Leon Uris (70 page)

“We are reasonable people,” the commissioner said. “We have arranged these petitions for you to sign. Officially they are petitions for mercy. However, off the record it is merely a formality ... a loophole, if you will.”

“Now you sign these petitions,” Bradshaw said, “and we will give you a fair compromise. We’ll take you two out of the country. You’ll serve a short term in one of the colonies in Africa and in a few years it will have all blown over.”

“I don’t quite understand you,” Akiva said. “What are we serving a sentence in Africa for? We have committed no crime. We are merely fighting for our natural and historical rights. Since when has it been a crime for a soldier to fight for his country? We are prisoners of war. You have no right to pass any sentence on us. We are an occupied country.”

The high commissioner broke into a sweat. The old man was going to be stubborn. He had heard Maccabee fanatics recite that theme before. “See here, Akiva. This is beyond arguing politics. It is your life. Either you sign these petitions for mercy or we will carry through the sentences.”

Akiva looked at the two men, whose anxiety was fully apparent. He was quite aware that the British were trying to gain an advantage or undo a mistake.

“You there, boy,” Bradshaw said to Dov. “You don’t want to hang on the gallows, do you? You sign and Akiva will sign afterwards.”

Bradshaw shoved the petition across the desk and took out his pen. Dov looked at the document a moment.

He spit on it.

Akiva looked at the two frustrated, half-frightened Englishmen. “
Thine own mouth condemneth thee
,” he snapped.

The rebuff by Akiva and Little Giora of the mercy petitions was carried in headlines as a dramatic protest against the British. Tens of thousands in the Yishuv who had formerly had little regard for the Maccabees were inspired by the action. Overnight the old man and the boy became the symbol of Jewish resistance.

Instead of damaging the Maccabees, the British were well on their way toward creating a pair of martyrs. They had no choice now but to set the hanging date, ten days away.

Every day the tension grew in Palestine. The raids of the Maccabees and the Haganah had stopped, but the country knew it was sitting on a short-fused powder keg.

The all-Arab city of Acre stood at the northern end of an arced bay with Haifa on the southern end. Acre jail was a monstrosity built on Crusader ruins. It ran along a sea wall that stretched from the prison at the northern outskirt of the town to the opposite end of the city. Ahmad el Jazzar—the Butcher—had turned it into an Ottoman fortress and it had stood against Napoleon. It was a conglomeration of parapets, dungeons, tunnels, towers, dried-up moats, courtyards, and thick walls. The British converted it into one of the most dreaded prisons in the Empire’s penal system.

Dov and Akiva were placed in tiny cells in the north wing. The walls, ceiling, and floors were made of stone. The cells’ dimensions were six feet by eight feet. The outside wall was sixteen feet thick. There was no light and no toilet. A stink of mustiness was present continuously. Each door was a solid sheet of iron with a tiny peephole for viewing, covered from the outside. The only other opening in the cells was a slit two inches wide and twelve inches high cut through from the outside wall, that allowed in a thin ray of light. Through it Dov could see the tops of some trees and the rim of Napoleon’s Hill, which marked the farthest advance point in the drive to conquer India.

Akiva fared badly. The ceilings and walls dripped, and the clammy damp penetrated his ancient inflamed joints and put him in agonizing pain.

Two or three times each day British officials came to plead for some sort of compromise to prevent the hanging. Dov merely ignored them. Akiva sent them out with quotations from the Bible ringing in their ears.

Six days remained before the hanging. Akiva and Dov were moved to the death cells adjoining the hanging room. These were conventional barred cells in another wing of the prison: four concrete walls, a deep hole under the floor, and a trap door under a steel-beamed rigging to hold the rope. A sandbag of the weight of a man was used in testing; the guards pulled the lever to release the trap door and let the sandbag fall with a crunching thud.

Dov and Akiva were dressed in scarlet pants and shirts, the traditional English hanging dress.

I
T WAS ONE O’CLOCK
in the morning. Bruce Sutherland dozed in his library with his head bowed over a book. He sat up quickly, awakened by a sharp knocking. His servant ushered Karen Clement into the room.

Sutherland rubbed his eyes. “What the devil are you doing here this time of night?”

Karen stood before him, trembling.

“Does Kitty know you are here?”

Karen shook her head.

Sutherland led her to a chair. Karen was white and tense. “Have you eaten, Karen?”

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Bring her a sandwich and some milk,” Sutherland ordered his servant. “Now see here, young lady, what is all this about?”

“I want to see Dov Landau. You are the only one I know who can help me.”

Sutherland snorted and paced the room with his hands clasped behind him. “Even if I can help you this can only hurt you more. You and Kitty will be leaving Palestine in a few weeks. Why don’t you try to forget him, child?”

“Please,” she pleaded. “I know all the reasons why I have thought of nothing else since he was captured. I must see him once more. Please help me, General Sutherland, please.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “First, let me call Kitty and tell her you are here. She is probably half out of her mind. You had no business traveling through Arab country as you did.”

The next morning Sutherland called Jerusalem. The high commissioner was quick in granting the request. The British were still trying to get Dov and Akiva to change their minds and were willing to grab at any straws. There was a possibility that Karen’s visit could break the armor of Dov’s defiance. It was arranged quickly. Kitty left Gan Dafna and was picked up in Safed by Sutherland, whence the three drove to Nahariya on the coast. There from the police station an escort took them directly into Acre jail, where they were taken to the warden’s office.

Karen had been in a daze all the way to Acre. Now, in the prison, it seemed even more unreal to her.

The warden came in.

“All right, young lady.”

“I’d better go with you,” Kitty said.

“I want to see him alone,” Karen said firmly.

A pair of armed guards waited for Karen outside the warden’s office. They led her through a series of iron doors and into a huge stone courtyard surrounded by barred windows. Karen could see the eyes of the prisoners leering at her. Some catcalls echoed in the hollow yard. She looked straight ahead. They walked up narrow steps into the death wing. They passed through a barbed-wire machine gun emplacement, then came to another door where two soldiers stood with fixed bayonets on their rifles.

She was ushered into a tiny cell. The door was closed behind her and a soldier stood near. He opened a slot in the wall measuring a few inches wide and a few inches high.

“You’ll talk to him through that slot there, girlie,” the guard said.

Karen nodded and looked into it. She could see the two cells on the other side of the wall. She saw Akiva in the first and Dov in the other, his scarlet dress. Dov lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Karen could see a guard enter and unlock his cell door.

“Up, Landau,” the guard barked. “Somebody to see you. “

Dov picked up a book from the floor and opened it and read.

“You’ve got a visitor.”

Dov turned a page in the book.

“I said you’ve got a visitor.”

“I’m not in for any of your good-will ambassadors. Tell them I said to go ...”

“It ain’t one of ours. It’s one of yours. It’s a girl, Landau.”

Dov’s hands tightened on the book and his heart raced. “Tell her I’m busy.”

The guard shrugged and walked to the slot in the wall. “He says he don’t want to see nobody.”

“Dov!” Karen called. “Dov!”

Her voice echoed in the death cell. “Dov! It’s me, Karen!”

Akiva looked tensely to Dov’s cell. Dov gritted his teeth and turned another page.

“Dov! Dov! Dov!”

“Talk to her, boy,” Akiva shouted. “Don’t go to your grave in the silence my brother has condemned me to. Talk to her, boy.”

Dov set the book down and rolled off the cot. He motioned the guard to open his cell door. He walked to the slot and looked into it. He could see only her face.

Karen looked into his cold, blue, angry eyes.

“I don’t want no more tricks,” he said acidly. “If they sent you here to beg, just turn around and get out. I’m not asking for mercy from these bastards.”

“Don’t talk like that to me, Dov.”

“I know they sent you.”

“I swear no one asked me to come. I swear it.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to see you once again.”

Dov clenched his teeth and kept his control. Why did she have to come? He nearly died with wanting to touch her cheek.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine ... just fine.”

There was a long silence.

“Dov ... did you really mean what you wrote to Kitty or did you say it just because ... “

“I meant it.”

“I wanted to know.”

“Well, you know now.”

“Yes, I know. Dov ... I ... I’ll be leaving Eretz Israel soon. I’m going to America.”

Dov shrugged.

“I guess I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“That’s all right. I know you was just trying to be nice. I would really like to see my girl but she’s a Maccabee and she can’t come. She’s my own age, you know.”

“I know.”

“Anyhow. You’re a nice kid, Karen ... and ... uh ... you uh ... get to America and forget about all this business here. And good luck.”

“I guess I had better go,” Karen whispered.

She stood up. Dov’s expression did not change.

“Karen!”

She turned quickly.

“Uh ... just to show that we are friends ... uh ... we could shake hands if the guard says it’s all right.”

Karen put her hand through the opening and Dov pressed it between his own and pressed his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes.

Karen grasped his hand and pulled it back to her side of the wall.

“No,” he said, “no ...” but he could not resist.

She kissed his hand and pressed it against her cheek and her lips and he felt the tears from her eyes. And then she was gone.

His cell door clanged behind him. Dov flopped on his bed. In all of his lifetime he could not remember shedding tears. But now nothing could stop them. He turned his back to the door so the guards and Akiva could not see his face and he wept softly from his heart.

Barak Ben Canaan was one of the Yishuv advisors who traveled with the UNSCOP as it inspected Palestine and made its various inquiries. The Yishuv showed its proud record of land reclamations, rehabilitation for the homeless—the progress of the
kibbutzim
and factories and the cities they had built. The UNSCOP delegates were impressed by the contrast of the Jewish and Arab communities. After the inspection tours formal inquiries were opened in which each side was allowed to present its case.

Ben Gurion, Weizmann, Barak Ben Canaan, and the other Yishuv leaders argued with tremendous skill the morality and justice of the Jewish case.

On the Arab side, the Higher Arab Committee, steered by the Husseini family stirred up bitter demonstrations against the United Nations. They barred the committee from many of the Arab towns where the squalor and primitive factory conditions would turn the strongest stomach. When the inquiries opened, the Arabs offidally boycotted it.

It became obvious to the UNSCOP that there could be no middle road in Palestine. On a basis of strict justice the United Nations would have to recommend a settlement in favor of the Jews, but there was the weight of Arab threats to consider.

The Jews had long accepted the theory of compromise and partition, yet they were fearful of the creation of a land ghetto like the Pale.

With the tour of Palestine and the inquiries concluded, the UNSCOP prepared to leave and retire to Geneva to analyze their findings while a subcommittee studied the displaced-persons camps in Europe, which still held a quarter of a million desperate Jews. They would then present recommendations to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Barak Ben Canaan once again accepted a commission to travel to Geneva and continue his advisory capacity.

He returned to Yad El a few days before departure for Geneva so that he might spend some time with Sarah, who, despite his many departures, had never quite got used to them. Neither did she ever get used to Jordana’s and Ari’s being away.

Ari and David Ben Ami were at the nearby Ein Or
kibbutz
, at Palmach headquarters for the Huleh. They came to Yad El and Jordana came down from Gan Dafna for a farewell dinner.

Barak was preoccupied through the entire evening. He spoke little of the UNSCOP, the coming trip, or of the pressing politics. It was a grim reunion.

“I suppose you’ve heard that Mrs. Fremont is leaving Palestine,” Jordana said at the end of dinner.

“No, I didn’t hear,” Ari said, masking his surprise.

“She is. She has given her notice to Dr. Lieberman. She is taking the Clement girl with her. I knew she would run at the first sign of real trouble.”

“Why shouldn’t she go?” Ari said. “She is an American and the girl is what she came to Palestine for.”

“She never had any use for us,” Jordana snapped.

“That’s not true,” David said in defense.

“Don’t always take her side, David.”

“She is a nice woman,” Sarah Ben Canaan said, “and I like her. Many times she passed this way and visited with me. She was very good to those children and they love her.”

“She is better gone,” Jordana persisted. “It is a shame she is taking the girl with her, but she has the child so spoiled now one would not think she was a Jewish girl.”