Leon Uris (55 page)

“She sounds like quite a girl.”

“Yes, she is. When Hitler came to power Harriet organized Youth Aliyah. She is responsible for saving thousands of youngsters. They maintain dozens of youth centers all over Palestine. You’ll get along fine with her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, no Jew who has lived in Palestine can ever go without leaving his heart here. It’s the same way with Americans, I think. Harriet has been here for years but she’s still very much an American.”

The orchestra stopped playing.

A silence fell over Jerusalem. They could hear the faint cry of a Moslem muezzin calling his people to prayer from a minaret in the Old City. Then it became quiet again with a stillness that Kitty had never experienced.

The bells from the carillon in the YMCA tower over the street played a hymn and the tones flooded the hills and the valleys. And then—again it became still. It was so peaceful it would have been sacrilegious to speak. All life and all time seemed to stand still in one moment.

“What an utterly wonderful sensation,” Kitty said.

“Those kinds of moments are rarities these days,” Ari said. “I am afraid that the calm is deceptive.”

Ari saw a small olive-skinned man standing at the terrace door. He recognized the man as Bar Israel, the contact for the Maccabees. Bar Israel nodded to Ari and disappeared.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” Ari said. He walked into the lobby to the cigarette stand and purchased a pack and then thumbed through a magazine. Bar Israel walked up alongside him.

“Your Unkele Akiva is in Jerusalem,” Bar Israel whispered. “He wants to see you.”

“I have to go to the Zion Settlement Society but I will be free shortly after.”

“Meet me in the Russian compound,” the contact man said, and hastened through the lobby.

King George Avenue was a wide boulevard in the New City and was lined with administrative buildings and schools and churches. The Zion Settlement Society, a large, four-storied rambling affair, stood on a corner. A long driveway led to the main entrance.

“
Shalom
, Ari!” Harriet Saltzman said, prancing from behind her desk with an agility that belied her years. She stood on her toes, put her arms around Ari’s neck, and kissed his cheek heartily. “Oh, what a job you did on them at Cyprus. You are a good boy.”

Kitty watched quietly in the doorway. The old woman turned to her.

“So this is Katherine Fremont. My child, you are very lovely.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Saltzman.”

“Don’t make with the ‘Mrs. Saltzman.’ Only Englishmen and Arabs call me that. It makes me feel old. Sit down, sit down. I’ll order tea. Or perhaps you would rather have coffee.”

“Tea is fine.”

“So you see, Ari ... this is what an American girl looks like.” Harriet made a gesture of tribute to Kitty’s beauty with mischief twinkling in her eyes.

“I am certain that not all American girls are as pretty as Kitty ...”

“Stop it, both of you. You are embarrassing me.”

“You girls don’t need me. I have a few things to do, so I’ll just beat it. Kitty, if I’m not back for you would you mind taking a taxi back to the hotel?”

“Go already,” the old woman said. “Kitty and I are going to have dinner together at my flat. Who needs you?”

Ari smiled and left.

“That’s a fine boy,” Harriet Saltzman said. “We have lots of good boys like Ari. They work too hard, they die too young.” She lit a cigarette and offered Kitty one. “And where do you hail from?”

“Indiana.”

“San Francisco, here.”

“It is a lovely city,” Kitty said. “I visited it once with my husband. I always hoped to go back someday.”

“I do too,” the old woman said. “It seems that I miss the States more every year. For fifteen years I have sworn I would go back for a while, but the work never seems to stop here. All these poor babies coming in. But I get homesick. Senility is creeping up on me, I guess.”

“Hardly.”

“It is good to be a Jew working for the rebirth of a Jewish nation but it is also a very good thing to be an American and don’t you ever forget that, young lady. Ever since the
Exodus
incident started I’ve been very anxious to meet you, Katherine Fremont, and I must say I am tremendously surprised and I don’t surprise easily.”

“I am afraid that the reports overromanticized me.”

Behind Harriet Saltzman’s disarming friendliness functioned a shrewd brain, and even though Kitty was completely at ease she realized how carefully the old woman was estimating her. They sipped their tea and chatted, mostly about America. Harriet became nostalgic. “I go home next year. I will find an excuse. Maybe a fund-raising drive. We are always having fund-raising drives. Do you know that the American Jews give us more than all Americans give to the Red Cross? So why should I bore you with these things? So you want to go to work for us?”

“I am sorry that I don’t have my credentials with me.”

“You don’t need them. We know all about you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We have a half dozen reports already on file.”

“I don’t know whether to be pleased or offended.”

“Don’t be offended. It is the times. We must be sure of everyone. You will find that we are really a small community here and very little happens that doesn’t come back to these ancient ears. As a matter of fact I was reading our files on you before you came this afternoon and I was wondering why you have come to us.”

“I am a nurse and you need nurses.”

Harriet Saltzman shook her head. “Outsiders don’t come to us for that reason. There must be another one. Did you come to Palestine for Ari Ben Canaan?”

“No ... of course I am fond of him.”

“A hundred women are fond of him. You happen to be the woman he is fond of.”

“I don’t think so, Harriet.”

“Well ... I am glad, Katherine. It is a long way from Yad El to Indiana. He is a
sabra
and only another
sabra
could really understand him.”

“
Sabra?
”

“It is a term we use for the native born. A
sabra
is the fruit of a wild cactus you will find all over Palestine. The
sabra
is hard on the outside ... but inside, it is very tender and sweet.”

“That is a good description.”

“Ari and the other
sabras
have no conception of American life, just as you have no conception of what his life has been.

“Let me be very candid. When a gentile comes to us, he comes as a friend. You are not a friend, you are not one of us. You are a very beautiful American girl who is completely puzzled by these strange people called Jews. Now why are you here?”

“It’s not that mysterious. I am very fond of a young girl. She came over on the
Exodus
. We met earlier in Caraolos. I am afraid her attempts to reunite with her father may end very unhappily. If she is unable to find her father I want to adopt her and take her to America.”

“I see. Well, you are on the level. Let us talk turkey. There is an opening for a head nurse in one of our Youth Villages in the northern Galilee. It is a lovely place. The director is one of my oldest and dearest friends, Dr. Ernest Lieberman. The village is called Gan Dafna. We have four hundred children there and most of them are concentration-camp bred. They need help badly. I do hope you will take this assignment. The pay and the facilities are very good.”

“I ... I ... would like to know about ...”

“Karen Hansen?”

“How did you know?”

“I told you we were a small community. Karen is at Gan Dafna.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Thank Ari. He is the one who arranged it all. Ari will take you up there. It is very close to his home.”

The old woman emptied her teacup and leaned back in her chair. “Could I give you one last piece of advice?”

“Of course.”

“I have been working with orphans since 1933. The attachment they form for Palestine may be something very difficult for you to understand. Once they have breathed the air of freedom ... once they are filled with this patriotism it is extremely difficult for them to leave, and if and when they do most of them never become adjusted to living away from Palestine. Their devotion is a fierce thing. Americans take so many things about America for granted. Here, a person wakes up every morning in doubt and tension—not knowing if all he has slaved for will be taken from him. Their country is with them twenty-four hours a day. It is the focal point of their lives, the very meaning of their existence.”

“Are you trying to say I may not be able to persuade the girl to leave?”

“I am trying to make you aware that you are fighting tremendous odds.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

David Ben Ami entered. “
Shalom
, Harriet.
Shalom
, Kitty. Ari told me that I could find you here. Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, we’ve finished our business. I am sending Katherine to Gan Dafna.”

“Splendid. I thought that it would be a good idea to show Kitty around Mea Shearim when the Sabbath starts.”

“An excellent idea, David.”

“Then we had better get started. Will you come with us, Harriet?”

“Lug these old bones around? Not on your life. You have Katherine at my flat for dinner in two hours.”

Kitty stood up and shook hands with the old woman and thanked her and then turned to David. He stared at her.

“Is something wrong, David?” Kitty asked.

“I have never seen you dressed up. You look very beautiful.” He looked at himself awkwardly. “Perhaps I am not dressed well enough to walk around with you.”

“Nonsense. I was just trying to show off for my new boss.”

“
Shalom
, children. I will see you later.”

Kitty was pleased that David had come for her. She felt more comfortable around him than with any of the other Jews. They walked from the Zion Settlement Society and crossed to the Street of the Prophets. Kitty took his arm, but it seemed as though David was the one who was the sightseer. He was rediscovering everything about Jerusalem and he was as delighted as a child. “It is so good to be home again,” he said. “How do you like my city?”

“Are there words? It is overwhelming and a little frightening.”

“Yes, that is the way I have always felt about Jerusalem ever since I was a boy. It never fails to thrill me and to haunt me.”

“It was very kind of you to take time away from your family.”

“We are not all assembled yet. I have six brothers, you know. Most of them are in the Palmach. I am the baby of the family so there will be a reunion. All of us except one ... I will have to see him alone later.”

“Is he ill?”

“He is a terrorist. He is with the Maccabees. My father will not permit him to enter our house. He is with Ben Moshe, a leader of the Maccabees. Ben Moshe was once my professor at the Hebrew University.” David stopped and pointed to Mount Scopus beyond the Hadassah Medical Center and beyond the Valley of Kidron. “There is the university.”

“You miss it very much, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. Someday I will have the chance to go back.”

The froggy sound of a horn blasted as it turned dusk.

“Sabbath! Sabbath!” a call went up along the streets.

All over Jerusalem the sound of the ancient horn could be heard. David put on a small skull cap and led Kitty to the street of Mea Shearim—the Hundred Gates of the ultra-Orthodox.

“Here in Mea Shearim you will be able to look into the synagogues and see the men pray in many different ways. Some of the Yemenites pray with a swaying motion as though they were riding on a camel. This was their way of getting even, as Jews were not allowed to ride camels because it would make their heads higher than a Moslem’s.”

“I am impressed.”

“Take the descendants of Spanish Jews.... During the Inquisition they were forced to convert to Catholicism on pain of death. They said their Latin prayers aloud but at the end of each sentence they whispered a Hebrew prayer under their breaths. They still pray in silence at the end of each sentence.”

Kitty was speechless when they turned into Mea Shearim. The street comprised connected two-story stone dwellings, all displaying iron grillwork on their balconies.

The men were bearded and wore side curls and fur-brimmed hats and long black satin coats. There were Yemenites in Arabic dress and Kurds and Bokharans and Persians in riotous-colored silks. Everyone walked from the ritual bath with a quick-paced bobbing motion, as though swaying in prayer.

In a few moments the street emptied into the synagogues, small rooms for the most part and several on each block. There were congregations from Italy and Afghanistan and Poland and Hungary and Morocco. The Mea Shearim was filled with the chanting of prayers and Sabbath songs and weeping voices of anguished Hasidim who whipped themselves into a furor. Women were not permitted to enter rooms of prayer, so David and Kitty had to content themselves with peeking through iron-grilled windows.

What strange rooms—what strange people. Kitty watched near-hysterical men cluster about the Sefer Torah wailing and moaning. She saw the angelic faces of Yemenites who sat cross-legged on pillows, softly praying. She saw old men weaving back and forth emitting a stream of Hebrew in monotone read from decrepit prayer books. How different and how far away they all were from the handsome men and women of Tel Aviv.

“We have all kinds of Jews,” David Ben Ami said. “I wanted to bring you here because I know that Ari wouldn’t. He and many of the
sabras
despise them. They do not farm the land, they do not bear arms. They shove an ancient brand of Judaism down our throats. They are a force of reaction against what we are trying to do. Yet, when one lives in Jerusalem as I have, we learn to tolerate them and even appreciate the horrible things in the past that could drive men to such fanaticism.”

Ari Ben Canaan waited near the Greek Church in the Russian compound. It turned dark. Bar Israel appeared from nowhere. Ari followed the contact man into an alley where a taxi waited. They got in and Bar Israel produced a large black handkerchief.

“Must I submit to this?”