The Glory (28 page)

Noah spoke up sharply, “He’s only the man who liberated Jerusalem.”

“Yes, yes,
‘The Temple Mount is in our hands,’
” Sarak sneered. “Thirty-six guys died on Ammunition Hill, my friend, and that battle should never have been fought. If Motta
Gur hadn’t been so hot to reach the Temple Mount first, Uri Ben Ari’s tanks would have arrived from the north and wiped out
the whole enemy force on the hill with cannon fire in ten minutes, and with no casualties.”

“Is that so?” Noah barked. Ammunition Hill was an enshrined legend of Six-Day War heroism. “And how do you know all that?”

“Because I fought on Ammunition Hill, my friend, and two of my pals got killed. Paratroop Battalion Sixty-six.” Noah was silenced.
“And I’ll tell you something else, Admiral.” Sarak snapped open a beer can. “This whole country is one big Ammunition Hill.”

“Yes? In what way?”

“A bloody story of futile deaths of too many great guys, for the glory of a lot of old fuckups and nonentities.”

“Look here, Sarak, why don’t you just pick up and go to Los Angeles?”

“And let the country fall into hands like yours, Admiral? I’m not that sour on it yet.”

At that point Noah stood up and dragged Daphna protesting out of the Jericho Café, telling her as they went that if they remained
he would have to knock Sarak on his ass. On a park bench under a lamp they had had the fight of their lives, and had not really
reconciled since. She loved and admired him, but she was not letting him force her back into the old mode; not him, not her
father, and not her go-go air force brothers, now that she had struggled free. Anyway, with Sadat throwing out the Russians,
how important were the armed forces, really? How could there be another war?

Shortly after that fiasco, she had brought Dzecki to the Jericho as a sort of litmus test of his character. In uniform on
a weekend pass, he came with her to the café willingly. Her friends rode him hard about leaving America for the glamorous
life of an IDF draftee, and of course about the Porsche. He took it all with a good-humored grin and mild repartee in passable
Hebrew slang. So they forgot him and went on with lively talk about new-wave movies (“the answer to Hollywood”), Leonard Bernstein
(“a sentimental phony”), Günter Grass, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, and so on, salted with inside talk on topics like the
latest bank scandal and politicians’ mistresses. Afterward Dzecki remarked, “They’re okay, just ten or fifteen years behind
New York.” Understandable, coming from an American, if annoying. Dzecki was
in
. Her friends’ needling was a rough well-deserved Israeli tribute. There was something to Dzecki! With three months to go
in the army, he was already looking into real estate projects in Haifa. He had showed her an old Arab waterfront warehouse
he and his father might buy and renovate. He even kept that battered Porsche going, though two Israeli drivers and an Egged
bus had hit it. No garage in Israel could maintain a Porsche as he did.

And at least he did not consider her Jericho Café crowd traitors and scum, as Noah seemed to. Noah’s attitude was intolerable.
All her friends had served in the IDF. All still did their reserve duty. Most scrounged their livings by working at two or
three jobs. Some had fought in the Six-Day War, several had been wounded. Daphna knew the military life all too well; knew
pilots who had died, knew their widows and orphans. The air force was great, but so what? She had endured childhood nightmares
of her father crashing in flames, and now she had to worry about Dov, and even her baby brother Danny was applying for flight
training. Meantime the politicians schemed and lied to keep their jobs, wars broke out every few years, the generals screwed
up, and the boys paid with their lives, or their legs, eyes, and arms. That was the plain Jericho Café truth about Israel,
not the threadbare Zionist myth that Noah was still trying to live up to.

Such were Daphna’s ruminations as she rode a bus to Rashi Street, and climbed dark creaky stairs to Shimon Shimon’s studio.
A dirty skylight on the top floor showed the ceramic doorplate with his name, black flames on gold:
SHIMON SHIMON
. She tentatively knocked. No answer. Louder knock. Nothing. She pressed the doorbell, and its raucous ring made her jump.
Heavy treads approaching, sliding of a lock, a muttered Arabic obscenity, door opening. In droopy underwear, the ceramicist
peered at her, scratching his red beard with one hand and his hairy belly with the other.

“Hello. Am I early? I can come back later.”

“You’re who? Oh, yes, you’re Daphna, aren’t you? Right, right, Daphna. No, no, come right in.” He grabbed a bathrobe from
a hook. Daphna went inside, and Shimon Shimon closed the door.

N
oah’s missile boat was docking about then. He had been working since dawn on an automatic gun-loader that had jammed, for
an exec had to be everywhere and do anything. He hurried to his quarters to get out of his greased-up coveralls, and dress
for the wedding. At last a chance to see Daphna and smooth things over! He had not seen her since their quarrel. The navy
had to keep constant watch for seaborne terrorists, and the nights on patrol were long and monotonous. Noah had much time
to think, looking at the black waves, the crowding stars, and the lights of home sending up a glow on distant clouds. What
to do about that provoking Daphna? In the draggy hours on watch, visions and sensations of their lovemaking haunted him, but
she had drifted into that disgusting Jericho Cafe set. A vexing problem, for he remained infatuated with her.

A letter from Cherbourg lay on his cot. A picture of Julie Levinson slid out of the envelope, and to his surprise, the writing
was in childish large-lettered Hebrew.

Dear Noah,

These are the first words I have ever written in Hebrew besides exercises!

You remember Shmulik Tannenbaum, your navy supply officer who came back to Cherbourg and married my friend Yvonne? They now
have two babies, and Shmulik is giving Hebrew lessons to make extra money. Our class is small, five girls counting me, and
two fellows. All the others plan to make aliya.

(It has taken me
half an hour
to write this much! I have to keep looking up words in my French-Hebrew dictionary, which is not very good.)

I and my parents will visit Israel right after Yom Kippur, only three months from now. I talk better than I write, so you
can talk to me then in Hebrew to test me! (A joke.) You probably have forgotten how I look, so I enclose a picture (my verb
forms are awful, I know).

We will only stay three weeks, but it will be nice to see you again. I have a boyfriend but he is not Jewish, he works in
a bank. I think that is why my parents are taking me to Israel. But don’t worry, they don’t hope to match up you and me. Anyway
by now you must have married Daphna! If so I hope you are happy and I would like to meet her.

Your friend,

Julie Levinson

P.S. —
Time, 2½ hours!

In the picture she wore a jogging suit and a soft cap. Her face was thinner, hard to recognize. This was Julie’s first letter
in a long time. Noah could not write easily in French, he hated to make the slightest error, and once he saw Daphna again
he had let the correspondence dwindle and lapse. He dropped the letter and picture in a drawer. Poor Julie!

As he dressed, Noah heard on the radio a roundtable of experts disputing about Sadat’s move, mainly throwing up gassy clouds
of bafflement and verbiage. He was baffled, too. L’Azazel! Could Egypt really be giving up the fight? Was Israel no longer
in peril, after a quarter-century of cliff-hanging? Egypt was the powerhouse of Arab enmity. Without Egypt the front was broken,
and without the Soviets the Egyptians were helpless. Chasing down those terrorists in rubber boats was no career for a man;
would he never have a chance to fight in a war? He set out for the wedding in a fresh uniform, hoping he could take Daphna
somewhere afterward. The damned Jericho Café was a good two hours away, thank God. Perhaps she would even come to the Dan
Hotel for the night.
That
was the way of ways to put a fight behind them.

D
aphna’s Aunt Yael also ran a dissatisfied eye over her more extensive wardrobe, wondering what to wear for a mid-July strictly
religious wedding; which, however, she was not about to miss. The sleeveless pink shantung would be coolest, but Elohim, no!
The Ezrakh was officiating, the great Talmud scholar Benny so much admired, and to such holy men bare arms and bare breasts
were all one. The blue pima cotton then, with sleeves below the elbow. If naked wrists were too immodest, haval! She was not
coming to Shayna Matisdorf’s nuptials looking like a pious frump. That was the bride’s game.

Despite the hold she had on Yossi in their two children, Yael never quite shrugged off the sense of that religious old maid
as a threat. Of course sneaked meetings with Kishote, even surreptitious telephone calls, were much beyond that goodie-goodie,
though they were routine to the
shmatas
(loose women) he fooled with. But most men in the long run needed love, not shmatas, and that was the standing menace of
Shayna. Yael was sleeping alone these days. The flame was out. She had not tricked him with Eva, and he knew that. Still,
he clearly wanted no more children, at least with her, and he was employing the one unfailing contraceptive, cool distance.
Otherwise she could hardly complain. He was good-humored, he seemed reconciled to things as they were, and how much time did
other army wives get to spend with their husbands, anyway? Nevertheless, seeing with her own eyes Shayna Matisdorf removed
from circulation was well worth killing a business day.

“Got to wash off the desert dust, first thing,” Kishote said, coming in with a clatter of tankist black boots, as she was
affixing a gold lion pin to the pima cotton. “How are you, Yael? You look elegant.” He was unbuttoning his green blouse, omitting
any kiss or hug, though he had not been home for weeks. “Where are the kids?”

“Aryeh’s dressing up. Eva’s in kindergarten. We won’t bring her. There’s a pressed uniform in your closet.”

“I’ll wear a shirt and slacks.” He kicked off the boots.

“So, Shayna gets married at last,” she ventured. He nodded without a word, stripping down to sweat-soaked briefs, a muscular
glistening figure. “Yossi, what about Sadat?”

“Sadat? Good question.” He ran a hand over his face. “I suppose I should shave.”

“Have things changed at the Canal at all?”

“Dead quiet, but there’s always plenty to do.”

“Is it serious, his expelling the Russians?”

“Very serious.” He went into the bathroom.

In the car heading up the coastal highway Aryeh, now a lanky fifteen but still beardless, sat beside the driver, turning around
to look and listen as his parents discussed Sadat’s move. “Sharon called a staff meeting that same night,” his father said,
“to exchange ideas about it. We were still talking when the sun came up. Five explanations emerged, or should I say survived.”

“Let’s hear.”

“Well,
one,
the Russians were denying him first-line armaments, or charging too high a price.”

“Oversimple.”

“Maybe, but just like the Soviets.
Two,
the Egyptian people, especially the army, hate the Soviet presence. The crude Russians treat them like dirt, even their senior
officers. We know that’s true.
Three,
Sadat had to do something bold and popular after bluffing and doing nothing in 1971.”

“That’s more like it,” said Yael. “It’s what I think.”

“Well, Sharon thinks it’s none of those. The last two are bad, and one’s worse than the other.
Four,
Sadat’s decided to tilt his foreign policy to America, because Washington’s where he can get the most leverage against Israel.
Five,
the Russians wouldn’t let him plan to attack Israel, because that would end détente and might drag them into nuclear war
with America. He kicked them out to free his hands for war.”

At this Aryeh opened wide eyes.

“Oo-wah,” exclaimed Yael. “Sharon’s the pessimist, as usual.”

“Abba, what do you think?” Aryeh said.

Kishote looked at him with affection. “Me, think? When I’m ordered, I fight.”

T
he ceremony began as soon as Benny Luria arrived at Michael’s apartment with the Ezrakh, the aged scholar famed for his grasp
of Torah law, and for never having set foot outside the Holy Land; hence his sobriquet, which meant “the Native.” Benny had
met him years ago, through the bereaved parents of a pilot lost in a training accident, and they had struck up an unlikely
but continuing friendship. Shayna had known the Ezrakh all her life, and that he would conduct her wedding was taken for granted.

Chanting the blessings under the canopy, the Ezrakh looked and sounded no older than he had five years ago at Reuven’s circumcision
in this same room, in the same rusty black hat and ankle-length threadbare black coat. His voice was weak, yet the hand that
held the cup of wine was steady. Yael saw the ring go on Shayna’s finger. Michael Berkowitz missed the glass on the first
stamp, then
crunch
! The thing was done. “Mazel tov! Mazel tov!” cried the guests crowding the small flat.

But there was no outburst of song. Vibrations of romance or erotic excitement were not in the air of this stooped skullcapped
professor’s second marriage, to his associate in her thirties. Stepping out from under the canopy, Shayna embraced Reuven,
leaning on his crutch nearby. She was adopting the crippled boy, Yael thought, and the handiest way to do it was to move in
with the professor. Well, anyhow that was that, Shayna was locked away.

But the next thing Shayna did was to kiss Don Kishote! This struck Yael as not only unladylike, but against the religion.
Shayna strode to Yossi through the relatives, neighbors, and friends in her plain gray dress, the white veil thrown back on
her head, and planting a kiss on his lips, murmured something to him. Then she and her limping groom went off to a bedroom
for the
yikhud
. Kishote looked after her with an expression that Yael had seen him direct at Aryeh in his baby years, and nowadays at little
Eva, but never at her; a wistful tenderness that quite smoothed away his half-humorous half-menacing look. Shayna was disappearing
into that bedroom and from his life, Yael perceived, but not to make room for her. The professor’s wife would just leave a
hole.