Israel (54 page)

Herschel was solely concerned with Frieda's reactions, and somehow he would make her understand that if the Nazis defeated the Allies, the question of a Jewish state would be academic.

There was plenty of time for Frieda to come to terms with Herschel's decision once she learned of it. She said that she wouldn't marry him until Palestine was liberated, and what point was there in taking a wife when he had a war to survive?

One morning just after dawn the police came for him. It was a nightmare. Herschel opened his eyes to see half a dozen police officers crowded into his tiny bedroom. They were grouped around his bed, revolvers drawn on him as he cowered naked beneath the sheet.

Through his doorway he could see two more struggling to hold back his mother. One of them had his hand clamped across her mouth. Herschel could see that his mother's eyes were wide with panic. The other officer did something to her wrist, and her eyes squeezed shut against the pain.

“Let go of her, you bastard!” Herschel roared, his fear forgotten in his anger over the mistreatment of his
mother. He jackknifed from the bed, but they must have hit him.

He dimly heard his mother's cry, muffled by the policeman's fingers across her lips, and a gruff order, “Search the place!”

To Herschel it all seemed very remote as he settled softly onto the planks of the bare wooden floor and into blackness.

He came to propped upright in a hardbacked swivel chair. He tried to raise his arms, but found his wrists cuffed behind his back and chained to the chairback. At least they'd clothed him. He was wearing rough hemp pants and a pullover smock, prison garb, he realized.

The room was windowless; its walls were cinderblock. Got to think, he warned himself. How did they find out?

He flinched, startled, as a hand snaked past his ear and came down upon his shoulder.

“Back with us, eh, Mr. Kolesnikoff?” came a man's British accent from behind him. Herschel was spun around in his swivel chair—unnerving with his hands pinned behind him—to confront three men. All wore the khaki of the British police. The one who had spoken stood uncomfortably close. The other two sat behind a plain wooden table laden with books and papers—his books and papers, Herschel realized.

“Is my mother all right?” Herschel demanded.

“Not relevant,” the officer beside him proclaimed.

“Who are you? What's your name?” Herschel stared up at the man, who was in his fifties and had icy blue eyes and the florid complexion of his kind. He had a white bottlebrush mustache precisely clipped along the line of his upper lip. Herschel glanced at the stripes on the man's sleeve. A sergeant.

“Sergeant,” Herschel began, “there's been a terrible mistake. I'm just a student—”

“You're a terrorist, lad, a murderer, and that's the whole of it.” The sergeant scowled. “We've all but measured your neck for the hangman's noose, of that you can be assured. Now then, the corporal over there is a stenographer. What I want you to do, lad, is tell us nice and quick the names of your friends in the lrgun.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Lad”—the sergeant's tone held menace—“don't make me beat it out of you.”

Herschel took a deep breath, trying to control the trembling in his voice. “If you beat me, you'll get nothing but screams, sergeant. I can't tell you what I don't know.”

One of the others at the table laughed. “Well said.” Herschel peered at him and saw captain's bars on his collar. “Yes indeed, Mr. Kolesnikoff, well said, even if it is a lie. Now, first we'll tell you what we know, and then it will be your turn.”

The captain looked to be no more than thirty, Herschel thought. He found himself idly wondering if the sergeant was jealous of his young superior. Anything was better than attending to the captain's revelations.

“We had you tracked—right down to your address—within forty-eight hours of the attack on the coffeehouse,” the captain was boasting. “We could have picked you up at any time, but we waited in the hopes that you and your lrgun mates would have a get-together.”

“Why? Why me?” Herschel blurted. Frieda, he thought, thank God she's been away. “P-please, captain, if that's true, you must know that I'm innocent of these charges. I've gone to no lrgun meetings.” He smiled tentatively. “I've even volunteered for the army.”

“We know that, lad.” the sergeant nodded. “That you Yids hate Hitler makes sense to us, all right. But there's no point in your going on about not belonging to the lrgun.”

The Captain held up the IRA leaflets and the crudely
carbon-copied small-arms manual by Raziel. “We found these items in your closet, Mr. Kolesnikoff.”

“All right,” Herschel sighed. “1 flirted with the idea of joining the lrgun. But I never did join, honestly.”

The sergeant and the captain exchanged weary smiles. “We have two witnesses, Mr. Kolesnikoff,” the young officer said. “The rug merchant has already come by—you were unconscious—to identify you as the man who threw the grenades.”

Herschel stared, dumfounded, sick at heart. Up until now he had entertained a hope of talking himself out of this mess. Now that hope was gone. That the rug merchant might identify him Herschel could understand, but how did the police manage to nab him in the first place. “You said there were two witnesses?”

“Aye, lad,” the sergeant replied. “An Arab at the scene identified you by name.”

“But how?” Herschel cried out. “That's not possible.”

“Lad, the two witnesses support one another, don't you see? We've got you.”

“Now then, let's have that list of names,” the captain said.

“I'm not going to tell you anything.”

The sergeant and the captain exchanged glances. “What the hell, lad.” The sergeant gave him a comradely pat on the shoulder. “There's no real hurry. We can postpone your hearing for as long as we like. We'll let you stew over your predicament for a while. Let you talk with your mother—oh, yes, your mother's fine. Perhaps she can talk some sense into you. Cooperation with us might rescue you from the gallows.”

No longer any point in pretending, Herschel thought. “As an lrgun soldier I demand to be treated as a prisoner of war.”

“That's not likely,” the sergeant said almost kindly. “If it were up to me—” He shrugged. “It's true you lrgun
blokes have yet to hurt a British subject, and I appreciate the fact that you personally volunteered. It's a pity you didn't think of it before you threw those bloody grenades.”

Herschel felt worse faced with sympathy than with bluster. He began the lrgun anthem. “
In blood and fire did Judaea fall/In blood and fire Judaea shall rise again
.”

“Perhaps,” the captain acknowledged brightly, “but unless you supply us the information we're after, you shan't live to see it, Mr. Kolesnikoff.”

“Kol,” Herschel said fiercely. “My name is Herschel Kol.”

The captain smiled thinly. “Quite. When the time comes, we shall see to it that the hangman gets it correct, won't we, sergeant?”

It had long been Abe Herodetzky's habit to sit in his rocking chair behind the meat counter and study the newspapers for mention of Palestine. With Becky handling things up front he often had an uninterrupted hour early in the morning to skim the English-language papers and then peruse the Yiddish press. The American papers ran little about what was happening over there, but the
Forward
and especially the
Freiheit
offered regular dispatches from the Holy Land.

The
Freiheit
was the Jewish Communist paper, and while Abe despised the Communists for what they were doing to the unions, he bought the paper for its coverage of Palestine. Ever since the Palestinian Zionists staged the bombing reprisals against the Arabs, the anti-Zionist
Frieheit
—despite Stalin's devil pact with Hitler the Communists insisted that post-revolutionary Russia was the Jews' Promised Land—afforded expanded coverage of the British administration's efforts to “track down the terrorist fanatics.”

“Father,” Becky called for the third time. Giving up,
she left her place behind the counter and walked back to the meat counter. “What's wrong?” she demanded. “Didn't you hear me calling you?” She stopped abruptly. Her father was ghost-white. He was staring at his newspaper like a man reading his own obituary. “Father, are you ill? What is it?”

Abe looked up at her and chuckled. “Nothing. I'm fine.” He breathed deeply and laughed again. “I gave myself a good scare, that's all.” He gestured to his daughter to come around the counter and read over his shoulder. “See here? Look what it says: Herschel Kol, just like in Kolesnikoff, yes Becky? I was reading about this poor fellow who got arrested for blowing up the Arabs, and then I got to his name and for a moment—”

“In your head you thought his name was Kolesnikoff.” Becky murmured. “Oh, I'm sorry . . .”

Her father had long ago confided in her that he studied the papers not out of Zionist fervor but because he still held onto the hope of finding mention of Haim. “One day his name—with a picture—will be in there,” her father predicted, wagging his finger. “With my luck the day I don't buy will be the day it gets published.”

Becky scanned the article. It seemed that the man had yet to be sentenced. There was some flap about his being the grandson of a deceased famous painter, once a big shot in England, for that matter. Considering his crime, the young man's heritage made for a good story. The British were afraid that if they hanged their prisoner, the publicity would exacerbate a sensitive political situation.

“Look, Becky,” Abe grumbled. “These Commies are saying the young man did it because he came from a wealthy background. They say that a boy from an honest worker background would never do such a thing.” Disgusted, he quit reading to crumple the paper into a ball. “Now, why were you calling me?”

“Just to remind you that I've got something to attend to this afternoon.”

“What, today? You're leaving me alone in the store today?” Abe frowned, shaking his head. He remembered the crumpled newsprint still in his hand and set to work polishing the slanted glass windows of the meat counter. “You can't go today. You know the freezer is coming.”

“Oh, Father, you can handle it.” The General Foods wholesaler was supplying the store with a small freezer to display frozen packages of fruits and vegetables labeled “Birdseye.” Abe had made room for the freezer by tearing out some of the old wooden produce bins.

“All right, go,” Abe said with a long-suffering sigh. “I'll manage.”

At one o'clock Becky untied her apron and went upstairs to change her clothes. She'd been giving careful thought to her clothes for the last few days, so there was no indecision as she shucked off her skirt and sweater and put on her best navy blue dress with its white collar. Her best shoes were brown and low-heeled, but they would have to do. Becky sighed. At least they matched her coat, if not her dress.

She turned on the radio and absently hummed along as she looked at herself in the vanity mirror. She had no makeup of her own, but the drawers of the vanity were filled with her mother's cosmetics. She selected a lipstick and carefully put it on, then peered doubtfully at her reflection.

She could not remember when she had last thought to wear makeup. She no longer attended school, had no beaus; there was no call for it in the store. There had been nobody to teach her how to put it on; all she had to go by were the photographs in the magazines.

Becky turned away from the mirror, feeling depressed. She was certainly no glamor girl. Her nose was too big,
for one thing, and she was far too fat. Compared to the angels in strapless evening gowns who filled the society pages, she was a cow. But at least her lipstick was on straight and her hair was clean and shiny. She was so happy she'd found the gumption to defy her father and have it cut into a fashionable shoulder-length page-boy.

She grabbed her coat and purse and was halfway down the stairs before she remembered the radio. She hurried back to the apartment to cut off the warbling and then thought to wonder about the time. The alarm clock in her bedroom read a quarter past two. She'd frittered away over an hour at the vanity, as if all the lipstick in the world could help her if she was late.

She flew down the stairs and rushed through the store, stopping at the cash register for a dollar. She hated taking money, whether it was to buy something for herself or just to have a little in her purse. Her father never commented on it, but he never failed to notice and winced at the amount, however small, as if his heart had begun to act up.

Today she had no choice. She had to have carfare if she was to be on time.

“I'll try to get back before it gets busy,” she called to her father, who nodded morosely. She hurried out the door.

She took the subway to Fourteenth Street. As she rode she went over her strategy, trying to bolster her flagging courage. If this worked out, she would find the resolve to stand up to her father. He'd have no choice but to allow Danny to help out after school and on Saturdays.

She got out at her station and skipped up the stairs to street level. She ran the few blocks to Malden's, the sprawling five-and-ten, crossed her fingers and searched the store's plate glass windows. The small sign was still there. “Applications to be accepted for part-time sales
clerks,” it read, and then the succinct instructions to apply on today's date at three o'clock.

Inside Becky negotiated the maze of aisles through Notions, past Dress Goods, Costume Jewelry, Clocks, Hosiery, Stationery. She began to panic. It was just a few minutes before three. Where was Personnel?

“Help you, sweetie?” It was a matronly woman with silver hair and a badge that read “Floor Supervisor.”