“Shayna, I’m going out of my mind,” said Lena, clutching the baby. “Find out what’s happening.”
“I’ll try.” She went shouldering into the disorder and Kishote saw her talking to her former fiancé, the black-bearded Chaim Poupko, long since married, with two children. His father, the chief rabbi of Haifa, loomed tall and stout at the center of the disturbance, expostulating with the Ezrakh. Soon Shayna came back, saying, “Here we go. It’s all settled.” The noise was fading away into muffled ritual chanting.
Lena quavered, “What’s been the trouble?”
“No trouble.”
The guests were making way for the Ezrakh, who was approaching the bedroom wrapped to his ankles in a yellowed black-striped prayer shawl. With a kindly smile he held out his arms to Lena, who hissed at Shayna, “So what’s this?”
“Give him the baby.”
“But I thought Colonel Luria—”
“It’s been reversed. Go ahead, everything’s fine, it’s beginning.”
Lena handed the child on a pillow to the Ezrakh. He nodded, still smiling, and walked away with stately steps. In a reluctant tone Lena said, “By my life, the man has a nice face.”
“He lives downstairs from my mother in Jerusalem,” said Shayna, as the chief rabbi and the mohel, a very short man in a white coat and surgical mask, began chanting the liturgy. Benny Luria sat in an armchair between them, looking solemn and a little confused, a prayer shawl over his uniform, the baby in his lap. “He’s very poor, the Ezrakh, his apartment is just a cellar, but the greatest Torah scholars come there to consult him.”
“Will they do it to my baby now?” choked Lena.
“Any minute.”
“Tell me when it happens.” She dropped on the bed, her hands over her ears.
More chanting, Michael Berkowitz’s hoarse voice reciting a blessing, sudden quiet, then general shouts of “Mazel tov!”
“So! His name’s Reuven!” exclaimed Shayna, kissing Lena. “Mazel tov! It’s a lovely name.”
“It’s over? He didn’t scream?”
“Not that I could hear. Just wah, wah, and quiet. They give the baby wine, you know.”
“I want to see him!”
“They’ll bring him.”
“What happened? Why did the colonel and the Ezrakh change places?”
“The Ezrakh wanted it so.”
“So Reuven was circumcised on the knees of a fighter pilot from Nahalal? Suits me!” Lena burst out in a hysterical laugh. “Something to remember, isn’t it?”
Hungry after all the delays, the guests fell to with cheery appetite on the food and drink laid out on long tables. Benny Luria and the Ezrakh drank a toast with the pale happy father, and left. Daphna Luria and Noah Barak also departed forthwith. The other guests remained and became reasonably merry, considering their previous glum Hamtana mood. “The question is,” Michael Berkowitz called out over the jocund singing and chatter, as the party wore on into the evening and the blackout curtains were drawn, “do we or don’t we watch the news from Jordan? Do we want to be depressed? Eshkol will be on in an hour.”
Israel had no TV station, but the Berkowitzes’ small black-and-white set picked up the Arab broadcasts. During the Hamtana anxious Israelis were congregating in flats and shops that had sets, for the pictures from Jordan were morbidly fascinating. Everyone wanted the professor to turn on the TV, and in a moment the same scary stuff of recent days filled the tiny screen: Arab crowds in city squares burning Israeli flags and howling for the extermination of the Jews; big squat Russian tanks ranged by the hundreds in Sinai as far as the camera could show, manned by black-mustached crews in spruce uniforms; masses of bombers and fighter planes darkening the sky over a jubilant Nasser and his smiling staff officers.
The Jordanian narrator: “Egypt’s brave armed forces stand poised and ready for the final battle to reverse by force the fait accompli imposed on the Arab nation by force, by American imperialism, the Zionist excrescence on Arab soil.” Shots of Syrian, Iraqi, and Jordanian forces on the march. Nasser addressing a cheering assembly of trade union workers, the tall handsome Egyptian radiating confidence and power, his impassioned rhetoric ominous even in his rapid mellifluous Arabic, roughly conveyed by English subtitles.
“We have been waiting for the day when we would be fully prepared to liberate Palestine. It has come! Taking over Sharm el Sheikh meant confronting Israel, but it is no longer a question of the Gulf of Aqaba…. The battle will be a general one, and our basic objective will be TO DESTROY ISRAEL.”
A woman guest’s shaky voice: “It’s a second Holocaust.”
While Nasser was still talking Kishote walked to the set and snapped it off. “Nonsense! If we had a TV station it wouldn’t be showing our armed forces, but they’re ready, I promise you. Haifa’s streets are empty because we’re at battle stations out of sight all over the country, on highest alert. And that’s where Reuven Berkowitz will be eighteen years from now, if by then the Arabs haven’t come to their senses and left us alone. So in his honor let’s drink and enjoy!”
“Will there be a war, Colonel?” A voice from the gloom, the lights being off for better viewing. Michael flipped them on and the guests blinked.
“You’ve heard Nasser,” said Yossi. “Next you’ll hear Eshkol, and I think you’ll know. What’s happened to the wine, Shayna?”
Israelis are not usually drinkers, but wine bottles went round and round, and the talk grew animated as the guests shook off the stunned dejection that had followed the Jordan broadcast.
“Five minutes till Eshkol speaks,” said Lena. “Turn on the radio already, Michael.”
“This will be Eshkol’s greatest hour,” said Chief Rabbi Poupko. “Mark my words.”
***
Sitting not far from Eshkol in the small dimly lit broadcasting studio, Pasternak leaped to retrieve a page of the speech that fell to the floor from the Prime Minister’s trembling hands, while the aides and the radio men just stared in frozen disbelief. Eshkol gave him the grateful look of a drowning man rescued, and resumed trying to read aloud, through thick glasses, jargon he could not possibly have written himself.
“In the cabinet meeting today the government laid down principles for the… uh, uh, continuation of political activities which are designed to… uh, uh, induce the international factions—uh, factors—to adopt affecting measures—effective measures—to safeguard the…” he held the page to his eyes, painfully peering “…freedom of international shipping in the Tiran Straits…”
L’Azazel, what had become of Eshkol’s own speech? So Pasternak angrily wondered. What dismal shlepper had concocted this turgid stuff and handed it to the bedeviled old man fighting for his political life? What criminal shlepper had put him at a low narrow microphone table, placed wrong for the single overhead light? What sheep-headed shlepper had failed to insist on a rehearsal, failed to think of making a recording in which stumbles and hesitations could be edited out? Shleppers, shleppers, shleppers, the collective soft underbelly of Israel!
As the Prime Minister stammered on, Sam Pasternak was already calculating the damage of this fiasco. The Americans and the Arabs must be monitoring every word, and Eshkol sounded like a man in terror, unable to control his voice or his tongue, lapsing into mere “uh, uh” while trying to make out the words.
“Uh, uh, lines of action have also been adopted for the… uh, uh, removal of military considerations—uh, uh, concentrations from Israel’s southern border…”
Not my responsibility, this shattering balagan, thought Pasternak, but whose? He had arrived only five minutes before the broadcast, to accompany Eshkol afterward to the parley with the generals. It had already been, he knew, a calamitous day for the Prime Minister. The murky political maneuvering to force him out had boiled up in meetings, phone calls, corridor whisperings, offers, counteroffers, threats of resignation. His oldest friends were deserting him. A cabled letter from Lyndon Johnson, warning him that if the Israelis commenced hosti
lities they would have to go it alone, had stampeded a new cabinet vote to take no military action while the American President tried to assemble his flotilla. Eshkol next had to face his generals, knowing the postponement might push them near mutiny, for how much longer could their outnumbered troops sit and wait for the foe to strike on three fronts? How much longer could the economy endure this paralysis? Beset on all sides, Eshkol had apparently assigned an aide to rewrite his speech, and had not had time to look it over before he went on the air.
“…action to safeguard our… uh, uh, sufficient—uh, uh, our sovereign rights and security on the frontiers and the prevention of aggression…”
***
In a coffee shop outside the naval base, Noah Barak and Daphna Luria stood with sailors, officers, and navy girls around an old radio set, which further garbled Eshkol’s talk with static and whistles. Wondering, dismayed looks passed among the young listeners.
“What is this?”
“Is he sick? Is he having a heart attack?”
“Can you understand him?”
“This is not possible!”
Noah seized Daphna’s hand and led her out of the shop. “I can’t take it. Anyway, my captain gave me only two hours off to go to the Berkowitzes. I have to get back on board.”
“Noah, what ails the Prime Minister, do you suppose? He sounds panic-stricken.”
“Who knows? If he’s frightened, the navy isn’t. We’ll continue our argument about Zionism, Daphna, maybe after a war.”
“You really think there’ll be war?”
“After what we’ve just heard? If I were Nasser I’d strike at dawn.”
They lingered under the sentry’s blue light at the base gate. “You look awful,” she laughed, “like a dead man.”
“Even in this light, you look beautiful.”
“Come off it.” She struck a small fist on his shoulder. “And no more arguments, understand? You’re a Zionist? Fine, all honor to you. I’m a Daphna-ist, first and last. End of discussion.”
“No, just the beginning.”
“Oh, well.” She gave him her hand. “You mustn’t overstay your leave, Noah. If there’s war, come back safe.”
He did not release her hand. “And call you?”
“Why not?” With a slight squeeze, she disengaged her fingers and hurried off into the dark.
***
In the Berkowitz flat when Eshkol finished, silence. All faces were somber. Somebody groaned, “Ayzeh gimgoom!” (“What stuttering!”)
The chief rabbi spoke up with hollow cheer. “He’s been under a heavy strain, that’s all. It was a good speech.”
“I’m taking my family down to the shelter tonight,” said a philosophy professor.
“Don’t be like that, Alex,” said his wife. “We’re not going to the shelter.” She turned to Yossi Nitzan. “What did you think, Colonel?”
“He’s no speaker,” said Yossi, “but he warned the Arabs we’ll win if they start something. That’s the main thing, and that’s the truth.”
The guests made hurried goodbyes and left in a murmur of dejected comment.
“Ben Gurion has to come back.”
“Dayan! We need Dayan!”
“No, Allon! Allon is worth ten Dayans.”
“I still believe in Eshkol.”
“Eshkol? He’ll be out of office in two days.”
“He’s got to step aside as Minister of Defense, at least.”
***
When the red light went out over the door of the broadcasting studio, Levi Eshkol took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes hard, his large head hanging down. “My eyes itch so! They itch!” He put on the glasses and shuffled the papers together. A young bearded aide accepted them, looking doleful. Eshkol pushed himself to his feet, and trudged to Pasternak. “Thanks for picking up the paper. You saved me. How was it?”
“Well, Prime Minister, you warned the Arabs to beware of attacking.” Pasternak spoke as forcibly as he could. “And you let the Americans know that the Hamtana from now on is their doing, and we expect them to act responsibly. The record’s clear. The elements were there. It was all right.”
“You think so? Good.” The others came around him—the shleppers, Pasternak thought with angry contempt, who, had probably destroyed the man—with empty congratulations. “So, Sam, what next? Yes, now I meet the generals. All right, we move.”
As they went down a flight of stairs, Eshkol missed a step and clutched at a banister. Pasternak caught his elbow and kept him from tumbling. In the back seat of his car, Eshkol leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Better make an air reservation, Shafan.”
“It’s made, Layish.”
The Prime Minister’s eyes opened, and the old foxy Eshkol was smiling tiredly at him. “Bad, wasn’t it?”
“Prime Minister, you were in a tough spot.”
Eshkol shook his head. “All my fault. I should have shut out everything else and concentrated on that speech. Now I realize it.”
“There was too much happening. You couldn’t.”
“Well, it’s over. Now for the generals.”
***
As Yossi drove Shayna through the blue-lit streets of Haifa, a ghost city at nine o’clock, she rattled on about the Ezrakh, for the Prime Minister’s debacle had shaken her nerves, and sitting with Don Kishote in a car always perturbed her. Their strained relationship was all the more tense now that she was caring for Aryeh. “In the Old City we kids played in his yard,” she was saying. “He’d call us into this room full of huge old books, and give us candy. He looked just the same then. I’d swear he wore those same clothes. And he did nothing but learn Torah, day and night.”
“Was he captured when the Old City fell?”
“No, a month before the vote for partition he moved out, books and all, to a hole in the New City, in Geula. There was a lot of criticism, questioning his piety. Then after the war people said he was a prophet. He ignores what anyone says about him. We moved out right after he did, Grandpa’s tailor shop too. Grandpa said if the Ezrakh could go we could go, and we did.”
“How does the Ezrakh live?”
“In those days he sold kerosene. Now he sells candles. Not many, so as not to hurt the business of other candle sellers. People would buy a lot more than he sells. It’s a big thing to have the Ezrakh’s candles for Shabbat. When he gets in a new stock it’s all gone in a day or two. He won’t accept support or gifts.”
Yossi turned into the road winding up Mount Carmel. “I’ll tell you, Shayna, that old man impressed me, putting Benny in the chair, and all of us obeying him, mohel, rabbis, Benny! Leadership. If he were eighteen and in my brigade I’d give him a platoon.”
“Well, that story will certainly get out, the Ezrakh yielding that honor to an air force colonel! He’s already an odd man among the haredim [pious], because he’s a Zionist. He calls Israel the beginning of the Redemption, the footsteps of the Messiah, the Great Era. He’s not openly attacked, since the greatest sages consult him. They consider him a walking Mount Sinai.” The jeep bumped and roared up a steep cobbled street to the old tenement where she lived. “Wake up, Aryeh, we’re here,” she called.
Yawning, Aryeh jumped out to the dark windy street. “It’s cold here, Abba.”
“Let me come up with you, Shayna,” said Yossi. “Give me a cup of tea.”
“By your life, no.”
“Why not? I’ve never seen your flat.”
“No!”
“Why not? Issur yikhud? Aryeh’s your protection.”
“Don Kishote, go and fight the war, if there’s one coming. Leave me be. I’ll take good care of Aryeh.”
He lowered his voice so that the boy, taking shelter in the doorway, could not hear. “You may not see me again. Ever. You realize that?”
“Don’t! Elohim, you’re unfair, you’re disgusting.”
“Ten minutes.”
“Oh, wait here then. You and Aryeh both.”
She went running up four fl
ights of black-dark stairs, snapped on the lights, and drew the blackout curtains. From a clothesline strung between the transom and the window she frenziedly snatched off cheap underwear she had hung up to dry—stockings, nightgowns, panties, brassieres, the washing of a two-week pileup. Shayna lived alone, brought home much academic work, and tended to let housekeeping lag—laundry, dishes, bills—and now and then go at the mess in one whirlwind night. She dumped the stuff in her tiny spare bedroom, swept books and test papers off the kitchen table, and cleared her desk of stacked bills and mathematical journals. Two framed photographs stood there, usually half out of sight: the fading blowup of herself and Kishote on the Tel Aviv boardwalk, and one of her latest swain, his skullcap almost invisible, his beard close-trimmed, his smile charming. Shayna slung the boardwalk picture into the other room, pulled down the clothesline, and opened the window. “All right! Come up!”
“Coming!”
Aryeh went to bed, and as they drank tea in the kitchen, Shayna’s unease lessened, for she saw that Yossi was all business. He talked about the prospects of war. If it came, and he now saw it as a fifty-fifty chance, his armor brigade would be in the forefront. He had confidence in his men and in himself, but war was chancy, and he had to think ahead. “There’s Aryeh’s education, Shayna. I want him to have some Yiddishkeit. I’ve named you for his religious guide in my will, and left money. Yael knows all about this. If he goes back to Los Angeles…” Yossi shrugged and pushed up his glasses. “Well, I don’t think he will.”
Shayna found her voice after a moment. “I’m touched, and I agree about Aryeh.”
“Good. Thank you. Please give me more tea.” As she poured he went on, “Lee and I both started in a yeshiva, you see, because that was how my mother wanted it. He rebelled and they sent him to a Zionist school, but I liked it. I tried to keep up the religion even in the camps. It was too hard. Aryeh won’t be an Ezrakh, but he shouldn’t be an ignoramus. I pity some of the sabra boys in my brigade. Wonderful kids, but of Yiddishkeit they know nothing.”
“Aryeh already knows quite a bit, Yossi.”
“I’m glad you think so. Next thing, that fellow on your desk. Is that the new one? The Canadian?”