David had no answer. “So now I will ask a favor,” Peretz said bluntly. “I want you to meet with survivors of the Passover bombing, at least those who can stand to be in the room with you. I do not want you to leave as untouched as you came.”
“I’m not quite untouched,” David answered. “But I’ll meet with them, of course. No one I love has ever been murdered.”
Returning to the hotel, David was far more tired than jet lag could account for.
On his bed, he found an envelope. The typed note sealed inside read: “Visit the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem. There is much you can learn there.”
David had been in Israel for twenty-three hours.
5
After setting his alarm, David slept.
He slipped into a dream. He was driving on a busy, rain-slick highway with a woman whose face he could not see. Suddenly he realized that he must swiftly cross two lanes and exit to the right. The highway was crowded and David had only seconds; braking abruptly, he swerved across one lane and then accelerated, trying to slip between two semitrucks onto the exit ramp. The woman gave a soft cry. As the truck behind them clipped his bumper, David lost control...
When the alarm jolted him awake, he lay across the mattress amid tangled sheets. It took him seconds to remember that he was in Jerusalem, alone, and that his fifth-floor window framed a view of the Al Aqsa Mosque. He had never felt so isolated, or so adrift, so completely at the mercy of others.
Dressing slowly, as though still in a dream, he readied himself for Yad Vashem.
The starkly modern museum was built on a hillside surrounded by pine trees. The day was bright and clear; around David, young men and women, Israeli soldiers, came and went. Those departing seemed subdued: so that they might better understand their service, Ernheit had explained, the IDF took them to Yad Vashem. The other defining trip, Ernheit had added, was to the desert fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebels had committed mass suicide rather than yield to the Romans. “Once you’ve finished at Yad Vashem,” Ernheit said, “you will understand Masada.”
Entering, David was greeted by a collage of black-and-white film footage, showing the normal lives of European Jews before the Holocaust: shoppers at a market, bright-faced children at a school, celebrants observing Passover—all of them oblivious to what awaited. Then, taking a ramp, he descended into the museum.
At the bottom of the ramp was a large photograph from a concentration camp. It was filled with the bodies of adults and children piled on wooden fagots, some with their eyes closed, others with the sightless stare of the dead, their arms and legs at angles seldom seen in life. At the end of the war, the Germans who had run the camp tried to burn the evidence of their crimes; there were so many bodies that the guards, forced to work in haste, could not completely incinerate them all. Beside this was a display of smaller photos retrieved from the half-charred corpses—a family at the beach; smiling couples; boys in athletic uniforms—the only evidence the dead possessed that their lives had once been different.
For some moments, David did not move.
The next room began the path between these two depictions of innocence and death: a film of gleeful Germans throwing books by Jews into a bonfire, as though prefiguring the burning of Jews themselves; a children’s board game in which the object was expelling Jews from Germany; beer mugs with anti-Semitic slogans etched above their portraiture; photos of German doctors measuring the heads of Jews, seeking to identify the features that marked them as “subhumans.” Then, without warning, David stepped into his parents’ living room.
Perfectly preserved, it was that of a Jewish family living in Berlin: austere, entirely secular, its wooden chairs, tables, and mirrors antiques. David had always thought of his parents’ chosen decor as an affectation, the efforts of a couple who barely saw themselves as Jewish to appropriate the style of New England Episcopalians; now he perceived that, whether consciously or not, they had replicated the parallel life they might have lived in Germany. Except that, by the time of Kristallnacht, when Nazis had looted and destroyed the homes of German Jews, David’s mother and father, children then, were safe from harm in the beautiful American city that their grandparents had chosen.
Your father became a psychiatrist, Bryce Martel had said to David, because, like many psychiatrists, he wished to understand himself. But whatever he discovered, he did not wish to share. Including how he felt about being a Jew.
As with sex and death, Philip Wolfe had avoided all mention of the Holocaust.
Past the sprawling pile of shoes taken from those awaiting cremation was a semicircular display, holding records of some of the six million who had perished.
Behind this was a room filled with computers. At each station, visitors could enter the names of their relatives, perhaps learn more about their fate. But David had never known family names beyond those of his grandparents, or even what place in Germany they might have come from. If the Holocaust had touched his ancestors, he did not know it.
He hesitated, then decided to experiment with the past.
“Wolfe,” David tapped on the keyboard, followed by “Germany.”
He found twenty-one names and several photographs—men, women, and children, perhaps relatives, perhaps not. He scanned the faces but found no clue to consanguinity. Wolfe was not an uncommon name, and for all David knew, it was anglicized from some more unwieldy, less attractive surname.
He tried his mother’s name, Schneider, with similar results. Then, out of some vestigial memory—an inscription written in a leatherbound book, he guessed—another surname came to him: Wolfensohn.
He typed the name onto the screen and pushed “Enter.”
Several names and faces appeared. The second photograph froze him: Hans Wolfensohn, a surgeon, had perished with his family at Birkenau. It was a face David remembered from childhood, in memory close enough to startle him—his father’s father, an estates and trusts lawyer who had taken David to the zoo and tucked him into bed with stories. But never of the past.
Shaken, David stared at the doctor, his grandfather’s murdered doppelganger. He thought of his prep school friends, with their ancestral homes and famous progenitors, senators or industrialists, their lives preserved in portraits or biographies. But like Hans Wolfensohn, David’s past had been erased.
Outside, a man stood waiting for him—bald and fit, sunglasses perched on top of his head, his manner casual. Without preface, he told David, “When the first Jew died in the War of Independence, we did not count from one, but from six million and one. But if you believe that Israel is God’s answer to the Holocaust, at least there is a symmetry.”
David was too distracted for subtlety. “Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Ari Masur.”
David knew him at once—though still youthful, the former general came from a founding family of Israel, and his father had been a hero in Israel’s War of Independence. Perceiving David’s recognition, Masur added with an ironic smile, “Some think I wish to become prime minister of Israel. But today I’m simply your driver. I promise that your journey will be less taxing than the one you just completed.”
They drove in silence to Jerusalem, taking what seemed to David an elliptical route, Masur glancing at the rearview mirror. “I once headed the Shin Bet,” he explained. “Sometimes, for amusement, I practice the art of evasion.”
Though his instincts were alive with curiosity, David asked him nothing. The last few hours were too present.
Parking near a public square, they walked down cobbled side streets and then entered a three-story sandstone home. It was five hundred years old, Masur observed, but perfectly preserved. Through the alcove David saw a tree-sheltered patio surrounded by a garden; ascending the stairs, they passed carefully appointed rooms combining sunlight and shadow, rich with a sense of history. The roof garden, shaded by olive trees, afforded a panorama of Jerusalem.
A dark-haired woman, gazing out at the city, turned at the sound of f
ootsteps. She was forty or so, with an erect carriage and aquiline features that caused David to stop where he was.
“I’m Anat Ben-Aron,” she told him. “I believe you knew my father.”
Startled, David looked into her face, so reminiscent of Amos Ben-Aron’s. “I admired your father,” he said at last. “So meeting you is difficult.”
“Yes. I imagine so.”
The cool matter-of-factness in her tone and manner left no room for polite evasion. “Whoever killed him,” David said, “I don’t believe it was Hana Arif.”
Ben-Aron gave a curt nod. “This I also understand. So let us sit.”
They did so beneath an olive tree at a corner of the roof garden. Ice and bottled water waited on the table; whatever they meant to discuss, Masur and Ben-Aron did not want it overheard by servants. Masur poured water into the glasses with the precision of an apothecary. “I assume we speak in confidence,” he said to David.
“Of course.”
“All right, then. Anat and I are among the embattled who still believe that peace is possible. By grotesque coincidence, you may become our ally.”
Ben-Aron leaned forward on the table, her study of David’s face unwavering and keen. “Whether Arif lives or dies,” she told him, “is of little concern to me. I care about two things: knowing who planned my father’s death, and ensuring that he did not die for nothing. As of now, his death is a weapon for those he despised in life: Arab terrorists and fanatic settlers like Barak Lev.”
Trying to find his bearings, David sipped some water. “I’ve had much the same thought,” he ventured.
“We have an election soon,” Masur said. “As matters stand, it will complete the transfer of power to Isaac Benjamin and those who define peace as a separation barrier, strengthening Hamas and leaving the West Bank as a festering sore, filled with the angry and impoverished.” Once more, Masur glanced at Ben-Aron. “Now, again, we bomb them, this time to wipe out Al Aqsa. And, again, we have no choice.
“But what does it gain us? More power for Hamas. Without the hope of peace, the Palestinian people will turn to them for good. And the only winners will be the haters on both sides of this barrier we’re building.”
“This is geopolitics,” David said. “My interests are different. I’m a lawyer, defending a client who may die—”
“Yes, by suggesting that Jews helped kill my father,” Ben-Aron interrupted brusquely. “You recall the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. The radical settlers also hated him. In their minds, they were engaged in an underground war with the secular Jews, which they had to win before they could deal with the Arabs.” Her lips curled in distaste. “When Rabin was murdered by a Jew, some literally sang and danced. But the great majority of us were sickened, and expected Rabin’s policies to continue.”
“Until,” David added, “Palestinian terrorists, especially Hamas, launched a wave of suicide bombings.”
“Not just Palestinians,” Masur said. “Iranians.”
“Are you saying,” David prodded, “that the Iranians were behind the assassination of Rabin?”
“No. I’m saying they exploited it, by fomenting and financing the wave of suicide attacks carried out by Palestinians, destroying the chances of peace and leading to the election of a right-wing government of Israel. And, in doing so, the Iranians learned a valuable lesson for the future.
“By themselves they could not kill Rabin. But a right-wing fanatic could. So they perceived that those who hated them and the Palestinians the most—fanatic settlers—were also enemies of the State of Israel.”
Ben-Aron gazed at the table, her handsome features set, as though fighting back repressed emotion. “For the worst of the settlers,” she said with quiet bitterness, “Israel is not a place of democracy or hope but of land and tombs and sacred sites. This is not Judaism—it’s idolatry, and now it’s become insane. Throughout history, the insane kill to achieve their dreams.”
“Your father’s security detail,” David responded gently, “was meant to repel the insane.”
The statement, and the challenge it contained, prompted a swift glance from Ben-Aron to Ari Masur. “This is a small society,” Masur said at length. “With various overlapping spheres of influence, and many connections. And one connection that embraces most Jews.”
David reflected on what he knew. “The army?”
“Military service,” Masur corrected. “Almost all of us serve, even fanatic ‘hill boys’ like Barak Lev. The army is a place where disparate men forge bonds for life.”
Anat Ben-Aron, David saw, was still contemplating the table. “Also the place,” David countered, “from which your prime minister’s security detail is drawn. Including the most junior, and therefore perhaps the least reliable. But we’re talking in riddles. Which ‘disparate’ men? And how might they be connected to Iran?”
“Were there such a connection,” Masur answered cautiously, “it could traumatize the Israeli people. But in the end, this knowledge might be the saving of us, and of Anat’s father’s plan. Sooner or later, Mr. Wolfe, everything in Israel leaks. Why not in a good cause?” Once more, Masur smiled. “Whether a plan for peace, or the defense of a former lover.”
Astonished, David realized that Anat Ben-Aron was studying him. “For now,” she said quietly, “we are done. But you should not leave Israel too soon. With skill and patience, you may start to find some answers to your riddles.”
6
In the hills of Haifa, a striking coastal city with commanding views of the Mediterranean, David sat on a patio with four middle-aged Israelis, two widows and a wife and husband, whose families had been shattered by the female suicide bomber from the refugee camp at Jenin.
It had happened, as Ehud Peretz had told him, on the Saturday night of Passover, when four generations—the eldest, survivors of Auschwitz—had gathered to celebrate the regeneration of their families. The restaurant was owned by Arabs: Haifa was a place where Israelis and the descendants of Arabs who had chosen not to flee lived in relative amity. At the moment of the bombing, each of these survivors had just finished a delicious meal and felt suffused with well-being and the love of family.
From Zev Ernheit, who had driven him here, David knew their stories. Shoshanna Ravit, a dark, slender woman of fifty whose mournful gravity evoked for David a Velázquez painting, had come to the restaurant with her husband, Isaac, a retired army colonel turned businessman; her son, David, a keen soccer player and student of architecture; and their daughter, Rachel, a young teacher of students with special needs. Saar Mendel had come with her husband, Mickey, and son, Dov; that night they were celebrating Dov’s release from military service. Eli and Myra Landau had attended the celebration with their daughter, Nurit, a high school senior whose raven hair and bright smile were captured in a photograph that gazed back at David from the wooden table around which the four of them had gathered in the twilight.
David struggled for words to bridge the gulf of sorrow and distrust between himself and these grieving parents, wondering as he did so why General Peretz had arranged this meeting. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he told them. “I can’t claim to know how you must feel. But I want you to know, especially given the reason I’ve come to Israel, that I hate what you’ve been forced to suffer.”
In the silence, Shoshanna Ravit regarded him. She sat in a wheelchair, her slacks hanging loosely where her feet should be; as with the others, her voice was drained of life. “General Peretz said you came tolearn,” shetold him. “But that you shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose. For our part, we’ve become used to speaking of our families to keep them alive in memory, along with the hope that others outside Israel will comprehend what we must face.”
David nodded.
“So, do you want my memories?” she asked.
In the candlelight, Shoshanna had looked into the face of her daughter. The atmosphere was boisterous, filled with talk and laughter; in the privacy this offered them, Rachel leaned closer and confided, “Two weeks
ago, I met this guy . . .”
At the corner of her eye, Shoshanna saw a movement that distracted her: a young Arab woman with dark, soulful eyes approaching a table filled with four animated generations of an Israeli family, the youngest a blond infant on her great-grandfather’s lap. His arm, circled around her, showed the tattoo on his forearm.
“Arik’s really cute,” Rachel was saying. “And so completely smart . . .”
The Arab woman smiled at the infant. When the great-grandfather looked up, returning her smile, she closed her eyes, then exploded with a concussive shudder that lifted Shoshanna from her chair.
When consciousness returned, she lay in a pool of blood, faintly aware of the keening sounds around her, the lack of feeling in her legs. Beside her lay her husband, blood trickling from his mouth. The thought came to her, slowly, that he was dead.
Turning on her stomach, Shoshanna faced the room. It was nothing like before. Where families had been were splintered tables, bodies or pieces of bodies, blood spattered on the wall.
Shoshanna closed her eyes. She must be strong for her children, she admonished herself, and then darkness overcame her.
She awakened in the ambulance as a paramedic was giving her a shot. “What is this for?” she asked groggily.
“Tetanus and hepatitis B.”
“Then be sure to give this to my children,” she instructed him. “Even though Rachel still cries at shots...”
Finishing, she told David, “I used to love to walk along the seashore with my family, feeling the cool splash of water on my feet and ankles. When I awakened from my numbness, I saw that I had no feet or ankles, and realized I also had no family.”
Unlike Shoshanna Ravit, pain had left Saar Mendel with a look of passive bewilderment, as though she were confronted by a puzzle to which she could not divine the answer.
Exile: a novel Page 34
