wrist.

Rifka dabbing her wrists with a lace handkerchief.

Sara enters the room and seeing her sister's distress, hugs her closely.

    “Darling girl, whatever is the matter?”

Rifka sobs: “If he doesn't marry me, I'll kill myself!”

****