by Herman Wouk
“Yes, Golda,” said the widow, wiping her eyes. “Let me take you to him.”
“Please. And after that, Sam,” she said to Pasternak, “I want to talk to you.”
As she trudged up the staircase the animated talk in the room turned to matters of detail — when to inform the public, how to handle the crowds, which heads of state to invite, and the like — and Dayan and Allon both took part, neither one trying to dominate. Here was history in the making, thought Pasternak. Out of the government for years, Golda had been a hard-handed political boss of Labor, but now she was presumably just a private citizen. Yet she had passed through this room like a queen, and nobody had been up to challenging her word. By all odds there would be no struggle over the succession, and the next Prime Minister would not be a military hero, but a seventy-year-old grandmother.
“I made one mistake. One bad mistake.”
Thus Zev Barak to himself, replaying his mental tape of the Pentagon meeting just over, as he strode off on the five-mile walk back to his office, as usual criticizing his own performance. For better or worse, self-scrutiny was his habit of mind, perhaps a hobble to his ambitions. He did not envy his rivals who bulled ahead down the years with unshakable confidence in themselves. A man had to take himself as he was.
It was a breezy March day, the daffodils made splashes of dancing gold along the glittery Potomac, the exercise aerated his brain and blood, and all was almost right with the world, except for that one damned mistake. He had been summoned to meet the new Secretary of Defense, a good sign right there, for the incoming President Nixon owed the American Jews absolutely nothing. They had voted en masse for his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, and there was fear in Jerusalem that Israel might be in for a long Washington freeze. But Secretary Laird, a tall bald man with a hearty politician’s manner, had said straight off that while he couldn’t speak for the President, his strong sense was that Richard Nixon would honor Johnson’s pledge to sell F-4 Phantoms to Israel. Barak had even managed to elicit possible delivery dates from him, a real step forward. The dour General Rabin, who had replaced Abe Harman more than a year ago as ambassador, might even be pleased enough to smile at that.
“Now, General, I’m interested in the military aspect of Mrs. Meir as Prime Minister, since that’s my job,” said the Secretary, having cheered Barak with his first words. “I’m informed that you’re an astute officer who can talk straight. General Rabin’s a diplomat now, and has to guard his tongue. Suppose you tell me, then, about a woman as your Prime Minister. Does that mean Moshe Dayan will be calling the shots?”
In reply Barak sketched Golda for Melvin Laird as frankly as he could: a formidable personality, he put it, capable of soft womanly charm but also of ruthless decision; less likely to compromise than Eshkol had been, because she knew so much less about arms and strategy; inclined to listen to Dayan and others, but in the end allowing nobody to call the shots but Golda Meir. Laird kept nodding, and seemed faintly amused by the picture.
Next he questioned the attaché hard about Colonel Nasser’s newly proclaimed “War of Attrition.” Barak pointed out that this was mere redundant posturing for his people, since the Egyptians had never yet ended the state of war against Israel declared back in 1948; agreeing to cease-fires only when routed in battle, and then persistently violating those until harsh retaliation made them desist for a while. Laird waved a dismissive hand. “You’re talking legalities, General. This is something new. The man’s words are clear and serious: ‘What has been taken by force will be recovered by force.’ Our Cairo embassy says he means business. He’s given the Russians a powerful naval base in Alexandria, a major problem for our Sixth Fleet, and in return they’re rearming him heavily. How do you counter that?”
“With our army and air force, Mr. Secretary, which when last challenged crushed all our enemies.”
Laird’s further probes indicated that he had accurate intelligence about the Israeli defenses at the Suez Canal, a series of fortified outposts erected atop huge sand ramparts all along the eastern bank; Egyptian commandos were crossing the Canal and hitting Israeli forces, he observed, despite this so-called Bar-Lev Line.
“Nuisance raids, sir. Most of them die and we bury them in the Sinai sand.”
“How long can you hold out in the Sinai behind that line, General?”
“Until the Egyptians tire of their futile policy, Mr. Secretary, and at last sit down to talk peace. If we have to, for a hundred years.”
At that Laird raised an eyebrow, and ended the meeting with a pleasantry.
Barak winced to recall those last moments. For a hundred years! Bad, bad, bad. Boastful. Unprofessional. Journalistic. Why not something like “Indefinitely”? Up till then he had done well, but that lifted eyebrow! He had been stung into saying it, because Laird was prodding at his own doubts about the Canal defenses. Well, the words were said and gone beyond recall. The main thing, after all, was the Phantoms. Whatever the Russian rearmament of Egypt, a couple of Phantom squadrons should overawe Nasser — for a while.
Walking by the Kennedy Center reminded him of Emily Cunningham, naturally; of strolling with her under the stars on that overhanging promenade during intermissions, sipping tepid champagne from plastic glasses, talking about the music or the play, enjoying the sparkle of the lights of Georgetown in the black river. He would never hear Mahler again, he knew, without thinking of Queenie. But that relationship was fading off. After all her to-do about corresponding, she had written only twice in a year and a half; a joking honeymoon postcard from Hawaii, and a short letter months later, saying that she was pregnant, happy, and busy settling into their new home in Oakton, Virginia. Closed chapter, and just as well, he thought with a faint wistful pang.
Amid a pile of government mail on his desk lay a letter from his brother. He read it first.
Dear Zev:
I’ll send this via the diplomatic pouch because there’s news about the Gabriel seaborne missile, which you may not learn otherwise. Since the loss of the Eilat and the disappearance of the submarine Dakar put the navy command in such a rotten light, their obsession about secrecy approaches paranoia. But this Gabriel program has been going forward for many years despite all setbacks. It’s now at a make-or-break point, and you may find a big job thrust on you one of these days. As you know, I’ve been involved right along.
Marine technology and weapons design are a far cry from high-energy physics, but if I can’t fight, I can at least serve in this way …
Barak blinked when he read this. Michael, a congenital cripple, almost never referred to his handicap, though Zev thought it explained almost everything about him: his strange religiosity, his low self-esteem, and his marriage problems, especially since the couple’s one child had been born with the same crippling muscle defect.
Some people found it hard to believe they were brothers, they were so different. In their Vienna boyhood they had both had a little yeshiva training, a concession of their irreligious socialist father to his Orthodox parents. The family’s move to Palestine, barely ahead of Hitler’s march into Vienna, had ended all that for Zev. His father had risen high in Labor Party circles, and Zev had gone the usual route of Zionist elite children, secular schools and then the army. Michael had diverged — or according to his appalled agnostic father, regressed — into a sort of shtetl orthodoxy, while flashing ahead as a mathematician and physicist of extraordinary brilliance. Zev admired his younger brother, though he was always somewhat baffled by him. The letter went on:
… Apropos, I’ve received a letter about my article in Nature (which you said you couldn’t make head or tail of) from Richard Feynman, a very great Cal Tech physicist. It’s an argumentative mess of equations, but then he ends by saying that my paper gives me a leg up on a Nobel Prize. Very nice, but I don’t think he’s right because (a) I’m an Israeli, and (b) I’ve put in far too much time and brainpower on stupid weaponry. No regrets, Israel’s survival comes first.
Anyway, what has evolved is a
small vessel fast and powerful enough to take on and sink the Soviet missile boats, and even their capital ships if they threaten our existence. Twelve of these boats (ex weapons, of course) were built in Cherbourg for us by the French, on a German design improved by our people, and we’ve used and upgraded matériel from all over Europe. Seven boats have been delivered and are now berthed in Haifa getting their weaponry installed.
However, De Gaulle recently slapped an embargo on the last five, although we’ve already paid for them. If the final test of the Gabriel succeeds, those five boats will become crucial to Israel’s future. Maybe American pressure can get De Gaulle to release the boats, and it’s worth a try, but Monsieur seems to be almost as sore at America as at Israel. The navy has other quasi-legal ideas to free those boats, which may bring you in directly —
Desk buzzer. “General, are you in to a Mrs. Halliday?”
Queenie? “Yes, put her on.”
“Old Wolf? Hope I’m not disturbing your work.” Emily sounded feeble, hoarse, yet exhilarated. “Guess what, chum, it’s twin girls. About three hours old, and beautiful as daffodils. Only bright red.”
“Why, good God, that’s marvellous, Emily. And you’re okay?”
“I suppose so. Just a bit broken on the wheel. You’re the first to know, because Bud’s off in Japan. If it had been a boy, I’d have called Chris first, but Bud and I will just have to try again. How are you, dear? Read any Plutarch lately?”
“Queenie, congratulations! My God, I’m terrifically happy for you. And for General Halliday, and for your father, too. He’ll be ecstatic, I’m sure.”
“Well, I guess he won’t mind too much once he sees them. They’re so pretty! I’ll phone him next” — Emily’s voice was weakening — “before the dope takes hold again. All well with you and the girls and Nakhama?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
“Bye, Zev, you rascal, it’s partly your doing, you know. Don’t tell Nakhama, she’ll get a proper announcement.”
“God bless you, Queenie.”
“Oh, he has, he has, darling.”
The roiling emotions that this call evoked made it hard to get back to Michael’s letter. There was much more about the five Cherbourg boats, and some brief personal words at the end.
Thank you, by the way, for intervening in the matter of my former assistant’s lost passport. Shayna’s a remarkable mathematician, and there’s a slot in my Technion department awaiting her return. Ever since that lowlife you call Don Kishote jilted her years ago — which I thought at the time was lucky for her — she’s been half-alive. A bedeviled lady, and helping her to return home was a real mitzvah.
Lena and I have been having our own troubles, as I’ve reported, but now there’s hope. I’ll write you separately about that.
Love,
Michael
The last words were heartening. Michael’s marriage to a kibbutznik atheist had always seemed to Barak a desperate business, what with Michael being crippled, and his wife so opinionated and far from pretty. They had made bizarre compromises, such as separate cooking by each one, kosher and unkosher sets of dishes and cutlery, Michael lighting the Shabbat candles, and so on; a shaky arrangement at best, but for a few years they had appeared to be in love and happy. Lately, however, Michael had been writing about a separation. If they could stay together after all, Zev thought, that would be best by far. Whatever Lena’s drawbacks, Michael had a life with her. Not many desirable women would be eager to marry a pious divorced cripple, even one eminent in his field.
A shot of adrenaline flushed hotly through Yael Nitzan’s nerves, as a comely black-haired woman of thirty or so walked into the El Al gate area at Kennedy airport. Surely this was Shayna, from whom she had stolen Don Kishote! Yael sat there with Sheva Leavis waiting to fly back to Tel Aviv, boarding time was only five minutes off, and here came Shayna Matisdorf, of all people.
For years after Yael had caused their split-up, this devout academic, a most unsuited match for the wild Yossi — at least in Yael’s view — had languished in a single state; then, shortly after the Six-Day War, she had taken her broken heart to Toronto, there to mend it by marrying a rich Orthodox real estate developer. That was the last Yael had heard of her. If this was Shayna she seemed much older, she was not dressed like a rich man’s wife, and she had an ashen woebegone look.
Why not go over and say hello, and find out something about her? Their relationship was coldly cordial, for during Yael’s years in California Don Kishote had sometimes entrusted Aryeh to Shayna’s care, and the boy adored “Aunt Shayna.” Yael was slightly jealous of her on both accounts, husband and son. With Yossi’s second child kicking around inside her, Yael had little to fear from the pallid woman sitting a few rows away, but she had never ceased regarding Shayna as a standing if remote threat. Yael was drifting along with Kishote much as Ruth Pasternak was doing with Sam, hanging on to a good thing as long as there was no urgent cause for a break. Next question: Was Shayna married? If so, why was she travelling to Israel alone? And if she was not married, why not?
“Are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” said Sheva Leavis, startling her. He had been absorbed in the Wall Street Journal.
She patted her stomach. “This little no-good is giving me a hard time.”
Leavis’s eyes flicked around at the passengers, his glance rested on Shayna, and he gave Yael his peculiar smile, thin lips sliding up in a U-shape, conveying irony rather than mirth. It was uncanny, almost scary, for he had never met the woman. This natty little man with close-cropped gray hair, who looked like a nobody unless one could recognize a Savile Row suit, missed absolutely nothing.
When the flight was called Yael moved close to the woman in the queue of passengers. On the slim fingers of her left hand holding the boarding pass there were no rings. “Hello, Shayna.”
Lustrous melancholy brown eyes rounded at her in amazement. “Yes? Is this Yael?”
“Have I changed that much in a year and a half?”
Shayna Matisdorf shook her head, as though to clear a mental fog. “Of course it’s you. Sorry, but —”
“Oh, listen, I’m so bloated I shock myself when I look in a mirror. Coming back for a visit?”
“Well, not exactly a visit, no. How is Aryeh? I’m dying to see him.”
“Why not? Anytime.”
On the plane Yael preceded Sheva Leavis into the almost empty first class. As they settled into the commodious seats, Leavis said, “You really seem perturbed.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“And you’re sure you haven’t seen a ghost?”
“Sheva, let me alone, I’m very tired.”
A sliding smile, as he accepted a Ma’ariv from the flight attendant and laid aside the Wall Street Journal.
In tourist class Shayna was sealed into a narrow window seat by a fat kerchiefed Hassidic woman with a squalling baby on her lap, and a big red-bearded husband beside her. As the plane took off Shayna resigned herself to a long night of misery. The glimpse of Yael Luria was reviving buried half-forgotten horrors, and when the woman familiarly thrust the baby in her lap, asking her in Yiddish to hold it while she went to the toilet, Shayna was glad of the distraction. The husband was immersed in a religious book, and had to be nudged to make way. The baby, quiet now, regarded Shayna with crinkling little eyes in a big red face. It was far from cute, but Shayna didn’t care, she loved babies. That Yael should show up pregnant seemed somehow inevitable, given her role in Shayna’s haunting misfortunes.
The start of them all had been her own fault, maybe. One small decision, right or wrong, can shape an entire life, and such had been her refusal to go to Paris with Don Kishote, when she was nineteen and finishing university, and they had been about to become engaged. Long before that, during the siege of Jerusalem, she had encountered him as a little girl. He had then been a crazy boyish stringbean of a soldier, a new refugee from Cyprus, and she had soon forgotten all about him. But years later the
y had met again, and an unlikely passion had blazed up between them.
Shayna’s circle of friends in Jerusalem and at Hebrew University, strictly Orthodox like herself, had all disapproved of this Don Kishote fellow, a veteran paratrooper of raffish reputation, and her parents too had looked askance at him. But she had braved it out until the Paris episode had blasted everything. Yossi’s rich brother Lee, associated with the millionaire Sheva Leavis, had come from Paris to Israel on business, and had offered Yossi a birthday present of a trip to Paris with his girlfriend, not imagining that any Israeli girl would hesitate about jumping at such a treat. But Shayna’s friends had been shocked at the idea, her parents had forbade her to go, and she had had to defy them all or anger Kishote.
What a dilemma, even in retrospect, it still seemed to her! Moral scruples aside, she had at that time never been out of Israel, she had no clothes suited to Paris, she had never eaten nonkosher food in her life, and the whole thing loomed as a scary plunge into the unknown. So she had backed out, and it might have passed as a minor lovers’ dispute, except that Yael Luria had volunteered to go with Kishote instead; and in his irritation at Shayna he had taken her up on it. Months later had come his confession, which had stunned and almost destroyed Shayna, that in Paris he had gotten Yael pregnant, and on finding this out, had felt compelled to marry her.
And then, after ten long years, during the Six-Day War, a second smashing blow from Yael, who by that time was established in Los Angeles, making money hand over fist working with Sheva Leavis. Kishote had given Aryeh into Shayna’s care while the war was on, and he had returned wounded to her Jerusalem apartment, on the very day the army was recapturing the Temple Mount. That day he had declared his unchanged love for her; and for a rainbow hour or two, Shayna had hoped that happiness might be dawning in her life. But Yael had arrived like a thunderbolt, returning because of the war, sweeping into Shayna’s apartment glamorous as a movie star; and with bland irresistible self-assurance, she had then and there reclaimed her son and her husband. Gone, the rainbow, gone, the brief vision that joy might yet be possible for Shayna Matisdorf.
