The Hope Page 4

  “Fried won’t be good for you. I’ll boil you some eggs.” Paula went out.

  Barak handed the Prime Minister a sheaf of the late despatches. He read and initialled them, making terse comments, and had Barak translate some for the American. Marcus shook his head as he listened. “Right away, the logistics need reorganizing, Prime Minister. Also the fronts must be stabilized. The way things are going—”

  “Fronts? What fronts? The whole country is the front,” said Ben Gurion peevishly.

  Paula Ben Gurion looked into the room. “We’re out of eggs.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ben Gurion. “I’ll just have tea with jam. Zev, I want to see that manifest on the Messerschmitts—”

  “You need some food. Zevi, be a good boy, run over to Greenboim’s store and get me four eggs.”

  “Paula, we’re having a top staff meeting,” Ben Gurion said irritably.

  “How long will it take him? Two minutes?”

  Barak stood up. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll go for the eggs.” She tended to treat him familiarly, and indeed as a child he had sometimes called her Aunt Paula.

  “Stay where you are!” Ben Gurion thrust out his jaw at Barak, then turned on his wife. “Give me anything. A bowl of soup, all right?”

  “Never mind, Zevi. I’ll get the eggs,” said Paula, departing.

  “Show him your plan,” Ben Gurion said to Marcus.

  The American passed to Barak an operational map of the Latrun area. Fresh red and green arrows sketched a second attack, mainly a variant of the first, with a new Palmakh diversion from the southeast. Marcus described his plan, and said he would order all newly arrived armaments moved to Shamir’s brigade at the Latrun position.

  “Well, Zev?” Ben Gurion prodded the silent Barak.

  “Shoot,” said Marcus, “if you have any criticisms.”

  Barak pencilled circles around two hilltop villages. “First of all, the Arabs must have moved back in there. Laskov’s armor took heavy fire from that flank this morning. I’d say recapture those villages before the next attack goes.”

  Marcus slowly nodded. “Sound thought.”

  Paula reappeared. “Greenboim is out of eggs, too.”

  “We’re discussing an important matter,” snapped Ben Gurion. “For God’s sake, forget the eggs.”

  “He may have some later. You said soup? There’s that nice canned American soup Yitzhak brought back.”

  “Good. I’ll have that.”

  “It’s peppery, though. It’ll bother your throat. I’ll make you some soup.” She put her hand to his bright pink face. “You’re cooler already.”

  Scrawling notes on the battle map, Marcus gave Barak an appraising glance. “Now, Zev, this bypass idea you brought up. Anything to it?”

  “If you capture Latrun, Mickey,” Ben Gurion interjected, “why a bypass road? I don’t want the troops hearing about a bypass road. They have to attack.”

  “It’s very rough terrain, sir,” said Barak. He summed up different reports he had heard. Some called the bypass notion preposterous, others favored trying it.

  “Soup,” said Paula Ben Gurion, entering with a tray.

  “Thank you, Paula.”

  “Taste it. Hot enough?”

  “Burns my tongue,” said Ben Gurion, taking a spoonful of the greenish soup.

  “Good. I made it in a hurry. I thought it might be cold.” She went out.

  “It’s cold,” Ben Gurion said.

  Marcus persisted. “Come on, Zev, what’s your opinion? Is it a pipe dream or not?”

  “It’s a bobbeh-myseh, Mickey,” Ben Gurion snapped at Marcus. “Know what that means?”

  Marcus smiled at the Yiddish byword. “Sure, a grandma story, but why?”

  “Never mind! You just concentrate on Latrun.” He picked up a despatch from the coverlet. “These French armored personnel carriers, Mickey, due to arrive tomorrow—Shamir’s brigade should get them straight from the boat.”

  “Can you handle that?” Marcus asked Barak.

  “If those are my orders.” Barak knew that, in the wild confusion at Haifa port, the chances of the vehicles arriving at all, let alone being unloaded in time for the attack, were very slim. He saw no point in saying so. Ben Gurion was fretful enough.

  “French matériel. That’s good,” said Marcus. “Don’t rely too much on Czechoslovakia. Stalin can shut off that faucet overnight.”

  “Yes, a Zionist Stalin isn’t,” said the Prime Minister. “He lets the Czechs sell to us, so as to kick the British out of the Middle East. We know that. That’s why his bloc votes our way in the UN, too. Meantime we pay good dollars to the Czechs, and they also sell to the Arabs, you realize. Communists don’t know from embargoes.”

  Marcus pointed at a yellow cable form on the bed. “Now, what about this new British cease-fire move at the UN? Is that on the level?”

  The Prime Minister waved both hands in dismissal. “A bluff, a bluff. By now, an old trick.” He fell into Talmudic singsong with thumb gestures. “The UN calls a cease-fire. We obey it. The Arabs ignore it and grab some territory. The war starts up again, we regain the lost territory.” He shook his head at Marcus. “But no more! When they stop fighting, we stop. Not before, and they’re not ready to stop.”

  The Prime Minister lay back on the pillows listening politely to Marcus’s next comment, but his face and bald pate kept getting redder. If a cease-fire wasn’t imminent, Marcus argued, the attack on Latrun should be delayed. The new Seventh Brigade still needed some hard drill. The heavy guns and personnel carriers could go to other fronts meantime to gain ground. For when a real cease-fire took effect, those lines might become Israel’s permanent boundaries.

  “Mickey, do me a favor, keep one thing in mind.” Ben Gurion raised his voice, and a stubby forefinger. “Your responsibility is Jerusalem. Jerusalem! And that means one thing. Latrun! Latrun! No delay, Jerusalem is starving! Cease-fire lines are not your problem, not now!”

  Paula Ben Gurion came striding in. “Now what? Why the screaming? Do you have to burst a blood vessel? Greenboim just sent up some eggs, after all. Do you want them boiled or fried?”

  “Boiled,” said the Prime Minister, in a drop of tone to complete calm.

  “You’re red as a beet. Behave yourself.” She felt his forehead, nodded, and turned to Marcus and Barak. “Maybe you can let him get some sleep? He was awake all night, sweating and tossing.”

  Marcus stood up as she left. “She takes good care of you, Prime Minister. Like my gal does.”

  Ben Gurion gestured at Barak. “What about Zev?”

  “Ah, yes. Zev, since I’m to take command of the whole Jerusalem front, I’m bound to need an English-speaking aide. Interested?”

  Nonplussed, Barak did not respond.

  “You got some objection, Zev?” inquired the Prime Minister. “This is what I’ve had in mind for you. Extremely important.”

  Paula appeared in the doorway. “Suppose I scramble them with onions? We have nice green onions.”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Ben Gurion, with a trace of appetite.

  ***

  “Is there a bar around here?” Marcus inquired, shading his eyes from the low sun as they came outside.

  “A bar?” Barak glanced around at the bleak concrete apartment houses, their balconies draped with washing. “I’m not sure.”

  “I could use a drink.”

  “We can pick up a bottle of cognac at Greenboim’s.”

  “Good enough.”

  In Greenboim’s makolet, a small general store piled with pots, pans, fresh vegetables, canned goods, magazines, bread loaves, laundry soap, toilet articles, hats, underwear, sieves, washboards, Bibles, and folding chairs, an apparent infinity of such items receded toward the shadowy rear, but no liquor. Up front sat Greenboim by an open counter, where cheesecloth covered defunct fish and chickens, and flies covered the cheesecloth.

  “Cognac? The best,” said Greenboim, a potbellied bearded man in
a bloody apron, and he produced a very dusty bottle of Palestine brandy out of a bin full of potatoes sprouting eyes.

  “Outstanding,” said Marcus, as Barak paid. “Now, where do we drink it?”

  “Mrs. Fefferman’s bakery next door has a table and chairs.”

  “Fine.”

  At a rickety table by the display of pastries, the gray-haired Mrs. Fefferman provided water glasses for the brandy, and slices of crumb cake. Marcus poured his glass half full and drank it straight down. Barak had seen such quaffing in the British army, but it jarred him. He cautiously sipped the raw brandy and ate cake. Marcus poured more for himself and murmured, glancing at the yawning proprietor, “Can we talk?”

  “Mrs. Fefferman doesn’t know English.”

  “Okay. Will my plan for Latrun work?” Barak only blinked at the American. “If you have doubts, Zev, state them. I don’t want to issue a bum operation order, first time out.”

  “Well, it’s a night attack, sir. That’s good. Giving the brigade more training first is excellent. Mandatory.” He hesitated. “As to that Palmakh battalion you’ve got attacking from the southeast—”

  “What about it?”

  “Colonel, they’ve been fighting the Egyptians since the war began. They’re badly cut up.”

  “Yadin told me they’re what’s available. The Palmakh’s dead set against assaulting Latrun. Why?”

  “There are a lot of opinions in Palmakh.” The brandy was burning Barak’s throat and stomach. He drank very seldom, and never by day.

  Marcus looked him in the eye. “Zev, you talked straight to Ben Gurion. Talk straight to me. Not everybody does here.”

  In rapid dry sentences, Barak ran through the strategic disagreement that had been plaguing the war: Ben Gurion’s obsession with Jerusalem, and his hankering for textbook military operations, derived from hasty reading of authorities like Liddell Hart and Fuller, versus the Palmakh concept of knocking out the Arab forces by proven tactics suited to Palestine, and to the volatile nature of the enemy. Marcus kept drinking as he listened.

  “Well, Zev, there’s only one commander-in-chief here,” Marcus commented, “and that’s Ben Gurion. Look at George Washington. You know our Revolutionary War, don’t you? Washington made fearful mistakes. Took terrible defeats. But he was commander-in-chief, he was a leader, and he won.”

  “Sir, Washington was a soldier. Ben Gurion’s a great man, but what he knows is politics.”

  “You have to go with the leader you’ve got. He’s your George Washington.”

  “And you’re our Lafayette,” said Barak, putting his glass to his lips and surprised to find it empty. Marcus laughed and poured him more, though Barak tried to wave away the bottle.

  “Lafayette brought over a trained army,” Marcus said, “and got the French fleet to fight on the American side. That’s really how old George beat the redcoats. I bring you bopkess. If you know that military expression.”

  “Napoleonic term, I believe,” said Barak, “for moral support.”

  “Exactly.” Marcus grinned. “You’ll have to win this war all by yourselves. And you will. Know why? Two reasons. One, your soldiers want to fight.”

  “Well, they have to, sir. No choice.”

  “Okay, whatever the motivation, they’re as good as the best damn soldiers I’ve ever seen. The other is your secret weapon.” Marcus gulped brandy. “The Arab High Command. Zev, what the hell’s the matter with them? Why didn’t they overrun you two weeks ago?”

  Barak said after a moment, “Sir, they’re not very experienced armies, you know.”

  “So what? They had plenty of British training, didn’t they? And they had you surrounded, outgunned, and outnumbered.”

  “Sir, in the manual they gave us in the British army in North Africa, three words were printed in big black type, define the mission, and—”

  “It’s in all military manuals,” Marcus interrupted. “It’s in the doctrine I dictated for your army.”

  “I saw that, sir. Well, the Arab mission in this war was to wipe out the Yishuv. Wasn’t it? No more of this little excrescence calling itself Israel! Three simple words: define the mission. But instead they’ve been tearing apart the land the UN awarded to the Palestine Arabs—Egypt grabbing Gaza and the Hebron area, Syria snatching at the north, Abdullah swallowing the West Bank and trying to swallow Jerusalem. They distrust each other. They lie to each other. They won’t admit defeats. They keep announcing victories that didn’t happen. In short, unclear on their mission, sir.”

  “Do you really want to be my aide?” Marcus asked. “Nobody’s forcing you.”

  “Colonel Stone, I’m honored.”

  “Well, then, you’re hired.”

  “Good. I request a few hours off duty, starting now.”

  “You do? There’s a soldier. What for?”

  “To see my wife. She’s not far, in Herzliyya. It’s been a while.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Four years.”

  “Kids?”

  “One son.”

  Marcus sighed. “Emma and I have missed out on kids. Israeli lady?”

  “Yes.”

  “Army?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  “At a party, when I was on leave from North Africa. A guy from the Brigade told me he was bringing the most beautiful girl in Tel Aviv. He wasn’t just talking. A week later I married her.”

  “Outstanding. Three hours off duty granted. Then meet me in Ramat Gan. Let me have that bottle. We’ll work out the logistics tonight for Latrun. You people have things to learn about logistics.”

  “About everything. We’re still guerrillas, and pretty amateurish.”

  Marcus struck his shoulder. “You said it, I didn’t, young feller. In the Negev kids were fighting without helmets and barefoot, in flimsy uniforms, on freezing nights.” As they walked out of Mrs. Fefferman’s, Marcus went on. “No doubt your wife’s been raking you over the coals, like my own darling. It’s been goddamn hard on Emma.” Marcus heaved a deep sigh, almost a groan. “Well, I’ve got me a general’s star, something I never made in the U.S. Army. Maybe that’ll please her.” He fell silent as they walked, then said slowly, “And my first combat assignment is to defend Jerusalem, the Holy City! How about that? You know something, Zev? Emma said, night before I left, ‘Why you? It’s not your fight,’ I asked her, ‘After what happened in Europe, don’t you think a Jewish State should exist?’”

  “What did she say, Colonel?”

  Marcus took a moment to reply. “She said, ‘If my husband has to go over there to fight for it, maybe it shouldn’t exist.’”

  “Is she Jewish?”

  “Yes.” A short laugh. “Not Orthodox, you know. Neither am I.”

  They came to the small gray Vauxhall the army had given Marcus. The driver was asleep at the wheel. Marcus startled him awake with a heavy rap on the hood.

  “Go and see your wife, Zev.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “That’s Mickey. Now, about that bypass idea B.G. called a bobbeh-myseh. Anything to it, really?”

  “Sir, I can reconnoiter the area tomorrow and let you know.”

  “You mean yourself? Kind of risky out there, isn’t it, snipers and such?”

  “No problem. I’d take an armed patrol.”

  “Well, we’ll see. We’ll discuss it in the war room tonight.”

  Driving to Herzliyya, Barak found himself cheering up. Why? The war situation was as threatening as ever. Prospect of seeing Nakhama and his boy? Reason enough, maybe, but there was more to his lift of spirits than that. It was Marcus. Barak knew all the commanders in Jerusalem, and he had observed their brabbling at first hand. Marcus was a likable and forceful presence, but as a front commander in Jerusalem, lacking Hebrew and without a savvy interpreter, he would be a tongue-tied outlander. Barak was sure he could help the man in the defense and relief of Jerusalem, and it was an important job, about that t
he Old Man was correct. If there were plusses and minuses in being too close to David Ben Gurion, this sudden temporary reassignment was a plus. And right away there was also the plus of putting his good arm around Nakhama’s exquisite soft slim waist.

  ***

  The house was very quiet, and still redolent of his father’s Schimmelpfennig cigars, though Meyer Berkowitz had been in America for months at the UN, where he headed the Israeli delegation. Barak called, “Anybody home?”

  Trampling on the stairs. Nakhama’s voice, alive with joy: “You! Finally, you!”

  She came dancing into the book-lined living room in a dingy housedress, flinging arms and legs this way and that like a child. “Mama phoned me that she talked to you, but she didn’t think you’d come today! How’s your elbow?”

  He encircled her waist with the good arm, and drew her to him with the heavy crooked cast. “See, it works!”

  Laughter, a light kiss or two, then a close embrace and passionate kissing. “Oo-ah, darling,” she exclaimed, bending away from him. “What is this? You’re stinking drunk! In the daytime, on duty? You?”

  “It’s part of my new job.”

  “A new job? What new job? Guzzling like a goy is part of a job? Can I make you something to eat?”

  “How’s the boy?”

  “Fine, having a nap, but listen—”

  “I’m not hungry. You listen!”

  He drew her down on the red plush couch his parents had brought from Vienna, presciently departing with all their possessions before Hitler marched in. The house was furnished with that stuff, and the books had never quite lost the mildewy aroma acquired on the long slow sea voyage. Barak told her of his assignment as aide to Marcus. Nakhama had heard gossip of an American adviser to Ben Gurion, but all she wanted to know was whether this meant she would see more of him.

  “Well, I think so. He won’t be running me around night and day like Ben Gurion.”

  “But—Jerusalem Command? How on earth will you get to Jerusalem? And if you do, won’t you be stuck there?”

  “You look beautiful, you know?”

  “Stop that”—she deflected his good arm—“and explain!”

  Barak described how Piper Cubs still flew in and out of the capital, maintaining military communication.