An Independent Woman

by Howard Fast

  At two p.m. today, Israeli time, a bus exploded in Dizengoff Circle. The bus was starting its run, and the only passengers were two men and a woman with three children. Apparently a terrorist’s bomb in the briefcase of one of the men exploded prematurely, and the bus burst into flames, killing the terrorist, the other man, the woman, Rebecca Kahn, and one of her three children. A soldier attempting to board the bus at the moment of the blast was severely injured but is in stable condition at Tel Aviv Hospital, as is the bus driver.

  At great personal danger, Reverend Carter dragged the driver to safety and then entered the burning bus and carried two of Mrs. Kahn’s children to safety. As he bore the second child to safety, his hair caught fire. His wife, who had stood by the open door of the bus to receive the children, managed to smother his burning hair with her sweater. The Reverend Carter attempted to enter the bus a third time but was restrained by a soldier on leave. Then he and his wife carried the two children and the two wounded men out of harm’s way. Dr. Leon Phagel, a passing motorist, gave immediate medical aid to the two men, who are expected to recover. The two children carried by the Reverend Carter to safety were uninjured, but suffering from shock….

  Freddie paused. The story went on with the reaction in Israel to the suicide bombing, and the measures to be taken against terrorist groups.

  “I would never have thought it,” Adam said. “He’s such a mild-mannered man. Thank God they’re all right.”

  “Poor Philip,” Eloise said. “I can’t imagine what happens when hair burns.”

  “It’ll grow back,” Freddie assured her. “There’s a sidebar about Barbara. Shall I read it?”

  “Please.”

  Mrs. Philip Carter, formerly Barbara Lavette, is the scion of one of the oldest and most respected San Francisco families. Her great-grandfather Thomas Seldon Sr., was the founder of the Seldon Bank. After his death her grandfather Thomas Seldon Jr., continued as head of the bank. Her father, Daniel Lavette, is still remembered as one of the most colorful figures of the post-earthquake era, and Ms. Lavette has had a memorable career as a novelist and a screenwriter. Twice widowed, she married the Reverend Philip Carter this past September. She was a candidate for Congress in the forty-eighth Congressional District and has been active in Democratic politics and in many liberal causes over the past twenty-five years. She is a close associate of Mayor Dianne Feinstein, whose comment on her actions in Israel was that she would expect nothing less from Barbara Lavette.

  “Pretty neat, don’t you think?” Freddie said.

  Eloise shook her head. “Wherever she goes…” She had tears in her eyes.

  “Why don’t you call her in Tel Aviv?” Adam suggested. “You’ll feel better after you speak to her.”

  “I don’t know where she’s staying,” Eloise complained. “She called me from England last week to tell me that she was rearranging their schedule to go directly to Israel because Philip was deeply depressed. She was supposed to stay at the Sheraton, but she couldn’t get a room when they altered their plans.”

  “Then she’ll either call or write,” Freddie said. “Come on, Mother. There’s nothing to worry about. Aunt Barbara has a charmed life. Nothing is going to happen to her.”

  BUT A GREAT DEAL WAS HAPPENING to Philip and Barbara. After the blisters on Philip’s head were treated, with the burned hair cut away in half a dozen places, he asked Barbara what he looked like, and she shook her head hopelessly.

  “Philip, dear,” she said, “you’re a brave wild man, and I don’t care what you look like.”

  “God giveth and God taketh away,” he said. “I felt very comfortable in England with all that hair. And I’m not brave. I didn’t know what I was doing. If I’d had time to think about it, I wouldn’t have dared to go near that bus.”

  “Two beautiful children are alive. The bus driver is alive. The soldier is alive. You saved their lives. It’s a wonderful thing. Allow yourself to have it. Now let’s go back to the hotel and rest.”

  “And pray for those poor people who died.”

  But there was no time for rest or prayer. Word had gotten out that they were staying at the Samuel, and when they stepped out of the taxicab they were surrounded by reporters from the local newspapers and the Jerusalem Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post; London newspapers, German newspapers, Reuters, the Associated Press; photographers, television cameras, as well as Tel Aviv natives and tourists. The most insistent question was, “What made you act, Reverend?”

  Philip disliked being called Reverend. He shook his head hopelessly.

  Barbara felt that with the bandages and the tufts of singed hair sticking out here and there, he looked like something out of a carnival. “He acted,” Barbara replied, “because he’s a decent human being.”

  Philip managed to say, “I did what I had to do.”

  And Barbara pleaded that they were exhausted and that they had to rest. And finally they were allowed to go to their room, where a dozen telephone messages awaited them.

  They decided to have dinner in their room, since they were afraid to set foot in a crowded dining room. Evidently the waiter in the cafe had given the entire story to the press, and among the messages was one from Prime Minister Shamir and another from the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, asking them to be his guests at the VIP guesthouse in Jerusalem for a week, where an apartment would be provided facing the Old City. Would they call and confirm?

  Philip took some painkillers that they had given him at the hospital, and Barbara began to cry; and when Philip asked her why she told him, “Because I haven’t wept all day. So please allow me to cry.”

  Dinner was brought to their room, and the waiter who wheeled in the cart informed them, in very bad English, that it was his brother-in-law’s cousin, Chaim, who was working in the cafe and gave the whole story to the press, and who clung to Philip to keep him from entering the bus a third time, and please, God forgive him for asking, could he have their autographs? Philip dumbly signed a page from the waiter’s receipt book, and Barbara wiped away her tears and signed it as well.

  When he had left, Philip said, “Do you know, my dear—” It was hard for him to speak. A burn on his cheek hurt when he spoke. “Do you know, my dear,” he whispered, “I’ve never been asked for my autograph before.”

  She didn’t know whether he was pleased or upset. “What has happened to us?” she said woefully. “We come here to walk in the steps of Jesus, which you’ve been practicing for years, and the world explodes”

  “Not the world,” he whispered. “Just a bus.”

  She took the warmers off the dinner dishes. There was beef stew and peas and potatoes. They sat staring wanly at the food.

  “You should eat something,” she told him.

  The phone rang again, as it had at least five times since they entered the room. This time it was the manager of the hotel, who wanted to know whether there was anything he could do for them.

  “If you could have the operator take our messages for the rest of the day, it would be helpful,” Barbara said. “We’re very tired.”

  “Absolutely. Absolutely.”

  Philip took a piece of the stewed meat and chewed painfully. “It’s very good,” he said.

  Barbara shook her head. They had ordered a bottle of wine, and now she opened it and poured a glass for each of them. “I think I’m going to get drunk,” she said. “Have you ever seen me drunk, Philip?”

  “No, not really.”

  She raised her glass. “To what?”

  “Shalom.”

  “Good enough.” She took a mouthful of meat and agreed with Philip. “Very good, but a bit strange. The wine, on the other hand—well, it’s wine… You do look odd, Philip dear. How do you feel?”

  “Not bad, except when I lie down on the bed. That hurts. I’ll have to sleep in a chair. They sent us a bottle of champagne, compliments of the house. Did you notice, they didn’t send us a dinner check? Ouch,” he muttered.
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br />   “You don’t have to talk, darling,” Barbara told him. “Just sit quietly and bask in glory. I think you’re wonderful—absolutely wonderful.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re embarrassing me.”

  Barbara burst out laughing. “Oh no! Why am I laughing? An awful thing happened and I almost lost a brand-new husband. What time do you think it is at Highgate? It’s either yesterday or tomorrow.”

  “I think it’s tomorrow,” Philip said vaguely, “or maybe this morning.”

  She poured herself another glass of wine and filled Philip’s. She was never much of a drinker, and the wine on an empty stomach was having an effect. “Last night,” she said, “which was at least a month ago, I was in the depths of despair. I wanted to pack up and get out of here. Today, for some reason I don’t quite understand, I feel wonderful. Not totally wonderful—guilty-wonderful, because I think of that poor woman and her child trapped in that bus. Still, I feel wonderful. Do you think that’s terrible, Philip?”

  “I know the feeling. You saved a human life. In the Talmud, it says that he who saves a human life saves the whole universe.”

  “You saved the children, not I.”

  Philip stood up, walked around the table, turned Barbara’s face up to his, and kissed her. “I love you, beautiful lady,” he whispered. “My hair was on fire. You smothered it. You didn’t have to think. You just tore off your sweater and smothered the flames.”

  Barbara shrugged. “You must eat something, Philip… It was an old sweater, not even wool, cotton knit. Now sit down and eat.”

  He sat down and raised his wineglass.

  “How do you know all this Talmud stuff?”

  “The seminary. I sometimes think Jesuits know more about the Jews than Jews do… Those painkillers work. I can almost talk without any pain. Here’s a toast:

  How odd of God to choose the Jews,

  But not so odd as those who choose

  A Jewish God and hate the Jews.”

  “Oh? And where did you get that?”

  “Same place.”

  THE NEXT MORNING Barbara called Eloise. It was the previous evening in California. “We’re both safe and well. Philip looks somewhat like a Fiji Islander, but they assured us at the hospital that his hair will grow back,” Barbara told her. “We’re going back to the hospital today, and I think they’ll take the bandages off. He wasn’t badly burned—just a few blisters.”

  “I’m so glad you’re safe. It was all over the papers today. Barbara, can you possibly stay out of trouble until you return?”

  “I’ll try,” Barbara agreed. “Will you call Sam and reassure him? Tell him that we’re not insane and that we don’t go looking for trouble. And call Philip’s people at the church.”

  “Barbara, I miss you so,” Eloise said plaintively. “When are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know. Teddy Kollek—he’s the mayor of Jerusalem—invited us to stay for a week at a guesthouse that the city maintains for VIPs. Philip is so excited about staying in a place where he can look out and see Old Jerusalem that he can hardly wait to get there. But tonight, if Philip is well enough—”

  “I’m well enough,” Philip said in the background.

  “—we’re to have dinner with the mayor of Tel Aviv… Yes, Philip is absolutely wonderful, considering his age. And be sure to tell Adam that Israeli white wine is interesting, but that’s the best I can say of it.”

  “Freddie wants to speak to you.”

  “All right. Put him on.”

  “Aunt Barbara—you’re all right?”

  “We’re fine, Freddie.”

  “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Freddie, you know I will.”

  “I sold ten cases of Zinfandel—you know, the stuff we still produce for the synagogue and church trade—to a dealer in Jerusalem. His name is Kurt Levinson. He’s on Saladin Street. If you could ask him how it’s taking?”

  “Freddie!”

  “All right. Don’t get angry. I’m only asking.”

  “Freddie, I love you. Good-bye.”

  “What was that all about?”

  “Freddie sold some wine to a dealer in Jerusalem. He wants to know whether it’s selling.”

  “Well, that’s Freddie,” Philip said. “You shouldn’t be annoyed.”

  “Doesn’t anything ever annoy you, Philip?”

  “Yes, these cursed blisters on my head.”

  At the hospital a Dr. Levinson, who had been at medical school in Israel with Barbara’s son, Sam, removed the bandages and talked to Barbara about her son. When he heard that Sam was chief of surgery at Mercy Hospital, he complained enviously about living in a country with a surplus of physicians. “I’m going to put something on the blisters that will tend to dry them. Don’t worry if some of them break… We have too many doctors here. We need laborers and farmworkers, not a doctor for every ten people.”

  “Ten people?” Barbara exclaimed.

  “Well, maybe every three hundred. Who counts? How is my English?”

  “Very good. What shall I do if a blister breaks?”

  “Just pat it gently with a clean tissue. I’ll give you some codeine pills and a salve. But use the salve sparingly. I’ll take you to a room, and I want you to wait there until I find the hospital barber, and I’ll send him up.”

  “You have a hospital barber?”

  “He’s a volunteer. He’s very good.” The doctor, a fat, round-cheeked man, grinned. “Bet you don’t have one at that Mercy Hospital of yours.”

  “I never asked,” Barbara said.

  The barber, a man in his late sixties, told them that his name was Cosmo Santina. “I was with the GIs in North Africa. I’m from Brooklyn. My pop was Italian, my mother was Jewish. That makes me a Jew by Israeli law. We got a furlough in Israel before they closed the gates. I went AWOL. I like it here. Tel Aviv was just a village then. I get out of one army and they put me in another— in 1948. So I been through it all, and I had the best barbershop in Tel Aviv. My pop taught me the trade. Don’t worry,” he said to Philip. “Just sit down and relax. My son runs the shop now, but I’m better than he is. You won’t feel a thing.”

  “Thank you. That’s very reassuring,” Philip said.

  “I like that.” Santina nodded and said to Barbara, “Your husband’s a gentleman. You live here in Tel Aviv, you appreciate a gentleman. Don’t get me wrong. We Israelis are the best people in the world—but gentlemen, that’s something else. Not you, Reverend—I hear that before you jumped into that bus, which was a very fine thing, believe me, you had a head of hair like the Brits, nice and full. I can’t give that back to you, but I’ll give you a nice short cut. And even under the blisters, it’ll grow back. Meanwhile, I give you a yarmulke. We got plenty of yarmulkes here at the hospital.”

  Back at the hotel Barbara studied Philip thoughtfully. “I kind of like it,” she decided. “You’re almost bald. They say bald men are very passionate. It’s true, it looks a bit like a boiled beet, but they assure me that will pass. Does it hurt very much?”

  “No, not too much. With the yarmulke, I’m either Jewish or a cardinal. There’s a man in our congregation at home who always wears a yarmulke.”

  “You don’t make him take it off, do you?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  “We had a call from Teddy Kollek’s secretary. She says that an apartment has been reserved for us at the”—she pronounced it carefully—”Mishkenot Sha’ananim. We are welcome to stay as long as we please. As guests of the City of Jerusalem.”

  Philip shook his head despairingly. “Barbara, I am so embarrassed I could just crawl away and hide. I did nothing that any decent human being wouldn’t do, and if I had only been a bit quicker, that poor woman and her child wouldn’t have died—and instead of blaming me for their deaths, the Israelis are making me a national celebrity. I am so ashamed.”

  “Of what? Are you completely crazy, Philip? If you had gone back into that flaming bus, there would have been three dead. The bus d
river is going to recover and so is the soldier, and there’s no way in the world that you could have gone back into the bus. You struggled like a demon when we held you back. I feel so wonderful—why are you depressed?”

  “It could be my hair. At heart, I’m very vain.”

  “You’re not vain. You’re meshuga. That’s a Jewish word for ‘crazy’.”

  Their argument was interrupted by the telephone. The husband of the woman who had died in the bus was downstairs in the lobby, and the hotel manager asked if they would see him. “Yes, of course,” Barbara replied.

  He entered the room slowly, a big, sunburnt man with heavy sloping shoulders that reminded Barbara of her first husband, Bernie Cohen. He held out his hand to Philip, who took it and winced under the crushing grip of the man. “My name—Enoch Shelek. I have not much English to say much—”

  “Speak Hebrew slowly,” Philip said in Hebrew. “I have some Hebrew.”

  He nodded, and speaking very slowly, he said, “You gave me the gift of life, two of my beautiful children. My wife perished, may she rest in peace, and this morning we buried her and my baby son. But you gave me two lives, my son’s and my daughter’s. God sent you from faraway to stop the hand of the Malakh Ha-Mavet. I don’t know how to thank you. I’m a small farmer, but all that I have is yours.”

  Barbara didn’t know how much of what he said was understandable to Philip, but she saw tears welling up in Philip’s eyes, and then he went to the man and embraced him—and for a long moment, both of them were locked in that embrace. Then Philip let go and wiped his eyes, wincing, for the lashes were gone and his lids still inflamed. Then Shelek offered his hand to Barbara and said something in Hebrew. And then he turned to the door and left.

  Philip dropped into a chair and closed his eyes. For a few minutes he and Barbara remained silent.

  Then Barbara asked, “Did you understand what he said?”

  “Mostly, I think. Gratitude—and something about the Malakh Ha-Mayet, who is the Angel of Death in Jewish folklore, and the two children who were saved. Before he left, when he took your hand, he blessed you and all our children. I understood that, very biblical, and somewhat ironic. We have so much, Barbara, that I should not lament the fact that we have no children.”