“Hardly any. And what’s your news?”
“All negative so far,” says Uri. “We expected the British to refuse, of course. But the Italians, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Greeks — Lo b’alef raboti! [No with a capital N!] You were hoping for some results with the French, Sam.”
“Near zero.”
“Well, I’m not greatly surprised. Say ‘oil’ to a French politician and he goes catatonic. But what to all the devils ever made you hopeful?”
“I know the Minister of Transportation from the Resistance days. Actually I once saved his life. We’ve remained in touch, and he even stayed in my home in Ramat Gan. When I talked to him on the phone, he thought landing rights might be arranged, so I came. There’s a lot of public sympathy for Israel here.”
“That, I know. It stops at the third bureaucratic level. That’s the snow line, and above is ice and stone.”
“Look, Uri, I’m dead tired. Tell the ambassador that Corsica is still a possibility, the minister’s working on it. I’ll report the minute I hear anything.”
“B’seder. You realize, Sam, today makes six days? A bit different this time.”
“Yes, well I guess repetition would be boring.”
In his room Sam is about to lie down when a bellboy brings a card engraved in small neat script, Mme. Armand Fleg. On the back a few French words in a hurried hand: M. Pasternak. Am in the lobby and would much appreciate a word with you. He recognizes the husband’s name, a very wealthy unobtrusive Jewish leader. When he steps out of the elevator, there stands a blond woman with the tanned skin and lean figure of a skier, dressed with killing Parisiennc chic, complete to the off-white silk stockings that are now the rage. She is the lady of the Beirut raid, no doubt of it. She smiles and comes to meet him. “So good of you! The minister mentioned to my husband that you are in Paris. Has your trip been successful?”
“Can’t say yet.”
She gestures at a couch, and they sit down. “We’re terribly worried here about the war.”
“It has started off badly, that’s true.”
“My husband has already raised a large sum to purchase urgent materiel on the embargo list.” In a lower tone: “Illegally of course. A shipment will go by sea tomorrow. That’s terribly slow, but air freight is out of the question. The airports are under wartime surveillance.” Pasternak does not comment, regarding her with weary watchful eyes. “Your son is in combat?” He nods. “Of course he would be. Where?”
“The Golan.”
“Is he all right?”
Expelling a heavy breath, Pasternak says, “He’s been wounded.”
“Badly?”
“He’ll have a full recovery, I’m told. At least ninety percent. Shrapnel hits in face and arm.”
“Your son’s a brave young man. I’m glad about the full recovery. I’m sure he’s distinguished himself.”
“Your husband, Madame Fleg, has distinguished himself as a friend to Israel. You, too.”
“Me? If you mean my adventure with your son,” she replies with nervous haste, “I grew up in Beirut, and your Mossad has persuasive recruiters. It was no business for a mother of children to get into. Crazy. Once it was over and a success, I was naturally pleased with my tiny part in it.”
“And your husband must have been proud of you.”
“Armand? Mon Dieu, he hasn’t the remotest notion that I did — or would ever do — such a thing. Never mention it! I’ll take chances on the ski slopes, that’s my amusement, in fact I met your Mossad recruiter there. Otherwise I’m a very conservative person, like Armand.” Pause. “Not that it’s important, but did your son ever receive my little note?”
“Oh, that. My fault. I moved my office, and it was misplaced. I did give it to him just before the war, when he was on his way to the Golan.”
“I see. I thought perhaps he didn’t bother to reply to a foolish matron, which would have been quite right.” In a sinuous unmatronly motion she gets up and holds out her hand. “Bonne chance. My husband and I are at your disposal, if in the slightest way we can be of any help to you here in Paris.”
Pasternak wakes from a nap thinking about First Sergeant Luria. Maybe it’s not too late, after all, to pick up the pieces, and what better setting than Paris? In the long hours of bombinating nightmare in the Pit he has thought a lot about Yael. Getting out into the light of day, catching some sleep on a plane, taxiing around in Paris, have somewhat brought him to earth, and French official frostiness and haunting worry about Amos have further dimmed anticipation. In a way, so has Madame Fleg. The woman exuded romance like a flower scent. On the Haifa wharf he saw that his son had fallen for her. Such a flare of the real thing can hardly be blown into life in the embers of the old, old Yael Nitzan affair. Or can it yet?
“Avar zmano, batful karbano.” It was a favorite phrase of a learned uncle of his on the kibbutz. “Time past, sacrifice cancelled.” Talmudic rule about temple ritual: if the daily or holiday offering is not brought at the appointed hour, there is no making it up. It is gone. Ah, First Sergeant Luria! It did not seem so at Shimshon’s, over the second bottle of Golan red wine …
“Well, here’s where it all happened, isn’t it?” Yael says. They are walking past the Hôtel George Cinq to a small three-star restaurant, in a windy night of falling leaves. “Four lives messed up for good by one crazy afternoon, eh?”
Pasternak thinks for a moment. “I count three.”
“Shayna Berkowitz, hamood, Professor Berkowitz’s wife, have you forgotten? Kishote was mad for her. What’s more, I’m pretty sure they still love each other, poor dears.” She takes his hand. “And you! You, with that Hollywood kurva!”
“I don’t remember her name, Yael.”
“You’re a shocking lowlife. Always have been.”
It is a suitable restaurant for a rendezvous: dim lights, partitioned booths, candles and roses on the table. They talk about the war, and about Amos. He tells her what he knows of Kishote: unhurt, much commended by Sharon, and by the Ramatkhal, too. “I heard Dado say Kishote’s coming into his own in this war. However it ends, your hubby’s going places afterward.”
“Not with me.”
It is an opening. Pasternak lets it go by, and Yael is not offended. Sam must be several years younger than Professor Roweh and seems older. But then, is that fair? Sam has carried much responsibility for Israel’s fate for years, while Roweh has picked up languages and dug through obscure philosophers like Vico. Anyway, Sam is still an attractive old dog.
Pasternak for his part well knows he has declined a gambit, though nothing changes in Yael’s look or manner. Over the years Yael has played the old girlfriend on amiable terms with him, but that is all off since the dinner at Shimshon’s. This is their first time face to face since then, following a very sweet intimate transatlantic telephone talk, when she comforted him about Amos and he responded with much of the old affection.
Now there Yael sits, still lushly seductive in her middle forties, her yellow hair pulled back and parted, Beverly Hills smart in a dark green wool suit and a pearl choker, with a turtle pin of pearls on one shoulder. If she is travel-weary she doesn’t show it. Her eyes are glowing at him, her smile is inviting, or so it seems. That she is legally Mrs. Nitzan is almost a technicality. Yael acts as though she is free, and no doubt she can be when she wishes.
Falling silent as they eat grilled sole and drink Chablis, they hear a couple talking in the next booth about the war, the woman maintaining in a piercing Parisian soprano that it is high time les Juifs get it in the neck, even Hitler didn’t teach them their lesson, they are still out to rule the world. Not too remote, Pasternak thinks, from the sentiment he has encountered all day in the French bureaucracy.
Yael says with an acid smile and a nod toward the voice, “A long way from Shimshon’s, eh, hamood?”
“The other pole,” he says.
She lays a hand on his and says softly, “Sam.”
“Yes.” Here comes the Shimshon
approach again, he thinks, and how do we deal with it this time?
“Sam, forget it.”
“What?”
“You’re too nice to say that the clock of love doesn’t run backwards, chickens don’t turn into eggs, and in short there’s no going back. I’m too proud and vain to admit it was a stupid idea, so let’s just leave it all unsaid. B’seder?”
When he recovers from his surprise, he bursts out laughing, and she chimes in. “Oo-ah, I don’t think I’ve laughed since Yom Kippur,” he gasps, and they laugh more and more. Then he says, gesturing at the next booth, “Easy, our friends will think we’re Arab sympathizers rejoicing.”
“Relieved, my dear?” she says.
“First Sergeant, I’ll never stop loving you.”
“Fine. Let’s enjoy our dinner. I met an interesting man on the plane to New York. Ever hear of Max Roweh?”
“Sure, an author. Very rich wife, very charitable woman. As a matter of fact” — from habit he drops his voice — “we have a Mossad fund for the widows and families of guys lost on assignment. She endowed that fund.”
“You know she’s dead.”
“Oh, yes, unfortunately.”
Yael tells him about the River House apartment, and the lecture at the Reform temple. Over brandy she tries to recount Roweh’s ideas. Pasternak’s brow begins to wrinkle and his eyes to cloud. “Yael, that’s one obscure gent, that Max Roweh. He wrote a book called Heine and Hegel. I like Heine’s poetry, so I tried to read it. Heavy, heavy highbrow stuff! I’ve never met the man. Is he saying Islam is a primitive society? That’s not a world-shaking new idea, motek.”
“No, no, that’s exactly what he was denying, Sam. He calls Islam a great civilization, advancing through history at its own pace. It would help if I hadn’t fallen asleep. I just can’t put it the way he did, but to me it seemed promising for Israel and for peace. It’s all tied up with Ibn Khaldun and Vico. Ever hear of Vico?”
“A Greek, like Plato?”
“God, no, a modern Italian. Or of Ibn Khaldun, the Arab historian?”
“Ibn Khaldun, yes, vaguely. Anyhow, you like this Roweh, ha?”
“To all the devils, Sam, not like that! He’s an ancient professor. But interesting.”
“Your plane leaves when, Yael?”
“Half-past midnight.”
“Well, drink up, and let’s get back to my hotel.”
“Whatever for?”
“You dropped your bags in my room, remember? You have to pick them up.”
“It isn’t nine-thirty.”
“Well, you don’t want to miss your plane.” He gives her a wise ogle.
“Why, you horrible old rogue, what are you suggesting?”
“Punctuality.”
“Don’t rush me. I’ll have another brandy.”
They are back in his room at ten. He puts a call in to a number in Israel, reading it from a message he picked up, then tries to take her in his arms.
“Sam, by my life, you’re not a serious person. Never have been.” She fends him off. “It’s a real character flaw. Who did you call?”
“Dayan, in fact.”
“What about?”
“I guess he’ll tell me.”
“Hey! General Pasternak, hands off! What is this? Are you being polite? Reassuring me that I’m still a hot piece? It’s not necessary, believe me.”
“Old times’ sake,” he mumbles into her neck.
In his familiar embrace, somewhat cushioned by both midriffs, Yael does a lightning review of options. After two brandies and much wine she is feeling kindly to Pasternak and sorry for him. What then, laugh him out of it? Bring up Eva Sonshine? Or after all, what the hell?
He lets her go to pick up the ringing telephone. The conversation is very short, and all on Dayan’s end. As Pasternak listens, his face settles into the hard wartime lines Yael knows well. “Yes, Minister, at once. … Well, that’s it, Yael. Come with me to the embassy.” He slings a small bag and a despatch case on the bed. “I have to call him on the secure telephone. You and I will be going back on the same plane.”
“Can you tell me what it’s about?”
“After I find out myself, maybe.”
Not until they sit side by side in the half-empty plane does he talk, and then in low, almost whispering tones. Dayan believes the war is suddenly at its absolute crunch. By all intelligence from Washington, New York, and London, a cease-fire is rapidly coming on, and the race against the political stopwatch will brook no more delay. Not only have the Golan forces been ordered to advance into Syria, but the desperate expedient of sending the Sinai forces across the Canal at once is up for decision. The cabinet has met to discuss crossing the Canal, and after putting Dado through hours of grilling, the ministers have decided to meet again next day and vote the crossing up or down.
“Only the Jews could figure out such a chain of command, Yael. Such a vital military decision must be made by the full cabinet, you understand. Each minister with one vote! Transportation, Health, Religious Affairs, Housing, Justice, that whole sorry political mishmash, some of whom don’t know which end of a rifle shoots, that’s our many-headed commander-in-chief. By your life, that’s the way it works. The cabinet authorizes Golda, she authorizes Dayan, he authorizes Dado, he authorizes Southern Command, they authorize Sharon and Adan, they give orders, and somebody finally shoots a gun.”
She laughs.
“It’s no joke, Yael. Or rather, it’s a sick Jewish joke, the whole system.”
“Kishote never described it to me that way, and he can be scathing about the army.”
“It’s the view from the top. One day, he’ll see it for himself. Good luck to him.”
He folds Le Soir to a war analysis with maps, and Yael pulls Roweh’s book out of her leather carry-on bag. “Vico and Descartes,” Pasternak reads aloud, glancing at the jacket. “The Fork in the Road. What fork? What road?”
“I’m trying to find out.”
She shows him the inscription. “Dulcinea, hey?” Pasternak grins. “Don Kishote’s lady fair. It was all a delusion, you know. In reality she was just a farm wench, fat, ugly, and stupid.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
“My pleasure, motek. Let’s see his picture … hm. Too old.”
“You’re an idiot. Read your paper.”
She opens the book to the first chapter. Before Pasternak finishes the lucid, meticulously technical, and totally mistaken battle analysis of both fronts by a retired French general, Yael is out cold, her head to a side, the book fallen in her lap. She looks pretty and young. “Dulcinea,” he murmurs, laying a blanket over her, “at least I never bored you like that. And you were no delusion. Sleep well.”
Avar zmano, batul karbano …
In the dark morning hours on that same sixth day, Yanosh summons his battalion and platoon commanders to his HQ tent for a briefing. A ghastly-looking lot they arc, Yanosh included: hollow-eyed, stubble-cheeked, dust-covered, sooty, bandaged, patched, drooping, dozing, altogether played out. Colonel Yanosh Ben Gal, who came to Israel through India in a shipment of rescued European children, is a natural and ferocious field tactician. He stands at a large map of Syrian terrain, notebook in hand, stooped over because he is too tall for the tent height, running his bloodshot gaze around the group. Many are new to him, soldiers pressed into leadership because their commanders are wounded or dead.
“Kahalani, where’s Pasternak?”
“Evacuated, sir.” Kahalani sits cross-legged on the ground, map in his lap, trying to keep his eyes open.
“To all the devils. How bad?”
“Not sure, sir.” He describes how Pasternak’s crew turned him over to the medics bloody and barely conscious.
With a sad shrug, Yanosh begins the briefing by telling these battle-worn troops that they will have to launch a counterattack in a few hours. They take it with dulled disbelief, and the order goes much against Yanosh’s military grain. After five days of hot and sanguinary head-to-head combat, t
he enemy has at last slacked off, and these troops urgently need to rest and regroup. Yet he not only has to give the order to go on fighting, but he must inspire them to carry it out.
The high politics that call for the counterattack — “change the battlefield picture, forestall a cease-fire” — would make no impact on these soldiers. Yanosh speaks straight hard words. He tells them they have broken the Syrian attack, taken the worst the enemy can do, and sent him reeling back home. One more blow can knock Syria out of the war. Then it will probably end, and Israel will be safe again thanks to the heroes of the Golan Heights campaign. So the cry is “On to Damascus!” The exhortation works. The young men perk up and start bandying about possible names for the new push, a code word for this thrust into Syria. Suggestions ranging from comic to obscene bring laughs and groans.
A voice at the tent flap speaks up. “Call it ‘Black Panther.’ ”
Amos Pasternak stands just inside, his face and arm bandaged, his tone buoyant. Kahalani jumps up and hugs him amid a chorus of welcome. “You escaped from Rambam, maniac?” asks Yanosh.
“No, sir. The doctor told me if I was fool enough to want to come back, he wouldn’t stop me.”
Amos’s coup de théâtre sticks, and when the Seventh Brigade crosses into the Syrian minefields behind the roller-flail tanks at eleven o’clock that morning, the signal is “Black Panther.” And Amos stands in his turret leading nine tanks, all that is left of his battalion.
By the time Sam Pasternak lands at the blacked-out Ben Gurion airport his son is deep in Syria, advancing through burning abandoned tanks and vehicles under a shell-streaked sky. When Friday, October twelfth, dawns, his tanks are a third of the way to Damascus, under heavy fire from entrenched defenders; and the whole attack all along the front is slowing down, for a fresh Iraqi armored division has rolled into the battle.
The rising sun of the seventh day, October 12, shines through the trees into the garden of Dayan’s Zahala villa, where he sits with Pasternak. Around them are Canaanite antiquities, some of them almost priceless, which Dayan has acquired, one way or another. A few he has restored with his own hands.