Leah's Children

by Gloria Goldreich

  “Take that off,” Rebecca said harshly to Yaakov, and they all turned and stared at her in surprise. Abruptly, she rose from the table and ran back to her bungalow, where she threw herself across the bed and waited for the tears that did not come.

  She realized as she lay there, grieved but dry-eyed, her heart pounding in arrhythmic beat, that she doubted everything about her life in Israel. Her husband’s love, her commitment to the kibbutz, and, above all, the future she wanted for her sons, all were shadowed by her own sudden uncertainty. She knew that she did not want her sons to be wounded in a war and sit as Yair sat, maimed and disabled, while other men whirled in a raucous hora. She did not want death to come to them, as it had come to Noam, as it might yet come to the redheaded bridegroom and to the soldier friends who had escorted him in song and dance to the marriage canopy. She was not as brave as Sara Meiri, who had lost her son, or as Miriam—the Mia of Yehuda’s dream and memory—who had lost her life. She closed her eyes and allowed the tumescent sleep of emotional exhaustion to engulf her.

  When she awakened, Yehuda was sitting in the chair beside the bed, slowly turning the pages of ha-Aretz.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Not late. You slept for about an hour and a half. The entertainment is still going on.”

  She heard the strains of Mordechai Meiri’s accordion. Soon it would be time for the bridal couple to steal away, and then the guests would dance again, forming wide circles for a hora, weaving across the field in elegant debkas until the younger people urgently called for Western music—frenetic twists, slow fox trots, and the intricate rhumbas and sambas that the Argentine immigrants had introduced. It was simple enough to entertain the young people of Israel, Rebecca thought. It was more difficult to protect them.

  “Do you want to go back?” she asked.

  “No. I want to talk to you,” he said. “Rebecca, I am going to be away from the kibbutz a great deal.”

  “You are always away from the kibbutz a great deal,” she replied. The bitterness of her answer soured her mouth. What was happening to them that they spewed spite at each other? And why, after almost twenty years in the country, was she suddenly so gripped by uncertainty, so entangled in a net of apprehension?

  “You knew when we were married that I had special obligations.”

  “That was almost twenty years ago. Don’t these special obligations ever come to an end? Doesn’t another generation inherit them?”

  Her voice was harsh. Yehuda had fought for the British in Europe, and then he had fought against them, at war’s end, as a Mosad agent smuggling illegal immigrants into the country. He had been wounded in the War for Independence, and he had done battle during the Sinai Campaign. And always there had been clandestine trips out of the country—secret meetings in Larnaca and Athens, unexplained journeys to England and America. Surely, it was someone else’s turn to take up that “special obligation.”

  “I must go,” he repeated.

  “Why you? Always you?”

  “Others are also going.”

  “Where?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  She was silent. She could not argue against his secrets. The postcards would arrive, casual scrawls with colorful stamps that the children claimed noisily, clamoring for the stamp with the portrait of Idi Amin, Queen Sophia, the French tricolor. He would be scavenging arms and allies again, she knew, courting danger in European airports, African hotels, spacious homes in American suburbs. And she would be alone with her fear and uncertainty and her irrational jealousy of a woman long dead who surely would have been neither frightened nor uncertain. Miriam, Mia, whose name her husband sometimes whispered in his sleep.

  “I think you should go to America while I am away,” he continued. “You’ll be with Mindell when she needs you. You’ll be in New York for your exhibit.”

  “But the kibbutz, the boys,” she protested. “How can I leave them?”

  “The kibbutz is well staffed. We’re flooded with volunteers just now, all keen to see a war. And the boys will be well taken care of in the children’s house. Danielle is here. And you haven’t been back to America for any length of time since we were married.”

  “Do you think I ought to check and see if there’s something I might have missed?” she asked lightly.

  “Perhaps. I would think it strange if you had not wondered from time to time what your life might have been like if you had stayed in America.” He would not allow her forced flippancy to deceive them both. “I do know that it will do you good to get away. You’ve been so tense lately, so irritable.”

  “We have both been tense and irritable,” she said. She would not allow him to exonerate himself. “There is something wrong between us.” Their last refuge, she acknowledged now, was honesty.

  “You must never be afraid to say what you feel,” her father had once cautioned her gently. She had summoned her courage and spoken.

  The words she had feared to utter had slipped out, and she waited for him to refute them. She wanted him to embrace her, to look at her and murmur, “No, there is nothing wrong. You are my Rivka, my darling Rivka.” His silken-gray eyes would be soft upon her face, as they had been so many years ago in the Jerusalem hospital where she had tended his wounds and claimed his love. But he said nothing and continued to stare out the window at the evening shadows that cast violet streaks across the sand crater.

  He was quiet then, as though drained of words. She struggled to assess his silence, to coax forth explanations, to understand the pain she read in his eyes. But she understood that she could not invade his struggle. They had reached a crossroads, and now, for a time, they would take separate paths. Still, briefly, she persisted.

  “How can I leave the country when there is danger of war?”

  “I do not think there will be war this year. Only saber rattling. Algeria inspired Shukairy. Why fight a real war when terror is so potent?”

  She rose and stood beside him at the window, her head resting on his shoulder. Stars spangled the desert sky, and the wedding music drifted toward them.

  “It will not be easy,” she said, “but I think that you are right.”

  “Sometimes it is necessary to go away only so that one may come home again. Really home. At last.”

  How gentle his voice was. She stood revealed before him, she knew. He recognized her love and her longing, her courage and her fear. His large hand covered her head; his fingers fondled the thick tendrils of her coarse black curls.

  “It will be all right,” she said, but he did not answer. He held her even closer because soon they would be apart and alone.

  REBECCA

  1966–1967

  MINDELL AND MICHAEL GOLDFEDER pressed their faces against the glass window of the observation tower and watched as the El Al jumbo jet tipped its blue-starred wings and taxied to a halt on the rain-streaked runway at Kennedy International Airport. Stairwells were swiftly slipped into place at the plane’s exits, and slowly, warily, the passengers disembarked and peered toward the wide-windowed arrivals building, as though even from the distance they might discern a relation, a friend. Two bearded men in black caftans and wide-rimmed fur hats carefully picked their way down the metallic steps and waited as their bewigged wives trailed after them. A lanky youngster wearing jeans and a Hebrew University sweatshirt descended, awkwardly balancing his guitar. Michael would not be surprised to see him, in a few weeks’ time, sprawled in the student lounge at Hutchinson College, playing mournful songs about the Galilee at twilight to wide-eyed, long-haired coeds.

  Harried couples, managing too many bags and supervising too many children, barely looked up, but the slender woman whose dark hair was winged with silver peered above the head of the small blond child she carried and smiled as droplets of rain fell on her upturned face.

  “There she is,” Mindell said, and she waved frantically, although she knew that Rebecca could not see her.

  “Yes. I see her.” Michael felt ashamed
because the child in his sister’s arms had deceived him and he had stared past her without recognition. It would be like Rebecca to assist another passenger. Leah’s children had been well taught. He himself often found himself holding a stranger’s baby in airports or carrying shopping bags for the elderly men and women who lived on his street. “We are all connected to each other,” their father had told them again and again. “It is the smallest kindness that counts,” Leah had reminded them. Leah and David, during their journey from Russia to the States, during their early years of poverty and struggle, had so often depended on the kindness of others.

  “Rebecca looks tired,” Michael said.

  “But beautiful.”

  Mindell was reminded now of the first time she had seen Rebecca, as she descended the stairwell to the cellar hiding place in Bari. Mindell had been taken there after her release from Auschwitz, and she remembered still how frightened she had been when she glimpsed her own reflection in the mirror. A small ghostly face, framed with lank strands of pale gold hair, had stared back at her. She had stared in wonder then at Rebecca, who had been recruited by Yehuda to escort that group of children to Palestine. She had marveled at the young American woman’s high color, at her thick black hair and full figure. There was verve in her voice and vibrance in her laughter. When she spoke, the frightened children began to believe in the possibilities of freedom and joy.

  Rebecca had married Yehuda, and as the years passed, the desert sun had burnished her skin and the youthful softness of her features had been honed into the chiseled profile that intrigued Israel’s leading portrait photographers. Mindell kept a copy of Ariel, Israel’s cultural journal, which featured a photo essay entitled “Rebecca Arnon—Kibbutz Artist,” on the small coffee table in their Eldridge Street apartment.

  Often, she studied the photograph of Rebecca reading to Yaakov and Amnon and the accompanying shot of Rebecca and Yehuda carefully pruning a rosebush they had planted in the garden in memory of Noam. She especially loved the portrait of Rebecca at work, her full lips pressed closed in concentration, her fingers gripping the paintbrush with such intensity that the furl of skin where the flesh tensed about the wood was perceptible.

  The essay that accompanied the photographs included an interview with Rebecca. Did the artist regret her decision to settle in Israel? “No. I have found satisfaction here.” “But surely,” the interviewer had persisted, “in America there would have been more opportunity to study, to meet with other artists, to mount exhibitions that would attract international recognition.” “Such opportunities are more than balanced by what I found in Israel,” Rebecca had replied.

  Mindell wondered whether Rebecca’s answers would be the same now if similar questions were asked. She had visited Israel twice since her marriage to Michael, and on each visit she had been conscious of new tensions between Rebecca and Yehuda. A controlled courtesy had replaced the spontaneity that had characterized their early years together. They spoke little and seemed to measure their words carefully.

  They remained leaders of the kibbutz. In open meetings they radiated authority; their opinions were listened to with respect and consideration. Always their voices were firm and rang with conviction. Younger members came to Rebecca with their problems, sought her advice. Yehuda sat on important committees. Rebecca sat in for him occasionally, because he was so often out of the country, and there was general agreement that she spoke with his voice, reflected his feelings. Yet, when they were alone together, they sometimes spoke with the controlled courtesy of estranged friends who wish, at all costs, to avoid a confrontation. Too often, Yehuda averted his eyes from her intense gaze; too often, Rebecca ignored his outstretched hand. They seemed then, despite their energy and strength, oddly vulnerable, and Mindell, who observed them with love, was troubled.

  “Is there something wrong between Rebecca and Yehuda?” Mindell had asked Danielle during her last visit. Yehuda’s blond daughter had nodded.

  “It’s been that way since Noam’s death. Sometimes I think it’s because my father is away so often—more now than ever before. And sometimes Rebecca does not even know if he’s in the country or abroad. Once Yaakov became ill and ran a high fever, and we could not locate him. At first she was frightened and then she was angry. She needed him, and she was alone. It was not easy. It is not easy.”

  Danielle blamed neither her father nor Rebecca. There was no culpability. That was the way life was in Israel. They never discussed her father’s work, but it was assumed that he was involved in intelligence operations.

  Mindell thought about the secrecy of Yehuda’s work and the restrictions it imposed on his marriage. She and Michael had long conversations each evening about their jobs—his students, her patients. What would their marriage be like, she wondered, if they had to conceal such important aspects of their lives from each other?

  “And, since Noam’s death, I think Rebecca has been frightened,” Danielle added hesitantly. “Not for herself. Never for herself. But for the children—for Yaakov and Amnon.”

  Fear was a stigma in Israel, where clouds of danger threatened the brightness of each day. Every border was hostile, and acts of terror plagued the cities and towns, haunted the settlements. Daily the papers carried stories of bombs discovered beneath sand pails on the beaches, explosives concealed in supermarket shopping carts, Fatah members apprehended at the Lebanese border. But fear was the greatest enemy because it threatened any semblance of normality and validated the philosophy of terror.

  “I don’t blame Rebecca for being frightened,” Danielle continued. “We were born into the danger. It came to us as a fact of life, a challenge. When I was very little, the children’s house on our kibbutz was burned by the Mufti’s gang, the Black Hand. I remember still the woman who carried us to safety through the flames, kept on cautioning us not be frightened. ‘You must be brave, children,’ she kept saying. We were scared, of course. Our faces were black with soot, our eyes smarted, and we did not know where our parents were. Still, we sang a song proclaiming our bravery, even though our voices cracked as we sang. ‘We will never leave the land. We are proud and we are brave.’” Danielle hummed softly. “But Rebecca did not grow up here. The danger, the responsibility, was thrust upon her. I don’t think her life in America prepared her for it. Still, everyone remembers her courage during illegal immigration. Always she is the last to descend to the shelter.”

  “Michael told me that her parents, Leah and David, called her their princess. All they wanted was to see her happy, to hear her laugh,” Mindell acknowledged. There was no danger on the tree-lined streets of Scarsdale village, no terror and threat in the rolling hills of Vermont where young Rebecca Goldfeder had studied art. “But still she did come to Israel. And she loved—loves—your father. She chose this life—she loves this land.”

  Mindell remembered walking with Rebecca through the fields of Sha’arei ha-Negev on a distant summer dawn. The air had been cool and threaded with the thin rays of pale gold that preceded the brilliant radiance of the desert morning. They had paused at a newly planted tract where the pale green ovoids of young melons swelled on thick-leafed vines.

  “Look, Mindell. And they were sure nothing would grow here,” Rebecca had said, triumph and pride in her voice. She had knelt and touched the earth, and Mindell had seen tears glinting in her eyes. Danielle was right. Yehuda had led her to the dream, perhaps even imposed it upon her, but it had, with the passing years, become her own. Chance had magically drifted into choice.

  Yet Mindell did not share this memory with Danielle. There was no need to offer a defense of Rebecca—strong, brave Rebecca who required no advocate.

  Danielle smiled sadly.

  “Perhaps she didn’t recognize then what her choice involved. The loneliness, with all her family in America. The secrets. The danger. She could not have known what it would be like to be the mother of sons in Israel. I watched her at Noam’s funeral. She held Yaakov’s hand so tightly that he had to pull it away. She
never took her eyes off Amnon. I saw then that Rebecca’s grief for Noam was mingled with fear for her own sons. And I understood that fear.”

  “How do you know all this, Danielle?” Mindell asked. Danielle’s perceptions awed and mystified her. She and Danielle had grown up together, as sisterly friends, inseparable companions, and always, it had seemed to her, Danielle had been possessed of an intuitive wisdom. Even as a child she perceived the source of another child’s misery, sensed and soothed night terrors. Often, her sweetly singing voice had calmed the frightened youngsters as they huddled in the shelter. Motherless Danielle had known how to mother others.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I only suppose. Maybe because now I acknowledge my own fear. Sometimes I think that I will marry Yair partly because I love him and partly because he is crippled and he will never have to go to war again. I will never have to fear for him, I will never have to be afraid that he will be killed before our children are grown. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes, of course I can.” Mindell had leaned forward and stretched her hand out to Danielle. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I am not ashamed,” Danielle had replied.

  Would Rebecca be ashamed, Mindell wondered now, to acknowledge her fear, to confront her loneliness? It was strange how roles were reversed. Throughout their childhoods, Rebecca had mothered Danielle and Mindell. Now it was they who worried over her and sought to shield and protect her.

  “Come, Mindell. They are passing through customs.”

  Michael took her arm, and they hurried down from the observation tower. By the time they reached the main floor, Rebecca Arnon was making her way through passport control. She moved slowly, weighted by a weariness induced by more than the long journey. Her face was veiled in a sadness Mindell had not seen before. Then suddenly she looked up and saw Michael and Mindell waving excitedly at her from behind the glass partition. She smiled brilliantly and stood erect, recalling to Mindell’s mind that bright-faced, strong young American woman who had stood before the frightened children in the concealed basement of the Bari house so many years ago. “Rebecca!” she shouted joyously, and Rebecca Arnon waved in return, with the relieved exuberance of a traveler who has safely returned from a long and treacherous journey.