The thing happened many years ago. In the third class of the train that went from Jerusalem to Jaffa, in a special cell, a murderer was being transported who was accused of a heinous offence – robbery and murder – and had been sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. His guards, two armed policemen, were bringing him by train to Ramla, in order to transfer him by foot from there to Acre, the place where he was to serve out his punishment. The prisoner, whose arms and legs were bound in irons, sat inside the cell, and his two guards – the policemen – on the bench facing the cell door from the outside. At first, the rest of the passengers turned away from this bunch and did not approach them. But little by little, curiosity got the better of fear and loathing and the passengers began to draw nearer to the cell and to the policemen and exchange words with them. At the second stop, when one of the policemen announced that the prisoner asked for bread to eat, mass enthusiasm ensued. Each one thought it his duty to cut a slice from his bread and give it to the prisoner. The Fellahin among them gathered for him many pitas, which they gave generously. Many gave their bread to the policemen, and others approached the cell themselves and threw the bread into the prisoner’s hands and returned with beaming faces, as if they had discharged a public obligation.
I too felt a desire to see the man who was locked there in the cell. I got up from my seat and sat on the bench next to the policemen, opposite the cell door.
The cell was one cubit by one cubit with no window. On the floor sat the prisoner, a Negro. Between his two hands, bound at the wrist with chains, he held a loaf of bread which had just been given to him and was biting off large chunks off it with his white, shiny, and sharp teeth, and swallowing them one after another without chewing. He was completely absorbed in his eating, the eating of an animal, and all his attentions were focused on it to the point where it seemed that he noticed nothing of his surroundings. He must have been very hungry. I suddenly felt nauseous and I decided to get up and go back to my seat. But at this moment, something grabbed the prisoner’s attention. He suddenly raised his head from his prey and levelled his gaze at me…
My heart struck me. The face was indeed the ordinary face of a Negro: hair that was short, stiff, curly, and blacker than tar, a thin and sunken forehead, a black face, shiny as a black shoe that has been polished by a master shiner, a short nose, cleft in the middle and round at its end, and prominent and flaring nostrils, thick lips protruding upwards, and a short, pointy chin covered by a few stiff hairs. His entire countenance was hard and cruel. But the eyes…. They are what struck my heart and drew me to them as if with a magic rope… They were large, black, but not bulging, and the whites of his eyes were not orange like the eyes of a Negro. And what amazed me most of all – was the look in his eyes: open, innocent, simple and good, like the eyes of a child, or like the eyes of a country girl. “Was that the look of a man who had robbed and murdered?”
“Why are you looking at him like that? Do you know him from somewhere?” one of the policemen asked me. He had signs of grey in his hair and his face looked angry, with a hint of a goodly smile.
And the Negro murderer looked at me too with the fullness of his childish gaze, fixing his eyes on me as if he were asking me for something. He opened his mouth wide and a light laugh, a good laugh that was full of good-will, arose from between his thick lips and covered the whole of his dark face that shone black… At that moment it seemed to me that I did indeed know this Negro from some time in the past… “Who was he? And where do I know him from? Was that the laugh of a man who had been sentenced to fifteen years hard labor?”
“What is his name?” I asked the policemen.
One of them, the younger one, cast a furious glance at me, as if I had – God forbid – intended to avert him from the sanctity of his duties. The other, the older one, looked at me again out of a good-hearted laughter, cast his glance over the prisoner, then set it again on me, and spoke at length:
“His name? You want to know his name? Call him: Hamidi… This is a famous man… Sentenced to hard labor for the third time already… Once for five years, once for ten, and now for fifteen… And the fourth time he might get the gallows…”
And to better illustrate the point, the policeman moved his hand across his neck and motioned as if he were strangling someone with a rope.
And on the face of the murderer, who had been sentenced to fifteen years hard labor and in whose future the gallows was expected, the same easy childlike laughter lingered and its light illuminated his entire face.
“How can this be?” I wondered, “Can he really have already served fifteen years of hard labor? He still only looks about thirty years old!”
“And maybe not even thirty,” the guard added after me, and he turned to the Negro and asked:
“How many years old are you?”
“Allah knows!” grunted the Negro briefly. And his laughter expanded even more to the edges of his face.
“Do you think that he’s ever served out his entire sentence?” added the policeman and continued, “It is his way to escape from the prison he is in after a year or two, and he will escape this time as well.”
And again the policeman turned to the Negro and said:
“Will you escape this time, too, Hamidi?”
And again the Negro let out a two-word grunt, whose meaning I did not catch. I couldn’t tell if it had been an affirmative or a negative response.
“And how can a man whose feet and hands are bound, escape?”
The two policemen and the Negro with them laughed at me good-naturedly.
“As soon as the family of his effendis needs a scapegoat, means of escape will be found…”
“How? What are you saying?”
The young policeman was taken aback. He cast a glance of anger and protest at his comrade and closed his mouth with great exertion, as if he feared he himself might broach some unkosher talk. The old one measured me with a lengthy glance, as if he were testing whether I was worthy of open-souled conversation. After this he brought his head near to mine and whispered in my ear:
“Do you really think that guy robbed and murdered?”
“What?!” I asked again out loud in amazement. The old policeman too sent me a glance of protest and fell silent. But the desire to talk was strong in him, apparently, and again he leaned his face towards me:
“He is nothing but a scapegoat… Ten years ago, one of the effendis of the S. family shot a Jewish man in the moshava of N. and killed him…”
“Why, that was in our moshava!” I cried out aloud again, not being able to restrain my spirit this time: “Is that Yusef?!”
This time the old policeman gave me a look of ire mixed with contempt and was silent. I had lost all standing in his eyes. His silence this time was absolute. He even turned his face away from me and cast an angry and scowling look at the prisoner. And this look brought terror to the Negro. The laughter that had graced his face was gone, and his face was sunk again between the palms of his two hands, which still held the remains of bread.
_____
Then I recalled what had happened:
The land for our moshava we had bought from a rich effendi of the S. family. He was a good and kind man. He was not able to keep together the large holding he had inherited from his father. He was not able to mind his sons, who had begun to play cards and drink wine. And he was forced to sell his land.
The effendi and his family dwelled all the days in the provincial capital and the land was tended by his black slave, who dwelled with his family, a wife and three sons, in a ruin on one of the hills. Only during the threshing every summer would the effendi come, pitch his tent near the ruin, and collect a tithe of one fifth from the neighboring Fellahin who worked his land as sharecroppers. And when the land was sold to us, and on that same hill the new moshava began to be built, the Negro and his family continued to dwell in their ruin, and he became the herder of the moshava’s flock, and his three sons became coachmen in the settlers’ farms. The faces of the three sons were like those of all Negroes, but their eyes… Their eyes were not like those of the Negroes. And the Fellahin who had been sharecroppers of the land, would joke with the boys of the moshava and say that the Negro’s sons had inherited their eyes from their benefactor, the effendi…
Back in the first year since the building of the moshava, the effendi died of an infectious disease that ravished the country at that time, and after him all at once the Negro and his wife died of the same disease. After their parents’ death, the two older sons left the moshava and went wherever they did go, and only the youngest – Yusef – remained with his owner, a Jewish bachelor farmer, because his soul had come to love him, and his master too was good to him and took care of him.
And the following year this sad incident transpired:
One of the effendi’s sons came to the moshava with a gang of friends. They got drunk at the inn, and as they walked out into the street, they were met by the farmer and his black coachman who were returning from the fields. And the effendi’s son drew his gun and shot the farmer in the heart and killed him. The murderer and his friends fled before the moshava dwellers could be mustered. And when the policemen arrived, who had been summoned from the neighboring city, they found next to the slain man lying in his own blood – since by law it was forbidden to remove a body without the authorities witnessing it – the black man, and they arrested him and brought him to the city. The trial lasted an entire year and swallowed up a vast sum of the moshava’s money. The murderous effendi went about almost entirely free and was never caught. And the black man locked in the prison was forgotten from hearts and minds. The moshava still did not know then the wiles of Turkish law and all its avenues of investigation and inquiry. The agent, a native of this country, who led the parties through the trial, drew fees from both sides. And how livid the moshava was on the day of the trial to hear that the Negro Yusef was convicted for the farmer’s murder… The judges were lenient in his sentence since he had killed his owner in anger, while in dispute over withholding of his wages! And the witnesses who had seen the murder with their own eyes were members of the effendi’s gang… The moshava board travelled from one place to another, protested, wrote letters, payed bribes right and left, and all its efforts were in vain.
_____
“Was this really him? Wasn’t his name Yusef?”
All the while, my eyes did not stray from the Negro’s face. He had finished eating his bread and his face registered total calm. His good and innocent eyes looked straight at me. This time, they were not laughing, nor did they convey sorrow. They were quiet.
“Yusef?” I asked, addressing him directly. The young policeman jumped out of his seat again, and the old one touched me with his hand, as if to say:
“Leave him be. What do we care?”
“It is I,” grunted the Negro.
“And why do they call you Hamidi?”
Again his good eyes laughed, and the whole surface of his hard face laughed.
“Is it fitting that a man be tried three times under one and same name?” the old policeman, who liked to talk, answered me. He had already put aside the feeling of contempt for a son of the moshava that did not know to avenge the blood of one of its sons, and also the fear that the Negro’s true name had aroused in him when pronounced by a third party. After this, he added:
“Each trial and its own name. Then, in your moshava,” the emphasis was again not in our favor, “we arrested Yusef… Later, the second time, we arrested Gashem… And this time it’s Hamidi… And what will your name be when you go to the gallows?”
This time the Negro did not heed the policeman’s words. He neither grunted nor laughed, and his eyes, which had taken their gaze off me, were cast now towards the window that opened onto the broad fields that stretched out before him. It seemed to me that some shadow of sadness rested on his eyes now, perhaps a shadow of longing, or perhaps he recalled the days of his youth, or his mother?
“What is that man thinking? What are his meditations? What does his heart turn to?”
“And what was he convicted of the second time?” I asked the policeman, for I wished again to arouse the Negro’s interest.
“Concerning the same family again. That time because of the brother of his ‘benefactor,’ the uncle of your man of interest…”
And again the policeman’s look reduced me to lower than the dust of the earth.
“And what happened?”
“This uncle was suspected of killing in anger the watchman of his orchard… Afterwards, the true murderer was found… The same Negro again, who had gone to steal oranges, and when caught by the watchman – killed him. The orchard workers, who work during the day, saw it with their own eyes at night… And this time the Negro’s name was Gashem… And for this he was broken out of his prison in Acre…”
“And why was his name changed?”
“I told you already: It is better that way. Then, at the time of the murder, Yusef was still serving out his sentence in Acre, and it is not fitting to convict a man of a murder in Jaffa if on that very day the man was in prison in Acre… It was of necessity that he be called Gashem!”
The two policemen laughed out loud, and together with them the Negro laughed too, an innocent laughter. This time, it was I who was sad, and I did not know why or what about. And suddenly I recalled the details of the affair that I had heard of just now, and that I knew at the time.
“Wasn’t that same effendi killed later on in the middle of the street by a Mughrabi?”
“That was the brother of the watchman… The Mughrabis are no yahud!”
This time, the force of his contempt overflowed its banks. And I… My face flushed red and I bowed my head down, as if the sin of the people of my moshava really did hang over me, for not having shed blood for blood.
And to extricate myself from my embarrassment, I continued to question without interest, for all my concern had dissipated suddenly and my soul ached and I did not know why.
“And what was he convicted of this time?”
The policeman’s desire to talk had been impaired as well. Perhaps it was because we were already approaching Ramla, and from afar the top of the old tower could be seen, reminding him that here began the hard road to Acre. Or maybe the same ill wind passed over him that had passed over me. He answered me again at length, as was his wont, but listlessly:
“First, it was the fault of the son of his ‘benefactor,’ then it was due to his brother, and this time it is because of his grandson… The grandson ‘misbehaved’ while playing cards, he killed his friend and robbed his money… And this time too the Negro was troubled to escape from prison… And again his name was changed, this time out of feelings of mercy… Otherwise, he might be facing the gallows already now… But maybe it was for another reason that they had mercy on him… His ‘family’ will probably be in need of him again…”
The policeman turned his hard and angry face towards the Negro and asked him:
“Whose crime will you go to the gallows for? Again because of someone from your ‘family’? This is what Allah created him for. The families of the effendis, each family has its scapegoat…”
The policeman spoke with an angry voice. The hardship of the coming journey agitated him. And maybe it was something more.
“Quiet! Don’t move a muscle! You… Scoun-… drel…!” the policeman suddenly yelled and stomped his foot towards the Negro, even though the other hadn’t even thought of moving a hand or a foot.
The three of us – me, the young policeman and the Negro – looked in astonishment at the old policeman. The train had stopped in Ramla. The policemen and the Negro prisoner got out. I too got out after them. Something drew me to look one more time at the prisoner’s face. And again it seemed to me that a veil of sadness covered his eyes. My heart contracted suddenly within me. It was clear to me at that moment that between the Negro and the gallows stood only a matter of time.
And a desire arose in me to help him. How? With what? I approached him without knowing why myself, without knowing what I was going to ask him or what I would say to him. Suddenly, I remembered and I asked him:
“Yusef… Where are your two brothers today?”
He looked at me in wonder as if he didn’t follow my question. What did he have to do with his brothers? How should he know where they are? And what did I have to do with him?
The old policeman concerned himself with his business and the young one put on an angry face and admonished me:
“Get out of here!”
I left. The train began to move. I returned to my seat.
For a long time, the face of that Negro and the naive, simple, and childish look in his eyes stood in front of my eyes. And sometimes I see him before me standing on the scaffold, ready to be hung, and his naive and guileless gaze lingers with me as if he were asking me something. What?
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