Leon Uris (64 page)

Kitty appeared angry and sounded adamant. Karen bit her lip and retreated. She peeked out of the comer of her eye at the full-skirted mannequins in the window. “It isn’t fair to the rest of the girls,” she said in a final effort.

“We’ll hide the dresses under the rifles if it will make you happy.”

A few moments later she was bouncing before the mirror, happily staging a one-woman fashion show and terribly pleased that Kitty had been insistent. It did feel so wonderful and look so wonderful! How long had it been since she wore nice things? Denmark ... so long ago that she had almost forgotten. Kitty was as delighted as she watched Karen transform herself from peasant to
soignée
teen-ager. They walked the length of Allenby Road, still shopping, and turned into Ben Yehuda Street at the Mograbi Square, loaded with packages. They plopped down at a table at the first sidewalk café. Karen gobbled an ice-cream soda and watched the panorama of passing people with wide eyes.

She shoved a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. “This is the nicest day I can remember,” she said. “It would be perfect if Dov and Ari were here.”

She was adorable, Kitty thought. Her heart was so filled with goodness she wanted only to give to others.

Karen meditated as she sipped from the bottom of the glass. “Sometimes I think we have picked a pair of lemons.”

“We?”

“You know ... you and Ari. Me and Dov.”

“I don’t know what on earth gives you the impression there is something between Mr. Ben Canaan and myself, but you are quite, quite, quite mistaken.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Karen answered. “Is that why you twisted your neck watching every truck that came in the gate before the Shavuot celebration yesterday? Just who were you looking for if not Ari Ben Canaan?”

“Humph,” Kitty grunted, and sipped her coffee to cover her guilty confusion.

Kitty shrugged as she wiped at her lips. “Gosh, anyone could tell you are sweet on him.”

Kitty narrowed her eyes and glared at Karen. “You listen to me, Miss Smarty ...”

“Deny it and I’ll run up and down the street and shout it in Hebrew.”

Kitty threw up her hands. “I can’t win. Someday you’ll realize a man can be very attractive to us older women of thirty without there being the least bit of seriousness attached to it. I like Ari, but I’m sorry to have to dispel your romantic notions.”

Karen looked at Kitty with an expression that clearly said she was simply not convinced. The girl sighed and leaned close to Kitty and held her arm as though she were going to impart a deep dark secret. Karen’s mien took on the earnest sincerity of the teen-ager. “Ari needs you, I can tell that.”

Kitty patted Karen’s hand and adjusted a loose strand of hair in the girl’s pigtail. “I wish I were sixteen again and things were so pure and uncomplicated. No, Karen, Ari Ben Canaan comes from a breed of supermen whose stock in trade is their self-reliance. Ari Ben Canaan hasn’t needed anyone since the day he cut his teeth on his father’s bull whip. His blood is made up of little steel and ice corpuscles and his heart is a pump like the motor in that bus over there. All this keeps him above and beyond human emotions.”

She sat silent and very still and her eyes looked beyond Karen.

“You do care for him.”

“Yes,” Kitty sighed, “I do, and what you said is right. We’ve got a pair of lemons. We’d better get back to the hotel. I want you to dress up for me and make yourself look like a princess. Bruce and I have a surprise for you. We’ll take the pigtails down.”

Karen indeed looked like a princess when Sutherland picked them up for dinner. The surprise was attendance at a touring French ballet company’s staging of
Swan Lake
at the Habima National Theater, accompanied by the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra.

Karen leaned forward and sat on the edge of her seat during the entire performance, concentrating intently on the steps of the prima ballerina as she floated her way through the fairy tale. The overpowering, haunting beauty of the score filled her brain.

How beautiful it all was, Karen thought. She had almost forgotten things like ballet were still in the world. How lucky she was to have Kitty Fremont. The stage was bathed in blue light and the music swelled into the finale with the storm and Siegfried defeating the evil Von Rotbart and the beautiful swan maidens turning into women. Tears of happiness fell down her cheeks.

Kitty watched Karen more than she watched the ballet. She sensed that she had awakened something dormant in the girl. Maybe Karen was rediscovering that there was something in the world she once had that was as important as the green of the fields of the Galilee. Kitty resolved again to keep this thing alive in Karen always; as much as the Jews had won her over there was still much of her they could never get.

Tomorrow Karen would see her father and her world would move on in another direction. Kitty won something this day.

They returned to the hotel late. Karen was bursting with happiness. She flung the hotel door open and danced through the lobby. The British officers raised their eyebrows. Kitty sent her up to get ready for bed and repaired to the bar with Sutherland for a nightcap.

“Have you told her about her father yet?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“I’d rather ... alone.”

“Of course.”

“But please be there afterwards.”

“I’ll be there.”

Kitty stood up and kissed Sutherland on the cheek. “Good night, Bruce.”

Karen was still dancing in their room when Kitty arrived. “Did you see Odette in the last scene?” she said, imitating the steps.

“It’s late and you’re a tired Indian.”

“Oh, what a day!” Karen said, flopping into her bed.

Kitty walked into the bathroom and changed. She could hear Karen humming the melodies of the ballet. “Oh God,” Kitty whispered. “Why does this have to happen to her?” Kitty held her face in her hands and trembled. “Give her strength ... please give her strength.”

Kitty lay wide-eyed in the darkness. She heard Karen stir and looked over to the girl’s bed. Karen arose and knelt beside Kitty’s bed and lay her head on Kitty’s bosom. “I love you so much, Kitty,” Karen said. “I couldn’t love my own mother more.”

Kitty turned her head away and stroked Karen’s hair. “You’d better go to sleep,” Kitty said shakily. “We have a busy day tomorrow.”

Kitty stayed awake smoking one cigarette after the other and occasionally pacing the floor. Each time she looked at the sleeping child her heart tightened. Long past midnight she sat by the window listening to the waves and looking at Jaffa on the bend of the coast line. It was four o’clock before Kitty fell into a restless, thrashing sleep.

In the morning she was heavy with depression, her face drawn and her eyes showing rings of sleeplessness beneath them. A dozen times she tried to broach the subject. Breakfast on the terrace was in silence. Kitty sipped her coffee.

“Where is Brigadier Sutherland?” Karen asked.

“He had to go out on business. He’ll see us later this morning.”

“What are we going to do today?”

“Oh, a little of this and a little of that.”

“Kitty ... it’s something about my father, isn’t it?”

Kitty lowered her eyes.

“I guess I really knew all along.”

“I didn’t mean to deceive you, dear ... I ...”

“What is it ... please tell me ... what is it?”

“He is very, very sick.”

Karen bit her finger and her mouth trembled. “I want to see him.”

“He won’t know you, Karen.”

Karen straightened up and looked off to the sea. “I’ve waited so long for this day.”

“Please ...”

“Every night since I knew the war was ending over two years ago I’ve gone to sleep with the same dream. I lay in bed and pretended we were meeting each other again. I’d know just how he would look and what we are going to say to each other. At the DP camp in Caraolos and in Cyprus all those months I dreamed about it every night ... my father and me. See ... I always knew he was alive and ... kept going over and over it.”

“Karen ... stop it. It’s not going to be the way you dreamed.”

The girl trembled from head to foot. The palms of her hands were wet. She sprang from her chair. “Take me to him.”

Kitty took her arms and gripped her tightly. “You must prepare for something terrible.”

“Please ... please, let’s go.”

“Try to remember ... no matter what happens ... no matter what you see ... that I’m going to be right there. I’ll be with you, Karen. Will you remember that?”

“Yes ... I’ll remember it.”

The doctor sat before Karen and Kitty.

“Your father was tortured by the Gestapo, Karen,” the doctor said. “In the early part of the war they wanted him to work for them and they made things very hard. They finally gave up. He was unable to work for them even upon threat of danger to your mother and brothers.”

“I remember now,” Karen said. “I remember the letters stopped coming to Denmark and how I was afraid to ask Aage about my family.”

“He was sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, and your mother and brothers ...”

“I know about them.”

“They sent him to Theresienstadt in hope he would change his mind. After the war he found out about your mother and brothers first. He felt guilty because he had waited too long to leave Germany and had trapped your mother and brothers. When he learned what had happened to them, on top of the years of torture, his mind snapped.”

“He will get better?”

The doctor looked at Kitty. “He has a psychotic depression ... extreme melancholia.”

“What does that mean?” Karen asked.

“Karen, your father is not going to get well.”

“I don’t believe you,” the girl said. “I want to see him.”

“Do you remember him at all?”

“Very little.”

“It would be far better to keep what you can remember than to see him now.”

“She must see him, Doctor, no matter how difficult it is going to be. This question cannot be left open,” Kitty said.

The doctor led them down a corridor and stopped before a door. A nurse unlocked it. He held the door open.

Karen walked into a cell-like room. The room held a chair, a stand, and a bed. She looked around for a moment and then she stiffened. A man was sitting on the floor in a corner. He was barefooted and uncombed. He sat with his back against the wall and his arms around his knees and stared blankly at the opposite wall.

Karen took a step toward him. He was stubble-bearded and his face was scarred. Suddenly the pounding within Karen’s heart eased. This is all a mistake, she thought ... this man is a stranger ... he is not my father ... he cannot be. It is a mistake! A mistake! She was filled with the urge to turn around and scream out ...
you see, you were wrong. He is not Johann Clement, he is not my father. My father is still alive somewhere and looking for me
. Karen stood before the man on the floor to assure herself. She stared into the crazed eyes. It had been so long ... so very long, she could not remember. But the man she had dreamed about meeting again was not this man.

There was a fireplace and the smell of pipe tobacco. There was a big moppy dog. His name was Maximilian. A baby cried in the next room. “Miriam, see to Hans. I am reading a story for my girl and I cannot be disturbed.”

Karen Hansen Clement slowly knelt before the hulk of mindless flesh.

Grandma’s house in Bonn always smelled of newly-baked cookies. She baked all week getting ready for the family on Sunday.

The insane man continued to stare at the opposite wall as though he were alone in the room.

Look how funny the monkeys are in the Cologne Zoo! Cologne has the most wonderful zoo. When will it be carnival time again?

She studied the man from his bare feet to his scarred forehead. Nothing ... nothing she saw was like her father ...

“Jew! Jew! Jew!” the crowd screamed as she ran into her house with the blood pouring down her face. “There, there, Karen don’t you cry. Daddy won’t let them hurt you.”

Karen reached out and touched the man’s cheek. “Daddy?” she said. The man did not move or react.

There was a train and lots of children around and they were talking of going to Denmark but she was tired. “Good-by, Daddy,” Karen had said. “Here, you take my dolly. He will watch after you.” She stood on the platform of the train and watched her Daddy on the platform and he grew smaller and smaller.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Karen cried. “It’s Karen, Daddy! I’m your girl. I’m all grown up now, Daddy. Don’t you remember me?”

The doctor held Kitty in the doorway as she shook from head to foot. “Let me help her, please,” Kitty cried.

“Let it be done,” he said.

And Karen was filled with remembering—“Yes! Yes! He is my father! He is my father!”

“Daddy!” she screamed and threw her arms around him. “Please talk to me. Please say something to me. I beg you ... beg you!”

The man who was once the living human person of Johann Clement blinked his eyes. A sudden expression of curiosity came over his face as he became aware of a person clutching at him. He held the expression for a tense moment as though he were trying, in his own way, to allow something to penetrate the blackness—and then, his look lasped back into lifelessness.

“Daddy!” she screamed. “Daddy! Daddy!”

And her voice echoed in the empty room and down the long corridor—“Daddy!”

The strong arms of the doctor pried her loose, and she was gently dragged from the room. The door was closed and locked and Johann Clement was gone from her—forever. The girl sobbed in anguish and crumpled into Kitty’s arms. “He didn’t even know me! Oh, my God ... God ... why doesn’t he know me? Tell me, God ... tell me!”

“It’s all right, baby, it is all right now. Kitty is here. Kitty is with you.”

“Don’t leave me, don’t ever leave me, Kitty!”

“No, baby ... Kitty won’t ever leave you ... ever.”

T
HE NEWS OF
K
AREN’S FATHER
had spread through Gan Dafna before she and Kitty returned. It had a shattering effect on Dov Landau. For the first time since his brother Mundek had held him in his arms in a bunker beneath the Warsaw ghetto, Dov Landau Was able to feel compassion for someone other than himself. His sorrow for Karen Clement was, at last, the ray of light that illuminated his black world.