Raquela (46 page)

Raquela walked through the living room into the garden, her heart pounding. She saw four men holding wooden poles, raising a velvet canopy under the noon sky—her three brothers, Jacob, Yair, and her adopted brother Itzhak; the fourth man was their host, Leon Lustig. And waiting for them under the canopy, dressed in a black robe with a white prayer shawl, was the rabbi, who had come, like most of the people in Nahariya, from Hitler's Germany.

She saw Arik, standing with his mother and father and sister, his face transfigured with joy and fervor. She hoped he could see her through the veil, see her own joy. Even her throat seemed to be throbbing.

The ceremony began.

Arik walked down the garden path, escorted by his mother and father, to the border of the canopy.

Raquela came next, walking between Mama and Papa, her eyes fixed on Arik. He stepped forward and led her under the canopy, facing the rabbi.

The garden smelled of pomegranates and figs and mandarins, their heavily laden branches shading the canopy and the little circle of sixteen wedding guests. Birds darted through the trees. Raquela breathed in the perfumed air.
My whole life
, she thought,
has led to this day
.

She stood at Arik's side, listening to the rabbi intone, “May He Who is supreme power, blessing and glory, bless this bridegroom and bride.”

The rabbi sanctified the wine and handed the glass to Arik, who drank a few drops. Arik lifted Raquela's veil and put the glass to her lips, and she sipped one or two drops. She wanted to listen, to drink in the meaning and the poetry of the ceremony. The rabbi continued: “The sanctification of all great moments in Jewish life is symbolized by the drinking of the wine. As you share the wine of this cup, may you share all things from this day on with love and understanding.”

Raquela nodded. For the rest of her life she would give Arik all her understanding and love such as she had never felt, never given anyone before.

Arik was slipping the gold ring on her finger. “By this ring you are consecrated to me as my wife in accordance with the law of Moses and Israel.

Her hand trembled; the ring belonged. Now, gently, she placed the gold band on his finger, “a symbol that you are my husband and a sign of my love and devotion.”

From the Song of Songs, she quoted, looking at his face, suffused with love, “I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me.”

The rabbi held up a scrolled
k'tuba
, the marriage certificate. “This is to certify that on this day, August twenty-ninth, 1950, Aron Brzezinski and Raquela Levy have entered the holy covenant of marriage.”

Arik repeated after him, “Be thou my wife according to the law of Moses. I faithfully promise that I will be a true husband unto thee and I will honor and cherish thee.”

“And I,” Raquela promised, her eyes shining, “plight my troth unto thee in affection and in sincerity.”

Once more the rabbi gave them the wine he had sanctified. “I pronounce you husband and wife. May the Lord bless you and keep you and cause His countenance to shine upon you and bring you peace.”

The rabbi now placed the empty wineglass on the grass. Arik crushed it under his heel. It was a symbol. The breaking of the glass was to remind them, even on this day of greatest joy, of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the year
A.D.
70.

“
Mazal tov! Mazal tov!
” the wedding party shouted.

Under the canopy, Arik kissed his bride. Mama and Papa and Arik's parents kissed the bride and groom.

Jacob embraced her. “My baby sister,” he said, and smiled.

By six in the evening the wedding guests had departed. Raquela and Arik were driven inland past Nazareth to Megiddo, overlooking the Jezreel Valley. They checked into a small hotel with a bedroom overlooking a green fertile field.

Arik opened the windows. The night air carried the sweet smell of orchards. He sat in a chair watching Raquela slip a blue-silk nightgown over her head; the pale-blue straps and ecru lace bodice made her skin glow.

He spoke softly. “I want to remember this night as long as I live.”

“We both will, Arik. All our lives. Forever.”

He kissed her shoulders, drew aside the blue-silk straps, and kissed her throat. He led her into bed and kissed her face, her body.

“My husband, my love.”

They drew together.

The room, the hotel, the world dropped away. She was somewhere, beyond gravity, in space, whirling among the stars.

The next afternoon, they climbed the mound of Megiddo, exploring the site where archaeologists had uncovered twenty layers of civilization, of a people who had lived here from 4000 to 400 B.C. Megiddo was the famous battlefield across which ancient armies had fought for this land, the doorway to the fertile soil of the great Jezreel Valley.

The late-afternoon sun turned the ruins fiery red as they circled Megiddo's protective dirt walls, prowling around the palace, the Canaanite temple, the royal stables where King Solomon had built a garrison for hundreds of horses and chariots. They looked down into waterproof silos within whose walls of rock the people had stored their grain. But in the end it was the water tunnel that fascinated them the most. They descended countless circular steps to a pool of water; ancient engineers had built a sophisticated tunnel into the hill and brought water from a spring in the plains to the garrison.

“Everything they did,” Arik said, “was in preparation for defending themselves, for holding out in case they were besieged by their enemies.”

“Like us,” she said, looking down at the dark water, but thinking of Jerusalem.

Arik nodded. “It's as if our whole history were laid out before us on a table. The armies marching, war after war, the endless battles for this land. I guess that's why the New Testament changed the name Har Megiddo to Armageddon.”

“Even the name sounds terrifying—‘
Armageddon
.'” She repeated the word slowly. “I know some people believe the world will end here and all who survive will come to live in Jerusalem, right on Mount Zion.”

“Well, I'm sure, darling,” he laughed, “if it happens, you'll be there in Jerusalem to greet them.”

They climbed back up the circular stairs to the perimeter of the huge excavation. The sun was setting as they started back to the hotel.

“Looking at four thousand years of our history,” Arik said softly, as though he were thinking aloud, “makes you realize how short, how frighteningly short, our life is.”

He picked up a loose stone, shook off the dirt, and put it in his pocket.

“I've such a sense of urgency, Raquela. Today especially. Megiddo, our Jewish past, our own lives, compressed—one day in history.”

He put his arm around her waist. “I want to make every minute with you count. And I want a house full of children.”

She laughed. “How many do you see, my prophet? A dozen?”

“I'm serious. I'll die before you.”

“Arik, why always thinking of death? You're in the prime of life. Even a twenty-year-old lover could take lessons from you.”

He kissed her. “Thank you, my love. From this day on, at your service, madam, night or day.”

They moved into a three-room apartment at 18 Palmach Street in Jerusalem. It was a quiet hilly street not far from the jewellike Monastery of the Cross, built on the ancient site where the tree that supplied the wood for the cross was said to have stood. It was surrounded by olive groves in a lovely garden.

Hadassah had made the sunny apartment available to them; their neighbors were mostly other doctors married to nurses. Raquela furnished the apartment simply, following her own strong sense of color and warmth. There was little furniture in the shops, but she soon found a sofa bed and a table and chairs for the living-dining room. She hung white curtains in the bedroom and covered the bed with a multicolored knitted afghan she had made.

After their week's honeymoon in Megiddo, they both resumed their work in Hadassah. Each Tuesday, they drove down to the rapidly expanding Hadassah hospital in the desert. Every Jerusalem specialist gave time to the new immigrants and Bedouin Arabs in the Beersheba Hospital; the most difficult gynecological cases were saved for Arik's weekly visits.

For Raquela, it was a time of fusing her life with his. They were partners, sharing everything, mutually respecting each other's strengths and skills, happiest when they were together, resenting the hours that separated them. They left for work together in the morning, took a bus to the hospital on the Street of the Prophets, looked in on each other whenever they could; at lunchtime, if they were free, they crossed the street to eat a rationed lunch at the Patt Bakery, and late in the afternoon they went home together to a light supper of rationed vegetables, two eggs a week, and bread.

Food was as scarce as it had been during the War of Independence. The two-year-old country, faced with the dilemma of choosing more immigrants or more food, had opted for immigrants.

Tzena
was the answer: rigid, planned, uncompromising austerity.

The new immigrants rushed to Israel through the open doors, and the populace shared its meager rations with them. They stood in long queues with ration cards, and, in time-honored fashion, they made jokes out of hunger and adversity.

Carp became Raquela's staple. All over the country, farmers were digging and stocking live-carp ponds, especially in the kibbutzim and in the Huleh Valley, spread across the Galilee. Raquela learned to cook carp, bake it, fry it, steam it, broil it. She never knew, when she visited friends, whether she would see a live carp swimming in the bathtub, waiting to be beheaded and chopped up for Friday night's delicacy—
gefilte fish
.

Carp was nutritious, and carp was filling. Even with austerity and pangs of hunger, one could survive. The dilemma was solved.
More immigrants and more carp
.

The telephone rang in Arik's office in Beersheba.

Raquela answered the phone. A frightened voice spoke.

“This is Revivim.”

“What?” she shouted into the phone. “Speak up. I can't hear you.”

“I'm calling from Kibbutz Revivim. Do you hear me now?”

“Yes. Speak up, please.”

The voice was urgent. “One of our pregnant women is very sick. She's in the sixth month. We have no doctor here.”

Raquela put Arik on the phone.

“What are her symptoms?” he asked.

“Her body is shaking all over; her lips are blue. We think she's having convulsions.”

“What kind of transportation do you have?”

“A farm truck.”

“Get her in the truck and start toward the hospital. I'll leave this minute and meet you along the road. Watch for us; we'll be in a white ambulance.”

Raquela jumped into the ambulance with Arik and the driver. The wheels churned up a cloud of sand and dust on the dirt highway. Kibbutz Revivim lay thirty miles south of Beersheba. Midway, they spotted the truck coming toward them. The truck and the ambulance pulled over to the side of the road.

The men lifted an unconscious young woman out of the truck, placed her on a stretcher, and carried her into the ambulance. They set off immediately for the hospital. The husband, a handsome young Yemenite, followed in the truck.

Inside the ambulance Arik examined the pregnant woman. His face was grave.

“It's eclampsia,” he whispered to Raquela.

Eclampsia: the dread toxemia of pregnancy.

At the hospital the young woman was wheeled up the ramp.

Arik telephoned Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem to consult the renowned gynecologist Dr. Bernhard Zondek. They decided only an operation could save her life. Arik operated.

Raquela went to the waiting room and found the young husband hunched over with anxiety.

“How is my wife? Can I see her now?”

“I'm sorry. Not yet. She's very ill.”

“And my baby?”

Raquela put her hand out to comfort him. “The baby is dead.”

His face was contorted with grief. “My baby—dead?”

Tears welled in his eyes. “Will my wife be all right?”

“If anyone can save her, it's Dr. Brzezinski. You have the best gynecologist in the country.”

“Can I telephone her mother from here?”

“Of course. I'll take you to the doctor's office; you can use his phone.”

Raquela heard him ask the operator, “I'd like to call Jerusalem. The Ministry of Labor. I want to speak to Mrs. Golda Meir.”

Raquela hurried out of the office—to give the young man privacy, and to tell Arik the young woman was Golda Meir's only daughter, Sarah.

Two hours later Raquela was called to the waiting room. Golda Meir had rushed down from Jerusalem.

“How is my daughter?”

Raquela's eyes fixed on the strong, commanding face she had last seen in Cyprus. Now it was the face of a distraught mother. Her son-in-law, Zecharia Rehabi, stood beside her.

“Tell me the truth. Will she live?”

“It's touch and go, Mrs. Meir. Dr. Brzezinski is with her. He hasn't left since the operation.”

“Can I see her?”

“No one can see her. She's too critically ill.”

Golda dropped into a chair in the waiting room and lit a cigarette.

“Would you like to rest, Mrs. Meir? Would you like to use one of the nurses' rooms. There's no hotel in Beersheba.”

“Thank you. I'm all right here. When can I see Dr. Brzezinski?”

“I'll tell him you're here.”

Arik entered the waiting room.

“How is she, Doctor?”

Arik's eyes were bloodshot with fatigue; his compassionate face was lined. “Mrs. Meir, you have a very sick daughter. We're doing everything we can to save her.”

“What are Sarele's chances?”

“We won't know for a while.”

“Please, doctor—don't give me double-talk.”

His face grew solemn. “Her chances are not very good.”