Pursuit (32 page)

“As you are undoubtedly aware from last night's radio,” he said, “the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, UNSCOP, has recommended in a majority report that the British mandate over Palestine be terminated, and that Palestine be partitioned into sovereign Arab and Jewish states. This morning, just before I left Jerusalem, we also learned that President Truman accepts this partition plan—”

He was interrupted by a cheer; he took the opportunity to take a sip of water before raising his hand for quiet. When the room at last fell silent, he went on.

“The UN General Assembly will vote on the UNSCOP recommendation, probably in two or three months. If they vote for partition—and we believe there is a chance that they will—then it will only be a matter of months after that before the British have to leave. The British, as we know, have not been any great protection against attacks on Jews and on Jewish settlements by Arab bands, but they have been helpful to a small degree. Once they are gone the situation will be much worse. The Arab states, all of them and officially, have said they will attack us and try to wipe us out. For once we see no reason to doubt their word; they will try. We have to start now, therefore, to prepare for those attacks.”

He bent over his briefcase; this time the silence was intense as he took out a piece of paper, studied it a moment, and then looked up.

“Up until now, the attacks on the settlements have been sporadic. Once the Arab armies begin to invade Palestine, the attacks will be concerted. This is certainly not to say that attacks on the
kibbutzim
and the
moshavim
will not continue while the British are still here; it simply means that we must be prepared for more concentrated and more vicious and better-armed attacks. The settlements are going to have to be prepared to defend themselves to a large extent; the cities are going to have their own problems. Certain settlements, such as Ein Tsofar, must be strengthened to act as bulwarks for the smaller and weaker settlements in their areas. They must be prepared to give these smaller settlements help, or to take in survivors or refugees from these settlements. Ein Tsofar is a natural choice in this part of the Negev; it is protected at its rear by the mountain; it has water, and it is now sufficient in food, or at least can manage to exist on its own food if it has to. And it has caves, and an arms-manufacturing facility of sorts, primitive though it be. Regarding the arms, we must enlarge the facility to provide better and more land mines and bombs, and if possible small arms. As to water, it must be conserved; old cisterns must be cleared and cleaned to store water during the rains. Food will have to be conserved, and additional stores of tinned foods sent here. Within a month we will establish at Ein Tsofar a hospital with a doctor and nurses to implement your small clinic. Our underground bunkers must be enlarged for the children—”

There was an argumentative shout from one of the women. “Why must the children stay?”

“Because, at present, they have no place else to go,” Wishnak said patiently. “Our cities may be overrun; it is almost a certainty that they will be bombed. There is going to be street fighting with the local Arab population. And where else can the children go? No country is offering us permission to send our children to them, any more than they offered the Jewish children of Europe any escape during the holocaust. No country is helping us at all, as a matter of fact.” He shrugged. “When there is a safer place for the children, they will go there, but at present nobody has anyplace to go, including the children. Only into the sea.”

He waited a moment for further argument; there was none. He went back to his paper almost wearily.

“We must strengthen the defenses of the settlements, and particularly Ein Tsofar, which will be a key point in our defense. We have been in touch with the Irgun and the Stern people; we would expect in the case of an attack by the Arab countries they would be willing to submit to a central authority, that of the Haganah, because as the American Ben Franklin said, if we don't hang together, we shall assuredly hang separately. I should like to see the men in charge of the defense, and the person responsible for arms building, together with Joel Perez the manager, as soon as this meeting is over.”

Benjamin Grossman sat through the meeting discussing his requirements for additional raw materials and equipment to manufacture greater quantities of mines and bombs and begin to manufacture larger weapons with no expression on his face, and little attention to the discussion. His mind was on far more important things. The man had said that there was a good possibility that the UN might abolish the British mandate, and once the British were out of Palestine, he would be a free man! And once that happened, Ein Tsofar and their awful food and their pitiful little arms factory and their imprisoning desert would be a thing of the past. And this time nobody or nothing was going to stand in his way. He had waited too long as it was. Let the Jews and the Arabs battle to their hearts' content; let them annihilate each other and blessings on both of them. He would be out of it.

The hospital contingent came to Ein Tsofar in mid-October, trucks rumbling along the dirt road that skirted the Dead Sea, churning dust, led by a jeep with armed men, for the Arab attacks on outlying settlements and small traveling convoys had increased greatly, not waiting for any vote on partition in a land thousands of miles from their own. Ben Grossman heard of its arrival but paid little attention; by the time he had finished his day's work and had cleaned up for supper, most of the equipment for the hospital had been unloaded and temporarily stored in the cave that had been selected for the enlarged clinic. Unlike the other members of the kibbutz who had come from their chores to watch and help with the unloading, Grossman had no interest in the activity. Instead he waited for the supper hour sitting in his room, staring as usual at the slopes leading to the waters below and the mountains beyond that completed the walls of his prison.

There was a diffident knock on his door and he looked up in surprise; as a general rule he was left pretty much to himself.

“Come in.”

The door opened; he stared as Deborah smiled at him. He came to his feet in confusion.

“Is Max here?”

“No,” she said. “I'm alone. Or rather, I came with a doctor and three other nurses, but not with Max. I'm with the hospital.”

“But—” He stopped, still surprised to see her.

Deborah smiled at his expression. “Aren't you even going to say hello?”

“I'm sorry. Of course—hello. It's just—well, I'm rather surprised. I didn't expect to see you again. I mean, not alone. I thought by now you and Max would have been married.”

Deborah looked at him steadily.

“Max and I are not going to get married. He's a fine man, a strong man, a wonderful man, and I suppose I even love him in a way. But not in the way you should love a man to marry him and spend your life with him.”

He didn't know what to say. He had never in his wildest dreams expected to see Deborah appear at Ein Tsofar, with or without Max, even though he had pictured her in his dreams often enough. He looked about his little room, trying to think of some words.

“I—well, I hope you like it here.” He seemed to see his room for the first time. “I'm afraid the accommodations aren't very luxurious—”

Deborah smiled. “I was raised on a kibbutz in the north. Ein Tsofar is far better than the one I knew as a child. We started from nothing, bringing water miles. This is heaven by comparison. And as for accommodations—” Her smile broadened. “I imagine the quarters for married couples are a lot better than this.” Ben felt his face getting red. Deborah took pity on him. “It's nearly time for supper. Shall we go?”

They made love for the first time one week later. Ben had spent the evening watching Deborah play chess, sitting on the arm of her chair in the community room; in the background the radio played softly, a concert from Jerusalem. For that moment, at least, he felt peace. It was an odd feeling, a rare feeling. It was even a pleasant feeling, but it was also in a way a disturbing feeling. He could not allow this feeling of well-being to take him from his ultimate goal of reaching Switzerland and his money there; not after all the sacrifices he had made to reach that goal. But still, it was a welcome feeling from those of frustration with which his life had been filled before the arrival of Deborah.

When the game ended—and he had not paid enough attention to even know who won, only that Deborah's arm was pressed familiarly against his leg and that her hair smelled clean and fresh—he walked her to her room. She opened the door and then turned to him, pulling him to her, reaching up to brush her lips against his cheek. They kissed; the kiss grew in intensity as he tightened his grip on her; then she pulled away and took his hand, leading him into the room, closing the door behind them, not bothering to put on the light. They lay on the bed in the darkness, just holding each other tightly, and then he slowly started to unbutton her blouse and free her breasts, and felt her fingers opening the buttons of his shirt one by one.

They made love slowly, deliciously, and when at last it was over Ben Grossman realized that it was the first time since he had lost his virginity at the age of fifteen that he had made love without comparing the woman beside him with some previous woman someplace, sometime. He felt sure he was not falling in love, because he had never fallen in love, but he also knew it was important to him to be able to repeat the wonderful experience, to enjoy again those exquisite sensations. Deborah turned to him and stared at him in the dark, her hand softly rubbing his chest. Her voice was low, warm.

“‘I'm sure we can get larger quarters together without getting married. I'm sure Joel Perez would understand. Would you like that?”

For a moment his gratitude at her understanding, together with the emotion brought on by being next to her and still feeling the euphoria of love-making, nearly made him say that marriage was what he wanted, but some inner caution held him back.

“Yes,” he said softly and held her tightly, kissing her cheek, then her neck, feeling himself begin to get excited all over again. “I would like that very much.”

Deborah Assavar was born of Iraqi-Jewish immigrant parents in the small town of Hadera, almost exactly halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa, on the Mediterranean. When she was two years old, her father decided that the life of a fisherman was not for anyone both accustomed to the land and unaccustomed to seasickness, and the family joined others to form the kibbutz of Ramat Mizrah in the Galilee. Deborah was too young to remember Hadera on the sea, but as she grew up she was sure there had to be a better place than Ramat Mizrah, or a better life than being hustled into a shelter to avoid Arab raids every week or so, or carrying water miles from the time she was old enough to handle a full bucket. The settlers of Ramat Mizrah had all been farmers at one time or another in their lives, but none had been fully prepared for the hardship that lay in trying to wrest a livelihood from the inhospitable desert, which had been the only land they could afford for their project.

One by one they succumbed, either to the Arabs or to the sun or to the endless toil of working the harsh land without proper tools. Deborah's father had simply laid down his hoe one day, lay down beside it, and ceased to breathe. Her mother had grieved for a short time and had then taken her husband's place in the fields, to die two months later in giving birth to a dead brother for Deborah.

Nursing was a natural career for anyone raised in such circumstances. There were no doctors nor any hospitals nearer than Haifa, and the settlers had to learn to take care of themselves. Those too young for the field took care of those even younger. The application of bandages, or the dosing of the sick, had to be handled by those who did not contribute to the other labors of the kibbutz, or by those with the stomach to face gunshot wounds without fainting. By the time Deborah was thirteen she was dividing her time between teaching the younger children their alphabet as she had been taught, taking care of the small dispensary that had been established, and taking her turn with her rifle at the guard station at night.

Her ambition had been to become a doctor, but this was clearly impossible under the circumstances; her education was lacking in many respects. But when the settlers finally admitted to themselves that not every kibbutz had to become a success story for the visitors from America, when Ramat Mizrah was finally abandoned, Deborah knew that at least she could and would become a nurse.

She did not return to Hadera with the others but went to Haifa to enter a hospital and work for her room and board, doing the most menial jobs while learning her profession. It was a hard life, but she was used to a hard life. It left little time for friendship and none for love, other than the compassionate love she felt for her suffering charges. But it built a strong woman, a woman strong enough to face the fact that the only man who she had ever felt anything for until that time, Max Brodsky, was not for her; but that a man named Benjamin Grossman, a quiet, at times even sullen man, had something for her that she needed. And that she had something for him that he needed, whether he recognized that fact or not.

She looked at the profile of the man sleeping beside her and smiled. No, she had not been wrong in asking for the assignment to Ein Tsofar. She had not been wrong in falling in love with Benjamin Grossman.

Chapter 3

It was two o'clock in the morning of November 30, with nobody at Ein Tsofar even faintly considering sleep. Even the children beyond the age of infancy had been allowed to stay awake—an unheard-of privilege—and were crowded with the adults into the community room. A samovar of hot tea stood on the table together with the usual collection of chipped cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and spoons, but nobody was drinking. They sat restlessly on the hard chairs or wandered about nervously, pausing to read or reread the notices on the bulletin board, all waiting impatiently for the radio to give them some inkling as to their future. For this was the evening of Friday, November 29, in New York and the United Nations General Assembly was preparing to take a vote on the resolution to partition Palestine and end the British mandate.