by Herman Wouk
Lee Bloom smiled and patted her shoulder. “Yael, that’s pretty sharp, that’s just what Cookie calls it, a Jewish High Noon.”
“Well, but, Lee, Sheva doesn’t approve of your getting into the movie business, and he’s very leery of venturing money himself.”
“Sheva’s a business genius, but he’s old-fashioned. The tax write-offs in films are the point he misses.”
“Sheva doesn’t miss anything. He says movies are dreams, and manufacturing dreams isn’t for serious people.”
Lee Bloom shook his head. His high-styled mane of graying hair fell away from his bald spot, and he smoothed the hair back in place. “Wrong. Making film product is a serious business, Yael, like land development. Very similar, actually, as I see it. You need a piece of ground, that’s the story property. A construction plan, that’s the script. Building materials, that’s stars, actors, settings. A builder, that’s the director. And a client, that’s the distributor.” Lee was speaking now in great earnest, piercing the air with a forefinger. “And money, of course. That’s the same. The one-year write-off, there’s the big difference! It’s tremendous, Yael. If the risk goes sour, you write off the film fast, it’s gone, and the IRS has taken most of the gamble. Whereas an empty building stands there, eating taxes and deteriorating. Sheva won’t see it, but—well, Joe, feeling better?”
He and Yael both chuckled as Kishote appeared in a fuzzy yellow bathrobe much too short for him, his head damp and unkempt. “So, Lee, what’s this I hear, you’re going into the movie business now?”
“It’s a possibility.” Lee turned solemn. “Nowadays you have to diversify.”
“Look here, Yossi,” said Yael, “if your flight departs at nine, that’s the height of the rush hour. We’ll have to leave here at five, and you’ll have no time at all with Aryeh. Why don’t I go and get him out of school early?”
“Do it.”
She left the brothers looking at each other in an awkward silence. Lee spoke first. “Kind of a wild trip, Joe. Just like you.”
“What’s Yael got to do with movies, Lee?”
“Nothing. She has a good business head, and Sheva wanted her to size up Greengrass.”
“Quite a house she’s rented here,” Kishote said, glancing around.
“Actually, she’s buying it.”
“She is?” Yossi yawned.
“Joe, I think you should get some sleep.”
“I will. Is she making that kind of money?”
“I’m cosigning the mortgage.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“Well, Sheva has an iron rule against going on notes, and I know she’s valuable to him. Sheva’s a deep one. I suspect he’s more interested in films than he lets on. He’ll listen to Yael, and Greengrass made an impression on her.”
“He made an impression on me. He should be rendered down for whale oil.”
“Well, he wouldn’t qualify for your tank brigade,” Lee returned jovially, “but he’s a nice Jewish boy and he’s going places.” Kishote yawned widely and rubbed his eyes. “Joe, go lie down. I’m leaving. It’s great seeing you again. I don’t have to say how proud of you I am. We all are. Sheva thinks the world of you. Have a good flight.”
Alone, Kishote went wandering through the house. Ten times the space of their flat back home, fine new furniture (was she buying that, too?), several bedrooms and baths, a smooth front lawn bordered by red-flowering bushes, a walled garden with a pool and a slide, swings, palm trees, and lemon and orange trees studded with fruit. In the biggest bedroom, pictures on the dresser: himself and Benny, in uniform and much younger, an inscribed picture of Moshe Dayan—“To pretty Yael, from Uncle Moshe”—and not too surprisingly, an early picture of Sam Pasternak, thin and with plenty of hair. Drop in on a woman without warning, and accept the consequences! The largest picture was of Aryeh as a baby in her arms, in a silver frame. Kishote did not snoop in closets or drawers. From what was visible, Yael either had no fellow or she made her trysts elsewhere.
Aryeh’s room cheered Kishote. His latest picture, taken on his promotion to lieutenant colonel, was on the boy’s little desk. There was no other in the room. On the walls were bright El Al posters of Jerusalem, Eilat, and Haifa. Noticing the edge of a photograph that was tucked under the desk blotter, he pulled it out and it gave him a turn; an old yellowed boardwalk snapshot of himself and Shayna on the Tel Aviv beachfront.
“ABBA!” Aryeh leaped on him, waking him from an involuntary doze in an armchair. “Abba! Abba!” The boy hugged and kissed him, babbling his joy in Hebrew. Yael stood regarding them with a melancholy smile. “Kishote, don’t sit around in that silly bathrobe. If you’re not going to sleep—”
“I’ll sleep on the plane, what else is there to do? Come with me, Aryeh, while I get dressed.”
“I got all A’s on my report card, except in American history,” exulted Aryeh. “It’s a stupid school, and the kids are all stupid, all they talk about is sports and television. I even got the third highest mark in English, and besides—”
“Talk to Abba in English, why don’t you?” said Yael. “Show him what you’ve learned.”
Ignoring her, Aryeh said, “Abba, are you really flying home tonight? Why? Stay with us.”
“You’ll ride with me to the airport,” said Kishote. “I have to go back to my brigade, Aryeh.”
“He’s not riding with us,” said Yael, “unless he does some homework first.”
“You hear Imma? Go to your room, Aryeh, and get busy,” said Kishote. “We’ll still have time to talk.”
“Abba, I hate it here.” Aryeh kissed him again and scrambled out.
“He knows what you want him to say,” Yael observed with a twist of her mouth. “Are you hungry?”
“Sit down, Yael. Lee says you’re buying this house.”
“I told you about it in Washington.”
“Not that I recall. So you’re settling here for good?”
“What makes you say that? In California you buy a house and sell it two years later, motek, for a fifty percent profit. It makes more sense than renting, that’s all.”
“Okay, two more years. That’ll make four years in all. You’re definitely coming home then?”
Yael sat on the edge of the long modernistic beige couch, looking at him and not replying. All at once she burst out, “Stop trying to pin me down, Yossi! If I make enough so that we don’t have to live like dogs anymore, yes! Otherwise, what’s another year or so? I can’t get anything done back home, I choke among those shleppers! Here it’s like a gold rush, you don’t know which opportunity to grab at first! I’ll come home when I’m good and ready, all right? When I can provide us and Aryeh with a decent life, which an army officer, much as I respect the army, can’t do.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have a divorce? Then you wouldn’t have to choke among the shleppers at all.”
Yael’s face showed real shock; wide eyes, open mouth, sudden pallor. “Is that what you want?”
“I want my boy home with his mother.”
“Yossi, we made an agreement, and—”
“That was temporary.”
“Did Shayna Matisdorf ever marry that rabbi’s son?”
Kishote’s turn to look startled. “What kind of idiotic side issue is that?”
“Well, did she or didn’t she? He’s in your brigade, or he was.”
“He served his sadir, and he’s out. I think I’d have heard if they married.”
“I suggest you get a little rest, then we’ll have a bite.” Yael stood up. “You’re very, very tired. You look worn out. Talk like this hurts me, but I’m happy to see you. Aryeh loves you and so do I, whatever you may think—”
“Then don’t buy this place. Come home. We live modestly in the army but not like dogs. That’s no way to talk, and never talk that way around my son, Yael, do you hear?”
“Yossi, listen, this sudden jump in and out of Los Angeles is plain craziness. Surely the army will extend your leave! Put o
ff your flight and let’s talk when your head is a little clearer. And Aryeh will be so happy!”
He got up and clumsily put an arm around her. “You have a point, but I can’t do it. Trouble in my sector again.”
“What, the water war? You told me the Syrians were beaten and quit.”
“They’re trying something new. Look, I’ll go talk with Aryeh in his room. Okay? Forgive the homework. He’ll get it done.”
“He’s your son. Go ahead.”
Later the cook-maid went looking for Yael, and found her at her dressing-table mirror, staring at herself. In her broken Spanish-English she inquired whether the colonel would be staying for dinner. Yael made no sign of having heard, so the puzzled woman repeated the question. Turning a drawn face to her, Yael told her to forget about dinner, they were all going to the airport and would have a bite there before the colonel flew off.
20 July 1966
Dearest Queenie:
Well, it’s on. The die is cast. I report to our Washington embassy in October, and Nakhama and the girls will join me in January.
I’ve written you before about our bizarre “War for the Water” with Syria, and it appears to be coming to a climax. General Rabin is insistent that I’ll be particularly useful in Washington in this precarious time, so I’ve saluted and said, “At your orders, sir.” There’s a sort of understanding that I’ll get commander, Central Command, as my next post, but it’s nothing to count on.
To borrow your colorful phrase, Nakhama is happy as a clam about this. It’s a struggle for her to run a decent home here and also dress and cope with two growing girls on army wages. She’s had to take a part-time job in a jewelry shop, actually, to make ends meet. On the living and housing allowances of the attaché she feels she’ll be rolling in luxury, though by U.S. standards the money is still pretty modest. The girls too are excited about America, though not so happy about leaving their friends. Their English is passable, so we’ll put them straight into school, and I’m sure they’ll make new friends quickly. The other embassy kids usually do.
There you have it, Queenie, and unless your Lieutenant Colonel Halliday shows up meantime, we’ll be seeing a little more of each other than heretofore. Will our relationship survive this, or does it thrive only on starvation, distance, and pen and ink? We’ll soon know, won’t we?
Yours,
Wolf
August 1st, 1966
Wolf!
I’m all but wordless with shocked joy. No hair nor hide of Lt. Col. Halliday, though it wouldn’t matter a curse if he were camping on my doorstep. You know that. A Mahler cycle is on for the National Symphony, Sept.-Dec., and I do believe I’ll subscribe for the two of us, okay? Word out to all Virginia fireflies: “New orders, flash in the fall.”
A toi,
Queenie
PART FOUR
Six Days
32
Casus Belli
The so-called War for the Water went on sporadically for years, and if one gropes for the origins of the famous Six-Day War of 1967 it is not a bad starting point.
In 1964, three years before that celebrated war exploded, the Israelis completed their National Water Carrier, a north-to-south conduit of canals, tunnels, and pipelines some eighty miles long, bringing River Jordan water to the Negev Desert. The Arabs perceived this as a threat, for it would increase the usable land in Israel and therefore the influx of Jews; so the Syrians set to work diverting the Jordan tributaries in their territory in order to dry up the carrier.
Tank duels across the border ensued. As the Israeli marksmanship improved, knocking out the tractors and dredgers digging the diversion canals, the Syrians moved their machines farther and farther from the Israeli border, until the equipment was beyond the range of tank guns and could dig away at dams and canals with impunity. For there was a tacit understanding in the region that activation of the Israeli air force in the water conflict might lead to real war.
Enter Colonel Israel Tal, a wiry dark sabra no taller than Napoleon, who took over the armored corps from Dado Elazar, and improved and trained up his tanks to shoot and hit the earth-moving machinery far outside their tested range. After some furious gun battles that ensued the diversion project was dropped, but the water war did not end there. The balked Syrians instead turned to intensive shelling of the Galilee farms and kibbutzim from the lofty cliffs of the Golan Heights, where Israeli tanks could not readily hit them back. Ben Gurion’s cautious successor, Levi Eshkol, at last sent the air force to suppress once for all the artillery bombardment of the Galilee villages, knowingly risking war with the Arabs and even possible Soviet intervention.
The date of this reprisal attack was April 7, 1967. The Syrian air force did in fact scramble its MiG-21s, the most powerful Soviet fighter plane at the time, and an Israeli squadron of lighter French Mirages shot down six of them without loss. This news caused a world stir. The Russians lost face, the UN scolded, the Arabs raged and threatened.
***
And in mid-May, in consequence, the Mirage squadron leader, Benny Luria, found himself in Los Angeles, as a star attraction at a United Jewish Appeal black-tie dinner dance for a thousand people. He was seated up on a long dais, flanked left and right by big givers, in UJA parlance. His sister Yael, at a front table with poor yawning Aryeh, was looking up at him with smiles which he could not return, for the situation at home was turning very ugly; and here he was, listening to UJA speeches and having to make one, too. His victory had touched off escalation on escalation. Egyptian armored divisions were now pouring into the Sinai Peninsula, Nasser was demanding that the UN peacekeeping force get out of its positions along the armistice lines, and on the TV, street mobs in Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus were howling, “Death to the Jews!” But the commander of a Mirage squadron had yet to go on speaking after the cherries jubilee, at dinners like this one in San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington. Benny had telephoned Zev Barak just before the dinner, to make sure no orders for his return had come in on the embassy teleprinter. No, nothing.
The other main speaker, a tall bald U.S. senator, was waving his arms and pounding the podium. “Now my friends, just a word about these new troop movements in Sinai. Three American Presidents—Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—have pledged that America will never let Israel be destroyed. This loud-mouthed Colonel Nasser is bluffing, as usual, and in my view the crisis will blow over, unless he makes the mistake of his life. In that case Israel will prevail!” (Standing ovation.)
The air ace, in a light dress uniform with no medals, rose to speak after a long flowery introduction by the banquet chairman. “I ask you all in this audience,” he began, “to rearrange your country a bit in your imagination. Start with Rhode Island, and surround it with some real big states. Say put Texas to the south, Illinois on the north, California on the west. The fourth border is the Atlantic Ocean, as now.
“Good, then behind those three states, my friends, put Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York; and let’s say all six are at war with Rhode Island, all in a pact to wipe it out and drive its people into the ocean.” Benny turned to the senator sitting beside him. “Mr. Senator, given that picture, it’s nice to have your assurance that Rhode Island will prevail.” The senator gave him a nonplussed half-smile. “Especially since to complete the picture, I’d have to put north of Illinois a superpower violently hostile to Rhode Island and committed to all-out military support for its enemies.” A pause. Sober faces all over the ballroom. “Fine. Now I’ll make my speech. Like the senator, my friends, I just wanted to cheer you up.” At his easy wide grin, the audience broke into laughter and applause.
“He’s good,” Lee Bloom said to Yael. “Where’d your brother learn to speak English like that?”
“A year in England. RAF staff college and engineering courses.”
“His accent is so charming,” said Mary Macready. “Like Charles Boyer.”
“Sh!” Sheva Leavis put a finger to his lips. He was not on the dais with the big givers. What Leav
is gave for any cause was never announced.
Benny Luria delivered his standard UJA talk, calculated to give American Jews a lift; old stuff, but not untrue. His theme: Israel had no strategic depth in territory, but the love and support of the world’s Jews provided a unique strategic depth of spirit and resources. Benny knew it was no use urging his hearers, as Ben Gurion interminably had done, to be real Zionists and come to Israel with their goods and their children. There sat his own sister, gone from Israel for years, and considering a divorce so that she could stay in America; Yael Luria of Nahalal, a reserve captain in the army, who called General Dayan “Dode Moshe”! What then was to be expected of these fortunate American Jews? Benny marvelled that they turned out in such vast numbers in city after city, and pledged so much money, and listened to an Israeli fighter pilot with such rapt faces and shining eyes.
He closed with a few terse words about his squadron’s victory. The Syrian MiGs were good warplanes and the Syrian pilots were competent and brave, but they had no strong motive to risk death. Their country was safe. Up there in the sky, everything depended on the pilot’s motivation, alone in his cockpit. Israeli pilots knew that their country could live or die by their own victories or defeats in the air. That was their edge in combat; that, and the training that went with it. No matter what the current crisis might bring, the air force would fulfill its mission, Clear skies over Israel.
The audience rose in prolonged applause, then the orchestra struck up a frug, and the ballroom floor became crowded with wriggling couples. Even Lee Bloom, somewhat on the paunchy side, was soon out there with his pretty wife, frugging away, and Aryeh was dancing with a gawky little girl in an evening dress. Yael turned to Sheva Leavis with a grin. “Well, this just leaves us.”
He held up a hand. Leavis was one of the few men in the ballroom who wore a skullcap, though in business hours and travelling he went bareheaded. With his lipless sliding smile he said, “Don’t suggest it. Don’t even think it.”