by Herman Wouk
“I’m in the army, yes.”
“I envy you.” The Dietrich voice went vibrato. “Those Israeli army men are something, aren’t they?”
“Some of them.”
“Do you happen to know a fellow named Sam Pasternak?”
Yael barely managed not to leap a foot in the air, which was her impulse. “Sam Pasternak? Yes, why?”
“I met him years ago, in Beverly Hills. He was raising funds or something. Ugly brute. Short, barrel-chested, funny eyes. But charming! Wow. Is he a general by now? That man was going places.”
Yael at first thought she was being baited, but the actress clearly was only gossiping. “I believe he’s a colonel. We don’t have many generals.”
“There are the fellows,” said Isobel, heading through the crowd and waving.
When they came outside after the show the night had turned misty, with a chilly drizzle which enhanced the magic of the lights. All Paris seemed to glow cold and white as the limousine crawled through thick traffic to La Tour d’Argent.
“Isn’t that the most expensive restaurant in Paris?” Yael artlessly asked Lee Bloom.
“It’s the best.”
“I could use some coffee,” said Kishote, sitting up front with the driver.
“Yes, about a gallon.” Yael’s tone was tart. Kishote had fallen asleep during the spectacular finale about Messalina, an orgy in a Roman bath with troops of naked youths and maidens splashing in and out of a vast real pool, amid much simulation of intercourse, all to Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun.
Isobel Connors giggled, and said, “I guess Yossi’s bored by Roman history.”
“I’ll tell you about the Folies-Bergère,” said Kishote. “One girl with her clothes off can be the greatest thing in life. Twenty of them are like big chickens with the feathers off.”
“Why, Yossi, you’re a philosopher,” said Isobel.
Waiting behind the velvet rope for the headwaiter of La Tour d’Argent to seat them were several couples in smart clothes looking self-important and impatient. Across the restaurant, over the heads of the thronged diners and through huge picture windows, Yael could glimpse Notre Dame looming illuminated in the mist. What a city! What a restaurant! And what a man of the world this Leopold Bloom was, in his dark sharply tailored suit, with protruding white shirt cuffs fastened by big gold links, an American every bit as elegant as these Frenchmen all around him! By contrast Don Kishote appeared decidedly shabby and oafish, though seeming quite at ease and unaware of it, in an ill-fitting gray suit badly wrinkled by the plane trip, standing away from the faded blue shirt he hadn’t changed, his big wrists dangling and without cuffs because it was a short-sleeved shirt. In his paratrooper uniform he cut a good figure, though there was always a slightly clownish air to him, but in Israeli street clothes nobody could take him for a regular patron of La Tour d’Argent. The headwaiter looked him over with half-closed eyes before showing them to a table at a window, with a grandiose view of the cathedral’s flying buttresses and lit-up towers, magnificent in the frostily glowing mist.
“Oo-ah, how do we rate this table?” Yael exclaimed.
“Sheva Leavis’s name,” said Lee, rubbing thumb and forefinger together. “That maître d’ has reason to remember it.”
“There’s a fellow who’s dressed worse than I am,” said Kishote, nodding his head toward another window table, where a large man with long dishevelled hair, in a rumpled stained shiny blue serge suit, sat with a slim beautiful woman. “I guess that headwaiter is no snob. I thought he might be, the way he looked at me.”
“That’s Diego Rivera,” said Isobel Connors, “and he’s with Paulette Goddard.”
“Is she the one who was Charlie Chaplin’s mistress?” Yael was proud of knowing the spicy rumor.
“His among others,” said the actress. “She’s had more men than Messalina.”
“Can I get some coffee right away?” said Kishote,
The waiter brought menus handwritten in French, which Yael knew well enough to follow Lee’s suave orders. He ended by ordering coffee for Yossi “toute suite,” at which the waiter hesitated and blinked incredulously, as though he had asked for a roast cat, before bowing and departing. Delicious grilled fish garnished with mussels came along after a lengthy wait, and then enormous white asparagus, and then exquisite tiny strawberries, but no bread and no coffee. The pale yellow wine was the best Yael had ever tasted, and she drank a lot of it, and found herself feeling more kindly toward poor Kishote, who was weaving in his seat and ate almost nothing until the bread and butter came along, when he ate it all while the others watched Diego Rivera and Paulette Goddard quarreling in Spanish.
“This is good bread,” he said. “I like this restaurant, but it’s slow with the coffee.”
When the actress and Yael went off to the lounge, and Kishote was drinking a tiny demitasse, Lee said, “Look, I’m sorry about the hotel, and putting you on different floors. I didn’t realize Paris was all jammed up for the auto show. We were lucky to get two rooms for you in the same place.”
“It’s not a bad hotel, Leopold. Only thing is, Yael’s hall light is out, and she had to grope her way to the toilet with her cigarette lighter. I complained, and now she has candles. The French are very accommodating.”
“I tell you what.” Lee tossed a key on the table. “You take that. Extra key to the suite, Isobel has one. I have to fly to Frankfurt with Sheva tomorrow, just overnight, and Isobel’s going to Cannes for two days. She has movie friends there. Our suite is big and very fancy, and you two can use it.”
“What for?”
“For whatever you want.” Lee faintly leered. “There’s a bar with everything, and a great view of the Arc de Triomphe. It’s nice.”
Yossi shook his head. “You’re off track. Yael is madly in love with someone else, and I’m in love with Shayna, you know that.” He sighed. “I’m disgusted with her, that’s all.”
Lee shrugged. “Shayna still has to mature.”
“Yes, for a decade or so.” Kishote took the key. “Well, at that I suppose Yael will get a kick out of seeing a suite in the Georges Cinq. She’s enjoying all this. Thanks.”
The two couples emerged in the frigid mist as the cathedral bells were chiming midnight. The drizzle had stopped. Lee said with smoking breath, “This is when Paris begins to wake up. Let’s go on to Montmartre.”
“Great idea,” said Isobel.
Huddled in his army coat, Kishote groaned, “Yael, you go.”
“Not without you.”
“Come on, it’s a perfect night for Montmartre,” said Lee. “The mist, the chill. Right out of Toulouse-Lautrec.”
But Yael begged off too. The limousine dropped them at a dingy hostelry on a blind alley, L’Hôtel Feydeau, and the actress and Lee went on to Montmartre. “See you day after tomorrow,” he said in farewell. “Have fun.” He had pressed on Yossi a fistful of francs, saying that Paris cost like sin unless you had dollars to exchange, and he knew Yossi had no dollars. Yossi took the money because he had Yael on his hands, felt he owed her a good time, and couldn’t otherwise deliver.
The hotel elevator, no larger than a telephone booth, squealed up inside the stairwell with jerks and shudders. Kishote and Yael, standing face to face, were perforce in violent body contact like overeager lovers, their grins of embarrassment barely visible in the dim glow of an overhead bulb like a mushroom. When the elevator stopped a foot or so above her landing, Yael jumped out and Kishote followed her. “I’ll walk up from here,” he said. “The next jump could be worse, and I’m a coward.”
She laughed and kissed his cheek. “What do we do tomorrow, and when do we start?”
“Anything you say.”
Kishote struck Yael, all at once, as very young and forlorn, no Sam Pasternak by a light year. “Sorry I’m not Shayna Matisdorf.”
“Well, so am I, Yael, but you’re a good sport.”
“Know what? Let’s climb the Eiffel Tower, Kishote.” She put on a gay air
. “And maybe have breakfast up there, if there’s a restaurant.”
“You’re on. Call my room in the morning.”
“There are no room phones, just one on each floor.”
“Right. Like the toilets. Okay, bang on my door. It’s number 517, just two away from the toilet. Real luxury.”
***
Barak and Pasternak shared a room in a hotel off the Étoile, about halfway in quality between the George Cinq and L’Hôtel Feydeau. For instance, the room had a toilet, and Pasternak plunged straight for it when he got back from a conference in a suburban villa about midnight. Barak was lounging on a twin bed in underwear and a heavy bathrobe, reading Paris-Soir. Without explanation, a Dayan aide had told him he would not be needed at the conference. “Well, what happened?” he called. “Are we going to war?”
“Hold on.” Pasternak came out after a while shaking his head. “The Frenchmen served us some strange creatures for dinner with claws and feelers, sort of like scorpions. Écrevisses. In a rich sauce. I almost died during the second meeting. Or maybe it was just nervous stomach. The Old Man staggered everybody, even Dayan.” He lay back on a bed, cradling his head on his arms. “What about your dinner with Chris Cunningham? How did you explain being in Paris?”
“I didn’t explain. He didn’t ask. His wife’s charming, an aristocrat.”
“Yes, a noble lady, Caroline. How about the daughter and her boyfriend? That poet?”
“The girl’s grown up sort of striking, in a strange skinny way. All bones. The boyfriend showed up after dinner, had Cointreau and coffee with us, then took her away.”
“What’s he like?”
“A catastrophe. Hiroshima in a trench coat. I’m having breakfast with the daughter tomorrow, unless I’m wanted out at the villa. I’m supposed to reason with her about life and love. That emerged from the dinner. The girl’s idea.”
“Well, it looks like we’re not going to war. I couldn’t have been more wrong.” Pasternak sat up. “I’m feeling better. In fact, hungry. Either the Old Man is a political genius beyond my understanding, or he’s clear off his head. Why don’t we go to Montmartre? Have some drinks and something to eat?”
“Sam, I don’t want to go to Montmartre. It’s full of tourists and weird characters staring at each other. There are bistros around here.”
“Not open now. Get dressed.”
“Okay. Tell me about the conference.”
“You won’t believe me, though I’ll tell God’s truth and nothing else. This whole Suez thing’s like a comedy written by a guy smoking hashish.”
“It has been right along.”
“Well yes, but it’s getting crazier. I don’t think anybody knows what he’s doing, except maybe B.G. He baffles me.” He glanced around at the walls and lowered his voice. “More, outside.”
When they emerged into a silent foggy side street and walked toward the nearest boulevard, Pasternak resumed his account. The three top men of France had shown up at the villa first—Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister; smooth, gracious, well-disposed to Israel, even admiring. In return for their arms supplies they had been learning many secrets about Israel’s military capabilities, and they seemed a bit dazzled, Pasternak said, probably because they hadn’t expected much from a country of little over a million people. The conference had begun with chitchat about Suez, Nasser, the Americans, and so on. Then the Frenchmen had invited Ben Gurion to speak first about the proposed operations.
“You know the Old Man,” said Pasternak. “It took him a while to get wound up. But when those Frenchmen grasped what he was driving at, they looked at each other stunned. Absolutely flattened. First he asserted that Egypt’s grabbing the Suez Canal was just a detail. A comprehensive solution of the regional problem was needed, so he would offer a new concept that would restore British and French power in the region. Then Nasser would wither on the vine, or easily get forced out.”
Pasternak stopped walking and touched Barak’s arm. “Now what comes next beats everything.”
“Well, at this point nothing will surprise me.”
“Okay, then listen. B.G.’s great concept was that Jordan wasn’t a real country and should be partitioned! It was just a diagram on the map of Ottoman Palestine, drawn by mistake by the British Foreign Office. Everything east of the Jordan River should go to Iraq, everything west to Israel. The British sphere of influence would be Greater Iraq, Iran, and Egypt. For the French, the solid bloc of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Zev, he seemed dead serious with this meshugas.”
Barak shook his head. “I believe he was. I’ve known him since I was a boy. Finding himself sitting with the three most powerful men in France—talking to them as an equal, a Prime Minister, just went to his head. He was intoxicated. He thought he was Roosevelt at Yalta, carving up the world.”
“Either that, or he was throwing them off balance, talking deliberate nonsense,” Pasternak said, “while he took their measure, and got ready to make his real demand—that all three forces attack simultaneously.”
Standing under a haloed streetlight, Pasternak hailed a passing cab. The driver looked about eighty years old, with a bushy Clemenceau mustache, and eyebrows like two more mustaches. “Ata m’daber ivrit?” Pasternak inquired. The driver’s unfocussed blank look satisfied Pasternak that he didn’t know Hebrew. “Bien. Montmartre.”
They got in, and he went on. “Well, their Prime Minister said they had better stick to the Suez question. The English might pull out unless we moved fast, because Eden was already catching hell in Parliament, and his Foreign Office opposed any action that might irritate the Arabs. We only had Anthony Eden with us, and he was a sick man and weakening.”
“Anthony Eden,” spoke up the driver in hoarse French, “is an enemy of France and a homosexual.”
“Justement,” said Barak.
“The guy B.G. really angered was the Foreign Minister,” Pasternak continued. “That man got vehement. If the British were provoked to back out at this crucial moment by such bizarre proposals, he said, Nasser would become unshakeable, stronger than ever, and out to become the new Saladin by destroying Israel. He urged B.G. to bear that in mind. That’s when the Englishmen arrived at the villa.”
The cab stopped at the foot of the Montmartre hill. Inquiry in crack-voiced French: “Monsieur desires that I ascend?”
“No, from here we walk.” They got out and Pasternak paid the fare.
With a glittery look and a snarling lift of his mustache, the driver said, “Monsieur, Dreyfus was guilty.” The cab jolted away.
“Cognac, right now,” said Pasternak, and they went into a dark little boîte and sat as far as they could from the only other customers, two dim bulky shapes talking in American accents.
“When I say the Englishmen arrived,” Pasternak resumed, “I mean there was a lot of bustling in and out of the big main room, and some British voices off in another part of the villa. We could hear two words being repeated over and over: ‘No collusion, no collusion.’ The English wouldn’t come into the same room with us. The French ministers had to go running back and forth, one end of the villa to the other, and it’s a big villa. The British were like rabbis, we were like ladies, and the villa was an Orthodox synagogue. Strict separation.”
Barak ruefully laughed. “Are you saying Ben Gurion never met them face to face?”
“Oh, leave it to the Old Man. This crazy shuttling by the Frenchmen went on for about an hour. Finally B.G. said there was no point going on with this peculiar business, it was a deadlock, and he’d fly home in the morning. That brought the rabbis into the ladies’ section. They even shook hands.”
“Through a handkerchief, no doubt,” said Barak.
“This is pretty raw cognac. Let’s move on. Let’s eat something.”
As they started to climb the crooked cobbled street, Pasternak said, “There was a point after that when I thought Ben Gurion really would walk out. He looked within an inch of it. You know, when that jaw juts forward an
d he turns all pink and can’t sit still—”
“I know it well.”
“He was urging the English Foreign Minister, Selwyn Lloyd—square face, a cold fish, or maybe he just felt chilly in the ladies’ section—to advance the date of the landing in Suez. The French were all for that. But the British insist they won’t land until about a week after we invade Sinai. B.G. argued that we’d be fighting alone all that time. The Egyptians could bomb our cities. The Russians might even intervene. Well, Lloyd said he was sorry about that, but England couldn’t be seen as starting a war, her allies would disapprove. B.G. was gripping the arms of his chair with white knuckles, the way he does, when fortunately the French invited us to dine on those écrevisses.”
Pasternak halted and peered through an open doorway into a brightly lit smoky place, where an accordion played and a few people at the tables discordantly sang. “La Vache Heureuse,” he said. “The Happy Cow. I once had a good steak here. Off an unhappy cow, I guess. Feel like a steak?”
“If you do.”
Pasternak was almost through the door when he stopped. “No. I see that fellow Lee Bloom in there. No need for him to know we’re in Paris.” He stood squinting through the smoke. “Very pretty redhead he’s with. I think I recognize her.”
“Sam, I think you recognize most women.”
“No, I met that woman in California. Yes, that’s her. Connors. Isobel Connors, she’s an actress. She was a blonde then. I’m sure it’s her. Well, let’s move on.”
Seven or eight young people came roistering down the hill, laughing and shouting in German. The two Israelis trudged up past them in silence. Then Barak asked, “So, the outcome?”
“Deadlock. The British want us to commit a real act of war. The Old Man will only do a raid against the fedayeen, and he wants them to start bombing the Egyptian airfields the day after we go. The British say no, that’ll look like collusion.”
“Then we fly home in the morning?”
“Not yet. Dayan ad-libbed a compromise plan that they’ll take up tomorrow. Ah, here we are, Les Rieurs Amants, The Laughing Lovers. Great place. I once saw Hemingway in here. While I was eating, a lion leaped in through the door and he killed it. They do very good coq au vin.”