Mitla Pass (43 page)

What else did I love? He was a good fellow. He couldn’t resist a party and he was a happy drunk. I mean, the little
putz
could outdrink any Russian Jew in Israel.

Chutzpah was his middle name. When he got someone drunk, they’d spill their guts out to him. Even sober, people seemed to want to tell him their story. He got to the soul very fast. A few weeks and I began to feel his lust for life and tremendous energy. Maybe, just maybe, Nimrod and the others had made a good gamble. I started to believe in him.

The hate part? Oh boy, was he arrogant! It didn’t matter who he wanted to get to, or what he wanted to know, he got it, often out of my hide. He drove me out of my mind. Push, push, push, two hundred, three hundred kilometers through the night to make a six o’clock meeting. Questions, questions, questions. History, anthropology, geology, agriculture, geography, military, archeology. Shlomo, what happened behind that rock? How the hell did I know what happened behind every rock?

And look, we were a small new country trying to make rules. He broke every one of them and left it for me to explain. I hated his tenacity and I come from a country of tenacious men.

He was often angry, a madman with a bad temper. Just when I hated him the most, he would turn around and weep for an hour after an interview with a concentration camp victim.

Love-hate. When I failed at something, he cursed me as though I were a peasant. When I got through on something difficult, he hugged and punched my shoulder like I had won an Olympic medal.

Bit by bit, I started believing in this little shlemiel. He didn’t forget one fucking thing I taught him. So, maybe I was serving some kind of literary messiah. Besides, Nimrod refused to accept the three resignations I turned in during those first weeks.

S
HIT
! Gunfire from the forward observation post. I wrapped myself in my blanket and continued to watch the star show. I fished through my backpack and found a bottle of good old Israeli brandy. The rest of the world can laugh at us, but not at our brandy. Best cognac in the world. Ah good ... the shooting had stopped. I made a short prayer that when the sun came up, I would see Zechariah’s Para 202 crossing the desert floor toward us. If not, oh boy!

I could see Ben Asher pacing. Even in the semi-darkness his figure was unmistakable. Wait! Yes, airplanes. I could hear stirrings all over our lines. In a few moments we could distinguish the engines. Dakotas! An air drop! God, I hoped they sent a radio. I didn’t like this isolation.

We popped off several flares to give the planes a fix, and silently several platoons moved out to recover the parachutes.

H
E WAS ASLEEP
like a baby now, the little
momser.
Jerusalem. That’s when he started up with her. Gideon and Natasha Solomon, as crazy a pair of bedroom warriors as I have ever known, and I’ve been in some pretty good skirmishes, myself.

Jerusalem was a divided city with an ugly barbed-wire no-man’s land running through the Kidron Valley. There wasn’t too much levity in the city. In fact, night life was downright grim. Of course, a party in someone’s home would often turn out to be a good party.

A costume party at Joshua Hillel’s flat showed promise. He was a very successful journalist, a stringer for a dozen American and European newspapers and magazines. His crowd consisted of actors, musicians, and newspaper people. A number of them had access to the foreign commissaries, so there was the promise of embassy-level food and real whiskey and vodka. Everyone would be in costume and some were very daring for Jerusalem.

Gideon and I came rather late and the evening was in full swing. Shoshanna Daman belted out Israeli songs and the more intimate revelry had found its way into the bedrooms, balconies, closets, and W.C.s.

Gideon had put together a cowboy costume, which was appropriate, and I was a handsome (so I have been told on occasion) Bedouin. Gideon immediately became a center of attention, as everyone in the country knew of his presence and not many real writers passed our way in those days.

What happened took place in the blink of an eye. Natasha Solomon, dressed as a belly dancer, was across the room, looking like she was ready to be eaten in layers.

I stood next to Gideon, who was immediately trapped by two women, and in that instant Natasha’s and Gideon’s eyes made contact across the room. I could almost swear the entire place had turned silent and they were the only two people left in it. If anyone had passed through the beam between their eyes, they would have been fried.

“Her name is Natasha Solomon,” I said. “She works in the P.M.’s office. You want an introduction?”

“I’ll introduce myself,” Gideon answered and took off in her direction. I trailed behind out of morbid curiosity. Gideon pushed into the circle around Natasha, took her by the arm, and led her to a quiet corner.

“You’re Natasha Solomon. I’m Gideon Zadok.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Can I have my arm back?”

As he let her arm go, he saw the tattooed number that denoted a concentration camp inmate. He stared at it for ever so long; then he looked into her eyes and tears fell down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t get used to it.”

“That’s all right, I’m in Israel now,” Natasha answered. “Here now, no need to cry.” And she put her arms about his neck so naturally, drew him close, and held him and let him finish his tears.

I, Shlomo Bar Adon, who rarely lies, could swear that I felt the walls of the Old City shake at that instant.

“Lunch, Hesse’s at one o’clock tomorrow, all right?” Gideon asked.

“I’ll be there,” Natasha answered.

That was it. I don’t know what I started by taking him to that party. At the very least, it looked like I had stirred up a couple of dormant volcanoes.

T
HERE WAS A
great deal of activity at the command post, so I went over. A new radio was in working order! Our operator was receiving the end of a long message from the Southern Command. He handed it to the major.

“Para 202 ran into heavy resistance at Thamad. Outside air support has failed to develop. That would mean the British and French. If the situation is not better by morning, we are going to attempt to evacuate.”

“God in heaven, how are we going to get out of here?” a young officer asked.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” the major said, “Zechariah will break through to us ... don’t worry.”

JERUSALEM

February 1956

T
HE HUGE STONE VERANDA
in the rear of the King David Hotel offered a taunting view over the Kidron Valley to the Ottoman walls of the Old City. A gash of barbed wire ran through the valley, dividing the city and the country in half. One could almost reach out and touch the Jaffa Gate, it was so close. It had become an obsession with the Jews, for inside the Old City stood the most sacred place in all of Jewry, the Western Wall of Solomon’s Temple.

Gideon was no exception. The sight of the Old City jolted his imagination to the threshold of pain. It was more than cruel for the Jordanians to deny access, he thought.

“Hello, cowboy,” Natasha’s voice said behind him.

“Hi,” Gideon said coming to his feet. “You look great.”

“Even out of costume?”

“Don’t leave me an opening like that,” he said.

“Hi there, it’s me, Natasha.”

“What?”

“You seem to be in a trance.”

“Sorry. It’s the Old City over there. It seems that every night I’m in Jerusalem, I dream about crossing over and going to the Western Wall. It can drive you crazy, I guess, if you live here.”

“Yes, it does. We may yet live to see it.”

Four days had flown by since the party. Four lovely evenings together. Fink’s, a tiny five-table bistro, was the only place one could get a decent steak or Polish vodka and whisper romantic nothings. It had become their “in” place.

Gideon and Natasha hadn’t done much about probing into each other’s history or volunteering details of their pasts. They spoke in the abstract, gazed at each other in the abstract, and occasionally even touched in the abstract.

Both of them had their own intelligence networks. Natasha’s story seemed commonplace on the surface: Hungarian, affluent professional family, lived undercover with false documents wearing a blond wig in Budapest for a greater part of the war, a survivor of Auschwitz. Her mother, father, two brothers were killed in the gas chambers, ran the British blockade of Palestine in a refugee ship after the war.

One could gather that Natasha was quite worldly and well traveled in Europe before the war. She had been married but said nothing about how it ended. Thus far in Israel, several names were attached to her romantically, but apparently not seriously.

But Gideon knew that none of the survivors were simple or commonplace. Their heads were labyrinths with pockets of secrets, tortured guilt, twisted and violent memories. Every concentration camp victim he had interviewed had raw nerves hidden in shallow places, waiting to be irritated. Natasha must have her share of them, but she covered them well.

Gideon spoke even less about himself. His mind, soul, and body were consumed by the book he was going to write. Israel had captured him more deeply than he imagined. He burned with desire to end the research and get at the book itself, but that was months off.

“The Knesset adjourned today. I’ll be heading back to Tel Aviv tomorrow,” Natasha said.

“Just in the nick of time,” he said. “Shlomo and I are going on patrol with the paras in the Negev. We’re going from Nitzana along the Negev-Sinai border down to Eilat. I’m really excited.”

Natasha smiled the smile that every man wanted to see from the woman opposite him—sensuous, playful, knowing.

“What are you snickering at, lady?” he asked.

“I was the one who signed approval for you from the P.M.’s office. You’re going out with the Lion’s Battalion.”

“Small country,” Gideon said. “Well, are we Finked out? Any place else exciting to eat? How about here?”

“One of my girlfriends has a flat just a few blocks away and she’s out of town. I’d like to fix you dinner. I found some fabulous baby lamb chops from the Arab side.”

“How’d you get them? Come on, I’m curious.”

“I have a friend with the United Nations peacekeeping force. Everything passes through the Mandelbaum Gate, except people. Shall we be off?”

“How about a drink first?” Gideon asked.

Natasha nodded knowingly. “What’s on your mind, cowboy?”

“The story of my life in five minutes or less.”

The sound of the muezzin calling the Muslims to prayer was heard from a minaret and drifted over the calm valley. A chilling moment in the divided city’s life.

“Natasha, I’ve been a bad boy for a long time. Right now, my marriage is on tenterhooks. We’ve both made mistakes. Val’s were small stuff beside my sins and transgressions. Mine were whoppers.”

“Whoppers? What’s that?”

“Big ones. I rationalized my screwing around because I blamed her for nailing me to Hollywood. But, you know, in the end we’ve all got to own up for our own actions. So, the marriage is on hold, more or less on trial.”

“Do you still love her?”

Gideon wavered just long enough to give Natasha an answer without words. “You know how it goes,” he finally said. “We’ve been bedmates for over a dozen years, good lovers ... even great sometimes. We’re comfortable around each other when we’re not fighting. We’ve got two beautiful children and I guess you’d say, they’re my life. Who knows about love? We do care for each other. That may have to be enough.”

“That’s sad,” Natasha said.

“When you invited me up to your room last night, I did something I never believed possible, especially to a woman like you. I said no. I said no because I was determined to stay clean here in Israel. Val and I left on very good terms and I wanted, very much, to be trusted again as a husband. God-damned lies pile up on each other. Tell one lie and you need twenty more lies to back it up. It’s shit living that way.”

Natasha’s eyes grew mournful and moist. “That’s very commendable,” she said.

“I don’t know, Natasha. If it were a quickie or a one-week stand, maybe I’d give in, but I’ve got a gut feeling that once we get our hands on each other, we aren’t going to want to let go. Am I right?”

“Maybe,” she answered.

Gideon sighed heavily, then took his drink down to the bottom of the glass. “There’s even the possibility I might ask the family to come to Israel if this research runs too long. If my wife comes here, I want to be able to look her straight in the eyes.”

Natasha laughed a bit bitterly. “Well, you’re not a Hungarian, that’s for certain.” She took his hands and demanded his eyes. “You’re a damned fool if you don’t grab at whatever promises compassion and what we have in the making.”

“Natasha, don’t lean on me. I’m not the strongest guy in the world when it comes to this.”

“What we have brewing is beautiful, wild, madness. We’ve been looking for each other for a long time, cowboy.”

“I know that and I’m scared to death of you.”

“You only want a woman you can walk away from. I know that because I’m cut out of the same dirty cloth.”

“Sorry, Natasha.”

“Funny, I’ve never been rejected before,” she said. “I don’t know how to behave.” She took a pad and pen from her purse and scribbled out a street and telephone number. “Here’s where I’ll be tonight if you have a change of heart.”

Lord, Gideon thought, lead me not into temptation. He tore the paper to bits and put it in the ashtray.

Natasha spouted something in Hungarian.

“I don’t speak the language, but I get the drift,” he said.

“Up your mother’s you know what,” she said.

“See, it’s wrong already,” Gideon said. “People should be happy in love. We’re grim and we haven’t even made it to the bedroom.” She got up abruptly. Gideon grabbed her arm tightly. “You don’t want love, Natasha, you want combat.”

NATASHA

C
OMBAT!
H
OW DARE HE
! Gideon the cowboy writer, big shot. Interviews us as though we are cattle ... Which concentration camp? ... What was your relationship with your parents? ... What dreams do you have?