Raquela (23 page)

But now armored cars and personnel carriers were lined up on King David Street, and soldiers with submachine guns stood on the steps of the Y, pushing back a crowd of people who seemed to be waiting for a big event.

“What's happening?” she asked a woman.

“The members of U
NSCOP
are opening their hearings. We want to see what they look like.”

She nodded. She had read about U
NSCOP
—the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine—composed of delegates from eleven small, neutral countries.

Two months ago, on April 28, the United Nations had held a “special Palestine session.” Bevin seemed to be giving up. He had thrown the Palestine problem into the lap of the UN. The fifty-five member nations, meeting in the special session, had voted to send another committee to investigate and make recommendations.

It was the nineteenth commission on Palestine. But this committee was different: for the first time Britain was not a member of the group investigating her own role in the Holy Land.

The people watched as a fleet of Studebaker limousines pulled up. The eleven members of the committee climbed the wide stone stairs to the tree-shaded veranda, and entered the conference chamber.

Raquela stood in the crowd, holding her package in her arms. Strangers talked to one another; everyone was involved.

“Do you really think this U
NSCOP
committee is any different from all the others?” a woman in a large straw hat asked her neighbor, a man, carrying a briefcase, who looked like a civil servant.

“And if it is different, and they do come up with a real solution”—he shrugged his shoulders—“do you think Bevin will accept it? Remember how he turned down the Anglo-American Committee report last year?”

Raquela questioned him. “Don't you think, this time, Bevin's had a stomachful? After all,
he
went to the UN and threw it in
their
lap.”

“Bevin will never give up Palestine. He's pretending now that he is neutral. You heard his line, ‘The Jews want to go to the head of the queue.' He's incapable of neutrality. He loves Arabs and hates Jews.”

“Then why did he turn the problem over to the UN?” she asked.

“It's his newest trap. He didn't go to surrender the Mandate. He wants a new mandate—this time from the UN. He's probably sure he can convince the countries of the world that Britain is the only one that can keep law and order here.”

A boy broke into the crowd, waving a newspaper. “The three Irgunists have been sentenced to hang!”

The crowd gasped. The three Irgunists captured after breaking into the prison at Acre on May 4, 1947, were being tried in the British Military Court nearby.

The man with the briefcase turned to Raquela. “That shows you who's running this country. Imagine choosing today. The very first day the UN committee holds its meetings.
Today
they have the
chutzpah
to fling this death sentence in the committee's faces.”

Raquela had seen the pictures of the three condemned prisoners on wall newspapers pasted up at night by the Irgun. They looked barely eighteen or nineteen. They had hardly lived; now they were sentenced to die at the end of a rope.

From the back of the crowd, Raquela heard the voice of a young woman: “The Irgun will fight back! The Irgun will avenge this terrible deed!”

Raquela spent the next days at home, with Mama and Papa. Jacob and Yair came with their wives, and Arik, welcomed affectionately, especially by Mama, came in the evenings.

All conversation stopped the moment Papa turned on the radio in the living room for the nightly broadcast of the U
NSCOP
hearings.

Raquela sat on the straight-backed sofa, beside Arik, trying to concentrate. But her mind kept wandering back to Athlit. Soon she would have to make the decision. Return to Athlit—or stay.

She looked around the room; all the people she loved were here, in the small, simply furnished cottage.
It's so good to be here
, she thought,
and Jerusalem is so beautiful, even with all the tension and the violence and the soldiers. Listen
, a voice beguiled her,
you can sleep in your own clean bed. No tents, no dirt, no rats on your roof. Privacy
.

But another voice spoke even more insistently:
Go back to Athlit. They need you
.

Vaguely she heard the radio announcer describe the eleven members of U
NSCOP
.
Eleven strangers
, she thought, trying to decide the fate of Palestine. The fate of the Jews, the Arabs, and the British. Eleven Solomons pondering what to do with the “baby.” Give it to one of the mothers? Give it to the foster mother—Britain? Or cut it in half?

“Listen to B-G,” Jacob said, breaking into her thoughts. Ben-Gurion was Jacob's idol.

“
What the Jews need
,” Ben-Gurion told the committee, “
is immigration and statehood; what the Arabs need is economic development and social progress
.”

Immigration and statehood
, she thought. That's what my people in Athlit want. Her mind no longer wandered, as she heard Ben-Gurion say, “
We feel we are entitled to Palestine as a whole, but we will be ready to consider the question of the Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine
.”

Jacob blurted, “It's the first time B-G has come out for partition. Until now the Jewish Agency Executive has held to the original promise of a Jewish homeland in
all
of Palestine.”

So they might cut the baby in half after all
, Raquela thought.

A few nights later, Arik came to the house for dinner. After the meal, they were to go into town, to the Philharmonic. Raquela decided to wear the new brown dress.

Arik noticed it instantly. “Turn around, Raquela,” he said, examining the strange long hemline and the padded shoulders. “Fine. Gorgeous.”

Delighted, she asked, “And don't you think it makes me look older?”

He laughed. “Positively ancient.” Then he frowned. “But it may bring you bad luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't you know I'm very superstitious? People will envy you, you look so beautiful. They'll give you the
ein hora
—the evil eye.”

She chuckled. “Are you afraid of black cats, too?”

“And I won't walk under a ladder. Do you have some red thread?”

“What do you want with red thread?”

“Just give me some with a needle.”

She went to her bedroom and returned with a needle, through which she had pulled red thread.

“Here.” He lifted the back of her hemline and sewed a few stitches. “That will keep the evil eye away.”

At the dinner table in the little foyer, Papa said, “Dr. Weizmann appeared today before the U
NSCOP
committee. It must be heartbreaking for him—the nineteenth time he's had to testify. Once he was so full of hope, and now—what must he be feeling?”

“Maybe we can hear some of his testimony,” Arik said, “before we leave for the concert.”

They took their coffee cups into the living room. Papa switched on the radio as the announcer described Dr. Chaim Weizmann being led by an aide to the semicircular mahogany table in the YMCA. Raquela and Arik took their customary seats on the sofa. She fluffed the brown taffeta skirt over her lap; it brushed Arik's leg. The living room grew still. Raquela leaned forward, fascinated, as Dr. Weizmann's voice came over the radio. Age and near blindness had not dimmed his wisdom or his wit. “
What is a Jew?
” he asked the committee, and then answered: “
He is a man who has to offer an explanation of his existence. As soon as you have to offer an explanation, you are under suspicion
.”

Arik whispered to Raquela, “The old man may be nearly blind, but his mind is nimble and graceful. He moves around those men like a ballet dancer.”

Raquela smiled. Dr. Weizmann went on. “
Why, of all places, have the Jews chosen Palestine, a small country which has been neglected and derelict for centuries?
”

She heard him talk of Moses and of the biblical promise. That's why they had come. At different times. All through the ages. Four thousand years ago. This was the Land of Promise.

“
I am old enough to warn you
,” he was saying. “
For us, the question is of survival, and it brooks no delay. All that you have seen here constitutes national progress. All of it we did with our own hands. Here in Palestine there were marshes, and we drained them. There were no houses, and we have built them. All that has been done here, from the modest cottage of the settler to the university on Mount Scopus, is the work of Jewish planning, Jewish genius, and of Jewish hands and muscles—not only of money and initiative
.”

Reluctantly Arik stood up. “I wish we could stay and hear all of his testimony, but it's getting late.”

They hurried into town. Inside the concert hall, Arik whispered, “It's a lucky thing I sewed that red thread in your dress. Everybody's turning around to look at you.”

Raquela beamed with secret pleasure as she settled herself into her seat.

The members of the orchestra took their places on the stage. The lights were dimmed. Arik placed his hand on her two hands, crossed in her lap, as they listened to Brahms and Beethoven. He took his hand away only long enough to let her applaud the performance.

After the concert they walked along Jaffa Road and entered a coffeeshop. Once again, women and men stared at Raquela's dress. She overheard a woman at the next table whisper, “I wonder how it would look on me.”

But Raquela was no longer interested in the dress. She was agitated. She still had not resolved her conflict over Athlit.

“Arik,” she said, “we have carefully avoided discussing something very much on my mind.”

“I waited for you to bring it up,” he said.

“I wasn't ready to talk about it.”

“Then you've made your decision?”

“Not yet. I'm in conflict, my teacher, my
rebbe
. What do you think?”

“I think you've given so much of yourself that you shouldn't feel any guilt if you decide to stay in Jerusalem.”

“It's not guilt that would make me go. It's all that's been happening since I came home. U
NSCOP
. Listening to Ben-Gurion the other day, and Dr. Weizmann tonight. Those Irgunist kids sentenced to be hanged. It makes me see Athlit in a different perspective.”

He nodded and waited for her to go on.

“We're all part of the resistance. Even in the misery of Athlit, prisoners are asserting their right to a home for their babies. They need me to help bring those babies into the world. How can I let them down?”

“I'll miss you, Raquela,” he said.

She put her hand to her throat to ease its choking.

The days seemed shorter now in Athlit; the weeks meshed. One morning, Dr. Carr entered the hospital. “I've just come from Haifa; they telephoned me from Jerusalem to give you a message. A friend of yours”—he opened a little notebook—“let me see, ah, here it is—her name is Judith Steiner—she'll be here this afternoon.”

“Judith!” she exclaimed. “But I thought no visitors were allowed in Athlit.”

“She's not coming as a visitor. She's discovered her brother is here.”

So Judith's little brother, Joseph, had survived. She shut her eyes.
Thank God
.

“We're telling the guards,” Dr. Carr explained, “that she's coming as a nurse to replace you for a little while. You looked rested when you came back; now you're beginning to look weary again. It won't hurt you to get a little rest.”

Late in the afternoon Judith arrived, wearing her nurse's uniform. Raquela threw her arms around her. She noticed Judith was wearing dark sunglasses. Was it to hide her tears?

“Sit down for a few minutes, Judith. Let me get you a tranquilizer.”

Judith steadied herself in the chair. “I don't know if I'll even recognize him. I haven't seen him for seven years. He was thirteen—” Her voice broke.

Raquela drew up a chair beside her.

Slowly Judith tried to regain her composure. “Everyone in Jerusalem sends you love. I phoned your parents; they're fine. Dr. Brzezinski sends you special greetings. He wants to know when you're coming back.”

“I've no idea. So long as they need me.…”

Judith nodded; her body was trembling. Raquela realized she was still too overwrought to move.

“Tell me what's happening in Jerusalem,” Raquela said. “Athlit's like a desert island. We're cut off from the whole country.”

Judith answered slowly. “The tension is worse than ever. A few days ago—July thirteenth—the Irgun retaliated for the sentencing of the three boys. They picked up two British sergeants in Natanya and now have them hidden somewhere. They've threatened to hang the sergeants if the British hang the Irgun boys.”

“My God! And what are the British doing about it?”

“They've put Natanya under martial law. There's no communication; no phones, no telegrams, no food can be brought in; nobody can enter or leave Natanya. They've got more than five thousand soldiers making a house-to-house search. And they haven't found the sergeants yet.”

“Is U
NSCOP
doing anything about it? They're still in Jerusalem. Can't they do something?” Raquela demanded.

Judith had stopped trembling. “What can U
NSCOP
do? What can anyone do? The three Irgun boys are already in Acre—the prison they liberated. That's where the British are planning to hang them.”

“They mustn't hang them,” Raquela said, her teeth clenched. “If only U
NSCOP
can make the British see that they mustn't hang them.”

Judith stood up. “I'm feeling better now, Raquela. Your tranquilizer is working.”