The Gates of Zion (49 page)

“Let’s just hope we find what we’re looking for, eh?” Moshe replied.

“This is certainly not the Christmas Eve dinner I had planned for us.”

Howard looked around him, choosing from the myriad of food sellers. Then he blanched and struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh no!” he muttered.

“What is it?” Moshe asked with alarm.

“That young fellow, David. I asked him to dinner tonight. I thought maybe he and Rachel―”

“Yes?”

“Well, I forgot to tell him we wouldn’t be there, that’s all. I simply forgot about it with all the excitement.”

“Maybe Ellie will call him.” Moshe purchased two more skewers of meat.

“She didn’t know he was coming.” Howard shrugged.

Moshe eyed him disapprovingly. “I did not know you were so devious.”

“I was … I thought she would say no. Young David seems like the sort who could cheer up a girl like Rachel.”

“Where I come from you would be called a matchmaker. Though I do not know if I approve of the match.” Moshe frowned and wiped his mouth on the fringe of his keffiyeh in Arab fashion.

“Do I detect a note of jealousy? I thought that you and Ellie―”

“I am not jealous. It is simply that Rachel is … she is wounded, you see, and I think quite fragile. I do not approve of this David person.

After all, it was he who wounded Ellie.”

Howard arched his eyebrows, “Oh?” He glanced away self-consciously. “Funny how you can live in the same house with someone and never know what’s going on. I never have been very perceptive when it comes to women.”

“Nor have I, my friend.”

“Well, you seem to have a fix on the two women in my house.”

“They are both innocents.” Moshe smiled. “Each in a different way.

Until now, Ellie has had the innocence of one who has never seen the pain of others’ suffering. And Rachel, dear Rachel, has suffered without understanding, like a small child lost in the marketplace.

Now Ellie’s eyes are beginning to open, and in the end, it may be she who takes the lost child by the hand and leads her home.”

“This doesn’t have the sound of a man who doesn’t understand women.”

“I only know this because once I lived in blindness and hopeless confusion at the horror around me. The very thing I have come to love about Ellie is her ability to act in the face of terror. Rachel has not learned this yet, and she is still a victim waiting for the next blow to be struck against her. It is only when our eyes are opened and we rise up in indignation against those things that are wrong and evil that we become what God would have us be; is that not so?”

“I see what you mean,” Howard answered, munching thoughtfully on a chunk of lamb.

“Ellie knows this instinctively, I think.”

“She’s fairly tough, all right.”

“Not tough. Unafraid. Even when she is afraid, she looks for the answer that will give her victory over her fear. Rachel is simply afraid. Without hope in her soul, she lives among those whose hearts have died. I grieve for her. There is so much beauty in her heart. She has forgotten, and I only wish I could …”

“I didn’t know you felt this way. And I am ashamed to admit I didn’t think that far.”

“Earlier today you quoted Martin Luther to me.” Moshe warmed his hands at the fire. “And now I wish to share with you a poem by Bialik.”

Howard squatted and put his hands out toward the flame. “Please,”

he said quietly.

Moshe knelt, the glow of the fire illuminating his face. The anguish of concern about his eyes was highlighted by the fierce, flickering shadows. He began:

“All, all of you do I remember yet,

In all my wanderings you go with me―

Your likeness graven on my heart forever.

And I remember, too, how strong, how sturdy The seed must be that withers in those fields.

How rich would be the blessing if one beam Of living sunlight could break through to you.

How great the harvest to be reaped in joy, If once the wind of life should pass through you, And blow clear through to the Yeshivah doors.”

Moshe lowered his voice. He faltered for a moment, then continued:

“All, all of you do I remember yet―

The hungry childhood and the bitter manhood, And my heart weeps for my unhappy people… .

How burned, how blasted must our portion be, If seed like this is withered in its soil.”

31

The Trap

David pushed through the revolving door of the Atlantic Hotel and onto Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. For the first time in weeks, the shops and cafés of Ben Yehuda were brightly lit and crowded with men and women picking up last-minute gifts for the holidays.

The last week and a half had been quiet in Jerusalem, David reasoned, lulling everyone into a sense of safety and well-being, despite the news from Cairo about the Arab meeting. Christians and Jews alike welcomed this night, and the stone walls of Jerusalem echoed with happy laughter once again.

David tucked Ellie’s present under his arm and stood for a moment, noting the ruler-edge crease in his slacks. Even his tie was pressed, and his shoes glistened with the reflected lights from the blinking neon of the Atara Café across the street. The Atara was the hangout for the volunteer forces of the Haganah, as well as a number of newsmen who were on their own. Through the windows David could see groups of young men in animated conversation at tiny tables crowded with large mugs of beer. “Sorry, fellas,” he murmured happily, “this is one party you’re going to have without ol’ David.”

Under his leather flight jacket he carried a small balsa-wood model of a Mustang fighter plane for Yacov and two rolls of Italian salami for Shaul. He had purchased twenty pounds of salami in Rome, stuffing every available corner of his duffel bag with the spicy cargo.

Only moments before, he had untied the bag to find that everything inside smelled like a deli. He sniffed the thin, six-inch-square package he carried on top of the camera box. Only a vague aroma drifted from the paper. David hoped that the beautiful silk scarf he had purchased in Rome for Rachel had not absorbed any of the smell.

It was only a few blocks to the bus stop, but David had borrowed Michael’s beat-up car for the occasion. He placed the gifts on the front seat and climbed in. Glancing at his watch, he felt a wave of impatience. It was only six-thirty; he was half an hour early.

He sat for a minute watching through the windshield as two lovers strolled happily down the street, stopping in the shadows to kiss. An ache started in his stomach and spread to his arms as he remembered Ellie looking up into his face and leaning against him as they strolled along the boardwalk in Santa Monica last Christmas Eve.
Had it
only been a year?
he wondered in amazement. How fresh the feelings inside his heart were still. Every emotion, every stirring seemed like only yesterday. He sighed deeply and started the car.

“So,” he said, “you’ll be a little early. You can help her mash the potatoes.”

David took the long route to the Moniger home, avoiding the barbed-wire roadblocks along the dark and bleak military areas. He passed through a Haganah checkpoint and was instantly recognized by a man he had seen in the office of Ben-Gurion.

“Let him through,” came the order. “He’s okay.”

David waved, then rolled down the window to shout at the grim collection of men at the outpost directly in front of the Jewish Agency. “Merry Christmas!”

The men smiled and waved in return. Then, on impulse, David tossed a salami into the hands of their leader. For a moment the man seemed startled; then he smiled at David. “Be careful who you throw salami at. Someone might think it is a grenade you toss and …

kablooey
!” He pointed his index finger at David. “But thank you!

Merry Christmas to you as well!”

Lights glimmered through closed shutters of the homes in the Rehavia neighborhood. A few houses stood dark and desolate, abandoned by their owners for safer places in the world, but for the most part, the Jews had held firm to Ben-Gurion’s pleas that not one inch of the city be given up without a fight.

The Jewish outposts and kibbutzim that David and Michael had flown over today also bustled with activity. Even from their high vantage point, David had seen men and women at work digging jagged trenches on the perimeters of their tiny settlements. Most of the Jewish land had been purchased nearly a century before by Jews in Europe who had foreseen this moment in history. Now the land that had been desolate and barren had begun to bloom with the hope of a new nation. At this point, David knew, it was only hope that sustained these people. They had very little else to combat the constant threats and ever-increasing incidents of terrorism.

Some Jews had turned to counterterrorism, though. If anything would destroy the United Nations’ resolve to support Partition and a Jewish homeland, it would be atrocities committed by Jews. The world’s conscience was raw with the sight of the Nazi death camps.

Militancy among the Zionists only served to dull the edge of the world’s guilt. David hated to admit it, but Moshe had been right about Ellie’s photographs; they showed the truth of the situation to a world that sought any excuse to forget that God’s chosen people struggled not for land or territory, but for survival.

He rounded the corner of Ellie’s street and patted the red-tissue-wrapped box that held her new camera. He had been wrong about her staying; he knew that now. He only hoped that the Speed Graphix would convey the message that he believed in what she was doing.

Not a day passed but one of the Haganah men mentioned a letter from a relative in the States who had seen one of her pictures. Every image struck deeply back home, and momentum for private assistance seemed to be growing. As the official United States policy teetered precariously between support of Partition and the threat of repeal, men and women gathered at banquets across the U.S. to hear Golda Meir speak of the Yishuv’s urgent needs. Money was flooding in daily.

David thought about the Messerschmitts and smiled grimly. He only wished there had been money enough to buy a flock of Mustangs.

They were neat and stable planes, and there wasn’t an ME-109 that stood a chance against him in the cockpit of his own little fighter.

He pulled up in front of the Moniger home and set the brake. He stared at the house, puzzled by the darkened windows. The structure seemed deserted, but Uncle Howard’s Plymouth was parked in front.

“Maybe they’re at the back of the house,” David murmured as he stepped out of the car onto the sidewalk. He stood and scratched his chin, then retrieved the packages from the seat and strode up the front steps. He knocked sharply on the door and consulted his watch.
I’m
a little early, yes, but certainly they should be here.
He knocked again, harder. When no one answered, he returned to the car and climbed in to wait.

***

The kerosene chandeliers of Nissan Bek Synagogue smoked and flickered above Ellie’s head. The great auditorium was nearly deserted now.

A rabbi talked in hushed tones to two young defenders. A third man lay on a scaffolding suspended from the roof of the dome far above the floor of the great hall. Ellie glanced up when he coughed. From her angle far below, she could see him gazing intently through the window to the north, scanning the darkness of the Muslim Quarter on the other side of the thick walls of the building.

A young woman in a long black dress, her hair covered by a scarf, hurried in and placed a small basket into the larger basket that hung from the scaffolding. “Happy Hanukkah, Shimon,” she said, smiling up toward him. Her voice echoed throughout the building.

“Thank you, Tikvah,” he said in a low voice. “And could you fetch me another blanket? It is cold up here.”

The woman waved, then hurried out, casting a curious look in Ellie’s direction. Ellie watched as the man on the scaffolding hauled the basket up and carefully unwrapped his lonely supper. Ellie thought about all the flagpole sitters and wire walkers who had covered the front pages of the newspapers of her childhood. The folks back home had cheered them on, even though their only purpose had been to achieve some senseless record.

Now here was a man perched on a few boards high above her head in the dead of winter in Jerusalem. Surely he deserved some title: World’s Loneliest Outpost or Guard Duty Closest to Heaven. Ellie tapped her black camera case with her thumb.
What a front-page
picture this man would make!
But she was out of film.

The man coughed again, and Ellie looked up as he sipped hot coffee and hungrily devoured a slice of bread.
Every Jew in Palestine is a
flagpole sitter in a way,
she mused. And down on the ground, the United Nations and the peoples it represented watched with detatched interest to see whether the Jews would finally and irrevocably lose their balance and fall into the angry hands of the Arabs.

She wondered about her photographs, popping up between ads for soap and cigarettes. Perhaps people back home looked at them, shook their heads, muttered words like
crazy
, then turned the pages and forgot about it. “I guess You must be here on the flagpole, huh, God?” she said quietly.

The guard must have heard her, for he glanced over the edge of his perch. Ellie grinned and waved. He waved and returned to his meager supper.

Moments later the door to the little room opened and Rachel and Yacov came out, followed by the large man who had first attended Yacov’s grandfather. Ellie stood and walked to meet them, embracing Rachel, who laid her head against Ellie’s shoulder like a child.

“How is he?” Ellie asked.

The big man shook his head. “I was a medic in the war, nothing more. I cannot do anything for him here. He needs medical attention.

At Hadassah.”

“It is his heart. The kind doctor says for many months … ,” Rachel began to explain.

“He never told me.” Yacov’s eyes clouded.

“I cannot … ,” Rachel began, then squeezed Yacov’s arm. “
We
cannot leave him now.”