Raquela (45 page)

“On your feet, everybody,” Miriam shouted to her nurses.

The march continued. The sun rode the sky and set slowly. Still they marched. It was nine o'clock and pitch dark when they bivouacked in an orange grove. They drew lots for sentry duty. Raquela and Naomi stood guard the first four hours while the others slept.

At one in the morning they woke the second shift of sentries. Raquela unrolled her blanket and in seconds was fast asleep.

At dawn Miriam prodded them awake. They ate their field rations, marched all day, and late in the afternoon, straggled back limply, mindlessly, to Camp Tel Nof.

Raquela tore off her crumpled uniform and showered away the dirt and sand and sweat.

The nurses ate dinner in the mess hall and then fell into their cots.

Raquela could not sleep.

Overtired, her mind played tricks; she was back in the Yellin Seminar, terrified, listening to the stories of the Arabs' murdering in Motza, in Hebron; it was snowing, and she was entering the nursing school, caring for Henrietta Szold; now Athlit, Cyprus, Hadassah A, Beersheba, began to spin in her brain. She was running again…the desert…Arik.

Why had she left him? Why had she demanded that their love be on her terms, not his?

Her limbs ached, and in the cocoon of the Nissen hut, surrounded by the other exhausted nurses, even her mind seemed to ache as she painfully recalled the past week.

Again she was back in Beersheba, lying in bed in the nurses' cottage, trying to understand Arik, asking herself,
Why doesn't he trust me? How can he even imagine I would look at another man now that we've slept together?

Somewhere in the darkened hut, someone sighed. She could hear a few women turning on their cots, breathing heavily. She lay uncovered; night brought no respite from the June heat.

She closed her eyes.

Arik was beside her in the army hut; she felt him caressing her sore limbs, healing her.

Arik the doctor. Arik the healer. Arik the lover.

She saw his face.
I know the army needs nurses like you. But so do we…and so do I
.

She could feel his body against hers. Her heart pounded. What was she doing here? Why wasn't she in Beersheba, holding him close, listening to him tell her, “You're the most desirable creature in the universe.”

She sat up suddenly in bed.
The things I love in you are the things I fear
. Is it possible he sees me as so desirable he can't believe I'm ready to stay with him forever? He, of all people—so secure as a doctor, so sure of himself as a man. How can he be so insecure about me?

Loss
.

That's what he's afraid of. Afraid of losing something he loves
.

The end of the second week, Raquela, felled by a stomach virus, was sent to the infirmary.

She woke in the afternoon and found Miriam sitting beside the hospital bed. She looked at her in surprise. “You've come to visit me?” she asked the young corporal.

“Why not?”

“We seem unable to do anything right in your eyes.”

“You nurses were pretty arrogant.”

“So you tried to break us. Was that it?”

“That's my job.”

“But why? We're all in here for the same reason. You seemed to be tougher on us than the other noncoms.”

“I had my reasons. You nurses acted so superior. Our army takes all of us—no matter what our background, no matter what our education, no matter what countries we came from—and makes us all equal.”

Raquela studied Miriam's earnest face.

“Do you know what the army did for me? Do you know where I come from, Raquela?”

Raquela sat up. It was the first time Miriam had called her by name.

“I don't know anything about you. I'd like to know.”

“I was born in the Atlas Mountains, north of the Sahara Desert, in Morocco. We lived in a cave—my parents, my twelve brothers and sisters, and I. We came here during the War of Independence. I was seventeen. I had never been to school. I went to school and in one year had learned enough so I could join the army. Now, here I am, nineteen, only two years in Israel, and I'm a corporal. And I can give orders…Where are you from, Raquela?”

“Jerusalem.”

“A Sabra?”

Raquela nodded.

Miriam was thoughtful. “I often wonder if a Sabra like you can understand where I come from, what it means. You and I would never have met; it's the army that brings us together. You're as strange to me as I am to you. I don't know what your life was like in Jerusalem any more than you can know what it was like to live lower than the lowest Arab in an Arab land.”

“But I think I do understand,” Raquela protested. “I've delivered the babies not only of Arabs but also of Jewish women from Arab countries.”

“But did you ever march and eat and sleep with girls from Morocco the way you did the nights we've bivouacked? Did you ever live so closely with girls from Tunis? From Algeria? From Libya? From Yemen? From Ethiopia and Afghanistan and Cochin, India?”

Raquela shook her head.

“This is what it means to be in the Israeli army. This is what our army does. They took my brothers, all illiterate, and taught them to read and gave them each a vocation they can use when they get out. They took Jews like the Yemenites, who weren't allowed to ride camels because their heads would be higher than an Arab's. They took Jewish girls like me who weren't even second- or third- or fourth-class citizens and made us first-class citizens.”

For the first time Raquela felt close to Miriam; they belonged together—she and the young corporal. The army was bringing them together.

Miriam's huge eyes focused on Raquela. “Now maybe you'll understand why I act the way I do. I want to be the best soldier in CHEN. Someday I hope to have children. Because of what the army did for me, I'll be able to give them everything I learned here—and more. The things my father could never have given me if we had stayed in Morocco.”

A week later, the course was over. Miriam stood proudly as her nurses received their second lieutenants bars.

“Good-bye, Raquela.” Miriam looked up at Raquela's face. “May a corporal kiss a second lieutenant?” she asked.

Raquela and Naomi strolled through Tel Hashomer's hospital complex outside Tel Aviv. Soldiers in hospital robes sat in wheelchairs lined up in front of a Nissen hut. Between the hospital huts, men hobbled on crutches; some walked with canes; others struggled painfully with new limbs. A group of young men, sitting together, lifted their sightless eyes to let in the morning sun.

Dressed in khaki uniforms with the gold bar of a second lieutenant on their shoulders, Raquela and Naomi made their way toward the administration building to report for duty. They were assigned to Rehabilitation.

They changed into white uniforms and entered the ward. Soldiers lay on beds, legs up in traction, arms swathed in bandages.

A soldier whistled. “Wow! Look at these two new birds.”

Every soldier who could move sat up. Long low whistles sang through the room.

“Life's looking a lot better,” a soldier called out. “Pinch me. Am I dreaming?”

“Okay, guys,” Raquela said, smiling broadly. Pregnant mothers had never greeted her this way. “You're not dreaming.”

Naomi looked around. “How you doing, fellows?”

Two young men in traction answered, together, “Great, since you came.”

“You both sound pretty cheerful.” Naomi walked between the two beds; wire pulleys elevated the soldiers' legs encased in white plaster.

“We'd better be cheerful,” one of the young men answered. “We want to get out of here fast.” He pointed to a calendar on his night-stand. “By the time I've torn off thirty more pages, I'll be home.” The calendar page read
JULY
1, 1950.

Naomi turned to the second soldier in traction.

“You've got a whole art gallery pasted on your wall.” She looked at the posters, cartoons, photos. “Who did these drawings?”

“My three-year-old daughter. My wife brings her every day.”

Naomi fixed his sheet. “I can imagine that homecoming.”

Raquela was walking through the ward, exchanging pleasantries, when a young man deliberately turned his face away from her. She read his name on the chart at the foot of his bed. He was a quadriplegic.

“Can I do something for you, Aviad?” she asked.

“Nobody can.”

In the next days Raquela sought ways to make Aviad comfortable, gently lifting the paralyzed arms and legs as she changed his sheets and pajamas. He lay silent, a dead weight, neither thanking her nor protesting.

His mother came to help the nurses; she spoon-fed him, her eyes red-rimmed. She tried to talk to him, but he rarely answered.

One morning he called out, “Nurse, will you come here, please.”

“Yes, Aviad?” Raquela asked.

“My girlfriend is coming this afternoon for the first time. I want to be dressed.”

“Avi—” Raquela began, then cut herself short. “Of course I'll dress you.”

She left the ward and returned with a new white T-shirt and khaki pants. His mother helped her draw the clothes on his wasted limbs.

Excitement flushed his pale face. “Do you think I could sit up in a wheelchair?” he asked.

Lets try.

Raquela brought in a wheelchair and lifted him into it. But his head—the only part of his body that moved—collapsed on his chest.

“I'll get a neck brace,” Raquela said matter-of-factly, trying to control the quiver in her voice.

She whispered to his mother, “Keep holding his head up. I'll be right back.”

She raced through the hospital compound to the supply room, found a high leather collar, and began fitting it around Aviad's neck. His mother turned her head to hide her tears.

Aviad looked at the soldiers watching him in the ward.

“Hi, fellows. How do I look?”

Raquela, still arranging the neck brace, heard a familiar voice say, “You look just fine.”

Her heart stopped beating. She clutched the back of the wheelchair to steady herself.

She looked toward the door. It was Arik.

They walked through the hospital grounds.

“You were right, Raquela, to leave me. It made me realize that whatever years I have, I want to spend with you.”

“No more fears? No more doubts?”

“I want to marry you, Raquela.”

She walked beside him in silence.

“You're not saying anything. Have you—have you met someone else in these past weeks?”

“For Heaven's sake, Arik. Where? In boot camp? In the rehab ward?”

Arik put his arms around her. “Don't be angry if an old man still can't believe you could be in love with him.”

“Arik, I've missed you terribly.”

“Then lets get married. Lets not wait.”

“I can't now, Arik. I'm committed to the army.”

“How long do you think the army will need you?”

“I have no idea.”

“You know, the shortage at Hadassah is worse than ever. Especially in your department. With thousands of refugees still coming in and with war babies, your maternity ward is exploding.”

They found a shaded bench and sat down. “Did you know,” he said, “that the Knesset has just passed the ‘Law of the Return'? Any Jew from any country in the world is free to come to Israel to live, whether he is strong or maimed, blind or sighted, rich or poor. So, you see, these new citizens need you, too.”

He stopped suddenly. “Maybe Hadassah could convince the army to release you, convince them we need your skill as a midwife.”

“Does Hadassah have that much influence with the army?”

“We can ask.”

He took her in his arms. “If we succeed in getting you transferred, will you marry me?”

She put her head on his shoulder and whispered, “Yes, Arik.”

She looked up at his face; he seemed to her the essence of goodness, a
mensch
, a warm, decent, honest human being.

“Oh, Arik, I love you so. I'm the happiest woman in the world.”

He held her face in his hands. “My darling,” he whispered.

She returned his kiss, oblivious of the soldiers watching them embrace.

TWENTY-FOUR

AUGUST 1950

T
urning on her stockinged feet, Raquela examined herself in the long mirror, carefully buttoning the white linen suit softened with a pretty eyelet-embroidered collar and cuffs. She stepped into white low-heeled pumps, and then, holding the gossamer bridal veil as though it were a fragile newborn, she draped it over her head and shoulders.

She moved closer to the mirror; even through the veil, she could see her lips parted with anticipation, her eyes radiant.

Then she stepped away from the mirror and glanced around the unfamiliar bedroom, the home of Sophia and Leon Lustig, Arik's childhood friends from Poland. Rather than a huge wedding in Jerusalem, she and Arik had agreed on a small intimate ceremony the moment the army, acquiescing to Hadassah's request, had released her. A few days later the Lustigs had offered their cottage in the picturesque seacoast town of Nahariya, on the northernmost border of Israel.

Sophia Lustig, a small vivacious woman with wide green eyes, entered the bedroom. “For the beautiful bride.” She handed Raquela a corsage of pink roses she had picked from her bushes and tied with white satin ribbon.

Raquela lifted the veil and pressed her face into the bouquet. She inhaled the fragrance. “It's so good,” she said. “It's got to be good. It's the twenty-ninth. Twenty-nine is my lucky number.”

“Any day would be a lucky day, marrying Arik,” Sophia said. “I've loved him since I was a little girl. But I've never seen him like he is today. You've made him very happy, Raquela. And for this, I too will always love you.”

She stood on her toes to kiss Raquela. “Now, come, they're waiting.”