The Gates of Zion (34 page)

“Have you known her very long?”

“Three years―since 1944. I met her at the Hollywood canteen. You heard of that?”

“No.”

“No, I guess not.” He scratched his chin. “It was a terrific place where servicemen could go to dance and meet girls. It was in Hollywood―you know, where they make movies. You know about movies?”

“I have never seen one, but I have heard―”

“Anyway, sometimes movie stars like Lana Turner and Betty Grable would show up―gorgeous dames.” David’s voice became animated at the memory. “But believe me, they got nothin’ on you.”

Rachel tried to follow his words and translate them into Polish when a phrase escaped her comprehension, but only bits and pieces of the whole came through.

“And you met your girl there?” she asked, hungry to know stories of love and courtship. “Is she a movie star?”

“No, but she could be. Red hair …”

“A
shiksa
?”

“Whatever. Anyway, I saw her when the band was playing ‘String of Pearls’ by Glenn Miller. And I said to myself that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.” He paused and looked hard and long at Rachel, his smile fading.

“What is it?” she asked.

David looked into her eyes again. “Nothing. I just didn’t know anybody really had eyes like that. That’s all.”

“Her eyes are beautiful then?”

“No … I mean, yes―gorgeous! But I was talking about
your
eyes.

They are beautiful.”

Rachel studied her hands clasped in her lap. She felt a rush of embarrassment, even shame, that he had noticed her. “My eyes have seen too much to be beautiful any longer.”

“Nonsense. You’re still a person, aren’t you?”

“I have not thought so for a long time, David.”

“Well, you are. And someday the band is going to be playing Glenn Miller, and you’ll be standing with a group of girls talking―”

“Like your girl was?”

“Like Ellie. And some guy will spot you across the room and that’ll be it. He’ll say, ‘Hey, beautiful, do you want to dance?’―just like John Wayne or somebody—and he’ll sweep you off your feet.”

“It sounds like a lovely dream.” Rachel sighed. “An American dream.”

“Yeah? How do they do it here?”

“The matchmaker arranges for a suitable family.”

“Arranges?” David asked, incredulous.

“Oh yes. My parents had arranged for my marriage with a boy not far from Warsaw. I had not met him, but I spent my days imagining what he must be like.”

“How old were you when this all got settled?”

“Nine.” Her eyes sparkled. “Quite old. Many are betrothed much younger.”

David shook his head in disbelief. “You’re right. Sanity
is
a matter of perspective. So what happened to him?”

Rachel sat in silence for a long moment. “He was―” She searched for words to convey the horror of Nazi occupation: starvation, mass graves, mindless murder. Finally she chose the simplest terms. “He died … with his family. And my mother and father and brothers―everyone, even the matchmaker.”

David swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Dumb question.”

“They took me from the line,” she continued, as if unable to stop the flood of memories. “I was stripped and examined. Then I was branded and used for the pleasure of the men who murdered my family. And I was no longer a person.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“A child.”

“Full of dreams.” Her eyes were shining with tears. “I am sorry. I have not shared this with anyone. There has been no one who has seen me among so many.”

David gripped the control stick hard. “There must be someone who would understand.”

“To my own people I am a traitor. I should have died. I should have … I had a friend once.” The engine droned as Rachel remembered.

“She was a year younger than I. She became pregnant, and she knew she would be gassed. It was a rule, you see. So she stabbed a Gestapo colonel.” She closed her eyes. “They lined us up in the morning and made us watch her execution. I only wished that I could have been so courageous.”

“But you lived through it all,” David said, groping for words. “In my book that takes a special kind of courage.”

“You are kind.” She considered him through eyes that brimmed with pain. “I would have given anything to be that American girl on the dance floor. I am twenty-one now, and my dreams are all buried in the ashes of Auschwitz. At night I lie upon my bed and ask God where He has gone, why I was not allowed to die. He does not answer.”

***

Ellie and Moshe stood anxiously beside a truck parked at the side of the Naharia airfield. The radio blared the news of the Semiramis bombing. Ellie shivered, not from the cold of the day, but from wondering at the fate of Miriam’s son and grandson.
The old woman will be frantic.
The little Arab family had only each other.

“
… the names of the dead and wounded have not been released,
pending notification of kin,”
the radio announcer continued.

Moshe put his arm around her. “Your uncle will be there with her, Ellie. There is little you can do.”

“I know that. It’s just that she’s such a terrific woman. Moshe, if we are working for and with people who could do such a thing …”

“It was not Haganah,” he insisted. “That much I can tell you. Maybe those idiots in the Irgun would do such a thing. Maybe it was an accident. I don’t know what to tell you, but it was not Haganah. I would have known. I would not have permitted it.”

“Her grandson is a violinist.” Ellie imagined broken bodies among the rubble. “A violinist,” she repeated. “It seems so ridiculous that somebody like that could be hurt… .”

“Six million violinists, poets, dreamers, and doctors died within the last six years simply because they were Jewish. Nobody ever said any of this makes sense,” Moshe said wearily. “Perhaps the story of just one is more moving than the numbers. Perhaps it is too hard to imagine that so many died without cause.”

Ellie turned her face toward the gray sky and listened for the faint drone of David’s airplane. She switched off the radio and sat forlornly on the edge of the truck’s running board as the sputtering speck in the distance took shape and finally circled slowly above them.

Moshe looked at his watch. “He’s late.”

“As usual.”

David landed smoothly on the concrete runway and, without switching off the engine, rolled to a stop near the truck. He opened his door and dumped out the mail sack for a Sabra woman to retrieve, then waved to Moshe and Ellie to board.

Moshe opened the door of the buzzing little aircraft for Ellie. When Ellie saw a young woman sitting cross-legged on a mail pouch in the back, she balked and glared suspiciously at David.

“Hurry up,” David insisted. “I’m late.”

“We noticed,” said Ellie dryly as she took her seat next to the woman.

David made quick introductions. “Rachel Lubetkin, this is Ellie Warne.”

Rachel smiled kindly at Ellie and timidly extended her hand. “You must be David’s girl.”

“A matter of opinion. But I’m Ellie, anyway.” She returned the smile.

“And this is Moshe Sachar,” David said as Moshe boarded.

Moshe turned and looked into the shadow of the cargo area for the first time. His smile faded for an instant, as if he was astonished at whom he found there. Then he beamed. “You!”

“It is you!” Rachel exclaimed in delight as she reached out and shook his hand vigorously.

“I see you two have met,” said David cheerfully as he taxied out to a much slower takeoff than usual.

“One very dark night, Mr. Sachar taught me to swim,” Rachel replied.

A surge of jealousy passed through Ellie as she realized that this must be the woman Ehud had used to win the chess game. Every word he had said about her was true―and then some.

“You have been well?” Moshe asked, his eyes lingering in a way that Ellie distinctly disapproved of.

“David has helped me locate my family.” She took a letter from her sweater pocket and handed it to Moshe.

“
Mazel tov,”
he said sincerely as he skimmed the letter. “So now you are returning home.”

“If there is a home to return to,” quipped David. “Did you hear we blew up an Arab hotel?”

“In the first place, it was not our men. And Ellie has friends staying there,” Moshe shot back angrily.

“Oh―” David’s bantering ceased. “Sorry, Els. Open mouth, insert foot, huh?”

Rachel gazed sympathetically at Ellie. “I hope no one is … injured.”

She crossed her arms and looked away. “I am sorry.”

“David, you remember Miriam?” Ellie asked. “It’s her son and grandson.”

“The old woman?”

“Yes.”

David whistled. “Tough as a boot.”

“You are a picture of concern!” Ellie snapped. “Where does your family live?” she asked Rachel, changing the subject.

“It is only my grandfather. He is a rabbi in the Old City.”

“Do you have a place to stay until you can get in?”

Rachel glanced nervously toward David. “Well, I … I mean, David thought―”

David chewed his lip. “Els, I figured maybe you could put her up for a few days.”

Rachel looked down at the mail sack. “But if it is any bother …”

Ellie couldn’t stop the aggravated expression that she knew had crossed her face. She glared at the back of David’s head. “No bother at all,” she said with difficulty.

“Good.” Moshe rubbed his hands together. “Then it is settled.”

“Didn’t I tell you Ellie was terrific?” David yawned.

Ellie turned to stare out the window as Rachel studied her with eyes full of understanding. Then Ellie felt a hesitant, light touch on her arm. She turned slightly without looking Rachel full in the face. “I’m all right,” said Ellie. “A little edgy, maybe. Worried, you know?”

“I can find a hotel room if it is an inconvenience.”

“Forget it. Really.” Ellie felt ashamed of her jealousy. “It will be all right.”

Rachel gazed solemnly down at the road below and the tiny trucks that crawled along toward Jerusalem.

***

Ellie immediately spotted Uncle Howard in the lobby of Hadassah Hospital.

He sat at the end of a long row of nearly empty chairs, his face unshaven and his clothes rumpled. In his hands he held the pocket Bible that he always carried, and as he studied its pages, his face was a strange mixture of sorrow and peace. Miriam’s beautiful Sunday shawl lay folded neatly beside him on the chair.

As Ellie hurried toward him, leaving the others to wait by the door, a dark foreboding gripped her heart. “Uncle Howard!” She leaned down and hugged him. Picking up the shawl, she sat beside him, gazing pensively into his eyes.

Howard drew a deep breath and blinked back tears. “Such a waste.

Such a terrible waste.”

“Sammy?” she asked.

“He’ll live. Broken arm, cuts—that’s all.”

“Thank God. Ishmael?”

Howard shook his head slowly. “No,” he replied simply.

“Oh, Uncle Howard!” Ellie cried, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Poor Miriam! Poor old dear!” She glanced around the lobby.

“Where is she? Is she all right?”

Howard placed his hand on Ellie’s arm. “No. She’s gone, child.”

“Gone? Gone where? Is she at home?” She clutched the old woman’s shawl to her, afraid of the answer.

A lone tear trickled down Howard’s cheek as he tucked his chin and tried to speak. “She stayed with them last night,” he said finally, after he’d cleared his throat. “At the hotel.”

“Miriam!” Ellie buried her face in the shawl as the emptiness of loss pressed in on her.

“She is safe now, child.” Howard wrapped his arms around Ellie.

“She has gone home.”

***

The last of 30 bodies was recovered today from the rubble of
the Semiramis Hotel in the Jerusalem suburb of Katamon.

Although Haganah sources deny involvement in the bombing,
other sources indicate that the hotel was being used as a
military headquarters by Arabs. No members of Arab military
staff were present, however, and only civilians were
numbered among the victims. British High Command called
this latest act of violence by Jews against Arabs “dastardly …

the murder of innocent people.”

Haj Amin lowered the newspaper and fixed his eyes on Rabbi Akiva, who sat across from him on the patio. “A vile act, do you not agree, Rabbi?” he asked grimly.

Rabbi Akiva shook his head in shame. “My heart is breaking that such as these would call themselves Jews.”

“You see our dilemma, then? If we were to allow passage into the Jewish Quarter, what guarantee would we have that the Old City would not be polluted with these Jewish fanatics, these murderers of the innocent among my people?”

“It was my thought, Haj Amin, that perhaps an arrangement could be made. For the sake of my people in the Old City.”

Haj Amin’s eyebrows raised slightly with interest. “Arrangement?”

Akiva toyed with the watch chain stretched across his belly. “It has occurred to me that we might make a little exchange. There is a possibility that I might obtain something you want very badly.”

Haj Amin leaned forward and gazed intently at Akiva. “And what do you have that I could possibly desire, my friend?”

“Victory.”

“That is mine, at any rate.” Haj Amin shrugged and settled back in his chair.

“Are you so very sure?” Akiva smiled knowingly.

Haj Amin cleared his throat, then poured coffee for Akiva and himself. “And for this promise of victory against the Zionists, what would you receive in return?”

Akiva confidently sipped his coffee. “The preservation of the Jewish Quarter. For the sake of my people. The places of learning, the synagogues.”

“Ah yes.” Haj Amin smiled. “Immortality for the name of Akiva, eh?

Savior of the old ways?”

“Just as the name of Haj Amin Husseini shall also be immortal among his people.”

“That goes without saying.” Haj Amin set his cup on the low table before him. “Immortality. A simple enough request.”

“I thought perhaps we would see eye-to-eye.” Akiva tugged at his vest. “And there is one more item I require,” he added.