Raquela (33 page)

After lunch the cook cleared the table and left them alone. Gad put his arm around her. “Raquela, do you realize this is the first time we've been together without Esther and Ike?”

She grinned. “Of course.”

“Are you comfortable?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Do you need to ask?”

“I want to be sure. I'm growing very”—he paused—“very fond of you, Raquela.”

She put her hand on his. “I'm…I'm fond of you, too, Gad.”

“You've made these last weeks tolerable,” he said. “You and Esther, both. Ike and I would be going out of our minds, tied up here, if not for the two of you. We should be out, sailing our ships back and forth to Europe to get every DP who can fight into Palestine. God knows how we need every single soldier.”

He paused. “But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about you. In fact, if you want to know the truth, I don't want to talk at all.”

He moved closer to her at the table, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.

She rested her head against the ship's wall, her hair falling softly around her face.

Gad kissed her again, on her lips and eyes; then he leaned back a bit to look at her. “The first time I saw you, Raquela, in that black maternity hut in your white uniform, something opened inside of me.”

She shut her eyes. Something was opening in her, too; her body was growing soft against his. He was kissing her again; her lips returned his kisses; her mouth parted.

The
Pan York
was rocking gently at anchor; there were no sounds from the decks. Perhaps the men were taking their siesta. Gad was stroking her cheeks.

“Talk to me, Gad,” she said. “I've never known anyone like you.”

“No talking.” He covered her mouth with his lips. The blood shot through her veins.

Suddenly she drew back. Arik, am I disloyal? But it was you who told me…
I want you to meet more men…young men…younger than I
.

An urgent knocking on the wardroom door startled them. They moved apart.

“Come in,” Gad said.

His radio operator stood in the doorway, his face white.

“There's been another explosion in Jerusalem. It just came over the air.”

Raquela's stomach turned over. “Do you know where?”

“Ben Yehuda Street.”

Raquela's hand flew to cover her mouth.

Ben Yehuda Street. The Fifth Avenue of Jerusalem. The hilly slope of narrow streets lined with shops, cafes, hotels, and modern apartment buildings with little balconies. The street where she had bought her “new look” dress.

She turned to Gad, her voice hoarse with fear. “Esther's family lives in Ben Yehuda Street.”

“Esther's family!” Gad stood up, in command again. “Come on, Raquela, let's go to the radio shack. Maybe we can get more details.”

They hurried down to the room that housed the wireless and made contact with the radio ham in Jerusalem. Raquela sat motionless, praying silently that no one was hurt. Praying for a miracle.

The radio operator in Jerusalem was talking: “
No word yet how many were killed
.”

Pan York
: “How did it happen?”

“
Arabs and British deserters—joint operation
.”

Arabs and deserters
. Like a dirge, a song of death.
Arabs and deserters
. She felt faint. She heard the voice say, “
The Vilenchik Building
…” She saw it, six stories high, one of the tallest buildings in Jerusalem. She had many friends living in it.

“
The stone wall buckled outward and collapsed into the street
.”

She pressed herself down in the ship's chair, steadying her body.

“
It was early this morning. Two apartment buildings are rubble. The Amdursky Hotel fell inside itself. The streets are rubble. Hundreds of people are in the streets now, running out of burning buildings; they're in their nightclothes. Pieces of bodies are mixed in with glass and bricks
.”

“Oh, my God,” Raquela moaned.

The shortwave conversation ended. Gad came toward Raquela and placed his arm around her protectively.

She looked up at him, her eyes blurred with tears. “Esther will go out of her mind.”

“Don't tell her anything yet. Not until we learn whether or not her parents are safe.”

“But somebody might tell her at the hospital.”

Gad took his handkerchief and wiped her cheek. “When is your next four-and-a-half-day leave?”

“The end of this month. Another week.”

“Why don't the four of us go somewhere—get her away? Meanwhile, you alert the doctors and nurses not to mention the explosion in front of her.”

Raquela dried her eyes. “Where do you want to go?”

“I'll check into some places with Ike. You two have seen only the seamy side of this island. It has some beautiful spots, too.”

Esther was delighted with the plans.

But Raquela, eager to get Esther away until the casualty list reached them, found herself in a quandary. She spent most of the night before they were to leave tossing on her bed, repeating Arik's words over and over: “
Younger man…younger man…younger man
.”

Was she being disloyal to Arik? Was she in love with Gad?

What if the British suddenly allowed the two ships to sail? What if Gad, sailing the DPs to Palestine, was attacked and his ship bombed?
Arabs and deserters
. What if these were the last four and a half days she would ever see him? She twisted in her bed, a mass of longing and yearning tinged with a sense of impending loss.

I'm human, too
, she thought.
Sure, I could throw in the sponge and leave this island. Tell the JDC to get itself another Hadassah midwife. I've served enough.

No, I can't. I can't leave my women now; I've got deliveries every single day
.

Then why should I feel so torn about going off with Gad? I've been living like a prisoner myself. I deserve some escape. Maybe it's all going to blow up. One big Ben Yehuda Street explosion! We'll all be killed. Mama. Papa. Jacob. Yair. Arik. Gad
.

Arabs and deserters. Arabs and deserters
.

The words finally lulled her to sleep.

The next morning, two cabs pulled up on the hill outside the hospital compound. Raquela and Esther waited, their small suitcases beside them. Gad and Ike jumped out; Ike helped Esther into the first cab; Gad and Raquela followed in the second.

Inside the taxi, Gad kissed her. “You should always wear that blue cape. It makes you look like a princess in a fairy tale.”

Her eyes shone. “This whole adventure seems unreal. I keep wanting to pinch myself.”

“It's real, all right. “We're going to have four wonderful days.”

“Where are we going?”

“The Troodos Mountains. There's a lot of snow up there this time of the year.”

The two cabs drove down the hill into Nicosia. Raquela, looking out the window, thought again of Jerusalem. Like new Jerusalem, Nicosia had spilled out from the old battlement walls, a panorama of old stone houses and modern apartments, of churches and mosques, a blend of Europe and the Middle East, of the Middle Ages and the twentieth century.

Even the jewel-like St. Sophia Cathedral seemed to symbolize the clashes between people and cultures in this Mediterranean enclave. The conflict here was not, as in Palestine, between Jews and Arabs, but between Greeks and Turks, between two religions and two diverse cultures. The cathedral became a mosque—the grand mosque in a city of more than one hundred thousand Cypriots. The conflict between Christians and Moslems remained unresolved.

Raquela watched the landscape change as the cab left Nicosia and drove across the wide treeless plain—the Mesaoria—that stretched from east to west across the island. They traveled southwest until, fifty miles from Nicosia, they reached the foothills of the southern mountain range. They began the ascent to Mount Troodos.

A fresh snow carpeted the mountain. Tiny villages seemed painted into the landscape, guarded by tall poplar trees standing like silver sentries. The two cabs navigated the winding hilly road past apple orchards, cherry orchards, and vineyards, their branches and foliage heavy with snow. The warm morning sun cast strong shadows; the world was a study in black and white.

Raquela's eyes swept with pleasure across the white-carpeted fields. “It snowed the first day I entered nursing school,” she told Gad. She laughed. “We were even called the Class of Snow Whites.”

Gad kissed her cheek. “You're still Snow White—beautiful Snow White with a bunch of adoring men.”

She looked at him, startled. What did he mean? Did he know about Arik? Or Carmi? On Mount Troodos both Carmi and Arik seemed part of another world, another life.

The two cabs pulled up in front of a rustic lodge. A few guests milled around the cheerful lobby. They registered, then followed a porter up the stairs. Esther and Raquela entered a large inviting bedroom, smelling of pine needles. A white hand-crafted bedspread covered the bed in the center of the room.

Gad and Ike checked into a room on the next floor.

The four unpacked swiftly, changed into ski pants and sweaters, and hurried out to walk in the snow. They raced through the fields, tossed snowballs at one another, built a funny snowman, and then, famished, returned to the inn for lunch.

The four and a half days melted into one. They ate, drank, romped in the snow, danced in the evening, sang, laughed, took midnight walks, and were inseparable.

On the last evening, after dinner, they walked along a snow-covered path framed on both sides with snow-clad oaks and pines.

Gad drew Raquela aside. “Let them walk ahead,” he said.

His hands reached inside her cape. He caressed her body; then he drew her close and kissed her. She put her arms around him, returning his kisses, her body flaming in the snow.

“I'm in love, Raquela.”

Gently she put her hand on his lips. “I'm in love, too, Gad,” she whispered.

“Snow White,” he kissed her. “My darling, I dream I hold you in my arms every night.” He brushed his lips across her eyes, her cheeks.

“I love you, Gad. I love you.” She held him tightly.

Slowly, they walked back to the inn.

Esther's parents were safe. The whole family had rushed into the street wearing only their nightclothes. Their apartment, with everything they owned, was ruined.

March descended on the camps with sudden brutal heat.

Raquela counted the days. Seventy-five days until May 15,1948—Bevin's announced target date. On May 15, all the troops would be withdrawn. The last Englishman would be out of Palestine.

The gates of Cyprus would surely fling open. She—and all the prisoners—would go home to the so-long-promised land. They would have their own state.

In the March heat the two and a half months seemed millennia away. The air burned. The metal Nissen huts were furnaces.

Raquela, touching the door of her maternity hut, felt her hand scorch.

The Haganah stepped up the drilling and marching and kept morale fairly high among the adults. But in the children's village, a mound in Dhekelia housing the orphaned children whose parents had been killed in Hitler's gas chambers, the teachers fought a desperate war against the children's rage and frustration.

Hanoch Rinott, Henrietta Szold's disciple in Youth Aliyah, had come from Jerusalem to set up schools and activities for the children. He pleaded with the British, “Let the children go swimming. The heat in the camps is making them physically and emotionally ill.”

Finally, the commander yielded. “No adults may go swimming. Only children.”

Raquela was visiting a young mother in Dhekelia when the children were lined up for their first swim. Hanoch Rinott invited her to go along as an escort and to be available for medical help.

Flanked on both sides by armed soldiers, the children were marched through the campgrounds like prisoners in a chain gang. Raquela marched beside them, her own rage boiling.

Outside the camp a British tank with a soldier standing up in the turret led the parade; for a mile and a half in the relentless sun the children marched behind the tank, guarded by soldiers lest they escape.
And where would they escape to?
Raquela looked around bitterly as they trudged past Cypriot fields and the gaze of curious and astonished farmers.
Where would they hide?

The next two hours were magic, as they swam, bathed, built castles and dug tunnels in the sand, and seemed to forget the camps.

Then, reluctantly, they dressed for the long march back.

Raquela's body sagged as she watched the children reenter the hated gates, march to the children's village on the mound, and fall wearily to the ground.

What could they make of their lives? Could they pick up skills and professions? Could they be reclaimed? Could a child who had never been inside a house, who had never seen a bathtub, or a flush toilet, who had long forgotten what his parents looked like before they were shot or burned, ever be normal?

A few weeks later, Major Maitland, a kindly British officer who spent his Sundays driving through Cyprus, trying to buy shoes for the children, made an announcement: “All orphaned children who arrived on the
Pan York
and the
Pan Crescent
will be allowed to leave on the next transport to Palestine.”

The adults helped the children prepare for their voyage; they brought them presents and helped them pack their little knapsacks. The camps for once were filled with smiling people. The children would go directly to Youth Aliyah children's villages and kibbutzim in Palestine, the whole country ready to put its arms around them, adopt them, welcome them home.

And still the conceiving and the birthing never stopped. More than two thousand girls and boys were born in the prison maternity ward—each newborn an answer to Hitler.