The Seventeen Thieves of El-Kalil/Chapter 4

AVE you ever had an official dispatch passed to you to read, marked “secret,” that has been brought at sixty miles an hour by a grimy man on a motorcycle? It feels good, never mind what serious news it contains. Grim tore open the envelope, glanced at the single sheet and handed it to me; whereat I enjoyed all the sensations that attach themselves to unauthorized participation in events, all the thrills that come of reading tragic news—as if I were a spectator and not actor in a drama—and pride besides, because Cohen, of course, belonged to an inferior breed and might not read it.

“Any trouble on the way?” asked Grim.

“Nothing to speak of, sir. Fired at nine or ten times, but only one bullet through my tunic.”

“Think you can get back all right?”

“Have a try, sir. Sixty mile an hour’s a poor target. Gettin’ dark too.”

“Did you notice any signs of concerted action as you came along?”

“Can’t say I did, sir. I was comin’ that fast I didn’t dare tike me eyes off the road. Them what fired at me was snipers.”

Grim took the dispatch from me and handed it to Cohen. I had to recall deliberately that I liked Cohen. He read it in the manner of a dry-goods dealer opening the morning mail. What was worse, he read it aloud, destroying secrecy and ninety-nine percent of the Romance. What was the use of marking the thing “secret” in big black letters if it was to be treated like a newspaper, and in the presence, too, of the corporal who had risked his life to bring it? But the British are a strange race and Grim’s way with some of their conventions was even more surprising.

“‘Jerusalem,’” read Aaron Cohen, “‘is fairly well in hand.’ I suppose they mean by that the Moslems have quit knifin’ for twenty minutes to go an’ say their prayers! ‘Several Jews and Moslems have been killed and a considerable number of both sides wounded.’ You’ll notice there’s nothin’ about British officers an’ Sikhs. They ain’t a side; they’re on top! ‘All gates have been closed and a guard set on the ramparts.’ That’s to keep Jews from escapin’ while the Moslems do the dirty work! ‘There is no reliable news from Hebron and it is therefore assumed that all is well there.’ Say, ain’t that English for you! ‘The present moment is not favorable for sending detachments of troops, small or otherwise, to outlying places and it is therefore hoped that you will tide over the emergency without assistance.’ Hey! I’m going to remember that! That’s a pippin! Next creditor that writes me for something on account, I’m going to answer ‘the present moment is not favorable for sending remittances, small or otherwise, to out o’ town dealers, an’ it is therefore hoped—’ Oh, that’s a lallopolooser! ‘Word from you by bearer would be welcome, with any particulars that you think important.’ Can’t read his signature—looks like a G and an X and three Ws and a twiggly mark. Calls himself staff-major. I call him a genius! That man ’ud be worth any firm’s money!”

He passed the letter back to Grim.

“Goin’ to answer it? Let me answer it! I bet you I’ll bring the Sikhs here in motor-trucks in two hours! What this Administration needs most is a course in business correspondence. Let me give him some particulars that I think important! I’ll tell him!”

Grim, signing himself as “acting in temporary absence of the governor,” wrote a few lines in a hurry and showed them to Cohen and me before he sealed them up.

“You might be an out-o’-town drummer askin’ the firm for samples!” was Cohen’s comment on that. “What that firm needs is orders—‘Send hardware quick by express and men to demonstrate!’”

“That’s all,” said Grim, handing the corporal the envelope; and the man saluted and was gone. Two minutes later the bark of his exhaust began echoing off the stone walls and in a minute more our last link with civilized force had vanished out of hearing.

░ THEN, as the galloping explosions died in the distance the Governorate servant came in with the news that sixteen men were waiting at the gate. Grim told him to admit them and we went into the long hall to await their coming, sitting on a bench at the end like three kings on a throne, Grim, Cohen, and I, with Ali Baba standing like a lord high chancellor beside us.

They filed in one by one, mysterious and curious, peering this and that way in the deepening twilight, strangely heavy-footed in spite of a manner suggesting conspiracy, and not in the least at ease until Ali Baba spoke to them. I noticed that Grim was watching the old man narrowly; if a signal had passed I think he would have known it.

They were led by a giant—a bulky, bearded stalwart about forty years old, in a sheepskin coat that only half-concealed the heft of his shoulders. He wore a long knife in a sheath at his middle, but looked able to slay men, as Samson did, without it. The naked, hairy calf that showed for a moment through a slit in his saffron-colored smock was herculean with lumpy muscle, and he bowed to us with rather the air of a strong man favoring weaker brethren. But his smile—a streak of milk-white in the midst of glossy dark hair—was winning enough, for his brown eyes smiled too and were wide enough apart to look good-natured.

None of the rest was as tall as the first man, or as good-looking, although they were a magnificent gang and quite aware of it. They were used, those fellows, to the middle of the road and the deference the physically weaker pay to athletes who know their strength and value it. They seemed to own the earth they stood on. There was a one-eyed man among them and one fellow much shorter than the rest, who made up for lack of inches by prodigious breadth and arms like a gorilla’s, reaching nearly to his knees. Almost the last to enter I recognized our old friend Mahommed ben Hamza, grinning good-humoredly as ever, and swaggering with all the old “the world is mine oyster” manner that distinguished him at El-Kerak, when he held Grim’s life and mine for a day or so in the hollow of his hand.

They were a strong-smelling company, but otherwise comforting to meet, since they were not to be enemies. There was a vague suggestion about them of a pack of hound-pups, ready to howl on a scent and tear their quarry in pieces, or to wag their tails and play; whichever might suit the huntsman’s mood.

I dare say the lot of them weighed a ton and a half, and if you had boiled them down for fat you might have harvested a dozen pounds; but excepting that one characteristic of hard condition the only strong family resemblance that they all shared was a certain plastic serenity of forehead and breadth between the eyes.

“Show your respect to the gentlemen,” Ali Baba ordered sternly, whereat they formed in double line across the hall and bowed with great dignity.

“Your father Ali Baba has a word to say to you all,” announced Grim.

“We listen when he speaks,” said the big man.

“Go on, Ali Baba.”

“The Jews are not to die tonight. Jimgrim has spoken. Between us and Jimgrim is a covenant of blood. See ye to it that our honor is whole in this matter.”

“Then the fire-gift? What of that?” asked the giant.

“Use ye the fire-gift as before. Use it this night. I come too, for Jimgrim has done me honor and set me free. But let it be known that it is not written for tonight. Perhaps tomorrow night, but not tonight by any means may Jews be killed.”

There was a murmur of half-rebellion along both ranks, and an exchange of quick glances.

“Jimgrim is our brother,” said the big man, “but who will listen now? They will smite us in the teeth and throw stones if we say now that what we said before was false! Moreover, they will draw their swords in spite of us.”

I rather expected Grim would join in the argument at that point, but nothing of the kind.

“This is your gang, Ali Baba,” was all he said, and sat well back, rather ostentatiously at ease. And the old man took the cue from him.

Never have I seen such fury—such sudden change from patriarchal dignity to blazing wrath; nor ever more surprising meekness in the face of it. The old man raised both clenched fists and the very hairs of his beard seemed to stand apart and stiffen with the intensity of his frenzy.

“Shall I curse my sons?” he screamed. “Are these the men I got—the children of my loins that sneer in my face like idiots and answer Nay to my Yea? Is my old age a mockery that sixteen louts should dare know better than I? Leave me! I will marry wives and God will give me other sons! I will find me better sons in the suk! Is it not enough to be jailed by an infidel for the sake of a heretic Jew, that my own sons must come and mock my face and my gray hairs? Truly is Allah great and his judgment past discerning! All these years have I nurtured snakes, believing I was blessed in them. And so at last Allah clears my old eyes and shows me the poison in their teeth! Go! Go! I am a childless man! Better the dogs of the street than sons who mock their father! Go, I order you!”

But they did not go. Nor did they take his terrific reproof other than abjectly. They closed up and fawned on him, more than ever like hound-pups, looking more enormous than ever because of his age and comparative frailty—begging, imploring, coaxing him, calling him respectful names, making him promises that would have made Aladdin’s eyes start, even after his experience with the wondrous lamp. Finally the biggest of them put their arms about him and bore him off in the midst of the sixteen, they still fawning and he protesting.

“So that settles that,” said Grim, getting off the bench.

“Call that a settlement?” asked Cohen. “All you’ve done, as far as I can see, is to turn a lot of knifers loose on the town and nothin’ gained but their own admission that they can’t do a thing! They’ll talk that old rooster over as soon as they get outside. Here it is dark already and a pogrom slated for tonight! Seems to me you’re— Say, what do you figure you’ve done, anyway?”

But Grim is not given to explaining things much; he told me more than once he has a notion that discussing half-formed plans “lets off the pressure and drowns the spark.” He looked at Cohen critically, but with that gleam of tolerant amusement that always takes the sting out of a remark:

“We’ve still got Aaron Cohen to fall back on,” he answered quietly. “I’ll bet with you, Aaron—my silver watch against your gold one that there won’t be a throat cut in Hebron as long as you play the game!”

“Me? What game? Call this a game? Here, take the watch! I’ll have no use for it this time tomorrow!”

“I’ll trade with you. There, take mine. Now I’ll bet with you the other way about. My gold watch against your silver one that you daren’t play my game and pull this fat out of the fire!”

“May as well play your game as any man’s!” laughed Cohen. “Are you thinkin’ of issuing rain checks in case the knifing’s put off till tomorrow?”

“I’ve offered to bet you that you daren’t.”

“Daren’t what?”

“Play my game.”

“Blind? All right, it’s a bet! You show me the thing I daren’t do!”

“I’ll try!” Grim answered. “But I’d take ten cents for my option on your watch!”

De Crespigny and Jones came in together just then, laughing about some incident in the city; and the servant began laying the table for dinner with a brave effort to seem cheerful too, as if he hoped we might live to eat it. He was a wizened old city Arab, deeply pitted with smallpox marks, who had seen his share of trouble in Hebron and retained little except poverty and a huge capacity to doubt.

“The city’s quiet,” announced de Crespigny, as we started on the soup. “Either they’re waiting for the men on the camels to bring back a report, or they’ve made up their minds to cut loose at midnight. There’s no knowing which. I acted Dutch uncle to the head-men in the mejliss hall.”

“How old was the youngest of them?” I asked him.

“Lord knows. Why? What difference does his age make? I told them they are responsible for good order in the city and that I’ll hold their noses to it. The Jews made the most fuss; they’re naturally scared. They demanded a curfew rule—everybody to be within doors after eight o’clock.”

“Did you agree to that?” Grim asked—a shade sharply it seemed to me. He left off eating soup and waited for the answer.

“Didn’t dare. Couldn’t enforce it with ten policemen. So I pretended to give the idea a minute’s consideration and then told ’em the head-men might make any ruling they liked and that at the first sign of disorder the head-men will be the ones who’ll catch it! On top of that I told ’em I’ve decided not to send for troops as long as they behave themselves; thought that might explain away the fact that we can’t get troops!”

“Good boy!” said Grim.

“I feel like Pontius Pilate!” laughed de Crespigny.

“He was better off; he had about a hundred men,” said Jones. “All the same, you’ve done what he did. I was all through the city. You’ve jolly well got P. Pilate Esquire looking like a silver-plater cantering behind the crowd at the end of a season.”

“Thanks!”

“What I mean is, I think you’ve kept on top. You were so jolly cool they think you’ve got a red ace up your sleeve.”

“I’m hoping Grim has,” said de Crespigny.

“Sure—I’ve got Cohen,” answered Grim.

Cohen laid his spoon down and looked about him.

“Red ace? Me? Up anybody’s sleeve? Say, quit your kiddin’!”

“All right. You’re to do the kidding from now on.”

“Kid myself, I suppose? Kid myself my stummik don’t feel creepy each time there’s a new noise in the street!”

“Yes, kid yourself. You’re going to be an Arab after dinner.”

“Well, give me a long knife then! Maybe I’ll wave it an’ preach a holy war an’ lead all the Arabs in rings around the country until they get sore feet an’ die o’ homesickness? That’s a better idea than any I’ve heard yet.”

“You’ve got to lead Jews, not Arabs,” Grim answered.

“Me? In this place? It can’t be done. They’re all Orthodox here. There isn’t one of ’em would listen to me.”

“We’ll see,” Grim answered and he would not say another word on the subject all through dinner.

It was not an easy meal. There were constant interruptions by mysterious men from the city who sought word with de Crespigny. Most of them were men who feared for their property in case of an outbreak of violence—for the Moslems loot pretty indiscriminately when the game begins, and he who has an enemy does well to watch him. But two or three of them were on the official list of spies and their reports were not reassuring.

However, we reached the stage of nuts and port wine without having been fired at through the window, which was something, and although there was an atmosphere of overhanging danger, not lessened by the smoky oil lamps and the shadows they cast on the wall, or by the dead silence of the street outside, broken only at intervals by the cough of the solitary sentry I, for one, did not feel like a doomed man; and I suspected Cohen of feeling less afraid than he pretended. I think he was actually more nervous about what Grim had in store for him than creepy about Arab knives.

░ AFTER dinner the house was ransacked for Arab garments that would fit him, and in half an hour he was trigged out well enough to deceive any one. The Jewish are not unlike Arab features, in the dark especially, and there was less risk of his being detected than of my making some bad break that would give the three of us away; although by that time under Grim’s tuition I had learned how to act an Arab part pretty well, provided I held my tongue.

Cohen could talk Arabic as easily as English, being a linguist like most Jews, as against my mere beginner’s efforts. But Grim would not hear of leaving me behind. I am convinced that over and over again if he had left me out of things he could have accomplished his purpose more easily, but he has a sort of showman instinct under his mask of indifference to side-issues, coupled to a most extravagant devotion to his friends.

I should say that his weakest point is that. He is inclined to run absurd risks to do a friend a favor, and takes a child’s delight in springing a weird surprize [sic] on you, often for his purpose treating regulations and such encumbrances as if they never existed. And his friends are strictly of his own choosing. Nationality, creed, social standing, even morality, mean nothing to him when it comes to likes and dislikes, so that you often find yourself in strange company if you are lucky enough to stumble into his astonishing circle, as I did.

He and Cohen and I left the house by the front door— I with strict instructions to keep silent and much occupied with the difficulty of walking like a native. We went past the jail, where the man on duty did not recognize us, for he challenged gruffly and cautioned us to go home; then straight on down the empty street toward the city, where hardly a light hinted that more than twenty thousand people dwelt.

Parts of the ancient wall are standing, but there are no gates left and it was only as the street grew narrower and crooked that we knew we were within. There was no moon; so although the purple sky was powdered with blazing jewels, the shadows were black as pitch and it was more by watching the roof-line than the pavement that we found our way.

Now and then we passed under tunnels where ancient houses with six-foot-thick walls were built over the street; but those were generally lighted by dim oil lamps that flickered wanly, suggesting stealthy movements in the dark ten feet away.

It was clean enough underfoot, for those two boys had set at naught the Palestinian obsession for saving water that is as old as the tanks they preserve the rain in; but as the camel-load-wide street shut in on us, the smells of ancientry awoke, until we came to the ghetto and a stench like rotting fish put all other sensations for the moment out of mind.

You can get a suggestion of the same smell in New York in the small streets where the immigrants live awhile before they begin to absorb America.

There an iron lamp hung on a bracket and shed gold on the flanks and floor of a plain stone arch. There had been a great gate, for the hinges were there, but the gate was gone. Under the arch, beyond the farthest rays of lamplight was the night in its own home, blacker than the gloom of graveyards. There was not a sound or a suggestion of anything but mother-night, that you might lean against.

Grim led the way in. It felt like groping your way forward into a trap, for in spite of the insufferable silence—or because of it—there was a sensation after the first few yards of being watched by eyes you could not see and waited for by enemies who held their breath.

Twenty yards down a passage so narrow that you could touch both sides at once without fully extending your arms Grim stopped and listened, and it was so dark that Cohen and I cannoned into him. Little by little then, you became aware of infinitely tiny dots of lights, where doors and shutters did not quite fit and once or twice of a footfall about as noisy as a cat’s. There was teeming life behind the scenes, as awake and watchful as the jungle creatures that wander between the thickets when men go by.

Suddenly Grim began to call aloud in Hebrew, sending the mellow, rounded vowels booming along between the walls, but getting no response except the echo of his own voice. Three times he repeated what sounded like the same words and then turned back.

“Quick! Out of this! An Arab isn’t safe here!”

By comparison the gloom of the street looked like daylight. We made for it like small boys afraid of graveyard ghosts.

“What did you say to them?” I asked and Cohen snickered.

“A verse from the Psalms in the original—‘Come, behold the works of the Lord. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God. … The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.’”

“Now who’s kiddin’ himself?” asked Cohen. “You think they wouldn’t sooner know the Sikhs were coming?”

“D’you know the history of your own people?” Grim answered. “There isn’t a man in that ghetto who hasn’t a sharp weapon of some kind. If they thought the Sikhs were on the way they’d very likely start something for the Sikhs to finish. That’s crowd psychology. Get a number of people all in one place, hating one thing or afraid of one thing and any fool can stampede them into violence. Jews are fighters; don’t forget it; if they weren’t they’d have been exterminated long ago. If the Jews start anything tonight we’re done for. That voice in the dark may make them think. Come on.”

“Where are we going now?”

“To the Haram.”

“Gee!”

There was no need to explain to Cohen what that meant and the deadly danger of it. Beneath the mosque in the Haram is the cave of Machpelah in which Abraham’s bones are said to lie. The Arabs claim descent from Abraham in the line of Ishmael and Esau, and dwell lingeringly on the story of how both men lost their birthright, as they hold, unfairly; so now that they have the tables turned and own the tomb of the common ancestor, they take delight in keeping out the descendants of Jacob, and the death of a Jew caught in that place would be swift. Jews and other “infidels” with rare exceptions are allowed as far as the seventh step leading upward from the street, but not one inch nearer.

“Are we going inside?” asked Cohen.

“May as well.”

“You’ve got your nerve!”

“We’ll be safe if you’ve got yours.”

Cohen did not answer and I would have given a lot to know just what was going on in his mind. If the prospect of entering that mosque thrilled me it must have meant vastly more to him, however broad his disrespect and loose his faith might be; for not a Jew had stood within stone-throw of the tomb of Abraham for nearly two thousand years, and all the Jews of the world, Orthodox or not, look back through the mists of time to Abraham at least as thoughtfully as does New England to the Pilgrim Fathers.

If he regarded Abraham as myth it was none the less an adventure to tread where no Jew had dared show himself for nineteen centuries; but I don’t think he did, for you need not scratch the most free-thinking Jew particularly deep before you find a pride of ancestry as stiff as any man’s. Cohen was not one of those “international” fire-brands that offend by denying race as well as creed, but a mighty decent fellow as the sequel showed.

Grim knew the way through the dark streets as a fox knows the rabbit-runs, and led without a moment’s hesitation. His point of view was not so puzzling as Cohen’s; he was like a knife that goes straight to the heart of things, as unconscious of resistance as a blade that is fine enough to slip between what heavier tools must press against and break.

Making our way continually southward, we threaded the quarter of the glass-blowers and the quarter of the water-skin makers, past endless shuttered stalls where lamp-light filtered dimly through the cracks in proof that the city was not asleep.

There was very little sound, but an atmosphere of tense expectancy. A few men were abroad, but they avoided us, slinking into shadows; for it is not wise to be recognized before the looting starts, lest an enemy denounce you afterwards.

The wise—and all Hebron prides itself on wisdom in affairs of lawlessness—were indoors, waiting. You felt as if the city held its breath.

When we drew near the Haram at last there was more life in evidence. It began with the street dogs that always leave their miserable offal-hunting to slink and be curious around the circle of men’s doings. We had to kick them out of the way and were well saluted for our pains so that our arrival on the scene was hardly surreptitious.

Over the south entrance of the Haram a great iron lantern burned, and we could see the wall beyond it, of enormous, drafted, smooth-hewn blocks as old as history. Men were leaning against it and standing in groups, some of them holding lanterns and every one armed. The men of Hebron, who pride themselves on fierceness, are at pains to look fierce when violence is cooking and the Arab costume lends itself to that. I think Cohen shuddered and I know I did. Grim led straight on, as if he owed no explanation to the guardians of the place and did not expect to be called upon to give any.

But they stopped us at the entrance, an arch no wider than to admit two men abreast, and, because Grim was leading, hands that were neither too respectful nor over-gentle thrust him back, and fierce, excited faces were thrust close to his.

“Allah! Where are you coming? Who are you?”

“Heaven preserve you, brothers! Mahommed Hadad and two friends,” Grim answered.

“What do you want?”

“To see the fire-gift.”

“Whence do you come?”

“From Beersheba, where all men tell of the great happenings in El- Kalil.”

“Ye come to spy on us!”

“Allah forbid!”

“Then to steal! Beersheba is a rain-washed bone; ye come to help loot El-Kalil and afterwards leave us to bear the blame for it!”

“Shu halalk? We be honest men. In the name of the Merciful, my brothers, we seek admittance.”

“Are there Jews with you?”

“That is a strange jest! Who would bring a Jew to this place?”

“Nevertheless, let us see the others.”

There were long, keen knives in their girdles. As Cohen and I raised our faces to be looked at we offered our throats temptingly and the goose-flesh rose all down my arms and thighs. Only a Jew can guess what Cohen felt; but a Jew looks exactly like an Arab when his face is framed in the kufiyi. Neither of us spoke. I stepped forward after Grim, trying to look as if I knew my rights in the matter, and Cohen followed me. In another second we were past the guard and mounting steps up which sudden death is the penalty for trespass.