Raquela (32 page)

Why indeed
, Raquela wondered?
Giving up everything—job, apartment, security, his great skill recognized by his own government? Going to a land he had never seen, a land in turmoil
.

She thought of Gerda, Lili, Henya—the women with Auschwitz numbers on their left arms. They had lost everything—husbands, children, homes. They had no options. Dr. Ashkenazy had a choice. Why had he chosen this route of sacrifice and suffering?

“What did your husband tell the minister?” Raquela asked.

Nina's tapered fingers struck a match in the tent's semidarkness. She lit another cigarette. “He said, ‘I want to be in my own country.'”

The words hung in the tent like Nina's puffs of smoke.
I want to be in my own country
.

“My husband was shocked by Georgescu's answer: ‘Listen to me, Harden, it isn't worth your while going there. There will never be peace in the Middle East. We—and the Russians—will see to it.
There will never be peace
.'”

Raquela put her hands to her forehead.
Never be peace! Must we always have enemies? The Romans. The Crusaders. The Spaniards. The Germans. The British. The Arabs. Now the Communists
.

Only the sound of the waves outside the barbed wire broke the stillness. The two women sat in the tent, silent. Nina went on.

“My husband was desperate. He has a passion for freedom. When Georgescu saw that he could not lessen Harden's determination, he called his secretary to come in. ‘Give Dr. Ashkenazy and his wife a slip of paper with permission to leave. I will sign it.' We caught the very last train. When we pulled into Burgas, we saw these two ships; every porthole was lit up; the decks, the gangplanks, strung with lights. Snow on the docks. It was a fairy tale.

“Almost everybody on the ships had heard that we were barred—the only ones of the fifteen thousand who were held up. The story must have gone from mouth to mouth. Because now there was a collective shout. Fifteen thousand people seemed to be shouting in one voice, welcoming us aboard.”

Raquela pulled her cape around her.

“You can't imagine how happy we were on that ship,” Nina said.

“On those terrible planks—in that hold?” Raquela gasped.

“Sure, they were terrible. Horrible. But I tell you, I've taken elegant cruises in my life, and never, on any cruise, was the spirit so high. We were ecstatic. Happy beyond belief. We didn't care what the ship was like, that we had almost no clothes and had left behind everything we owned. It was like Paradise. We were free.”

A shadow fell across the tent flap. Dr. Ashkenazy entered.

“Nina.” He spoke rapidly. “The meeting
was
about us. The refugee committee voted to let us leave immediately. Two kind people—the Schwartzes—gave up their certificates so we can go right to Palestine.”

Nina threw her arms around her husband. “When do we go, Harden?”

Tomorrow.

Raquela stood up, tears in her eyes. The great surgeon would soon be in her homeland. Healing the wounded. Performing the most delicate of all procedures: brain surgery.

She shook Dr. Ashkenazy's hand and embraced Nina. “Can I be of any help?” she asked. “I can change shifts with a friend at the hospital and come back tomorrow if you need me.”

“I would like that,” Nina said. “Come back.”

Dr. Ashkenazy put his hand on her shoulder. “The British must not know we're leaving.”

“I understand,” Raquela said. To let the famous brain surgeon into Palestine would mean helping the Jews. The British would sooner throw him in jail.

The next morning Raquela returned to Caraolas. She accompanied Nina and Dr. Ashkenazy as they returned their two blankets, tin plates, tin cups, and tin spoons to the camp depot. The refugee in charge gave them a receipt.

All over the camp, people stood up as the trio approached, to say farewell.

An elderly man took Dr. Ashkenazy's hand. “I am a rabbi,” he said. “God give you strength to save our people.”

“What about your instruments?” Raquela asked.

“Josh Leibner has already got them past the British. They'll be waiting for us aboard the ship.”

Raquela helped them carry their bags to the barbed-wire entrance gate. “Your reception committee.” She nodded in the direction of the British officers sitting at a table just outside the gate.

Nina whispered hoarsely, “Harden, look. The same officers who interrogated us when we came off the
Pan York
six weeks ago. What if they recognize us?”

“Don't worry. They see hundreds of people.”

They walked through the gate; Raquela, showing her ID card, waited at the side. Seven hundred fifty people stood in line. Finally it was the Ashkenazys' turn.

At the officers' table a second lieutenant with an antlerlike red mustache looked up at Dr. Ashkenazy.

“Your name?”

“Yakov Schwartz.”

“Your receipt for returning the camp equipment?”

Dr. Ashkenazy handed him the paper he had just received. The lieutenant stamped and signed it.

“Move along. Next, please.”

Dr. Ashkenazy waited. “She's my wife. I'd like to wait for her.”

“Keep moving…Your name?” The second lieutenant looked up at Nina.

“Rivka Schwartz.”

He stared. “What did you say your name was?”

“Rivka Schwartz.”

“You sure you didn't pass through here a few weeks ago?”

Raquela and Dr. Ashkenazy looked at each other. Nina was calm. Pretending not to hear, she repeated, “Rivka Schwartz.”

The second lieutenant stroked his mustache slowly. Raquela saw him wink.

“Good luck, Mrs.…”—he paused significantly—“Mrs. Schwartz.”

He stamped and signed her paper. Nina hurried to her husband's side.

Raquela accompanied them and the 748 other refugees traveling in lorries to the dock.

A graceful white yacht waited at anchor. It was the
Kedma
, the Mosad's ship for “legal” immigration. Raquela looked at it longingly.

She kissed Nina good-bye and shook Dr. Ashkenazy's hand. “I know how busy you'll be the minute you land,” she said, “but if you get to Mount Scopus, if you meet a doctor—his name is Brzezinski—give him my…my regards.”

“Be glad to,” Dr. Ashkenazy said. “We'll look for you in the Promised Land.”

With the rest of the day free, Raquela rode back to camp in a lorry. The sound of an accordion and people singing filled the air. A group of refugees sat a few yards from the watchtower.

“Raquela, come join us.” The accordionist, Adi Baum, beckoned to her. He was a constant visitor in Maternity, where he came to play his accordion for the mothers and their babies. Young, skinny, with a shock of curly brown hair and dark eyes, Adi had been a chef on the
Pan York
. Now, inside the camps, his culinary accomplishments no longer needed, he became a musical director. He set up an orchestra of talented musicians, composed music, and arranged concerts for the refugees.

“Sit down, Raquela,” he said. “We need you.”

She tried to read his face. Why would an accordionist need her?

She sat next to him in the sand.

In a low voice he said, “Four young men are making a break for it through the tunnels. We want to divert the soldiers up there in the watchtower. We want to keep them looking down here at us, not outside the barbed wire when the boys surface.”

The tunnels were the biggest secret in Cyprus.

There were two reasons for the tunnels: to smuggle
out
young men of military age; and to smuggle
in
Haganah teachers, from Palestine, with guns, for drilling the refugees.

In all the camps young men and women were training to be soldiers, to join the Haganah the moment they arrived in Palestine. When British officers came upon groups openly drilling in a compound, the British were told, “It's physical culture, the only way to keep up morale.”

Seven tunnels were built; Haganah and refugee engineers worked out the techniques. In the floors of carefully selected tents and metal huts they sank shafts seven or eight feet into the ground. Since sand runs and earth collapses, they shored up some of their shafts with pieces of wood from broken-up crates.

Now they began mining horizontally. A human conveyor belt of men and women passed the dirt back in baskets. Then a pulley lifted the basket up the shaft.

Other refugees quickly “broadcast” the dirt, spreading it in front of the huts and tents, planting it with vegetables and flowers.

The English soldiers in their watchtowers were oblivious of the refugees digging their escape routes. The prisoners used old-fashioned bellows to pump fresh air down the shafts to keep from suffocating. The tunnels varied in length, depending on the distance to the barbed wire and the spot chosen for the exit. They were just wide enough for a man to crawl through: about three feet wide and three or four feet high. Finally, they built the exit shaft, digging from the bottom up and surfacing in areas concealed by trees or bushes or hidden in a farmer's field. Here the refugees climbed up, then lay on the ground, hiding until Haganah men slipped them into cabs, drove them to the dock, and put them on little fishing boats or rowed them out to the
Kedma
.

The tunnels came alive each time the
Kedma
sailed into port for legal immigrants. Hundreds more escaped through the underground and boarded the white yacht for Palestine.

Now, sitting in the circle, Raquela was part of the diversionary action, singing with the little group, clapping her hands and taking her cues from Adi. His repertoire seemed endless; he knew songs in every language, including the Scandinavian. He ran his fingers up and down the ivory keyboard; he folded and pleated the bellow, glancing up at the watchtower to see if the soldiers were watching.

They were indeed; they even applauded when he struck up a medley of English tunes. Raquela hummed and sang, but her mind was on the
Kedma
. Dr. and Mrs. Ashkenazy were safely aboard; by now most of the seven hundred fifty people with certificates had undoubtedly been processed.

But would the four young men in the tunnel reach the
Kedma
in time?

The singing went on, unabated. Adi seemed tireless. The circle of refugees did not move, even for food.

It was late afternoon when a teenager joined them. “Keep playing,” he said in a muffled voice. “They haven't come out of the tunnel yet.”

Adi's accordion grew louder, faster, full of passion.

Raquela looked at the watchtower. Did the soldiers recognize the change? The new urgency? Were they growing suspicious? What did they think—a group of crazy people singing and clapping and humming for hours on end?

Adi seemed to sense something. He struck up another medley of English tunes. Then he stood, his tall spare body erect, holding his accordion like a soldier going into battle, and he played “God Save the King.”

In the watchtower the soldiers, too, stood at attention, their faces turned solemnly to the music, their backs to the field where the tunnel surfaced.

It was twilight when a Haganah man dropped on the sand, joining the circle.

“They're aboard the ship,” he said. “They sail at midnight.”

EIGHTEEN

FEBRUARY 22, 1948

G
ad was waiting for Raquela at the Famagusta dock. Soon they were in the motorboat with Mikos, the young Greek Cypriot, maneuvering through the sun-dappled waters to the
Pan York
. Raquela climbed the Jacob's ladder confidently.

She and Esther had come aboard several times for lunch or dinner, their friendship with the two young sea captains a welcome reprieve from the prison-hospital routine and the fears for their families in Jerusalem.

Raquela walked the deck in the warm sea breeze, beside Gad, relaxed and happy. She told him how Nina and Dr. Ashkenazy had escaped from the heavily guarded camp. “He's probably already operating on soldiers with head wounds,” she said.

“Maybe now,” Gad said, “there won't be so many death notices on the walls.”

He took her below to show her a newspaper photo of walls and billboards in Jerusalem covered with small square obituary notices framed in black. The names of the dead young men and women were printed below the photos, with the words
WE STAND TO ATTENTION BEFORE THE MEMORY OF OUR COMRADE
—.

She studied the faces. Two of them had been her classmates in high school.

The day seemed to grow dark; fear and worry gnawed at her.

“What's going to happen, Gad? This is only the beginning.” She continued to look at the faces. “I've read that the mufti's gangs are being reinforced with Polish and Yugoslav volunteers, and with British deserters and German Nazis specially released from prisoner-of-war camps in Egypt. I wonder how the British officers in Palestine are reacting.”

“From the reports on our shortwave radio, it looks as if each British commanding officer makes his own decisions. Some are on our side, holding off the Arabs with even a few men; others are openly siding with the Arabs. They've even withdrawn their troops from some of the borders, so Arabs from outside can join the battle. There's a so-called ‘Palestine Liberation Army' made up of irregulars and troops that have come all the way from Iraq. They're battling our boys in the north; their leader is Fawzi el-Kaukji, an Iraqi Nazi; like the mufti, he spent World War II with Hitler in Berlin.”

Gad studied her face. “For heaven's sake, Raquela, don't look so glum. We're not helpless. We're fighting back. The Haganah has just blown up six bridges leading from Palestine to the neighboring countries; Kaukji's men won't have easy access. Now, let's have lunch. The cook's always so tickled when you come aboard he dreams up concoctions he never makes for the crew.”

He took her arm and led her into the wardroom, where the cook greeted her with obvious pleasure. The food was delicious; Raquela downed it with a glass of cool wine, relaxing into the air of salt and brine that enveloped her each time she boarded the ship. Maternity was a woman's world; this ship, devoid now of women passengers, was an all-man's world. She welcomed the change.