Raquela (15 page)

“Carmi!” Raquela snapped. “You have no reason, no right, to ask that.”

Arik moved his chair away from the table.

“Please don't go, Arik,” Raquela said. “You haven't finished your lunch.”

“I'm sure you want to spend some time together. Raquela, I have to see Miss Landsmann anyway. Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

Carmi nodded. Raquela thought she heard him grinding his teeth.

She tried to eat, but the food was gall in her mouth. She watched Carmi finish his lunch.

Her mind was churning. She had been so eager, so impatient, for him to come home. This was the moment she had dreamed of. Now it was ashes.
He really doesn't trust me
, she thought.
Maybe he's incapable of trusting any woman. He broke up with Debby because she was jealous of him. But maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe he can't trust anyone. Maybe not even himself
.

How can I be a nurse and live with that kind of jealousy? A nurse has to associate with doctors, men and women. He'd go insane, and I would, too, if I had to come home every night and explain myself to him. What if I had night duty?

She shuddered. “Let's go,” she said, “unless you want something else to eat.”

“I've had enough.”

Silently, almost without thinking, she led him along the ridge of Mount Scopus to the university garden. They walked through the pergola and descended to the circular bench, where they sat close together as they had done before, looking at the incredible panorama. But now Raquela was barely aware of the Old City.

They sat in stony silence, waiting.

Finally, Carmi broke the silence. “Who is this doctor friend of yours?” he asked truculently. “I can't even pronounce his name.”

Raquela exploded. “He's one of the most respected doctors in the country. He's my teacher.”

“The way he looks at you, I'd say he's a lot more than your teacher.”

“Carmi, how dare you?”

“How dare I?” His blue eyes were iced with anger. “How dare I? You called him by his first name. What kind of teacher-student relationship is that?”

“You don't understand how informal most of us are in the hospital. I love nursing, and delivering babies, and Dr. Brzezinski is a great gynecologist and obstetrician.”

Carmi sneered. “And I suppose he holds your hand every time you deliver a baby.”

“Stop it, Carmi! I've been loyal to you. Dr. Brzezinski is just a good friend.”

His face seemed drained of color. Raquela stared at him. He was a stranger to her and somehow frightening.

She bit her lip, feeling guilt.
He's been away so long—fighting Nazis, liberating the survivors of the death camps. A soldier's life is so lonely…I must give him time
.

She gave him time. After work they walked the quiet streets of Bet Hakarem; they sat in cafés in downtown Jerusalem, drinking coffee; they went to the movies. She was determined not to give him a single reason for jealousy. Yet whenever she worked closely with Arik, she felt restless, vulnerable, confused.

It was a custom among the student nurses to arrange their schedules so that any nurse whose boyfriend came back from the war could spend three full days with him.

Raquela and Carmi planned their three days carefully. The first day they would go to Tel Adashim, so Carmi could see where she had done her “national service.” Then they would visit Carmi's aunt Malka, in Petah Tikva, the oldest Jewish agricultural settlement in the land just outside of Tel Aviv, and the last day of their holiday they would spend in Tel Aviv proper and at the beach.

The October day was flawless, the air clean and cool, as they sat in the intercity bus, holding hands. In Tel Adashim, Carmi, his hair golden in the sunlight, moved through the rustic farm village like a native son, picking up the soil, smelling it, admiring the even rows of barnyard crops, stroking the bark of slender trees that opened to the sky, chatting easily with the farm families with whom Raquela had lived.

“This is what I want, Raquela.” He spoke with quiet conviction. “This is my dream. All the time—all those years in Egypt, in Italy, in Europe—I saw the two of us spending our lives in a farm village like this one.”

He put his arm around her waist. Raquela walked in silence.
Spending our lives
…could she spend her life on a farm? What about her work? There was always a need for nurses and midwives, especially in the rural areas. The thought of nursing brought Arik to mind. Guilt rose again. Why should she think of Arik during these three precious days with Carmi?

“We ought to get started for Petah Tikva,” she said, “before it gets too late.”

In the bus she put her head on Carmi's shoulder, relaxed in his contentment.

The two-hour bus trip brought them to Petah Tikva before dark. They walked from the bus stop through the streets of the little town, where each family owned its own home and cultivated its own land. It was a
moshav
, a cooperative village, and it looked like a European
shtetl
transplanted to Israel. Pioneers from Jerusalem had come here to farm in 1878, convinced they could redeem the malaria-ridden swampland. The determined farmers had turned the marshes into vast groves of citrus fruits and vineyards. Now Raquela breathed the air of Petah Tikva, of orange blossoms and pungent barnyard odors.

Aunt Malka's house was a typical Petah Tikva white stucco cottage with a door in the middle and a window on each side. The back of the house had a garden filled with flowers and shaded with lush green orange and lemon trees.

Carmi's aunt greeted Raquela effusively. Aunt Malka and Mama had been classmates at the Teachers' Seminar and had remained good friends. “And now,” the older woman bubbled, “to think Tova's daughter is the girlfriend of my favorite nephew!”

Raquela followed her into the scrupulously clean, simply furnished living-dining room, called the “salon.” Through the doorway she could see the one bedroom and the large sunny kitchen.

“Sit down. Sit down.” Aunt Malka took Raquela's arm and led her to the narrow sofa bed. Carmi followed them, smiling broadly.

“How about some coffee?” Aunt Malka said.

Raquela nodded. Aunt Malka was a slim pretty woman with long brown hair worn pioneer style over her ears and rolled into a bun. Her fair skin was made ruddy by the sun and wind, and like most Petah Tikvaites, her shapeless woolen skirt and bulky cardigan sweater were at least five years behind those of the more fashionable Tel Avivians who lived just a few miles away.

Aunt Malka's eyes swept over Raquela as she handed her a cup. “Everybody in Petah Tikva wants to meet you. And”—she turned to Carmi—“they can't wait to welcome you home.”

“I've known some of them,” Carmi explained to Raquela, “since I was a child. I was always coming over here to stay with Aunt Malka and help out on the farm.”

All evening Aunt Malka's neighbors came in a steady stream to welcome the returning hero, resplendent in his uniform, and to meet his girl friend. They were warm, friendly, some rambunctious, all unabashedly curious, openly taking her measure. Was she good enough for their war hero, their young and handsome Carmi?

Across the little salon, Raquela saw Carmi slap his thighs with laughter, joking with some of the villagers. She felt alien and alone.

The next day, Carmi and Raquela headed straight for the seashore. They walked along the beach, watching the foreign ships anchored in the Mediterranean; small tenders and motorboats plied between the ships and the shore.

“Aunt Malka approves of my choice, Raquela.” Carmi took her arm.

Raquela kicked a pebble on the promenade. The sense of alienation she had felt last night clung to her. Carmi was talking of the neighbors and she could hardly follow his voice. She saw him again in Petah Tikva, far more at home there than in her Jerusalem, reveling in the little farming town with its warmth, its liveliness, its sharp provincial curiosity, the neighbors pumping his hand, kissing him on the cheek, asking him about the war. She looked at his bronzed profile as they walked. There was so much to admire in Carmi—his good looks, his sensitivity, his readiness to lay down his life for the land and the people he loved.

Then what were the flaws that troubled her? She remembered his jealous outburst against Arik. So childish, she thought. Was that it; was it his immaturity as well as his jealousy that filled her with a growing apprehension?

“Let's walk in the sand,” she said.

They descended the few steps to the beach, took off their shoes and sat down. The Mediterranean was green-blue and inviting. Impulsively, Raquela jumped up and ran to the water's edge. Carmi leaned back in the sand, watching her. She rolled her skirt around her thighs, waded into the water, letting the sea lap about her legs. She felt a sense of release; Carmi had not followed her. She was alone in the water—and free.

Two soldiers approached her. “
Shalom, motek
”—Hi, Sweetheart.

Raquela smiled, and the next moments were a blur of water splashing, of Carmi shouting at the soldiers, grabbing her arm, pulling her out of the sea. His mouth twitched angrily.

“Why were you flirting with those soldiers?” he demanded.

“Carmi, I was not flirting,” Raquela insisted.

She was confused, torn by desire, need, anxiety. Was she really innocent? Had the soldiers detected something even she was not fully aware of?

The energy drained from her, she said, “I think we'd better go back to Jerusalem, Carmi.”

She wiped the sand from her feet, slipped into her shoes, and silently climbed the promenade steps. The sea lay behind them. Soon they were on the intercity bus, climbing the hills to Jerusalem. They hardly spoke; Raquela stared out the bus window, but she saw nothing. Carmi sat beside her, his handsome face sullen, anguished.

They caught the bus to Mount Scopus. “Don't go in yet,” Carmi pleaded. “Let's walk to the university garden.”

They sat on the stone bench, the turrets and towers and battlement walls below them washed in the afternoon haze.

She heard herself saying, “Carmi. Let's end it now, before we hurt each other too deeply. I can't live with your jealousy, with someone who doesn't trust me.”

“Forgive me, Raquela.” He tried to embrace her.

She drew away.

“It's only because I love you so much.” His lips trembled. “I know this weakness in my character. But I'll change. I promise you.”

Raquela searched his face. Her eyes moved toward the Jewish Brigade insignia on his sleeve. It would be so easy to accept his promise; to wait, always hoping he might change.

“Carmi”—she shook her head sadly—“I've watched the surgeons operate. I've watched them take a knife and cut clean. That's what we have to do. Cut it clean now, Carmi.”

“Raquela, give me another chance. I can't live without you. Please, Raquela.”

She trembled, frightened by her own strength. She realized she was destroying her own dream.

She would throw herself harder than ever into nursing. She would absorb, as never before, everything Arik and the hospital taught her. She shivered.

“Carmi, for both our sakes, let's say good-bye now.”

He looked at her, his lips parched and white.

He drew himself up to his full height, turned, and walked away.

Raquela watched him disappear. She ran blindly back to the nursing school and up to her room. She flung herself on her bed and wept.

NINE

OCTOBER 1945

J
udith searched the published lists of survivors for news of her family. She haunted the halls of the Jewish Agency for people who might have information. She put ads in the newspapers in Palestine and in the camps for Displaced Persons in Germany, Austria, and Italy, where hundreds of thousands of homeless and stateless refugees were now being sheltered.

WILL ANYONE WITH ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THE STEINER FAMILY OF BRNO, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, PLEASE WRITE JUDITH STEINER, HADASSAH—HENRIETTA SZOLD SCHOOL OF NURSING, JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
.

One day she received a letter from Eva Grunberg, a school friend.

Dear Judith,
     It is good to know that you are alive in our beloved
Eretz Israel
. I saw your ad on the wall newspaper in Zeilsheim, a DP camp near Frankfurt where I and thousands of other Jews are waiting. After the liberation, when the American Army freed me—I was working in a Nazi slave-labor camp—I went back to our home in Brno. I looked for my family. But they were all dead. Then I looked for the families of my friends. Judith, dear, it grieves me to tell you that your family, too, were all exterminated.

Judith's tears blotted the handwritten note. She shut her eyes in anguish. Six years of nightmares had become reality. Silently she screamed,
It can't be true. Someone must be alive
.

She forced herself to go on reading.

     The only one for whom I could find no witnesses and no records is your little brother Joseph.

Joseph! He had just had his Bar Mitzvah when she left, in 1939.

Was it possible that the miracle had happened? Could Joseph be alive, wandering somewhere across Europe?

Judith was numb, torn between grief and a glimmer of hope.

Raquela watched her go about her work, serious, never missing a day teaching or comforting other students and nurses who were now learning of their families' fates. Raquela, longing to comfort her, invited her home on weekends, hoping Mama and Papa might give her the warmth, the sense of family, that she had lost.

Late one Friday afternoon they were on bus 9, descending Mount Scopus into the Arab quarter of Sheikh Jarrah, when British police stopped the bus.

“Everyone out!” the policemen commanded.

They lined the men up separately from the women, searched the men for arms, and checked everyone's ID card against a list they carried.

The Arabs of Sheikh Jarrah poured out of their houses and shops to watch the drama on the street.