“You’re not a Jew, are you?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“American. Press.”
“Right.”
The soldier stared at the bodies as if he saw them for the first time every second.
“This is bad.”
“I know.”
The Welshman shook his great head. “No, sir. You don’t.”
The crowd was left alone with the suspended corpses while the two sappers cleared the ground. In an audible whisper, one policeman lectured a civilian near him, likely a Jew from Netanya, perhaps an official making some complaint. Within moments, every soldier and cop began to murmur, unbottling their disgust.
A captain of the Welsh Guard had waited long enough. He stepped out of the semicircle to bark at one of the sappers, to know if they’d completed their job. He was told they wanted to go over the ground one more time. The captain said, “Bollocks.”
He produced a knife, then moved to the first strung-up corpse. The sappers stopped circling. The big corporal beside Vince stepped out to assist; a few policemen padded, too, toward their murdered comrades.
Before slicing the rope away from the first body, the captain unraveled the shirt from the corpse’s head to make sure everyone saw the young sergeant’s swollen blue face. The officer unpinned the paper from the undershirt; this he walked to one of his men who announced to the crowd it was a handwritten death sentence from the Irgun.
With one slash of his blade the captain cut the noose. He made no effort to catch the body.
The corpse collapsed into a kneel; for a moment it appeared to beg. Before the captain could cut down the second sergeant, the body on dead knees vanished in a burst of fire. Vince, the soldiers, and the cops dove for the earth.
Vince scrambled to his feet, ears ringing. The Welsh captain writhed in the dirt, scorched and alive. The boobytrapped corpse had been obliterated. The detonation had hurled the other sergeant into the weeds, still at the end of a noose tied to a broken branch.
Cops and soldiers leaped off the ground, weapons drawn, searching for threat. The corporal had been knocked facedown, and the back of his uniform was shredded.
Vince sprinted to the downed captain. The bomb had badly scored the man’s arms and face. Vince pressed both hands into the officer’s smoking chest, trying not to hurt him but needing to keep him down and still. The captain tried to roll over as if he were still aflame; Vince shouted that he was going to be alright. A private skidded to his knees to ask what he could do; Vince told him to run out of the grove to the street, call his headquarters and report what happened, have them send an ambulance. The boy flashed away into the trees.
The reporter from London walked up. He coughed, then turned away, taking notes.
On the ground, the captain was wild; he would not pass out. Others helped Vince pin him down. No one in the crowd had anything for his pain. Soldiers leaned in close to say, “We’ll find them, sir. We’ll get the bastards.”
Vince left the captain to his men. The two sappers inched closer to the second corpse with metal detectors. The body’s face lay exposed, wrenched and blue as the other.
The big corporal with a tattered back regained his feet, to order soldiers to locate and mark body parts. The rest of his squad he arrayed in a perimeter to protect the people in the grove.
Vince wasn’t concerned. Pinchus had come and gone.
Chapter 70
Rivkah
August 2
Massuot Yitzhak
On the dark porch, Malik recited a poem, the dream of a thirst-dying man. Mrs. Pappel and Rivkah would not sip their tea during his performance, wishing to be mannerly. Mrs. Pappel despised cool tea; she tapped lightly against the cup where Malik would not see it.
Malik interrupted himself, to raise a big palm. “Do you hear that?”
Mrs. Pappel said, “Yes.”
Malik’s camel, always on guard in the night, grumbled. Malik’s hand went into his sleeve. “Someone is coming.”
Mrs. Pappel stood on the porch step. “I don’t see headlights.”
Rivkah asked, “Who could it be this time of night?”
Mrs. Pappel entered the house to blow out the lantern in the kitchen.
Rivkah rose from her chair. Malik gripped her wrist. “Where are you going?”
“Someone’s coming up the hill.”
“Yes. And what will you do?” Malik blotted out much of the night. “It is dark. The someone who has come does not want to be seen. It is a car with its lights off. We do not know what they intend.”
Mrs. Pappel emerged, pistol in hand. Malik pulled a handgun from his sleeve. Mrs. Pappel said to Rivkah, “Stay here.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Malik.” Mrs. Pappel hurried off the porch.
Malik lapped a big hand on Rivkah’s shoulder. He dipped his face. “If they are friends, we will bring them to you. If they are not…” Malik shrugged. “This is not for you. Stay here.”
When he turned away, his robes swirled across Rivkah’s legs. The camel bleated from a different place. The beast was moving with Malik.
The pale dome of Jerusalem lit the northern horizon, Arab Nahalin glowed on its hill. Stars and a half-moon glossed the ground to make inky shadows. Rivkah saw nothing on the quarry road, not Malik or Mrs. Pappel or intruders.
She moved under the open sky. No one ran among the buildings, no one called alarm, the rest of the kibbutz was unaware.
On the quarry road, the unseen car’s motor revved, not skulking any longer. Rivkah hurried back to the porch; the car sped uphill, toward her.
A gunshot popped in the night, and another. The car’s engine wound tighter, working up the slope, still without headlamps. Two shots answered, not from the road but the hillside, Malik and Mrs. Pappel firing back. Rivkah crouched on the darkened porch. She clutched the stones of her house with shaking hands.
The car neared the crest of the hill, invisible but roaring. Behind it another shot crackled, and Malik’s strong voice sailed up the slope, bellowing the alert.
Rivkah chanced a glance from behind the porch wall. A fat car, black and grimacing, raised a rooster tail rushing along the edge of the kibbutz. The first settlers emerged from their homes, calling to each other. The car barreled at Rivkah’s darkened house.
The vehicle slid on the gravel to stop. A dust cloud trailing it caught up and drifted past. In the driver’s window, a pistol was leveled, too dark to see the face behind it. Rivkah dropped behind the low porch wall. She shuddered at each bullet smashing her windows and pelting the front door. The shots rang loudly but did not mask Malik’s running scream of “No!”
The car fishtailed into a U-turn to run across open ground before it crashed through a fence, back to the unpaved road. Shots from Malik and Mrs. Pappel chased it downhill.
Rivkah stepped over broken glass on the porch, out to the road, into the tracks of the car. At the bottom of the hill, the vehicle cut on its lights among the empty hills. Haverim came to stand with Rivkah and watch the raiders depart. Rivkah stayed in the road until Mrs. Pappel came running out of the dark calling her name.
Chapter 71
Rivkah
August 3
Rivkah sat on a broiling rock in a field of stones, mopping her brow. The distance wobbled with warped mirages. In this wincing heat, Vince arrived.
She was quick to embrace him, despite her sweat and the other settlers watching. She and Vince did not kiss or whisper greetings or news, she only closed her eyes against him to feel him searing and breathing. Vince stepped back, making a show of beholding her.
“I came as soon as I heard about the shooting.”
“How did you find out?”
“I read a police report. Let’s go up to the house.”
Rivkah said, “I have to finish he
re. You go ahead. I’ll be an hour. Will you stay?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“I checked out of my room at the YMCA hotel.”
“Do you mean it?”
“I’ll sleep at the guest house.”
“You’ll sleep on our sofa.”
“What’ll Mrs. Pappel say?”
“Many things. But the last thing she’ll say will be yes.”
“Do you have any idea who shot at you?”
“No. Do you?”
“Probably the cops.”
“Why?”
“You know about the hangings. The sergeants.”
“Yes.”
“I was there.”
“How terrible. I’m sorry.”
Vince only nodded. The smallness of the gesture spoke to the horrors. “Get out of this heat. I’ll see you soon.”
Rivkah swiped the kerchief over her face. Vince backed away up the hill, taking many steps without turning.
Vince opened the door; he’d been watching for her. On the couch lay a pillow and folded blanket, a full duffel on the floor. Vince closed the perforated door; a pair of bullet holes let in light.
He said, “That wasn’t in the report.”
Mrs. Pappel emerged from her room. “He’s staying.” Mrs. Pappel threw up her hands.
Rivkah headed for her bedroom. “I’ll shower. Don’t exhaust him.”
Once she’d toweled off and dressed, Rivkah found Vince and Mrs. Pappel on the porch sipping tea. Vince sweated; Rivkah fetched a fresh kerchief. Would he stay long enough to grow used to the extremes on the rim of the desert?
Mrs. Pappel said, “We waited for you. I didn’t want Vince to have to tell it twice.”
Vince spoke first about Hugo, the little Irgunist who came with him months ago to rattle a pistol in their faces. He was in Jerusalem on death row, guilty of the murder of a Haganah fighter and possession of a weapon. Mrs. Pappel and Rivkah had heard the news of Hugo Ungar’s conviction, but nothing more. Mrs. Pappel said a man with Hugo’s sadness was bound for such a fate. Vince offered no defense; perhaps they were no longer friends.
Mrs. Pappel leaned to touch his hand. “What of Netanya?”
Vince rubbed his palms together, hesitating. “Pinchus.”
Mrs. Pappel nodded. “I expect so.”
“He wanted a crowd. He made sure the cops got a bunch of false calls to whip everybody up looking for the sergeants. One call was so specific; everybody knew that was it. Pinchus played us like a violin. Cops, soldiers, the press, people from the town, everybody flocked to a eucalyptus grove in Netanya.”
Vince called it a peaceful, dappled place. Already he was selecting the language for his column to America.
“A soldier in the grove warned me it was bad. He said I couldn’t know how bad it was.”
Rivkah asked, “What does that mean?”
“Boobytrapping the bodies of those sergeants might have been the last straw. Add that to the King David, the Goldschmidt House, all the whippings and kidnappings, bombings and violence for two solid years. This might’ve broken loose something in the British.”
“What?”
“I think rage.”
Mrs. Pappel nodded. “That’s why they shot up our house.”
“This sort of thing is going on all over Palestine. Vigilantes are firing into Jewish buses and taxis, beating up Jews in the street. It’s bad in England, too. Synagogues are getting vandalized, shops and factories are being torched.”
“I’ve seen this before,” said Mrs. Pappel. “We all have.”
“It won’t be long until Pinchus answers.”
Rivkah said, “He’s a monster.”
Mrs. Pappel asked, “Why do you say that?”
“He only creates the need for himself. Violence makes more violence.”
Mrs. Pappel said, “I won’t argue with you over this, Liebling. Vince, why don’t you take Rivkah for a walk.”
Rivkah let him lift her by the hand from the porch chair. Together they stepped out into the warm, waning dusk.
The settlers of Massuot Yitzhak filed out of the dining hall. Vince and Rivkah held hands, and without jealousy the young men dipped their heads. Many of the teen girls joined hands to swing arms in a parody of the two strolling.
Chapter 72
Vince
Vince steered her onto the path to the orange orchard. They strode down the rows of young trees, under the calming wonder of the blossoms.
He said, “I’m from Brooklyn.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s a part of New York. Small yards, tight houses. My mother grows four tomato plants. My father takes ten minutes to cut the grass with a push mower. I live in an apartment in the city. I don’t know how to do any of this.”
He trailed a hand through the citrus branches. The leaves rustled with the swish of a dress. He’d not seen Rivkah in a dress.
“I don’t know how to cut stone. I can’t build anything. My father’s a millwright at a shipyard. He doesn’t keep tools in the house. I don’t cook.”
“You can carry a bucket.”
“I made six trips before I sat on it.”
Vince stopped walking and framed Rivkah’s shoulders with his hands. The day’s last rays played in the orchard’s leaves; the light made Rivkah pink and the reclaimed earth rosy.
“I wired Dennis, my editor in New York. I let him know I was coming here for a while.”
“A while.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said the story of Palestine is here on the frontier as much as anywhere else.”
“Did you mention me to Dennis the editor?”
“I did.”
“And?”
From his pocket, Vince produced the smooth pebble he’d taken away when he visited with UNSCOP.
“Do you want me to make you a promise?”
She took the pebble from Vince and tossed it among the orange trees.
“No one in Palestine can make a promise and be sure of keeping it. Only Pinchus.”
Rivkah pulled him by the hand.
“Let’s go back. Mrs. Pappel will figure out work for you.”
Chapter 73
Hugo
September 5
Jerusalem
Hugo laid a towel on the tile floor for his knees. His bones sometimes ached, a legacy of the camps. Kneeling, he wrestled the white porcelain toilet bowl over a new wax seal.
From the bedroom, through the open door, the warden called, “How’s it going?”
“Five minutes.”
Hugo caulked the edges, matched the bolts and nuts, and tightened his work. He secured the water tank, then turned the spigot to fill it. The warden left the easy chair beside his bed to stand in the doorway. Hugo gave him the honor of the first flush.
“There,” the warden said to the swirling water. “Like a dream.”
Hugo asked, “Do you cut your own hair?”
“I do. Why?”
“Throw the hair in the trash. Not the toilet.”
Hugo gathered up the tools the warden had assembled: wrenches, a wire snake, caulk gun, hammer, and screwdrivers. The warden said to leave them.
“Guard.”
The warden backed out of the small bathroom; he didn’t help Hugo to his feet. The armed guard took Hugo’s place to gather the tools.
Hugo followed into the den. A second guard leaned against a wall. The warden indicated a stuffed chair for Hugo to sit.
The apartment was sparsely decorated, a touch of temporariness. The tables had doilies, the walls a few framed pictures, a handful of
books lined a shelf, and the windows were curtained.
“Tea?”
“With a splash of milk.”
The warden sat across from Hugo in a similar chair. Without instruction, the guard entered the kitchen where he padded about, sifting through drawers and cabinets. The warden made a tsk-ing noise.
“Because of you terrorists, I do not have my wife with me. I have a clod there making my tea.”
“Apologies.”
“Do you play chess?”
“No. You could teach me.”
“I’m afraid that would take years.” The warden pressed fingers over his lips. “That was an inappropriate jest. You must think me an ass.”
Hugo waved it off. “I hear the guard laughing. It wasn’t a waste.”
“Checkers, then.”
The warden set up a game table. He let Hugo choose, red or black, fire or smoke. Hugo picked smoke and began the game.
With his corresponding move, eyeing the board, the warden said, “What an odd thing, that you turn out to be an excellent plumber.”
Hugo responded with a checker, then leaned back. “Why is it odd?”
“I suppose it’s convenient to think of you as a killer and little else. In any case, I’m pleased. How did you find out about my toilet clog?”
“Some of the guards make fun of you as a dandy. It was mentioned. So, I thought while I was here I would fix it for you.”
The warden answered with his own move. “Why did you do it?”
“I swore I would never be a plumber again. The thought repelled me. A man swears things. He means them when he does it. I did. Now I understand no one can know what’s coming. A clock can, yes, a clock. And a calendar. Not a man.”
The warden winced at Hugo as if recalculating something. He sat back in his pillowy chair.
“If you could choose. We know you can’t, but if you could. Would you be better off if you’d become a plumber here in Palestine?”
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