The Glory (36 page)

Amos not in Sinai? Now what?
“Tell him to come up.”

“Only the service elevator is running, sir.”

“So let him use that.”

Like the government and most Tel Aviv businesses, the Kivshan Building was shut down. The season of holy days was upon Israel;
tonight at sundown Rosh Hashanah, ten days later Yom Kippur, then Sukkot — the annual three-week lull of rituals for pious
Jews, and beachgoing or travel for others. Pasternak was alone on the executive top floor, no secretaries, not even a cleaning
woman. In field uniform, briefcase in hand, Amos walked in and dropped letters on the desk. “Your mail, I stopped at the flat
first. I’ve been ordered to the north. Why are you working today?”

Pasternak recognized Yael’s handwriting on the top letter. High time. “To the north? That’s sudden. What’s happening?”

“The Golan’s getting warm. I’m bringing up two companies and my command HQ. Know anything about it, Abba?”

Pasternak’s response was guarded. It was still inside intelligence that the Arabs were massing and maneuvering again, north
and south, in a virtual replay of
BLUE/WHITE
. “Well, after shooting down all those planes of theirs we had to expect some kind of reaction.” In mid-September Syrian MiGs
had scrambled to pursue an Israeli reconnaissance flight, and in an extended dogfight with its air cover had lost twelve aircraft
to Israel’s none.

“Abba, that was an encounter that got out of hand on both sides.”

“I know. Still, they ended up with a big public black eye. Some sort of limited reprisal may well be in the wind.”

“No, Yanosh thinks it’s a lot more serious than that.” Colonel Yanosh Ben Gal, Amos’s hawk-faced brigade commander, in peace
was something of a cynical womanizer, which to Pasternak was no great black mark against him, and in war he was a resourceful
stubborn fighting man. “Yanosh expects the whole brigade will be moved up. There are seven Syrian divisions on the Golan by
now, and we have only one brigade there, he says.”

“Probably right,” said the father wryly. “Peacetime deployment.”

“Well, that’s a monstrous asymmetry, Abba, twenty-one brigades to one! It’s been a balagan, calling my troops back from holiday
leave, deciding who goes north and who stays in Sinai. Come on. Will there really be war this time? Do you know? Maybe we
should get it over with. All these false alarms —”

“Yanosh is wrong. They won’t dare, Amos. It’s more of the old bluff to keep us on edge. Not pleasant, of course, while it
lasts.” Pasternak felt a stir of disquiet. He was sure that the concepzia was sound, and that it was just a
BLUE/WHITE
feint again. Yet, if a Syrian reprisal for the air incident did occur, his son would be in the hot spot. “Good luck, son.”

“I need luck at the supply depot up there,” Amos grinned. “They’re fighting with my deputy about releasing the reserve tanks.”

Pasternak pulled open a drawer and fished a letter from his
Soon
file. “I don’t think this is important, but here it is. Some lady brought it, I think a Frenchwoman, on the day of the parade.
It got buried, what with moving my office and all.” The father saw no point in mentioning that the woman was the elusive blonde
of the Beirut raid. Let her stay elusive.

“Thanks.” Amos slipped the blue envelope into his briefcase.
Frenchwoman! Hmm
. “Well, if things cool down, maybe Yanosh will let me come and join you for Yom Kippur.”

“Sounds good. Now what about that rolling bridge? If your brigade’s in the north and there’s trouble down south, how does
it get to the Canal?”

“Not up to me, Abba. I hope somebody’s thought about that.”

Pasternak resisted the notion of embracing Amos; too heavy a gesture for what was happening, so far. “Okay. If you can get
to a telephone up there, call me.
Shana tova
[A good New Year], Amos.”

“Shana tova, Abba.” Amos threw him an ironic salute and left. The desk drawer was still open. It occurred to Pasternak that
the best place for Yael’s letter was the
Soon
file. The intense mood of the dinner at Shimshon’s was fading, after weeks of searching his mail for word from her, and waiting
for a phone call, at least. Nothing. Nothing! Who could tell, with First Sergeant Luria? To the
Soon
file with her! So he thought. But he reached for the paper cutter and slit open the letter. What to all the devils was she
up to now?

No way of knowing, from the single sheet of warm bright chatter; the sound of Los Angeles and of pure devious Yael. He dashed
off one rapid sheet in reply.

KIVSHAN

TEL AVIV

26 September 1973
Erev Rosh Hashanah

Dear First Sergeant —

Amos just brought your letter, which is three weeks old. He picked it up at the flat on his way to the Golan Heights. His
battalion has been transferred there from Sinai, a funny business. Our air force tangled with the Syrians two weeks ago and
shot down twelve planes, so Dode Moshe may anticipate a reprisal attack.

I was giving up on you when our post office snails finally crawled up with your short billet-doux. So you’re busy now with
that film foolishness and happy to be back in the expatriate paradise. Good luck to you. I envy Sheva Leavis your services
as adviser and troubleshooter. I could use them. Business is bound to bring me to the USA one of these days. I’ll let you
know when I come, and maybe we can pick up where we left off at Shimshon’s. Meantime enjoy Eden, don’t eat the wrong apples,
and shana tova.

A
voiding the Rosh Hashanah eve highway traffic, Amos’s driver tried to speed north through shortcuts and byways, but it was
slow going here, too. Vehicles were few on the farmland back roads, but people cluttered them in holiday best, walking to
the villages or to relatives’ homes. Up on the wild green Heights the Rosh Hashanah feeling dimmed in the ambience of crossroads
guarded by bored soldiers, fenced-off Zahal camps flying the Star of David, and many armed jeep patrols. At the local brigade
headquarters Colonel Ben Shoham greeted him with something like wartime briskness. “Pasternak, as soon as you’ve drawn your
tanks and supplies put your battalion here.” He fingered a red circle on a wall map. “Be ready by morning for all eventualities.
You’ll be my counterstrike force.”

“What’s the situation, sir?”

“Not clear. Not so good.” The bushy-haired officer sounded unafraid, but he had the grim weary look of a field commander with
a single brigade, holding a front against seven enemy divisions.

“My deputy’s been having trouble drawing tanks.”

“That’s all cleared up. Yanosh’s troops have top priority on everything.”

Near sunset the bulk of Amos’s men arrived in a long convoy of busses. They swarmed into the supply depot to draw tanks out
of storage; to test engines, bore-sight guns, load shells, magazines, and signal equipment, and grab up the thousand items
of tank kits, all in a great noisy chaos. Here Rosh Hashanah ceased to exist, except for a small knot of soldiers in knitted
skullcaps off in a corner of the depot with prayer books, rushing through a New Year service. Amos and his junior officers
kept watching and checking far into the night, to ensure having at sunrise a counterstrike force of thirty-five working tanks.
At 3
A.M
. he went to snatch a little sleep in a bleak tin-roofed officers’ hut. Piling coarse blankets on a cot, for it was very cold,
he pulled off his boots, and glanced again at his orders. The envelope his father had given him fell out of his despatch case:
square, pale blue, no stamp. Inside was a single sheet.

Mon cher
Pasternak
fils
:

My husband and I are here for the Independence Day Parade. I have been troubled to think that in our recent adventure I may
have been unnecessarily rude or evasive. You asked my name. It is Irene Fleg. In “real life” I am a happily married woman
living in Paris, the mother of three children. My husband is M. Armand Fleg, a businessman active in the Alliance. If you
happen to be in Paris one day, we will be pleased to see you. Meantime let me thank with less coyness the brave lady with
the wet stockings who brought off a great exploit for Israel, and made me feel safe in a very foolhardy escapade. I was approached,
felt challenged, and volunteered. Thanks in part to your cool courage, I came out with a whole skin. Never again!

Irene Fleg

Pasternak
fils
had more pressing things on his mind now than the tanned blond lady, but he had been long in the field and he had no steady
girlfriend. As he slipped under the blankets in his heavy tank coveralls he was reflecting that this was an oblique sort of
come-on letter. A Parisienne with three children and a husband active in the Alliance, therefore probably rich; out of the
question, and not his style anyway. Still, how peculiarly seductive she had seemed. … Maybe one day when all this cooled down
… He fell asleep indulging in these weary fantasies.

D
ov Luria had a very different Rosh Hashanah eve. At midday he was flying at forty thousand feet over the Golan, photographing
Syrian tanks and artillery, massed for miles on miles right up to the Purple Line of the cease-fire; and before sundown, dressed
in a stiff new civilian suit, he was walking arm in arm with Galia Barak to the Ezrakh’s synagogue in Jerusalem. A bizarre
transition, but such was an aviator’s life. The Baraks had invited him and his parents for holiday dinner, and his father
had told him to bring Galia to the Ezrakh’s services first. Dov was mildly tolerant of his father’s drift to religion, and
Galia was not about to object to anything suggested by Dov’s famous father. She was dizzy with tension, awaiting a serious
word from Dov. She wore a costly red wool dress bought for her in Tel Aviv by her mother, just for this dinner, after they
had shopped vainly for two days in Jerusalem.

As for Dov, he was more than ready to speak the serious word, but this fighter pilot was plain scared. Galia Barak baffled
him. Did she really like him? She now seemed to him the unmatchable girl among girls, her dark eyes a fathomless mystery,
her body a tall sweet flame, her every word charming and witty, her every motion full of grace, her relatively shy and chaste
kisses the tantalizing essence of undeclared love. He hoped she cared for him, but on the other hand he had heard she was
also seeing a very tall paratrooper. Dov was uncomfortable about his short stature, for Galia was half an inch taller. Girls!
Suppose she turned him down?

They were walking in the pedestrian stream filling the street, for in the Holy City, auto traffic was down to zero. Friends
greeted her and gave Dov sharp-eyed looks which warmed her heart. That Galia was going with a Phantom pilot was known all
through Jerusalem’s teenage set, though at the moment he was in mufti and complaining about it. “The tie chokes me,” he said.
“My father had this religious grandmother. She once told him that in the old country a new suit for Rosh Hashanah was a must.
So last week he dragged me out and bought me this getup.”

“I love it,” said Galia. It was a checkered brown suit which the Hebrew label called “Scotch tweed,” and for Israeli ersatz
it fit well enough. Services were already droning inside the Ezrakh’s little synagogue on a side street, and Benny Luria was
waiting by an open worm-eaten wooden door hanging askew on its hinges.

“You go in the women’s section,” he said to Galia.

“I know, I know.” She slipped away, laughing. A bearded
gabbai
led them to reserved front seats in the packed plaster-walled shul. Deep in prayer by the Holy Ark, the Ezrakh did not glance
around at them, though General Luria’s uniform was causing a stir. Without explanation, the Ezrakh had told him to wear it.

For Dov the service was a bore. The standings, sittings, and chantings confused him, and he passed the time reading the quaint
Hebrew of the liturgy, all new to him. When the Ezrakh gave a brief talk, Dov was surprised at his clear colloquial Hebrew.
He was half expecting Yiddish.

“K’tiva v’hateema tova!”
the Ezrakh began in his high weak voice. (“A good decree, written and sealed, to you all!”) “This greeting, dear friends,
should not be used at services tomorrow, on the second night of our holiday. Tonight, as we are taught, the righteous and
the wicked receive their final decree. But
bainonim
[mediocrities] have the ten days until Yom Kippur to review their deeds, and true remorse can still change the outcome.”
He stroked his long white beard, glancing around with a little smile. “So you see, if
tomorrow
night you wish your neighbor a good decree, you imply he is not righteous, but a mediocrity! Yet how can you be sure? We
must judge every man on the side of merit. All the same, my friends, I give you permission to wish
me
a good decree tomorrow night, because to my pain, I am a mediocrity of mediocrities, and I thank the Creator for the Ten
Days of Repentance.”

Dov asked Galia, when they came out amid the chattering congregants, “How was it in purdah?” The women were all staring at
his father.

“Oh, b’seder, but I sure got funny looks. Mostly old ladies in there. I guess the young ones are home making dinner.” The
first stars were out in the clear violet Jerusalem sky, and a cool breeze was blowing. “General, I told Mama that Dov and
I would walk to the Wall after services. So enjoy dinner, and we’ll be back later.”

“Shana tova,” he said, with a paternal wistful smile. Those two could skip dinner or do what they pleased. The world was theirs.

Hand in hand they walked downhill, across a valley and up the slope to the Old City. More tense than he had been while flying
over Syria, Dov wondered how to speak a serious word, meantime telling Galia about a tank column that had broken through here
to the Jaffa Gate in the Six-Day War. He had learned this in an army tour of battle sites for recruits. The route was unmarked,
just so many hilly streets and vacant weed-choked lots.