The Glory (74 page)

Shayna said, “My God, is he sick?”

“Heartsick maybe,” said Kishote, and he acidly quoted the Book of Numbers, “
‘A land that eats its inhabitants.’
They’re trampling him in the mud. Why? He didn’t write the Agranat Report.”

“God bless you, Kishote,” remarked Sam Pasternak, who had come up beside Yossi and heard him. “He’s still a great man, and
they’re hounding him to death. He and I were walking down Ben Yehuda yesterday, and a woman spat at him, screaming, ‘You murdered
my son,’ and ran off. He turned dead white. It happens to him often, things like that. God pity anyone who’s ever led the
Jews! From Moses onward.”

Noah Barak appeared in a new blue suit, accompanied by a fat French-speaking rabbi with a square red beard, engaged by his
parents because of the Alliance guests who would be baffled by a harangue in Hebrew. Passing the table of presents, Noah saw
the people gawking at the painting and halted. “What is
that
?” he asked his father, who was showing it to Dayan.

“It seems to be a Mondrian, son,” said Barak, “and it seems Guli brought it.”

“Guli, eh? It goes back to him tomorrow.”

“The Levinsons are thrilled by it, Noah. Better ask Julie.”

“I don’t have to ask her. I’ll tell her.”

The two musicians furnished by Zion Gardens began to play an old wedding tune on loud electronic instruments. “It’s starting,
Yossi,” said Pasternak, and he walked off toward Amos, deep in converse at a side table with Irene Fleg.

Abruptly Shayna said to Kishote, “I may go to Australia, you know.”

“What!” Yossi pushed up his glasses and stared.

“Just to see Reuven. Lena writes that he isn’t eating, and doesn’t like it there. She’s invited me to come and cheer him up.”

“Well, Shayna, I may be going to Los Angeles myself.” At the dark look crossing Shayna’s face he hastily added, “Listen, I
want to see my daughter, and there’s business I can look into.”

“By your life, Don Kishote, California? Whatever you do, come back.”

“Do you imagine I won’t? There’s the bride. The ceremony’s on.”

In a buzz of admiring comment among the guests seated in rows of gilt chairs, Julie was entering the lawn on her father’s
arm, and she came to Noah’s side under a permanent canopy adorned with fresh flowers. The French-speaking rabbi was expansive.
He was a Rumanian refugee from Hitler, he said, and he had lived in France before making aliya. How heartwarming to be marrying
a Jewish girl from France to an officer of the Jewish navy, the first since the reign of Solomon! France had been Israel’s
greatest friend in her struggle to survive, and one day would be again. Young people like this happy couple could not conceive
how Jews had been regarded in his own youth; a cowardly, weak, helpless, victimized race, surviving only by cunning, like
rats. He still thanked God every day that he had lived to see the rebirth of a strong free Jewish people in the Holy Land,
with powerful armed forces. And so on and so forth, at passionate length.

Standing with Nakhama at Noah’s side, Zev Barak was very ill at ease with all this galutnik effusiveness, but looking around
he could see that the Alliance people were eating it up, while the Israelis who knew no French were fidgeting, and those who
understood exchanged cynical smiles. What surprised him was that Moshe Dayan, half-hidden in the crowd, was listening with
enthralled attention, his pallid face lit with something like its vivacity of former days.

Noah crushed the glass with his heel, the musicians struck up a gay tune, and nearly all the men took off the skullcaps supplied
by Zion Gardens. Dayan came to Zev Barak, grasped his hand, and with his one eye agleam, looked him in the face. “Thank you
for inviting me, Zev. Beautiful bride, splendid son.” He walked out without another word to anybody.

Amos was helping himself to chicken salad when his father came beside him. “So, when do I celebrate yours?”

“When I meet the right girl.”

“You fancy that blond French lady, eh? You won’t find one like that in Israel.”

“I’m not looking for one, Abba.”

“Well, just watch yourself. A lady like that, Amos, can eat you for breakfast, and you won’t even know it until she shits
you out.”

Amos screwed up his face. “To all the devils, Abba, that’s crude. That’s disgusting.”

With a heavy-lidded look, his father put a hand on his shoulder. “I see a great future for you, but not as a Parisienne’s
poodle.”

After a buffet lunch the wedding guests left Zion Gardens with the customary extravagant compliments to the Levinsons and
the Baraks, who stood at the archway making farewells. Soon they were all gone, and waiters were dismantling the table and
cleaning up the littered lawn.

“Alors, c’était très joli,”
sighed Julie’s mother.

“Well, it was in good taste,” said Mr. Levinson, “and considering the country’s mood, the Hilton might have been too elegant
at that. With whom do I settle, Zev?”

“I’ll take care of it and let you know.”

“Now, I’m the father of the bride. This was at my expense, everything.”

“Most generous of you.”

When Nakhama and Zev were left alone amid the debris and the gossiping cleaners, she said, “So, Noah goes first, not Galia.
The war, the war! Poor Galia.”

He put his arm around her. “They say married people get to think alike, Nakhama. There’s an instance for you.”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “Oh, what a fool that Daphna Luria was, what a stupid fool, with her stupid ceramics. But
Julie’s nice, and they’re decent people, they’ll be nice in-laws.”

“Especially living in Cherbourg,” said Barak. It made her giggle. “Nakhama, where are the girls?”

“Waiting in the car, I guess.”

Ruti was, but Galia sat with Dzecki Barkowe in his newly repainted gleaming blue Porsche, parked behind their car in the street.
“If it’s all right with you,” Galia called to her parents, “I’d like to drive out with Dzecki for a while.”

“Why not?” said Barak. Nakhama clutched at his arm as the Porsche rocketed off.

T
he brisk woman behind the Air France counter in the Athens airport cast an admiring eye at the broad-shouldered man in brown
tweed who handed her an Israeli passport with his ticket. “All the way to California today, Monsieur?”

“Yes, land of dreams.” She laughed and checked the bags through.

“Kishote!” Amos Pasternak exclaimed, as Yossi dropped beside him in the tourist section of the Air Bus. “What were you doing
in Athens?”

“Knocked around Greece for a week. Very educational. And you?”

“Going to Paris on a five-day leave.”

“No place better, but you should have a girl along.”

“You’re going there too?”

“Just to change planes, then on to Los Angeles.”

“You haven’t resigned, have you, Yossi? There’s been talk —”

“I know. Motta Gur agreed to my going inactive for at least a year, possibly two. I’ll spend some time with Yael and my daughter
in L.A., do some travelling, and then — what’s the matter?” Pasternak was staring at a black-mustached swarthy man arguing
with the stewardess at the front of the section.

“Nothing. How will Motta do as Ramatkhal, do you think?”

“Motta was lucky. He was in Washington, so he made no mistakes in the war and he starts clean.”

Amos put a hand on his arm, as the stewardess wrested a large bag away from the man and stowed it. The man passed down the
aisle, muttering. Amos whispered, “You remember the Sabena plane?”

“Who doesn’t?” Sayeret Matkhal had stormed the hijacked aircraft at Lod airport and gunned down all the terrorists.

“That guy is the twin of a hijacker I killed. This sure is the airport for them, it’s a security sieve. They shot up the TWA
counter here, you know, a bloody massacre.”

“I know.” Kishote spoke low. “Well, are you concerned?”

“No, no. TWA had a flight going to Tel Aviv, so they were killing Jews and Americans, fair game. Air France isn’t a terrorist
target, Yossi, no government crawls to the Arabs like the French.”

“Amos, will my son make Sayeret Matkhal?”

“He’ll just have to apply, when the time comes.”

“You put the idea in his head.”

“I did.”

“Now he’ll be heartbroken if he can’t get in.”

“Look, he’s courageous and physically he excels. He’ll get his chance.”

At takeoff Amos passed the
International Herald Tribune
to Kishote. “Seen this?” he shouted over the jet roar. A cartoon reprinted from the
Los Angeles Times
showed Kissinger trying to drag a balky mule with a Golda Meir face to a wagon labelled “Peace Process,” where a Sadat-featured
mule stood smiling in the traces, ready to pull. On the ground lay a wooden plank, lettered
NO MORE AID
. The caption read,
“To reason with a mule, use a two-by-four.”

“I’ve seen worse in our own press,” said Kishote. “The country’s in a total funk. In the army, in the government, in the people,
I see nothing but decay and collapse.”

Amos argued against Kishote’s gloom. The war-weariness in the country was a natural thing, he said, but in fact the future
looked good. The Arabs had blown their one shot at a decisive surprise assault, Israel had passed an ultimate test of fire,
and Zahal now controlled more Arab territory than it had before the war. The enemy had learned once for all that the military
option led nowhere. Egypt had broken the united Arab front with the face-to-face disengagement talks at Kilometer 101. If
the national objective was peace, it was coming closer.

“Well, I like your attitude, young fellow,” Kishote said, “but we don’t hold the cards we held, our image is badly damaged,
and to me the crime against Dado is a symptom of deep rot.”

The stewardess brought lunch trays. Amos bantered with her in French, her replies were perky, and when she swayed away Kishote
said, “There’s a girl you might have fun with in Paris.”

“More trouble than it would be worth,” Amos said.

Kishote recalled seeing him hanging around one of the French wives at the Barak wedding. Was she awaiting him in Paris?
That
could prove far more trouble than it was worth. But the young man was not asking his advice. Yossi settled back in his chair
and slept like a soldier in the field. In the airport he hurried off to make his Los Angeles connection, and Amos passed through
customs behind the twin of the hijacker, who now seemed harmless enough, juggling luggage like everyone else.

At the front of the crowd outside the plane gate, Madame Fleg gave Amos a shy little wave. She wore a pale blue suit with
a crisp white collar, a lily of diamonds as a shoulder pin, and a small gray hat and veil.

“Hi. This is for you, Irene.”

“
Tiens!
A present!” She began tearing the duty-free shop wrapping off the package.

“Wait, wait till you get home.”

“I never can … Oh, Amos!”

“It’s nothing. Just to replace the one that blew overboard.”

She whipped the pink chiffon scarf around her neck and kissed him, a quick cool brush of thin lips on his mouth.
“Merci!”

“Where do we get a cab?”

“Come along.”

“My reservation is at the Hotel Feydeau.”

“Yes, you told me.” She led him deftly through the terminal throng, and out into a warm rainy afternoon. “Here we are.” To
a wizened old chauffeur at a black Jaguar she said, “Take monsieur’s bags, Theodor. Hop in, Amos.”

In the back seat, while Theodor stowed the bags, Amos swept an arm around her. She pulled away with a warning smile, pointing
at the chauffeur. As the car left the airport, she squeezed his hand hard against her wool-clad thigh. Amos kept wondering
why to all the devils she had brought this decrepit driver. Couldn’t she drive a Jaguar herself? Puzzling lady, but fascinating,
that bony face, those high cheeks. A few wrinkles at those slanted clever eyes, so what? He knew a dozen smooth-skinned prettier
girls who bored him.

They turned into a dead-end alley in an old section of Paris and stopped. “Where are we, Irene? This isn’t the Feydeau.”

“This is our garage,
chéri
,” she said, as Theodor got out and opened a double wooden door. “The fact is, Armand insists that you stay with us.”

“Armand? You said he’d be in Italy.”

“Well, he got back early.”

“Look, it’s absurd, Irene, out of the question.”

“It’s done,
chéri
. Armand is a quiet man, but what he says, goes.”

They entered from the back a narrow town house, where children’s voices resounded as they went up many stairs. “We have a
modest guest room for those who can climb three flights,” she said, panting a little.

“Call this modest?” There was a four-poster bed, hunting prints on the walls, and a red leather armchair and ottoman by a
brick fireplace. He dropped the bags, seized the slender body of Irene Fleg and gave her a hungry kiss. “Look, Irene, I can’t
stay in your house, you know it’s preposterous —”

She slipped from his arms, whispering, “
Doucement
, here’s Madeline.” In walked a tall uniformed maid with a square hairy face, carrying towels and bed linen. Behind her came
the son wearing a natty school uniform, who snapped to attention and saluted.
“Bonjour, le vrai héros!”

“Bonjour!”
Saluting, Amos racked his brain for a way to get out of this trap. He had not flown to Paris for five days of bourgeois hospitality,
to all the devils. Romance under the Fleg roof, with three children racketing around and servants popping in and out, was
not to be thought of.

“Come, Anatole,” said Irene Fleg, “we’ll let the hero rest before dinner, and I’ll help you with your English lessons.”

In her son’s room she coached him through Poe’s “The Raven,” smiling about poor Amos up there in comic discomfiture. She had
been unable to resist his telephoned offer to come to Paris. He would expect her to make love, she realized,
vite, vite,
on his arrival, no doubt in his hotel room; not her style, but she had agreed to his visit, leaving all to chance and impulse.
Her husband’s early return had gotten her out of an awkward spot. End of problem, Amos was here for five days under her roof.
Why look beyond that?