Raquela (7 page)

The door opened. Raquela looked up at a slender young woman in a blue and white student uniform, with a starched white cowl hiding her hair.

“I'm Judith Steiner.” She extended a firm hand. “I'll show you your room.”

Raquela gathered her coat and suitcase and followed her.

She's a third-year student, Raquela thought; that means she's two years older than I. But she seems old—really old. Why?

They were walking down a broad white corridor lighted by a bank of windows; green ferns spilled to the floor; miniature palm trees rose out of ceramic pots; ivy trailed up to the ceiling. Outside the snow fell on the garden; but the corridor was warm and friendly, hoarding sunshine.

They climbed a stairwell to the third floor and entered a dormitory bedroom. Two sofa beds flanked one wall; the other held two wardrobes, two desks with mirrors hanging over them, and two straight chairs.

“Your roommate is Debby Kahana,” Judith said. “She's a term ahead of you.”

Raquela looked at the shelves over Debby's bed, a mélange of knicknacks, books, and photos.

“I hope you'll like her,” Judith went on. “She's a nice girl, but she seems to be having a hard time. We're not sure if something personal is troubling her or if she's just not studying enough. She's still on probation.”

The ominous word again: “probation.”

Raquela lifted her suitcase to a chair.

“Do you mind if I stay a few minutes while you unpack?” Judith asked.

“Not at all. Won't you sit down?”

Judith pulled up a chair.

“Watching you take your things out brings back memories of Czechoslovakia. Of my mother packing me up to go to Palestine in 1939. With ten hats.”

Raquela turned from the closet. “Ten hats! What were you supposed to do in Palestine with ten hats?”

“Hitler didn't allow us to take out any money. Only clothes. So my mother gave me the best clothes we had in the house. Along with twelve pairs of shoes and four evening gowns!”

Raquela shook her head; her one party dress was already hanging in the closet.

“You couldn't take out any jewelry, not even the simplest school ring,” Judith went on. “I won a prize as a good student, a pretty gold ring. The Nazis at the border yanked it off my finger.”

“What a terrible experience,” Raquela shuddered. “Have you heard from your mother since the war began?”

Judith's blue eyes clouded over. “Not one word. Four years, and not one word about my entire family.”

Was that why she looked so much older than twenty?

Raquela spoke carefully. “It's so hard for me to know what you've gone through. Except for one year on a moshav, I've never really been out of Jerusalem.”

Judith stood up. “Do you know how lucky you are?” Then, abruptly, she said, “I'd better go now.”

Raquela stepped through the French doors to a small circular balcony. She could see the hospital linked to the nursing school by a graceful pergola running through the garden. The snow was still falling. The omen was good.

Raquela turned back and went into the room. A young woman stood eyeing her.

“I'm Debby. I guess you're my new roommate.” She was short, with red hair cropped like a boy's; freckles fanned across her snub nose.

“How do you do?” Raquela extended her hand. “I'm Raquela.”

Debby gave her a limp handshake, then flopped on her bed. “I'm exhausted. They work you to death here. They expect you to learn anatomy, physiology, chemistry, pharmacology, ethics, the principles and practice of nursing—the whole history of nursing, from Florence Nightingale to Hadassah. Lord only knows why I ever thought I could be a nurse.”

Raquela was startled by the outburst. “What made you decide to become one?”

“I did it to please my boyfriend. He joined the British army the minute they would take him. He's so patriotic, I felt I had to become a nurse to show him I was patriotic, too.”

She pointed to a framed photograph dominating the shelf over her bed. “That's him. His name is Carmi Eisenberg.”

Raquela stepped toward the shelf; she saw a young man with a brilliant smile, white teeth, light hair, light eyes, and strong yet oddly sensitive features. He was in a British uniform, his army cap perched at a jaunty angle.

“He looks like a movie star,” Raquela said.

“He's handsome, all right,” Debby acknowledged. “We're planning to get married when the war's over. He's one of those idealists, you know. Writes poetry and dreams about killing Nazis. He's going to save the Jewish people, single-handedly.”

Raquela glanced up at the photo again, thinking that he was the handsomest man she'd ever seen.

It was four-thirty that afternoon when Raquela and the new student nurses were called down to the lounge for tea. They were all outfitted in the same uniforms: simple white probationers' caps on their hair and blue cotton dresses covered with white aprons crisscrossed in back. White stockings and shoes were war casualties; instead they wore heavy black oxfords and gray cotton stockings that bagged around the knees. They were the first stockings Raquela had ever worn.

Judith took her into the lounge, introducing her to little groups standing near the piano or sitting at the little tables. Raquela was awed into silence by their self-confidence.

A hush fell on the room; an attractive woman of medium height sailed in. “Mrs. Cantor,” Judith breathed to Raquela, “the director.”

Shulamit Cantor was a commanding vision in white, from her nurse's cap, nesting in a bower of magnificent white hair, her starched white uniform, down to her—war be damned—white stockings and shoes.

“Welcome,” Mrs. Cantor said. “Welcome to the Hadassah-Henrietta Szold School of Nursing. You new girls came so covered with snow we're going to call you the ‘Class of Snow Whites.'”

Raquela watched the animated woman, startlingly beautiful, her features small and delicately carved, yet authoritative even when she smiled.

“Maybe some of you had problems convincing your families to let you become nurses.…”

How did she know?

“Because of the war and the terrible shortage of nurses, we've created this special winter class,” she said. “You've chosen a difficult profession. It's not going to be easy, but we will help you overcome the difficulties. You'll start with theory and practice; during the next three years, you will rotate in all the wards; you will learn every branch of medicine. Your practice at the hospital is a continuous learning program, and yet it must in no way interfere with our whole program of education. We keep tight discipline, and we expect you to give the best you have in you.”

Raquela listened with a mixture of fear and respect. Mrs. Cantor sounded tough, stern, intimidating; yet beneath her starched exterior Raquela sensed something feminine and delicate.

“I'm not going to keep you much longer.” The director looked across the lounge at the novices. “I want you to know—I believe there is not a nobler profession in the world than the one you have chosen. In these days we can either be soldiers or nurses. You have elected to become nurses, and so long as you devote yourselves, with your hearts and minds and bodies, you will have no problem in our school. And now”—she permitted herself a smile—“let me introduce Miss Bertha Landsmann, director of nursing services in our hospital. An American.”

An almost doll-like woman, exquisitely dressed in a white silk uniform, stood up. She had bobbed white hair cut in a thatch of bangs over her brow.

“Hello, girls.” She spoke Hebrew with a New York accent. “Welcome to Mount Scopus.”

“And this is my first assistant, Mrs. Eyta Margolith. She will be one of your chief instructors.” A dark-haired, middle-aged woman stood up, nodded warmly, and sat down.

“And now, young ladies”—Mrs. Cantor stepped aside with a wave of her hand—“help yourselves to tea and cake.”

Raquela woke the next morning at five-forty-five, drew aside the blackout curtains, opened the French doors, and stepped out to the little white balcony.

The world had changed. The snow had disappeared. Pastel lines of orange and pink were penciled in the sky, lighting up the Hills of Moab in the distance, then the Dead Sea, and, closest to her, the sand-locked hills of the Judean desert.

She had grown up in this city. There were times when the whole history of the land seemed to seep inside her skin.

The Hills of Moab. It was across this very desert that Ruth, the Moabite, had come with her mother-in-law Naomi to the Land of Israel…
whither thou goest
.…

Raquela looked at the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on the surface of the earth. Who had named it “Dead”? she wondered. No one in the Bible. It was alive, so full of minerals that Lot's wife, looking back from its shores, had turned into a pillar of salt.

She was part of this land, part of its history, part of all the generations that had built it.

Raquela closed the French doors and dressed in the blue uniform and probationer's cap. Hurrying down the back stairs, she entered the tunnel under the pergola that led to the hospital.

The dining room was crowded with doctors and nurses sitting at square tables. She took her turn in the cafeteria line, put a hard-boiled egg, a slice of rye bread and jam, and a cup of coffee on a hospital tray, and searched for Judith.

She found her sitting with two student nurses, joined them, and ate eagerly, impatient to begin the day.

She returned to the nursing school and entered a classroom, where she waited until the twenty newcomers in the Class of Snow Whites assembled. A senior nurse took over.

“Today, I'm going to teach you how to make beds,” the nurse said. “Beds,” she repeated. “Beds with tight corners. Proper folds. The first know-how in nursing is making beds properly.”

For the next few hours, Raquela maneuvered among the white dunes of hospital sheets, tucking in corners, tightening the sheets until they were so taut she could have bounced on them and not left a wrinkle.

The students were getting tired. “Most of you look as if you're good sleepers,” the senior nurse said. “But I can tell you—when I can't sleep, I count sheets instead of sheep.”

Raquela heard the girls grumble: “This must be my punishment for never making a bed at home.” “My mother spoiled me rotten; she made all the beds.” “My father said I'd never make it as a nurse. I'll show him—but oh, my aching back.”

Lunch. Rest. Classes at five in the afternoon. More beds. This time with dolls, life-size. Dolls to roll over while you changed the sheets. Dolls to sponge-bathe without drowning.

By nine o'clock, Raquela fell into her own bed; her arms were limp, her legs leaden. Within seconds, she was asleep. At midnight, she woke with a start. Mrs. Simonson flashed a light in her face.

“What is it? Is there trouble? A bomb attack?” Raquela shot out of bed.

Mrs. Simonson held her fingers to her lips. “It's just the nightly check. Go back to sleep.”

A few days later, Judith came to her room. “Mrs. Cantor would like to see you.”

“What does she want?”

Judith looked mysterious. “Let her tell you.”

Raquela hurried down the stairs. Mrs. Cantor's office opened off the corridor opposite the ferns and potted palms.

“Come in, Miss Levy.” Mrs. Cantor smiled expansively. “How would you like to go to a dance for the soldiers tonight? The Women's Committee for Soldiers asked me to send fifteen of my prettiest nurses.”

Raquela blushed. “But I—I have classes tonight.”

“You can get there after classes. Eight-thirty would be fine. It's at the Menorah Soldiers' Club. You can go there by bus with the other girls I'll be inviting.”

Raquela raced up the stairs. She had never been inside the Soldiers' Club. She had never been to a formal dance before. Upstairs in her room she found Judith waiting, holding on her arm the four evening gowns her mother had packed in Czechoslovakia. Debby lay on her bed, watching.

“I thought one of these dresses might fit you,” Judith said. “The women usually wear long gowns at those dances. Maybe some glamour helps the soldiers forget the war.”

“You're very kind, but I can't borrow one of your dresses. What if something happened to it?”

Judith smiled. “I'm your ‘mother.' Come on, let's see how they look. Try this one.”

She handed Raquela a turquoise gown of shimmering satin. Raquela stepped into it, turning slowly in front of the mirror over the desk. Her skin looked golden against the turquoise; the skirt billowed out as she turned.

“Every soldier will flirt with you tonight,” Judith said approvingly.

Debby bolted from her bed and stalked out of the room.

“What's bothering her, I wonder.” Raquela turned to Judith.

“I think she's worried. Her probation period is almost up.”

The Menorah Soldiers' Club was a low, one-story building set inside a garden gate. Two flags fluttered from the rooftop—the British Union Jack and the blue and white flag of Zion.

The nurses Mrs. Cantor had chosen stood shyly at the entrance door. Dance music drifted out to them. They looked at one another. Do you ring a bell? Do you just march in?

A committeewoman standing near the door spotted them. “We're so glad you came. And you all look beautiful. Come with me; we need help pouring tea.”

They walked across the brilliantly lighted ballroom floor. Men and women in British uniforms milled around, some holding drinks in their hands, some talking animatedly, some wandering under the tinted photographs of King George, the reigning monarch, and Queen Elizabeth.

Long tables stacked with food lined the walls. Raquela, standing behind a buffet table, began pouring tea from an antique silver tea service.

In Europe, the front was exploding; here they were dancing, drinking, eating, squeezing in a few days of respite, away from the war.