Raquela (28 page)

Raquela stared at him, “I…I can't find the words to thank you, Colonel. What a gift for these new mothers.”

The colonel explained. “My replacement has just arrived. I'm afraid he's so hostile to your people he won't even give you the things you're entitled to.”

Raquela yearned to say yes immediately. The kindly Englishman was offering her a bonanza. But it was too big a haul to accept on her own. She ought to get permission from Dr. Mary Gordon, the JDC's medical director.

“Can I let you know in a few minutes?” she asked Colonel Richardson.

“You're not turning me down, are you?”

“Oh, no. But I'll be right back.”

She hurried to Dr. Gordon's office in the administration building. Dr. Gordon was a South African in her fifties who had served for years as a Jewish officer in the South African army. In the turbulence of the camps she was calm, tough, unflappable.

Dr. Gordon listened to the offer.

“Don't accept it. You're an attractive young woman, and he's been here a long time without his wife. He's going to demand something from you.”

“I don't believe that for one moment.” Raquela turned on her heels.

She sped back to Maternity, looked at her aides, and chose Henya, a small gray-haired woman. She had long been struck by Henya's urbanity and air of quiet strength. Raquela asked her to come along to the Red Cross hut. On the way, they picked up some laundry duffel bags.

“We're back for your offer, Colonel,” Raquela said.

His face broke into a smile. “I'll help you.”

The three of them, the tall sandy-haired Englishman, Raquela, and Henya swiftly emptied the shelves and stuffed the baby's layettes into the duffel bags. The two women thanked him, dragged the bags to Raquela's room, and hid them in her closet.

Henya looked at Raquela's clothes hanging there.

Her face changed. “Let me sew something for you,” she said. “In fact, you're looking at the best seamstress in the whole Caraolas camp. I'll make you a dress—like from Paris—if you can get me some real silk.”

Raquela was intrigued. “Maybe we can buy silk in Nicosia.”

Henya shook her head. “You know the British won't let me out of the compound.”

Raquela closed the closet door on the babies' bounty. “Meet me here tomorrow morning, right after I come off night duty.”

Raquela could hardly wait until Henya arrived. She had borrowed a dress, a cape, and an ID card from one of the Jewish nurses. The postage-stamp-size picture on the identity card was sufficiently vague to bear a slight resemblance to Henya.

Henya arrived, breathless with excitement. She tried on the dress. It was a little big. No matter; the cape would hide it.

“You'll pass,” Raquela said. “But don't say a word at the gate. If you open your mouth, they may begin to question you and get suspicious.”

At the gate, they showed their cards to the soldiers and continued walking nonchalantly until they were on the road.

Henya took deep drafts of the cool, clean morning air. “So this is what free air smells like.”

Raquela held her arm. “For today, forget the camps. Forget everything. We're going to town.”

She hailed a cab. “Downtown Nicosia, please,” she told the driver.

Soon they were driving past the circle of fortifications and ramparts that girded the capital city. Within the double walls of brown-earth embankment and green trees, they drove past Gothic churches, domed mosques, and Turkish baths, past palm trees and orange groves. The minarets of St. Sophia, once a great cathedral and now the principal mosque of Nicosia, rose above the narrow streets.

Henya whispered, “I don't know where to look, where to throw my eyes first.” She stared at the crowded shops and the white stone houses with overhanging balconies covered with tile. “So today there really exists in the world,” she said slowly, “a place without barbed wire.”

They left the cab in the bazaar and walked through a network of streets and lanes crowded with villagers and townspeople shopping for fruits and vegetables. They wandered in and out of open shops with huge, cavernous interiors.

“It's like the Old City,” Raquela said. “You'll see—when you get to Jerusalem.”

“When I get to Jerusalem,” Henya sighed. “It's more than two weeks since they voted in the UN. What's holding the state up?”

“The British still have to get out of Palestine,” Raquela explained as they walked down streets where coppersmiths hammered metal trays and carpenters turned wood into furniture.

“So when will the British get out?” Henya asked.

“I heard on the air just the other day—it was about the eleventh or twelfth of December—that Bevin told the House of Commons the Mandate will end on the fifteenth of May, 1948.”

Henya counted on her fingers. “Five more months! Five more months of imprisonment.”

Raquela felt a twinge of guilt. Her tour of duty would be ending in three weeks.

They stopped in front of a shop that displayed pure silk and damask brocade in its windows. They entered the shop; the shelves were stacked with bolts of fabric. Henya was like a hungry child at a banquet. “That's the one.” She pointed to a bolt of periwinkle-blue silk with a fleur-de-lis pattern woven into it.

They bought three yards of the silk, a rainbow assortment of threads, a tape measure, pins, and needles.

“Let's have some ice cream,” Raquela said. They sat in an ice-cream shop, talking about the dress soon to be created. Henya, savoring every spoonful, shut her eyes. “Don't wake me. I'm dreaming this whole day.”

It was midaftenoon when they returned to Raquela's room. Henya changed into her own clothes. “I feel like Cinderella after the ball,” she smiled ruefully. “But let's not waste any time. Do you have a pencil and a piece of paper? I'll need to take your measurements.”

Measuring the length she wanted, from the shoulder to the hem, Henya stopped the tape measure just above Raquela's knee. Raquela looked down. “That's too short!!”

“Why do you want to hide your legs?”

“Skirts are much longer now,” Raquela explained. “It's the new style by Christian Dior.”

“Who's that?”

“He's the latest rage in Paris.”

Henya drew back. “There was no Dior when I worked for a couturier in Paris. I was there a few months.” She paused. “I went home to Warsaw to my husband and my two little girls just before Hitler came, on September first, 1939. See my gray hair. I know I look like an old woman. I'm thirty-eight. My hair turned gray overnight.”

She leaned against Raquela's small table, unconsciously stroking the blue silk. “One day Nazi trucks came down the street, rounding up all the children. I saw them grab my two little girls and throw them into a truck. I ran after them, screaming, ‘Give me back my children.' The Nazi officer stopped the truck.

“‘Which are your children?' he asked me. I pointed to them.”

Henya stopped talking. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Raquela's eyes filled up. Henya went on.

“The Nazi officer took my two precious children to the back of the truck, where I was standing.

“‘Choose one,'” he said.

“I stood there screaming. How could I choose? ‘Give me back my children.'I kept pleading.

“He laughed and drove away.”

SIXTEEN

JANUARY 1, 1948

L
evi, Morris Laub's ten-year-old son, woke early on the first day of the new year. He wheeled his bicycle out of the garden of their house on Franklin Roosevelt Road.

Near the Famagusta harbor, he saw the port filled with British naval vessels escorting two huge ships.

Levi pedaled home as fast as his legs could spin the wheels.

“Daddy, Daddy!” He woke his father. “The two biggest ships in the whole world are in the harbor.”

Laub put on his trousers and shirt, jumped into his car, and rushed to the port.

Raquela had stayed the night with the Leibners after a New Year's Eve party. Now they too hurried to the harbor.

They saw British soldiers lining the dock, armed to the teeth, as if they were preparing for an invasion. Out in the water, thousands of men, women, and children were crowding the decks of two huge ships.

Josh spoke in an undertone to Raquela and Pnina to prevent the soldiers from hearing. “We had word, there are more than fifteen thousand refugees on the two ships.”

Raquela was appalled. “Fifteen thousand more! Where in the name of humanity are we going to squeeze in fifteen thousand more human beings? The camps are already overflowing. No water. No plumbing. No electricity. My God, there was no privacy before. What will there be now?”

“The British will have to open new compounds for them,” Josh said. “There'll be no sleeping for any of us for at least a week until we make life a little bearable.”

“I'd better get right back to the hospital,” Raquela said, “and see if I can scrounge some more supplies. It's lucky I've got all those extra diapers and shirts.”

She taxied to Nicosia, entered the hospital on the hill overlooking the city, and hurried to Maternity.

“Gerda, Lili, Henya,” she called. “We've got to get to work right away. Fifteen thousand new refugees are being unloaded in Famagusta.”

In the early afternoon there was a knock at the white door of the protruding entrance. Gerda opened the door and reported to Raquela.

“There are two funny-looking
shmendricks
outside. They say they want to see the midwife in charge. I told them you were busy, but they refuse to go away.”

Raquela walked to the entrance. Two men who looked barely out of their teens, wearing khaki shorts, waited impatiently. One, slight but muscular, had curly hair, thin lips, and light eyes; the other, taller than Raquela, was also spare and muscular with bright Mediterranean-blue eyes.

“What can I do for you?” Raquela asked.

The taller man spoke. “We have fifteen babies who were born during the voyage. And I don't know how many pregnant women. They need medical attention. We want to be sure they're taken care of properly.”

“We take care of all our women,” Raquela said. “Who are you, anyway?”

“We're the captains of the
Pan Crescent
and the
Pan York
.”

“You're the captains! Then I'm Napoleon!”

The shorter one spoke first. “I'm Ike. I was the captain of the
Exodus
.”

The nurses and aides who had followed Raquela to the door burst into laughter. “The
Exodus!
” Gerda scoffed. “Who's he kidding?”

Belligerently Ike whipped his seaman's identification card and an envelope of newspaper clippings and photos out of his shirt pocket. He handed them to Raquela for examination. He had indeed been the captain of the
Exodus 1947
.

Raquela was embarrassed. “I've never seen a sea captain before; we don't have any in Jerusalem.”

The taller man seemed to enjoy her confusion. “I'm Gad, captain of the
Pan York
. We'd like to bring our patients and the newborn babies right here in ambulances.”

“We can arrange that,” Raquela said.

The next hours were spent in feverish preparations. Dr. Mary Gordon appeared in the maternity ward. “We're setting up another Nissen hut, fully equipped with cots, cribs, blankets. I'm getting it from the British commandant. We'll annex a hut right next to Maternity.”

It was already dark when a convoy of ambulances moved into the prison compound. Every nurse, midwife, and doctor was on duty. British soldiers lifted the stretchers out of the ambulances and carried the women into the new maternity annex. It was lit by a few unshaded lightbulbs. There was no flooring. Only dirt. The hollow hut looked eery and haunted. Some of the women seemed terrified. The babies sensed their mothers' fright and began to howl. Even the sleeping babies awoke and joined the infant chorus.

Raquela tried to comfort a tiny, frail baby, lifting it out of the crib. The mother, a somber-looking woman, ran toward Raquela, pulled the baby out of her arms, and screamed, “You can't have my child. Where's my husband? They separated us when they put me on the ambulance. God only knows where they've taken him. It's like Auschwitz.”

Raquela spoke softly. “This is not Auschwitz. You'll see your husband soon. This is a Jewish maternity ward, and we're going to take care of you and your baby.”

Women lying on cots nearby stared at Raquela. One woman shouted joyfully, “Look at her cap! The star of David! She
is
Jewish. Now our babies will be safe.”

Willingly now, the women surrendered their babies to the nurses and aides who washed their tiny bodies and fed those whose mothers had no milk to nurse them. The doctors and nurses examined them; aides weighed them, put name tapes on their wrists, and tucked them, clean and warm, into the cribs heated with hot-water bottles.

Before dawn, Raquela and another midwife delivered two babies.

One of the new mothers took Raquela's hand gratefully. “I didn't want my baby born on the ship. It was like a dungeon. All around you everyone seasick, vomiting.”

Raquela looked at the woman resting on a cot against the iron walls.
Sure, it's better than a ship
, she thought.
But damn it, you're still giving birth in a prison
.

All the next day doctors and nurses worked, forgetting hours, forgetting shifts, taking time out only for coffee or tea. Raquela's eyes were burning with weariness; she was suddenly consumed with longing for Mount Scopus. In a few days she would be back; her six weeks' tour of duty would be finished; and Arik would be there.

At five in the evening Mary Gordon entered the new ward. Raquela was at the bedside of the somber woman who had snatched the baby out of her arms.

“Some of you”—Dr. Gordon's eyes searched the hut, “are scheduled to leave here next week. We are asking you to prolong your stay. With these fifteen thousand—and who knows how many thousands more will be coming—we need every nurse and midwife.”