by Ehud Diskin
“I understand,” I said, keeping a straight face.
He shook my hand and headed off to work.
An hour later, I went to visit Hannah. I was beginning to feel bad for Avrum. He was my friend now—a nice person, really—and here I was, having an affair with his wife. Had I known Avrum before I met Hannah, I don’t think I would have had an affair with her. Hell, if I had known she was married, I probably would have run in the opposite direction.
But now … now I felt that my time with Hannah was essential to my mental—and physical—well-being. We had become friends and had fun together. Most of all, being with her helped me not think about Shoshana so much. She helped keep me going.
Moreover, I realized from things she had said what Hannah’s relationship with Avrum was really like. I felt that it was just happenstance that I was there with her. It could have been any other man. I wasn’t really a disturbance in their marital life.
After an enjoyable hour in her bed, we dressed and went to the kitchen for some coffee.
“Your girlfriend is a charming young woman,” Hannah said. “We’ve arranged to get together—just the two of us—in a couple days, and I’m hoping we can become friends.”
I didn’t respond, no longer sure that my idea of introducing Shoshana to Hannah and Avrum was such a good one. It seemed strange that Shoshana hadn’t mentioned anything to me about her upcoming date with Hannah. After talking for a few more minutes, I said goodbye and then walked to Shoshana’s apartment to pick her up and go to work.
At Café Pinsk, I waited until Shoshana was busy taking a customer’s order before approaching Max to ask if I could speak with him in private. He led me into the kitchen and instructed the chef to go to the shop to restock the English pepper. Once the chef had left, he gestured for me to start talking.
“Yesterday,” I said, “I was walking down Geula Street when I had to piss so bad that I couldn’t wait until I got home, so I ducked into a courtyard. Two British officers passed by, and I overheard them saying they were going to launch a raid on the underground on Monday night.”
“Is that all?” Max asked. “Did they say exactly who they were targeting?”
“That’s all I heard.”
Max’s face darkened like a thundercloud. “You’re infuriating! You tell me you were a partisan commander, but I find that very hard to believe. You listen to an important conversation between two British officers yet carry on pissing away in peace without even bothering to try to get more information! It’s a shame, but I guess that’s all you’re capable of. I’ll warn whoever needs to be warned, and I really hope you properly understood what you heard.”
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I WENT to the Haganah meeting at the Glicksteins’. It was a small, modest one-bedroom apartment, with simple wood furniture and some photos of family members on the wall. The owners had arranged about twenty folding chairs in a circle in the living room. A jug of water and some glasses had been placed on a small table in the corner of the room.
Yaakov was already there, along with about twenty others. He introduced me as a partisan during the war, which sparked much curiosity among the others. I fended off their questions, not wanting to seem like I was boasting. More than that, I worried that one of them was a British informant. I told them that I worked as a waiter at Café Pinsk, which was very popular among British soldiers and policemen, and had overheard a conversation between two British officers about the operation planned for Monday night.
“Thanks, David,” Yaakov said. “We’ll relay your information to the appropriate parties. And now let’s talk about how you can help us and how we can help you.”
“Look,” I said, “I went through some very difficult times as a partisan. I stared death in the face every day, and I still struggle to understand how I survived the war, not to mention the hardships of immigrating to Israel. For the moment, at least, I’d like to take it easy. I’d be happy to serve in an advisory capacity, if you think that would be helpful. And if I hear anything else, I’ll pass it on, of course.”
If Yaakov had expected more, he managed to hide his disappointment. He shook my hand and thanked me. I started to leave and then turned back.
“I thought of something else. The British officers who come to the restaurant are always trying to get me to talk. If you give me a piece of harmless information to pass on to them, I could use it to gain their trust.”
“I’ll try to come up with something,” Yaakov said. “Come here again next Saturday.”
“I can’t make it next Saturday.”
“In two weeks, then. We meet here every Saturday.”
“I’ll be here,” I said. We shook hands again, and I bid farewell to the group.
I seemed to be making progress, but at the same time, I wondered if I was spreading myself too thin. Perhaps, I thought, I’d be wasting my time with the Haganah. I admired David Ben-Gurion, who had proven to be a leader of rare quality, a man of both vision and action, but I didn’t like his obsessive persecution of the Irgun and Lehi. We were all Jews, and even if some of us had different opinions, they weren’t the enemy, and we should not be fighting among ourselves.
On the other hand, the Haganah had recently allied with the Irgun and Lehi in the fight against the British, and I viewed the agreement as atonement for the mistakes of the past, at least to a certain extent.
The Irgun was the organization that I sympathized with most, since it had always seen the true picture. The Irgun was the military wing of the Revisionist Movement. I knew all about it because when I was a youngster, my father had been one of its supporters. In the 1930s, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leader of the movement, had been one of the first to recognize the terrible threat that Nazism posed to the world in general and the Jews in particular.
He’d urged as many Jews as possible to leave Europe, even if it meant violating the laws of the British Mandate that restricted immigration to Israel. With the outbreak of World War II, the Irgun had suspended its struggle against the British and fought alongside them in the war against the Germans.
But in 1944, the new commander of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, had realized that the British were not going to fulfill their commitment to establish a Jewish national home in Israel, and he’d called for an uprising against the British authorities. At the same time, he’d forbade reprisals against the Haganah, even though the organization had turned in several Irgun members to the British.
“There will be no civil war,” he’d said. “Our soldiers will not raise their arms against Jewish opponents.” I admired Begin for his bravery and ingenuity; the British had placed a hefty price on his head and made concerted efforts to capture or kill him, to no avail.
The Lehi, a much smaller organization than the other two, had shown itself to be a determined and capable resistance movement, and its members were willing to sacrifice themselves without hesitation for the sake of the Zionist cause. I was troubled during the war when Lehi members had held talks with the Nazi regime, seeking permission for European Jews to immigrate to Israel in return for the Lehi’s help in the fight against the British.
I knew that the Haganah viewed the Arabs as our people’s primary threat. Yes, the Arabs hated us, as they had shown in the past. But right now, the Arabs weren’t our immediate enemy—the British were. For the time being, we needed to invest our efforts and resources into driving out the British.
As I thought about the different Jewish resistance organizations, I realized that I was doing a kind of balancing act. I was trying to gain information from each group in order to ultimately aid my own mission—to help establish a Jewish state.
When I was a child, my rabbi had taught me to always be honest and fair. There was a special verse from Deuteronomy he often quoted that advised a man to “keep your leaps,” which means “be honest and don’t lie.” I had been raised to follow these edicts, but when it came to saving the Jewish nation, or family and friends, sometimes I had to keep the rule “The end justifies the means.”
I decided that if it came down to it, I would join the Irgun. But in the meantime, I’d be helping them, even if they didn’t know it.
7
“THE EARLY MORNING SUN WILL BRIGHTEN OUR DAY”
(FROM “SONG OF THE PARTISANS” BY HIRSH GLICK, 1943)
I eagerly awaited the picnic with Shoshana. When Saturday came, the weather was mild and sunny, despite the season, and we met near her apartment. Shoshana came outside with two knapsacks for us to carry and two folded blankets.
We made our way up Zephaniah Street and then down toward Tel Arza, turning onto a dirt track at the end of the street and following its winding course down into a valley. Trees and wildflowers, unlike anything I knew from Belarus, lined the path. The only flowers that I recognized were the pink cyclamens nudging up between the rocks.
When we reached the bottom of the valley, we found a secluded spot to spread out the blankets and sat down. Shoshana pulled a bottle from one of the knapsacks—Stock 84 Italian brandy from the Carmel Mizrahi distillery—and told me that Max had donated it to our picnic.
“Max sees himself as a father figure to me,” she said with a shy smile. “That’s one of the reasons—maybe the main reason—why he’s so hard on you. He sees there’s something between us.” She poured two fingers of brandy into a pair of tumblers, and we raised them for a toast. “To our lives,” she said, and I repeated her.
Our first drink was followed by a second. After pouring our third, Shoshana lay down on the blanket. Her loose blond hair made a glowing halo around her face as she looked up at the sky.
“David, I’m so happy to be with you. I felt so dead inside before I met you. I was like a machine, going about my days, feeling nothing. My heart was burned to ash, but somehow you lit the fire inside it again, and now I feel like I have a reason to live.”
She paused for just a moment, and when she continued, her voice was soft yet determined. “I want you to know I haven’t resigned myself to the way things are between us. I talked with Hannah about how I wish I could be more physical with you, and she promised to refer me to a good psychologist. After all you’ve been through, you deserve a loving woman in all senses of the word, and I want to be that woman.”
The beautiful day, the brandy, and her words made my head spin. Staring into her green eyes, I opened my heart and told her how I felt.
“You’re an extraordinary woman, Shoshana, both beautiful and intelligent. I’m lucky to have met you, and I love you very much. I feel as if you are truly made for me.”
She smiled as I gently stroked the back of her hand.
“We’ve never spoken about your past,” I said. “I know that you were born in Novogrudok. I would love to hear more about you … about your life …”
She squeezed my hand as I trailed off. “It’s hard for me to talk about, but I’ll try. I grew up in a loving family with a younger sister. From a young age, I loved to draw. I would make birthday cards for my friends and family and decorate our storybooks so they looked more interesting. My mother always encouraged me—she kept everything I drew and said that they would be valuable when I became a famous artist one day.” She laughed, but her smile quickly faded. “That never happened, of course. The Russians came, then the Germans. They put us to work in a factory that made blankets for the German army. Terrible things started happening to the other Jews, as you know.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I well know.”
She closed her eyes and fell silent for a long time. A single tear ran down the side of her face. I waited, afraid to speak lest she stop telling her story. All at once, she sat up, linking her arms around her knees, her dress flowing around her ankles.
“We were living in an apartment with several other families,” she finally said. “I was sitting at the table playing Trust, Don’t Trust with a girl named Riva. She wasn’t a pretty girl, but she had beautiful black hair and a beautiful smile. Then all at once, the door slammed open with a bang! The sound was so loud I thought something had exploded!” Her fingers tightened around the cloth of her dress, and I could see them trembling as she turned and looked at me.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, alarmed by the terrified look in her eyes.
“It was the police,” she went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, our gazes locked. “They raped the women, tortured the men, and finally shot and killed everyone, or thought they did.” She lowered her eyes then, and her voice became a whisper. “They raped my mother and killed her in front of me.”
“Shoshana …” I said, “I’m so sorry.” My words offered poor comfort, but I didn’t know what else to do. She began to speak again, this time her words monotone, emotionless.
“They shot in my direction. They missed me, but I fell to the floor right beside Riva’s body. I pretended to be dead. They left as suddenly as they’d come. A small resistance movement in the city helped smuggle me out of the ghetto to a family in the country. They gave me shelter. I pretended to be a Christian, and that’s how I remained alive until the Russian army arrived.”
She stared up at the sky. I took a long drink of the brandy. I had seen my own terrors in war, but the thought of gentle Shoshana being put through such madness—I shook my head and took another drink.
“I know that you crave physical contact with me,” she finally said after several moments of silence, “and I am trying to get there. Until then, is there any other way I can show my love for you?”
“After all I’ve been through in life so far, all I want is you by my side,” I said. “Our love gives purpose to my life.”
She leaned over and rested her head against my shoulder. I stroked her beautiful golden hair. “I love you, David,” she whispered.
I held her nestled against me for several long, wonderful moments, both of us satisfied to just be quiet, thoughtful together. Eventually we began to talk again, shifting the conversation to less troubling matters—funny stories from our childhoods, our favorite movies and books, places that we would like to see. Then Shoshana pulled away from me slightly and looked into my eyes.
“Have you noticed how Hannah looks at you?” she asked. “She definitely wants you for more than a breakfast guest.”
She said this with a teasing smile, and though I had the presence of mind to laugh, I was shocked. I knew women sometimes noticed things that men would never give a second thought to, but this was a reminder that I needed to be careful. I didn’t want to lie, so I played dumb.
“Really? Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
“Of course. You should be careful. Her husband might notice those looks too, and then there’ll be trouble.”
“Thanks for warning me,” I said, making a mental note to discuss the matter with Hannah as soon as possible.
Shoshana opened the other knapsack and started pulling out the lunch that she had packed—a small Hungarian salami, crackers, yellow cheese from the Tnuva dairy, a little container filled with Arabic cracked olives, a cucumber, and a tomato. For dessert, we ate two hefty slices of a home-baked cake.
We drank the rest of the brandy and then made our way back to Kerem Avraham. We parted outside her apartment, where the usual kiss on the cheek and hug she gave me felt warmer than usual.
ON MONDAY, I WENT TO Hannah’s apartment. For the first time since our affair had begun, I had a difficult time enjoying our lovemaking. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, Shoshana was very much on my mind. After we’d spent an hour in bed, we got dressed and had coffee in the kitchen. I asked her to tell me more about the therapy she had recommended to Shoshana.
“I like Shoshana, and I want to help her,” she said. “I know a woman, an immigrant from Germany, who studied psychology there. Her professor was a student of Sigmund Freud himself,” she added. “I hope she’ll be able to help your girlfriend.”
“By the way,” I said, “Shoshana noticed the way you look at me. She doesn’t suspect anything, but we need to be more careful—both of us.”
She gave me
a tentative smile. “I admit, it’s hard for me to hide. This started as a flirtation, something purely physical, but it has developed into feelings beyond my control.”
She seemed to be expecting similar sentiments from me, but I didn’t say a word. I changed the subject and asked her how Avrum had secured his job with the British police.
“I don’t know,” she said, though I had a feeling she did.
I decided to try a different approach. I asked her if Avrum ever socialized with the British. “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “I don’t think the British are interested in hanging out with Jews. They call us ‘natives’—Jews and Arabs alike. The only relationships they have are with Jewish women, like my friend Sarah. She’s seeing a sergeant in the British CID named Perry.”
I was intrigued, but I didn’t want to appear too inquisitive. Hannah, however, seemed just as eager to talk as I was to listen.
“We used to be really good friends,” she continued, “but our friendship has gone cold since she started seeing Perry. He spoils her, and she’s become such a snob, as if she’s a queen or something. As a CID detective, he earns good money and doesn’t have any expenses here, not to mention he gets a nice bonus every time he brings in underground members. And he spends almost all of it on her. Besides going out for groceries, all she does is lie around at home and wait for him.”
“At least she’s happy, I suppose.”
“Well, he’s tall and muscular, with blond hair and blue eyes. He has these big ears that she doesn’t like very much, but she says he’s an animal in bed.”
“Is that how you girls are, gossiping about your men?” I asked. “I hope you haven’t said anything about me.”
“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t say anything about you because I want you all to myself!”
Hannah gave me an especially passionate kiss before I left, and as I walked home, her words echoed in my mind. She wanted me all to herself. And she’d said our “flirtation” had developed into feelings beyond her control. Obviously, our arrangement wasn’t as casual to Hannah as it was to me.