Israel (66 page)

Pickman was a tall, angular grey-haired man in his late fifties. He was a renowned philanthropist, and Becky remembered reading somewhere that in Pickman's youth he'd been a champion equestrian.

Whatever his activities, Carl Pickman left the stewardship of his family's store to his subordinate, Philip Cooper. In her two years at Pickman's Becky had glimpsed the store's owner on the sales floor a mere half a dozen times. Never had she seen stern Mr. Pickman so much as nod in the direction of an employee.

She turned away from Pickman's office and timidly knocked on Philip Cooper's far more modest door.

Cooper was coming around the side of his desk to shake hands with her. He offered her a chair and perched himself on the edge of his desk, crossing his arms as he regarded her.

“First of all, I want to apologize for my rudeness. You caught me by surprise, Miss Herodetsky.”

“I should apologize—”

“Nonsense. Now then, let me begin by saying that you are not in any danger whatsoever of being fired. You're in no trouble at all.” Cooper paused to remove his glasses and polish them on his crisp-looking pocket handkerchief. “It's just that I'm curious to know how you found out about the merchandise in our warehouse. I mean, it's all aboveboard, but it wasn't common knowledge by any means.”

“A friend of mine in Shipping told me about it.”

Cooper's baby-face lit up. “I see, your boyfriend.”

“Oh, no,” Becky said, aghast. “He's sort of a business acquaintance. You see, when I was working in my father's store—urn, that's a grocery; I mean a supermarket on the Lower—urn, it's downtown.”

The appalled look on Cooper's face made Becky wish his carpeted floor would open up and swallow her, that she could just tumble back down to her nice, safe handbag counter. She stared at his wingtips and plowed ahead.

“What I learned from working in the supermarket was that if you knew your suppliers, they'd be more inclined to see to it that your deliveries arrived on time. So I figured it would work the same way here. I took some doughnuts down to the men in Shipping and Receiving and got to be friends with them. Now, when a customer wants a certain color handbag and it's in stock but downstairs, Joey will bring it right up for me, and I—we—Pickman's—doesn't lose the sale.”

Cooper was laughing. “How extraordinary.” He walked back around his desk and seated himself in his big leather chair. He opened a box on his desk and took a cigarette. Becky craved one, but of course she didn't ask and would have refused one if he'd offered. “And the warehouse merchandise? What was that all about?”

“Mr. Cooper, I want the job as Millie—Miss Kirby's—assistant.”

Cooper smoked his cigarette and looked at her. “How much do you make?”

“As a senior sales clerk, thirty-seven dollars a week,” she said proudly.

Cooper shrugged. “This job pays only thirty-two fifty. You'd be taking a substantial salary cut.”

“Yes, sir.” She waited, perched demurely on the edge of her chair, knees together, hands clasped in her lap, heart thudding, holding her breath.

“Millie has spoken quite enthusiastically about you.”

“I know,” Becky said nervously, without thinking.

“Yes,” Cooper's blue eyes sparkled. “I suppose you would.” He was quiet, making up his mind. “All right, we'll give it a try.”

“Oh, thank you so much.”

Cooper pressed down on his intercom and said, “Millie, we're going to take Miss Herodetsky on.”

He got to his feet and Becky followed his lead. He shook hands with her and said, “Millie will work out the details.”

Nodding so hard her neck made creaking noises, Becky backed out of the office.

“You're not by any chance a member of Phi Beta Kappa?” Cooper asked her as she got to the door.

“No, sir, not that one.”

“Hmmm.” Cooper nodded to her in dismissal. “We'll give it a try.”

Outside Millie collared her. “Earlier, when Mr. Cooper
asked me if you could type, I lied and said yes. I'm a liar now, but I don't intend to be for long,” she warned. “Get it?”

“I'll borrow a book from the library and come in early and practice every day.”

“Come in very early.” Millie grinned. “Congratulations.”

Becky skipped out. She felt elated—no, exhilarated. She hadn't felt this way since the good times with Benny. She felt in love, not with some fickle man, but with this store.

She had to find Grace and tell her the news. Oh, what a fuss Grace would make! Tonight the two of them would go out and drink more champagne and talk forever about their tomorrows.

She'd have to call her father, of course, but only to tell him she'd be out late tonight. There was absolutely no point in telling him about her new job, she thought bitterly. He'd take no pleasure in her success. Her father had long ago ceased to be able to take pleasure in anything.

“Big deal,” said Abe Herodetzky to his daughter's news. “Big deal. So you're an assistant. For this you left our store? You told me you wanted to be a big-shot buyer. First you spend two years selling handbags, and what now? You're just the girl they have to shuffle the papers for them. Believe me, if an important job opens up, you'll never get it. And for this you took a cut in salary? Believe me, when they take away the money it's no promotion. You see how poorly our store is doing? You see how with the war rationing I got hardly nothing to sell? We needed the extra you were making as a sales clerk. We have to put away for your brother's education. You had no business taking a job that paid less. Selfish, that's what you are. You're a selfish girl.”

Becky, quite indifferent, said, “I knew you wouldn't understand,” like he was a stranger or an imbecile, and then she went to her bedroom.

That was six months ago, and since then she'd evidently not thought it was important enough to tell him how the job was going, so why should he give her the satisfaction of asking?

Abe knew why she was giving him the cold shoulder.
It was her guilt. He hadn't been lying when he warned her that the store was going under. The neighborhood was changing; his old, loyal customers were dying or moving away. Even Leah's sister Sadie and Joseph had moved to Chicago at the invitation of their oldest boy, a successful attorney.

What was left of his business was being choked off by the war and those coupon books with their goddamned blue points for canned goods and red points for meat and dairy products. Everything had to be labeled correctly, never mind the fact that the government was constantly issuing new guidelines on point values.

His meat case had been dark for months. He couldn't get it now that he lacked Stefano de Fazio's clout. What little meat there was went to the large supermarkets, who could pay the wholesalers' under-the-counter premiums. It was bitterly ironic that after all of those years of servitude to Stefano, now that he needed a black market connection, none was available to him.

One packer had the gall to offer Abe a shipment of horsemeat—horsemeat! After thirty years in business he should be reduced to such an indignity?

Maybe it was for the better that he had so little to sell. A succession of boys had worked for him, and every one of them was a lout, too stupid to succeed in school but too young to be swallowed up by the armed forces. Why did he need such louts when half the store was barren and dark?

These days Abe sat in his rocking chair behind the front counter, surrounded by his newspapers and the vodka bottles that he'd taken to bringing out whenever an old acquaintance happened by—but more usually when they didn't.

Becky began to issue empty threats about selling the building. She didn't like him being alone, she said. It was the solitude that was leading him back to the bottle.

Abe laughed in her face. He was sixty-six years old. What should he do, go out and make new friends? Maybe he should join the army? If she wanted to sell, that was fine with him. He'd have himself another good laugh watching her search for somebody who might want such a property and who had the money to pay for it.

As for his drinking, well, he no longer had to answer to anybody about his drinking.

July second, 1942, a Thursday, marked Daniel Herodetzky's sixteenth birthday. He'd spent the better part of that day, as he had every day since summer began, in a sweltering remedial classroom, trying to raise his failing grades so he would not be kept back for the next school year.

How Danny hated school. Every day it was the same, a mix of daydreaming, boredom and hot, sweaty humiliation when his teachers ridiculed him or his classmates twittered at his stupid answers. As if nine months of that each year weren't enough, come June, when the other kids started their vacations, he'd been forced to attend summer school—always the only Jew in summer school.

But no more, Danny thought as he walked along Cherry Street on that smoldering July afternoon. Today I'm sixteen. It's finished.

“So how did it go today?” his father asked over his newspaper as Danny entered the store.

“It went swell. I quit.”

Abe put down his newspaper. “What? What did you say?” he squinted at Danny. “Quit what? I meant school, how was school?”

“It's July second, Pop. Don't you know what day that is?”

Abe nodded and went back to his paper. “It's the anniversary of your mother's death.”

Danny tore the newspaper out of his father's fingers
and threw it aside. “It's my birthday. I'm sixteen. I told my teachers they could go to hell, Pop, and now I'm telling you the same. I'm through with school.”

“You'll apologize to your teachers,” Abe said sternly, “and you'll go back to school—”

“No, Pop. It's a waste of time for me, and it always has been. The other kids laugh at me—”

“Fight them!”

“I can't,” Danny shouted. “I can't fight! Look at me. For once in your life see your son as he is. I'm short and scrawny, plain-looking and a dunce. I'm not that guy Haim, Pop, I'm Danny,
your son.”

Abe turned away. “Some son.”

“Thanks,” Danny muttered. He began to weep. “I love you too. Thanks.”

“Get control of yourself,” Abe grumbled. “What are you crying for? Don't be a baby.”

“I'll be what I want,” Danny snapped. “I'm sixteen and you can't stop me. No more do I try to be what you want.”

“You'll do what I say as long as you live here,” Abe thundered.

“Don't make me laugh.”

“You're under my roof.”

“This slum belongs to my sister, not you.”

“All right, I'll put you to work right here in the store.”

“The hell with that. I ain't spending my life in this crummy place. I've been over to Lafayette Street, to the Norden bombsight factory. They've given up so many guys to the draft that I was able to finagle myself a spot as an apprentice machinist—”

“I order you to forget this nonsense, Danny. Go back to school and beg them to let you in. I've saved for your college so you can make something of yourself.”

Danny ignored his father. He reached across the counter to help himself to a pack of cigarettes.

“Don't ruin your life,” Abe roared, and then his tone abruptly shifted. “Stay in school for me. Your future is all I have left to look forward to and—”

“See you later, Pop.”

“Danny, wait! You owe me, damnit. Remember how you fixed it so I can't even show myself at the synagogue? You fought with the rabbi. You wouldn't even study for your bar mitzvah.”

Danny left the store and walked aimlessly around the neighborhood for a long while, smoking cigarettes, trying to regain his composure. He was old enough to leave school and take on a man's job. He was too old to let his father reduce him to tears. Anyway, he had set himself up to be knocked down. Imagine asking his old man, “Don't you know what day it is?”

“The anniversary of your mother's death”—why did I say that? Abe brooded. The bottle of vodka and the glass were on the counter before him. He poured himself a little more.

If only he could talk him into staying in school. He stopped, the glass halfway to his lips. “Like father, like son,” he murmured.

Around goes the circle. My son is going to work in a factory just a few streets over from the sweatshop I struggled to escape. Like father, like son. I am weak and so is he.

He finished his drink and went around the counter to the front door to lock it. He drew the shades and made his way to the cot set up in a dark corner behind the empty meat counter. He stretched out and stared up at the ceiling. Closing his eyes, he willed himself into a private, far better world where he was young, a cobbler in Russia, embracing a strong, blond-haired, blue-eyed son, his real son.

Herschel Kol returned to Degania directly from Habbaniyah and remained there for over a year. His mother welcomed him home and Herschel was content. His meandering journey from Iraq across the Transjordan had passed uneventfully, but Jerusalem Prison had taken its toll. Herschel was exhausted, his nerves worn ragged.

He did not fear being pursued by the police, who had their hands full attempting to block the steady stream of ships laden with illegal immigrants.

The Messerschmitt attack that claimed the life of David Raziel also dealt a death blow to the organization. With Raziel dead and its arms caches, money and printing presses lost, stolen by Arabs or confiscated, the lrgun was considered to be history by the authorities. A few scattered Irgunists like Herschel Kol, who had never harmed anyone British, were not considered worth chasing as long as they lay low. Accordingly, Herschel's quiet appearance in Degania attracted no police attention whatsoever.

The rigors of prison had cost Herschel twenty pounds of muscle. In the beginning of his Degania stay he would
be exhausted after an hour in the fields, but as the year progressed his strength returned. His skin tanned to a coppery hue as he labored beneath the strong sun clad only in his khaki shorts and workshoes. Soon he was as dark as when he ran about the kibbutz during his barefoot toddler days, when he was a true child of Galilee. He cut his thinning hair short and allowed his honey-colored beard to grow. The beard, combined with the lines and furrows etched into the weathered skin of his handsome face, made him seem older than he was. His youth had been stolen and no one would ever again mistake him for an English gentleman. Happily, however, his physical transformation meant that the authorities would have a hard time recognizing him.