by Judith Gould
'You know Elie,' the man said with easy familiarity. 'Panics every time his wife or one of the kids as much as sneezes. I'm temporarily assigned to take his place.' The VIP man turned to Daliah and favoured her with a professional smile. Politely but firmly he touched her elbow and led her toward the terminal.
Frowning, the chief steward watched their receding backs until they turned the corner and were out of sight. Funny, he thought. The VIP man sure was rushing Miss Boralevi.
Hannah, one of the economy stewardesses, rolled her dark eyes at him. 'You always get the biggies. Hey! What's the matter? Why the screwed-up face?'
'I . . . don't know.' He shrugged. Whatever was nagging at his mind had yet to prod his memory. Meanwhile, he had work to do. Blocking the herd of restless economy passengers, he bid each of the first-class passengers a warm, friendly good-bye. Then he let the economy people out.
Too late, he recalled that Elie lived alone with his mother, who had been left crippled after a PLO raid.
Elie had never married. His records would show that, so he'd never use such an asinine excuse to get a day off.
It was a thought which would scratch at his memory for the rest of the day.
Who, then, was the stranger who had sped Daliah Boralevi so efficiently off the aircraft?
'If you'll give me your passport and baggage claims, Miss Boralevi,' the VIP representative was saying to Daliah, 'we can skip the usual formalities.' He smiled pleasantly, but his eyes were curiously cool as he stuck out one olive-skinned hand, palm up.
Daliah nodded and without breaking her leggy stride dug into her bag, handing him her ticket folder and the Israeli passport, sheathed in thin Mark Cross leather with triangular corners fashioned of smoothly polished twenty-four-carat gold.
Eleven years, but I've still kept my citizenship, she told herself approvingly. And I'm glad I did. It would have been so easy to become a naturalized American after five years, but I didn't bow to temptation. I might have stayed away forever, but I didn't have the desire (or courage?) to cut the umbilical tie to my heritage. That counts for something.
Doesn't it?
The man marched Daliah swiftly past the backed-up line of passengers from an Athens flight, flashed her open passport to an official behind the counter, who nodded and waved them past. Then the VIP man guided her efficiently through the crowded, noisy terminal, making a beeline for the exits.
'Wait!' Daliah stopped, turning toward him just as he was sliding her passport and the ticket folder with the stapled-on luggage claims inside his jacket pocket. 'What about my luggage? And I need my passport!'
His smile was cemented in place. 'I'll have the baggage delivered to you by special courier within the hour. The same goes for your passport. Our first consideration is you. We have to be very security-conscious, and you, Miss Boralevi, are an important national treasure. El Al does not like highly visible celebrities, especially one such as yourself, who hails from a prominent family, to be unnecessarily exposed to possible danger in public areas.'
She stood her ground. 'Surely there's a VIP lounge,' she said with irrefutable logic. 'I can wait there while you get the luggage, and save you a lot of trouble. Besides, I can't walk around without my passport. If I remember right, it's against the law here not to carry identification papers at all times.'
He smiled at her typical Israeli regard for official law. 'Don't worry,' he said airily. 'For you, carrying identification has been temporarily waived.' Apparently her logic was refutable after all. 'I have strict orders, and your safety is our sole concern. The car is already waiting outside.'
Her heart surged with eagerness and her eyes glowed with unexpected moisture. The car, with my family in it, no doubt, waiting to welcome me back within the warmth of their loving fold.
Without further delay, her Andrea Pfister heels clacked such a rapid staccato on the tile floor that it was the VIP representative's turn to keep pace. She reached the glass doors with such a rush of speed that she had to wait impatiently for them to glide smoothly apart. Then she burst out into a blaze of such stark white-hot sunshine that she was momentarily blinded. Blinking, Daliah groped in her bag for her huge dark sunglasses and slipped them on. Already her body was wilting, recoiling from the heat. After the air-conditioned cavern of the terminal, the dry broiling heat hit her with the hellish intensity of a blast furnace. The heat and sun were much harsher than she'd remembered, unrelenting and undiluted, of an almost surrealistic clarity. How easily one forgot things like that.
The VIP representative was right behind her, guiding her toward a shiny old Chrysler limousine waiting at the kerb. Its tinted windows were tightly shut, obviously cocooning the interior's air-conditioned coolness from the ungodly temperature outside. The driver waited behind the wheel, and in the back seat, at the far side, Daliah could make out a shadowy figure.
Only one person's come to greet me, she thought with a pang of misgiving. Who would it be? Dani? Or Ari? Perhaps Tamara?
The El Al representative gripped the rust-speckled chrome handle and yanked open the rear door. Daliah ducked inside the big car. Then she clutched the doorframe, her stomach heaving in fear.
It wasn't any of her family come to greet her, but a hawk-nosed, dark-skinned stranger, who was not offering her a welcoming bouquet but a victim's-eye view of the round, malevolent barrel of a revolver. It was lined up point-blank with her suddenly wary green eyes.
Time came to a standstill.
'Welcome to Israel, Miss Boralevi,' the stranger said with a ghastly smile, his Hebrew heavily accented with an Arab dialect.
She blinked and turned slowly as another pistol prodded her spine. The man posing as a VIP representative pressed close behind her, shielding his pistol from any curious onlookers with his body. On the sidewalk behind him, she caught sight of two wiry policemen in short-sleeved uniforms. Her heart gave a hopeful surge.
'I would get in very quietly if I were you,' the voice behind her whispered threateningly. 'If you try anything, you'll get shot, and innocent bystanders will get killed too. We have people staked out all over the airport.'
She didn't doubt him one bit. Wordlessly she climbed into the car. The bogus VIP man got in beside her. The door slammed shut against reality. Two pistols, one to either side of her, pressed through her expensive clothes, into her flesh.
'What's going on?' she demanded as the big car surged off smoothly. Her face was bleak, drained ofits naturally creamy colour.
The men remained silent.
'Tell me. What do you want with me? I've done nothing.'
'Ah. So you too are one of the holy innocents.' The man who had been waiting in the back seat barked a short laugh. 'You have more than your share of skeletons rattling in your family's closet, film star,' he spat out harshly. 'It is time someone paid for them.'
'Paid?' She nearly laughed hysterically, choked it down with an immense effort. 'Whatever for?'
'Let us say ... for the sins of the fathers and the mothers.' His smile was fixed.
'You won't get money from them. They refuse to buckle in to kidnappers' demands. You should know that.'
'It's not money we want.'
Her face burned feverishly. 'What, then?'
'To pay them back ... in kind. Call it payday, if you wish.'
'You know what you are,' she said with a blunt, cool vehemence, somehow managing to keep her voice subdued and steady. 'You're nothing but common criminals. Criminals,' she pronounced a second time, as though needing to make her point twice.
But her mind was racing. What did he mean by 'the sins of the fathers and the mothers'. Was he being metaphorical?
Or was she meant to take it literally?
BOOK ONE
SENDA
1911-1922
Composers, playwrights, choreographers, and dancers found favour, fame, and fortune in pre-revolutionary Russia, but because of the fleeting popularity of its stage stars and the lack of records on film, only a solitary name has survived from the
stars of the theatre of that pre-motionpicture era—the legendary Senda Bora.
—Rhea Gallaher, Jr.,
Stage and Screen: A History of World Entertainment
Chapter 1
The pale afternoon sun cast weak, shifting shadows on the soft mossy ground in the birch forest. The canopy of tender green leaves overhead diffused the light even further, softly dappling Senda's purposeful features with a luminous glow. She was humming softly to herself, the tune one of the lighthearted lullabies Grandmother Goldie used to sing to her at bedtime as a child. Now the tune was especially appropriate, she considered. It was soft and lulling, light and innocent, and she appreciated the innocence it conveyed because she knew that the tryst toward which she was hurrying was anything but.
She lifted her heavy quilted skirt and with a swiftly bouncing step darted through the trees, ducking here and there to avoid the low-hanging branches. She breathed the brisk chill air and laughed to herself. Spring had definitely dawned; last night's frost had disappeared. She took it as a good omen and hurried even faster. Soon she left the village far behind, and only once she crested the hill and reached the familiar clearing did she stop to catch her breath.
This was her favourite spot. To her right was the wellspring of the stream which flowed past the village, the water in the small pool clean and crystal clear. She treasured the solitude this spot afforded, and proprietarily thought of it as her own— and his. Here they could make love together, far from prying eyes. Here, too, she could be at peace with only the sounds of the babbling water, the rustling of the leaves, and the chirping of the birds. Surveying the countryside from the clearing, she felt that the world was at her feet, the tiny rustic cottages built of mud, wattle, and wood appearing tinier yet, but the distance made the mean poverty of the village fetching, with the most important building, the synagogue, standing apart, larger and therefore more imposing.
Her breathing returned to normal, and she spun around, her skirt swirling about her legs. Her eyes searched the trees. She was alone.
The anticipation of seeing Schmarya again brought a glowing flush to her cheeks, intensifying her already natural startling beauty. Her face was a blend of her father's finely chiselled features, far too beautiful and delicate in a man but striking in a woman, and her mother's more harsh and determinedly disciplined, though no less eye-catching, strength. In Senda, the distillation was arresting, lending her a peculiar, unearthly beauty all her own. Her face was a perfect oval, with striking Slavic cheekbones, exquisite Botticelli hair and dazzling emerald eyes. Seen close, they were not perfectly emerald, but touched with glints of hazel and slivers of aqua, each a perfect jewel set within a star of copper lashes which matched her thick, gleaming hair. Her eyebrows were bewitching and decidedly witchlike, slanting upward at the ends at an elfin angle, and her skin had the lustre of pearl touched ever so slightly with a faint healthy pink glow. There was a naturally poetic lilt to her carriage, and she was by far the most beguiling young woman in the village, far more lovely, it was said, than even Grandmother Goldie had been, and Goldie Koppel was still as famous for her long-lost beauty as for her razor-sharp tongue. At the tender age of sixteen, Senda's beauty was in its flowering prime. Seated against the thin, supple trunk of the birch under its vast umbrella of green, with her knees drawn up close to her chin, Senda looked remarkably like one of the wood nymphs which populated the fairy tales she'd been told as a child. Not even the voluminous, shapeless quilt of a skirt in its drab shade of mud brown, and the modest off-white peasant blouse unadorned with any finery, not even an inch of lace, could detract from her magical appearance. Her sole feminine adornment was her precious bright scarlet scarf, tied like a sash around her waist. As soon as she'd left the village behind, she'd snatched it off her head and wrapped it around her. It was a desperate attempt at beautification, at the finery she hankered for but knew would forever elude her in this poor, puritanical village. But no matter what she wore, her nineteen-inch waist and well-matured breasts could not be disguised, to the chagrin of her shrewish, domineering mother, her sedate, archconservative husband, Solomon, and her disapproving in-laws. 'She's far too beautiful for her own good,' her mother-in-law, Rachel Boralevi, was all too fond of suspiciously uttering to any sympathetic ear she could find. Not that Rachel Boralevi didn't have a point. But for all her suspicions, even she had begun to admit that maybe Senda wasn't all that bad, and that she had, thank God, settled down since she'd married the apple of Rachel's eye—her dear brilliant and sensitive Solomon. But Rachel Boralevi saw what she wanted to see. She had even begun to take Senda's afternoon walks at face value, and Senda, knowing there was little love lost between them, tried her best to conceal her true self. At home she was demure, almost decorously prim and silent, not so much because she wanted to give a false impression of herself as because she was trapped in a loveless marriage—a marriage which was slowly killing her spirit. And it was this sullen spiritlessness that let Rachel Boralevi breathe a little easier. She was blind to the fire which burned within Senda's emerald eyes. It glowed constantly and turbulently, pleading for the three things she treasured most: freedom, adventure, and true love.
Senda's breasts now heaved with a painful sigh. She knew she was lucky to have managed to leave the house and come here. Only here in the forest clearing could she really be herself. Only here could she breathe freely, without being stifled, without being physically and emotionally fettered in a match not made in heaven. The forest gave her respite from the arranged marriage she so despised. And most important, it gave her the opportunity to steal the few precious hours of love which made life worth living and kept the fire from dying within her eyes.
Her extraordinary features sagged into a most unattractive frown. 'Only me, Grandmother Goldie, and Schmarya,' she said aloud, voicing her misery to a pair of sparrows darting through the trees. 'Why are we the only ones who know how much I despise this marriage? Why?'
Neither the trees nor the birds could answer her question. She fell silent, her frown deepening, remembering that day last year when the shadchen and her family had arranged her loveless union . . .
'She's not built for childbearing,' pronounced a woman's shrill voice. 'You have only to look at her hips. Did any of you notice how narrow they are?' There was a prolonged silence. 'You see!' the woman cried dramatically, smacking her hand resoundingly on her knee with the force of a gunshot. 'What did I tell you? One look at her, and you can see that she'll never give birth! And tell me, what good is a woman who can't have children, eh? You tell me!' Her prognostication was punctuated by the sudden creak of her chair as she sat back in triumph.
Senda felt Grandmother Goldie's gentle hand on her arm and resisted the impulse to stick her head through the open window to give Eva Boralevi a piece of her mind. Instead, she peered cautiously around the edge of the window frame, her face hidden from sight by the dark night and the curtain shifting in the breeze. Through the lace patterns she could see the kitchen of the Boralevi cottage. It was the main room, and it was warmly lit by flickering oil lamps. The faces of all those in the room were aglow with the yellow light. The Boralevi family counsellors, six of them; the shadchen, the official matchmaker who arranged marriages between families; the Valvrojenskis, her own parents, who had been relatively silent; and Uncle Chaim, her father's brother, and, his wife, Aunt Sophie, who had debated vehemently, pointing out her outstanding qualities, one by one, as the Boralevis had seized upon every potential defect. In all, there were eleven people crowded in a semicircle on three-legged stools; only Rachel and Eva Boralevi occupied chairs with backs.
The meeting had already lasted for over two hours, and the debate had just begun to heat up. Now, with Eva Boralevi's grim verdict on childbearing, the debate came to a temporary standstill. Eva Boralevi was the local midwife, and no one dared argue with her when it came to matters of giving birth. Nor did any family want to be saddled with a barren woman.
'I think,' the shadchen said hastily, sensing th
at the debate had gotten totally out of hand, 'that it's time to take a break and have a nice cup of hot tea.'
'So now we should stay to have tea?' Uncle Chaim growled. 'It's obvious that our Senda isn't good enough for the high-and-mighty Boralevis.'
'Ssssh, ssssh!' Aunt Sophie hushed her husband quickly. Then she smiled around the kitchen. 'Some tea would be very nice.'
Senda felt Grandmother Goldie pulling her aside, away from the window. She let herself be led around the corner, out of earshot. 'I have to go back inside now,' Grandmother Goldie told her. 'I left because I said I had to use the outhouse. I can't stay out here with you forever.'
Senda nodded in the dark. 'But ... I don't want to marry Solomon!' she cried in a low voice. 'You know that, Grandmother Goldie. Meanwhile, they're tearing me to shreds in there—dissecting me like a piece of meat! If they don't want me, why don't they just come out and say it and leave me in peace?' The pale moonlight shone weakly on her miserable features.
'It's not that, Sendale, and you know it. They do want you—'
'But I don't want them!' Senda interrupted vehemently. 'Not Solomon or any of his family!' She sniffed noisily. 'I want nothing to do with any of them!'
'Not any of them?' Grandmother Goldie asked shrewdly.
'Well, Schmarya, yes,' Senda admitted in a voice filled with longing. 'But he's not like the rest of the Boralevis.' Suddenly her emotional dam broke and the words tumbled out of her mouth. 'I love him, Grandmother Goldie! Oh, how I love Schmarya. And he loves me too!'
'I know. I know,' the old woman whispered gently, 'but Schmarya is out of the question. Your parents would never allow you to marry him.'
Senda hung her head. 'I know,' she said miserably.
'And if you know what's good for you, you'll stay far away from him.' Grandmother Goldie's voice grew harsher. 'Schmarya everyone tries to avoid like the plague, and with good reason. Even his parents have washed their hands of him. He has dangerous ideas. You mark my words, one of these days he will come to no good.'
