by Herman Wouk
It’s quite unlikely I’d have come to know Major Smith if you hadn’t delivered him to my doorstep, as it were. I’ve never met his older brother who lives near here. Jack stayed with him only a week or two before moving into digs in Arlington. But thanks to you Jack saw that portrait of me in the foyer that Hester Laroche painted (she was for a long time—chastely but passionately—my girlfriend), and it reminded him of his girl who got away. He’s been paying me rather prim low-key court ever since. I think the girl who got away damaged his spirit for romance. He’s no Hiroshima for ineffectuality, but truly girl-shy, and that’s strange because Dad reports he’s regarded in the army as a fireball.
There’s no way I could love Jack, amiable and manly as he is. For concerts, theater, tennis, horseback, and such he’s just great, and he’s a good dancer, too. I’ve never danced much before. I date very little. Most guys are nuisances. As for you and me, these things at bottom make no sense, I daresay, but I’ve pretty well puzzled it out so far as one can. It’s all one-sided, obviously, except for an eerie and possibly wishful sense I have that it won’t always be.
You were the first Israeli I ever laid eyes on or talked to. You correspond with Dad, so I’m sure you’ve sized him up by now. He’s a Jekyll and Hyde, a tough brilliant intelligence man, totally down-to-earth and infinitely skeptical, suspicious, and cynical, with an obsession about the Soviet Union. He is also a religious visionary who some people would consider a nut, his ideas are so fundamentalist and millenarian. What my comparative religion prof used to call “chiliastic.” Dad thinks we’re in the Latter Days, and that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land is the Sign, the Hope. He is wholly mystical about the way the Jews have risen from the ashes of Auschwitz and marched back to Jerusalem as Joshua’s warriors reborn. There’s nothing in history to match it, he maintains, nothing natural about it, it’s the religious turn in world affairs called forth by the nuclear age. Those views aren’t in his intelligence estimates of course, but that’s the man. It’s what I’ve been hearing ever since Israel was founded.
And on the famous night of the fireflies, there you were; also Major Pasternak, but I saw only you with your bent arm, invested with all the glory and glamor of my father’s visions. That was before you spoke a word. Then when you talked up to him at the table, and after that when we had that conversation on the terrace—which I could write out to this day, word for word—I was hooked, or more exactly transfixed, shot through with Cupid’s arrow, a poor skinny nothing of a mouthy little twelve-year-old.
Now, what do I want of you?
Just to correspond. Okay? Do you believe me? Hester Laroche went back to Oregon after college, married a local banker’s son, and already has two children, but we still write to each other at least once a week, sometimes more often. I’m her secret life while she goes on with what’s expected of her in her hometown, and what on the whole she enjoys and is happy with. Not much talk of Mahler or Laura Riding or John Donne (we used to read Donne aloud to each other, sweet thunder that is!) or Plutarch, who we discovered together is endlessly deep, wise, and entertaining. We tell each other small things too about dresses and cooking and the weather and what’s blooming in the gardens. It’s lovely. A letter arriving from Hester brightens my day.
Can’t we try to do that, Wolf? Is there anything harmful in it? You may not have much to write about to me, but I’m dying to write to you. I seem to be going nowhere with Jack Smith, but soon or late I know I’ll do just what Hester has done, find some guy who’ll do. Meantime I’m in no hurry at all. I love the girls at Foxdale and I love my work there. It’s an enchanting place. If you answer and we start to write I’ll tell you about it. I just want to know that you’re there. I’m here.
Love,
Emily Cunningham
Same hurried almost vertical hand, t’s uncrossed and letters skipped, yet quite clear, with generous wide curves of the loops. The girl’s claim that one kiss in a hotel room was a watershed in her life struck him as affected, a bit laughable, and a bit sad. By this time Emily was far from his thoughts, though he had never entirely forgotten her. A year and a half of intense army reorganization and field exercises based on the lessons of the Sinai campaign, the press of family matters—the move to a larger flat, the illnesses and schooling of the children, a failed pregnancy of Nakhama’s, Michael’s troubled courtship of his irreligious Lena—and the border incidents and internal political shenanigans that filled the days in Israel: all these things had long since eclipsed the strange moods and incidents of the faded KADESH time.
“What’s funny, Abba?” Noah popped into the tiny back room Barak used as an office, and found him still smiling.
“Oh, nothing. Comical letter from a friend in America.”
“Here’s another reason to smile, then. I’ve been accepted in the Reale School.”
The father jumped up and hugged the boy, who had grown a foot since his bar mitzvah and now had the suspicion of a mustache. His face was changing too. The Berkowitz bones were beginning to show through Nakhama’s oval soft features; lengthening jaw, deepening eye sockets, and the brown eyes looking wiser, yet with a new touch of adolescent shyness. The Haifa premilitary academy was the best in Israel, the doorway to the army elite.
“They told me in school today. Proud of me?” Noah still peered up at his father, though at the rate he was growing Barak thought his son might look him straight in the eye in a year or so. The fresh-colored boyish face glowed.
“Couldn’t be prouder.”
When Noah left, Barak sat down at his desk and studied Cunningham’s response about tanks. It was not encouraging. Containment of the Soviet Union was now the one theme of American policy, he wrote, and the Arabs were such a weak link in that policy that the planners had to be wary of any move that might offend them. On this point Cunningham quoted at some length Major John Smith, who was now in army war plans. Smith was not pro-Jewish or anti-Jewish, the CIA man wrote, and he was quite hardheaded about Nasser, seeing him as a mere charismatic upstart riding a streak of political luck. But, Cunningham went on,
Jack calls Israel “a small thorn in the flesh of the Arab world, causing some political pus and bound to be extruded after some years of inflammation and pain.” Jack’s prevailing school of thought at the Pentagon considers Israel a passing historical accident in the Middle East, created by world revulsion at the Nazi massacres and President Truman’s pro-Jewish sympathies. When I try to argue that the Jews themselves are a historical accident that’s lasted three thousand years and more, and ordinary logic doesn’t apply to them, Jack smiles at what he considers my religious loose screw.
You should get to know Smith. He’s a sound fellow, and a comer in the army. Israel has to reckon with such officers and their ideas. They are pragmatic patriots in the mold of George Marshall, a very great man who thought Truman’s policy in Israel a serious mistake and opposed it to the last. In fact, I think you or somebody like you should enroll here in any army course they’ll admit you to—something nonclassified like armor or artillery. There’s a professional respect here for your Sinai victory. Once here, you could start softening the hard-frozen ground for a small initial purchase of stockpiled old Shermans. Even that could take years. Ike is essentially unforgiving about Suez, thought casual comment he has grudgingly commended Israel’s good-faith withdrawal, and the technical skill of the campaign.
Barak showed Cunningham’s reply to Dayan, who had finished his tour as Chief of Staff and was studying Middle Eastern affairs at Hebrew University. General or civilian, Dayan remained the number-one army figure. “Good idea,” said Dayan. “We could use those Shermans. Go ahead and do as he suggests.”
“Apply to armor school, you mean?”
“Absolutely. The Americans lead the field. Professional advancement for you, Zev, and maybe you’ll break the ice on procuring tanks, at that.” Dayan gave him an appraising glance with a half-closed eye. “You’re a fellow who might just do it.”
“You fl
atter me, sir.”
“No, I don’t,” said Dayan.
So Barak applied to the armor school at Fort Knox, Kentucky, for the next opening, a course starting in 1960, nearly two years off. Command of his brigade now happily preoccupied him; much could happen in two years, so he put the prospect from mind.
As for Emily’s “billet-doux,” Barak tore it up and tried to put it from mind as well. But he could picture the girl’s disappointment—not that she was exactly a girl anymore, must be getting into her twenties—at finding not a word of acknowledgment from him, day by day and week by week. Her acerb charm had pervaded the letter. Almost, as he had read the words, he had heard her tense hurried voice. That voice continued to echo at odd moments, self-assured yet plaintive: “I just want to know you’re there. I’m here…”
At last he sat down to dash off something.
Dear Emily:
I got your very nice “billet-doux.” When I delivered Jack Smith to your doorstep, as you put it, he and I had quite a talk, driving down from West Point. He’s an able man, and I can’t think he’ll be “girl-shy” any longer than he deems proper. He’s also quite good-looking. My guess would be that you’ll decide he’ll do.
I now command an armor brigade, and am out to make it the best in the army. My son Noah, whom you liked, has been admitted to our most select high school. All is well with us.
Interesting that two American college girls discovered Plutarch together. I still read Plutarch almost every night. The paperbound copy I picked up in the British army is falling apart. If I had to choose three books to have with me on a desert island, no problem. Bible in Hebrew, Shakespeare, Plutarch.
I’m not much of a letter writer, but I’ll be glad to hear from you once in a great while. Why not? You can address your own envelopes. Nakhama isn’t nosy about my mail, she has enough on her mind without that. Two children, a new larger apartment we can’t really afford on army pay, and so on. I don’t consider your father a nut, but you’re not far from one. If I took you seriously I wouldn’t be answering you. You’re very lovely, and very nice, and the fellow to make you happy is on his way to you, if he isn’t Major Smith.
Sincerely,
Barak didn’t like this letter much, but to cut off the echoing voice he mailed it, and it worked. “That girl” dimmed from mind.
***
After a year their correspondence was an ongoing if sporadic one, consisting mostly of her letters.
September 22, 1960
Dearest Zev—
I’ve a world to tell you this time—Hester tried to kill herself and I’ve been out in Oregon visiting her—but before I get into that, I’m sorry as hell that you have to drop out of that armor course. I’ve been counting the months and lately the weeks, but you’ve done the right thing, no choice. Of course you can’t leave Nakhama at such a time. At least she has a chance to keep the baby, although staying bedridden for months is a lousy prospect. Please please give her my deepest wishes for full recovery and a marvellous baby. Sorry, I’m not interested in meeting the officer who’s coming in your stead. He’s not you. Finis.
Well, about Hester, what a mess! I can’t imagine that you’ve saved my letters, but if you have, tear them up! I never think when I write, I just pour it out, as you know by now. Her husband came on a packet of our correspondence and was scandalized, mostly by an unfinished letter of hers which was very warm. “Wish I could feel your dear arms around me,” and such. Also a sweet poem. Doesn’t mean a thing, Zev, girl stuff, but it doesn’t go in Eugene, Oregon. There was a big fight, and Hester tried to hang herself on a chandelier that you couldn’t hang a dog on, and it came down with a crash on top of her. I don’t mean hang a collie, I mean a poodle, I saw the chandelier, it’s been put back, really flimsy. Well, then Bruce, that’s the husband, was all tears and contrition. The thing was hushed up, and he bought her a Mercedes convertible, and I was invited out there to show that he understood and there were no hard feelings or suspicions left.
He’s a nice enough man but very dull. Hester has painted about a thousand canvases, I guess to keep from going crazy, they’re piled waist-high in her attic. Portraits of her kids, landscapes of Oregon scenery—a fabulous state, Oregon—but most of them are ghastly abstracts that hint at a disordered mind. Hester was never thin, the girls at school used to call us Laurel and Hardy, but she’s really ballooned. But that’s not why the chandelier came down. She couldn’t have been serious, heavy as she is, jumping off a chair and expecting that chandelier to do her in. It’s a mercy she didn’t bring down the whole ceiling. Hester just isn’t happy.
SO, my fine feathered friend, as we used to say as kids, don’t you dare keep on with this stuff about my getting married! What’s the matter, guilty conscience about these stupid letters, four of mine to every one of yours? I’ll get married when I’m goddamn good and ready, and that may be never! I’m quite okay as I am. So stop harping on that dreary note, it’s the one thing in your cautious avuncular letters that really burns me up. I’m delighted that your armor brigade won the Defense Ministry citation for excellence, but that must occur with everything you touch.
Your dropping out of the armor course is the tip-off on you and me. Pure fate! We’re destined to conduct a Shaw-Terry correspondence, no more—I hesitate to say Héloïse and Abélard—which gets torn up as it goes, so that only we two get to enjoy it, not the whole bloody snoopy world. Shaw met Terry just once backstage in a crowd, you know. There’s no record that he kissed her, so I’m one up on Ellen Terry, and can let it go at that. The truth is I absolutely love loving you from a distance. I’ve gotten used to it. So stay away since that’s how the good Lord clearly wants it, and just lay off the marriage jazz, okay?
Jack Smith, by the way, is back in the picture. He got to squiring a beautiful army brat after he and I drifted apart, and it surely looked like orange blossoms for half a year. Jack was sort of old for her, but he’s making a name in the army, and I suppose she was flattered and just enjoyed gaffing him and then throwing him back. It takes all kinds. So now he’s been burned twice, a shaken fellow, but it isn’t affecting his career. I suppose I rate as an old friend who at least won’t hurt him, and we do have good times.
Are you following our election over there? Kennedy is all glamor and grace but I’m not sure of his specific gravity. Nixon is a glowering climber nobody likes, he’s just Ike’s boy. But he’s able. Years ago, running with Ike for vice president, he got in a corner with the uncovering of some kind of illegal fund he had, and he looked to be finished. But he battled his way out with a mushy TV speech about his wife and his dog Checkers, a right slick performance. The Jews here are all against him, being mostly liberals, so I guess you Israelis also are for Kennedy. Though I’m not sure how you relate to American Jews, you really seem different breeds of cat.
By the way, not that it’s my business, but is there anything to all this newspaper talk about an Israeli nuclear reactor? Big vague fuss here. Nasser threatening to mobilize six million men and march in to destroy it, and all that. Should I worry?
Well, that’s it for now. You have no idea, dear old Zev, how much reluctant affection seeps through those few careful lines of yours. By now you believe me. You know I’m neither ordinary nor silly, and you value my regard. As you should. Love is the rarest gift this melancholy existence affords. You should hear my father read romantic poetry out loud sometimes, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Browning, Swinburne. He seems a stick, but I believe he and I have much the same nature. He’s channelled it into patriotism, and he’s happy enough with my mother, but there’s capped turbulence there.
Anyhow I herewith sign off with unchanged reasonably pure love. My dreams are my own affair. I’ll give Anatomy of Melancholy a try, since you urge me, but the title has always put me off. Anyway I don’t really believe there’s a book to compare to Plutarch. However, since Uncle Zev says so—
All yours,
Emily
31 December 1960
Dearest Emily:
There, I break down and call you dearest. Enough already with the caution.
Nakhama’s had a girl, a big beautiful kid, eight and a half pounds, and they’re both fine! So now we have one boy and two girls, and that’s it for Nakhama. She had a rotten time, but now we’re very happy, though we both wanted another boy. The girls fight in this country but it’s the boys we hand the torch to. I hope by the time this baby grows up the Arabs will have gotten over their delusion that we will ever leave, or that they can drive us out. But it looks like a long pull, and it may soon be Noah’s turn to take up the torch. If he has to, he’ll hold it high.
I’m writing at 11 at night and snow is falling on Jerusalem outside my window. You call this New Year’s Eve. It’s not a holiday here for us, we had our New Year in September, in fact the day you wrote me about Hester Laroche and the chandelier. Here this day is called Sylvester, some minor saint’s day. The American tourists get drunk, blow horns, and throw colored paper around. We go about our business.
That’s a real horror story about your poor fat friend and the chandelier, her thousand paintings, and her boring husband, but the way you wrote it I kept laughing. That’s very Israeli, you know, making laughter out of the awful things that go on here. I’m happy enough and fulfilled enough, at this moment, to tell you that I return your affection, not at all in the same way, not with the tricksiness (is that good English?) which is your trademark, and not at all like my love for Nakhama, which is my life. I couldn’t have predicted you, but I appreciate your letters and your feelings. George Bernard Shaw I’m not. Abélard God forbid I should be. I haven’t much to say to you, Emily, for obvious reasons, and if you sense affection between the lines let it go at that.