Leon Uris (10 page)

“And I’m saying you don’t have to lynch a man to rip his insides out. Oh sure, the American Jews have it good, but just enough of your thinking and enough of two thousand years of being a scapegoat has rubbed off on them. Why don’t you argue it with Ben Canaan? He seems to know how to handle you.”

Kitty shot off the bed angrily. Then both she and Mark began to laugh. They were Mark and Kitty and they could not really be angry.

“Exactly what is this Mossad Aliyah Bet?”

“The word
aliyah
means to arise, go up, ascend. When a Jew goes to Palestine it is always referred to as an
aliyah
... always going higher than he was.
Aleph
or the letter
a
was used to designate the legal immigration.
Bet
or the letter
b
for the illegal. Therefore Mossad Aliyah Bet means Organization for Illegal Immigration.”

Kitty smiled. “My goodness,” she said, “Hebrew is such a logical language.”

For the next two days after Ari Ben Canaan’s visit Kitty was perturbed and restless. She would not admit to herself that she wanted to see the big Palestinian again. Mark knew Kitty well and sensed her irritation, but he pretended to carry on as though Ben Canaan had never entered the scene.

She did not exactly know what was disturbing her, except that Ben Canaan’s visit had left a strong impression. Was it that American conscience that Ben Canaan knew so well, or was she sorry about her anti-Jewish outburst?

Almost but not quite casually Kitty inquired when Mark expected to see Ari. Another time she made an unsubtle suggestion that it would be nice to go sight-seeing in Famagusta. Then again she would grow angry with herself and resolve to wipe out any thought of Ari.

On the third night Mark could hear Kitty’s footsteps through the connecting door as she paced back and forth in her room.

She sat in the darkness in an overstuffed chair and puffed on a cigarette and decided that she would reason out the whole matter.

She did not like being drawn against her will into Ben Canaan’s strange world. Her entire approach to life had been sane, even calculating. “Kitty is such a sensible girl,” they always said of her.

When she fell in love with Tom Fremont and set out to win him it had all been a well-thought-out move. She ran a sensible home and served sensible meals on a sensible budget. She planned to give birth to Sandra in the springtime and that had been sensible too. She stifled spur-of-the-moment impulses in favor of planned decisions.

These past two days seemed to make no sense to her at all. A strange man appeared from nowhere and told her an even stranger story. She saw that hard handsome face of Ari Ben Canaan with his penetrating eyes that seemed to read her mind mockingly. She remembered the sensation in his arms, dancing with him.

There was no logic to this at all. For one thing Kitty always felt uncomfortable around Jewish people; she had admitted as much to Mark. Then why did this thing continue to grow?

Finally she knew that she would continue to be disturbed until she saw Ari again and saw the camp at Caraolos. She decided that the way to beat this whole idea was to see him again and assure herself she was not mystically involved but had merely been jolted by a sudden and brief infatuation. She would beat Ari Ben Canaan at his own game on his own ground.

At breakfast the next morning Mark was not surprised when Kitty asked him to make an appointment with Ben Canaan for her to visit Caraolos.

“Honey, I was happy with the decision you made the other night. I wish you’d stick to it.”

“I don’t quite understand this myself,” she said.

“Ben Canaan called the shot. He knew you’d come around. Don’t be a damned fool. If you go to Caraolos, you’re in. Look ... I’ll pull out, myself. We’ll leave Cyprus right away ...”

Kitty shook her head.

“You’re letting your curiosity throw you. You’ve always been smart. What’s happening?”

“This sounds funny coming from me, doesn’t it, Mark, but it almost feels as if some force were pushing me. Believe me, I’m going to Caraolos to end all this ... and not to start something.”

Mark told himself that she was hooked even though she was pretending she wasn’t. He hoped that whatever lay ahead would treat her kindly.

K
ITTY HANDED HER PASSES
to the British sentry at the gate and entered Caraolos at Compound 57, which was closest to the children’s compound.

“Are you Mrs. Fremont?”

She turned, nodded, and looked into the face of a young man who smiled and offered his hand. She thought that he was certainly a much friendlier-appearing person than his compatriot.

“I am David Ben Ami,” he said. “Ari asked me to meet you. He will be along in a few moments.”

“Now what does Ben Ami mean? I’ve taken a recent interest in Hebrew names.”

“It means Son of My People,” he answered. “We hope that you will help us in ‘Operation Gideon.’ ”

“Operation Gideon?”

“Yes, that’s what I call Ari’s plan. Do you remember your Bible, Judges? Gideon had to select a group of soldiers to go against the Midianites. He picked three hundred. We have also picked three hundred to go against the British. I guess I may be stretching a point for the parallel and Ari does accuse me of being too sentimental.”

Kitty had braced herself for a difficult evening. Now she was disarmed by this mild-appearing young man. The day was closing and a cool breeze whipped up a swirl of dust. Kitty slipped into her topcoat. On the other side of the compound she could make out the unmistakable towering figure of Ari Ben Canaan crossing over to meet her. She drew a deep breath and steadied herself to fight off the same electric sensation she had felt the first time she saw him.

He stopped before her and they nodded silently. Kitty’s eyes were cold. She was letting him know, without a word, that she had come to accept a challenge and she had no intention of losing.

Compound 57 consisted mostly of the aged and very religious. They passed slowly between two rows of tents filled with dirty and unkempt people. The water shortage, Ben Ami explained, made bathing virtually impossible. There was also insufficient diet. The inmates appeared weak, some angry, some dazed, and all haunted by ghosts of the dead.

They stopped for a moment at an opened tent where a wrinkled old specimen worked on a wood carving. He held it up for her to see. It was a pair of hands, clasped in prayer and bound by barbed wire. Ari watched her closely for a sign of weakening.

It was squalid, filthy, and wretched here, but Kitty had prepared herself to accept even worse. She was beginning to be convinced that Ari Ben Canaan held no mysterious power over her.

They stopped once more to look into a large tent used as a synagogue. Over the entrance was a crudely made symbol of the Menorah, the ritual candelabra. She stared at the strange sight of old men swaying back and forth and reciting weird prayers. To Kitty it seemed another world. Her gaze became fixed on one particularly dirty, bearded old individual who wept and cried aloud in anguish.

She felt David’s hand lead her away. “He is just an old man,” David said. “He is telling God that he has lived a life of faith ... he has kept God’s laws, cherished the Holy Torah, and kept the covenants in face of unbelievable hardships. He asks God to kindly deliver him for being a good man.”

“The old men in there,” Ari said, “don’t quite realize that the only Messiah that will deliver them is a bayonet on the end of a rifle.”

Kitty looked at Ari. There was something deadly about this man.

Ari felt Kitty’s disdain. His hands grabbed her arms. “Do you know what a
Sonderkommando
is?”

“Ari, please ...” David said.

“A
Sonderkommando
is one who was forced by the Germans to work inside of their crematoriums. I’d like to show you another old man here. He took the bones of his grandchildren out of a crematorium in Buchenwald and carted them off in a wheelbarrow. Tell me, Mrs. Fremont, did you see one better than that at the Cook County Hospital?”

Kitty felt her stomach turn over. Then resentment took over and she fired back, eyes watering with anger. “You’ll stop at nothing.”

“I’ll stop at nothing to show you how desperate we are.”

They glared at each other wordlessly. “Do you wish to see the children’s compound or not?” he said at last.

“Let’s get it over with,” Kitty answered.

The three crossed the bridge over the barbed-wire wall into the children’s compound and looked upon war’s merciless harvest. She went through the hospital building past the long row of tuberculars and into the other wards of bones bent with rickets and skins yellow of jaundice and festering sores of poisoned blood. She went through a locked ward filled with youngsters who had the hollow blank stares of the insane.

They walked along the tents of the graduation class of 1940–45. The matriculants of the ghettos, the concentration camp students, scholars of rubble. Motherless, fatherless, homeless. Shaved heads of the deloused, ragged clothing. Terror-filled faces, bed wetters, night shriekers. Howling infants, and scowling juveniles who had stayed alive only through cunning.

They finished the inspection.

“You have an excellent staff of medical people,” Kitty said, “and this children’s compound is getting the best of the supplies.”

“The British have given us none of it,” Ari snapped. “It has come as gifts from our own people.”

“You made the point right there,” Kitty said. “I don’t care if your facilities are manna from heaven. I came at the request of my American conscience. It has been satisfied. I’d like to go.”

“Mrs. Fremont ...” David Ben Ami said.

“David! Don’t argue. Some people find just the sight of us repulsive. Show Mrs. Fremont out.”

David and Kitty walked along a tent street. She turned slightly and saw Ari staring at her back. She wanted to get out as quickly as possible. She wanted to return to Mark and forget the whole wretched business.

A sound of uninhibited laughter burst from a large tent near her. It was the laughter of happy children and it sounded out of place at Caraolos. Kitty stopped in curiosity before the tent and listened. A girl was reading a story. She had a beautiful voice.

“That is an exceptional girl,” David said. “She does fantastic work with these children.”

Again laughter erupted from the children.

Kitty stepped into the tent flap and drew it open. The girl had her back to Kitty. She sat on a wooden box, bent close to a kerosene lamp. Circling her sat twenty wide-eyed children. They looked up as Kitty and David entered.

The girl stopped reading and turned around and arose to greet the newcomers. The lamp flickered from a gust of air that swept in from the open flap and cast a dancing shadow of children’s silhouettes.

Kitty and the girl stood face to face. Kitty’s eyes opened wide, registering shock.

She walked out of the tent quickly, then stopped and turned and stared through the flap at the astonished girl. Several times she started to speak and lapsed into bewildered silence.

“I want to see that girl ... alone,” she finally said in a hushed voice.

Ari had come up to them. He nodded to David. “Bring the child to the school building. We will wait there.”

Ari lit the lantern in the schoolroom and closed the door behind them. Kitty had remained wordless and her face was pale.

“That girl reminds you of someone,” Ari said abruptly. She did not answer. He looked through the window and saw the shadows of David and the girl crossing the compound. He glanced at Kitty again and walked from the room.

As he left, Kitty shook her head. It was mad. Why did she come?
Why did she come?
She fought to get herself under command—to brace herself to look at that girl again.

The door opened and Kitty tensed. The girl stepped slowly into the room. She studied the girl’s face, fighting off the urge to clutch the child in her arms.

The girl looked at her curiously, but she seemed to understand something and her gaze conveyed pity.

“My name ... is Katherine Fremont,” Kitty said unevenly. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes.”

What a lovely child she was! Her eyes sparkled and she smiled now and held out her hand to Kitty.

Kitty touched the girl’s cheek—then she dropped her hand.

“I ... I am a nurse. I wanted to meet you. What is your name?”

“My name is Karen,” the girl said, “Karen Hansen Clement.”

Kitty sat on the cot and asked the girl to sit down, too.

“How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen now, Mrs. Fremont.”

“Please call me Kitty.”

“All right, Kitty.”

“I hear that ... you work with the children.”

The girl nodded.

“That’s wonderful. You see ... I ... I may be coming to work here and ... and, well ... I’d like to know all about you. Would you mind telling me?”

Karen smiled. Already she liked Kitty and she knew instinctively that Kitty wanted—needed—to be liked.

“Originally,” Karen said, “I came from Germany ... Cologne, Germany. But that was a long time ago ...”

COLOGNE, GERMANY, 1938

Life is quite wonderful if you are a young lady of seven and your daddy is the famous Professor Johann Clement and it is carnival time in Cologne. Many things are extra special around carnival time, but something that is always extra special is taking a walk with Daddy. You can walk under the linden trees along the banks of the Rhine or you can walk through the zoo that has the most magnificent monkey cages in the entire world or you can walk past the big cathedral and stare up at those twin towers over five hundred feet high that seem to push right through the sky. Best of all is walking through the municipal forest very early in the morning with Daddy and Maximilian. Maximilian is the most remarkable dog in Cologne, even though he looks kind of funny. Of course, Maximilian isn’t allowed in the zoo.

Sometimes you take Hans along on your walks, too, but little brothers can be a nuisance.

If you are such a little girl you love your mommy, too, and wish she would come along with you and Daddy and Hans and Maximilian, but she is pregnant again and feeling rather grumpy these days. It would be nice if the new baby is a sister because one brother is just about as much as a girl can bear.