The Glory (35 page)

Barak’s laugh was melancholy. “You’re not far off from Dado’s analysis, and he’s not crazy.”

“Really? He’s a great leader, so I’m complimented.” Kishote reverted to Hebrew. “I’m on my way to say goodbye to my wife.”

“Oh? Where’s Yael off to now?”

“Back to Los Angeles, where else? And she’s taking our little girl.”

“Yossi, are you getting a divorce?”

“In those rabbinic courts?” Kishote hoisted his shoulders. “That’s a big nuisance, and neither of us wants to marry somebody
else, so why bother?”

“I’m sorry about this. Yael’s a great woman.”

“Zev, there’s nothing I don’t know about Yael. The lack of feeling is mutual. I thought she might stay on in the flat for
Aryeh’s sake, make a home for him until he finishes school. But he’s almost a soldier now, he’ll be okay, and so will I. She
made a lot of money in California, and Lee has been after her to come back. Him and that Iraqi moneybags, Sheva Leavis.” A
pause. Kishote stopped cracking seeds, staring out of the window at the Dead Sea far below. “She may also figure that by taking
up with Sharon, as you say, my career is finished. In any case, she’s going.”

“Yossi, lately you haven’t given her much reason to stay.”

“Oh, I am what I am. I’ll say this for her, she does feel a bit guilty. When she broke it to me, she brought up that
Time
article. It’s not desertion anymore to leave Israel, and what Dayan said proves it.”

A
white Mercedes was weaving and slipping through downtown Tel Aviv in the worst of the early evening traffic. “It rides like
a cloud,” Yael said to Pasternak, “and Yonatan is a hero at the wheel. He hasn’t changed.”

The driver turned to smile at her, showing stained broken teeth. Long, long ago she herself had recruited him for Pasternak
during the Sinai campaign, a skinny Tunisian corporal of nineteen with perfect teeth. But the years had been hard on Yonatan;
he was stout and getting bald, and had seven children to support. So he was joyous at being back at his lifework, driving
Sam Pasternak.

“Excuse me, Giveret,” he said, “but you’re as beautiful as always. It’s you who haven’t changed.”

“If I weren’t leaving,” Yael said to Pasternak, “I would steal Yonatan.”

“Only you could do it, Giveret,” said the driver, “except I love this car too much.”

“I don’t, but it’s the company car for the chief executive,” Pasternak said. “It’s too rich for my blood.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it.” Her white hand patted Pasternak’s brown hairy paw. “Real fast, too, Sam.”

What had not changed was Shimshon’s. Once Yonatan had driven them there through the dark crooked Jaffa streets for a certain
memorable dinner. When Pasternak had asked her now where she wanted to eat, she had shot back, “Where else? Shimshon’s.” They
passed through the crowded street-level eatery — bright lights, tile floor, Formica tables, popular prices — and descended
to the costly gloomy nook of ornamented dark wood booths for American tourists and high-flying Israelis. “No appetizers,”
she said as they sat down, “and right away, red wine. Not Avdat. Vegetable soup, and of course
kevess b’tanur
.”

“You know what you want,” said Pasternak.

“I usually do, though I can’t always get it.”

A waiter in Yemenite costume — nevertheless a real Yemenite — took their orders. The wine came at once. “Well, I invited myself
to dinner,” she said, raising her glass, “and you’re sweet to put up with me, Sam.
L’hayim
.”

“L’hayim. It’s a pleasure, but your leaving is a shock.”

“Not to Kishote.” Head archly aslant, she said, “A last chance for some frank talk, old sweetheart, before we part?”

“Why not? Let me say I’m with Yonatan. You look marvellous, and you don’t change.”

“Charming of you, dear, but it’s partly the dim lights, and partly the memories, hey? Why do you suppose I suggested Shimshon’s?
I was in uniform then, that’s a change right there, and twenty, that’s
another
change, what? Ah, well.” She drank with the old mannerism. Yael did not just lift wine to her lips, she brought up the glass
with a zestful little flourish; and she was smiling at him in the old alluring way. Eva had a far prettier mouth, she still
picked up money doing head shots in candy and toothpaste ads, but Yael’s full mouth, when it stretched in a smile, had a tangy
unexpected sweetness, as though a leopard were showing a house cat’s affection.

“Enough about that,” said Pasternak. “I avoid looking in mirrors these days. How are your kids?”

“The baby’s an angel. I’m taking her. As for Aryeh, he’s a young lion, and he hero-worships your Amos, with good reason. He
lives in our flat and goes to school nearby. Quite self-sufficient. Please give me more wine … Thanks. About Aryeh, now.”
A long leisurely sip. That seductive mouth twisted in a sly grin. “Let me take you back a few years, old dear. All right?
Suez crisis, Ben Gurion and Dayan in Paris. Kishote’s brother Lee has a suite in the Hôtel George Cinq, and Kishote comes
out of the bedroom wearing a towel —”

Pasternak took her up. “And tells me he has a French
zonah
in there, and you’ve gone out shopping.” A pause, eyes meeting. “The rest I guessed long ago, Yael.”

“No doubt. But look, love,
you
brought a Hollywood
kurva
to that suite. What for? To discuss Suez?”

He held up a flat palm. “We all have a green light for whatever we did then. We were young and liberated, and life was tough.”

“Ah, but sweet, no?”

“I said, we were young.”

“You should have divorced Ruth then.” Yael turned sharp and abrupt. “And married me. I tried my best. We were so much in love,
Sammy —”

“Yael, enough. I was Dayan’s runner. There was crisis after crisis, and who had time for haggling with the rabbis? Anyway,
at that time she’d have given me nothing but
tzoress,
and no divorce.”

“So in the end she left you high and dry for a goy. And I had Aryeh. And here we are.” Yael’s voice slightly shook.

“And here’s the soup.”

“Lovely! I’m starved.”

They ate for a while in silence. Since he had plunged into an alien bewildering world of corporate business, Pasternak’s private
life had been, as it were, on hold. Still, his recent phone talks with Yael had intrigued him. He had been thinking much about
her. After all, they were both in middle years, both more or less free, though she was not divorced. With this dinner at Shimshon’s
and her bolt to California, was Yael trying to force an issue? So she had tried to force it years ago — in essence the same
issue — by breezing off to Paris with Yossi Nitzan, in place of that shy religious girl who had backed out. Yael was Yael.

People really did not change much in their natures, he reflected, admiring this old love opposite him. And in Sam Pasternak’s
eyes tonight, after more wine than he usually drank, it seemed that Yael had not physically changed much, either. This was
still pretty much First Sergeant Luria, the shapely blonde from Dayan’s moshav, whom Dayan himself had recommended as an aide.
There had been nothing in Sam’s life, before or since, like the passionate explosion of the encounter with the girl Yael Luria.
He could feel the radiant warmth yet when he was with her, especially in Shimshon’s, alone together over wine.

“Good as ever, the soup,” she said.

“Everything’s as good as ever,” he was startled into replying. At the lightning flash in Yael’s eyes he added, “Which could
be the stupidest remark I’ve ever made, but at the moment I mean it, so let it stand.”

“Sam, what about Kivshan?” Very casual shift of subject. “Are you happy with your decision?”

“Not sure yet, Yael. I’m still turning over rocks, and Histadrut shleppers keep scuttling away from the light. It’s alarming,
I tell you. On the research and development levels, I find something like genius. Managerial and production levels, I’d call
acceptable. At the top — the decision makers, the moneymen, the powers — a tangle of political worms.”

“Israel!” she exclaimed. “Any wonder that it stifles me, and I keep running away? I wish you’d gone into politics. You could
change this hopeless system. You, yourself! You’ve got the strength and the brains. You’d make a great Prime Minister.”

“The politicos would cut off my balls the first day,” he said, “before I’d hung up my hat and coat.”

“Really? Well then, dear,” she said, and the mouth widened in the leopard smile, “by all means let’s keep you at Kivshan,
what? We can’t have that, can we?”

“Kevess b’tanur,” said the waiter, setting down a large savory lamb roast on a board.

While they ate it with rice, pita, and more wine, he talked about the ramified industries of Kivshan. He was uncovering more
each day, he said, a mess of bad administration and tottery finance in Israel’s biggest government-owned manufacturing complex.
“I’ll tell you what,” she remarked when he paused. “They got you in not because of your ability — what do they know or care
about that? — but because you are who you are, with a big reputation and a spotless name, so you keep them kosher. For a while
longer, anyway.” And as he went on, all her comments were informed and keen. Unlike Eva Sonshine, she knew everybody in high
circles, up to Dode Moshe, and also knew nearly everything that was going on. After a while they were talking about Dayan
and the
Time
article.

“Do you agree with him?” she asked.

“Yes, I agree, and in a way because of Moshe himself. Dayan’s image is awe-inspiring, Yael, more so among the Arabs even than
here. The one-eyed Samson, the giant-killer. I suspect they won’t dare to move while he’s alive. And who knows, if he lasts
long enough, the status quo could come to seem normal.”

“Will the new wife change him?”

“Oh, that’s been going on for years. Finally his marriage broke up, so he could marry the lady. That’s all.”

“Sammy, the same woman as a girlfriend and as a wife are very, very,
very
different persons.” Over his wineglass he gave her a rueful look. She added, “I speak with some authority.”

“Confirmed, with equal authority.”

She took a half-joking tone. “Well, then, are you going to try me as a wife, or not?” He did not answer. “I’m serious, Sammy.”

“It’s all talk. I don’t really believe you.”

“Why not? You know about my marriage. Last chance, hamood! Kind of late, twenty years later, but why not?”

“Want to take me with you to California, Yael? Big charge for excess baggage.”

“Oh, talk sense. I have things to do there and almost nothing here, it’s just too empty, small, and boring. But darling, at
Kivshan or in politics — and don’t wave off politics yet, Sammy — you can use me, in fact you
need
me. Now let me tell you something that may sound very peculiar, but it’s absolutely true. In the army and in the Mossad,
you’ve led a sheltered life.”

“
Sheltered
? In the Mossad?”

“Sheltered, I say! I know all about the dangers you went through as you advanced, the difficulties, but you gave orders, and
things happened. You’re just now finding out at Kivshan what the outside is like, and your head is spinning. Isn’t it? And
you’re right, politics is even more slippery and booby-trapped.”

“Sheltered,” muttered Pasternak. “Now there’s a thought.”

“It’s a fact. Yossi Nitzan is an army star, he’s the father of my kids, but to me he still seems a big tough boy scout. He
hardly seems older than Aryeh. Maybe that’s why we’ve never hit it off — though, again, I’ve tried my best.”

“You’re divorcing him?”

“If there’s a reason to, I will. He knows that.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. “What a piece you are, First Sergeant Luria.”

“Such compliments.” She gave his hand a small squeeze. “Now then, tell me about Eva Sonshine.”

“Tell you what?”

“My brother’s girlfriend! Surely you’re not
sharing
? That’s not you. Not Benny, I’d swear. And from the little I know of her, not her either.”

“No.”

“What, then?”

A heavy sigh. “I doubt you’ll believe me.”

“I’ll know if you’re lying, Sam.”

That made him laugh. “All right. She’s nice. I like her. She’s no shmata. Between the hotel and the modelling she scratches
a living and supports her sick mother. Every fellow who comes along tries to screw her, especially the wiseguy Americans at
the Hilton. It’s her looks.”

“And you don’t, Mr. Innocence? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Just that. At first I amazed her. She thought I had an original approach. But I enjoyed talking to her, and I sort of felt
sorry for her. I still do. Of course to her I’m Dayan, Ben Gurion, and I don’t know, Humphrey Bogart or somebody, rolled into
one. It’s ridiculous, but it’s nice. If it got into screwing — anyway, I wouldn’t do that to Benny, she’s straight with him
— all that would be gone like smoke. It’s just something pleasant that’s happened. She makes me feel good. That’s it.”

“By my life, I believe you. You’re a very lonesome man, Sammy.”

The half-closed eyes peered at her. “No more than I want to be.”

“She’s no threat, then?”

“To what?”

Yael picked up her purse and took out a mirror. “Hm. No wonder you think I look passable. Good old Shimshon’s! I can hardly
see myself. And oo-ah, my head! I’ve drunk more wine than I’ve had in years. It’s been a marvellous dinner, and God help me,
I love you.”

He took a while to answer. “Well, I guess I believe you at that.”

“Such a pretty speech! Let’s get out of here. Yonatan can take me home. Kishote and Aryeh are helping me pack.”

“You leave when?”

“Monday.”

“Yonatan will take you to the airport.”

“Accepted! Exit Mrs. Nitzan in style.”

They kissed a lot in the car, much to Yonatan’s discreet delight and hope. But Yael left for America on schedule, much to
his sadness.

Pasternak was at his Swedish modern desk one morning in late September, in a big office with picture windows looking out over
uptown Tel Aviv and the sunny sea, when a building guard rang from the lobby, reporting that an army major wanted to see him,
claiming to be his son.