All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (30 page)

There were sunny days and fragrant evenings, an atmosphere of dreams and expectations. Strangers formed friendships more readily on the threshold of great adventure. But not I. My shyness isolated me. I yearned to strike up a conversation with Inge, a young Jewish girl of German origin whose melancholy beauty disturbed me—no surprise there. She had neither friends nor family. Clearly she was destined for me. Suddenly I forgot all past temptations. It was over with Hanna; Inge alone occupied my thoughts. She was surely sweeter than Hanna. Oh, how I could love her! Sometimes I found myself standing behind her in line. If only I could manage to speak a word, just one word. But I was paralyzed. I knew I should reach out and touch her arm, offer her my warmest smile, explain a difficult passage of the Bhagavad Gita or of Schopenhauer to her. I should whisper to her, convince her. I didn’t want to leave Europe never having made love. But I didn’t dare. I was afraid, afraid of being rejected. I promised myself I would be more daring on board. Surely at sea everyone becomes more daring. Everyone but me.

The ship, the
Negba
, was packed. There was no room to stand on the deck and no place to be alone. All of us were housed in the hold. From time to time we were allowed onto the deck for air, and I would search for Inge, my new obsession, in the unwieldy crowd. But there were too many people, many young children. Someone told me that a few women had moved into cabins. Had they suddenly gotten rich, or perhaps accommodated someone? Maybe if I showed my press card to a crew member, he would let me take a look at the other decks. But I was too shy. As always. To make such a request would mean drawing
attention to myself. Ever since the camp it had been my watchword to lie low. I promised myself I would be more daring in Israel, where everyone is daring.

It was an uneventful crossing. I prayed, read, wrote in my journal, took notes for my articles, observed others and myself, counting the hours and keeping busy so as not to get seasick. The night before we arrived I didn’t sleep. I wanted to be awake, eyes and ears wide open, all my senses honed, to catch my first glimpse of Mount Carmel. With a little luck I might even glimpse the Prophet Elijah.

I hoped to be the only one with this idea, but of course I wasn’t. Dozens of couples came out onto the deck. Some had brought blankets. “Wake us as soon as the mountain appears on the horizon,” they asked. But we didn’t have to wake them. They couldn’t sleep either.

I leaned against the railing and scoured the starry sky, rocked by the waves. A sadness as deep as the ocean enveloped me, so oppressive that I found it hard to breathe, so powerful that I had a sudden urge to end my life, to throw myself overboard and be swallowed up and carried off by the waves. I had never felt the lure of death so strongly, not even in my wretched room near the Porte de Saint-Cloud. Just then a man unknown to me, his face shrouded in shadow, spoke to me, and thus unwittingly saved me. I didn’t understand what he said, but I knew he was talking to me, or perhaps to himself through me. History, religion, poetry—he talked and talked, and when, in the end, I turned to him, Lord be praised, I caught sight of Inge next to him, staring off at the same waves, perhaps summoning death just as I had. I prayed that the man between us would go away, that he would speak to one of the many other passengers on the deck. And God heard my prayer. I should have stopped the man to thank him for saving my life, but Inge was right there, so very near, and I was afraid to lose her. Gently I moved closer to her, absorbing the silence that reigned over sky and sea, a silence broken only by whispers of love and prayer. I was sure, absolutely sure, that to take her hand would be to embark on an unforgettable love story. We would begin a new life together, have beautiful, mischievous children, and be together always, never separated, not even by death. I needed just one gesture, just one. But unsurprisingly, I remained paralyzed, imprisoned by my inhibitions. The blessed moment passed. It had lasted an hour, perhaps even two, but it passed, and all at once a powerful cry of triumph sprang from a thousand throats: “There it is!” I peered out at the horizon that would soon be tinged with the flames of dawn, and then
I saw it: Mount Carmel, looming high, menacing the enemy but beckoning to us, the faithful, to approach. My cheeks were suddenly and not surprisingly damp.

Was it our imminent arrival that had moved me so deeply, or bitterness at once again having let my chance slip away? I looked to see whether Inge had been as moved, but when I turned she was gone.

I felt alone in the crowd that thronged the deck, stupidly and irrevocably alone. As always.

I still have my notebook from those days. The handwriting is choppy and illegible, for I was elated as never before. In a few moments I would tread the soil of Israel and breathe the air of Galilee. It was like reliving my childhood dreams. Just imagine: Isaiah and Habakkuk, Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Ishmael, Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman and Rabbi Itzhak Lurie may have walked this very ground. Then, too, this was my first news assignment. Observing everything around me and within myself, I was determined to absorb and retain it all—the color of the sky (is there such a thing as biblical blue?), the slow and steady shifting of the clouds, the deafening sounds of the port mingled with shouts and cries in countless languages. The heat. The excitement. The officials wearing shorts!

The police and customs formalities were quick. Here no one was treated as an alien. Still, there was an assembly line of stamps, forms, and money-changing. People smiled and winked at me, not because I was a journalist but because I was a Jew, because we were all Jews. Immigration officials shook my hand and welcomed me. A disturbing thought crossed my mind: How could they be sure no spies had slipped in among all these immigrants from the four corners of the earth? Anyone could have told them any story; it was impossible to check. I made a mental note to look into it. In the meantime, I followed the immigrants to a reception center with the highly poetic name of Bat-Galim, “Daughter of Waves.”

Everyone in our group slept in the same tent, and—yes, there is a God—I was lying on a cot next to Inge, and all at once she reached out to me in the darkness. Truly, this was a land of miracles. Trembling, I took her hand in mine and held it for an eternity; perhaps an entire minute. Was this why I had come to Israel? To find out what it was to hold a delicate, sweet, and open hand, a feminine hand?

I grew up in a tradition that denies chance. Though not everything is predetermined, everything is linked. Nikos Kazantzakis once
said, citing an Etruscan proverb: “It is not because two clouds are joined that the spark ignites; two clouds are joined so that the spark may ignite.” Yet, free will and the possibility of choice exist. Rabbi Akiba tells us that all is foreseen, though human beings have free choice.

Holding Inge’s hand in mine, I was free to keep it or to let it go, to kiss it or caress it, to let my own hand wander. Would I dare? Yes, I would. I felt her breast, and the blood rushed faster in my veins. Then I stopped, perhaps out of modesty, or out of fear. Looking back, I think of what Oscar Wilde said: Our greatest regrets are for the sins we didn’t commit. I had made a fool of myself in Inge’s eyes, and now she proved it to me, sighing and withdrawing her hand. Feeling mutilated and empty, I could not fall asleep.

The next morning I couldn’t face her and promised myself that the next night would be different. But there was no next night. Someone came to pick her up and take her to a kibbutz. She never even said goodbye, and for the first time since Écouis I forgot to say my prayers before breakfast, not even realizing it until nightfall, by which time it was too late to put on the tefillin. Yet the sky did not split; no bolt of lightning struck me. But it happened in Israel.

A few days later I left Bat-Galim, having gathered enough material to write my first article on the immigrants’ arrival. I went to Tel Aviv to register with the foreign press service at the Kete Dan Hotel, but first I took a walk along the shore, and suddenly I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. Aground off the coast lay a hulking wreck: all that remained of the
Altalena
. Someone had written in gigantic white letters on its blackened flank: “Herut, you will end like the Altalena.” Why had that relic of a shameful episode not been erased? Herut, after all, was a democratically constituted, legal party. Why call for its doom?

I introduced myself to the officer in charge of press relations and was issued a “foreign correspondent” card, which, I admit, impressed me. The provisional government of Israel, no less, requested that civil and military authorities aid and support me in the performance of my duties. The young state was eager to please. All doors were open to overseas journalists. I traveled by jeep, bus, and truck, listening in a trance to war stories and dramatic tales real or imagined. An incorrigible romantic, I felt transported back to the days of Judah Maccabee. I crisscrossed the small country, bemused by its diversity and of course by its Jewishness, but most of all by its openness. No words could express
the peoples courtesy and warmth. No one locked their doors at night. Had they no fear of thieves? They have to make a living too, people told me with a laugh.

In Tel Aviv I tried to contact Nicolas, but he was in the army. I did manage to locate the two sisters of André Bodner, a former OSE counselor. In Haifa I ran into my cousin Leizer Slomovic, a future professor of Talmud in Los Angeles who had married a girl from Sighet. I spent a Shabbat with them, and their happiness was contagious. They gave me the address of our cousins Reshka and Leibi Feig in Tel Aviv, and I spent another Shabbat with them. Reshka knew my taste for latkes, which I had not eaten since the ghetto. They were happy, though their material circumstances were difficult, but so were everyone else’s. Individual problems didn’t seem to matter much, given the historic events the country was living through. My cousins talked like Zionist propagandists: A good Jew, a real Jew, ought not to spend even one day more than necessary in the Diaspora. Everyone here said the same thing. I was in no mood to argue and couldn’t have even if I had wanted to. I was conditioned to see only the good side of Israel. Call it sentimental, but I was moved when I spoke to a Jewish official, questioned a Jewish politician, saw a Jewish policeman or a Jewish army officer, or listened to a Jewish cabinet minister.

I loved the Galilee, so much so that I felt like settling down in Safed, city of mystic visionaries, or perhaps in Tiberias, of whose charms the Talmud boasts. But then, why not settle in the Negev, a desert unlike any other, of which so many poets ancient and modern had sung? And Jerusalem, most beautiful, most silent and inspired of cities—why not spend the years remaining to me there? Of course, I could not visit the Old City, the true Jerusalem; it was still in the hands of the Jordanian army. To see it I climbed the tower of Notre Dame, the Lamentations of Jeremiah ringing in my mind: How solitary, how abandoned, is the city of God.

For the first time since its founding in the days of King David, there was no Jewish life nor any Jew within its walls. Even after the Temple’s destruction, not everyone had deserted it. But now the Israelis seemed to have forgotten it, an inexplicable, disconcerting phenomenon I decided to investigate. But it wasn’t easy, for the witnesses to Jerusalem’s tragedy refused to speak. Faces went blank when I asked questions. I did not write on the subject, at least not yet. Much later I would speak of it in
A Beggar in Jerusalem
(1967) and
The Forgotten
(1989).

The fall of Jerusalem in 1948 haunts me still. Can it be compared
to its fall in the year 70, after the Tenth Roman Legion, commanded by Tiberius, nephew of Philo of Alexandria, laid siege to the city? Who were the men who defended her to the last? What happened during her last hours of sovereignty? I was riveted by the merest detail.

In my notebook I recorded what I managed to discover about her more recent fall. Here are excerpts from a chronicle:

That was my last entry.

The religious anti-Zionists reminded me of Flavius Josephus. He, too, sought to demoralize the inhabitants by preaching resignation
and inciting fighters to despair. Is there nothing new in the annals of our history? The question fascinated me, but I doubted it would interest my employers in Paris. They wanted a reporter, not a historian. I had been sent here to speak of living Jews, not dead Romans, of a wandering, dispossessed people who had become proud citizens. Flavius Josephus could wait. He had waited this long, he could wait a little longer.