A Promised Land? by Alan Collins

Author:Alan Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press

SEVEN

Out in the sunshine once again, so welcome after the coolness of the house, Jacob’s first inclination was to run all the way down the hill to Bondi beach. He paused where the road curved and he could look down on the beautiful glistening crescent of sand and surf. The waves curled and crashed without sound. Below the north headland were the crevices in the cliff face. The one he favoured was so secluded he could lie there without his clothes while the sun licked him all over.

He started down the hill, first at a fast walk; as he drew nearer the sea, he broke into a run until his heart was pounding both with his exertions and the momentousness of what he had proposed to Ruth. He was oblivious of the crowds heading to the beach so that for once it did not matter to him that he was alone. Ruth might not be alongside him in bathers and multi-coloured beach shirt, but she was inside his head.

Jacob ran to an insistent beat of ‘‘Palestine, Palestine, Palestine’’. He didn’t ease up until he reached the colonnaded bathing pavilion. Its Mediterranean architecture seemed to reinforce his new direction. He crossed the promenade and on the steps took off his shoes. On the beach, the hot sand became to him the desert of southern Palestine. He threaded his way between sunbathers and reached the cool of the shore. The sandstone caves and crevices of the northern headland beckoned him on. The tide was out. Jacob rock-hopped around the shoreline until he reached these crevices under the lee of the jutting cliffs.

The rays of the afternoon sun warmed the sandstone like a blanket. He took off his clothes and spread himself against the rock, feeling its heat and strength flow into him. These rocks were creamy, flecked with quartz. The pictures he had seen of the cliffs and caves of the Negev Desert in Palestine showed them in fiery orange colours that turned to purple as the sun sank behind the Hills of Moab. He tried to picture himself and Ruth posed against this background, like tourists at the Blue Mountains.

Then his thoughts turned to Ruth’s parting words. While she had been attending meetings of her particular Zionist youth movement — which was politically moderate — Jacob had become a member of another group which had its basis in socialism. In the end, their aim of settlement on a kibbutz was no different; they just approached it by different paths. For many these meetings were no more than social outings where Jewish boys and girls could meet and absorb the theories of political Zionism. The Marxist principles of kibbutz life, with their emphasis on shared responsibility and no individual ownership of property certainly did not have unanimous acceptance. It was noticeable that the strongest adherents were the children of migrants. Those from established Anglo-Jewish backgrounds or who had social ambitions to join them, were fewer and less enthusiastic.

Although the members of both

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