The Hope

  Cunningham said, “It’s far from clear, Emily. An arms race just brings the Soviets ever deeper into the region. They’ve heavily penetrated Egypt and Syria already. Some fine day Russia will crush Israel with one swipe of a bear paw, unless the Jews find a way to live in peace with the Arabs. Soon!”

  “Tell us how,” said Pasternak. “The Moslem world knows only one sovereignty, Islam. We face not just the Arabs, not just the Soviet Union, but more than half a billion Moslems, don’t we?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “That’s something of a puzzlement, no?”

  “A puzzle you must solve. The glory of the Moslem world,” returned Cunningham, “will be that they’ll eventually accept and protect God’s people, after the Christian world came too damnably close to murdering you all.”

  “You lose me there,” said Pasternak. “It sounds wonderful. I hope you have some information I don’t.”

  “Emily, let’s have our brandy and coffee in the library.”

  “Yes, Father. Then I’ll peel off and go back to Foxdale.”

  ***

  Seen from a taxi window through falling snow, Emily was a small dark figure by the monumental spotlighted pedestal of the memorial. “Wait,” Barak said as he paid the driver, then climbed the freshly snowed-over stairs as fast as he could. “You have a car?” he shouted. At her nod he waved at the taxi, which disappeared.

  She was holding out her arms. “Seven years,” she said. “Seven years.”

  Her fur coat and his army greatcoat kept them some distance apart as they kissed. “Emily, what the devil happened to that cruise?”

  Emily took off a black glove to twine cold fingers in his. “Hester got pregnant. Would you believe it of her poor hubby? Amazing feat of mountaineering.”

  Despite himself Barak burst out laughing. “Is she all right?”

  “Flourishing. Why did you ask whether I have a car?”

  “I’d rather not walk back to my hotel.”

  “Are you sharing a room with Pasternak?”

  “No, he’s staying with our military attaché, in fact.”

  “Perfect.” Her fingers tightened on his, her nails sharp on his palm. “Let’s go for a little walk.”

  “Here? In the snow?”

  “Of course. It’s quiet and beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “And then?”

  “Why, then we’ll go to your hotel and make love.”

  “We’ll do what?”

  “You heard me. Gitchi-gitchi. We’ll screw.”

  “Emily, honestly!”

  “Is that vulgar, dear? You know I’m new at this. ‘Screw’ is in all the books, in fact the more usual word is—”

  “Hold it. Right there!” Barak freed his hand and held it up.

  “That’s my car, dear, under the lamp. We’ll just walk a bit and then on to your hotel. Don’t you love me?”

  “Sure I do. Let’s go now. We can have a drink, talk, get out of this cold. I have to make an early start tomorrow.”

  “Gray Wolf, we’re going to make love.”

  “Emily, stop the foolishness. Not on your life.”

  “Why not? Are you impotent?”

  He could not help it, he laughed again, then thought he might as well go that route as any, to cut off this spinsterish aberration. “Well, it’s very embarrassing, but you’ve wormed it out of me.”

  “Then why are you laughing? That’s very sad.”

  “Yes, it’s been tough for Nakhama. But we love each other, and when you’re older, Emily, you find it doesn’t matter all that much. We have our family, after all.”

  She was peering at him, the black pupils of her eyes enormous. “Liar! I bet you still screw, ten times a night. I bet she begs you to let her sleep.”

  He threw an arm around her. “You’re shocking Abe Lincoln. Let’s go for our walk.”

  They took a turn around the memorial, saying no more. Snow caked their coats. She held his hand tight. In the car she put the key in the ignition, then turned to him. “That was no kiss up there. Come on.”

  He kissed her. No change in seven years. A long kiss, sweet as in the King David.

  “That’s more like it,” she gasped, breaking free.

  “Start that engine.”

  She obeyed, lifting her voice above the whirring of the cold motor. “You know, I wondered and wondered how this would go tonight. So far I think we’re okay. We’re off a knife edge.” The engine caught, and she shifted into gear. “I didn’t really expect you to take me to your hotel room.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What I wanted was to get you used to the idea.” Before he could object she changed tone and subject, straining her eyes through the semicircles in the snowflakes swept by the windshield wipers. “Zev, I’d guess your mission will be a success. My father’s super-cautious. That’s his business. There’s great sympathy here for Israel. Not just because of the Holocaust. That’s a negative thing. It’s the resonance with American history.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, it’s one of my father’s themes. He can go to town with it when he’s in the mood. You’ve landed on a hostile shore, trying to bring forth a new nation conceived in liberty, haven’t you? You and we both started as colonies that threw out the British. Both had early years of dangerous adversity, only yours are still going on. Almost a mirror image, Chris will sometimes argue.”

  “Pretty forced, Emily. Your Pilgrim Fathers had no history of living here, and that’s the mainspring of Zionism. If another million Jews would come, the Arabs might believe in it, and make peace—look out!”

  A yellow cab trying to pass went skidding in front of them, and stalled half turned around in their path. Emily calmly used brake and wheel to run up over the curb onto the snow-covered grass beside the highway, and slithered back down on the road well past the cab.

  “Oo-ah,” said Barak, “you know what you’re doing.”

  “Usually.”

  As they walked into the small hotel near Union Station, Emily looked around like an exploring cat. “I’ve never been in this place before.”

  “It’s cheap. Even so, my travel allowance doesn’t cover it.”

  In the gloomy sour-smelling bar, three men and three women at a round table were making the uproarious noise of call girls and their customers in jocose foreplay. “I don’t know about this,” said Barak.

  “Fine, let’s go to your room.”

  “Nothing doing. You sit down.”

  A rat-faced waiter in a dirty red coat came up with a rag and wiped slop off their little table. “What’ll it be, folks?”

  She said, “Zev?”

  “Me? Oh, beer.”

  “Beer? Coming in from the snow?”

  “Well, I don’t drink much. Coca-Cola’s just as good. You?”

  “Double Jack Daniel’s on the rocks with a twist.”

  The waiter bared his fangs at her in friendly appreciation of her patronage. “Okay, Queenie.” Emily might not look like a call girl, but they came in various guises.

  “Are you working at shocking me?” Barak inquired. “You have to drive to Middleburg.”

  “As you remarked, I know what I’m doing.”

  At the round table a heavy-set john with a hoarse midwestern voice was telling a joke. “…So the bartender says, ‘Look mister, in this bar we don’t talk religion.’ The guy says, ‘How about politics?’ ‘We don’t talk politics, either.’ ‘Well, how about sex?’ ‘Sex, sure, talk about sex all you want.’ So the drunk says, ‘Okay, what do you think of our fucking Catholic President?’”

  The girls whooped, the men hee-hawed. The heavy man started another joke, and the waiter brought the Coca-Cola and the double bourbon. Emily raised her glass. “Cheers. Now you listen to me, Gray Wolf, I’ve spent a bloody fortune and a lot of time this past year going to a psychiatrist. Don’t you suppose I realize I’m strange? The upshot was that according to him, what I needed was a good screwing. Moreover he more or less volunte
ered to supply same. A short fat guy with a droopy mustache and pince-nez glasses. You’re not drinking your Coke.” She took a deep gulp of the bourbon.

  Barak sipped, staring at her. “Did all this really happen?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Was the man serious?”

  “Well, I began to think so, about the time he came over to the couch and began patting me on the leg. On both legs, sort of high up. Where they join, you know?”

  Baritone guffaws and high giggles at the other table. Barak broke into laughter, too. “Yes, I know. What did you do?”

  She frowned. “Don’t laugh, I’m telling the truth. He said I was the most charming patient he’d ever had, and I had gorgeous legs, he couldn’t help noticing that, the way I tossed and turned on the couch, and I really did need to get over my father fixation. Otherwise I might end up an old maid, and that would be too bad, because I’d make a wonderful wife and mother. For that matter I believe him. He’s helped me. I’m still seeing him.”

  “But how did you get him to stop that patting, or whatever?”

  “Oh, no problem. His wristwatch buzzed, the fifty minutes were up, so that was that. Next patient.”

  The girls and their clients were leaving the bar in a merry babble. Sudden quiet, except for the clink of glasses and bottles being collected by the waiter.

  “Ray has a wife and five kids,” Emily went on.

  “Ray?”

  “Raymond Sapphire. His real name is Shapiro. He started practice in West Virginia where there are no Jews, so he called himself Sapphire. The fact is, I like Ray, but physically he’s as revolting as a horned toad. Zev, to me most men are. Ray didn’t cure me of that, and I guess he realized it. No more passes by the horned toad, anyway.”

  “Did you tell him about us? About the letters?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did he make of that?”

  “Oh, elementary. You’re a father figure, pure and simple, and I can allow myself to love you because you’re six thousand miles away and there’s no risk of actual sex.” She put a hand on his, and looked deep into his eyes. “Ha!”

  “Drink up, folks,” called the bartender. “Last call.”

  “Yes, I’ll have another,” said Emily.

  “No you won’t,” said Barak. He paid, and helped her on with her coat.

  The bartender showed his little sharp teeth at her, and patted her arm. “Come again, Queenie.”

  In the grimy lobby a gray-haired clerk was asleep at the desk, and a sailor was kissing a girl in the telephone booth. “Where did he get Queenie?” Emily said. “It sounds so lowbrow and whorish. I’m flattered.”

  The snowfall had almost stopped. Barak walked her to the car, parked on a dark side street. There she unbuttoned her coat, then his, and thrust herself close to kiss him. Her voice was muffled, her face on his shoulder. “Have I scared you off? Wolf, I love you, I love being in your arms, there’s nothing wrong with it, is there? It’s marvellous, it’s so sweet. Say what you will, it beats letters seven ways.”

  “What’s the telephone number of the Foxdale School, Queenie?”

  ***

  When a morning strategy session at the embassy broke up, Barak lingered in the conference room, and once the others were gone, he picked up the telephone. Emily had been haunting him all during the bleak three-hour discussion. Time to do something about this.

  “Hello, this is Miss Cunningham.” Businesslike teacherish tones, almost another voice.

  “Hi there, Queenie.”

  Pause. A burst of rich joyous laughter, and a drop of half an octave. “It’s you! Oh, Wolf, it’s you! My God, talk of my occult powers! How—”

  He broke in, “Listen! I’m talking on an embassy line through a switchboard, so let me make it simple and short. Understand?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “I’m not interrupting anything?”

  “Glory, no. I’m just sitting here correcting goddamned senior French exams. Or trying to, with about ten percent of my brain engaged. What can I do for you, sir?”

  “How about meeting me tomorrow night? Not at Abe’s place again. Where we went afterward.”

  “Tomorrow night?” An audible catch of breath. A silence. Voice down another half-octave, and close to a whisper. “Are we perchance talking gitchi-gitchi, mon vieux?”

  “Well, there is this unfinished business we should attend to. I won’t be here long, you know.”

  “Oh, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Say, how about this afternoon? I could arrange that, and—”

  “Sorry, I can’t.”

  “Pity. Tonight then? It is rather urgent, as you say.”

  “Tomorrow night, Miss Cunningham. My first clear time. Say eight o’clock?”

  “Whiz bang! You’re on! Eight o’clock! Bye!”

  Barak hung up, hoping the switchboard girls were very busy, or that they thought he was one of the uninteresting good husbands.

  In the hotel bar next night, the clock crept past eight, then past nine as he worked on papers by the meager amber light. So, was their date off? Case of virginal last-minute flutters? If so he was probably well out of it. Meantime, plenty to do! Never mind the unexpected pounding of his heart. At his age, too stupid! These papers were deeply discouraging. In a small chilly conference room of the State Department at a meeting that afternoon, the Americans had sharply challenged the Israeli assertions about the large and growing Arab array of Soviet and British tanks. He now had to compile a document of intelligence excerpts to support the position, and General Rabin wanted it done by morning. Of course he should have called off this rendezvous, but Emily in the flesh was proving too tantalizing a temptation.

  The bartender brought him a second Coca-Cola. “Waiting for Queenie, mister?” Barak nodded. “She’s high-class. You can tell. They’re usually late.” He dropped his voice and gestured. “We get some real bimbos in here.”

  A real bimbo in a tight red dress sat cross-legged on one of the two barstools, showing fat thighs and ruffled blue garters. Nobody else was in the bar but the waiter, so Barak worked on as well as he could, making pencil notes on his documents until Emily at last arrived in a rush. “Here I am, here I am. Fiona had one of her migraines. I had to stay late.” She fell into the chair beside him, and seized his hand in a clammy clutch. “Zev, did you really mean what you said on the telephone? I didn’t sleep all night. Not a wink.”

  He squeezed her hand hard. “Hi. Let me put away this silly bumf, and we’ll get down to business.”

  “Oh, wow! It’s on, my love? Truly on?”

  He freed his hand to stow the papers, smiling at her. “Unless you’ve changed your mind, always a lady’s privilege.”

  She stared at him with lemur eyes, then looked around ruefully at the bar, the bartender, and the bimbo. “The thing is, Old Wolf, this isn’t how I thought it would be. So help me, it’s like a dentist’s appointment.”

  He burst out laughing. “Really? Why, what did you expect, Queenie?”

  “Oh, who knows? In my fantasies we’d be in some magical terrifically elegant private place, and there’d be champagne in a bucket, and candles, and roses, and all that, and you’d sweet-talk me into it.”

  “Talk you into it? I can’t talk you out of it. That’s obvious. You’re preposterous. Dr. Sapphire has the answer, so let’s go.” He zipped shut the briefcase, a loud rasp in the almost empty bar.

  “You’re right, you’re right, you’re absolutely right. Get it over with.” Her voice was tremulous. “On second thought, may I have a drink first? Sort of like laughing gas?”

  “By all means.” He beckoned to the bartender. It was beginning to look as if Emily would balk and back out, after all. So be it! Her choice. He would not press her, though her slender young figure in a black suit was an inflaming presence, and everything else about her enchanted him: her slightly breathless way of talking, her knack for crazily funny narration with a straight face, her swift curving hand movements and an es
pecially emphatic gesture with all ten fingers shaken straight at him; these were just a few of the snaring graces of this fey spinster who was drinking off half the Jack Daniel’s at a gulp. “Ah! That’s better. Wolf, when were you last unfaithful to Nakhama?”

  “God, you’re impossible, Emily. You shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I guess not. Sorry. Tell me you’ve never been, and the dentistry is off. I mean that, darling. I mean it. A homewrecker I’m not.”

  “You’re not wrecking anything, but…” He hesitated. “Oh, hell—fair enough, I’ll tell you about the only time that mattered.”

  “Great.” She finished the drink with a second gulp, and signalled to the bartender for a refill.

  “Emily, where on earth did you learn to drink like that?”

  “From Fiona, really. She’s the next thing to a barfly. Always ladylike, but when things get rough at school she goes into Middleburg, to the Red Fox bar, and tanks up on bourbon. I used to drink sherry with her. I’ve switched. Go ahead. The only time that mattered…”

  “Well, if this will impress you, she was a marchesa. Italy, 1945.”

  “A marchesa! Oh, wow.”

  He told it sparely, but the memories flooded in on him, and as he spoke he could almost smell the climbing roses on the balcony outside the marchesa’s boudoir overlooking the purple Adriatic.

  “Then she was the one who really did it,” exclaimed Emily. “What a fellow you are, I swear! We have to hurl ourselves at you, don’t we? She sent the bottle of wine to your table, and you hadn’t so much as noticed her!”

  “For a fact, I hadn’t. But I was twenty-one, and I guess not that bad-looking. Not fat and gray, anyhow. So she noticed me.”

  “Brunello, you say.”

  “Yes. It was excellent wine, by the way. The waiter brought it with the marchesa’s compliments to the victorious British soldier. From her own vineyard.”

  “She was pretty?”

  “Emily, she was thin and blond. She was thirty-seven. Sort of stringy. Extraordinary woman, spoke several languages, very witty, very chic. She truly fascinated me, and I had trouble looking Nakhama in the eye when I got home.” He shrugged. “After a while, I managed.”