Free The Land Agent by J. David Simons Page B

better to be alone, don’t you think? To be a strong, independent woman.
    I am writing this letter in the dining room. It is very late, I don’t even know what time it is. There is a young man asleep in a cot at the other end of the room. Or at least he is pretending to be asleep, for I believe he is watching me. His name is Lev. I think he likes me. He grabbed my hand a while ago when I took him over a cup of tea. I pulled it away, of course. Yet I could feel all my feminine wiles coming to the fore just because there was a new male in the camp. How fickle I am after everything I have just written above. At the same time, it is hard to believe I can still be attractive when my clothes are so dirty, my hair is stiff with dirt and I stink for lack of a good wash. If he had come on the Sabbath, at least then I make a little bit of an effort. But what does it matter? As I just wrote, perhaps it is better to be alone.
    In the meantime, this Lev has come here from the organization that owns our land to help us acquire some more. More land. We cannot even take care of what we have. But it is essential we get this plot as it will give us access to the river. For there is one thing that is just as important as land here in Palestine, and that is water. Our crops are dying in the field and there are severe restrictions on the amounts we can use for bathing or the laundry.
    At tonight’s meeting, I believe Lev began to realize what a nest of vipers he was sticking his hand into. This piece of land is a symbol of all our differences in this little group of ours. When we talk of land, what we are really talking about are all the tensions that lie beneath our relationships, all the things we are too frightened to say to each other face to face. Some people in our group are against acquiring the land for ideological reasons. For socialist reasons. For Zionist reasons. For practical reasons. For personal reasons. For spiteful reasons. At the meeting tonight we
ended up discussing it all over again. Discuss, discuss, discuss. That is all we do here when we are not working. That is what socialism is, Charlotte. Discussions and committees and meetings. We discuss everything. In the end, it is not the one who is right who wins, but the one who can last longest. I feel I can’t even spend a penny here without a damn discussion. If I just lift up my skirts in the fields and go there and then, perhaps there should be a discussion about that too. I know it is important to talk about things as a group. That we should all feel equal. That we should give according to our ability and take according to our needs. But sometimes I am just sick of it. Sometimes I just yearn for a dictatorship (a benevolent one, of course, run by a woman) when someone just tells me what to do without any talk, talk, talk.
    Look at me, talk, talk, talking away. I am sorry, Charlotte, I must stop chattering on like this. I am so very tired. There is so much more that I could tell you but I must finish this letter so I can get this Lev to take it back to Haifa with him tomorrow. That way it should arrive with you more quickly. What price the grasping of my hand? Why, a postage stamp to Great Britain, of course.
     
    All my love
   
     
    Celia
   

Ten
    ‘N OT NOW .’
    Lev turned over in his cot, watched a pink lizard, its skin almost translucent, slither along one of the beams, disappear into a crack. He listened to the scratch of Celia’s pen across the paper. He heard the tiredness in her sigh. He couldn’t believe he had grabbed her hand like that. The last time he had held a female hand was when he had danced the
hora
around a campfire with Sarah and the rest of the Young Guard. His palm had been so sweaty then, he feared she would slip from his grasp. With Celia, his hand was as dry as parchment as it was propelled towards her wrist by some hidden force outside himself. Until he heard those two words that had filled him with just a little hope.
    ‘Not