Pursuit (37 page)

“There's something I want to tell you, too.” Her voice was muffled by his arm.

He glanced down at her profile, faint in the little light that filtered into the room through the curtain. “What is it?”

“You first.”

He smiled at the little-girl ploy. “All right. Max says they want me to go to Switzerland. To buy arms.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I saw Max this morning. He came to the hospital to check on the wounded. He said you had agreed to go.”

“Yes.” He pulled enough away from her to try to see her eyes; she turned her head and her eyes glinted in the faint light. “I want you to come with me.”

“You know I can't, darling. My job is here, or wherever else they send me. I'm not needed in Switzerland—”

“You're needed there by me.”

She kissed his cheek and lay back again, smiling contentedly.

“You're not going away forever, darling, just for a trip. You can stand being alone for a while. We've been with each other so much I'd think you would welcome a change.” He was staring at her, his face a mask. “Well then,” she said lightly, “rush through your job and get back quickly.” He didn't answer; she looked at him curiously. “What's the matter?”

“What would you do if I didn't come back?”

“You mean, if something happened to you? I don't know. I'd die, I think.” She shook her head angrily. “That's morbid! Nothing is going to happen to you!”

“I don't mean that,” he said slowly, wondering why he was talking about it and wondering why he didn't stop. But he could not. “I mean, what if I chose not to come back to Palestine? What if I chose to stay in Switzerland, or go somewhere else from there? Would you leave this place and join me wherever it was?”

She removed her arm from about his body and sat up in bed, completely at ease in her nudity before him. Her breasts, outlined in the light from outside, seemed fuller than usual; even in the shadow he could picture her in his mind in every detail, every curve, every beloved feature. Of late she seemed to be gaining weight, but she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He reached for her but she put her hand on his chest, not pushing him away, but merely forestalling him until she could speak.

“Darling,” she said softly, “I know how you've hated this place. I know you came to Palestine because you were forced to come, and that you came here to the desert for the same reason. I'm glad you did come; if you hadn't I would never have known what it is to be in love as much as I am. It's a wonderful feeling. It's made me feel like a woman, and never as much as right now.” She paused a moment, searching for the proper words. “But, darling, we can't abandon reality. We don't live all by ourselves in a vacuum. My country is at war, Ben; we buried twelve of our people this morning. I can help here; I'm needed here. If this were a normal country, or if these were normal times, I would go anywhere with you. You know that; you must know that. But we're at war, and we'll probably be at war for years. Maybe all our lives. It isn't possible, darling. I'm sorry.”

She reached up and touched his cheek, running her finger down the scar that lined his jaw, then touching his lips with the tip of her finger as if to keep him silent until she was finished.

“I didn't ask you to marry me because I didn't want to add to your feeling of being under compulsion, of being forced into something against your will. I know it's happened to you many times; I didn't want to make it happen again. I know you felt you were in a prison here at Ein Tsofar, and I wanted you to feel free, at least as far as we were concerned. You're still free, darling. I have no claims on you. If you want to come back to us, to me, when you're through with your work in Europe, you will. I'll still be here. If you don't, you won't. I wouldn't force you if I could; that isn't what love is about. At least not my love.”

She withdrew her fingers from his lips, indicating she was through. He stared at the ceiling in silence, his hand continuing to softly stroke her hair. The sad thing was that he would not return from Switzerland; he knew that to be the truth. He would miss Deborah; oh, he would miss her! But he could never return to the misery of this barren land he hated. Just a woman, even as fine a woman as Deborah, was not enough for him to throw away the future.

He leaned over to kiss her, and kissing her, slid down in the bed, pulling her to him. They made love with a passionate fierceness that was unusual with them, a violent coupling that seemed to acknowledge the approaching finality of their parting; and then fell apart, gasping, not speaking. Each turned away from the other as if to avoid the pain of discussion, seeking surcease in sleep.

But Benjamin Grossman could not fall asleep. The excitement of the battle for the settlement, the exhilaration of their tempestuous love-making, the fact that in a short while he could actually be quitted of Ein Tsofar and the hated desert, of Palestine altogether, filled his mind with thoughts that raced. Switzerland! He would actually be there soon, walking down civilized streets, taking an aperitif in some civilized hotel lounge in some civilized town among civilized people. He glanced at Deborah's back, wondering if she were asleep. Maybe when she realized he really was not coming back, maybe then she would join him. Nor would she be sorry. With the money in Zurich they could live where they wanted, how they wanted. France, possibly, or in Portugal. Why hadn't he considered those places before? Or on a Mediterranean island, one of the Ionian islands, possibly. It would be close to Palestine if Deborah ever wanted to come back for a visit.

He closed his eyes, determined to go to sleep, and then suddenly remembered something. He rolled over, speaking softly, hoping Deborah was still awake.

“You said you had something to tell me, too.”

She spoke without turning back, her voice wide-awake.

“It was nothing important, darling. Go to sleep.”

Chapter 5

Shmuel Ginzberg snored. This is not uncommon among elderly men, of course, but Ginzberg's snores were in a category by themselves. They were not the simple rasping sounds one associates with mouth-breathers, nor were they the half-muttered, grunting, intermittent noises one pictures as possibly accompanying some interesting dream. Ginzberg's snores were loud, earth-shattering, heart-rending, clamorous eruptions that seemed to reveal some inner torment too tragic for expression except through this gasping, snarling, half-neighing racket. He sounded as if he were drowning. Benjamin Grossman had learned to sleep through snores early in his camp experience, since otherwise one received no rest at all, but nothing he had heard before compared to the sounds that emanated from Shmuel Ginzberg.

They had arrived in Geneva after midnight, following a trip that had taken nearly twenty hours from the time they left Lydda Airport outside of Tel Aviv, by way of Cyprus to Athens, then to Naples, on to Rome, a further stop at Milano, and finally Geneva. They had taken the airport bus into the center of the city and from there, with Grossman carrying the luggage, had walked to the small cheap hotel where their reservations had been made in order to save taxi fare. The limited condition of their finances—for money was not meant to be wasted on personal comfort when the need for more important purchases existed—dictated the necessity for sharing a room, and since Shmuel Ginzberg was by far the senior in age, he commandeered the bed without putting the matter to a vote, leaving the lumpy couch for Grossman. After merely removing his elastic-sided shoes, his black hat, and his stiff collar, the old man fell upon the bed, wrapped himself in the single comforter the bare room provided, and almost instantly began to snore.

Grossman's first reaction on hearing the unprecedented racket coming from the bed was to overlook his previous intentions, and instead go through Ginzberg's pockets, extract enough money for the fare to Zurich, and be on his way since it was obvious he was not going to get any sleep. He was, after all, in Switzerland at long last—a fact he found hard to believe, although he knew it would grow upon him once he got a chance to get about in daylight and renew old memories. But while he had known that his visit would eventually end up at his bank in Zurich, he had fully intended to first help Ginzberg in his purchases of arms. To have done anything else would have been to estrange Deborah for all time, and he still had never abandoned the hope of eventually pursuading the girl to join him and share his life somewhere other than in Palestine.

He tried to deafen himself to Ginzberg's snores at first by sheer mental effort, but this was clearly impossible. He next arose, padded in his stocking feet down the dim hallway to the bathroom and stuffed his ears with toilet paper, but this was in the nature of attempting to stop a runaway train with a toothpick. He finally went over and tapped the old man on the arm, but this seemed only to make Ginzberg snore more loudly. In desperation he waited for the neighbor in the next room to finally tire of the disturbance and hammer on the wall next to Ginzberg's ear, but either the neighbor was deaf or the room unoccupied, because no such salvation came. At last he gave up. He got dressed, cast a look of malevolence at the old man, and went down to the lobby for a quiet place to think.

The lobby was deserted at that hour, other than a clerk half asleep behind the counter, and Grossman selected a chair beside a dusty rubber plant, and tried to bring his thoughts and his plans into some order. The clerk, noting that the intruder was a guest who apparently preferred the comfort of the lobby to the discomfort of the room—a condition the clerk could understand—put his head back on his arm and drifted off again.

Grossman pondered, his penchant for planning once again given an opportunity for expression. It was obvious he could not continue to room with Ginzberg, but it was equally obvious he would never get the old man to agree to the expense of separate quarters. Eventually he might become accustomed to the snoring, but until he did, other solutions had to be found. The most obvious one, of course, was to be able to finance the luxury of a room of his own out of his own pocket. It would be hard, it seemed to him, for Ginzberg to object. To do this meant a trip to his bank immediately, at which time he could arrange proper funds, transfer moneys where and how he wished, and in general settle the matter of finances for all time. He would, of course, have to make up some story to satisfy Ginzberg's wonder at sudden affluence right after borrowing the train fare from the man, but a relative in Zurich could serve. A dying and rich uncle, possibly, would be the excuse for the trip as well as the affluence, and they could take up their mission a day late.

Having thought the solution through, Grossman looked about the quiet lobby for some magazine with which to pass the time until Ginzberg's sleep settled into deep-enough narcosis to obviate snoring, or until his own weariness became so acute as to guarantee rest through any disturbance. But other than an old newspaper someone had discarded, the lobby was bare of reading material. With a sigh he retrieved the journal and prepared to bring himself up to date on Swiss events.

The newspaper was from that morning, or, rather, yesterday morning since it was now nearly three o'clock, but at least it was from Lucerne, he was pleased to see, and was therefore in German. He settled back with a yawn, flipping pages, and almost missed the article through lack of interest. But somehow it caught his eye and he went back to it.

His sleepiness vanished instantly; he felt a shock, almost electric. He bent over the newspaper, gripping it with fingers that ached from the pressure, reading it in total and utter disbelief:

NAZI BANK ACCOUNTS IMPOUNDED

Bern: May 24, by Our Reporter
.

By an agreement reached today between the Swiss Government and the Government of the West German Republic, all accounts suspected of having been established in Swiss banks through the deposits of former Nazi agencies, or of governmental funds of the Third Reich by former Nazi personnel, will be impounded until proper ownership can be established. In general, these suspect accounts are those established from Germany or German-occupied territories during the period 1941/1945. Anyone attempting to withdraw funds from such suspect accounts will be called upon to furnish proper identification as well as to give a proper account of the source of such funds. The agreement signed today in Bern will go into effect immediately and will be binding upon all Swiss banking establishments.

The Republic of West Germany feels that this agreement, which has taken over two years of negotiation to formulate, will return to it large sums of money which rightly belong to the government and which can be used for reparation to victims of former Nazi repression. It was felt such moneys were stolen either from victims of persecution or directly from the Reich treasury by dishonest elements in the course of their government service.

The Ministry of Finance, in making this announcement, wishes to advise all concerned that this regulation in no way affects normal confidentiality of normal accounts, for which Swiss banks are so well known.

Benjamin Grossman's stunned eyes went back to read the fateful story for a second time, and then for a third, although by this time the type was blurred before him. Then he looked at the date of the story: Monday, May 24. This morning—or again, rather, yesterday morning. Had they left Palestine—Israel, now, since a week ago Friday—only three days earlier—three days!—he could have cleared his account before the order went into effect. If Ginzberg hadn't been so damned slow in setting up their appointment in Geneva, and then if the old man hadn't refused to take a flight that might have caught him traveling on Friday after sundown but had insisted upon waiting for the Monday flight, they would have been here in time. A fortune lost because one damned Jew was a religious maniac! One more thing the Jews would have to pay for someday!