The Hope

by Herman Wouk

  This is the day the Lord has made.

  Let us rejoice and be glad in it…

  The face of the girl bending over him, which is the first thing Don Kishote blurrily sees upon opening his eyes, is not pretty at all: big nose, puffy cheeks, poor complexion, and disorderly lank black hair. “Doctor, I think this one may be conscious,” she exclaims. Stumbling Hebrew, American accent.

  A skinny man with very bushy hair, in a bloodstained white coat, comes beside her. “Are you conscious?” he inquires, taking Yossi’s wrist to feel his pulse.

  “I don’t know.” Yossi can hardly talk, his mouth and throat are dry as dust. “Are you a bad dream? It’s one or the other.”

  “He’s conscious,” says the doctor, “and snotty. Good sign. Firm pulse. Give him some more coagulant, and don’t let him out of bed.”

  “First please some water!”

  “Right, give him all he wants. I’ll look him over later. They’re bringing in another load from Jerusalem.” He hurries away.

  “You must be a nurse. Where am I?” says Kishote. She puts the cup to his lip. The water tastes marvellously sweet as he gulps it. “I have a hell of a headache.”

  “You’re in Tel Hashomer, Colonel. You were brought from the Sinai in a helicopter. You’re entitled to a headache, feel your head.”

  His hand encounters a mass of bandages. “Where are my glasses?”

  “They were smashed. Big pieces of glass were taken out of your forehead. It’s a miracle you didn’t lose an eye.”

  “Where’s my uniform?”

  “You won’t need it for a while.”

  “There are spare glasses in my pack. I have a feeling that you’re very beautiful, from the sound of your voice. I’d like to see you.”

  “You’ve got some nerve, Don Kishote.”

  “What? Do I know you?”

  She is opening a small locker at the foot of his bed. “Colonel, my brother is a tank driver in your brigade.”

  “He is?” Yossi says groggily. “His name?”

  “Hillel Horowitz.”

  “I know him. Big red mustache?”

  “That’s Hillel.”

  “Good boy. What’s happening in the war? What time is it? What day is it? What’s your name?”

  “In your pack, you say? Ah, glasses.” She hands them to him. “Here you are. My name is Dora and I’m not beautiful.”

  He has to slide the earpieces inside the bandages, a clumsy business, but he is glad to note that his arms and fingers are working normally. He blinks at her. “You look mighty pretty to me.” And so she does. Her eyes are gentle and she has a nice shy smile.

  The soldier in the next bed groans, turning over in his sleep; a master sergeant in uniform, with one arm in a sling. “That fellow was wounded in Jerusalem,” says Dora Horowitz. “A terrible battle’s gone on there all day, the Jerusalem hospitals are so full they’re sending casualties here. It’s Tuesday night, the sixth, about ten o’clock.” She picks up a clipboard. “Do you remember anything about getting wounded?”

  “Nothing. Now that you mention it I do remember a helicopter, but it’s like a dream.”

  “You were hit outside El Arish. The Sinai campaign is a big victory. We’re just now being told that the Arab air forces were all destroyed on the ground yesterday morning. So we’re winning the war, but the Jerusalem fighting is very bad.”

  “What about the Syrians?”

  “No news.”

  “I feel sleepy.”

  “Good. Sleep.”

  When he opens his eyes again, the master sergeant is spooning up soup from a bowl on a tray, looking very disgruntled. Kishote says, “B’ta’avon [Hearty appetite].”

  “Oh, you woke up? How’s your head, Colonel?”

  “No complaints, it’s on my shoulders. How’s the soup?”

  “Soup! To Azazel, this soup. My brigade is going for the Old City, where I was born, and here I am in this lousy bed eating soup.”

  “Which brigade?”

  “Fifty-fifth paratroopers.”

  Kishote sits up. His head swims. The darkened ward of thirty-odd beds crowded together circles slowly around him to the dissonant music of much snoring. Through an open window he sees stars.

  “Going for the Old City? Truly? Miracles! In Sinai we heard only rumors.”

  “My arm got smashed on Ammunition Hill, we ran into a rotten fight, I tell you. We were heading for Mount Scopus, maybe the guys are there by now.” On Mount Scopus, overlooking the Old City from the northeast, an enclave of abandoned Hebrew University buildings has been held by the Jews since the 1949 truce. “Me, I was saved by a miracle. It was black dark, I tripped on a stone and rolled downhill, and a second later a grenade landed right where I tripped. So I took shrapnel in my arm and that’s all. I should be scattered all over Ammunition Hill, just chunks of hamburger. You heard of the Ezrakh?”

  “I know the Ezrakh.”

  “Well, the Ezrakh blessed me before we started our break-in. That’s how come I tripped, I’m sure. I’m an atheist, but all the same it was a miracle.”

  The soldier describes the sudden transfer of the paratroopers to the Jerusalem front in busses, and their concentration in the old religious neighborhood of the Ezrakh. From there, he says, they attacked into no-man’s-land at two in the dark morning hours. In his boyhood in the Old City his family were neighbors of the Ezrakh, so he asked for his blessing before the attack. A couple of kind women in the Ezrakh’s building fed him sandwiches and coffee.

  Kishote alertly breaks in. “An old lady and a young one, you say?”

  “Well, my age. I knew her in the old neighborhood. Why?”

  “Did she have a kid with her?”

  “The kid was asleep. Not hers, she’s taking care of him.”

  “Look here,” says Don Kishote, roused by this chance of war, “what the devil are we doing in these beds when the Jewish army is going to liberate Old Jerusalem?” He gets up, steadying himself to the footlocker, and pulls out his uniform. “Let’s go there.”

  “I’ve been lying here thinking just that,” says Shmulik. “But will they let us out?”

  “Who’ll stop us? They’re too busy with the new casualties. We’ll get a ride with an army vehicle or find ourselves some wheels.”

  The dim-lit corridor is empty, but the bushy-haired doctor rounds a corner with Dora Horowitz and almost runs into them. She is carrying a sloshing bedpan. The doctor asks irritably, “Where do you two think you’re going?”

  “Just to the bathroom,” says Kishote. “He’s showing me the way.”

  “Why are you all dressed, suddenly?”

  “I’m modest.”

  “Get back to bed. She’ll take care of you.”

  “I’m too modest to use a bedpan,” says Kishote. “I won’t do anything.”

  “Listen, Lieutenant Colonel Nitzan, it was just a grazing wound, luckily for you, but you have a bad concussion. You were unconscious for hours, you may have a blood clot on the brain, or God knows what. You need a lot of tests. There’s no time for them now. Do you want to keel over dead?”

  “No, but I do want to use a toilet.”

  Another doctor appears. “Avi, we need you in Ward Four right away.”

  “Put them back to bed, Dora.” The two doctors hurry down the corridor.

  “Let’s go,” says Dora, taking Kishote’s arm.

  “Hamoodah,” says Kishote, “you said you’re not beautiful, but I’ll never forget the look in your eyes when I first came to. You have tender beautiful eyes. This guy is a fifth-generation Yerushalmi. We’re going to Old Jerusalem where his brigade is fighting.”

  She says with a severe frown at Shmulik, and an abrupt gesture that sends a splash from the bedpan, “Sergeant, are you crazy? What can you do with one arm? This Don Kishote wants to drop dead, that’s his business, but—”

  “I can do more with this one arm, nurse,” Shmulik flexes it, “than some guys can do with two. Shoot a gun, throw grenades—”


  “Before another doctor comes, Dora,” says Kishote, “help us get out of here. Which way, hamoodah?”

  Her eyes fill with tears. “I should never have come to this country. My brother Hillel talked me into it. I don’t have the strength. I can’t stand it…. The entrance is guarded, you’ll never get out. Follow me.” She leads them down a pitch-dark staircase, and they slip out into a paved lot where command cars, jeeps, and ambulances are parked here and there.

  “Ah, transportation,” says Kishote. “Let’s find one with keys—”

  “Pick your chariot, sir,” says the sergeant. “I can start anything that rolls.”

  “God help you both,” says the nurse.

  Yossi blows her a kiss. “I love you, and I’ll remember your eyes.” She is sobbing and smiling.

  ***

  Shayna’s Canadian boyfriend shows up at her flat in the dark morning hours, in a white bloody coat. “I have no medical experience whatever,” he says wearily, over the cup of coffee she presses on him. “You know that.”

  “Then what idiot assigned you to be an orderly at Hadassah?”

  “You want the whole story? I must be back at Ein Kerem by five o’clock. I just had to be sure you’re all right.”

  “Keep it low, that’s all.” She looks toward the sleeping Aryeh on the couch. Her mother is in the curtained-off double bed which they share. “I was terribly worried about you, Paul, you just disappeared.”

  “First of all, you sent me to the wrong agency. It’s for Israeli volunteers.”

  “God, how stupid of me.”

  “That’s okay. So I stood in a line where everyone was speaking Hebrew. I thought it was odd, no foreign volunteers. I figured I’m the one brave galutnik, good for me. When I got up to the desk, a girl tells me to go to a different agency, different building.”

  “I feel terrible about that.”

  “That? That was nothing. I went back to my car, I’d parked it in an empty lot, and someone had stolen the wheels.”

  “The wheels? Not the tires?”

  “The wheels. This other building wasn’t far, so—”

  “But the wheels!”

  “Yes. I walked there, and got on another line, everybody talking English. Lots of brave foreigners, after all. When I finally got to that desk, there was this irritable fat lady who asked for my passport. I said it was at the yeshiva, other side of town. ‘Well, go get it,’ she says. ‘You have a car, don’t you? Americans all have cars, not like us.’ I tell her yes, I have a car, but it’s sitting on its axles, somebody just stole the wheels. Well, Shayna, she blew up at me. ‘That’s nonsense,’ she snaps. ‘What a lame excuse! Anybody who can steal wheels is off at the front fighting. Go get your passport, and stop holding up the line.’”

  Shayna is trying not to laugh, but a subdued giggle bursts from her. “By your life, I believe it all.”

  “Why should I invent any of it? My car’s still in that lot, only now it has no headlights or fenders. I’m insured, it’s just a big nuisance. To make a long story short, I passed a building that a shell wrecked, and they were carrying injured people out. I helped the ambulance guys, and one of them was a Canadian I knew. He told me to come along to the hospital. They’re very shorthanded. I’ve been at it night and day ever since, just doing whatever I’m told.” His face grows somber. “I’ve seen terrible, terrible things there, Shayna. In a hospital you really see what war is all about.”

  A tapping at the door, and in tramp Shmulik and Don Kishote. Shayna utters a little shriek. The two rough green-clad bandaged figures seem to fill the room, bringing in a mingled smell of gunpowder, blood, and medicine. Kishote is a shocking apparition, in all truth, with his bloody bandaged head and four-day growth of black bristles, though his grin is merry and his eyes have the old untamed glint. “Shayna, ma nishma?” He glances at Paul. “Ah, the Canadian.” He offers his hand. “Yossi.”

  “Hello, I’m Paul Rubinstein.”

  “Abba!” Aryeh leaps off the couch in his pajamas and runs toward him, then abruptly halts, staring at the bandages. Kishote holds out his arms. “Ani b’seder. Kfotze!” (“I’m fine. Jump!”) The boy does jump and wraps his legs around his father as he has been doing since infancy. The legs are long and bony now, and Kishote feels with pleasure the strength in the ten-year-old’s growing muscles.

  “Where have you come from?” Shayna gasps. “Yossi, what happened to you?”

  The mother in a nightgown peeks out from behind the curtain. “Ai! Yossele! Just a minute.”

  Soon she is frying a few last precious eggs she has been saving for Sabbath baking, while Yossi and the sergeant tell Shayna of their encounter, and talk lightly about their injuries. The Canadian sits silent for a while, then interjects, “Surely you weren’t discharged from Tel Hashomer with those wounds. Either of you.”

  The soldiers look at each other. “Are you a doctor?” Yossi inquires. “I didn’t know that.”

  “He’s not,” says Shayna.

  “A volunteer medical orderly,” says Paul Rubinstein. “I push wagons and carry trays around in Ein Kerem.”

  “Okay, we left,” Shmulik says.

  “You escaped, you mean,” says Paul.

  “You insist? We escaped.”

  “I thought so. Wounded guys keep escaping from Ein Kerem, too.”

  Yossi shrugs. “Do you blame him? How often does a Jewish army liberate Jerusalem? Every two thousand years? He’s going back to his paratroop company, and they’re fighting for the Old City right now.”

  “And you?” Shayna asks. “You can’t go back to Sinai.”

  Yossi is holding Aryeh on his lap. “Of course not. Shmulik told me how you gave him a sandwich, so I thought I’d just drive up with him and see Aryeh and you.”

  “Come and eat,” says the mother.

  Shayna and Paul refuse the food. The soldiers quickly eat it all. Aryeh stands at his father’s chair, his arm around his neck, watching him take every bite.

  “You’re a great Jewish mother,” the sergeant says to the old lady, standing up. “I’ll tell my mother that you fed me, and gave me the strength to fight for Jerusalem.”

  Kishote gets out of his chair. “You’re not going, too,” exclaims Shayna. “Kishote, enough!”

  “Look, it’s okay, Shayna. This fellow’s brigade commander is Motta Gur. Motta was once my company commander, I’ll only go and say hello to him at headquarters.”

  “No! No more craziness!” Shayna seizes his elbow.

  “Colonel,” says the Canadian, “with an undiagnosed head injury, is it smart to go into a firing zone?”

  Aryeh takes his father’s hand, looking up at him with wide eyes. “Abba, how bad is your wound?”

  “I feel all right.”

  “But why go where there’s fighting, when you’re wounded?”

  “Good question, Aryeh. So that for the rest of your life when anyone talks about this fight for Jerusalem, you can say ‘Abba was there.’”

  With a glance at Shayna, Aryeh says, “Well, then, Abba, be careful.”

  Yossi bends to hug Aryeh and kiss him. The sergeant says, “B’seder, we move,” and walks to the door.

  Kishote puts an arm around Shayna’s slender shoulders for a rough yet tender hug. “Shayna, take care of him.”

  “What have I been doing?” Her voice is shaky and bitter. She briefly clasps his hand in both of hers. “Take care of yourself.”

  He kisses her mother. “Thanks for the eggs, Imma. Imagine, eggs! Luxury.”

  The soldiers go out. In the silent room their boots can be heard thumping down the stairs.

  ***

  Sam Pasternak is almost dozing off under a tepid shower, as cold as Tel Aviv’s water ever runs in June. Except for naps in the car beside his driver, he has not slept in days, nor has he been out of his uniform. Now he faces another predawn meeting with Eshkol; amazing how that heavy sedentary old man keeps going day and night, quietly and alertly following the war, while leaving in Mosh
e Dayan’s hands the reins he has so publicly grasped. Through the drumming of the water Sam hears the doorbell, no doubt a Mossad messenger. A quick dry-off, and he lumbers to the door with the damp towel draped around his middle.

  “Hello, Sam. Well! How informal.” Yael Nitzan stands there in a crumpled white linen suit, the same one she was wearing in Washington, a suitcase at her feet. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “You again! Welcome, come in!”

  “Thanks. It’s ridiculous, but I can’t get into my flat. I just flew in, have no key with me, and the landlord’s off at the Syrian front, he drives a lorry. His wife is I don’t know where.” She kisses his cheek. “Ugh, bristles like on a pig, dear. Are we really winning the war? The news is improving, isn’t it?”

  “You came here from New York?”

  “In the clothes I stood in.”

  “Yael, I’m due at a meeting with the Prime Minister. Want to stay here? Something I can do for you? I have to dress.”

  “Just let me use the telephone.”

  When he comes out shaved and in a fresh uniform, Yael is drinking coffee. “Ah, that’s more like it. Snappy fellow. Sam, I must find Aryeh. Shayna Matisdorf’s flat in Haifa doesn’t answer. I called from New York, from the London airport, I’m very concerned. Monday it was awful in London, all those news reports about Haifa in flames, Tel Aviv bombed—”

  “Arab nonsense. Try the Technion when the offices open. Someone should know where she is. Haifa hasn’t been hit at all, and the boy should be fine.” He gives her an appraising glance. “I’m off. Make yourself at home. The war is looking good. So are you, motek.”

  “A lie, I’m grimy and sweaty. I may take a shower myself.”