by Herman Wouk
“I’m to take you away now,” his Aunt Lydia said, coming up to him and hugging him. “Magnificent. The chairman will start twisting arms when you’ve gone. She won’t have to twist hard.”
He put his bag into the back seat of a tan Cadillac as long as one of the funeral limousines. She said, edging it casually into the heavy Central Park West traffic, “Of course I phoned your father as soon as I heard from Emma Marcus. He wants you to meet him at the UN, so I’ll drop you off and go on ahead. It’s only twenty minutes to our house, and he’ll bring you to us. It’s the cook’s night out and we were going to eat Chinese, but none of that. We’ll fix something.”
“Listen, Aunt Lydia, Chinese is fine. Don’t fuss, I can’t stay long, anyway.”
“Chinese? A guest like you? Zev Barak?” She said it with a proprietary smile, and made it sound like a stage name. “We can always barbecue lamb chops. I keep tons of them around, my boys are roaring meat-eaters. You like lamb? Isn’t that what they eat in the Middle East, lamb?”
“Yes, Aunt, we eat lamb.”
***
“Nissim v’niflaot! [Miracles and marvels!]” Barak’s father exclaimed, leading him through the wide semicircles of vacant seats in the General Assembly Hall at Lake Success. Meyer Berkowitz was almost as short as Ben Gurion and had much the same paunchy figure; also the wild white hair, a socialist trademark. “Miracles and marvels! This is exactly where I was sitting—on this chair, Zev—when Venezuela voted yes and made the two-thirds vote. Sit down in that chair! Then you can tell your grandchildren you did.”
Barak had not seen his flamboyant father for many months, and was slightly ashamed at his lack of feeling for him. Irreversible things had happened in the family besides his marrying Nakhama. He compliantly sat down, feeling no thrill, hearing no grand chord of history. It was just a chair in an empty hall. But his father supplied the grand chord, his voice booming and echoing. “Yes, the Jewish State reborn after two thousand years! In my time! And I sat right here, a representative of that State! ‘Even though I am not worthy or qualified…’” He was quoting the Yom Kippur liturgy in the old-time Yiddish accent. Barak’s father was all contradictions: a well-to-do fur trader and a doctrinaire socialist, an unbeliever who observed the holidays and ate no pork products, a Hebraist who loved Yiddish and wouldn’t Hebraize his name, an egalitarian who disapproved of his son’s marrying a poor Moroccan girl. This inconsistency was taken for granted in the family, except in occasional lacerating arguments.
“Ai, were the British wrong!” said his father, leading him out to the foyer. “Miracles and marvels! How could the damned Jews ever win a two-thirds vote for partition, they calculated, with the Soviet and Arab blocs both voting no? Only Stalin, may his memory be blessed and his name wiped out, laid them six feet in the ground by ordering his whole gang to vote yes! Miracles and marvels!”
“Look, Papa, what miracles and marvels? Stalin just wants to shove the British out of the Middle East for good. That’s why he did that, and that’s why we’re getting Soviet arms from Czechoslovakia.”
“Yes, yes, maybe he thinks that’s why he did it,” his father boomed, “but the hand of God was upon him—in a manner of speaking, of course. So, Aunt Lydia’s waiting. I warn you, I don’t drive a Cadillac, Zev.”
As they left Lake Success in a creaking Ford, Barak told his father that the army leaders were preparing for an immediate new offensive once the truce ended; assuming that Israel would accept the truce extension which the Americans and British were pushing, and that the Arabs would turn it down. It would be a chance to seize the initiative before the enemy moved, and win rational borders within which Israel could hang on for a few years and draw breath. His father shook his head vehemently. “Ben Gurion will be making a terrible mistake. More bloodshed, more deaths! Half a million Jews can’t conquer seventy million Arabs. If they attack again we should defend ourselves, of course, until they come to terms.”
“Their terms are simple, Papa. We die, or we leave.”
“‘Grasp a lot, and you haven’t grasped,’” the father quoted the Talmud. “‘Grasp a little, and you’ve grasped.’ That’s what Begin forgot in that awful Altalena balagan.”
“Did the papers make much of that here?”
“We were lucky. The Russians crowded it out with their Berlin blockade.”
Houses and grounds were looking bigger and fancier as they approached Great Neck. The Ford bumped across a railroad track into the suburb, and Barak began exclaiming at the clustering mansions. “What palaces! Do many Jews live here?”
“These are shacks,” said his father. “Sheds. Slums. Harry lives in Kings Point. You’ll see.”
They passed into a wooded area much like a park, where through leafy boughs large edifices could be glimpsed. “This is Kings Point,” said Berkowitz. The Ford drove up a gravel driveway to a white house with an immense pillared porch. Five shiny cars—three small convertibles and two Cadillac sedans—left little room for the Ford, but he slipped it between Aunt Lydia’s tan Cadillac and a high flowering hedge. Out of the house rolled Aunt Lydia with Barak’s Uncle Harry, who much resembled Meyer except for a short haircut, and behind them came two sons and a daughter. Greetings, embraces, laughter and joking all around, and soon they were seated on a screened porch that faced a wide lawn, watching Leon, the older son, barbecue lamb chops with the daughter helping, while they drank powerful brown concoctions full of fruit, called old-fashioneds.
The unaccustomed alcohol lifted Barak’s mood, but he was really wrung out by now. Though the sun shone through the trees he was perishing for sleep. Great Neck was as hot and steamy as Tel Aviv. The heavy uniform irked him. There was something altogether disorienting about Uncle Harry’s Kings Point house, with its Gone With the Wind pillars and the five automobiles. Barak felt no trace of envy, but he wished those delicious-smelling chops would get served up, so that he could leave and lie down somewhere.
Aunt Lydia was bubbling about his performance at the fund-raiser. “Sensational! Marcie Cohen phoned me. Ninety-three thousand dollars, Wolfgang! I mean Zev, of course. Do you realize that’s three times what Golda Meyerson raised from that same group?”
The younger son asked Barak, “Have you seen much action? I just missed our war. I was in army boot camp, all set to get shipped to the Pacific, when we dropped the bomb.”
“Well, Arthur, it’s different in Israel. We’re all strung out along the coast, and altogether our country’s no bigger than New Jersey, so you get in an army truck or jeep for a short ride from home, and there you are in the war. I saw a little action, yes.”
“Tell me something, do girls really fight?” inquired Aunt Lydia. “I’ve seen the pictures of them in uniform. Suppose Arabs captured them? Wouldn’t that be too horrible?”
“They’re usually not where they can be captured, Aunt. Many are in signalling.”
“What are they saying in Israel about the Berlin airlift?” Uncle Harry inquired. “Do they think the Russians will back down?”
“That’s a real mess,” Meyer Berkowitz interjected. “At the UN they’re talking about World War III.”
“Foolishness,” said Uncle Harry.
“Harry, Berlin needs twenty-five hundred tons of supplies a day,” retorted Meyer. “The Americans can’t airlift that much, and the word now is that Truman is planning to send an armed convoy through the Russian roadblocks. Then we’ll see who backs down!”
“Why, it’s just like Jerusalem and the Burma Road,” exclaimed Aunt Lydia. “That was so fascinating, Wolfgang, the way you explained it. You’ve got to tell my children all about it.”
“That’s probably Betty for me,” said the younger son, darting at a ringing phone. “Hello… Dad, it’s a Mr. Perlman calling from Los Angeles.”
“Dave Perlman,” said Uncle Harry in an aside to Zev, as he took the phone, “major film producer. Old friend…. Hello, Dave! …Yes? Yes, Dave. We’re all fine. If I can do anything, why not? Yes…” A long pause. Un
cle Harry glanced at Barak. “Well, as it happens, my nephew’s sitting right here now. He’s having dinner with us. Hang on.” Putting his hand over the mouthpiece, Harry said, “Wolfgang, do you know an Israeli named Pasternak? Sam Pasternak?”
“Pasternak? Sure, I know him.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“From Los Angeles?” This was even more disorienting. Pasternak, not in Prague?
Uncle Harry handed him the telephone, and on came the gruff voice. “Zev! You’re living the good life in Kings Point, hah?” Gravelly cement-mixer tones, the jocular Pasternak.
“What’s up, Sam?”
“Have you ever been to California?”
“No, why?”
“It’s nice here. Come on out.”
“Yes, sure. What else?”
“Look, I’m serious. Get on a plane and come here. I’ll meet you at the Los Angeles airport. Let me know what flight.”
“Are you crazy? I’m with Dayan, and we’re going back in the same Dutch charter plane we came in. I’m due for a battalion command. We’re just waiting for a shipment of bank notes, the new Israeli currency, to be loaded on the plane tomorrow.”
“Zev, I’ve already talked to Dayan. It’s okay. There’s a girl, Bonnie, at the mission office in Lake Success. She’ll arrange your air ticket. Here’s her phone number, and here’s mine.”
Barak noted the numbers to avoid arguing. “What’s up?”
“Your uncle will tell you.” The voice hardened momentarily in a switch to Hebrew. “There’s more I can’t get into on the phone, but I need you here.” Then in English: “How did the funeral go?”
“Very moving.”
“Ai, that poor bastard Marcus. Well, have a good flight.”
They sat down to shrimp cocktails, around a long wicker table on the porch. It was Friday night, but Aunt Lydia didn’t bother with candles; nor did Barak expect her to, although in his home Nakhama remained punctilious about that.
Dave Perlman was an immigrant from Minsk, Uncle Harry said, and they had become friends on the Polish ship coming over. Perlman had drifted from job to job in New York, and at last had gone on to California. After some years, during which Harry had done well in the old family fur trade and then switched to real estate, Perlman had written him to ask for a loan to make a movie.
“I always believed in Dave,” said Harry. “I didn’t ask to see the script, I sent the money. Thirty thousand. In those days, a bundle. He made a small movie you never heard of, a western. It did all right. He made more movies. Eventually he sent me back the thirty, with interest. Now he’s a power out there. I’ve never asked Dave for anything until now. I asked him to give this fellow Pasternak ten thousand dollars, no questions asked. He did it, like that.” Harry snapped his fingers.
The lamb chops were thicker than any Barak had ever eaten, three bones to a chop. The meat was luscious, the red wine excellent, and he was reviving. “Uncle, do you know Sam Pasternak?”
“Never heard of him before. We have this group, a few of us, we try to help out on Israel’s purchase problems. You know, what with the arms embargo and all. The chairman called me and said this Israeli in L.A. needed the ten, so I called Dave.”
“You want to be careful, Dad,” said the married son, a real estate attorney about Barak’s age, “about the embargo law. Don’t go sailing too close to the wind.”
“We’re careful, Leon.”
Barak asked his uncle, “Why does Pasternak—or Perlman—want me in Los Angeles? Do you know?”
Uncle Harry grinned at Aunt Lydia. “Well, Zev, it seems Dave’s wife’s having a Hadassah parlor meeting Sunday. Betty Grable’s coming, just to pull them in. Pasternak was supposed to talk, but Marcie Cohen’s been spreading the word about your hit today with her women. She even called Selma Perlman in L.A. to brag, they’re old fund-raising competitors. So Dave went and asked Pasternak to get you out there. He mentioned that you should wear your uniform.”
“It’s a yummy uniform,” said the daughter. “Arthur, can I have your car for a few hours? My brakes have gone out.”
“Sorry, I need it.”
“I thought you’d be working on your thesis.”
“I have a date with Betty.”
Leon said, “Don’t ask for mine, I’m picking up my wife and son at eight-thirty.”
A complex discussion of automobile usage ensued. Uncle Harry grew testy about too frequent borrowing of his Cadillac, causing an awkward silence. The talk turned to the new best-sellers and Broadway plays, and Barak thought, as he listened, how well-informed, well-mannered, and self-assured these three young Barkowes were. In Israel they would all be in uniform, the married one too, ground down with fatigue, not concerned about their cars, since they would have none, much rougher in speech and narrower in outlook, and lucky if they were all alive and unscathed. Their schooling would have been arrested. They would have few or no opinions about world politics. Barak could find no fault in them, but their lack of interest in Israel puzzled him. The younger son had asked him the question about seeing action, and that had been the end of it.
“They’re good kids,” Meyer Berkowitz said as they drove back to Lake Success. “Hard workers, fine scholastic records. Leon will be a big lawyer one day. He looks a lot like you, did you notice? Peggy writes short stories, they’ve been printed in magazines. That boy Arthur is a math wizard, he just won a scholarship.”
“They don’t give a damn about Israel, do they?” Barak said without rancor.
“Well, they’ve got their own interests.”
“Yet Harry and Lydia are involved.”
Meyer Berkowitz shrugged. “Different generation.”
In a tiny office of the Israel mission piled with books and reports, and smelling strongly of mimeograph ink, they found Bonnie, a woman of thirty or so from Haifa with frizzy hair, darting movements, and slangy Hebrew. “Hi, Moshe Dayan left a message for you.” She picked up a scrap of paper and read, “‘We don’t go back for three days. Problem with the currency printing. Regards to Sam. Watch out for those Hollywood starlets.’ Do you need a ride to the airport?” She handed Barak a round-trip ticket to Los Angeles.
“I’ll drive him,” said his father.
“Thank God,” said Bonnie. “There’s no one around here but me.”
Most of the way to La Guardia airport they drove without talking, not because there was nothing more between father and son to say but because there was too much. The diplomatic and military situation of Israel did not lend itself to automobile chatter. Their family problems and disagreements were stabilized, and best handled with silence.
Berkowitz and his son had long since agreed that his mother’s obsessive snobbism, her unending push to move among Israel’s small elite—the native-born socialists of Second Aliya parentage, the old Jerusalem families, the foreign diplomats—was folly, yet enough of it had rubbed off on Meyer, the son thought, so that he could not talk comfortably about Nakhama, her parents, or even about Noah. The topic of Zev’s younger brother, Michael, who had unaccountably turned religious, was another touchy one. Touchiest was an affair paunchy little Meyer had had a few years ago with a secretary in his Histadrut office, which had left a shadow on the whole family and nearly broken it up. Barak had sided with his mother in that mess. His father, he thought, had just seen too many Schnitzler plays in his Vienna years, for the woman was dumpy and stupid.
“I suppose,” said Meyer, abruptly breaking the silence as the flashing beams of the airport came in view, “that if I’d gone to America like your uncle, I’d have done well enough. Maybe we’d be living in Kings Point, and you could be driving a Cadillac convertible.” He wryly laughed. “When we were boys in Plonsk, Dovid Gruen was my friend, not Harry’s. Now he’s David Ben Gurion, and I’m in the UN, not Kings Point.”
“I like it as it is, Papa,” said the exhausted Barak, with a strong mental flash, almost like a dream, of the stony hillside near Kastel, and the hot stinging shock of being hit
in the elbow. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
At the plane gate Meyer Berkowitz had to reach up to give his son a hard hug. “Well, you’ll see your mother before I will. Tell her I love her. Best to Nakhama and my grandson. Happy landings, and if it’s war again, be careful.”
8
Sam Pasternak
Storms churned the air all the way to Chicago, where the plane circled for an hour in turbulent black rain before landing. After that the journey seemed only to begin, and to go on and on and on. Zev Barak had spent long nights in his life—lying in ambush for infiltrators on the Syrian border, pacing a hospital corridor through Nakhama’s labor, agonizing in an army infirmary bed with his smashed elbow—but this seemed the longest. How could one country be so gigantic? He did not recall falling asleep, yet all at once a stewardess was touching him to offer coffee, and the plane was drumming over sunlit rocky peaks capped with snow.
“Is this California?” he asked her, taking the coffee.
She smiled. “Those are the Rockies, sir. California in about two hours.”
“Do we fly over Pasadena, by chance?”
“Pasadena?” She peered out the window. “On this flight I’m not sure. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Zev Barak’s forlorn dreams of peace included graduate work in chemistry one day at the California Institute of Technology. He still had a year to finish at Hebrew University, and who could say when that would be possible? But his favorite professor had studied at Cal Tech, and had talked so much about it that Barak had come to envision the school as something like Plato’s Academy, in a flowery Athens called Pasadena.
“Where the hell did you get that uniform?” Sam Pasternak said at the plane gate with a bear hug. “You look like the doorman at the Ritz.”
“I’m here,” said Barak. “Now what?”
“Now we take you to a hotel, and you have a shower. You’d like a shower?”
“I would turn Christian for a shower. I haven’t been out of this stupid getup for two days.”