by Herman Wouk
The capacious grand ballroom was already full and abuzz with talk. On the high wall behind the dais, a huge color blowup of Moshe Dayan on the cover of Time hung under crossed Israeli and American flags, flanked by smaller black-and-white pictures of Herzl and Ben Gurion. Of Prime Minister Eshkol and Chief of Staff Rabin, no sign. Barak doubted that one person in twenty in the hall had heard of them. There was only one winner in this war—the Jewish general with the black eye patch—and through him everybody here was a winner. On the dais sat eminent Zionists from all over the United States. In his speaking tours Barak had met most of them, and they greeted him by name, faces aglow with happy excitement, as he went to his chair beside the ambassador.
“Zev, you speak after me. Did those slides of the battle maps come through?”
“All set. What a mob!”
“Yes, incredible.” The ambassador bleakly smiled. His face was gray, his voice was a croak, he slumped in his chair. Barak wondered whether the man could get on his feet to talk. “There’s an overflow crowd in another ballroom where they’ve put up loudspeakers. It’s happening everywhere in the country, but this is the big one.”
“Are you the first speaker?”
“Well, the ZOA president will introduce me,” Abe said with a little sidewise smile. “That may take a minute or two.”
It took twenty, and the talking in the hall did not abate much. Barak’s automatic shutoff of Zionist rhetoric cut in, and his mind wandered to the Growlery, and what he would say and do when he got there. Emily’s decision to go off around the world without a word to him about it was a hard jolt. He meant to have it out with her tonight.
The ambassador got a two-minute standing ovation when he came to the podium. This crowd was avid to applaud an Israeli. “I have news for our good friends in the Kremlin,” Avraham Harman began hoarsely. He paused to let the people settle down in their seats and when the hall was hushed went on. “I suspect those fine gentlemen don’t quite grasp how world opinion has changed. They lost in the Security Council. Now they’ve called for a special session of the General Assembly. There they have the votes, so they’re sure they’ll overwhelm us and rob us of our victory. My news is—” He was a master at this; the audience seemed to hold its collective breath. “—Gospodin Kosygin, you’re going to lose in the General Assembly, too.” (Applause and cheers.)
As Harman launched into his speech, Barak was watching the time. In a hurried telephone call he had made yesterday from New York after the Security Council adjourned, he had promised Emily that he would be at the Growlery today not later than five.
***
“What’s all this, Queenie?” he had challenged her. “You’re really off around the world?”
“Oh, God, who told you? Oh, God, it was Chris, of course, blast him.”
“It’s true, then?”
“Well, it is, but—”
“Then I’ll come out to see you tomorrow. I have to talk at a Zionist rally, but it’ll be over by four. Say five at the Growlery?”
“Old Wolf, as it happens, that’s not convenient. Day after, maybe?”
“Day after I’ll be flying home, Em.”
“What, to Israel? You’re through as attaché?”
“No, no. Just for consultations.”
Lengthy silence.
“Queenie? Would you rather not see me? Come on, what’s up?”
“Five o’clock, you say?”
“Yes. There’s an embassy meeting at seven, so I can’t stay long, but we should at least say goodbye, shouldn’t we?”
“Okay, see you at five, Zev. Not much later. The thing is, I’m having dinner with Fiona and her ex-reverend.”
“Queenie, do I hear the Donald Duck voice?”
“Listen, you mangy old Gray Wolf, will you be here at five tomorrow, or won’t you?”
“See you then, darling.”
***
Four o’clock, and applause was breaking into every other sentence of the ambassador’s stem-winding, fist-waving peroration.
“No more cease-fires! No more armistice lines! Peace! Let there be peace in our region at last! Our neighbors have tried terror. They have tried boycott. They have tried war. Their policies lie in ruins. Now let them try the last resort, common sense! Let them sit down with us face to face, to negotiate treaties. They cannot even dream what Israel will give up for peace. For less than peace, NOTHING. We have paid too dearly for this victory! For peace, generosity that will astound the world. Only for peace. FOR SHALOM!”
The audience was on its feet again, cheering. Now it was Barak’s turn to give a military picture of the victory with slides, timed for half an hour. Then he could slip out, and be off and away… but l’Azazel! United States Senator Wyndham was walking into the hall, the audience was applauding him, and the chairman was hailing him to the podium for an embrace. Yielding him the microphone! Damn, that windbag was good for half an hour of fiery friendship for Israel, so it would be something of a time squeeze. But what was the problem, after all, if Emily was a bit late for dinner with Fiona and her ex-reverend?
***
However, Barak had in fact heard the Donald Duck voice, for Emily’s problem was Colonel Halliday. He was flying up from Florida in a fighter plane, and was coming to the Growlery about seven-thirty. Zev was coming at five or so, and had to be back at the embassy at seven, so there ought to be plenty of time to see both men, she was figuring, turn by turn.
And yet, as she straightened up the Growlery for her visitors, Emily was uneasy. If one was to be off with an old love and on with a new, the two gentlemen certainly should not meet, not straight off. The colonel, on leave from his post in West Germany, by chance had called her the morning after the Greek restaurant fiasco with Nakhama. On impulse she had said yes, she would be delighted to see him; so in a way Colonel Halliday would never know, he owed this date to Nakhama Barak. It was just bloody inconvenient that now Nakhama’s husband was also coming. Emily almost felt herself back in a teenage girl’s fix, juggling fellows.
Four-thirty. What about dressing and makeup? The maroon housecoat with blue piping she was slopping around in was all right for Zev Barak, and for him she had combed her hair and put on a rudimentary face. No glamor, no allure, they were past all that. But for a new guy, a formal sort like Halliday… absolute minimum for serious makeup and careful dressing, forty-five minutes. Better yet, an hour. Unknown variable: suppose that rally ran late, as rallies tended to do? Well, if by five-thirty or so Zev hadn’t appeared, that would be that, he couldn’t make it back to the embassy for his meeting. Sooner or later he’d call, and they’d have a telephone farewell, not the first. Meantime she had better get ready for Colonel Halliday, who had said something about dinner at the Red Fox. The main thing now was to load the fridge with beer, which she proceeded to do.
According to Jack Smith, Bud Halliday could drink more beer than anybody alive with no effect on his conduct or his waistline. The waistline she had seen for herself. One could iron a dress on it. The conduct she could only guess at, but the man’s grave dry intimidating demeanor suggested granite control. In that way he was rather like her father, but Halliday was a very tall man, with thick black hair and sharp greenish eyes. She could imagine that the wife he had lost had been happy with this imposing professional, though unlike her father he seemed void of humor. Jack Smith had denied this. Halliday loved jokes, he said, only with women he was reserved. You had to know Bud Halliday.
Emily took scissors and went out to cut fresh flowers. The sun was sinking behind the pines. Lilacs and roses were blooming in masses, and every breath she took, as she plunged her hands into the bushes and snipped, reminded her painfully of Zev Barak. Most of their love affair had been by correspondence, after all. Each year when the fireflies came and the summer flowers perfumed the night, her letters had waxed warm, and his replies too. Emily regretted nothing except that it had to end, and even that was all right. The Israeli had taught her that making love was not necessarily a nuisance of the married
state, a mere nasty foolishness, but a glory of this life.
She was not in the least in love with Colonel Halliday, not yet, but—very differently from Jack Smith—the prospect of going to bed with him was not ridiculous, only remote. There would never be another Gray Wolf, but he was not hers, Nakhama had driven that nail to the board, and that was that! Maybe one day they could resume corresponding; Héloïse and Abélard to the end, sans Abélard’s unfortunate disability.
***
“Another beer?”
“Sure.”
She felt Colonel Halliday’s eyes on her as she got up and walked into the kitchen. The mauve shantung was a success, no doubt of it, the skirt not too short as she had feared. Even sunk in the couch beside him she showed leg but not knee. The legs were all right.
“I feel at home here,” she heard him say. “Marilyn and I had a place like this on the Blue Ridge, above Front Royal. Cathedral ceiling, wagon-wheel chandelier, fieldstone fireplace, same idea. We sold it because we used it so seldom. The squirrels and raccoons would get in, and once the hippies did. Quite a mess. That’s when Marilyn said sell, so I did…. Thanks. What wine is that you’re drinking?”
“Brunello. Like some?”
He shook his head, smiled, and sipped the beer. “Frosty cold. Great. We didn’t have such pretty flowers in the Blue Ridge. Our place was a jungle.”
“Well, I have the school gardeners. You were saying the Germans thought the Israelis would win.”
“Yes, but nobody figured on six days, Emily. Their staff estimate was much like ours. Thirty days.”
“They must have mixed feelings about the Israelis.”
“The Germans? Very much so. Even in casual conversation there’s a note of embarrassment, an odd look in the eyes….” Halliday drank, and was silent. Emily felt no pressure to keep the talk going. It was a thing she liked about the man. After a while he said, “Your Israeli friend must feel lousy about missing the war.”
Emily answered lightly and quickly, “His job here is important.”
“I’m aware of that. Possibly more so than a field command. Relations with Washington have to be a main concern of the Israelis. Still…” He shrugged and drank.
“I’ve never understood this urge for combat. Is that because I’m a woman?”
“See here, Emily, you train for it, years and years. As you rise in rank you get into weapons procurement, manpower, doctrine. You manage the lives of youngsters by the thousands. It all seems like waste motion, like make-believe, until a war comes. Then all those wasted years make some sense. I’m not a war lover, war is an insanity. But conflicts of national wills occur. The use of force occurs. I’ve never been happier than when I was a fighter squadron commander, flying missions in Korea, which I knew then was a particularly rotten war. There it is.”
She was thinking that in a brown tweed jacket and gray slacks—he had stopped in his home in Oakton to change—he looked quite as military as in uniform; straight-backed, serious, formidable. When Zev shed his uniform he shed the army to become his warm unmilitary self, a jester, a lover of music and books; in fact as he sometimes joked about himself, just another Viennese coffee-house Jew.
“Interesting,” she said. “I can see that. As far as my Israeli friend goes, Colonel, incidentally, it never amounted to much, and anyway it’s all over.”
“Oh?” Level tone. “Has he gone back home?”
“No, he’s still here, all right. But his wife and family have come. That changed everything.” She poured herself more wine. “I don’t really remember how much I told you about that harmless business, Colonel—”
“Bud.”
She smiled, but as yet informality with this man was too much for her. “Okay. Anyway, Jack Smith was plying me with punch like mad at that class reunion dance, and then after a while, there you and I were, off in that alcove—”
“Well, I started it, Emily, talking about Marilyn. Which was strange, because I seldom do that. It wasn’t that you reminded me of her. You don’t. She was so mainline, you know. General’s niece, old Richmond family, Junior League—”
“And I’m an overage kook.”
Bud Halliday’s laugh was reassuring: wholehearted, deep-chested, with an almost boyish flash in the eyes. “We can go into all that at the Red Fox. Ready for something to eat?”
“Anytime, Colonel.”
“Then we go. Where’s your facility?”
She pointed. “You’ll see it. Through the bedroom.”
In the kitchen she was turning out lights and putting away the wine when she heard the door knocker: rap, rap, rap. This time of night? Possibly the groundskeeper with a problem, or a telegram about her tour booking. Something. She opened the door, and Abélard stepped in and seized her. “Queenie! Did you give me up for dead? Here I am.”
“Wolf! I—you—it’s so late—you have a meeting, I thought—”
“Postponed. That rally will go on till midnight. Traffic coming out was murder. Now, first things first, I love you. All right?”
“Fine, but—” she tried to struggle free. “Zev, dear, you’re holding me so tight. Please—”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? Is something wrong? Are you angry at me? Queenie, stop wriggling like a fish.” Barak was gripping her with a steely tenderness.
“Zev, listen to me—”
“I beg your pardon.” Behind Emily, Colonel Halliday spoke in a parade-ground baritone.
Barak released her, and the three stood staring at one another. “Colonel Halliday, this is General Barak. You two should know each other,” Emily chirruped, “you have a lot in common.”
“I’m sure of that, and I would be charmed another time,” said Halliday, “but as you know, I’m just going.”
“The hell you are.” Emily felt a surge of self-preserving instinct. This beer-guzzling air force hotshot was not stalking out of her life like that! “Sit down, Bud. Have another beer.”
One heavy black eyebrow went up as she spoke the nickname. “Oh? Well, I seldom refuse.”
“Zev?”
“Why not?”
She darted for the kitchen, as for the air lock in a sinking submarine. The two men sat down, Halliday on the couch, Barak on an upholstered armchair leaking stuffing.
“I have the advantage of you, General,” said Halliday. “I know you’re your country’s military attaché. I’m back from staff duty in Wiesbaden, and I’ll shortly be taking a tactical fighter air wing to Vietnam.”
“Wiesbaden. I’ve been there. I worked with their army on acquiring and upgrading M-48s.”
“You’re in armor, then.”
“That’s my branch.”
“Wasn’t that a strange experience?”
“How do you mean?”
“You, an Israeli, dealing with the German army?”
Barak nodded. “Very grim.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Beer, gentlemen.”
She poured for them, looking from one to the other through horn-rimmed glasses she had put on, relieved that they had not eaten each other like Kilkenny cats. Emily was going head-down through this, discombobulated but obscurely elated. She was caught in an embarrassing moment between two splendid guys who both fancied her. Worse things could happen to a schoolmarm on the other side of thirty.
Halliday raised his glass. “To your country’s fine fight, General. The air strike was a classic. We’ll be studying it closely. All air forces will, for years to come.”
“Thank you. For the second time in a century we were facing extermination. But this time we could defend ourselves.”
“You were facing extermination?” Halliday took a dry war-college tone. “That wasn’t our estimate in Wiesbaden.”
“Our enemies proclaimed it as their war aim. Our people believed it, and they had a very bad time. It’s true the army always thought it could protect the country. And so we did.”
“So you did, and brilliantly. But how long can you hold such extended
lines?”
“Against our enemies, indefinitely, until they make peace. Against the Soviet Union, it’s a problem.” Barak looked straight at the air force man. “We won a war in 1956, too, you know. But the Russians made threats, Eisenhower and Dulles leaned on us, and we had no choice. We had to give up all we’d gained. I can’t predict what President Johnson will do. Can you?”
“He’ll act in our national interest.”
“Which is what, in this situation?”
“Well, there’s a rising tide of world revolution, General Barak, and one could argue that with this setback to the Soviets, your country’s the boy who’s put his finger in the dike.” Halliday drank off his beer. “If so, President Johnson might not act exactly the way Eisenhower and Dulles did. Thanks for the beer, Emily.” He stood up. “General, our protocol is that the senior officer leaves a company first. You rank me, so I must beg your indulgence.”
It was the first trace of humor, or at least irony, that Emily had detected in Bradford Halliday. His tone was formal, but his eyes twinkled in a sober face.
“We’re a young country.” Barak rose. “And we’re not much on protocol.”
“You’re most courteous, and I’ll bid you good evening.”
Emily walked out with him, and came back shortly, glowering. “Wolf, why the hell did you show up two hours late? You damned inconsiderate—Israeli, you!”
“That’s a very pretty suit.” Barak took no offense, nor did he bring up her fib about dinner with Fiona. Standard lady’s procedure, and he was not much surprised.
Softer tone. “Oh, you like it?”
“Listen, Queenie, I do leave in the morning. I wanted to see you, and ask you why you’re off globe-trotting without a word to me.”
Emily colored, looked away, then tossed her head. “I wrote you a letter. It’s still here. Want it?”
“Just tell me what’s in it.”
“Have some Brunello.”
“Okay.”
Over the wine Emily said after a considerable silence, sitting on her legs on the couch, “Look, sweetums, it comes to this. I’ll be a mistress but I’ll not be a concubine. Nakhama knows. She’s hinted very tolerantly and not too subtly that it’s okay, and I can go right on with it. That, I won’t endure.”