The Covenant

by Ragen, Naomi

  The brilliance of the ideas, the possibilities for a triumphant comeback, took her breath away. She considered the risks. Well, BCN was known to be an advocate for Palestinians . . . But some of these Palestinian types, however just their cause and however much they’d suffered, hadn’t actually seemed all that sympathetic. But there was no time to think about it, or go wobbly, she scolded herself, putting on her makeup, giving particular care to her eyeliner and shadow. You’ve gotten yourself into this mess, dearie, and you’ll just have to do whatever you can to climb back out, however far up and however slippery-steep the slope. She pulled on the white suit that had just come back from the cleaners and the dark, sensual emerald blouse. She put on her sunglasses and a green velvet hairband. It looked lush against her light hair, she thought with satisfaction. There was no point in even attempting to get men to behave and cooperate if you looked like hell.

  She caught a taxi and slammed the car door shut with urgency, telling the driver: “Center of town,” while she considered where, exactly, she was planning to go. What was the name of Milos’s fleabag hotel? “Hotel Judah, on King George Street,” she told the driver.

  The best scenario was to get her fixer back. She had a hunch that if she found Milos, she’d find Ismael. Anyway, it was worth a try.

  Hotel Judah was more like a hotel where you rented rooms by the hour, not the day, she noted, glancing distastefully at the grimy windows, the half-torn curtains, the broken Venetian blinds hanging at a forty-five-degree angle. And there was such a nice little hotel right nearby . . . Why did he have to pick this one? She took out her press card and showed it to the security guard. Unimpressed, he motioned for her to open her purse, then passed a metal detector over her body with more thoroughness, she thought, than was strictly necessary.

  “Moron,” she said under her breath as she took the elevator up to Milos’s room. Arabs, Jews. Palestinians, Israelis. No wonder the Middle East was a sewer. They were all brain-dead, she thought. Thank God for London!

  Not surprisingly, there was no answer to her insistent knock. Livid, she returned to the lobby. “Pardon me, but can you tell me where I might find one of your guests, a Milos Jankowski?” she asked the reception clerk, a heavy Russian bleached-blonde with a bad attitude.

  “Not detective agency. Hotel. You leave message.” The woman shrugged, concentrating on holding a glass of hot tea by her fingertips. She placed a cube of sugar on her pink tongue.

  “Well, thanks so much. I don’t think I could have managed to come up with that brilliant idea all by myself,” she retorted in clipped, icy syllables, followed by a poisonous smile. “If I’d wanted to leave a message, I’d have called,” she said.

  The woman looked up from her tea unsympathetically and shrugged. “English, not good.”

  “Well then, can you at least tell me if he’s still registered? Or if anyone saw him come back last night? Or if he ate breakfast here this morning?”

  The clerk sucked the tea through the sugar cube, then licked her forefinger and turned the page of a local Russian-language paper, ignoring her.

  ”Well, thanks for nothing!” Julia shouted, slamming her hand on the counter. She pushed the revolving door into the startled faces of two Nigerian Christian tourists, who had no choice but to hurry through.

  Out in the morning heat, she felt the Middle Eastern sun bake the top of her head like the worst setting on a two-thousand-watt hair dryer. Her temples pounded, and her cell phone rang and rang. Finally, she picked it up. “Look, Jack, I’m doing my best. No, I haven’t heard from Ismael. I was about to ask you the same thing. After all, you know him better than I do. But there must be another Palestinian fixer to take his place. There is? When and where is he picking me up?”

  She took out a pen and wrote it down. “David’s Harp, King David Street? At one? That’s four hours from now! All right, all right. Jack?” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about the tape. I honestly don’t know what went wrong.” Her face turned a bright red as she listened to the voice of the bureau chief. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Jack. I didn’t tell Milos anything.” She paused, her face flaming. “And I don’t agree that I think with my vagina.” She hung up the phone.

  Everyone knew, of course.

  She walked slowly down the street. They’d all be sorry! She was going back into the lion’s den, and they could all eat her dust. Maybe she’d even get Duggan fired? Or get a better-paying job at CNN . . . And maybe—why not?—she’d even wrangle another exclusive with that settler woman! See her reaction to the second tape. After all, the baby was fine, wasn’t it? No harm had really been done. She shifted uncomfortably. No, better not, she thought, remembering the old woman. That bridge was burned. Well then, maybe she’d find the mother of the Palestinian in the headband with the gun, find out something about his upbringing, his hardships . . . Kind of woman-to-woman . . .

  She had four hours to kill. She turned, heading aimlessly along King George Street. Just ahead she saw Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue with its pillars and stained glass. There was a bus stop crowded with people. A woman with a baby carriage, an old man wearing a light gray fedora, two teenagers giggling on cell phones, a female soldier with a heavy backpack. Maybe she’d just interview them, random Israelis in the center of a city where people blew themselves up. It suddenly occurred to her that their simple act of waiting for a bus might be considered by some an act of courage and defiance.

  She turned away, surprised at the thought. At herself. How must it be to live in a city where your steps were dogged by armed terrorists whose only job in life was to find unarmed civilians and cause maximum slaughter? The question made her queasy and she looked for a distraction.

  She spied a little bookstore called Stein’s with boxes of dusty used books on the pavement in all languages. That would be interesting, she thought. To see what kinds of books people were reading. She knelt, rifling through them. A few novels by Steinbeck. A graying book of 1950s etiquette. A wrinkled text of German grammar. The journals of Anai’s Nin. Now, this was interesting, she thought, picking up a book called Perfumes and Cosmetics in the Ancient World. It looked fairly new too. She stood up and began flipping through the pages. They fanned her face, which suddenly felt strangely cold in the morning sun.

  For no reason, she suddenly looked up and into the glass of the storefront. A dark shadow passed behind her, filling her with inexplicable fear. She thought: I should turn around and see who it is, that dark figure, so dark in the morning sun.

  The force of the explosion was a noise she had never heard before, a sound that was a personal attack, a statement of purpose both obscene and emphatic, whose meaning was unmistakable. And then there was a strange and eerie silence. Time was suspended, removed from the context of measurable units, each second an eternity. She watched, mesmerized, as the glass of the storefront shattered and flew out toward her, like something in a cartoon. She watched, fascinated, never even attempting to cover her face with her hands. Everything was suddenly silent, slow motion, dreamlike. One of those old, voiceless films.

  She didn’t feel afraid, not for those first few moments, as she slowly pivoted. The baby carriage wheels and a bottle, she thought, staring at the littered pavement. Someone’s arm. Half a head. And blood, blood everywhere, and the choking smell of something so foul and dense she tried not to breathe for as long as she could. Mouths were opened as if screaming, but she heard nothing. She tried to take a step, but the ground was suddenly slippery, like ice. Ice in the Middle Eastern morning sun, she thought, looking at her arm, or what was left of it. She opened her mouth to scream. Only then was she fully aware she wasn’t going to be reporting this from the sidelines. That she was going to be part of the story.

  She could hear no sound as she slipped down to the pavement. My hair, she thought, feeling the glass needles in her scalp. My ears, my head, my blue eyes, my body. For the first time, she was terrified.

  Terrorism. To instill terror. Yes. That word. The perfect word fo
r who they are and what they do. Terrorists.

  Am I going to live, she wondered. Or have I been killed? Is this the way you feel when you are killed? Or am I alive? She held on to that idea, until she thought of something else. Maybe it wasn’t over. Maybe someone was going to come after her now with a machine gun, someone who doesn’t know I have been on their side all along, who didn’t understand her being here at this moment was just an accident, an accident. This is all a huge mistake! A mistake! I’m not part of this conflict! It has nothing to do with me, something inside of her screamed.

  It was then she saw it. The baby bottle that had rolled on its side and lay near her on the ground. She felt herself suddenly sob.

  A spasm of pain went through her that she found unbelievable in its intensity, and then the pain in her body was strangely dulled. She felt oddly calm as she lay there in the dark, silent, slippery ground. As she lay there, waiting. My white suit, my favorite emerald blouse, she remembered. And then she felt nothing, nothing at all.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Ben Gurion Airport, Lod

  Friday, May 10, 2002

  8:00 A.M.

  IT WAS A little strange having such a handsome young man accompany her, Leah thought, holding on to Milos’s arm as he ushered her carefully into the arrivals lounge of Ben Gurion Airport to await the arrival of Esther’s private plane carrying her three dear friends. It had been some time since a man, any man, had been good enough to open a car door, chauffeur her, help her across a street . . .

  Not that she was feeling sorry for herself. Thank God. Feet she had, to walk; hands she had, to open her own car doors . . . But as she gripped his strong, young arm (Leave me alone! I’m an old lady, she told the disapproving little voice shouting in her ear that it was forbidden for a man and woman not married to each other to touch) she couldn’t help but think of Mendel, her son, so far away. She’d called him, told him all about what was going on. He’d been very nice. Really. He and his wife. He wanted to come, to help. Maybe he would. She gripped a little harder.

  “Come, Babcia . . . Come sit down,” Milos said, leading her over to the seats with a good view of the giant projection screen that flashed the images of incoming passengers to those waiting for them in the arrivals lounge, making them look, Leah thought, like movie stars.

  “ ‘Bo-Chuh?’ . . . This is what you call your own grandmother?”

  “Yes,” he smiled, helping her carefully into the seat.

  “You’re a good boy, Milos. A good grandson.”

  She thought of her own grandson, the skateboarding cowboy . . . God bless him. Maybe he too was a good boy . . .

  She settled back, seeking a comfortable position on the modernistic metallic-mesh seating. Who designed such a thing for the backsides of human beings, she wondered. A robot? And did you need to be a genius to buy them for a whole airport, to make old ladies suffer? But this new arrivals lounge at Ben Gurion was still a big improvement on the old one with that glass partition separating the passengers from the welcomers—all those people smoking and the babies crying and everyone pushing to get a little look at who had gotten off the plane.

  The Israelis had rebuilt the thing after that Japanese murderer—that Kozo, Bozo, something Aki-meshugana-Moto—took out a machine gun from his suitcase and began to shoot . . . What did a Jew ever do to him? He didn’t have enemies in Tokyo? He had to invent them halfway around the world? She shrugged. Should have hanged him. But go convince the Israeli government that the death penalty was good for somebody less than an Eichmann. He was probably still sitting in some Israeli jail eating gefilte fish and humous with chopsticks . . .

  So, this was a nicer terminal, even if the seats were like putting your behind in a blender.

  She looked up at the flickering red lights on the arrivals board, even though she knew the flight she was waiting for wouldn’t be listed. “A private plane. Imagine! Your own plane to fly around the world in! What a girl, that Esther! What a girl. And beautiful, blond, blue-eyed Maria, who could get any man to do anything, even bald in Auschwitz. And tall, slim, lovely Ariana, with her stories of summer homes in Cannes, and banquet feasts prepared by her famous parents’ chef . . . stories that had wound around them like magic, banishing the freezing cold, the starvation . . . They had only made it through because of each other. Because of the Covenant. They had all lived to see children and grandchildren; to see their hair turn gray, their stomachs grow fat.

  She wondered if they’d changed much, and if they’d be shocked when they saw her.

  She looked around at people, all of them in various stages of decay. Because that’s what it amounted to: from the moment you stopped growing in your twenties, you started deteriorating. You could, of course, with vigorous exercise, expensive creams, good food and plenty of rest, slow down the sag, shrink the bulge, lighten the creases. You could cajole the organs to keep up their pumping and emptying, without too many strikes or slowdowns. But sooner or later, it caught up with you. One day, you could be the kind of old lady who jogged to the supermarket and whipped up gourmet dinners, and the next you could slip on a sidewalk over nothing and find yourself in a wheelchair in front of The Bold and the Beautiful, wolfing down Meals On Wheels. Or you could get a bad grade on a medical test, the only kind of test where when you flunked, you died. Hearts, lungs, bones, blood—the raw materials that kept one alive—were so vulnerable. They wore out, wore down. But the spirit, that was another story. The soul of good people got stronger and more beautiful as time went by, experiencing life with more wisdom and gratitude. Her friends were all such good people.

  How she longed to see them!

  She saw Milos come toward her across the terminal.

  “Milos! You look as white as the moon! What’s wrong?” she asked, shocked at the change in his appearance.

  “I’m sorry to bring you bad news. But there’s been a terrorist attack in the center of Jerusalem. A suicide bomber detonated himself.”

  “Oy. Gotteinu!” Leah’s fingers gripped her dress. “How bad?”

  “Six dead. Forty-five wounded.”

  “Gotteinu.” She placed her hand over her heart.

  “One of the victims was Julia Greenberg.”

  Leah looked up sharply, incredulous, then resigned. “Baruch Dayan Ernes.”

  “What does that mean?” Milos asked.

  “ ‘Blessed be the true judge . . .’ ”

  “Look, Babcia, I know what she did to you was terrible. But she didn’t deserve this. No one does.”

  She put her hand gently on his arm. “It’s what we always say when we hear bad news.”

  “Oh, I see. Look. I feel somehow . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve got to go to her. I feel . . . I owe . . .” He stuttered.

  “You have a good heart, Milos,” Leah said kindly, shaking her head. “Not like mine. Like your own babcia ‘s. Go, child.”

  “You’ll be all right here by yourself? You’ll explain to my grandmother what happened?”

  “Yes. Of course. Go, go. Anyway, do you think Esther Gold would travel to Jerusalem in your beat-up Skoda? Go,” she said, pinching his cheek.

  He kissed each wrinkled hand, then walked away.

  She sat back on the metal mesh, staring at the screen, thinking with horror of the young, pretty reporter. And then she closed her eyes, remembering another roomful of pretty young women, so long ago . . .

  “You, you, you, you, raus, raus!” the SS guard shouted, pointing his whip at all four of them. Snarling dogs bared vicious teeth, straining at their leashes. “To the side, all of you! And you, you, you, you, you, you, you!” He pointed his whip at other girls: “Raus, raus”

  It took a few moments until the realization sunk in. After all the mornings the selektion had passed them by, letting them live another day; this time, they’d been chosen.

  “It’s because of me! It’s my fault, because I am sick,” Esther sobbed. “I told you to leave me behind!”

  “Jiesus have mercy,” Maria w
hispered, holding on to Esther. “Wait a minute. Took around!”

  But they were not among the old, the sick. They were surrounded by dozens of the youngest, prettiest girls in the camp!

  They were herded into a truck and taken to an empty barracks.

  “Take off your clothes!” the SS guards barked at them. They slipped off the pitiful rags, shivering. With agonizing modesty, they spread out their fingers, trying to make their hands cover their bodies as they huddled together for warmth and protection from the terrible unknown.

  SS doctors in warm clothes and shiny leather boots passed through their ranks, shining flashlights over their bodies, and into their mouths.

  “Hold out your hands! We are taking you to a factory in which delicate work must be performed. We want to see if you have the hands for it!”

  They looked at each other, not daring to hope.

  “If they touch my hands, they’ll feel I am sick . . .” Esther whispered, sobbing.

  “You have cooled off from being out in the cold. You have no sores. Your eyes are lovely. They will not find anything, fust don’t cry . . .” Leah begged her. “Don’t cry, my Esther.” She held her waist in a strong grip.

  They could see the doctors’ male eyes focus on their bodies, their young women’s bodies, making them all merge together. They would not notice something as human as a face. They would not notice Esther’s limbs were only upright because of the women’s hands that grasped her firmly on either side.

  “RAUS!”

  But no whips were used, no clubs. No dogs. They didn’t want to damage the bodies, Maria realized. Their women’s bodies. They were taken to another barracks and allowed to take a shower.

  Pandemonium broke out. Clean water! And real soap! They laughed and wept and held each other, shampooing each other’s hair for the first time since they’d arrived, scrubbing their bodies, evaporating the accumulated layers of filth.