An Independent Woman

by Howard Fast

  The flight attendant looked at him strangely, glanced at the boarding passes, and then nodded and said in English, “Yes, sir. This way.” Seated, Philip mumbled to Barbara, “I don’t think that the seats of the mighty are quite the same thing.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it,” she said consolingly.

  The last one to board, as the plane prepared for takeoff, was a tall man who walked down the aisle, scrutinizing each passenger carefully and coldly. Philip whispered to Barbara, “Notice the way his jacket bulges. I think he has a gun there.”

  “I have heard that one of the reasons El Al planes are never hijacked is that they have a guard on board, with orders to kill any hijacker instantly,” Barbara whispered back.

  “Oh no.”

  “I think oh yes, Philip—but I wouldn’t worry, not after the way they went through the luggage.” After the plane took off, Barbara dozed and then awakened rather abruptly. “Philip,” she whispered, leaning close to him, “there’s nothing I love better than to have you caress my thighs, but not here and not with two people who look as Waspish as you and me. We don’t want to give the wrong impression.”

  “I hardly knew I was doing it,” he whispered back.

  “Naturally. There’s nothing as wild as a fallen clergyman.”

  “Barbara!”

  “Darling Philip, I’m teasing. It’s the worst part of my nature, and it’s so tempting. Will you ever forgive me?”

  He kissed her.

  “That’s better. Kisses are like wine—and that reminds me. Freddie wants us to taste every kind of Israeli wine. It’s become a large export business, I hear.”

  “And we’ll roll through the land drunk.”

  “Why not?” And then she added, “No—as a matter of fact, Philip, there is little drinking here—some wine, coffee, and tea. Mostly the tourists drink. There is good food and plenty of it, but the Jews here are as different from those we know at home as night is from day. I know that at least twenty percent of your congregation are people who were once Jewish, but they are not enough different from us to be recognized as Jewish. I certainly can’t tell the difference.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “Well, for one thing, almost half of the Israelis are native born. They’re called Sabras, which is the name of a prickly pear—you’ve eaten it in Mexico, I’m sure, tough on the outside, sweet and soft on the inside. And then, thank God, most of them speak English, at least some English. I’m told that Hebrew is an extremely logical language.”

  “Oh, it is. It surely is. I was amazed at how quickly we learned it in school. But I’m listening to some of the people around us. I catch one word in three.”

  A middle-aged man, sitting on the other side of Philip and obviously listening to their conversation, tapped Philip’s arm and, speaking in heavily accented English, said, “You’re a rabbi? No. No, you’re not Jewish. So where did you learn Hebrew? I apologize for asking. You’re a diplomat? No, not in tourist class; they ride first class.” His apology for asking was no apology at all. Obviously, on an Israeli plane, he felt secure in interrupting a conversation by total strangers, something Philip and Barbara were to encounter again and again. An independent, self-willed, and generous people, the Israelis cared little for the texts of polite social intercourse. If one heard a question directed elsewhere and one had an answer, one answered.

  “No, we’re not Jewish,” Philip said. “My name is Philip Carter. I’m a Unitarian minister. This is my wife, Barbara. She’s an author.”

  “Ah-ha, so you learned Hebrew in the seminary?”

  “Yes, in the seminary.”

  “Let me introduce myself. This is a long trip—not to Israel, but possibly they stop in Geneva, which you don’t know with El Al. I’m Chaim Hertzog. I’m a chicken salesman for a moshav, which is something like a kibbutz, only it’s different because everyone in a moshav is an independent farmer, and sometimes they work a collective. Our collective is chickens. We produce half a million chickens a year and freeze them. So I’m in London, selling chickens.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Barbara said.

  “Not fascinating, but a good living,” Mr. Hertzog corrected her. “Now, about Hebrew. We call what you learn in the seminary, synagogue Hebrew: very good for talking to God, not so good in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem. After a few days, you listen carefully, you can talk Tel Aviv Hebrew—maybe not the best, but a little.”

  “Do you live in Tel Aviv?” Barbara asked him. “We’re booked into the Samuel.”

  “A very fine place. Very fine. No, I live at a moshav, Moshav Akiba. My family grows oranges—that’s personal, the chickens are collective—we have twenty-one trees, real California seedless oranges. You’d be surprised how many oranges you can get from twenty-one trees. My wife, Sara, she takes care of the trees with my two sons when they’re not in service in the army, and thank God I travel.”

  “We’re from California,” Philip said.

  “Wonderful! I never been there, but someday, maybe—who knows? Chickens are a worldwide commodity.”

  As Mr. Hertzog had predicted, the giant 747 made a stop, not at Geneva but at Bonn, to take on passengers and cargo. While the plane stood on the parking strip, a Jeep with a mounted machine gun circled it. The man Philip had pointed out, with the cold eyes and the bulging jacket, spoke to Hertzog in Hebrew, and then Hertzog explained to Philip and Barbara that these were extra security measures, following a bombing in Frankfurt; and Barbara reflected on the miracles of time and change, that the land where she had almost been put to death as an anti-Nazi forty-five years ago should now be protecting a Jewish airplane being loaded with German cargo.

  The cargo, Mr. Hertzog explained, was typewriters fitted with Hebrew type. “Germans make very good typewriters,” he said, somewhat apologetically. “They make good machines. I know the guard. His name is Shmuel,” referring to the man with the bulging jacket. “He’s very competent.”

  The landing at the Tel Aviv airport was smooth and easy, and Philip and Barbara were delighted by the colorful October sunset. A Mercedes taxicab—the Mercedes were a part of German reparations, and seen everywhere—took them to their hotel. It was the season of the Jewish High Holidays, and while Barbara would have preferred to stay at the Sheraton Tel Aviv, where they were originally booked, she could not change their reservation there and had switched to the Samuel. She was surprised at the elegance of the place, and after they had registered they were shown to a well-furnished suite with broad windows that faced the Mediterranean.

  “Well, here we are,” Philip said, “in the Holy Land. How many times I’ve thought of this!”

  “We think of it differently,” Barbara mused, almost sadly. “Here is where my first husband died. Sam went to medical school here; he even thought of making his life here. He was a medic in the Six Day War—fell in love here, spoke Hebrew like a native— and then gave it all up and returned to San Francisco and married Mary Lou.”

  “Are you happy or unhappy to be here?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she answered slowly. “But wherever I am, I’m happy to be with you.”

  When he crawled into bed later and moved close to Barbara and touched her face, he felt tears. He refrained from any words as to why she wept, and for that, Barbara was grateful. She was in no mood to exchange thoughts or words of any kind with him. If she could have her own way and if she were willing to bring total chaos into their relationship, she would get out of bed and pack her bag and take a cab to the airport and take the first plane out—to anywhere—and why she felt this way at this moment, she could not for the life of her understand. Her whole life had been threaded through with Jews. Her first husband, her father’s partner, the people at Highgate, Sally; her lawyer, Sam Goldberg, who had cherished her and who left her the house on Green Street in his will; Boyd Kimmelman, who had taken Sam Goldberg’s place in her life after Goldberg died and who worshiped her… And why had it been that way? She had read somewhere that M
ark Twain had said that Jews were like anyone else, only more so. Was she also like anyone else, only more so? If there were any real barrier between Philip and herself, it was the fact that he knew who he was and she did not know who she was. When he suggested teaching her to meditate with him, and she asked him why and what it would do for her, he had replied that among other things, she would know what and who she was. “I know who I am,” she had replied indignantly. But the truth of the matter, as she had begun to realize, was that she didn’t know.

  Finally she slept, and Philip knew this when her breathing became easy and regular. A three-quarter moon was hanging outside the window. Philip watched it for a little while and then closed his eyes and slept.

  In the morning they awakened together and looked at each other, and Barbara rolled over into his arms. “Make love to me, old priest, and try to remember all I taught you.”

  “Now? I’m starving.”

  “Now. Earn your food.”

  They made love, and then they stood at the window, with the sea and the broad white beaches spread out beneath them, and at the edge of the horizon, a freighter sailing north. “Here it began,” Philip murmured. “The Philistines landed on these beaches with their longboats; Gaza to the south, and in the north, Tyre.”

  “And we should dress and eat,” Barbara said. “We have three days here before we go to Jerusalem.”

  “Why don’t we go to Jerusalem today?”

  “Because we have no room in Jerusalem for today. I had to switch things to get you out of your depression, and we’re just past Yom Kippur, which is the Day of Atonement. It’s like trying to get a room at the Mark Hopkins for Memorial Day weekend. In three days, we have a room at the King David Hotel, which is where to be if you’re an American tourist in Jerusalem. The advice of Mr. Hertzog is to take off here in any direction with a guidebook in your hand. There are more museums and theaters here than you can shake a stick at, so let’s go and eat and buy a guidebook.”

  Breakfast was overwhelming; the food was laid out on a long table—cereal, milk, cream, herring in sour cream, scrambled eggs, French toast, bagels, five kinds of cheese, fruit, green onions, cucumber, and sliced tomatoes, and coffee and tea and hot chocolate.

  They ate well and went out into the cool sunshine, guidebook in hand. For a while they wandered aimlessly. If ever there were a city in constant eruption, this was it: cars honking their horns, buses, people in motion, houses being dismantled, houses under construction, business streets that suddenly became delightful residential areas, a tiny old cemetery tucked between office buildings, tourists speaking half a dozen different languages, neon signs advertising in Hebrew, street peddlers selling quick food—Oriental versions of what at home Barbara would have called junk food. Compared to this explosion of energy, London was quiescent, old, and settled into grateful accomplishment. Finally, having done at least three miles, their wandering brought them to Dizengoff Street’s comparative repose, the string of restaurants and cafes making a not-too-successful attempt to imitate the Left Bank of Paris, small tables and chairs set out on the sidewalk. In a way, these outdoor tables, in the benign fall climate of Tel Aviv, were a sort of social center of the expanding city.

  It was past the lunch hour, so most of the tables were unoccupied. At one shop a soldier on leave, his rifle slung over his shoulder, sat with his girlfriend, a pretty redhead. At another table two black men, obviously Americans, drank beer and ate flat bread dipped into a sticky concoction; and at a table in the other direction three old white-bearded men drank tea from glasses and were engaged in a vociferous argument in Hebrew, to which Philip listened intently, proudly able to inform Barbara that he could understand enough to know that they were talking about excavations in an old Jewish cemetery.

  “Not that I understand much of it, but I do get the thread when they slow down, words like sacrilege and God’s commandment. It’s absolutely remarkable. Give me another week—they use a word that I think means ‘clutching,’ probably an excavator. Trouble is they talk so fast; but the little fellow with the blue eyes, he’s given to judgments and he speaks very slowly. Now he’s looking at us. Tayar, I think that’s the word for tourist.”

  “You’re delicious,” Barbara said. “A Jesuit priest who speaks Hebrew. If I lived a lifetime here, I’d never learn.”

  “It’s a beautiful, logical language.”

  “Not when they shout at each other.” A waiter came out, and Barbara pointed to the soldier. “Beer for both of us, and that stuff they’re eating.”

  “Pita and hummus.”

  They drank the beer, broke up the pita bread and dipped it into the hummus, and washed it down with more cold beer. “Cold beer,” Philip said, “thank goodness.”

  “Very American,” Barbara agreed. “When I was in Egypt during the war, the GIs stationed there moved heaven and earth to get into Israel, which was not yet Israel, but the only place in the area where they could find ice-cream sodas.”

  “Tell me,” Philip asked her, “what is or who is Dizengoff? I’ve heard of Herzl and Ben-Gurion and Yigal Alon, but Dizengoff? You know, we have a Hanukkah celebration at the church every year, along with our Christmas festival, and we do a lot about Israel. But Dizengoff?”

  “He settled and I suppose originated Tel Aviv. From what the guidebook says, it was all sand dunes before Mier Dizengoff came here with some sixty families and began a city. Now there’s more than a million people.”

  “More than San Francisco,” Philip said with some awe.

  “Just about, with parks and concrete sidewalks and asphalt streets, and museums and theaters and all the rest.”

  At that moment a bus pulled up to the curb opposite where the soldier and his girlfriend were sitting. He hastily kissed her and then turned to the open door of the bus—and as he set foot on the step there was a tremendous crash and an explosion that flung the soldier off his feet and shattered the windows of the bus and of two cafes. The force of the blast rocked Barbara and Philip but left them unharmed. And the bus burst into flames.

  Afterward, as she recollected it, it seemed to Barbara that Philip acted instantaneously, but he told her that he took a moment to see that she was unharmed. Then he leaped toward the bus. The driver, unconscious, was hanging half out of the open door. Philip, with strength she had never known he had, lifted the driver out of the bus and laid him down on the sidewalk. Then Philip plunged into the bus, and as Barbara got to her feet and ran toward the burning vehicle—the redheaded girl meanwhile bloody and screaming in terror—Philip emerged with a small, whimpering, blood-covered child in his arms. He handed the child to Barbara, who had no voice, but took the child and laid her down on the sidewalk, and in that time Philip emerged with a second child in his arms and his own hair aflame. Barbara tore off the light sweater she was wearing and smothered the flames on Philip’s head as he carefully bore the little boy of ten or so away from the bus, shouting to Barbara, “Take the other one! It could explode! Get the child!”

  She picked up the child, a little girl, and followed Philip away from the bus to where the three old men had been arguing, and she laid the child down on the table. Philip laid the little boy on the sidewalk. The three old men had not moved; they were staring mutely frozen in place, apparently unable to comprehend what had happened. Then Philip ran back to the bus and started toward its door, as if to enter it again; but the waiter, who had come out of the café, and Barbara held him back, Barbara finding enough voice to plead, “No, you can’t go in there, you can’t! You’ll die! It’s all on fire!”

  All of this happened in a matter of seconds, and hardly a minute had gone by since the explosion. Suddenly the whole world was alive with screams and shouts, and soldiers on leave pushing people back from the burning bus, and the distant wail of police cars and fire engines.

  “There are children in there!” Philip yelled.

  A soldier on leave joined them, helping to hold Philip back. “Fire engines coming—firemen.” The street traffic
had halted, and a man came running from his car, shouting in Hebrew that he was a doctor. “Let him through!” someone yelled in English. The soldier hanging on to Philip said, “Mister, two men bleeding on the sidewalk. We take them away, the bus shouldn’t explode. Now help me.”

  Philip and the soldier picked up the bus driver, in spite of the doctor’s protests, and carried him up the street to where the two children lay sobbing. Barbara took the unconscious soldier’s feet while the waiter picked him up by the armpits, and they carried him after the bus driver. The doctor, a small man with brass-rimmed glasses and a bald head, was already stanching the blood of the driver’s wounds. He snapped a command at the soldier, who went to the wounded soldier and felt his pulse. The redheaded girl was kneeling by his side. The child Barbara had put on the table saw blood running from her nose onto her dress and began to scream. Barbara lifted her in her arms and tried to soothe her.

  And then, suddenly, their role was over. A fire engine went into action and began flooding the bus with water, and an ambulance arrived with people to tend to the two men and the two children, and Barbara fell into the arms of a bloody, blackened Philip, half of whose hair had burned away, and began to whimper, like a small child.

  Another ambulance arrived, and a man in a white coat said to them, “Come with us. We take you to the hospital.”

  Meekly Barbara and Philip followed them.

  AT BREAKFAST AT HlGHGATE, Eloise, opening the folded copy of the San Francisco Chronicle that had arrived that morning, went white, and her hands began to shake. Freddie took the paper from her and read aloud to Eloise and Adam: “Headline, ‘San Francisco Couple Hailed as Heroes in Israel.’” He asked Eloise, “Did you know they were in Israel? Weren’t they supposed to be in Greece or somewhere?”

  “Will you read it?” Adam growled.

  Special to the Chronicle. The Reverend Philip Carter, minister of the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco, and Mrs. Carter, the former Barbara Lavette, recently married and on their honeymoon, were saluted by Yitzhak Shamir, prime minister of Israel, for exceptional courage in the face of danger.