The Hope

  With these few lines I say goodbye for now, a joyful father and

  Your faraway friend,

  Zev

  P.S.—About the reactor, it’s a French design for electric power, and years away from completion. Newspaper nonsense.

  Z.B.

  (A card of congratulation on the birth of a girl, printed in Hebrew and English. On the blank space folded inside, this scrawl:)

  January 10th, 1961

  Zev, my love—I went to a Jewish bookstore in D.C. to get this card. I’m crying as I write these words because you and Nakhama have a new baby, because I’m happy in your happiness, and because in your fashion you love me. It’s a black freezing midnight in McLean, and against all nature the night is winking with fireflies.

  Your Emily

  23

  A Turkish Fantasy

  “Kfotze!” As the master sergeant’s hand hit his shoulder the Gambian colonel leaped, and the other jumpers in the dvukah, the hookup, shuffled up toward the slipstream roar and the blaze of sunshine at the open port.

  “Kfotze!” Out leaped a trainee Don Kishote especially liked and admired: the brigadier general from the Ivory Coast, stout, serious-minded, black as coal, sedulous in calisthenics, always reading political science books in his off-time for an unfinished master’s degree at Johns Hopkins.

  “Kfotze!” Turn of the joking colonel from Cameroon, who had brought his exotically robed pretty wife along to Israel, and played strange tunes on an instrument like an elongated piccolo. “Goodbye, cruel world!” he shouted in a French accent, laughing as he jumped.

  “Kfotze!”

  “No.”

  “Kfotze!”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Kfotze!”

  “I won’t! MY PARACHUTE’S LOOSE!” A bellow by a very tall fat officer, clutching at the sides of the port. “I’M NOT JUMPING!”

  The sergeant went behind the trainee and planted a heavy boot on his rear end. “KFOTZE!”

  “No! Listen, you kick me, you starting a war with Uganda!”

  “Unhook him, Uri.” Don Kishote had expected trouble with this one, a swaggerer who towered over the others, and had done childish monkeyshines in the harness jumps to show his courage. The small gnarled master sergeant gave Kishote a dirty look, hating to excuse a freezer. But he unhooked the Ugandan officer and pushed him away from the port.

  “Kfotze! …Kfotze! …Kfotze!”

  The last three African officers leaped one, two, three, proud of their nerve after Idi Amin’s freeze. Pointing a thick shaking finger at the sergeant, who was sliding the port door shut, Idi Amin shouted over the engine roar, “Major, I want this fellow reported for insubordinate behavior, for threatening a military personage of a friendly power, and for putting a boot on my ass! Feel my parachute. It’s loose!”

  In this unwelcome assignment Yossi had checked each parachute himself, not wanting the death of an African big shot on his record or his conscience, and he knew that the parachute was on as tightly as if it were glued to that enormous fat back. He gave the parachute a perfunctory feel. “Yes, practically falling off. The sergeant didn’t notice. Sorry.” Idi Amin smiled toothily at Yossi, and the sergeant made a gagging noise.

  That same afternoon Kishote confronted the Foreign Minister in her office. “Sit down, Major Nitzan.” Nitzan, meaning bloom or blossom, was now Yossi’s name, Hebraized from Blumenthal when he married. “This conversation is under four eyes,” she went on. “I’m bypassing army channels for sufficient reason.”

  “Yes, Madame Minister.”

  “Now, what’s all this about the Uganda officer? Uganda’s important to us, and this man’s a bull with horns there.”

  Yossi described the episode. Golda Meir wearily nodded, her eyes distant and glazed. “Yes, well take him up again tomorrow, and make sure that he jumps this time. Understand? That will be all.” She picked up a paper on her desk.

  “Madame Foreign Minister,” said Yossi, “the man will not jump. Or if he jumps, he will die.” Golda put down the paper and scowled at him, her reddened eyes now alert. “He may be a bull with horns, but he wasn’t born to jump with a parachute.”

  Golda pursed her lips. “But I’ve heard he’s a champion boxer. Are you saying he’s a coward?”

  “He’s as great a coward as I’ve ever seen.”

  She regarded him through wreathing smoke, half closing her eyes. “Major Yossi Nitzan, I’ve heard good reports of you. I’ve heard you referred to as Don Kishote. I know about your tziyun l’shvakh. You weren’t assigned this duty by chance. Tomorrow at this time you will report to me again. Your report will consist of two words. ‘He jumped.’”

  “Yes, Madame Foreign Minister.”

  “If he dies, that will be bad for Israel. And for you, not exactly a tziyun l’shvakh.”

  “I understand.”

  “Two words. ‘He jumped.’”

  “Ken, ha’m’fakedet.” Kishote ventured this formal army response and a salute. It was as much irony as he could allow himself with the imposing Golda. She did not smile, and she returned the salute with the hand holding the cigarette.

  ***

  In a room almost bare of furniture, a curly-headed toddler was clumsily chasing Yossi Nitzan round and round a table that was a plank on two sawhorses. “Bow wow! Ani kelev, Abba hatool!” (“I’m dog, Daddy cat!”)

  “Miaow! I’m scared, I’m scared!” Kishote turned, hissed, and spat, humping up his shoulders.

  His son shrieked with delight. “Nice cat! Now Abba elephant.”

  Kishote put an arm to his nose like a trunk, and trumpeted, swaying from side to side.

  “Now lion, lion!” cried the boy. Dropping on all fours, his father uttered a fearsome roar.

  The child shrank back, his face wrinkling up. “Bad Abba. ’Fraid Abba.”

  “No! Aryeh Nitzan is never afraid. Doesn’t Aryeh mean the same as ari [lion]?”

  “Ken, Abba.”

  “Well, is a lion afraid of a lion?”

  The child’s big gray eyes brightened. “No.”

  “Then let’s see.” Yossi roared again, eyes glaring, teeth bared. The child trembled but stood his ground, then fell on his hands and knees and gave a soprano roar in his father’s face. They were roaring so, nose to nose, when a door slammed. “Yossi, are you here? We have a big problem—Ai! Now what’s all this?”

  “The lioness!” exclaimed Kishote. “She brings food!” They both turned to roar at Aryeh’s mother, who put aside groceries, pulled her skirt far up on silk-clad legs and went down on the floor. The three of them roared and snarled at each other until the child rolled on his back laughing and breathless.

  “What’s the problem?” Kishote helped her up.

  “Who do you suppose walked into the shop today?” Yael was out of the army and managing, very successfully, a bridal shop on Dizengoff Avenue.

  “I don’t know. Golda?”

  “Ha! Golda, a bride? Hardly. Hint! An old friend of yours.”

  “Shayna,” said Yossi at once.

  A nod and a vinegary grin. “Nobody but Shayna Matisdorf.”

  “So she’s getting married, finally.”

  “Don’t look so heartbroken, please.”

  “Nonsense, I’m very glad for her. Who’s her guy?”

  “It wasn’t her guy, and she’s not getting married. She was with her boss, Professor Berkowitz, and—”

  “Zev’s lame brother?”

  “Yes, and he brought his intended, Lena something. She’s the bride, and she couldn’t get fitted in Haifa, so they came to Tel Aviv. And the problem is I did something idiotic. I invited the three of them to come here.”

  “Here? And Shayna accepted?”

  “She did. All three did.”

  Kishote looked around at the sawhorse table and three folding chairs, all the furniture in the room. “Well, no problem, I’ll get a few more chairs. They’ll understand. You’re a busy lady, and I’m in the field so much—”

  ?
??They’ll understand nothing, we’re going to furnish up this place fast. Chick-chack! It’s a disgrace. We moved in months ago.” Yael glared around. “The thing is, Shayna has a friend whose kid is in Aryeh’s kindergarten, and she told me she’d heard Aryeh was the smartest and the handsomest child ever. She couldn’t have been nicer, very genuine, and without thinking I said, ‘Well, come see him.’ And Professor Berkowitz asked to see him too, and he’ll bring that Lena, of course.”

  “When are they coming?”

  “Friday.”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “Benny? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “I have to talk to him. It’s urgent. He’s not at the air base.”

  “That’s right, it’s his youngest’s birthday. He must be at the moshav. Try there.” She picked up Aryeh and carried him into his room, which unlike the rest of the flat was amply furnished, even crowded, with bed, chairs, table, toys, and rocking horse, all new and of the best. “Undress. Bath time.”

  “No. Eat.”

  “Bath.” Hard motherly note. Aryeh unbuttoned his jumper.

  Later when they were eating at the sawhorse table, and Aryeh was smearily and greedily feeding himself mashed potatoes, she asked, “How did it go with the Africans?”

  “All right.”

  “Is it finished?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Did you reach Benny?”

  “Yes, I’m going to see him after dinner.”

  “Tonight? At Nahalal?” Kishote nodded, his face sober. “So you’ll stay there overnight?”

  “Probably. I’ll see.”

  “Try to get back.” Yael’s voice dropped almost to a purr. “I’ll miss you…”

  He looked at her askance, and faintly grinned. “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

  “Is that a complaint?”

  His taut expression warmed. Wry affection and secret amusement glinted in his eyes.

  “More,” said Aryeh. Yael wiped the child’s messy face and refilled his plate.

  “I’ll try to get back,” said Don Kishote.

  “Yes, try.” She put a hand on his. “I don’t know, today I got to thinking of Paris… the Eiffel Tower, Venus de Milo, the Georges Cinq, all that… things you should never forget, but you do, you get busy—”

  “Well, you saw Shayna.”

  She gave him an uneasy glance. “She looks very well. If anything, thinner. Can’t say that about me, can you?” A rueful pat at her aproned figure.

  “I like them overweight and dumpy.”

  She struck his arm hard with a fist. “Swine.”

  Don Kishote stood up, pulled her to her feet, and embraced her. Yael’s yielding figure was in fact a lot more curvy than it had been in Paris, somewhat on the Venus side. “Okay, I’ll come back.”

  “You will? Good! But not on my account, really. Four hours on the road—”

  “The thing is,” said Kishote, “I have this late date with a French whore.”

  Yael chuckled. “There’s a store near mine that rents furniture. I’ll try that. Waste of money, but simple.”

  “Rent a bed, at least. For appearance’s sake. They won’t know I like sleeping on a cement floor on a mattress.”

  “Complaints, complaints! Hurry back. Love to Benny and Irit, and happy birthday to Danny.”

  ***

  Don Kishote did not much enjoy the long drive to Nahalal. Too much time to think. Shayna coming to their apartment! Here was a turn! Since the fearsome night of their breakup, which he had tried to bury out of memory, he had only glimpsed Shayna now and then at a distance in Jerusalem gatherings, and once they had unexpectedly come face to face in a lobby outside a lecture hall. She had been with some guy in a yarmulke, and with casual hellos they had passed each other by.

  Regret was not one of Yossi Nitzan’s natural feelings, nor was guilt. Life was a sort of tactical battlefield for him, which perhaps made him a good soldier. Size up the situation, make a decision, act! The action once past, on to the next thing. Yael’s catastrophic surprise had created a new situation, calling for judgment, decision, and action. Tell Yael to stew in her self-cooked soup, and go on with Shayna? On two counts not possible.

  First of all, whatever his devilries in Karl Netter Street, he was at bottom a good Jewish boy; having a baby was a marvellous thing, and the baby—his first!—would need a father, and its mother a husband. Second, he could not go on with Shayna anyway, much as he might yearn to do so. He would have to tell all to her. She was a good Jewish girl, religious to the bone, and her quick irrevocable judgment would be that of course he had to marry Yael, and she would throw him out.

  So exactly it had happened, and he had put it behind him, but for a long time he had been haunted by her stricken look when he had told her about Yael, the horror in her wide staring tear-filled eyes, as though she were watching him bleed to death as he talked. What he least wanted to remember was his oafish stumbling last mistake; starting to say to Shayna that he and Yael could not really last long together, that he would marry her because it was the right thing, but that maybe one day—

  “Stop right there!” With those strident words and a single gasping sob she had cut him off. “Yossi, what you are is an overgrown stupid child. There’s nothing more to say. It’s over. You’ve nearly killed me. It’s over, forever and absolutely, get that into your head! We must never, never, never see each other again.” With that she had hurried off into the night, leaving him standing there at the Yemin Mosheh windmill overlooking the Old City; the romantic picturesque spot where they had first kissed, where newlyweds came to have their pictures taken, and where she had asked him to meet her so that they could talk over wedding plans, since her parents had given consent. Minutes after Yael had departed from his apartment, returning Shayna’s call, he had dumbly agreed to come and meet her there. Tactical instinct; if it had to be done, do it and get it over with.

  Kfotze, Kishote!

  Much time had passed. He had forgotten much. Aryeh was the joy of his days, and his army career was going well. As for Yael, she was quite a woman, and he was fond of her in a way, though he did not and could not love her. Since they were both young, healthy, and attractive, and sharing a life together, sex was part of it, but he was careful to have no more children with her. And now Shayna was coming back after all, if only to visit Aryeh! A surprise eruption from the past, unsettling and obscurely exciting; how would it go? What could she really want? “Never, never, never” had been her last words, years ago.

  He drove into the moshav close to midnight, and found Yael’s aviator brother in a bathrobe, reading the small Bible that the army distributed free, and that gathered dust on many an Israeli shelf. “Getting religion, Benny?”

  Luria put aside the book with a humorous grunt. “Hi. Moshe Dayan says that we have to live by the Tanakh [Scripture] in this country. Of course he means the history part, not the religion, that guy! And he’s right, you know? At least in this book you learn why we’re here.”

  “We’re here because we’ve been chased and murdered pretty near everywhere else.”

  “That’s not all of it. Not by a long shot. What can I do for you, Kishote?”

  ***

  When he returned from Nahalal, Yael was sleeping on the floor like the dead. He woke her, dropping on the cold cement and crawling under the covers. “Oh, you’re back.” She yawned, then, “Oo-wah, it’s light outside.”

  “Five o’clock.”

  “How’s Benny?”

  “Fine. I had a piece of Danny’s cake.”

  “Lovely. You must be exhausted.” He pulled her into his arms. Her resistance was sleepy and minimal. “Look, get some rest. We can do this anytime.”

  “No. Something to do at once.”

  This provoked a husky laugh, but the late date did not come off because Aryeh, awakened by his father’s return, danced into the bedroom in pink pajamas, chanting a song learned in kindergarten:

  “‘The
Lord of the World, who reigned before anything was created—’”

  “Oi! Get the lord of the world out of here,” said Kishote, “and wake me in two hours. Your brother is flying down to meet me.”

  The sun was high and hot when the aviator picked him up in an army car and drove to the paratrooper base. “Benny, will this actually work?” Yossi asked. “I’m getting shaky.”

  “Best idea I could think of, Kishote. It should.”

  Benny was a full colonel, shorter than Kishote but considerably better looking; rugged sunburned features suited to a cowboy movie, very thick-necked, erect posture even at the wheel of a car. Close-cropped hair and intent eyes gave him a hard look, but he could smile and seem friendly, even fatherly, all at once. He had three children, he commanded a fighter squadron, and he was very much the military paragon and a model family man; that is, he kept his young mistress in Tel Aviv under wraps, in a respectable job as a hotel receptionist, and held dalliance with a few girlfriends to a discreet minimum. His Bible reading, such as it was, evidently did not interfere with this part of life, any more than Moshe Dayan’s did. His cherished wife Irit was unaware of all this, or acted as though she was.

  “He won’t hang up on the tail, Benny, and kill himself?”

  “Not if he remembers to count to three. Then he has to remember to pull the cord. By the way, he can count to three?”

  “Yes, I checked him out on that.”

  “Excellent. You’re set then. If he freezes, we do the other. That’s all been arranged.”

  “I’m much obliged, Benny.”

  “No problem.”

  Idi Amin was half an hour late getting to the base. A limousine used by the Foreign Ministry, one of the few in all Israel, brought him there, caparisoned in white dress uniform with banks of medals and ribbons, gold epaulettes, and splashes of gold trim. “This is my lucky day,” he said to Kishote. “Today we do it.”

  Yossi introduced him to Benny Luria. Idi Amin looked down at the airman to smile as they shook hands. “Colonel Luria is my brother-in-law,” said Kishote. “He’ll pilot the plane, and there’ll be just the three of us.”