by Herman Wouk
“Shalom, boy.” To Shayna he says, “Your mother is wanted downstairs, lady, by the Ezrakh.”
“My mother? My mother is in bed with lumbago. She can’t move. What is it?”
“Who said I can’t move?” Querulous voice from behind the curtain. “The Ezrakh wants me, I’m coming, Shayna—oof! Oh!” Heavy thump on the floor.
“Mama!”
“I’m all right, I fell off the bed. Help me dress!”
But the mother is really immobilized, and Shayna puts her back to bed, violently protesting.
“My company commander is very religious,” says the paratrooper to Shayna as they go downstairs. “He suggested to Colonel Gur that the Ezrakh come to the Wall. I’ve been sent to bring him. The Ezrakh asked for your mother to go with him.”
The Ezrakh is wearing his Sabbath best, a shiny black sateen coat to his ankles, and a flat black hat somewhat less rusty than the weekday one. His long white beard is immaculately brushed out. “I’ll come with you, Rabbi,” Shayna says. “All right? Mama isn’t well.”
The Ezrakh nods, and says he will pray at the Wall for her mother’s recovery.
“I’m ordered to tell you, Rabbi,” says the lieutenant, “that there’s still firing in the Old City. You need not risk it unless you want to.”
The Ezrakh smiles and walks out of his open door to the parked jeep. Shayna follows him. “You’ll have to move that equipment,” she tells the lieutenant. A large field transmitter occupies the front seat. “He’ll sit there.”
“Why? The back’s more comfortable.”
“He won’t sit with me.”
The lieutenant grins. “Some kind of superstition?”
“Just move the stuff, all right?”
“I’d sit with you any day, lady.” He hefts the equipment into the back. “But I’m no holy man, true enough.”
She says as he helps the Ezrakh in, “By any chance, did you come on a Lieutenant Colonel Nitzan in there? That boy in our flat is his son.”
“You mean the armor guy? Don Kishote?”
“Right. The armor guy.”
“Sure. While the chief chaplain was dancing with the Torah he was blowing shofar.”
“He was? One moment.” Shayna runs upstairs to tell Aryeh that Abba is all right.
***
Soldiers are cordoning off the vast pile of munitions with barriers and ropes. “We’ll be two weeks getting this stuff off the Mount,” Gur says to Kishote. “There must be fifty tons.”
“Better put a round-the-clock guard on it, Motta.”
“I’ve ordered that.” Gur glances at his watch. “Say, that helicopter landed a while ago. The Prime Minister should be along. Sensible to use the chopper, instead of trying to drive. Listen, tell Major Shimon to bring Eshkol here to me, and I’ll escort him to the Wall myself.” He gestures at the ammunition dump. “I want him to see this.”
“B’seder.”
Soldiers throng in the Lions Gate archway, gawking over each other’s shoulders, blocking Kishote’s view. “Dayan! It’s Moshe Dayan! He came by helicopter!” The Minister of Defense, Chief of Staff Rabin, and Central Commander Uzi Narkiss appear through the gate, with soldiers making way and reporters and photographers crowding in behind. Dayan wears a webbed helmet with chin strap fastened, as though heading into combat. Narkiss has on a cloth cap, and Yitzhak Rabin is bareheaded. Dayan is saying to an aide, “Right this minute, get the Ramatkhal a helmet.”
“Not necessary,” says Rabin, looking pained, but when the aide snatches a helmet from a soldier and hands it to him, he tiredly puts it on and ties the strap.
“All right, now we go,” says Dayan. In theory a civilian minister, he is in full military uniform, looking every inch the conquering commander. With Narkiss and Rabin on either side of him he marches forward, arms rigid and swinging, fists clenched, chest out. Army cameramen and news photographers walk backwards before him, shooting every stride. Watching from a doorway of the Via Dolorosa, Kishote thinks, Magiya l’kha, Moshe—you’re entitled! Dayan’s rise has made a big difference, after all. When the Hamtana frightened the country and chilled army morale, he rallied and unified the people as no one else could have.
The soldiers swarm after him to the Temple Mount. Only the security detail remains on the Via Dolorosa, waiting for the Prime Minister. Kishote walks out through the gate and looks up at the legendary lions. As sculpture they aren’t much. Surprising how familiar the gate already seems, after twenty years of invisibility to Jews! Kishote’s head is bothering him; the wound throbs and the dizziness comes and goes. Was that the reason the Wall left him so cold? Motta is right: a real disappointment. As a yeshiva boy he was taught, and he believed, that that Wall was the gateway to Heaven, where prayers went up straight from the earth to the Throne. But with his lips on the actual rough rock his thoughts stayed earth-bound in a shady smelly alley, where a few religious soldiers were mumbling through the morning liturgy. Maybe they felt something mystical, some sense of Jews coming here to bewail the fallen Temple down the centuries. Not he. On the contrary, he thought of Ehud Elad, who had not lived to kiss those stones.
Well, that must be Eshkol, he thinks, seeing an army car winding down the road from the Rockefeller Museum. So it is. Sam Pasternak gets out of the car first, then Eshkol, in a black suit, white shirt, and blue tie. A surprise, that! Like most Labor politicians, Eshkol usually wears an open shirt collar, the badge of socialist plainness. At big events—a dignitary’s funeral, a head-of-state reception, some cabinet minister’s daughter’s wedding—he may wear a tie. This occasion evidently calls for such full dress.
Sam Pasternak is astounded to see Kishote here, pallid and bandaged. “Yossi! Ma nishma? Prime Minister, this is one of our great fighting officers, Lieutenant Colonel Nitzan.”
“What’s the situation here, Yossi?” The Prime Minister sounds brisk and businesslike, but he is beaming, and his eyes in wrinkled dark sockets are joyous.
Remembering Gur’s attack plan, Kishote is able to rattle off a concise picture of how things stand: which units have captured the Dung Gate, the Zion Gate, the Jaffa Gate, and which sectors they now occupy in the Old City. Eshkol nods and nods, looking up at the Lions Gate with a peculiar smile. “B’seder. I first saw those lions, Yossi, when I came to Palestine at nineteen, a nobody named Shkolnik. Now I see them again as Eshkol, the Prime Minister of the Jewish State. A big change, blessed be the Name.”
“Colonel Gur is waiting for you on the Mount, Prime Minister.”
“Yes? And Dayan?”
Kishote hesitates. Pasternak says, “We know he’s here. We saw the helicopter go by.”
“He may be at the Wall, Prime Minister.”
“Well, so we go there too,” says Eshkol, with faint irony.
The security detail is lounging inside the gate. There are no photographers. The Via Dolorosa is empty, the houses shuttered. From the Temple Mount comes the sound of walkie-talkies, shouted orders, and the tumult of the crowd. “This is the greatest moment of my life,” says Eshkol in a matter-of-fact way, as he walks through the gate and the few soldiers salute and form up around him. On the Mount, Colonel Gur, in a helmet with chin strap fastened Dayan style, salutes the Prime Minister. Eshkol casually returns the gesture. “Now there’s a fine sight, Motta.” He points at the Star of David flag fluttering on an improvised pole over the plaza.
“Somebody went climbing inside the mosque, and put the flag way up there, Prime Minister.” Gur points to the top of the golden dome. “Moshe Dayan was furious. He ordered it taken down, and so I put it here.”
“Yes, he has very good sense, Moshe. A tactful act. Well, well, look at this.” Eshkol approaches the ammunition dump and peers at the crate markings. “Excellent, we can use it all. Very expensive stuff. High quality.” He notices Gur’s tart grin. “Once a treasurer, Motta, always a treasurer.”
“They were lucky a shell of ours didn’t land here, Prime Minister,” says Pasternak. “Both mosques would be gone.”
“Maybe we were the lucky ones,” says Gur. “The world would have turned on us for sure.”
“They will anyway,” says Eshkol. “Meantime here we are.”
“Some real shlepper of a Jordanian general is responsible for this,” says Pasternak.
“Now to the Wall, Motta,” says Eshkol.
Pasternak and Kishote trail after them. “What to all the devils happened to you, Yossi?”
“What’s going on in New York, Sam, with the cease-fire?”
“They’re still talky-talking. Come on, what are you doing in Jerusalem? And how did you get hurt?”
“It’s a long megillah.”
Pasternak thinks of telling Kishote about Yael’s sudden arrival, and decides against it. Another long megillah. Let it lie, he’ll find out soon enough.
“Sam, will we settle with the Syrians too? Take the Golan Heights? Or will the Galilee kibbutzniks have to go on farming under shellfire, even after this war?”
“Rabin wants to do it. Dayan won’t allow it. That can bring in the Russians, he says, and we’ll lose all we’ve gained and be much worse off.”
“What does Eshkol say?”
“He isn’t saying.”
The noonday sun is now shafting on the Wall, bringing out its beautiful pinkish color and its peculiar weathering; some of the gigantic blocks partly disintegrated, others looking fresh from the quarry. An entire company of paratroopers is pushing into the alley, making a great noise and looking up at the sunlit Wall in happy awe. The arrival of the Prime Minister is hardly noticed.
“I should be wearing a hat, I guess,” says Eshkol. At a word from Gur a soldier offers Eshkol his helmet. He puts it on with chin strap dangling, and decidedly queer it looks on the fat old man in a dark suit and tie. From a street leading off the alley comes the sound of raucously jolly male voices in a wedding song, the words from Jeremiah:
Then will be heard in the cities of Judah
And in the streets of Jerusalem
Voice of celebration and voice of joy…
A handful of soldiers come dancing backwards into the alley, clapping their hands, escorting the Ezrakh to the Wailing Wall as a yeshiva bridegroom is escorted to the canopy. He is walking with slow steps, smiling, and Shayna Matisdorf is hanging back behind him in a dark plain dress, a kerchief covering her hair. Kishote waves, catches her eye, and she shyly smiles.
…Voice of bridegroom and voice of bride…
The Ezrakh walks up to the Wall, and spreads out his black-clad arms on the stones. The song peters out, dies off, and all through the alley there falls a silence, except for the screams of the circling birds; a long silence, all eyes on the slight black figure embracing the Wall, and Don Kishote feels in a rush the emotion he tried in vain to work up when he kissed the stones. His spine warmly prickles.
Leaning against an Arab house in shadow, Sam Pasternak is remembering his first visit to the Wall with his kibbutznik father. The rough barrel-chested bareheaded Zionist, holding the five-year-old boy’s hand, glared hostility at the wailing breast-beating Jews in black. “If I ever have the power,” he said, “or if you ever get it, son, the first thing to do is tear down this wall, or blow it up. We’re not victims anymore. We’re workers of our land. Our history has begun anew. The past is dust.” The words come back strongly, and he knows what his antireligious father would have said about this sight. It is happening because a lot of good Jewish boys died, killing many, many more good misled Arab boys. No Messiah has brought that old man here, and some goyish talk in New York may shut off the Wall again to the Jews tomorrow.
The Ezrakh turns back to the soldiers, and his wrinkled bearded face is radiant. He speaks quietly, but in the dead silence all hear him. “Why have you stopped singing, children?” He takes up the song in a weak reedy voice, holding both hands in the air.
…Voice of celebration and voice of joy…
Soon all the soldiers are singing it, roaring it, crowding around him, and he begins an unsteady little dance. Almost tottering, he shuffles through the soldiers and heads for Levi Eshkol. The Prime Minister stares in surprise, then self-consciously smiles. The Ezrakh takes his hand. The two old men link arms and go round and round in time to the singing:
….Voice of celebration and voice of joy,
Voice of bridegroom and voice of bride…
Don Kishote darts through the jubilating paratroopers to Shayna, who stands apart at the entrance to the alley. “Come, Shayna!”
“Are you crazy?” She snatches her hand away from him. “It’s no place for me.”
“Why not? Look at them.” Three girl soldiers who found their way into the alley are doing a round dance, arms on each other’s shoulders.
“No!”
“How is Aryeh?”
“He won’t do his algebra.” All this is shouted over the noise.
“Good for him. It’s a holiday.” Don Kishote drags her toward the Wall, where Eshkol and the Ezrakh still shuffle around arm in arm. The Prime Minister has his helmeted head thrown back, and his expression is ecstatic. From a pocket Yossi pulls a handkerchief and thrusts it on her. “You’ll dance with me! It’s fitting! We’re at a wedding, aren’t we?”
Despite herself she bursts out laughing. He is offering her an East European wedding caper frowned on by the strictly pious; unmarried girls and boys sometimes dance without touching, each holding a corner of the handkerchief. The wedding song is thundering in the alley with the lung power of more than a hundred soldiers, some are happily cavorting around the Ezrakh and the Prime Minister in a ring, and Shayna Matisdorf can’t hold out.
“So, all right, we’ll be two lunatics instead of one, for once. Let’s dance.”
And so they do, twirling here and there with the handkerchief taut between them, smiling in each other’s eyes. “I love you,” he cries over the singing, and he falls, ripping the handkerchief from her hand.
***
“What’s that?”
“Quiet. Don’t move.”
He is lying on a sort of bench; the side seat, he realizes, of a jolting command car. His head is in Shayna’s lap. Another earsplitting blast nearby, and a bespectacled medical orderly on the opposite seat, fat and swarthy, says, “They’re detonating mines, sir.”
“Mines? What to all the devils is happening, Shayna? Where are we going, and why?”
“Quiet, I say, Yossi. We’re in the no-man’s-land.”
“Sir, you fainted at the Wall,” the orderly says. “Colonel Gur ordered me to escort you back to Tel Hashomer.”
“By your life, no.” Kishote tries to sit up. Shayna pushes him down. They hear more explosions, as the command car grinds and rumbles over rough terrain. “Shayna, I’m all right. I’ve eaten nothing for days, that’s all.”
“Mama gave you a big omelette this morning. You’re off your head, and you’re going back to the hospital.”
“Right now?”
“We’re taking the Ezrakh home first. So you can see Aryeh, but then to Tel Hashomer you go. I’ll come along.”
“Well, step one, I see Aryeh. Good. Then we’ll negotiate, hamoodah.” He utters a small groan.
“Sir, I can give you some painkilling medication,” says the orderly.
“Not for what ails me. ‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.’ How are you fixed for flagons and apples, orderly?”
“I have codeine, sir.”
“Pay no attention to him.” Shayna is blushing at the Song of Songs verse. She bends over and kisses his lips, a mere brush. “There. Now shut up about flagons and apples.”
When the car stops at the house he sits up spryly, jumps out, and helps the Ezrakh alight from the front seat. The old man takes Kishote’s head in his hands, and kisses his cheek. “Man of valor, be blessed with a swift full recovery.”
“Amen,” says Kishote. To the medical orderly, once the Ezrakh and Shayna are inside, he mutters, “I’ll take that codeine.”
He follows S
hayna up the stairs. Over her shoulder, as she opens the door, he sees Yael sitting on the dingy couch with her arm around Aryeh. “Abba!” The boy jumps up and runs to him. “Imma’s here, Imma came back.” He hugs his father, pressing his head hard against the uniform. “Abba, were you on Har Ha’bayit?”
“I was on Har Ha’bayit, and at the Wall. I’ll take you there soon.”
Yael stands up. Shayna’s mother is pottering in the kitchenette, where a kettle noisily steams. “Hello there, Shayna. Your mother insists on making tea. I begged her not to bother. Yossi, Aryeh told me you were injured.” She comes and puts a hand gently to his face. “But I know you, you’re indestructible.”
“By God, this is a surprise, Yael. How did you get back? When?”
“This morning, on the first plane I could get out of New York. Oh, Kishote, what a victory! Har Ha’bayit b’yadenu! The world must be going crazy! Nasser is finished. The Arabs are routed. I’m so proud of you, of the army, of the country! I’m home, and I’ll never leave again.” She puts a hand on Aryeh’s head. “How big he is!”
“Where are the sardines?” moans old Mrs. Matisdorf. “And the hard candies, Shayna? Why do you put things where nobody can find them?”
Nothing will do but they all have to sit down at the table. Mrs. Matisdorf, complaining at every step, ordering Shayna around, serves tea, a can of sardines, dry crackers, and a plate of red and yellow sour balls. “I wasn’t expecting company,” she apologizes in painful gasps, “and there’s a war.”
Shayna is floored as much by Yael’s looks as by her thunderbolt return. This is an American beauty to the teeth, her yellow hair fashionably cut, her jewelry subdued and elegant, the white suit, though all creased, killingly of the moment. Perhaps she has put on a few pounds, but if so she is only more alluring.
While he gulps tea to wash down the codeine, Kishote too is sizing up Yael. Not looking at her with Shayna’s female eye he misses the details, but he gets the idea. As the army has recaptured Jerusalem, Yael has come to recapture him. To him her beauty is an old story, and her willpower too, but this swift assault dazes him, and he is in no shape to contain it. Try to stall her, anyway! Poor beloved Shayna…
