The Hope Page 16

  She touched the bell. “Estelle, please bring us coffee on the terrace…. Come.” Barak followed her through the French doors to the patio and down a curving brick stairway, where she took his hand in a cool small clasp. “The darn lights are kaput out here. Don’t stumble over the potted plants…. Here we are.” She released him on the flagstone terrace, and they sat down; he on a padded lounge chair, she in a cushioned swing. “Just to make me a liar, the fireflies probably won’t show…. Oh, there’s one. And another.”

  The moving green flashes in fact were all over a lawn that sloped down to dark trees, beyond which the river gleamed in the moonlight. “You certainly tickled my father, he loves to be talked up to. If you’ve got a point, that is.”

  “That beautiful smell here—what is it?”

  “Gardenias. They line this terrace. My mother’s favorite flower. What’s the matter with your arm?”

  Her directness nonplussed Barak as Cunningham’s had. He thought he was using his arm normally. “What makes you ask?”

  “The way you move it.” In the light diffusing from the patio above, he could see her swing her whole arm, slightly bent, in an emphatic gesture. “Were you wounded?”

  “Yes, but it’s all better.”

  The maid arrived with the coffee. Emily poured two cups. “Have you ever read Emily Dickinson’s poetry? I’m named after her. My mother grew up in Amherst, her birthplace.”

  “Isn’t that in New England? Your father talks like a Southerner.”

  “Oh yes. He’s from Georgia. They met on a boat. Romantic. I write poetry, but not like Emily Dickinson. She had constipated emotions.”

  The self-conscious show-off remark left Barak with no immediate reply. Pause. “Well, those fireflies are very nice. You should write a poem about them.”

  “I have. Tell me about your wound.”

  “Do you want to write a poem about it?”

  “I’ve never talked to a warrior before. I’m just interested.”

  “Well, all right.” As he described the midnight skirmish with the daughter’s gaze fixed on him, he began to relive it, recounting with vivid detail the Arab assault and retreat, and the way he had been shot.

  “You’re sure it was an accident? Was there a soldier in your company angry at you?”

  Smart girl, he thought. On being hit from behind, he himself had at first suspected that a lazy malcontent or coward in his company might have done it. “No, the poor guy is a shlemiehl—a clumsy fool—but he loves me. He ran up at once as I lay there bleeding, and told me it was his doing. He was devastated.”

  They watched the fireflies. Emily’s swing creaked. A river breeze stirred a scent of green leaves and gardenias. “And I’m not a warrior, you know. We all have to fight because the Arabs don’t want us there. I was studying chemistry. That’s what I hope to be one day, a chemist.”

  “How utterly boring. Makes me think of drugstores.”

  “Excuse me, Emily, but that’s very childish. Chemistry is the foundation of everything. You and I, for instance, are two small chemical machines making noises at each other. Those fireflies work by chemistry. So do the stars.”

  Emily dropped her eyes and twisted her fingers in her lap. “Sorry. Actually, when we girls talk about chemistry among ourselves, it means whether we like a boy or not.”

  “I have a younger brother,” said Barak, “who’s studying physics. One day he may be a great physicist. Physics and chemistry are what the world’s all about, Emily. Including war.”

  “No, war is about men,” she said, “and you know that. I’m glad your wound healed. Do you know Othello?”

  “Well, I’ve read the play.”

  “‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed,’” Emily intoned, in a high strained little voice, “‘and I loved her that she did pity them.’”

  Barak said awkwardly, “At your age, do you think much about love?”

  “Juliet was twelve and a half.” Silence, creaking of the swing. “I could tell you about my own wounds, but I think I hear my father returning. Most of my poetry is about that.”

  “Then it’s sad stuff.”

  “No, some of it is very merry. Even funny.” As they stood up and went toward the dark staircase, she clasped his hand again. “This way…. Incidentally, it’s all about another girl. Did you like the fireflies?”

  “They’re magical.”

  Cunningham said as they came in from the patio, “Well, did she bore you to death? Or get too inquisitive?”

  “She’s as pleasant a hostess as you are a host.”

  “Oh? Dubious compliment!”

  “Good night,” the girl said to Barak and Pasternak. “Nice meeting you.” Looking at her in the light, Barak noted that she was flat-chested, a child. “Good night, father.” She kissed Cunningham and almost ran out.

  “We have to go, Zev,” said Pasternak. “We have a plane to catch in New York.”

  Cunningham held out a hand to Barak. “Hope you didn’t mind my little jokes about Wolf Lightning, or my disquisitions. It’s just my way.”

  “I enjoyed it all. Also your daughter’s company.”

  “That’s nice.” Cunningham’s thin lips widened in a cold smile. “If you remember anything I said, you’re free to mention it to Mr. Ben Gurion.”

  Driving to the airport, Pasternak opened up about Christian Cunningham more than he had before.

  “Now that you’ve met him, let me give you some background. He’s one of a kind. He was serving in the OSS in Italy in 1945, and I was in the underground there, getting Jews out in boats bound for Palestine. That was when we ate octopus. We’d worked with each other before, in France, but we both got really involved in a deal between the OSS and some German generals in northern Italy who wanted to surrender separately to the Anglo-Americans. It came to nothing, but he and I got to know each other well. He helped me obtain a boat in Genoa, in fact, that made two successful runs through the British blockade, loaded with DPs. I passed him some underground intelligence on German troop movements, ammunition dumps, and so on. By luck our people in Provence also got hold of a Wehrmacht coding machine, and I gave it to him. That was late in the war. I don’t know that it did any good, but he appreciated it. I imagine it earned him points with his bosses… Say, why are you so restless? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. This is a damn strange way to get back to Israel, that’s all,” said Barak irritably, “via New York, Panama, Brazil, and Czechoslovakia.”

  “Relax, Wolf Lightning.”

  ***

  At the wheel of a parked jeep, sweating in the humid evening, Yael watched the racehorse plane approach over Tel Aviv, circle to the east through distant AA tracer fire and black puffs, and bounce hard as it returned and landed. Dayan came striding across the tarmac in a strangely gaudy uniform. “Dode Moshe!” Yael called. Since her childhood in Nahalal he had been Dode, Uncle, to her.

  He came through the gate, glancing here and there. “Hello, Yael.”

  “Isn’t Zev Barak with you?”

  “No.”

  “I was ordered to meet him.”

  “So, you’ve met me.” He jumped into the jeep. “I don’t see my driver. Take me to Tel Hashomer.”

  The two pilots of the plane walked by, looking shaken. “Those poor Dutchmen had to come in over the Arabs,” he said, “because there was no wind. Well, they’re collecting double pay.”

  “How was your trip?”

  “Rough. Storms all the way.” Dayan yawned, put both arms behind his head, and settled in the seat. “I’ll be glad to get to camp and into bed.” He fell fast asleep in a moment. Yael drove to the armor base, detouring where roads passed within enemy gun range. The full moon was well up in the sky when she turned toward the Tel Hashomer gate. Here scout cars, jeeps, and half-tracks were grinding out in low gear, manned by helmeted soldiers in full battle dress. Dayan woke with a start. “What’s all this? That’s my battalion!” He leaped out and snapped an order to an officer
in a half-track, who repeated it on his walkie-talkie. The vehicles clanked to a stop as Dayan hurried off to the head of the column. From the wheel of a gun-mounted jeep close by, the driver saluted Yael, and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  “Kishote! Where’s Benny?”

  “Three cars behind us.” He pointed, and Yael saw her brother standing up in a half-track by the gun. She trotted to him. “Benny, how are you?”

  “Me? I’m fine. What brings you here?”

  “I drove Dode Moshe in from the airport.”

  “Dode Moshe? Then he’s back! Shiga’on! [Crazy, marvellous!] We thought we’d have to fight the war without him.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  “Jumping-off point. As soon as the truce ends, we go.”

  “Good luck and success, Benny!”

  The night was stifling, and she was wiping her face with a handkerchief when she returned to her jeep. Don Kishote was perched on its hood. “Ah, you’re back,” he said. “Good, give me something of yours. Give me that handkerchief.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going into battle. It’s an old custom. Didn’t you ever read Walter Scott? I’m supposed to carry a favor from a lady.”

  “Only from a lady you love, idiot.”

  “B’seder, I love you. You know you’re the prettiest lady alive.” Grinning, he held out his hand. “A handkerchief is fine.”

  Yael hesitated and giggled. “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m serious. Give it here.”

  The declaration of love, even if playful, rather got to Yael Luria. She ate up homage, however gross, and she was not wholly indifferent to Don Kishote. Ever since he had carried Benny off the Latrun battlefield, her brother had certainly taken to him, and the sometimes uncivilized glint behind the youngster’s glasses tickled Yael’s own wild streak.

  “Okay, okay.” She gave him the handkerchief. “It’s wringing wet, but there you are. Good luck!”

  “Do I get a kiss, too?”

  “Oh, go fight the war, child.”

  He tucked it into his helmet and ran to his armored jeep, for the column was starting to move with great shouts and clanging.

  ***

  “You’ll be firing the cannon,” Benny Luria told Kishote next day. They were peering into the cramped dark interior of a captured Arab Legion armored car, which stank like a broken toilet. Half-naked soldiers perspiring in the broiling sun were frantically wiring up a new radio, welding patches on shell holes, and oiling and fueling the vehicle. It was still attached by a tow cable to the half-track with which Dayan himself had salvaged it under enemy fire. Benny Luria had volunteered to go with him to attach the cable, and that had earned him command of the car.

  “Me? What do I know about cannons?”

  “Who does? A gunnery guy is coming out from Tel Aviv.”

  Amid fragrant crushed stacks of millet the commandos were changing shot-up tires, plugging bullet holes in leaking radiators, replacing broken caterpillar tracks and the like, and medics were bandaging the wounded; for the light battalion, slicing into the salient threatening Tel Aviv, had already surprised and subdued two little villages by dashing in without a mortar barrage, all guns firing and Dayan leading the charge. The surprised villages had fallen quickly, if at some cost.

  “Who can read this stuff, anyway?” Kishote gestured at the blurry instructions in Arabic stencilled all over the interior. “How will you run the thing?”

  “A car’s a car, a gun’s a gun,” said Luria. “We’ll run it. Dayan says this one cannon doubles our battalion’s firepower.”

  The artillery expert showed up, a burly sabra hoarse from yelling at recruits. He dinned elementary gunnery into Don Kishote, making him swivel the turret, train and elevate the weapon, and aim at targets far and near. Kishote was cramped into a tiny space, the smells of gasoline and piss choked him, and the instructor’s guttural barks bewildered him, the more so as the banging and screeching and sawing at the car went on without cease. After a while Moshe Dayan showed up. “Well, well, can he shoot?”

  “Give him an order,” said Luria.

  Dayan pointed to a tall tree far down the field. “Take off that bottom branch.”

  Don Kishote let fly with a roar and a puff of flame. The branch leaped off the tree.

  “That’s that,” said Dayan. “So now we are invincible. We go into Lydda.”

  The battalion blasted westward into the well-fortified airport town past antitank ditches, thick cactus hedges, and heavy fire from gun emplacements, risking hitting minefields but luckily avoiding them. The trouble began when the column reached the town center. Dayan’s attack plan was clear. Half the column would turn north led by the armored car, now dubbed the Terrible Tiger, and he himself would lead the other half south. After shooting up the town in both directions to spread havoc and fear, they would rejoin and dash out by the road they had come in; the mission, to soften up the objective for an assault by an advancing mechanized brigade. Dayan was not acting on orders, but improvising this raid on the basis of some confused communications, and he well knew that his battalion lacked the firepower to secure the town.

  The Tiger went charging toward the north end of Lydda as ordered. The inhabitants were indeed shocked by the apparition of an Arab Legion armored vehicle running amuck and blazing away in their streets, but all too soon they recovered and began to make it very hot for the Tiger with grenades and rifle fire. It was a while before Benny Luria, directing the vehicle from the turret and shooting the machine gun, fully realized why the townspeople were being so bold. From the garbled shouts by Dayan in his headphones he understood at last that everything was going as wrong as possible, and he halted the Tiger in an open square.

  Kishote, peering around through a forward slit at the milling Arabs, yelled over the engine noise, “Say, Benny, where are the rest of our guys?”

  “They all went south with Dayan, through Lydda and on down to Ramle.”

  “What, all of them? All the way to Ramle? How come?”

  “Balagan, that’s how come!”

  Rattle of bullets on the armor, roar of exploding grenades, car rocking violently.

  “You don’t mean we’re here in Lydda by ourselves?” shouted Kishote. The driver, a blond young kibbutznik who had volunteered, turned round eyes at Luria, all the whites showing.

  “That’s exactly right! By ourselves. So shut up and fire at that roof to the left! See the smoke? Machine gun nest! Fire!”

  Kishote fired. The recoils were making his chest sore, blood was staining his shirt, the shell fumes were choking him, but the exhilaration of battle was on him and he didn’t care. “Don’t stop, no more stopping,” Luria called to the driver, “we move and we fire, we move and we fire, and when I order you, we head back and join the others!”

  A welcome sight the Terrible Tiger must have been to Dode Moshe, as he led his beat-up battalion back through Ramle and Lydda, taking heavy punishment all the way; and Benny Luria was decidedly glad to see Dayan returning. The Tiger was cannonading and machine-gunning a fortresslike police station which was erupting fire and barring the way out of Lydda.

  “Well, there they come!” Luria shouted. “We’ll cover them till they get past the station, then we run for it and bring up the rear!”

  Kishote jumped to the slit to look at the commandos. After the protracted harmless hail of bullets on the armor he felt snugly safe, but he wasn’t. A sudden burning blow on his temple dizzied him. Putting a hand to the place he brought it away sticky with warm bright red blood.

  “Rotten luck!” exclaimed Luria. “Hurt bad?”

  “No, no, I’m all right. Just grazed.”

  “Good, keep firing! Hey, there’s Dode Moshe going by! Elohim, those guys have taken a battering! Lot of wounded lying in those cars, Kishote, God knows how many may be dead…”

  Kishote shot round after round into the fort. The Tiger’s shells were nearly gone when the enemy fire at last slackene
d. The rear battalion vehicles were going by, half-tracks pushing scout cars, scout cars pushing jeeps, radiators boiling, tires flat, a sorry array. Luria ordered the driver to turn and follow the last jeep, and Kishote pulled Yael’s handkerchief from his helmet to stanch the blood running down his cheek.

  “Your sister’s handkerchief did it,” he said. “It brought me luck. It made that bullet miss. Walter Scott is a real authority.”

  “You want to believe that? Kol ha’kavod,” said Luria. “Only in that case, how did that bullet get through the slit? Why didn’t it bounce off like a thousand others? That’s a pretty inefficient handkerchief.”

  All this was shouted through a lot of engine racket and rumbling of wheels over broken ground. They were heading out of danger, alive and feeling exalted.

  “Your trouble is you’re superstitious,” yelled Kishote. “Suppose I walked out there naked with her handkerchief? Are all the bullets supposed to miss me? Foolishness. You better read Walter Scott again. My question is, did we win the battle?”

  “Maybe Dode Moshe knows,” said Benny Luria. “I sure don’t.”

  “One thing I know,” said Kishote. “From now on I want armor, the thicker the better.”

  “Not me. Me for the air force, if I can qualify. Get above all this dust and noise.”

  10

  The Constellation

  Until the Constellation actually soared off the runway in Panama, Barak wasn’t sure that he was not stuck indefinitely in Central America, at a small sweltering airport bordered by banana plantations. His passport was gone, collected by an official wearing a uniform even gaudier than the fantasy of the Tel Aviv tailors. A gasoline truck drawn up before the nose of the giant plane blocked it from moving an inch. Still the pilots and the crew, a diverse gang of Israelis, volunteer Americans, and Canadians, went on pottering with the awesome engines and the interior instruments. They did not disturb the passenger cabin, handsomely furnished with long rows of new beige seats for the “Panama airline,” and decorated in grays and browns with modernistic panels of Panama scenes, including the Canal locks.