Raquela (48 page)

Mama kneeled on the ground, weeping. “Why didn't God take me instead of Jacob? Why didn't God take me first?”

Raquela, her body swollen, tried to lift Mama.

Dear God
, Raquela prayed,
let my child be normal. And don't ever let one of my children die before me
.

Driving home with Arik, she said, “If only the baby comes on the twenty-ninth, everything will be all right.”

Arik patted her hand. “It will be all right, my darling.”

But he could not control the twitching in his cheek.

January 29 arrived. No labor pains.

Raquela fixed a steaming-hot bath. She soaked her body. No pains. She dressed and jogged around the apartment. No pains.

She took another bath, hotter than before. Without asking Arik, she took a big dose of castor oil. No contractions. No pains.

The twenty-ninth passed.

The next morning, labor began.

Arik rushed her to Hadassah A. This time she was to be delivered by a gynecologist, Arik's friend Dr. Sadowsky.

Labor was fast. Soon she was on the delivery table; Arik stood at her side, holding her hand, while Dr. Sadowsky moved swiftly, easing the baby out of her body.

“It's a boy,” Arik called out. “Raquela, we have another son.”

“Is he normal?”

“As beautiful as Amnon.”

“Is he really all right?”

“He'll be all right.”

She heard a note of caution in his voice. “Let me see him,” she said. “I want to see him right away.”

“You will, you will,” Dr. Sadowsky said cheerfully. “Here, I'm putting him on your stomach. You can feel him. Count his fingers and his toes.”

She pushed her head up to look at the baby lying on her abdomen.

“Oh, my God, Arik. He's jaundiced. His skin is yellow.”

Her head collapsed back on the delivery table.

“Raquela, honey, he'll be all right.”

“Of course he'll be all right,” Dr. Sadowsky echoed. He was examining the placenta on a white table beside him.

She waited to hear the words
mazal tov
, words she used when the afterbirth had come out whole.

At last she heard the doctor say, “
Mazal tov
.”

She relaxed a little; that hurdle was over.

Dr. Sadowsky placed the baby, wrapped in a sterile blanket, in her arms. She held the frail body tenderly, stroking the tiny jaundiced cheeks, her eyes filled with fear.

“Arik,” she said, “we've got to keep him alive.”

“We'll keep him alive, my darling. Haven't we named him Rafael—‘Healed by God'? Now you rest.”

He leaned over and kissed her.

She let them take their newborn son from her. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

But she could not rest. She knew too well what had caused her baby to jaundice even as he swam inside her body. The
herpes zoster
virus had penetrated her placenta. It had circulated through the fetus and then localized in the liver, inflaming many of the liver cells and destroying some as well.

She knew exactly what must have happened next. The swelling of the inflamed liver had created an obstruction of the liver tubules—the slender elongated channel through which the bile flowed to the intestines. Her baby's bile, jammed up and absorbed into his bloodstream, had caused the jaundice.

She knew liver cells could regenerate. Would her baby hold out? Could he survive long enough until the liver healed?

Slowly, Raquela regained enough strength to sit beside her baby's crib. He could hold no food. She watched the glucose drip nourishment into a tiny vein in his hand. He lay pale and listless.

Mama had taken Amnon to her house. And Arik, desperately trying, with pediatricians and pediatric nurses, to save his child's life, saw Raquela withdrawing inside herself.

“Raquela, there's nothing more you can do for our baby—for Rafi.” He said the name slowly. “You must come home for a while and sleep.”

“Leave me alone, Arik. I can't sleep.”

“You have to keep your strength. Amnon needs you, too.”

“Amnon is all right. Mama can handle him. But if anything happens to Rafi—”

He put his arms around her. “You're so pale, darling. And so thin. I'm worried about you, too, Raquela.”

“It's my fault. I did it to Rafi. I caught the
herpes zoster
. I damaged his liver.”

“Raquela, that's not like you. You know better. Anybody can catch a virus.”

Her eyes were glazed. His words hardly penetrated the dark cloud of her depression.

Her mind was numb. Her only feeling was guilt. She refused to leave the hospital. Day and night, she sat beside Rafi's crib.

“I feel that as long as I'm close to him,” she told Arik, “he'll live.”

Arik watched her anxiously.

Days passed. Weeks. Rafi showed little improvement.

Raquela lost awareness of the world outside. Only Rafi existed. Only she could hold him magically to life.

Arik brought her food; she took it listlessly, vaguely aware she had to take sustenance to keep Rafi alive.

Arik sought out their friends. “Please go sit with Raquela at the hospital.” He urged them to fill the hours when he was operating or on call.

“If she wants to talk, let her talk. If she wants to be silent, just sit with her and be silent, too. She's basically strong and healthy. We've just got to support her during these terrible weeks. And wait.”

Friends came. Judith Steiner. Shula Patt. Her brothers, Yair and Itzhak, came with their wives. Mama and Papa came and brought Amnon.

They sat with her. But no one, not even Amnon, whom she adored, could comfort her.

At last Rafi's body began to respond; the liver cells were regenerating. The glucose was no longer fed into his body. Raquela fed him his milk formula in a bottle, a few drops at a time. Then, gradually, solid food. He began to put on weight.

Rafi was winning his battle.

Arik and Raquela took him home, to Palmach Street. She extended her leave of absence; her life had only one purpose now: to nurse Rafi until he was fully well, and to take care of four-year-old Amnon.

The days were tolerable, but the nights were filled with dread. Every few hours, Raquela woke from sleep and jumped out of bed to check the crib and make sure Rafi was alive. She let Arik hold her in his arms, but she was too exhausted to make love.

Two months later, Rafi was back in the hospital. His liver was inflamed again. He vomited. He screamed with excruciating pain.

Drawn with anxiety, Raquela helped the nurse insert the intravenous needle into his hand. Arik and the pediatricians worked around the clock to save him.

Raquela tormented herself with new guilt. “I didn't take good enough care of him.”

Arik tried to comfort her. “It's a natural reaction for a mother to put all the blame on herself. But listen to me, honey, it's not your fault. Give yourself the luxury of believing you're a good mother. You are!”

She tried to listen and believe.

After a few weeks, the inflammation subsided, and the liver cells began their process of regeneration.

Raquela brought him home, and soon the apartment on Palmach Street, once again bright and cheerful, hummed with the sounds of her little boys, and of Arik's baritone voice, singing them to sleep each night.

They were sitting in the kitchen, sipping coffee; the children were sound asleep. “How was your day today, Arik?” Raquela asked.

“Two caesareans—an Arab woman and a Jewish woman, both with beautiful, healthy babies.”

Raquela leaned toward him, her eyes sparkling. “And the women—beautiful, too?”

“Of course. I saved them for their husbands.”

He stood up, bent over to kiss her, and led her tenderly into the bedroom.

Terror!

The year 1955 was a year of terror. The long-tenuous borders were penetrated by terrorist gangs called
fedayeen
, Arabs recruited largely from Gaza, with bases in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The border settlements suffered most: children losing limbs by stepping on mines; men and women and babies indiscriminately killed by hand grenades and bullets; six children and their teacher murdered in Shafir, a southern farming village; a wedding party ambushed and murdered in Parish, west of Beersheba.

Each evening Arik turned on the radio for the latest news of infiltration.

The IDF—Israel Defense Forces—retaliated. Regular-army units attacked the bases from which the
fedayeen
infiltrated.

The United Nations took note of the terrorist activities but reacted severely whenever Israel retaliated, censuring her for “atrocities.”

From Radio Cairo, beamed to Jerusalem, Arik heard the voice of Gamal Abdel Nasser, threatening war. “Burn, murder, and destroy,” Nasser proclaimed to the Arab world. “Prepare for the great battle ahead.”

Nasser had once been the hope for a democratic Egypt. In 1949, during the War of Independence, when he and his troops were surrounded by the Israel Army in the Negev, Nasser had convinced the Israelis that he, together with other idealistic officers, would overthrow the corrupt King Farouk and bring a friendly democratic state into being on the Nile. He had overthrown Farouk, but instead of democracy he had created dictatorship; instead of friendship he had created enmity.

The Russians found him an eager ally. For years they had sought to gain a foothold in the Middle East. Now, in exchange for Egypt's cotton, the Russians supplied Nasser with artillery and tanks, with submarines and MIGs, knowing full well they were to be used in the coming war against Israel.

In June 1956, turning against England and France, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, their lifeline to their markets in Africa and the Orient. And he barred Israel's ships from sailing through the Canal.

Next, he placed a battery of naval guns on the shore of the Straits of Tiran, blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, and cut off Israel's southern port of Eilat,
her
window to Africa and Asia.

On the borders he stepped up the daily raids of terror, extolling the
fedayeen
: “You have proved that you are heroes upon whom our entire country can depend. The spirit with which you enter the land of the enemy must be spread.”

Visiting a colleague in the former Turkish harem that now housed the men's ward of Hadassah, Arik saw orderlies wheeling in stretchers.

“A new
fedayeen
attack!” the ambulance driver explained. “A group of archaeologists working on a dig in Ramat Rachel was attacked. Four are already dead. We're bringing in more wounded.”

Arik walked toward one of the wounded men. “One of my friends was on that dig.” He stopped. Only a few days before he and Raquela had met the quiet, gentle scholar whose daughter Aya had just married Golda Meir's son Menachem.

Now, Arik learned, his friend the scholar was one of the dead.

October 22, 1956, Nasser concluded a military alliance with Syria and Jordan; the three armies were placed under Egyptian command. Their troops were amassed at Israel's borders.

Israel built air-raid shelters in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in the towns and kibbutzim. The border settlements were fortified. Older men and women were recruited and trained for civil defense.

October 29, Israel dropped paratroopers inside the Sinai Peninsula. Under the command of General Moshe Dayan, the well-trained soldiers of the regular army pushed across the desert in tanks, armored vehicles, jeeps, ice-cream trucks, taxis, trucks, buses, and private cars.

In one hundred hours, taking the world by surprise, they slashed into the Sinai, demolishing the
fedayeen
nests, knocking out Nassers Sinai army, one third of his total army of 150,000 men, capturing all the Russian hardware in Sinai and Gaza—millions of dollars' worth of Stalin tanks, machine guns, artillery, and untold rounds of ammunition. More than thirty thousand Egyptian soldiers were found wandering in the desert, abandoned by their officers. Five thousand were taken prisoner. Many were found with Arabic translations of Hitler's
Mein Kampf
' in their knapsacks.

One hundred seventy-two Israelis were killed, eight hundred wounded. Egypt took one Israeli prisoner, a pilot whose plane was shot down and who bailed out over Egyptian territory. He was exchanged for many of the five thousand Egyptian prisoners.

Hadassah's hospital in Beersheba became the receiving hospital for many of the wounded, some of them maimed for life.

Britain and France were to have attacked the Canal Zone and invaded Egypt from the west at the same time that Israel's troops crossed the desert from the east. But they waited too long. Two days late, they finally bombarded Egyptian airfields rimming the Canal. Dragging their feet, they succeeded in putting troops into the Canal Zone.

Immediately the UN, led by the U.S. and the USSR, demanded that all British and French troops be withdrawn from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.

Israel tried in vain at the UN to point out that this was the time to negotiate a genuine peace treaty with Nasser. But the Russians threatened rocket attacks. They sent Israel an ultimatum: if she did not withdraw, they would destroy her.

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sent another ultimatum, demanding withdrawal lest the U.S. support sanctions against her.

With a heavy heart, Israel withdrew from the Canal Zone and the Sinai, but she refused to withdraw from the Straits of Tiran and the Gaza Strip without guarantees of security.

During four and a half months of fruitless and frustrating debates at the UN, Israel tried to convince the world that without secure borders, her very existence was imperiled.

Finally President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave Ben-Gurion his personal guarantee: the UN would station forces in Gaza so there would be no enemy troops amassed at Israel's border and no
fedayeen
attacks. And the United States itself would guarantee Israel's free access to the waterways.

Conventional warfare dictated that after his defeat on the battlefield, Nasser would be forced to sit down, face-to-face, with his victor and sign a peace treaty.