Cafe Nevo (13 page)

“So what? I cried when you were born, too; that doesn't mean I didn't want you.” She stood, and in the slow movement of her slender body and the reaching of her hand toward the rail, he saw the first sign of her disease. She gazed over the kibbutz, her back to him. “It did hurt when you said you were never coming back to live,” she said. “But not because you were wrong. Because you were right.”

“You think I don't fit in?” he cried, stung, for there are no more bitter words than these, spoken to a kibbutznik.

Rina beckoned, and he came to stand beside her at the porch's edge. “When your father and I first came to this place, it was nothing but barren earth, so full of rocks you couldn't get a plow to look at it. Now just look at the gardens, the lawns, the fields, the fat animals and fatter children. We have color television in every house, we vacation abroad every year, and every child, like it or not, goes to the university. We're so
comfortable.”
She said it with such bitterness that Arik laughed. So, after a moment, did she.

“We Eshels are happier struggling than having. You can't live here, Arik. You need to fight your own battles, carve out your own place from the rock. And what's more, you know it. So don't talk to me about ‘coming home.'

“Besides,” she said, “you think I want you standing over me, watch in hand, waiting for me to die so you can get on with your own life?”

“Don't say that, Mama. You're not going to die.”

“Did I raise a fool for a son?” Rina snapped. “Everybody dies.” She waved to some passing friends and went back to her seat on the porch. “Getting sick with cancer has its interesting points,” she said. “When people find out, they're either frightened and shrink away, or they embrace you. I've had people I barely know coming up to me and saying that they love me or that they want to thank me for something I once did for them and forgot all about. The kibbutz members wanted to send me to the States when the doctors here said I was inoperable; it would have cost a fortune.”

“Who cares what it costs? If there's a chance—”
 

“There's nothing they can do in America that the doctors here can't do. They're being decent, trying to spare me useless trauma. An operation wouldn't improve my odds with this kind of cancer—so why go through it?”
 

“How can you be sure?”
 

“I've taken an interest,” she said drily.
 

He wanted to ask, Mama, what does it feel like? Does it hurt? Are you frightened? But nothing in his kibbutz training or army service had taught him to express such thoughts; besides, there was a part of him that didn't want to know. For if she said yes, it hurts, and yes, I am afraid, then what could he do about it?

“There are two things I want,” Rina said, and Arik blurted, “Yes? What, Mama?”

She laughed. “That's the other benefit of cancer. It's like getting a magic gift of wishes. I have only to say, ‘I want—' and the whole world jumps to attention. ‘Yes, please, tell us, what can we do for you?'“

Arik smiled painfully. He could admire, but not begin to emulate, her cool acceptance of this thing.

“I want you to come see us more often. Spend time with your father. For too long you've been communicating through me; now you've got to learn to talk together.” She looked him in the eye. “I want that
badly.”

Remembering their conversation in the orchard, Arik doubted it could be done, but he said, “Yes. And what's the other thing?”

Flushing, she said, “I'm not the interfering type of mother, am I?”

He smiled. “Not even close.”

“I wish,” she said, looking at her hands, “that you would find yourself a woman. I know you've had plenty of girls, but I wish you would find someone you'd be proud for us to meet. Men are so
helpless
without women.”

He thought, he could not help it, of Sarita. It was ridiculous; he'd never even spoken to the girl; for all he knew she was stupid, though somehow he didn't think so. But she came into his mind, and of course his mother saw it. She smiled.

 

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

Sarita Blume walked into Nevo, empty-handed, and looked around expectantly.

“What are you waiting for, the maitre d'?” growled Sternholz, who was very pleased to see her.

“Do you know a man named Simcha Noy? Is he here?”

“Hell, no,” the waiter said with a sniff.

“I guess I'm early.” Sarita sat at her usual table, beside the bar and under the waiter's protection. Sternholz brought her coffee and sat down opposite her with the groan of a man beginning an unpleasant but necessary job of work.

“So what are you meeting that bum for?”

“He's interviewing me about my work for
Ma'ariv
.”

“Noy? He doesn't know art from his
tuches.”

“Why don't you like him?” Sarita asked. Though nervous about the interview, she found talking to Sternholz remarkably comfortable—he was like someone she'd known all her life and didn't need to think about. Sternholz, for his part, treated her with crusty gentleness and watched over her. He had begun to anticipate her visits.

“He's an arrogant pup.” The old man humphed. “I like his nerve, setting up dates in my café.”

“I did it,” Sarita said. “It didn't occur to me that you'd mind. I didn't want a stranger in my home, and Nevo seemed public and sort of
safe
... you know.”

Absurdly pleased, Sternholz muttered darkly, “Better here than elsewhere.”

As he spoke these words, a youngish man with a languid manner, carrying a lizard-skin, initialed briefcase, entered Nevo's inner sanctum. Removing his shades, he looked about and immediately spotted Sarita. Gingerly, as if picking his way through a minefield, he made his way toward her, smiling fulsomely. “You
must
be Sarita Blume,” he said.

Looking around at the old men in the room, she agreed, “I must be.”

“Simcha Noy,” he said. He held onto her hand a few seconds too long, then sat down close to Sternholz, displacing the old man, who rose crankily.

“He's married,” Sternholz said dourly.

Noy flicked a look his way. “Bring me a beer,” he said. “Maccabi.”

“Please.”

“Please!” Then he turned to Sarita, a smile brightening his petulant features. “Shall we begin?” He removed a miniature tape recorder from his case and placed it on the table between them. “Tell me,” he said, pushing a button, “about your mother.”

“My mother?” Sarita flushed. “I thought the article was going to be about my work.”

“No, dear. I'm not an art critic. My story is about the woman behind the work. The very beautiful woman.” He bowed, without removing his eyes from her face. “Didn't Moriah brief you?”

“No.”

“Do you remember your mother?”

“Of course. I was seven when they died.”

“What do you remember about her?”

Sarita twisted a lock of chestnut hair around her finger. “Look,” she muttered, “I don't really...”

“Listen, sweetheart, it's great publicity, and that's what you want, isn't it?”

“No. I mean, I don't want to offend you, Mr. Noy”— “Please, call me Simcha!”—”Simcha, but my personal life is... personal.”

“Aren't you proud of your mother, Sarita?”

“Of course, I'm proud of both my parents, but—”

“Did you ever see your mother act?”

Sarita stiffened and said carefully, “Twice. I saw her as Mrs. Alving in
Ghosts
and in
The Watchmen.”

“The Watchmen—
wasn't that done in the forties? Surely your mother—”

“It was a revival,” said Emmanuel Yehoshua Sternholz. He slapped Noy's beer down in front of him, pulled up a chair, and joined them. “Hannah Rovina played in the original, and Yael Blume in the revival. After the premiere there were fistfights outside the theater between Hannah's fans and Yael's. But there was no doubt in my mind who was the better actress.”

“Who?” asked Sarita, eagerly.

“Rovina was a great actress, but Yael Blume was sublime. No one could compare to her.”

“She was better-looking, that's for sure,” said the reporter. “Like mother, like daughter.”

“‘Better-looking,'“ Sternholz sneered. “With your talent for words, you'll go far in the newspaper business—delivering papers. Yael Blume wasn't ‘better-looking'; she was breathtaking, heartbreaking—like Garbo, like, what's-her-name, Hepburn.”

“Audrey?” asked the reporter.

“Katharine, you fool. And she had their immense spirit about her, so that when she was present, you felt filled with power and optimism, as if you were breathing richer air.... Why, there were so many men in love with Yael Blume—” He stopped to catch his breath, laughing and shaking his head. “They all were. Uri Eshel, young Arik's father, was crazy about her; Muny was her lapdog; Minister Brenner”— he lowered his voice—”wanted to divorce his wife for her, and her without a civil word for him! And there were others who never even had the nerve to speak to her, but who used to hang out here because she sometimes came in.”

“And there were some who often spoke to her,” Sarita said in her soft voice, “but never spoke their hearts.”

When she smiled, Sternholz pulled back, blinking like a surprised turtle. Her smile was so like Yael's that for a moment he seemed to see the mother's face superimposed on the daughter's.

“What was she like?” Sarita asked. “Apart from how she looked—what was she like?”

The waiter's eyes grew hazy with remembrance, and he didn't answer for some time. Then he cleared his throat, hawked once or twice, spat into a handkerchief, and began:

“The first time I laid eyes on Yael was in 1947, after the war but before we kicked the British out. Illegal immigration was at its peak then; practically every night boats came in, to Haifa, Ashdod, Tel Aviv, or the desolate shores of Herzliya, full of refugees from the holding pens of Cyprus. The British knew what was going on, of course. Oh, they tried to stop it, and once in a while they got lucky, intercepted a boat and sent the poor wretches back; but the coastline is long, the captains were experienced, and most of the time the ships got through.

“In fact, so many boats got through that people were beginning to believe that the English were purposely turning a blind eye, but it wasn't true. The British commander of the Tel Aviv region at that time was a mean-hearted spit-and-polish type with the manners of a lord and the soul of a Nazi—Colonel Andrew Dinnis was his name. This Dinnis was an ambitious man who hated the way the ‘Jewish rabble' were making fools of him and his men. He decided to set a trap for the Hagana, especially for the leader of the rescue operation, Yehuda Blume.

“One night word went out through the usual channels (young boys and girls acting as runners, slips of paper inside synagogue prayer books, kiosk message centers, that sort of thing) that a boat would be coming in late at night to Gordon beach. It was risky coming right into the heart of Tel Aviv, but less so on that night than on most others, for it was New Year's Eve, and the British would be celebrating in the barracks. By ten o'clock that night, you couldn't see a single Hagana face on the streets....”

Running blind, the refugee ship entered the shallows of Gordon beach and anchored. Silently, efficiently, a ragged assortment of small crafts—fishing boats, dinghies, rafts, anything that would float and hold weight—was launched from the beach to bring the refugees ashore. They reached the ship and filled up first with children, mothers with babes in arms, and old people. The small armada set out for shore.

Suddenly, the beach was flooded with light! British trucks with searchlights mounted on the roofs lined the street, and tenders pulled up one after the other, discharging dozens of armed British soldiers. Colonel Andrew Dinnis himself stood on top of one of the trucks, dressed in full battle regalia, and spoke through a loudspeaker.

“You in the small craft,” he shouted, “come ashore and surrender!”

A terrible cry arose, as if from the sea: an elemental scream of anguish from the throats of those wretched, homeless survivors. It was a sound that would break the heart of anyone with ears to hear. Many of the soldiers faltered and looked to their leader, but he, untouched, stood firm and repeated: “You in the small craft, come in and surrender! You people on the ship, remain there! My men have orders to shoot the next man or woman who disembarks.”

Like lemmings, men and women leapt from the ship into the icy water, heading for shore. Those who couldn't swim were supported by others. Within moments the sea was full of floundering refugees.

“Shoot!” screamed the Colonel.