Feinstein was the younger of the two, just twenty, born in Jerusalem. He’d joined the British army at sixteen, the Irgun after the war. Seven months ago, Feinstein was arrested for driving a stolen taxi during an attack on Jerusalem’s rail station. In the raid, he took a wound which cost him his left arm. The police found him by following the trail of his blood.
One year older, Barazani immigrated as a child with his family from Iraq. His rabbi father did little to support the household; Barazani went to work as a boy. When he turned sixteen, he joined the Stern Gang, pasting up propaganda leaflets. He graduated to operations and became an experienced saboteur. Two months ago, Barazani was nabbed out past curfew in Jerusalem with a grenade in his pocket, on his way to assassinate a British general.
Vince said, “Hello.” The guard reminded him that no one was allowed to speak to the condemned.
Vince stayed back. Barazani and Feinstein breathed slowly, audibly, as if each breath were a sigh. The two were handsome, soft-featured, a shared dark cast to their eyes and olive skins.
Feinstein spoke in a deep voice, older than him. “We know who you are.”
The bearded man arose, leaving the Bible on the table. He came to the bars; with a gesture to the young guard, he was let out of the cell. He was shorter than Vince, built like a block. Dandruff sifted his shoulders.
“You are a reporter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am a rabbi. You may hear what I say. Please recall it correctly.”
The old man wrapped fingers around the bars above the hands of Barazani and Feinstein. Vince, too, stepped close enough to put a hand around the bars. The rabbi spoke to the boys.
“Each man is brought into this world for some purpose. Some men fulfill the task given them in twenty years, some in seventy, and others never at all. For those who never fulfill it and go on living, life no longer has purpose. That, too, is a kind of death. But in lives such as yours, my sons, death can get no footing. Even your death is turned into life.”
Through the bars, the rabbi laid a hand on each head.
“I will be with you at the end. The last face you see will be a Jew.”
The rabbi lowered his brow, making his beard fold under his chin. He muttered a Hebrew blessing, then backed away from the bars.
Barazani waved, not in farewell but to refute something.
“Rabbi. Please. Don’t come tonight.”
The old man hoisted a finger over his shoulder as he walked off. “I will not argue. No.”
The guard walked the rabbi to the gate of death row. While the cop had his back turned, Vince reached inside the bars. First he shook Feinstein’s lone hand, then Barazani’s. Vince asked, “What do you need?”
The young guard returned. He laid hands on Vince, not roughly but enough to pull him away from the cell. Neither Barazani nor Feinstein answered his question. Perhaps they needed nothing.
A reply answer came from the adjoining cell. One of the terrorists came to the bars. He called to Vince, “Oranges. We’d like oranges.”
Vince asked to see the gallows. The guard took him on another long walk through white halls.
The execution chamber lay at the end of an empty block, out of the way so no prisoners would hear it work. The room was high-ceilinged and uncluttered. One wood beam spanned the space overhead; from it hung a rope and noose. Vince stepped onto the trapdoor, a platform of boards and hinges that creaked under his weight. A lever in the wall would make it fall away. A noose dangled in his face.
Vince grew anxious standing on the trapdoor, afraid it might fall open. He dared himself to touch the rope and made it sway.
The guard guided Vince back to the warden’s office and left him there. Vince found Hugo waiting in the hallway. They greeted each other coolly.
Vince asked, “How did you know I was here?”
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t know.”
Hugo indicated a mesh bag stuffed with oranges at his feet. “I need you to get these to Barazani and Feinstein.”
“What’s inside the oranges?”
“I don’t lie to you, Vince.”
“You just never tell me the whole truth.”
“Truth. Would you like me to be philosophic about truth? I can be. How did you enjoy Massuot Yitzhak?”
“Did I cheat you somehow? Why are we trading slights all of a sudden?”
“You didn’t think it would be like this, did you? When you plucked me off my wooden slats and my pisspot for a pillow. When you set me out in the sun like a sick flower. You didn’t see this.”
“No.”
“You thought I would always be that skeleton.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. You and everyone else. Give him milk, easy; he can’t take too much. Give him a new set of clothes and an identification card. Feed him on pity. Give him a train and a ship, send him somewhere he can fatten up and quiet down. Let’s put this ugliness behind us.”
“I’ve tried to help you.”
“Truly? Be honest. Everything has been for yourself. Your search. Your understanding. Your newspaper. And I told you, didn’t I? Come to Palestine with me, Vince, see the stories we will live. That was a great truth, maybe the greatest of your life. I think you owe me for it.”
Hugo lifted the sack of oranges from the floor.
“Do you know what I found in Palestine? People who don’t pity me. The Jews here don’t talk about anyone’s deathbed in Europe. I’m not special. Palestine might be the only place in the world where the present is bigger than the past. Yet every time I look at you I feel that sun, I feel my ribs sticking out. I taste that goddam milk.”
Hugo held the oranges out.
“Don’t drop them.”
Vince walked away. “Find someone else.”
Hugo called down the white hall after him, “Stay away from Barazani and Feinstein. You will owe me for that, too.”
Vince headed for his cell among the Arabs to sleep into the evening.
Chapter 53
Vince
April 21
Vince sat up on his dark cot. He laced his shoes, a few minutes after midnight.
He left the cell. Around him, the Arabs knew where he was going and that he wouldn’t return. They muttered to him, “Ma’a salama.” Some reached open hands into the hall, a salutation for him or for the two who would be hanged, Vince didn’t ask. A brotherhood existed here and the two Jews who would die tonight hadn’t killed Arabs, so he believed the Arabs’ gestures were for them.
He padded the long halls to death row. Inside the locked gate, the lights were on. The Jews were singing.
When the song broke, Vince asked to be let in. The young guard came to open up.
“You’re early, sir.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Understood.”
“How are they?”
“In good spirits.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did they get a sack of oranges today? Did someone bring them?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“No. When I came to check on them this afternoon, this lot handed me a good one.” The guard indicated the cell of five Jews watching Vince. “It’s what they asked for, yeah?”
“Yeah. It was.”
The guard ushered him closer to the cells. They stopped five paces from the bars.
“Stay here, Mr. Haas. The rabbi and the warden will be here soon. You can watch, but no talking.”
The guard did not stay beside Vince but paced the length of both cells. Barazani and Feinstein sat at their table. Before them lay a pack of cigarettes and the remains of a meal. Feinstein scribbled something inside the cover of the Bible. In the other cell, the prisoners sat on their cots, dark heads
bowed.
Feinstein closed the Bible and brought it to the bars. He called the guard to come take it. The two exchanged delicate words Vince could not hear. The guard rested a hand on Feinstein’s shoulder.
“Move back, please,” Feinstein asked. “We would like our time to pray in private.”
The guard moved beside Vince. Barazani motioned them further away. Vince and the guard backpedaled again, putting their backs against the wall.
Barazani and Feinstein did pray together, but not a long prayer. They finished by touching foreheads tenderly, brotherly, then Barazani lit a cigarette. He inhaled a deep drag to raise a red glow. From his own pocket, Feinstein pulled an orange.
Vince’s back came off the wall, instinctively alarmed. The guard barred him from taking another step.
Barazani touched his cigarette to the top of the orange. A small shower of sparks flickered at Feinstein’s breast. Barazani clutched his comrade in both arms and the two pressed the crackling fuse between their hearts.
The guard dropped the Bible and flung out his arms, screaming something. The blast knocked him backwards the short distance he’d leaped. Vince was rocked back into the wall.
The explosion boomed down the long halls. The guard scrambled up off the floor, fumbling for his keys. In the adjacent cell, the five Jews gripped the bars as if they might all pull together to free themselves.
Vince’s ears buzzed and his face flashed. He didn’t enter the cell with the guard where smoke cleared like hurrying specters.
He lifted the Bible the guard had dropped. Feinstein had inscribed in it:
‘In the shadows of the gallows, April 21,1947, to the British soldier as you stand guard, before we go to the gallows, accept this Bible as a memento and remember that we stood in dignity and marched in dignity. It is better to die with a weapon in hand than to live with hands raised. Meir Feinstein.’
The two had elected not to kill the kindly guard who stood too close, or Vince, or the old rabbi who couldn’t be talked out of joining them on the gallows, or the executioner and the warden who surely would’ve been on the scaffold with them. Barazani would have asked for a final cigarette; Feinstein would request a bite of his last Jaffa orange.
Vince put the Bible on the floor where he found it. Inside the cell, the guard stood over the remains of Barazani and Feinstein. The young man could not kneel though his legs shook, and he seemed to want to. He could do nothing but set the table aright.
Chapter 54
Rivkah
May 9
Massuot Yitzhak
Gush Etzion celebrated a three-day rain.
The leaders of the bloc declared a break from the soggy fields. In the constant drizzle, Rivkah hiked to Revadim to visit her sister for the first time in weeks.
Gabbi squired her around the new kibbutz. Two big tents, each covering thirty cots, served as living quarters. The young settlers shared toilets and showers. Cooking was done over outdoor fires. Barbed wire marked the borders of Revadim; sandbag gun positions protected every approach. Gabbi showed Rivkah the beginnings of a fig orchard, the kibbutz’s five young goats, and a tin roof over a welding shop. They walked hand-in-hand under the dripping sky. Gabbi was lively, fed by the showers; the drops were the smallest of things. A pistol was holstered on her hip as she described the Arabs of Nahalin who sometimes fired guns in the night over Revadim.
Over tea, Rivkah told her about Vince. She showed Gabbi a column Vince had mailed, about Dov Gruner. Gabbi asked whether Vince was handsome, rich; would she go to America? Rivkah said no to all three. She folded the newspaper column away to keep it dry.
During her walk back to Massuot Yitzhak, the storm broke like a fever, with a chill and quivers of lightning. Toward dusk the sky opened to tracts of blue, with some gold in the clouds. At sunset, a car came to Massuot Yitzhak.
Mrs. Pappel met Rivkah on the porch. “It’s your American.”
“How can you tell?”
“Liebling. It’s him.”
Vince arrived in an old Chevrolet that coughed when it shut down. He stood beside the car; Rivkah stayed on the porch. Neither knew how to say hello. When Rivkah stepped off the porch, Vince sped until she pressed against him.
“You got some rain.”
Rivkah laughed into his chest, pleased that this was the first thing he said, unremarkable and acquainted. She took him in to Mrs. Pappel. At the table, Vince presented Rivkah with a typed copy of his most recent column, about Barazani and Feinstein. Vince sipped hot tea while Rivkah read.
Vince had been at the cell of Barazani and Feinstein in their last minutes. He called what he’d witnessed horrible but wrote, too, of his own horror. Two Jews had died by their own hands, an act of courage, but he didn’t overlook that they died plotting to kill more British. He described the kindness of the guard, the compassion of the Arab prisoners. Vince called the event what it was, a tragedy.
Pappel asked, “Will you stay the night? You’ve missed supper. We can scare something up.”
“Thank you, I’d like to.”
“We won’t be watering tomorrow. I’ll find something for you to do.”
Before Rivkah could stop Mrs. Pappel from enlisting Vince’s labor again, he spoke.
“I was wondering if, tomorrow, Rivkah would like to come with me to see what I do.”
“Vince.” Rivkah slid a hand across the table to bring the conversation around to her.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to ask Mrs. Pappel. Ask me.”
Quietly, Mrs. Pappel took the cups away.
“Do you like music?”
“I’m from Vienna.”
“Do you know the American composer Leonard Bernstein?”
“Everyone does.”
“He’s conducting his Jeremiah symphony tomorrow at a kibbutz north of here, Ein Harod. Would you like to go?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Pappel returned with refilled teacups. “Will that old Chevy make it to Ein Harod?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She set the tea in front of Vince, then sat behind her own cup. “Will it make it back?”
Rivkah stood. “Vince, go outside. We’ll find something for you to eat.”
With his teacup, he left for the porch.
Mrs. Pappel pointed at Vince’s column on the table, written for an American newspaper, by an American.
“You understand. He will go home.”
“Don’t.”
Rivkah made Vince a meal of vegetables, hummus, and bread. Mrs. Pappel sat with Vince’s words to read for herself.
Chapter 55
Vince
May 10
Vince sat up on the sofa, in undershirt and khaki pants. The sun wasn’t up yet. Mrs. Pappel presided over the stove and the pops of eggs.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Black, please.”
“Rivkah’s in the shower.”
Vince blinked to catch up to the pace of the morning. Mrs. Pappel brought him a mug.
“My husband Morrie took his coffee black. Come sit. I learned to make crepes when we lived in London.”
Vince buttoned on his blue cotton shirt, then carried his coffee to the table. Mrs. Pappel set down a plate of eggs and pancakes. Rivkah’s shower cut off. Through the window, other lights in dark Massuot Yitzhak glowed. Dawn was not the start of the day here. Mrs. Pappel sat across from Vince.
“Morrie and I lived in London for twenty years. He thought many things about the British were odd.”
“Like what?”
“He was in the movie business. A lot of money changed hands. We came from Vienna, an old place for the Jews. London, not so much. The British did business over gin, at the club, nice leather chairs, some stuffed heads on a wall.”
“Good description.”
“Tha
nk you. Morrie was an Austrian Jew. He came from people who shook hands after they signed the papers, not before. He’d have a drink when a deal was finished. Morrie liked ink, he liked details. He liked a profit but only his share. He never lost his accent. Didn’t shave his little moustache, never joined the club. He was always Shylock. He never understood the British.”
Vince forked more into his mouth. She smiled at his appetite.
“May I say something else?”
Vince nodded.
“I should have said this last night. I’m old and maybe I’ve been left in the sun too long. I’m a little hardened and things don’t soak in so fast like they used to. You’re a good writer.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re important to Palestine.”
“Pinchus told me the same thing.”
Mrs. Pappel reached across to pat one of his hands. “That makes it true. Vince.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll say only this. Palestine is like nothing history has seen before. It’s complex.”
“That’s funny.”
“What is?”
“I said that exact thing to my editor when I told him I didn’t want to come back.”
“This isn’t about Palestine. It’s about you. I want to say this before Rivkah comes out.”
“Okay.”
“This is not just a land. We’re not just a people. We don’t just live here. I lived in Vienna. The Jews here, we’ve become a new thing, us and this place. It doesn’t have a name yet, but there’s never been anything like it, our need for Palestine. And it seems to need us. I don’t know how to explain.”
Mrs. Pappel stood.
“What I’m saying is you may not, in the end, understand us. Please don’t use Rivkah for that purpose.”
“I won’t.”
“That’s a glib thing to say. Have you used others?”
Vince pushed away the breakfast plate. “You don’t know me.”
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