Leon Uris (56 page)

“I trust you, Ari, but orders are orders.”

The blindfold was tied over Ari’s eyes and Ari was made to lie on the floor and was covered by a blanket. For a long twenty minutes the taxi moved in zigzags and circuitous routes to confuse Ari, then headed toward the Katamon district near the former German colony. The taxi stopped. Ari was quickly led into a house and into a room and was told he could remove the kerchief.

The room was bare except for a single chair, a single table which held a single flickering candle and a bottle of brandy and two glasses. It took a full moment for Ari’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. His uncle, Akiva, stood opposite him by the table. Akiva’s beard and his hair had turned snow white. He was wrinkled and bent. Ari walked to him very slowly and stopped before him.

“Hello, Uncle,” he said.

“Ari, my boy.”

The two men embraced, and the older man had to fight back choking emotion. Akiva lifted the candle and held it close to Ari’s face and he smiled. “You are looking well, Ari. It was a good job you did in Cyprus.”

“Thank you.”

“You came with a girl, I hear.”

“An American woman who helped us. She is not a friend, really. How are you feeling, Uncle?”

Akiva shrugged. “As well as I can be expected to feel living in the underground. It has been too long since I have seen you, Ari ... too long. Over two years now. It was nice when Jordana was studying at the university. I saw her once each week. She must be nearly twenty now. How is she? Does she still care for that boy?”

“David Ben Ami. Yes, they are very much in love. David was with me at Cyprus. He is one of our most promising young people.”

“His brother is a Maccabee, you know. Ben Moshe used to teach him at the university. Perhaps I can meet him someday.”

“Of course.”

“I hear Jordana is in the Palmach.”

“Yes, she is in charge of training the children at Gan Dafna and she works on the mobile radio when it transmits from our area.”

“She must be around my
kibbutz
then. She must see a lot of Ein Or.”

“Yes.”

“Does she ... does she ever say how it looks?”

“It is always beautiful at Ein Or.”

“Perhaps I can see it one day again.” Akiva sat down at the table and poured two brandies with an unsteady hand. Ari took a glass and they touched them. “
Le chaim
,” he said.

“I was with Avidan yesterday, Uncle. He showed me the British battle order. Have your people seen it?”

“We have friends in British Intelligence.”

Akiva stood up and began to pace the room slowly. “Haven-Hurst means to wipe out my organization. The British are dedicated to the destruction of the Maccabees. They torture our prisoners, they hang us, they have exiled our entire command. It is not bad enough that the Maccabees are the only ones with the courage to fight the British, we must also fight the betrayers among our own people. Oh, yes, Ari ... we know the Haganah has been turning us in.”

“That is not true,” Ari gasped.

“It is true!”

“No! Just today at Yishuv Central, Haven-Hurst demanded that the Jews destroy the Maccabees and they again refused.”

Akiva’s pacing quickened and his anger rose. “Where do you think the British get their information if not from the Haganah? Those cowards at Yishuv Central let the Maccabees do the bleeding and the dying. Those cowards betray and betray. Cleverly, yes! But they betray! Betray! Betray!”

“I won’t listen to this, Uncle. Most of us in the Haganah and the Palmach are dying to fight. They restrain us until we burst, but we cannot destroy everything that has been built.”

“Say it! We destroy!”

Ari gritted his teeth and held his tongue. The old man ranted, then suddenly he stopped and flopped his arms to his sides. “I am a master at creating arguments when I don’t mean to.”

“It is all right, Uncle.”

“I am sorry, Ari ... here, have some more brandy, please.”

“No, thank you.”

Akiva turned his back and murmured, “How is my brother?”

“He was well when I saw him last. He will be going to London to join the conferences.”

“Yes, dear Barak. He will talk. He will talk to the end.” Akiva wetted his lips and hesitated. “Does he know that you and Jordana and Sarah see me?”

“I think so.”

Akiva faced his nephew. His face reflected the sorrow within him. “Does he ... does he ever ask about me?”

“No.”

Akiva gave a hurt little laugh and sank into the chair and poured more brandy for himself. “How strange things are. I was always the one who angered and Barak was always the one who forgave. Ari ... I am getting very tired. A year, another year, I don’t know how long it will be. Nothing can ever undo the hurt that we have brought to each other. But ... he must find it in his heart to break this silence. Ari, he must forgive me for the sake of our father.”

A
HUNDRED CHURCH BELLS
from the Old City and the Valley of Kidron and the Mount of Olives and Mount Zion pealed in chorus to the YMCA carillon. It was Sunday in Jerusalem, the Christian Sabbath.

David Ben Ami took Kitty into the Old City through the ornate Damascus Gate and they walked along the Via Dolorosa—the Way of the Cross—to Stephen’s Gate which looked over the Kidron Valley and the tombs of Zacharias and Absalom and Mary and to the Mount of Olives, the scene of the Ascension.

They walked through the narrow streets, through the Arab bazaar and the tiny shops and the scenes of wild bartering. At the Dome of the Rock, the Mosque of Omar, a thousand pairs of shoes covered the steps. Ancient, bearded Jews stood and wept before the Wailing Wall of their great temple.

How strange this place is, again Kitty Fremont mused. Here, so far away in these barren hills, the merging point of a hundred civilizations in its thousands of years. Of all the earth, why this place, this street, this wall, this church? Romans and Crusaders and Greeks and Turks and Arabs and Assyrians and Babylonians and British in the city of the maligned Hebrews. It is holy, it is sacred, it is damned. Everything strong and everything weak, all that is good in man and all that is evil in him are personified. Calvary and Gethsemane. The room of the Last Supper. The last supper of Jesus, a Jewish Passover Seder.

David took Kitty to the Holy Sepulcher, the site of the crucifixion and the tiny chapel lit with ornate hanging lamps and perpetually burning candles over the marble tomb of Jesus Christ. Kitty knelt beside the tomb and kissed it as it had been kissed thin by a million pilgrims.

The next morning Ari and Kitty left Jerusalem and continued northward into the Galilee. They drove through the timeless Arab villages into the fertile carpet of the Jezreel Valley, which the Jews had turned from swamp into the finest farmland in the Middle East. As the road wound out of the Jezreel toward Nazareth again, they moved backwards in time. On one side of the hill the lush lands of the Jezreel and on the other, the sun-baked, dried-out, barren fields of the Arabs. Nazareth was much as Jesus must have found it in His youth.

Ari parked in the center of town. He brushed off a group of Arab urchins, but one child persisted.

“Guide?”

“No.”

“Souvenirs? I got wood from the cross, cloth from the robe.”

“Get lost.”

“Dirty pictures?”

Ari tried to pass the boy but he clung on and grabbed Ari by the pants leg. “Maybe you like my sister? She is a virgin.”

Ari flipped the boy a coin. “Guard the car with your life.”

Nazareth stank. The streets were littered with dung and blind beggars made wretched noises and barefoot, ragged, filthy children were underfoot. Flies were everywhere. Kitty held Ari’s arm tightly as they wound through the bazaar and to a place alleged to be Mary’s kitchen and Joseph’s carpenter shop.

Kitty was baffled as they drove from Nazareth: it was a dreadful place.

“At least the Arabs are friendly,” Ari said. “They are Christians.”

“They are Christians who need a bath.”

They stopped once more at Kafr Kanna at the church where Christ performed his first miracle of changing water to wine. It was set in a pretty and timeless Arab village.

Kitty was trying to digest all that she had seen in the past few days. It was such a small land but every inch held ghosts of blood or glory. At certain moments the very sacredness of it was gripping; at other moments exaltation turned to revulsion. Some of the holy places struck her speechless with awe and others left her with the cold suspicion of one watching a shell game in a carnival. The wailing Jews of Mea Shearim and the burning refinery. The aggressive
sabras
of Tel Aviv and the farmers of the Jezreel. The old and the new jammed together. There were paradoxes and contradictions at every turn.

It was very late afternoon when Ari turned into the gates of Yad El. He stopped before a flower-bedecked cottage.

“Ari, how lovely it is,” Kitty said.

The cottage door opened and Sarah Ben Canaan ran from it. “Ari! Ari!” She was swept into his arms.

“
Shalom, ema
.”

“Ari, Ari, Ari ...”

“Now don’t cry,
ema
... shhhh, don’t cry, don’t cry.”

Kitty saw the massive Barak Ben Canaan rush out and throw his arms about his son.

“
Shalom, abba, shalom
.”

The old giant clung to his son and slapped his back again and again, repeating, “You look good, Ari, you look good.”

Sarah studied her son’s face. “He is tired. Can’t you see how tired he is, Barak?”

“I’m fine,
ema
. I have company. I want you to meet Mrs. Katherine Fremont. She is going to work at Gan Dafna tomorrow.”

“So you are Katherine Fremont,” Barak said, taking her hand in his two giant paws. “Welcome to Yad El.”

“Ari, you’re such a fool,” his mother said. “Why didn’t you telephone and say you were bringing Mrs. Fremont? Come in, come in ... you’ll take a shower, you’ll change your clothes, I’ll make a little to eat and you’ll feel better. You’re such a fool, Ari.” Sarah put her arm around Kitty’s waist and led her toward the cottage. “Barak! Bring Mrs. Fremont’s luggage.”

Jordana Ben Canaan stood before the newly arrived
Exodus
children in the outdoor theater. She was tall and straight, with a statuesque carriage and long shapely legs. Jordana, with red hair hanging free below her shoulders, had a striking and classic beauty. She was nineteen years of age and had been in the Palmach since leaving the university. The Palmach assigned Jordana to Gan Dafna to head the Gadna unit which gave military training to all children in the village over fourteen years. Gan Dafna was also one of the prime places for hiding arms and smuggling them to the Huleh settlements. Jordana also worked on the mobile Voice of Israel secret radio when it transmitted in the Huleh. Jordana lived at Gan Dafna, right in her office.

“I am Jordana Ben Canaan,” she said to the
Exodus
children. “I am your Gadna commander. In the next weeks you will learn spying, messenger work, arms cleaning and firing, stick fighting, and we will have several cross-country hikes. You are in Palestine now and never again do you have to lower your head or know fear for being a Jew. We are going to work very hard, for Eretz Israel needs you. Tomorrow we will have our first hike. We will go over the hills north to Tel Hai. My father came to Palestine through Tel Hai nearly sixty years ago. It is the place where our great hero, Joseph Trumpledor died. Trumpledor is buried there, and a great stone lion near the graveyard looks down upon the Huleh just as the statue of Dafna looks upon the Huleh. On the lion are written the words ... ‘It is good to die for one’s country.’ I might add to that: it is good to have a country to die for.”

As Jordana entered the administration building later she was called to the telephone. She lifted the receiver, “
Shalom
, Jordana here.”

“
Shalom!
This is
ema!
Ari is home!”

“Ari!”

Jordana ran from her office to the stable. She mounted her father’s white Arab stallion and spurred him through the gates of Gan Dafna. She galloped bareback down the road toward the village of Abu Yesha with her scarlet hair waving in the wind behind her.

She galloped full speed into the main street of the Arab village, sending a dozen people scurrying for safety. The men at the coffeehouse turned and sneered. What a disrespectful prostitute this redheaded bitch was to dare ride through their streets wearing shorts! It was fortunate for her that she was the daughter of Barak and the sister of Ari!

Ari took Kitty’s hand and led her through the door. “Come along,” he said, “I want to show you some of the farm before it turns dark.”

“Did you have enough to eat, Mrs. Fremont?”

“I’m ready to burst.”

“And the room is comfortable?”

“I’m just fine, Mrs. Ben Canaan.”

“Well, don’t be too long, dinner will be ready when Jordana gets down from Gan Dafna.” Sarah and Barak stared after them, then looked at each other. “She is a beautiful woman. But for our Ari?”

“Stop being a
Yiddische
momma. Don’t go making a
shiddoch
for Ari,” Barak said.

“What are you talking, Barak? Can’t you see the way he looks at her? Don’t you know your own son yet? He is so tired.”

Ari and Kitty walked through Sarah’s garden on the side of the house to the low rail fence. Ari put his foot up on the rail and looked out over the fields of the
moshav
. The water sprinklers were whirling a cooling spray and the orchard trembled lightly in the evening breeze. The air was scented with the fragrance of Sarah’s winter roses. Kitty watched Ari as he looked out at his land. For the first time since she had known Ari Ben Canaan he seemed to be at peace. They
are
rare moments for him, Kitty thought, remembering that brief period of peace in Jerusalem.

“Not much like your Indiana, I’m afraid,” Ari said.

“It will do.”

“Well ... you didn’t have to build Indiana out of a swamp.” Ari wanted to say much more to Kitty. He wanted to talk about how much he longed to be able to come home and work on his land. He wanted to beg her to understand what it was for his people to own land like this.