Israel (50 page)

It was several weeks after his initiation into the Irgun that Frieda at last took him to her bed. They had been at a hushed candlelit cell meeting in the musty basement of a university building. There was a debate about something. Herschel could not remember what, all he remembered was the way he'd fathomed Frieda's point of view and championed it. She tried to argue for herself, but she'd never been good at that sort of thing. With one other person she could be persuasive, but addressing an assemblage her heady sexuality betrayed her. The women disagreed with her to punish her and the men ignored what she had to say to bask in her aura.

So Herschel rose to the challenge, taking the floor and speaking for his beloved. He debated, cajoled and harangued for over ninety minutes, alternating jokes and shouts to put her point across to them. All that while he knew Frieda's eyes were on him. He noticed another Irgun
member leaning toward Frieda and heard the man murmur in admiration, “He's very good.”

Frieda smiled and Herschel saw her nod.

Afterward he shyly stood before her, his head lowered, waiting for her benediction. He felt small and vulnerable, but also excited and expectant; he was still elated from his triumph in bending the meeting to his will. His throat tightened as he asked her to have coffee with him. He was ready for her to say no, she was busy, she was going with one of the other boys—Herschel had known from the start that she went with other boys—but she said yes, taking his hand.

They hurried, tense and silent, to Frieda's small rented room in the Jewish quarter. They made love on her thin mattress on the floor beneath her room's single gauze-curtained window. The moonlight washed over them as they twisted together. Frieda's experienced, lushly sensual body enveloped him. He clutched at her, almost frightened as he discovered what delicious physical sensations his own body was capable of. She cried out when he'd moved within her. It was his first time hearing a woman's passion, and that high, feline sound brought him more pleasure than his own climax.

He'd heard frightening tales about a man's first time: that he would be unable to love or else it would be over too quickly. Nothing like that had happened, however. When at last they lay quietly, Herschel's head resting on her soft hip, he nervously asked her if he'd been all right. Frieda's throaty, purring laugh filled the gloaming.

She marked him as her own right then; he felt her etching ownership onto his heart's pristine surface and rejoiced. “Sweet, sweet boy,” she murmured, her fingers in his hair, “sweet boy . . .” He drew himself up to lie on her; he suckled at her full bosom; he pressed his ear against her ribs to listen to her heart. He was half drowned,
embracing the shore after struggling out of the turbulence of a roiling sea.

“Sweet boy—”

His low, guttural moan rose from his core as Frieda's fingers recaptured him, inexorably drawing him back into her warmth.

Much later that night, as dark velvet gradually lightened to leaden grey and the first expectant bird song greeted the morning, Herschel told her how much he loved her. Frieda said nothing in return, and during that awful silence, as the hopelessness of Herschel's devotion became evident to him, he left her side and ran to the rusty sink in the corner to wash his face.

He left his face dripping wet so that she could not see that he was weeping.

And so at first Frieda refused further advances. She didn't want to encourage him, she insisted. It was not fair to him. He should find another girl. She was married to the lrgun. She would never take a man until the homeland was established.

Herschel persisted. He was head over heels in love, but that did not make him foolish. He set about wooing his reluctant lady. Love had not blinded him to Frieda's weaknesses. She was a slave to her own sensuality, and Herschel had made love to her in an exquisite inspired fashion. No other man could so love her. It was inevitable that Frieda would grow at first to desire and then to need his loving.

Before another month passed Herschel was able to lay claim to her bed. For a week at a time he'd disappear from the apartment he shared with his mother.

“Have you ever heard of the Betar?” Frieda asked him one night in bed as they shared a cigarette in the dark. “It's a youth organization founded in Latvia by Jabotinsky back in the '20s. Betar's ideology combines Jabotinsky's
and Joseph Trumpeldor's ideas on forming a Jewish defense legion—”

“I knew Trumpeldor,” Herschel remarked. “I was only nine years old when he was killed in the Arab riots. Anyway, he lived for a time at Degania. It's said that he and my father were friends.” He glanced at her profile, inches away on the pillow they shared. “Is that where you became politicized, in Betar?”

“Yes.” The tip of her cigarette glowed red as she inhaled.

“A handsome young fellow probably seduced you into joining,” Herschel grumbled. “Another man—I can't bear it.” He leapt upon her, tickling her ribs and rolling his tongue about her nipples. Frieda began to screech, letting the cigarette fall to the mattress. She brushed the burning embers to the floor, where they burned bright cherry for a second and then slowly cooled to ashes.

“The fellow who ‘seduced' me, as you put it, was not handsome, but he won me all the same.” Frieda planted an affectionate kiss on his brow. “It was my mind, he won, not my body. Truthfully, we never met. I was thirteen when I attended a Betar membership meeting in my village in Poland. A Betar commander, a university student, spoke. What an orator, Herschel—better even than you, and I know how good you are,” she giggled. “The commander's name was Menachem Begin. The entire audience rose to applaud when he was through. Imagine, a young man barely out of his teens. It was a difficult time for Betar in Europe. The Socialist-Zionists and Betar used to have terrible street fights. Names were called and heads broken.”

“Jew fighting Jew?” Herschel shook his head in disbelief.

“Begin exhorted us to be strong, to be proud, to train and to wait patiently for vindication,” Frieda continued.

“We revisionists have been patient, and behold, we have
been vindicated. Since the Germans and Soviets signed their nonaggression pact, the Socialist-Zionists think twice before condemning us.”

Herschel's voice sounded small. “Frieda, you have inspired me the way that fellow Begin inspired you. We are soldiers together for Zionism. We are lovers . . . I want to marry you, Frieda.”

There was silence for a moment. Frieda struck a match to light another cigarette. In the flare Herschel saw her furrowed brow—her frown.

“They say Begin will be Jabotinsky's successor as leader of the movement,” she began, trying to change the subject.

“Frieda, I've asked you to marry me!”

“Oh, Herschel, how can we? You've told me you intend to return to Degania. Those kibbutz socialists would rather you bring home an Arab than my sort. They'd ask me my beliefs and I'd tell them. They'd blackball me.”

“Then to hell with Degania,” Herschel declared. “I'd renounce it for you.”

“You would, Herschel? Your home?” Frieda murmured. “You're a sweet boy, but what of your mother? She despises me. You can't give up your mother.”

“Frieda, I am all my mother has left,” Herschel began. “The day she admits that I am grown and ready to leave her nest is the day she must once and for all say good-bye to my father and the past. Surely you can understand what pain that will cause her”

“Yes, of course, but—”

“Nevertheless, I shall take leave of her nest. I already have,” he said firmly. “My mother has nothing against you but the notion you've stolen me away. When she realizes that my loving you does not amount to rejecting her, she'll come to adore you.” He grinned. “How could she not?”

“That much I accept,” Frieda chuckled.

“So? It's settled then?” He kept his tone light to control and conceal his anxiety. She could not abide uncertainty. “You accept, I presume? We will be married?” He held his breath.

“Herschel, in the Betar we took an oath. It went, ‘I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish state with a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan.'”

“So?”

“When I devote myself to something I do it totally, excluding everything else. When I marry my husband shall take precedence.”

“What does that mean?”

She embraced him. “It means that you have conquered me, Kolesnikoff.” Although he'd pared his surname down to Kol at his lrgun initiation, Frieda delighted in teasing him. “I thought I could twist you around my little finger, but I see that you have turned the tables on me. When our struggle is over, I will be your wife.”

The picture gallery connected to the university's library was empty at this time of day. Students were either in class or studying. To be enrolled here was a great privilege. Few students would jeopardize their standing by wasting time looking at pictures at this hour.

Herschel walked the deserted marble corridors, gazing at his grandfather's landscapes and desperately missing Frieda. It seemed that he could hear her ghostly laughter echoing in the still hallways, could remember exactly her comments about each painting.

If only you were here, he thought, you could tell me I did the right thing in the Arab quarter. You could tell me that destroying a terrorist headquarters struck a blow for our cause and brought us closer to marriage. If you were here I could feel like a hero.

But Frieda was not here. Three months ago the lrgun had ordered her to report to a cell somewhere along the
Mediterranean coast; she was not allowed to tell Herschel exactly where.

Since the Nazi invasion of Poland, leaky, overloaded ships flying the Greek or Turkish flag had begun to transport desperate Jewish refugees to Palestine. The ships brought their cargo as close to shore as they dared; then lrgun boats ran the British blockades.

The Arabs were howling in disapproval and the British were increasingly determined to stop the influx. Frieda's cell was doing all it could to keep the people from being drowned or sent back.

Herschel was at the mercy of his guilty conscience. Perhaps all the people in the coffeehouse were Arab terrorists, but what if they weren't? What if that one fellow, the one in the suit and tie and the fez, was an innocent?

That poor man stared at me like he knew me, Herschel recollected. He saw his death in me, and in him I saw stark fear.

It was no good. He couldn't live with the thought of more attacks like this one.

A particular painting by his grandfather caught Herschel's eye. It was a view of Galilee. Herschel did not know if Erich Glaser had ever visited Degania, but he had captured the burnt umber of the pillowy hills and the cerulean blue of the sky. Herschel had heard the usual criticisms leveled at his grandfather's work: that it was highly idealized, often saccharine. In some Herschel could see how such comments were justified, but with this his grandfather had succeeded. The almost fantastic pleasantness of the scene corresponded to the pride, affection and solicitude a son of Degania felt when gazing at the land he and his fellow members had tamed.

As Herschel took solace a childhood memory came to him. He could have been no more than ten. He and another boy were together in the schoolyard, which afforded
a view similar to the one in the painting. This other boy was seven and was named Moshe in memory of the brave young halutz who in 1913 rode out alone to fetch medicine.

The more Herschel concentrated the more vivid his recollection became. He and the younger boy were arguing, Moshe bragging that he'd been named after a hero. Stung by Moshe's boasting and still raw with sorrow over the loss of his father, Herschel reacted with a child's ferocious intensity.

“That man Moshe was dumb to be ambushed. My father is the true hero. He fought in the war, facing the enemy man to man. He had a pistol—yes, he did! I remember he showed it to me.”

The younger boy was no match for Herschel's fury. He apologized, agreeing with him. “A man who fought in the army is certainly a hero.” They shook hands and parted as friends.

“Shalom, Herschel Kolesnikoff.”

“Shalom, Moshe Dayan.”

A short while after that the Dayans, one of the original families of Degania, moved to another settlement with their three children, of whom Moshe was the youngest.

Herschel stared at his grandfather's painting, musing on the memory it had evoked. Seven-year-old Moshe misunderstood and assumed that Herschel's father was in the British army.
“A man who fights in the army is certainly a hero . . .”

Herschel hurried out of the gallery and cut across campus to the bus for Jerusalem. He knew what he had to do to assuage his conscience.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Herschel Kol returned to the apartment he shared with his mother near the Western Wall. He steeled himself for confrontation as he climbed the dim stairs to the third floor. He
hoped his mother had painted well that morning. When her time at her easel was profitable she was in a good mood.

Their rooms faced the rear courtyard and did not receive much sunlight after midmorning. The ceiling light was off in the living room as Herschel entered the apartment. He heard a chair creaking and saw his mother, bathed in shadows, sitting in a rocker in the far corner of the room.

Rosie reached out and clicked on a table lamp beside her chair. Herschel saw that her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, her lined face drawn and pallid. How old she looked. She was just fifty, but her years in Degania's harsh climate had turned her skin leathery and her hair prematurely grey. What had become of his beautiful mother? Who was this haggard crone in a shapeless, paint-splattered frock? When had mother and son become such strangers to each other?

“It was you, wasn't it Herschel?” Rosie's trembling voice, husky from disuse, shattered the dark stillness. “You blew up that coffeehouse. Oh, I know it was you.”