“A little over a year.”
“Surprise. I’ve been gone a little over a year.”
“You’re Vincent Haas.”
“And this is Vincent Haas’s desk.”
The reporter plucked at his suspenders, sitting back in Vince’s chair. He considered what to do. “Give me a minute.”
“Take your time.”
Wiping the ink off his knuckles, Vince moved to the westside windows, where long shadows ran toward the Hudson. Cars, trucks, cabs, limos, horse drawn carts, all competed for too little room in the city’s streets. The haze from exhaust, the open-cook fires of vendors, the heat mirages off the roofs, all made the city steamy. Vince touched the windowpane; New York was hotter than Palestine.
He greeted old comrades. No one asked much about his thirteen months overseas; they were unconcerned, or they already knew; he’d written a lot of dispatches.
The reporter who’d squatted at his desk approached. “Dennis wants to see you in his office.”
Vince didn’t knock on the glass door. Three floor fans and a ceiling fan worked to cool the sunny corner office of the editor-in-chief.
Behind his desk, Dennis hooked thumbs into his belt. His bowtie spread beneath a big Adam’s apple; Dennis was thin and blonde, a vulgar Midwesterner who’d made his career in news like a plainsman—through hard work, most of it digging.
“You’re back.”
“You sound surprised.”
“The last time I got surprised was the amount of my alimony. I got wind you might be in town.”
“How?”
“I’ll get to that. For now, what are you doing here?”
“You told me to come home, Dennis.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“Ten telegrams. One a month.”
“Did you get one the last three months?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Good to see you, too.”
“When’d you get home?”
“Three days ago.”
“Okay trip?”
“If you like ships.”
“I don’t. I need you to go back.”
“No.”
Dennis indicated an empty chair for Vince to sit. His desk was always the cleanest in the newsroom. As editor-in-chief, he was good at delegating and managing, and keeping work out of his office.
Vince asked, “I just did thirteen months. Send someone else.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
On Dennis’s desk lay issues of the Boston Globe, San Francisco Examiner, Miami Herald, and Chicago Tribune. Every morning, he scanned competing newspapers; it was his job to know what they were up to and to beat them at it.
“These papers. You know what’s in all of them?”
“News.”
“Yes, dickhead. News. Specific to our argument, news about Palestine. And do you know who wrote their articles about Palestine?”
“Just tell me.”
“You. Thirty papers, nationwide. All the heavyweights have been grabbing your datelines since the start of the year. Vincent Haas from Palestine for the Herald Tribune. That’s what it says. Nobody has anybody on the ground there like you. Look.” Dennis tossed him the Miami paper. “Second page, top.”
Vince opened to his article about Haifa’s superintendent of police barely escaping an Irgun car bombing. Dennis tossed him the San Francisco daily.
“A3, top. A train in Tel Aviv got derailed and robbed.”
Vince didn’t bother to open the paper. Dennis skidded the Globe across his desk. “Front page. Two British officers get gunned down in some place I can’t pronounce.”
“Stop. Okay, stop.”
“Let me ask you something. How many Jews are there in Jerusalem?”
“A couple hundred thousand.”
“Do you know who has more?”
“I don’t know.”
“You goddam do know. New York. I got two million in Manhattan and the Bronx alone. And they need news from Palestine. The Jews buy newspapers. This paper. Why?”
Vince let him say it.
“Because I have Vincent Haas reporting from Palestine. Go back.”
“No.”
“I can fire you.”
“That doesn’t solve your problem.”
“I’ll pay you more.”
“You’re going to do that anyway. I’ve done my time overseas. I’ve earned my shot at the national desk. Send someone else to Palestine.”
“Is that why you went? To get a promotion?”
“Don’t talk like I did something bad, Dennis. When I left I was covering city council meetings. I did a year and now I’m home. I want that guy out of my chair. I want the national beat. You said people are reading me. They can read me here.”
Dennis rose behind his desk. “Why? Why don’t you want to go back?”
“It’s complex.”
Dennis shot a finger toward his window at his hot city.
“What fucking isn’t complex? We just came out of a world war. The Russians are staring us down in Berlin. Mao’s making moves in China. Ten months ago we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. India’s screaming for independence. America’s rebuilding the whole goddam world, and the Nazis are designing our rockets for us. So tell me, Vince, please. Where the fuck can I send you that isn’t complex? Sweet Jesus.”
Dennis flattened both hands on his clean desk. “Why don’t you want to go back?”
“To be honest, I got tired.”
“I’m sure, Vince.”
“It’s a lot. It’s a lot to watch up close.”
“I bet it’s every day.”
“It is.”
“I mean, just reading your columns. Cafés getting blown up. Murders. Bombings. Like I said, I get it. But you know what else is every day?” Dennis stood, the focus of three fans. “The news.”
He came around to sit on a corner of his desk and look down on Vince.
“Let me tell you something my Irish grandpa used to say when he was drunk, which was the only time he ever said anything worthwhile. You’d think he would’ve said more. Anyway, he told me when a man wants to learn, he goes. When he wants to understand, he stays. I’m sorry it’s hard, and I’m sorry you’re tired. But I can’t send a happy guy to cover Palestine. You’re unhappy, but you understand the place. Vince. I got a paper to run. And alimony.”
Dennis returned to his chair. He took from a drawer two Western Union pages.
“These came in yesterday. It’s how I knew you were coming. Who’s this?”
Vince read the yellow telegrams. Both originated from Jerusalem.
LOOKING FOR VINCE HAAS STOP DON’T KNOW IF YOU ARE BACK IN AMERICA STOP IF YOU ARE COME BACK STOP I AM ON INSIDE STOP YOU HAVE ACCESS THROUGH ME STOP STORY IS HERE VINCE STOP
“It’s Hugo.”
“Who’s that?”
“The guy I wrote about last year. I never used his real name.”
“The Buchenwald Jew.”
“I lost track of him. Haven’t heard from him in six months. He’s a bit of a bastard.”
The second telegram read:
1130AM YMCA JERUSALEM STOP
Vince returned the telegrams to Dennis’ fan-swept desk. The editor tucked them into a drawer before one of the fans could blow them out a window. “He wants you to meet him at the Jerusalem Y.”
“I’m not going.”
“You got your own private Jew.”
“Don’t piss me off.”
“Something’s going to happen and Hugo wants you there. He says he’s on the inside. I have no idea what that means. Do you?”
“I don’t.”
“I can’t think of any way to find out sitting in that chair in
this goddam heat. Is it this hot in Jerusalem?”
“No.”
“Another reason to get the hell out of here. Look, he’s telling you he’s gonna keep an eye on that Y every day, at eleven thirty. If you show up, it’s a signal to meet. This is cloak-and-dagger shit. It’s big. Don’t make me beg. I have an idea.”
“What.”
“I don’t need you to report on the day-to-day stuff. I’ll get that from the wire services, maybe I’ll send someone else. What I want from you is a column.”
“I’m a reporter.”
“A reporter who wants a promotion. Okay, here’s your bump. I’m making you a regular columnist. I want your insights on Palestine, all of it, from every angle. Go back. And when you come home, you can have the national desk. You can have my fucking job. Vince, listen to me. We want the same thing.”
“What would that be?”
“You want your work to matter, right?”
“You don’t?”
“Fuck you, of course I do. This matters. Forget my alimony. To a lot of people, this matters. But let me give you some advice. You’re never going to be Hugo. Don’t try to be. He’s a guy who survived a death camp. Use your own understanding, not his. Let me ask, you believe in past lives?”
“No.”
“Me neither. But my ex-wife did. She used to say the two of us knew each other way back. She was a queen and I was some warrior prince. Anyway, I told her that if she was ever a queen and if I was ever within ten feet of her, I know for a fact I was no prince. I died in the mud, facedown with her fucking boot in my back. And if I did have other lives, I died in every one of them with a spear in my chest on a plain in the middle of nowhere. Or from the blisters on my hands from rowing some asshole around the Mediterranean. Or in a dungeon or a factory or a cottonfield. Or begging for drachmas or doubloons or whatever the fuck. I’ve always been a peon, a plebeian, a nothing. You, too.”
Dennis swept a hand around his warm, windy office.
“This life, Vince. This is the one we’ll brag about, you and me. This is where I get to be an editor and you get to be a columnist. This is the life, Vince, where you’re not Hugo.”
Dennis strode to his office door. He spoke with one hand on the doorknob.
“Go back to Palestine. Have lunch at the Y. Find Hugo. Go do what matters. Just while you’re at it, wire me eight hundred words twice a week. Can you do that?”
Dennis didn’t wait for an answer but swung open the door.
“Take two weeks off, paid leave. Take a rest. Walk around the city and think seriously about your job. Think about a free and independent press. You want to help the world understand its complexities? In two weeks, I’ll give you a raise and a ticket back to Palestine. And I’m letting that shithead keep your desk.”
Vince stepped into the newsroom, accosted by swelter and the noise of tapping keys, ringing phones, and the cacophony of the city. Another reporter with another problem brushed past into Dennis’s office.
Chapter 27
Rivkah
July 10
Massuot Yitzhak
The news spread through the orchards, the warehouse, down to the quarry, and out to the field where Rivkah rolled a stone. She tossed her gloves on top of the little boulder she’d prised out of the ground.
Aharon shut down the belching old tractor. He held out a hand for him and Rivkah to run together. The birth of the first child in the kibbutz, a girl, had emboldened him, proof that this hard land would give way to life. In the two months since Aharon’s arrival from Hungary, he’d only mooned at Rivkah through the flames of a bonfire or contrived to be near her when Massuot Yitzhak danced the hora.
She told him, “Go on ahead.” Aharon was a good-looking boy and quiet. Mrs. Pappel had encouraged her to pay attention to him. “I’ll catch up.”
Aharon galloped off with the rest. Rivkah stayed behind on the terrace. She’d spent weeks clearing and leveling this ground on the eastern slope of the hill. The bigger stones had been cemented into a retaining wall, the smaller stones tossed into a pile to line a cistern. Once the terrace was finished, the soil would be washed for months to clean away the salt. Then Massuot Yitzhak would plant. The pioneers would then carve out another terrace and shape the land more. If the covenant was true, their children would do the same for a thousand years.
Rivkah drew a breath of the ancient view. No one in history had ever stood where she did, because she had created this spot. Even so, no wall or terrace could match the baby, the Jewish girl who’d not had to climb this hill but arrived on top of it.
Rivkah hurried up the path to stand with Aharon outside the clinic to greet her.
The news had spread to the Arab villages. On the afternoon of the birth, they came to Massuot Yitzhak.
A hundred Arabs flocked to the bottom of the slope. They were same number as all of Massuot Yitzhak. The boys tied black and white keffiyehs around their necks and hid their faces like bandits. They arrived on foot and in mule-drawn carts. In Arabic and Hebrew, they shouted for the Jews to stop stealing their land, to go away, and to be damned.
Dozens of Jews formed their own mob on top of the hill. The Arabs climbed far enough to fling rocks at them. Some showed talent with slings, sailing pebbles almost to where Rivkah stood on the crest.
The two sides kept this distance in the July heat. A few Arabs and settlers got hit, each yelped, then came up yelling louder. No one got badly hurt, but the risk was high. Tempers might flare, the confrontation could grow into a brawl.
Several kibbutz girls stood with their boys. Mrs. Pappel appeared beside Rivkah in the shade of an olive tree. She’d been with the new mother and child. Mrs. Pappel clucked her tongue.
Rivkah asked, “How is the baby?”
“The baby’s fine. I’m not going to put up with this a lot longer.”
Mrs. Pappel mopped her brow, then reached to the small of her back and filled her hand with a pistol.
“Put that away.”
“If one rock goes in that baby’s window.”
“You’ll make things worse.”
“I’ll make it stop.”
“Put it away. Right now.”
Mrs. Pappel sat under the tree and set the gun where no one might see it.
The fracas on the hillside stayed at an even pitch, a stalemate of anger. The Arabs at the bottom of the hill had the greater number, but the settlers held the high ground. Both sides reveled in chasing after the same stones that had been thrown at them to heave them back; it became a test to see who could grab them off the ground first. In ones and twos, boys in scarves and boys in sun hats surged forward to launch their stones, then skip backward, taunting.
After an hour, Mrs. Pappel gathered her handgun and left to check on the child. She had no more fear that the squabble would escalate and invoke her.
The clash wore on as if it were the day’s work. Arabs and settlers bellowed with an inexhaustible dislike of each other, in a perfectly balanced fear that kept them apart and near enough. The violence slacked only at sunset. Both sides raised their arms at their opponents to skirl their last curses and stones. Calls for prayer rose from nearby Surif and Jab’a. The bell rang at Massuot Yitzhak’s dining hall. All the boys and girls withdrew, dutiful and hungry.
Rivkah filled a tray for Mrs. Pappel and the newborn’s mother and delivered it to the clinic. She returned to the plum trees overlooking the Wadi Shahid, the valley at the foot of Massuot Yitzhak. Rivkah sat with the opening stars and restored quiet. She thought of her family and her promise to build Palestine for them. Behind her the young settlement settled down to sleep. Rivkah stayed late under a spangling sky, hoping for a better country than what she’d seen that day.
Chapter 28
Vince
July 22
Jerusalem
In the back of the YMCA’s patio restaurant full
of white linen tables and umbrellas, Hugo waited behind a beer.
He stood at Vince’s approach. Vince didn’t extend a hand. Hugo looked rested, fed, even prosperous. He was on the inside now and appeared to take to it. His beer was half full.
“Hugo.”
“Vince. It’s been a while.”
“Eight months without a word from you. Yeah. A while.”
“I’m sorry. Did you stop believing we are friends?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then pretend to be happy to see me. We’ll go from there.”
Hugo sat, Vince followed.
“I figure you owe me for three more weeks at sea and another four days of waiting for you to show up here.”
“I’m sorry about all that. The four days I can explain.” Hugo motioned across the sunny patio for a waiter to bring Vince a beer. “Let’s eat.”
A beer for Vince came immediately. He ordered an American hamburger, Hugo the same.
“I regret having lost touch. But I always knew what you were doing; you’ve been easy to keep track of in the newspapers. You’re getting to be famous. It turns out you’re a wonderful writer.”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, I’ve been wanting to thank you. I’ve had time to think about all you’ve done for me. Gave me hope, perhaps even life. Gave me Palestine.”
Hugo lifted his beer to tap against Vince’s glass. Vince complied, then both drank. Customers began to fill the restaurant. Many were British military from their headquarters in the seven-story King David Hotel across the street, and others were hotel guests drawn to the Y’s sunny deck and lower prices.
“You look well, Hugo.”
“As do you. I’m glad you’re back. Why did you come? It’s not because I asked.”
“I got a promotion. This was part of the deal.”
“Ah. Ambition. Perhaps of all the things that came back to me,” Hugo held up his hands, once rail thin, strong again now as they once were, a plumber’s hands, “I was most glad to see the return of ambition. A corpse is nothing a man should want to be.”
“What have you been doing? Since you jumped.”
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