Promised Land

by Martin Fletcher

  “I agree,” Moshe interrupted. “Except that Israel isn’t sitting innocently by, we’re stoking the fire, by—”

  “We all read that column you wrote,” Arie put in. “And everyone denied it. When you wrote that Israel was deliberately provoking the Jordanians so that we can go in and kill them—”

  “That isn’t what I wrote. I said we want more land and—”

  “The government spokesman asked you to apologize,” Arie said.

  “No way. I—”

  “It’s all lies—”

  “Let him finish, Arie, stop interrupting. Moshe, why do you still believe Israel is provoking the Arabs? Why should we? And Arie, let him speak for once.”

  “Thank you Peter, very kind. It is my birthday after all. Ben-Gurion said, and I quote, more or less, ‘We are interested in peace based on the status quo, but if the Arabs force us to fight perhaps the status quo will change.’” Moshe paused to let the words sink in. “Perhaps. Perhaps,” Moshe emphasized. “In fact, we do want to change the status quo and that’s why we want a fight. But we can’t start the fight. So we provoke the other side. Ah, Peter, meet our young guest, I believe you knew her when she was a little girl.”

  “Alice?” Peter said, spreading his arms as Alice and Carmel entered the room with smiles as wide as their faces. “Look at you, a young woman, beautiful.” She let him hug her. “My parents send you hugs and lots of love,” she said, “and they made sure I would thank you for helping organize my visit to Israel. So thank you so much,” and she made a little curtsy that charmed the entire room.

  “I do believe that’s the first time anyone has ever curtsied in Israel,” Peter said. “How are your parents? And your grandmother Vera?”

  But before Alice could answer, the bell rang, and they heard Rachel call out, “Ido!” followed by, “Oh, God in heaven, what happened?”

  A dismissive chuckle from the entrance. “It’s nothing, it looks worse than it is, really, nothing.”

  Everybody pushed toward the door and there stood Ido, every inch the Israeli fighter, in olive-green fatigues, brown boots, and beret, his Uzi submachine gun over his shoulder. He was the tallest in the room, the broadest, sun-bronzed, unshaven. His smile creased his face and made his eye patch rise.

  “What have you done?” Rachel said again, almost in tears. “What happened to your eye?”

  “Really, nothing, I promise,” he answered as he greeted everyone with a hug. “A scratch in the eye, it’s bloodshot, I have to rest it.”

  “It makes you look even more of a rogue than usual,” Arie said, and held him tight. Over Arie’s shoulder Ido saw Alice. “And who do we have here?” Ido said in English. “I’m getting a hug from everybody else, what about you? You must be Alice, yes? I’ve heard so much about you, but I thought you were younger.”

  “I’m nearly eighteen.”

  Ido pulled the rifle strap over his shoulder, unclipped the magazine, and placed the gun high up on a ledge over the door. Alice couldn’t take her eyes off him. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt, revealing an olive T-shirt. “I’m home!” he shouted. “Thank God!”

  He pulled Moshe into a bear hug. “Happy birthday, Dad, I’ll get you a present tomorrow.”

  “You are my present,” Moshe said, his head crunched against Ido’s shoulder. Tamara looked with pride at her little brother. “Just do me a favor,” Ido called out. “No war stories. It’s Dad’s party, let’s celebrate.” He looked around. “Where’s Estie?”

  “Your sister couldn’t get away,” Peter said. “She’s on duty tonight.”

  Over dinner Ido was forced to explain how he hurt his eye. “Training accident,” he said, involuntarily glancing at Peter, as if he would know the truth. By now Ido understood the general area of Peter’s work, and appreciated his brother-in-law’s silent strength even more: he was understated, a man who didn’t have to prove a thing. In the army Ido had met men like him, all very senior officers.

  Later, after Moshe had unwrapped his presents and made a little speech, Carmel, Alice, and Ido drifted into the garden, where Ido offered Alice a sip of his beer. “Hey,” he said, “I said a sip, not to finish it.”

  She exhaled loudly and wiped her lips. “Not cold enough,” she said.

  Carmel made a face. “I hate beer,” she said.

  Alice laughed. “Me too. But at home everybody drinks.”

  “Do your parents know?”

  “Of course not. If they knew half the things I do they’d never let me leave the house.” Her smile lingered on Ido as she said this.

  Carmel smirked. “I think I’ll get an orange juice. By the way,” she added helpfully, “Ido, Alice wants to know if boys and girls sleep in the same room on the kibbutz.”

  “Only the lucky ones,” Ido said.

  Alice threw her head back and laughed.

  “I told you,” Carmel said as she walked away.

  “She told you what?” Ido asked Alice.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Ido shrugged and turned to lean on the fence, looking at the sky. Alice joined him. They stood in silence, their shoulders almost touching. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it,” Ido said after a few moments.

  Alice sighed. “It is.” The Milky Way glowed softly above them. “There, you see,” Ido said, pointing. “That’s Orion, you see the three stars almost together? That’s the belt. And there, northeast of it, that’s Gemini, and that very bright star…”

  Alice laughed. “Why is it that whenever a boy and a girl look at the night sky the boy tells the girl what she’s looking at? Girls never tell the boy.”

  “Because girls don’t know?”

  “Don’t they?”

  “Do you?”

  “Actually, no, I don’t. But the boys don’t know either, they just like to show off.”

  Ido laughed out loud. “Well, I do. Know them I mean. We use the sky for night navigation.”

  Alice fell silent. She had never met a boy like Ido in Taos. She wanted to ask about the army. What it was like, had he ever killed someone, but she felt they were silly questions. Instead, she asked where he lived when he was in the army. “You mean, where is my base?” he said. “Actually it’s very near the kibbutz you’ll be on. My base is near the Kinneret, what you call the Sea of Galilee, and your kibbutz, Ashdot Yaacov, is just a mile or two south.”

  “Really? Could I see you there?” She bit her lip. She should have waited for him to ask.

  “If I’m really, really lucky.”

  Alice smiled and whispered, “I think you’re the lucky type.”

  Ido smiled too, and edged closer, his hand grazing hers on the wooden fence. They gazed at the sky and Ido said, “There’s Ursa Major.”

  She nudged him with her elbow. “Everybody knows Ursa Major.”

  After a while he said, “When do you go to the kibbutz?”

  “In two days.”

  “So you’re right then, I am lucky. That’s when I go back to base. If you like, we can travel together.”

  Alice smiled in the dark and didn’t answer right away. She had to catch her breath. When she did she pointed into the sky and said, “Look, there’s Cupid.”

  “Cupid? What’s that? Is there a constellation by that name?”

  “If not, there should be.” Alice said, brushing Ido’s hand.

  PETER and TAMARA

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  April 15, 1967

  Strictly speaking it wasn’t Peter’s business. His job included collecting intelligence on Palestinians as well as the ability and intentions of Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon to wage war on Israel: to monitor Israel’s immediate neighbors.

  But the way Israel was handling the growing number of attacks in the north worried him; it seemed the bigger question was not what the Arabs were planning but Israel’s intentions. It really seemed Moshe could be right: the military appeared to be provoking the Syrians, and now they had gone too far. A week earlier, two Israeli armored tractors had begun working ne
ar the Syrian border, the Syrians had opened fire with tanks, the Israelis returned fire, then the air forces got involved and by the end of the day Israel had shot down six Syrian warplanes, including one near Damascus, sixty miles inside Syria.

  The media played it up as Israel’s greatest military success in a decade, the politicians competed for credit, but for Peter it rang alarm bells. Syria would have to respond. The Soviet Union would back its client. So might Egypt, even though the assessment was that Egypt didn’t want to fight yet. Jordan may get dragged in. What would America do? Where was this heading?

  Peter’s most immediate concern though was not the international chessboard or even Israel’s survival, but Alice. He had promised her parents that he would look after her and now there she was, working and studying on a kibbutz that was on the edge of a potential war zone. Terrorists were striking twice a week, laying land mines on roads, under a bridge, attacking railroads, water towers, pipelines, shooting at farmers in fields, all within three miles of his ward. Should he send Alice back to America, or at least bring her back to Tel Aviv, out of harm’s way?

  He had asked Tamara and she had responded with a laugh. “I don’t think she’ll listen to you,” she had said. “Ido told me that he’s smitten. The two of them seem to have started quite a romance. He visits her on the kibbutz whenever he can, and, to make matters worse, or better, she has her own room.”

  “That isn’t funny. I’m responsible for her. Ido better be careful.”

  “You can trust him. He has a heart of gold.”

  “Yes, and he also has a … well, I won’t say it. He’s twenty-one, a soldier. I’d say I know what’s on his mind.”

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s too late now.”

  “But she’s only seventeen.”

  “Seventeen is the new twenty-five.”

  Peter pulled Tamara to him, unzipping her skirt. He had to be back at the Office in an hour. “Well, moving right along, what is the new forty-four?”

  “Hmmm. In your case, twenty-six?”

  “And you, what is the new—how old are you, anyway?”

  “Let’s just say, I am the new me.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “Which brings us to Arie,” Tamara said.

  “No, it doesn’t. It brings me to you.” Peter had reached Tamara’s last item of frilly clothing, but she was already pulling it down.

  * * *

  Their arrangement was that Peter would never call Tamara anywhere, neither at home nor at the office. She could only call him at home between 8:30 and 9:00 in the morning, when he was alone, or on a phone number which, in a land with a years-long waiting list for telephones, he was able to change every month. They were sure they were covering their tracks; after all, she was a lawyer and he was a spy. But they were also wise enough to know that in the history of infidelity, nobody ever got away with it. Eventually they would be discovered, and already there was a weak link: Rachel. Peter had joked that if he was on a job, he’d eliminate the risk factor. Not funny, Tamara said. Or a neighbor could notice Tamara coming and going, even though she hid beneath a large hat. Or some family member would notice one tender glance too many, a pointed meeting of their eyes. At a certain point, Peter had warned, subconsciously they may even want to be discovered.

  “So maybe it’s time to tell Arie,” he said, propped up on the pillows. He blew smoke from the corner of his mouth, away from Tamara. She was lying against him, one hand resting on his belly. “What do you think?” he continued. “I can’t bear this lying any longer. Anyway, he’ll find out one day, it’s much better if he finds out from us.”

  She responded with a sigh and the tiniest shake of her head.

  “Well?” Peter said. “I love you, I always have, one way or another. It’s time to live together, come on, what do you say?” He stubbed out his cigarette and turned to face her. “And please decide now, I have to leave in ten minutes.”

  “Oh, no pressure, then.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should leave things the way they are for now. I’m so happy with you. Why upset the cart? Can’t we just go on like this?”

  “I don’t want a fight with Arie either, but it’ll come sooner or later. It’s better to control the battleground, so to speak. I’ll have to tell him. I’ll call him.”

  “No,” Tamara cried in alarm. “No, not yet. Peter, think about it, where will we live? Here? And my children, they’ll live here with us? Where will they sleep, in the kitchen? Or they’ll stay with Arie? I couldn’t bear that. Divorce Arie? He’ll fight us, Peter, he’ll take my children away…”

  “They’re fifteen, Tamara. They’re adults, almost. They can stay where they are and you can see them every day. Tamara, please, just think about it, it’s time to decide. We can’t go on forever hiding like this, this isn’t a life, we have to come out into the open. Be happy. Man and wife. Tamara, say you’ll do this. If Arie finds out first, it will get truly ugly. We have to go to him, not the other way around.”

  Tamara glanced at her watch. “Peter, you must go. I can’t say yes or no now, I need time to think about it.”

  “Think about it? That’s all I’ve been doing, I need you, Tamara, I love you, I want to live with you.”

  Tamara sighed heavily, her breasts rose and fell, Peter kissed one and then the other. He stood and silently drew on his clothes. At the door he hesitated, contemplating his lover half-covered by the rumpled sheets. “So now it’s up to you, Tamara. Call me.”

  He left, leaving her staring at the door.

  * * *

  Peter walked the last mile to work, struggling to focus on the hard-nosed questions waiting for him at Mossad. How to halt the slide to war? His job was to provide the politicians with information, not decide what to do with it. But what if you don’t trust the politicians? He heard raised voices, cars honking, and along Dizengoff Street came hundreds of people, a dozen abreast, holding up the traffic. Men protesting against unemployment. They needn’t worry, he thought, they’d get called up soon enough, they’d earn money in the reserves.

  But his thoughts kept returning to Tamara. He stopped for a coffee, it didn’t matter if he was five minutes late, after all, he was heading the meeting. He needed time to think more about her. He could still feel Tamara’s kisses, her warmth and softness, her body rocking against him. Yet … she didn’t appear ready to bite the bullet. Did she even want to leave Arie? He couldn’t tell. He thought she wanted to, but would she? Right now she had the best of both worlds, living a chaste life in luxury as well as a passionate secret life: who wouldn’t want that to continue?

  And why should he get into a fight with Arie? As it was they hardly spoke, they were both too busy, the only time they met was at birthdays, the family was the wrong age-group for funerals and weddings. Not for divorce though. Should he have it out with Arie? His younger brother. He didn’t often think of his parents, it was all too long ago, too hard; distant, yet too painful to bear. Now the thought of them sent a chill through him: they gave their lives for their children, and here am I, about to take my brother’s wife. I will destroy the family they died to save.

  He drained his coffee, examined the mud that remained; watched the traffic and the passing people and the shadows of the ficus leaves shifting in the breeze. A part of his spirit rebelled. Don’t be romantic: Mama and Pappi didn’t die to save his life. They died for no good reason, only because they were murdered, that’s all. He didn’t need to carry this guilt forever. On the other hand, they did give him up, send him away, endured the pain of losing their eldest son to save his life. Yes, that they did. He couldn’t begin to imagine what that must have been like for them. And then he realized, yes, he could understand. When he disappeared from their lives, when his father waved good-bye at the station, he was fourteen years old. Exactly the same age as his own two sons today. It would be like sending Ezra and Noah away, knowing he may never see them again, to save them. And if he could only save one, wh
ich would it be? How could a parent choose? And yet that was exactly what his own parents had done. They had chosen him. What courage it took, what pain it caused them.

  And this is how he repaid them.

  And Arie, who he left behind with an empty promise to bring him to America. Arie, condemned to five years of concentration camps, so painful that he never spoke about it. And this is Arie’s reward, to be betrayed by his own brother?

  Oh Tamara, what price our love?

  PETER and ALICE

  THE SEA OF GALILEE, ISRAEL

  April 25, 1967

  When Robyn Wilson had warned him on the phone that her daughter Alice was a stubborn child, Peter had to chuckle: she’s no child. That girl is all woman, and parents are always the last to see it. He wondered if he’d be the same with Diana in ten years. That made him miss the operative word—stubborn.

  He had called Alice’s mother to give her a progress report on her daughter but also to hint that peaceful Israel could be approaching more turbulent times. He had wondered whether she would feel more comfortable if Alice returned home earlier than planned.

  “Oh, thank you for letting us know, but we got a letter from Alice yesterday saying how quiet it is there and how much she enjoys working on the kibbutz. She’s been to the Sea of Galilee and even Capernaum where St. Peter lived and Jesus preached. She’s met a nice boy too so, knowing her, nothing will move her. Have you met him? His name is Ido.”

  “Yes, he’s my nephew.”

  “Oh, that’s nice, then.”

  “He’s a soldier.”

  “A soldier?” Her voice wilted.

  “An officer.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sure that’s fine, then.”

  Sure, Peter thought, she’s in safe hands, like the sun rises in the west. A pretty seventeen-year-old girl with a handsome twenty-one-year-old army captain. He had better speak to Ido fast.

  Amikam, his Office driver, had been at the wheel two hours when the Beit Shean Road winding east dropped steeply through hairpin bends to join the Jordan valley road to Tiberias. They followed the river that formed the Jordanian border, past the green fields and grazing pastures of Kibbutz Ashdot Yaacov where Alice was working. No time to stop yet though, that treat was for later, his meeting was in an hour at the northern end of the lake.