Israel (39 page)

“I could.”

Yol smiled. “Well, you've got a week to decide if you want to. Jibarn will be here with a mule and suitable clothing. You speak Arabic, can pass as an Arab and will be with the boy, so nobody will bother you. Jibarn will wait until dawn and then return to the Hashomer camp. If you are with him, all well and good. If not, then I say farewell to you, my friend, until this war is over and we can drink wine and joke together like we did in the old days.”

Haim got to his feet. “Maybe I'll come at that.”

At one time Yol's dark eyes would have glinted with sarcasm, but now he made no jokes at Haim's expense. He just nodded, the picture of equanimity, and began to gather up the teacups and tiny pot.

*     *     *

As Haim walked back to the settlement, he sensed an accompanying presence somewhere in the dark. “Jibarn?” he called.

There was no answer. Haim scanned the rocks but saw nothing. That was hardly surprising. An army, let alone one boy, could hide itself in those crags and shadows.

He walked on, concentrating now, and picked up the faint scratching sounds of the boy's fingers and toes scrabbling for purchase against the limestone. Now and again there was a rattle, dry as old bones, when a pebble came loose.

Why is he playing this game with me? Haim wondered. There was nothing good-natured about it. This was a stalk.

The moon rose and cast a ghastly pallor over the twisted, primitive landscape. Haim, searching for a glimpse of the boy, neglected to watch where he was putting his feet. He tripped on a stone and staggered forward for several steps before regaining his balance.

The boy's high-pitched trill of laughter wafted through the night, nasty music. Haim hurried on.

He's slit half a dozen Turkish throats
—a twelve-year-old boy. And he's frightened me half to death tonight, Haim mused. If Jibarn were not within Yol's protection I would—

Would what? He's a twelve-year-old boy, an orphan like yourself. Are you so afraid of fighting the Turks you'd kill a boy?

As he rounded the bend that put the torch-lit gate within sight, he heard Jibarn's call. “Next week then, Allah willing.”

Haim neither replied nor turned around. He lowered his head and hurried toward the light and safety of Degania. Next week was next week. Tonight he wanted his own bed.

*     *     *

Seven days—they lasted forever and passed quickly, like predawn hours spent in fitful sleep. Three days to make up his mind, then two, then one—Haim still did not know what to do. He had until tomorrow dawn to decide. By the next sunrise Jibam would be on his way back to the Hashomer camp and Haim's opportunity to join them would be gone.

That day he found himself volunteering to work in the tack room. The cool dark was redolent with the rich smell of well-worn leather. Haim was seized with a sense of tranquility. Working with his hands had a way of shrinking problems down to size. Haim took down a harness from its peg, laid it out on the rough worktable and began to clean it. His mind filled with memories of all the many things he disliked doing but had accomplished for a good purpose.

He left his beloved Abe to come to Palestine. He made friends with Dizengoff—and profited by it—to appease Rosie and for the same reason built up a fine business, the profits from which would someday go to his son and any other children of his. On that terrible night when Moshe was missing he answered Yol's call for a volunteer to go with him and Trumpeldor and conduct the search.

“And now I am asked to go to war,” he told Abe, whose presence he had conjured up via the feel of the leather and scent of the polish. “No, you needn't scold me. I know you would never willingly fight, but I also know you would do so if you had to.” After receiving a startled look through the door from a passing stranger, Haim continued silently.

While you might be angry with me for volunteering, I think you would also secretly approve a little. It was that way when I left you to come to Palestine. You wanted me to go with you to America, but still you gave me money. You did it out of love, I know, but also I think you were proud—sorry to see me go but proud that I dared.

Abe, I wish you could meet Rosie. She is so much like you.

Haim spent the rest of the day working in the tack room. He was at last in peace. His decision was made.

He waited until late that night after he and Rosie had made love to tell her that he was leaving. In this he was being selfish, he knew. He wanted his wife to give herself freely so he could memorize every nuance of their passion to sustain his soul through the long nights to come. He had another, more earnest reason for waiting: their lovemaking momentarily healed the rift between them. It was imperative that he and Rosie be as close to one another now as they were in the old days if she was to understand.

She listened quietly. The sheen of sweat they'd worked up through their hushed, sweet tussle dried fast in the cool night air. Ordinarily she'd have cuddled against him, but now she remained uncomfortably cold and stiff upon the damp, twisted sheets as she listened. Haim's day's growth of beard rubbed against her cheek and his breath tickled her ear in an insane parody of romantic intimacy as he whispered of their imminent separation.

As she listened she harbored fury as white-hot as Galilee's pale disk of a sun in July. She found herself hating Haim as well. All this nonsense about Palestine and Zionism—he was doing it for himself, running off to join a bunch of irresponsible dreamers. He would get himself killed in the process.

She stared into the darkness, listening to the rhythmic breathing of her sleeping son as well as to her husband. He had to go tonight, he was saying—within an hour or two. Was he planning to disappear without explaining to Herschel? Was he going to gather his things and sneak out of his son's life?

“You're just angry because the Turks beat you,” Rosie hissed at last. “This whole crazy notion is just
revenge for that. I suggest you get over your sulk and put this nonsense out of your mind.”

The ferocity of her response surprised her. Acting like a shrew is not going to keep him by your side, she admonished herself. Somehow I must understand what is going on inside him.

“Rosie,” Haim whispered, “as the British advance, the Turks will retreat north, toward Galilee. They will occupy Degania. If I'm here when they arrive, one of two things will happen. Either they'll kill me for defying them or our love will die because I've submitted.”

“That is the craziest thing—”

“It may be crazy, but it is true. You fell in love with a man who thought nothing of defying the Turkish immigration officer who slapped you—don't you remember that day on Jaffa beach, my love? I was with your father when it happened. I ran to you—”

“And I told you then that what Palestine needed were live Jews, not dead ones.” Her tone softened. “You were so brave.”

Haim smiled to himself in the darkness. “And you loved me for it; I know you did, Rosie. Deny it if I'm wrong. I know you can't lie to me.”

“I can't.” She felt his arms slide around her and then she was sobbing against his chest, for she began to comprehend what had been causing such trouble between them and realized why he had to go.

“It's so foolish,” she mourned as Haim stroked her hair.

Haim felt her warm tears running down his bare chest. He hugged her tight, marveling that he could think of leaving her and that his very decision had healed the breach.

“It isn't smart or foolish or good or bad,” he whispered. “You need a man you can respect and I need to conquer my fear. There was a time I was not afraid to
try anything. That's the man you fell in love with and married and that's the man I must try to be again.”

“What about Herschel?”

“I'll wake him before I go.”

Rosie smiled. “He'll say, ‘Papa take me with you; I'll help you fight.'”

Haim thought of Jibarn, creeping through the darkness with a knife between his teeth, and shuddered. “I'll talk to him. Somehow I'll make him understand.”

“But there is time before that?” Rosie asked.

“There is,” Haim said, and drew the coverlet over them.

September marked Leah's eighth month of pregnancy. She and Abe had progressed from guarded optimism to delirious joy as she moved closer to term. Even Glueck's usually dour mood brightened as she entered her third trimester. “I guess practice does make perfect,” he found it within himself to quip.

The physician was coming to see her once a fortnight now. Leah, her belly swollen and hard, was a queen bee, rarely moving from her bed in the upstairs apartment. Abe fussed over her, and his careful, awed attention pleased her to no end.

She felt voluptuous and womanly as she dreamed the days away, her hands caressing her swelling breasts. At last, Leah thought, after so much trying, I'm proving myself as good a wife as Sadie, as any woman.

Every night Abe would kneel beside her on the mattress, his ear pressed against her abdomen and his fingers gently, wondrously exploring.

“Listen, feel!” he'd laugh, astounded. “The boy is dancing around already. For his wedding he's practicing.”

Leah would smile approvingly, quite satisfied. Very late, after Abe had fallen asleep and she was dozing, she would journey inside herself to join hands with her baby and wheel around in a dance of life that made her feel like the Mother of the world.

The baby made her as physically miserable as proud. She suffered morning sickness the equal of her seasickness during the Atlantic crossing. She had cramps, not in her belly, thank God, but in her legs. The little walking she managed to do made her ankles swell and her back ache. She was quite content to take Glueck's advice when he decreed that she stay in bed. “Being pregnant is about as much as a skinny little girl like you ought to handle,” he insisted.

Glueck took Abe aside on one of his visits to the apartment and suggested that arrangements be made for Leah to deliver at the hospital with an obstetrician in attendance. “There could be complications,” he explained. “Your wife has very narrow hips. The baby may not be able to move through the birth canal.”

It was all Abe could do to listen without fainting. On the edge of Glueck's explanation was the possibility that the doctors would have to cut his Leah, cut her!

Leah begged and pleaded to have her baby at home, but Abe was adamant. Glueck himself was reluctant to deliver, and they must not force him. She would go to Gouverneur. Abe had money enough to pay her way there, if not at the expensive Jewish hospitals. She would not be in a ward and she would have a good doctor, but she would be in Gouverneur despite the unhappy memories the place held for her.

The obstetrician who saw Leah on her preliminary visit was a young Irish Catholic named Henderson. He had the lightest coloring of any human being Abe and Leah had ever seen. The first time she laid eyes on Dr. Henderson's ash blond hair and fish-belly complexion she
burst into tears. Haim excused his wife's behavior to the startled physician and led Leah outside into the hospital corridor to ask what was wrong.

“Abe,” she sobbed, “how can I let that goy touch me? He's got white eyelashes.”

In time both Abe and Leah came to think the world of Dr. Henderson. Despite his religion and strange appearance he was conscientious and compassionate. He did all he could to put them at ease. He even invited them to ask questions.

Abe and Leah politely thanked Henderson and assured him that they had no questions. It did no good for Abe to remind himself that he'd been in America for a decade and was a citizen; when speaking to a big man like Henderson, his accent seemed to thicken, his clothing became absurd, and for all practical purposes he felt like a greenhorn just off the boat. As for Leah, whenever Henderson examined her she just squeezed her eyes shut and thought about what to make for dinner that night.

With Henderson taking care of Leah and the bed in the hospital bought and paid for, Abe had nothing to do but wait for the birth while he ran the store, and that was fairly routine. Most of the goods Abe had once fetched from the wholesalers now were delivered. Business was good, although the talk around the wholesale markets and from the delivery men was that the United States' entry into the war would soon affect the supplies of groceries available.

Last June Abe and millions of his fellow citizens reported to local polling places to register for the draft. The dark, stuffy basement of Public School 31 was crammed with newly naturalized men who were bewildered with the bureaucratic process. The officials running the board seemed just as confused and clearly were frustrated with their slim pickings, for on the Lower East Side it tended to be
mostly older men who had been in the country long enough to be naturalized. In the confusion Abe, who could speak English and who though over forty seemed a youngster compared to the long white beards all around him, found himself scheduled for a preinduction medical examination.

He was unable to sleep the night before the ordeal. What would happen to him? Abe had never been examined by a doctor in his life, except for the cursory look they'd taken before letting him into the country.

He came home from the examination clutching an exemption certificate. The doctor told him he had a heart murmur. The word “heart” he knew. He also understood that a “murmur” was like a whisper, but what the two words meant together he had no idea. He decided to ignore the whole thing, and told everyone that he was exempt due to his age.

The 4-F certificate was proudly displayed in the store's front window, where it never failed to provoke gales of laughter from Stefano de Fazio, who had begun to stop by Cherry Street on a regular basis. Stefano had left his union post and opened an office on the Hudson River docks, where he had part ownership in a warehouse.