The Gates of Zion (10 page)

“The police can’t come tonight,” Miss Warne continued without stopping. “They’ve got enough to handle out on the streets, they said.

I guess every thug and petty thief in Palestine is out tonight.”

Yacov felt the tingle of fear in the pit of his stomach. Did his avocation of crime show on his face?

“I want your name and address. Someone will come here tomorrow and get the details. I want to know where I can find you if I need you.”

“You will pay me tonight?” Yacov raised his eyes to her and wondered seriously if he should give her his address, which she in turn would give to the police.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he said happily. “But you must not tell the police my address. If you want I should come talk, you come fetch me.

Grandfather would not like the Palestine police coming to our home.

It would look not good, you know?”

“All right,” Miss Warne agreed and got him a one-pound note as he scribbled down his Old City address on the back of an envelope.

“I am so sorry you broke your Speed Graphix.” He snatched the bill from her and hustled out the door with Shaul trotting along behind.

“Shalom.”

***

Ellie watched the boy and the dog until they disappeared in the shadows of the street. What a strange city this was, that one so young would be roaming the streets among the thieves and bullies lurking in the night! She bolted the door and slowly headed back down the hall to the bathroom to clean and dress her wounds.

***

Yacov almost skipped through the darkness. He was the happiest of all boys in Jerusalem. He had a few coins in his pocket, stolen from a drunken man’s nearly empty wallet, and a one-pound note as payment for a good deed. Surely God had smiled on him!

He reached under his skullcap for the note Grandfather had written to Rabbi Akiva, the mayor of the Old City. For a moment he chided himself for not going directly to the mayor’s house, but he had been caught in the excitement of a band of revelers and had instead followed them out the Old City gates and into the New City of Jerusalem. He could clearly see the hand of God in all of it. For if he had not gone to the New City and picked the pocket of the man and been chased, he might never have seen the American lady or received his reward. Yacov sighed. “God in His wisdom is great,”

he told himself as he wound along the outside of the Old City wall toward Zion Gate and the crooked corridors that would take him to his destination.

The craggy stones of the wall seemed to glow even in the darkness as the towers of Zion Gate loomed above him. As he passed beneath its massive brow, the feeling of exuberance left him. He had to go a hundred yards through the alleyways of the Arab Quarter before he reached the section of the Old City he called home, the same section where Rabbi Akiva lived. In sharp contrast to the light of the Jewish Quarter, the narrow, twisted street of the Arab Quarter was dark and shuttered. Yacov wondered what plans were being laid behind those locked and bolted doors. He wished for daylight and friendly faces as he passed through the gloom. Before this night, the Quarter had always seemed friendly enough, but tonight it seemed full of threats and had an air of foreboding.

With Shaul at his heels, he ran the last few yards to the archway that marked the beginning of the Jewish Quarter. Lights still burned in nearly every house, and music drifted through the streets from the Great Hurva Synagogue. Relief washed over Yacov as he passed a group of three Hasidim who shouted
“Shalom!”
and
“Mazel tov!”

as they returned from worship. The deeper he walked into the cobbled heart of the Jewish Quarter, the more faces he recognized.

And to his surprise, most seemed happy at the news.

“
Shalom
, Yacov!” exclaimed a group of Yeshiva students, each reaching out to pat his head. “And how is your grandfather, Rebbe Lebowitz, taking the news?”

“He is not dancing,” Yacov replied, feeling that he was somehow a party to disloyalty to speak to those of his own kind who were, in fact, dancing. These were Grandfather’s very students. Shouldn’t they be mourning this night instead of joining the new Jews in their celebration across the wall?

“Tell your grandfather we have been this night to pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” they instructed. Then they patted him again and sauntered off.

Even at his young age, Yacov knew that Jerusalem was in need of prayer. Grandfather always said that God enjoyed the joyful prayer of a good Jew. Yacov put away his misgivings and began to answer back enthusiastically,
“Shalom!”
and
“Mazel tov!”

He skipped down the last few steps to the house of Rabbi Akiva with Grandfather’s note clutched in his hand. Boldly he unlatched the gate to the courtyard and, commanding Shaul to stay, approached the massive door. He lifted the large brass knocker and let it fall three times. Light seeped from the window, and from the second story he heard the harsh monotone of the radio. After a full minute, Yacov heard the soft voice of Akiva’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Yehudit.

“Who is it?”

“Yacov Lebowitz. I have a note from my grandfather,” Yacov said, feeling very important.

The great door cracked, then swung wide. Yacov touched his fingertips to his lips, then slid his hand over the mezuzah that hung on the left doorpost and entered the house.

In her long black dress, Yehudit looked pale and drawn.

“
Shalom,”
said Yacov.

“
Shalom,”
Yehudit returned the greeting, her eyes downcast. “Wait here,” she instructed, swishing out of the entryway.

Now, this is a house.
Yacov contrasted it to the home of the American lady. There were no paintings on the thick walls, but the furniture was heavy and massive. A solid-silver tea service sat on a dark walnut buffet in the dining room to his right. Silver candelabra graced the heavily oiled table, and Yacov imagined the most wonderful and wealthy guests sitting in the high-backed chairs. He stood on a thick Oriental rug, studying the patterns of rich red and blue that swirled around his feet. Rabbi Akiva was a wealthy man: one of two in the Old City with the luxury of a telephone.

Yacov heard Akiva’s footsteps at the top of the stairs and glanced up to see the rabbi’s slippered feet as he began a regal descent. He wore the finest black suit of any Hasid that Yacov had ever seen. A heavy gold chain stretched across his vest, adorning the expansive belly. His long beard was as black and heavy as the wool of his coat. His eyes glowered from beneath his heavy brows, seeming to pierce Yacov’s very soul.

“
Shalom
, Rebbe Akiva,” Yacov said timidly.

Akiva continued his descent.
“Shalom!”
he boomed in his powerful voice.

Then as he neared the bottom step, Yacov ventured a half smile and said hopefully, “And
Mazel tov!
”

A controlled fury swept over Akiva’s heavy features as he glared at the boy.

Yacov’s stomach tightened and twisted with the certainty that he had said the wrong thing.

“
Mazel tov? Mazel tov,
is it?” Akiva sneered. “And what is it you congratulate me for?”

Yacov averted his eyes from Akiva’s legendary wrath. “Forgive me, Rebbe Akiva. I mean I―”

“Are you one of them?” Akiva gestured toward the streets with his broad head. “Do you dance in the streets of our doomed city, too?”

“N-no, sir,” Yacov stammered. “I pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

Akiva rocked back on his heels and regarded Yacov with one eye squinted in suspicion. “You answer well for one so young, boy. So should we all pray for the peace of God’s Holy City of David. And for what else do you pray?” he asked, raising his chin in challenge.

Yacov frantically searched his mind, then plunged into an answer that would be right regardless of what the rabbi wanted to hear. “I pray for the coming of our Messiah, Rebbe Akiva.”

The rabbi’s features seemed to relax, and the glimmer of a smile danced across the hard line of his lips for an instant. “Well said, boy. Well spoken. Your grandfather teaches you well.”

“Y-yes, Rebbe,” Yacov sputtered with relief.

“And does he also teach you that there is no nation without our Messiah to lead us? that those who declare a state now shake their fists in the face of God and deny His Chosen One?”

“Yes, Rebbe,” Yacov answered, uncertain if Akiva’s pent-up fury was directed at him.

“What does he say to those Jews who seek to come to Palestine illegally? without regard to the legal, God-given authority of the British Mandate?” asked Akiva, enjoying the game.

Yacov himself had entered the country as part of the Aliyah, which had smuggled Jewish children into Palestine. Akiva’s question was almost too difficult for Yacov to answer. “I suppose …”

Akiva narrowed his eyes. “Yes? Yes?”

“That it is by God’s grace if they reach these shores.” He looked straight at Akiva and thought of his own family, wishing that they had lived to run the final blockades of the Mandate.

“Well?” Akiva relaxed. “And what do you believe?”

“I would pray that every Jew could come home,” Yacov answered without fear.

“I see. At the expense of and in exchange for the lives of those of us already here?” Akiva scowled, and Yacov regretted his boldness.

“My family has lived here for many generations, Yacov. Yours for only a relatively short time. The Mufti and I know one another well, and both of us believe that no good can come of this Partition business.”

Yacov did not raise his eyes.

“So, boy, will you join these traitors to God? this Haganah? this secret organization of Jews who subvert the goodwill of the government?”

“No, sir,” Yacov answered, holding the note out to Akiva in hopes of ending the interrogation. “But I wish that Jews could come home.”

“Home!” snorted Akiva, tearing the seal off the note. He read it in silence, then glared at Yacov. “So go home, boy,” he said sarcastically. Then he turned on his heels and stomped up the stairs.

Yacov let himself out, thankful to breathe the cold night air as he walked slowly home.

6

Rescue

Moshe Sachar held the young woman firmly as the breakers caught their bodies and swept them, like driftwood, toward shore.

“We made it!” he shouted above the roar.

The woman could only nod in exhaustion as she struggled to find footing on the shifting sand.

“Hold on to me.” Moshe stood in the shallow water and pulled her out of the waves. She was crying, he noticed, as they stumbled the last few yards to the beach. Little sobs shook her slender shoulders as she fell in a heap on the dry sand. The warm salt of her tears mingled with the cold drops of the Mediterranean.

“You’re home,” he said, gently stroking her head as if she were a child. “Home, little girl.”

She shivered still, but gradually the sobs diminished and she slept.

He scooped dry sand over her like a blanket; then he, too, began to drift into sleep.
Surely Ehud spilled his cargo onto this same beach
hours ago
. The
Ave Maria
would have chugged off to another destination. Moshe hoped that the refugees had not been met by a patrol of immigration officers and carted back to Tel Aviv for deportation. He also hoped that the two of them would not be spotted by the British soldiers who checked the beach regularly for illegal immigrants. Right now, though, he was too tired to think. For an instant he wondered what the woman’s name was. Then they both slept where they had fallen… .

A hazy sun cracked the horizon to the east, pushing back the darkness and bringing with it the fresh memory of the night before. Moshe opened his eyes and lay very still on the sand next to the woman, examining her sleeping features as if he were seeing her for the first time. Her head was turned away from him, and her long, dark hair was thrown back from her face, revealing a graceful neck and slender shoulders. Her wet white cotton camisole clung to her slender figure.

As he gazed at her, Moshe felt a stirring that made him turn his eyes away
.
He sat up suddenly, spilling sand into the breeze that skimmed the beach. Her soft white arms were folded across her waist, and as she moved slightly, Moshe caught a glimpse of the numbers tattooed on the inside of her left forearm. During her imprisonment by the Nazis, she had been 7645–8927, and beneath the number was the jagged black scar of an SS lightning bolt and the words
Nur Für
Offiziere:
“For Officers Only.” The mark of a prostitute assigned to the brothel for Nazi officers.

Moshe turned away as revulsion and deep sadness overcame him.

He wondered if this young woman still remembered her own name.

Slowly she stirred with the awareness that he was awake. She opened her eyes―a deeper, clearer blue than the sea from which they had come. Almost as if by instinct, her right hand moved to cover the tattoo on her left arm. She seemed to feel no shame at sitting in her underclothes with a strange man on the beach. Her shame was that he would know that there had been other men—many other men—and each had left within her soul a gaping wound until, perhaps, there was no part of her own soul remaining.

Moshe pretended not to notice her gesture. Instead he gazed out to sea. “Good morning.”

She sat up and began to brush the sand from her body, careful to keep her left arm from view.

“Are you well?” he asked, still not looking at her.

She continued to brush away the sand almost angrily.

“I know you can speak,” Moshe said impatiently. “I heard your voice last night.”

“Am I well?” she snapped. “And how do you suppose I am, half frozen and covered with sand?”

“Well, you’re alive!” Moshe bellowed, losing all patience. “No thanks to that stupid stunt you pulled last night. We could have been warm and clean right now if you hadn’t jumped―you all snug at a kibbutz and me on my way back to Jerusalem. I should have let you drown.”

“Yes,” she said with resignation, “perhaps you should have.” She stopped brushing and hugged her knees to her chin as she stared out at the lapping waves.