They inched along what seemed like a footpath where overhanging branches raked the tops of their heads. Esther held Jacob’s face to her chest to protect his eyes. After a few more minutes, the driver hit the brakes again. The other men in the cab swore at him and Yitzhak shouted, “Back up.”
“Too dark,” said the driver. “Too steep.”
By now, men from the two other vehicles had arrived and joined the argument. The walkie-talkie crackled to life, but no amount of fiddling with the dials brought in a signal. Yitzhak finally switched off the machine. “Never mind that. I know where we are,” he said. “Beit Oren is a couple of kilometers up this hill. It’s a climb, but we’re close enough to make it. Pass the word: we’re walking.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” muttered the driver.
There were no smiles as the refugees were helped from the trucks, but everyone felt the urgency of the situation and within minutes, all 150 of them—refugees and Palmach—were on their way.
As they headed into the forest, the darkness thickened, both shielding and thwarting them. A narrow path led through uneven, rocky ground that seemed to reach up and trip someone every few moments. No one spoke, but the sounds of panting and gasping grew louder as they climbed.
Shayndel stayed near the front of the line, close to Yitzhak and his flashlight. Leonie and Tedi scrambled to keep up with her, but Leonie’s feet were on fire as the shoes rubbed through the blisters on her bruised heels and swollen toes. Tedi’s lungs ached.
Zorah hated being separated from Shayndel, but she would not leave Jacob and Esther, who lagged behind. Esther’s fur coat, now heavy with moisture and mud, slowed her down, and Jacob stumbled beside her, dazed by exhaustion.
With the loud crack of a gun, the rescue turned into a hunt. The Palmachniks pushed everyone to the ground as another shot echoed through the trees over their heads.
No one moved or wept or breathed a word as they waited, pressed against the forest floor. The quiet that followed the second blast continued long enough so that Yitzhak picked up his head and gestured for a couple of his men to crawl forward and join him. “It’s going to be daylight soon,” he whispered. “I want you to go up ahead and see what kind of defense the Brits have mounted around Beit Oren. The order is to get these people to safety, not to fight. If there are too many of them, we may have to wait here until tomorrow night.”
God forbid, thought Shayndel.
The two men ran out of sight and Yitzhak sent word back down the line: keep still.
People found places to sit and huddled together for warmth. Some rested their foreheads on their knees. Jacob slept with his head on Esther’s lap, his legs draped over Zorah’s. Leonie and Tedi looked up nervously as the night sky showed the first dim traces of morning. Shayndel crouched, eyes wide, listening for another gunshot.
It wasn’t long before two dark silhouettes scrambled into view. “The western slope is damn near empty,” Shayndel heard one of them say. “We have to stay as far from the road as possible, but we can enter safely on the far side of the kibbutz.”
Kibbutz. The word echoed in her head, suddenly unfamiliar and unlike an ordinary noun like “pencil” or “soup.” More like “justice,” or even “unicorn.” Not so much a thing you could put a hand on; a kind of fairy tale or dream—a nice idea, a noble goal, perhaps. Not a real place like the one these men were talking about—just out of view.
Yitzhak got to his feet. His men lifted children onto their shoulders, picked up suitcases, and set out at a brisk clip. Everyone felt the pressure of the coming dawn and walked quickly. Tedi caught the cold steel smell of anxiety around her. Zorah held branches back for those with bundles and babies in their arms. Leonie bit her lips as she hobbled on the outer edges of her feet. Shayndel shivered for the first time all night, suddenly aware of how cold she was.
“Look,” someone whispered. A yellow glow, haloed in mist, blooming in the darkness, not sixty yards away.
Shayndel tried to remind herself that this was no miracle, merely the energy pulsing through wires. Just electricity, no different from the power that had lit her days and nights in Atlit. And yet, these wires and bulbs made her ache with the need to shout and laugh out loud and sing praises and simply say the word: kibbutz.
It was only a few dozen yards between the edge of the forest and the settlement fence, where people were waiting, holding lanterns aloft. The escapees raced across the clearing and were met with bear hugs and blankets. Leonie fell to her knees, weeping with relief. Esther covered a stranger’s face with kisses. Tedi lifted Jacob and swung him around. Zorah panted and gasped, suddenly starved for air after a night of holding her breath.
The kibbutzniks and the Palmach rescuers cut the celebration short and led their guests over a dim gravel pathway and into a brightly lit dining hall. Mugs of hot tea were pressed into their hands. “Shalom and welcome,” they were told, again and again. “Shalom and welcome.”
Leonie sat down beside Tedi and asked, “Have you seen Shayndel?”
“The last I saw her, she was running through the fence. She must be here somewhere or maybe she’s already talking to the kibbutz president; you know, giving him the full report and telling him what to do,” Tedi said. “Now have some tea. You look frozen.”
Leonie kept an eye on the door. After she drained her cup, she slipped outside and found her way back down to where they had entered the kibbutz. A man with a gun was on patrol near the fence, which showed no evidence of having been the scene of their arrival a few minutes ago.
She stepped off the path into a stand of tall pines, feeling that she had somehow found her way back in time, into a darker, chillier hour of the night.
“Shayndel?” she called softly. “Shayndel? Where are you? It’s me.”
Shayndel was barely twenty feet away from her, her forehead pressed against the trunk of a young tree, mourning her brother.
Noah had been in love with the idea of the kibbutz. He would stretch his arms over the backs of the chairs on either side of him—he had such long arms—and provoke silly arguments with his friends, just to prolong the conversation about what kibbutz life would be like. “You can pluck all the Hebrew-speaking chickens you want,” he said. “I’m going to be an architect and create a beautiful kibbutz, not merely a utilitarian one.”
He laughed when they called him bourgeois. “We’re going to need buildings, right? And I see no reason why we shouldn’t build cottages and classrooms and, hell, even chicken coops that will be the envy of the rest of the world.”
Why not? thought Shayndel. But why aren’t you here?
Leonie followed the sound of muffled weeping and put her hand on Shayndel’s shoulder. “Chérie,” she said. “What’s wrong?”