Raquela

by Ruth Gruber

  “Monique,” Raquela said, “please tell the sheikh that no men, only women, will take care of his wife and deliver his baby.”

  The sheikh nodded as Monique translated. “I leave her in your hands,” he said to Raquela. “May Allah watch over her.”

  He left to rejoin his family in the courtyard.

  Monique helped the young woman slip shyly out of her long black gown and kept up a stream of soothing Arabic as she turned on the shower in the little bathroom off the tiny office.

  Her face frozen with fear, the young woman followed Monique into the delivery room. She stared at the white leather delivery table and clutched her body tightly. “What’s that?” she cried out hysterically.

  Raquela longed to put her arms around her, but she feared even the touch of her hand might be misunderstood. She had never seen such panic in a delivery room.

  “It’s only a bed, a kind of hospital bed to make it easier for me to help you have your baby.”

  “I’m not getting up on that thing.” Her eyes darted around the room. “Where’s the pole?”

  “She’s asking about a pole,” Monique said. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  The young woman had backed into a corner of the delivery room and crouched on her heels. Her childlike face looked stricken.

  She can’t be more than fourteen, Raquela thought.

  Monique sat on the floor beside her, talking quietly. The terrified girl spoke between sobs.

  Monique explained to Raquela. “She says when Bedouin women have their babies, they hold on to the pole that goes through the center of the tent. She says they stay on their knees, and when the pains come, they push and push, but they keep holding on to the pole. She says she saw her mother deliver many times. She says that’s the only way she’s going to have her baby.”

  Raquela listened thoughtfully. Pictures she had seen in old textbooks of women in ancient China and of Eskimo women in igloos, kneeling to give birth, flashed through her mind.

  “Tell her we know that kneeling is a natural way to give birth. Tell her she can kneel as long as she feels she wants to. But as soon as she wants me to help, then we will go to the table. I can’t do much for her if she kneels; but on the delivery table I can help, and maybe the baby will come sooner.”

  The young woman barely heard.

  “I want the pole.” She tightened her arms around her swollen belly as if she were protecting her unborn child against the enemy.

  A spasm of pain racked her body. She cried out, “Help me! Help me!”

  “We will help you,” Raquela said.

  They lifted the young woman onto the delivery table. Raquela placed the stethoscope on her abdomen and listened to the baby’s heartbeat. Then she checked the mother’s heartbeat, pulse, and blood pressure and examined her internally.

  “Tell her,” she said to Monique, “she’s almost ready. Tell her to push against me. Push. Push.”

  Raquela worked swiftly, skillfully. Suddenly the head, covered with straight black hair, emerged. She turned the shoulders and eased the baby down.

  “The most beautiful baby girl in the world,” she said, and then, as always, gently placed the baby on the mother’s stomach.

  The young woman opened terror-stricken eyes. “My husband wanted a son.”

  Raquela stopped working and looked at her for a moment. “I’m sure he’ll love his new daughter.”

  The young woman turned her head away, sobbing.

  Raquela finished the delivery and then went to find the sheikh in the courtyard. She beckoned him to come into her little office. Monique joined her as interpreter.

  “You have a beautiful baby,” she said.

  “Allah be praised. A son?”

  “You have been blessed with a healthy daughter.”

  He frowned. “I have too many daughters. What is wrong with my wives?”

  Raquela swallowed hard. How could she help the young wife? She thought swiftly—a white lie would hurt no one. She spoke with authority. “So far as science knows, it’s the seed of the husband that determines the sex of his child. If you have only daughters, then it must be something in your seed. But have no fear, I will not reveal your secret to anyone.”

  She paused. “Now I will take you in to see your wife and baby.”

  The sheikh gathered up his voluminous black gown and strode into the delivery room.

  His young wife lay resting on the table with the baby in her arms. She saw him and instantly turned her frightened face to the wall.

  He took the baby from her. “Allah be praised!” He kissed his infant daughter on the forehead.

  Then he bent down and spoke to his wife. His voice was tender.

  Her lips parted in a smile.

  Raquela and Monique slipped quietly out of the room.

  The Israel Philharmonic was performing in Beersheba.

  Half the hospital staff arranged to attend. The orchestra was to play in the outdoor movie theater on the main street, opposite the Cassit Café.

  Raquela and Arik left the hospital early in the afternoon to have dinner before the performance. Dressing for the desert night, Raquela wore a terra-cotta wool suit and the necklace of blue Hebron-glass beads Arik had bought her on their first walk through the Old City.

  They walked arm in arm through the bustling streets toward Cassit. Little shops now lined the main street—dress shops, greengrocers, stationery stores, bookstores.

  The restaurant had been enlarged and was nearly filled as the owner led them to a table in the rear.

  “Let’s celebrate and have some wine,” Arik said.

  “What are we celebrating?”

  “Just being in love.”

  The waiter brought the wine. Arik lifted his glass. “To the lucky day on Scopus when we first met.”

  Raquela sipped her wine, looking across the table at Arik. Four years had passed since they’d first met. He had been the thread weaving through those years. He had been on Scopus, a shadowy backdrop in all the turmoil of her love affair with Carmi. In Cyprus, walking the ship with Gad, or kissing him in the snow-covered Troodos Mountains, she had never been able to drive Arik completely from her mind.

  Now in these four months of intimacy in Beersheba, of nights of closeness and beauty in his bedroom in the villa, Arik had not once talked of a total commitment—of marriage. Why? She no longer believed his argument that he was too old for her. His lovemaking disproved it; he was as passionate as any young lover.

  What was holding him back?

  The waiter stood over them, reciting the menu. “Hummus…t’heena…felafel”—Middle Eastern dishes—chickpeas and sesame seeds ground with oil. They ordered hummus with pita. There was no meat; Israel was too poor to import beef and too young to produce it.

  In minutes the waiter set the food before them.

  “You’re so quiet tonight, Raquela,” Arik said.

  She dipped her pita into the hummus.

  “You’re my etze-giver, Arik. I’m troubled. I need advice.”

  He straightened himself on the hard chair. “And what advice does my beautiful petitioner seek?”

  “I had a dream last night. There I was, walking alone out into the desert. Walking—it seemed for hours and hours—on the sand. I was parched; my mouth felt stuffed with cotton wadding. Finally, far off, I saw the hot sun shining on a patch of water—the oasis. I began to run. I ran faster. I was ready to faint. But the oasis kept moving farther and farther back into the emptiness. I wanted to scream, but the scream choked soundlessly in my throat. I woke up in a sweat.”

  His eyes filled with sadness behind his glasses.

  “One can never deny a dream, Raquela. Only the fears that cause it. I’m not drawing back from you.”

  “I’ve known you for four years, but I wonder if I really know you. You’re a very complex man, Arik.”

  He fished a cigarette out of a pack. His hands trembled as he lit it.

  Raquela kept searching his face. “Ther
e’s some barrier between us, and I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Our ages—”

  “It’s deeper than that,” she interrupted. “Even when I’m in your arms, I feel something dark—something unspoken—between us, and it scares me.”

  “But I’ve never been so completely in love.” Anguish spread across his face.

  “Are you sure? Completely?” She tried to stifle her doubts.

  “With every cell in my body.”

  She shook her head.

  Slowly he ground out his cigarette in an ashtray.

  “You called me complex. All right, I am. Yes, I do have fears. The very things I love in you are the things I fear: your strength, your independence, your desirability.”

  “For God’s sake, Arik, how can a man with your strength, your understanding of human nature, be scared off by”—she ticked them off her fingers—“by strength, independence, desirability?”

  “I wish things could go on just the way they are now.”

  “You know they never can.”

  She leaned across the table and put her hand on his. “Do you still have doubts about me? After these last months in Beersheba? I’m over twenty-five. Don’t you think I know what I want from a man?”

  Around them people began to stand up.

  “We’d better get to the concert,” Arik said.

  They crossed the street to the outdoor theater where Dov and Sarah waited for them. They took their seats together; the Hadassah staff filled the first three rows.

  It was early evening. The raw frontier town was blanketed in a glow of orange and gold. Raquela tried to push the conflict out of her mind. The sun was setting; she watched the ball of flame drop abruptly out of the cobalt-blue sky. Night enveloped them as the musicians assembled on the improvised outdoor stage.

  TWENTY-THREE

  JUNE 1950

  “One-eight-one-nine-two-five!”

  Raquela studied the rectangular disk hanging around her neck. She read her name, the number 181925, and her blood type engraved on two halves of the metal disk.

  “Here,” she called out. Her voice reverberated through the army warehouse stacked with clothing.

  A young woman soldier shouted, “Over here, one-eight-one-nine-two-five. Sign the receipt.”

  Raquela leaned down on the warehouse table and signed for her gear—khaki shirt and jacket, khaki blouse, khaki beret, brown belt, brown sandals, pajamas, underwear, a duffel bag, and an aluminum mess kit.

  She moved to the side of the warehouse to wait. Twenty-five Hadassah nurses milled around the warehouse in Camp Tel Nof, an army training camp twenty miles south of Tel Aviv. Was it only a week since the notice had come from Hadassah in Jerusalem? “The army has requested every civilian hospital in the country to supply nurses. They’ve asked for twenty-five volunteers from our staff. Ages 21 to 25. URGENT!”

  Raquela had read the notice carefully. In the war’s aftermath, hundreds of young soldiers, blinded and burned and crippled, still filled the Nissen huts of Tel Hashomer, the military hospital outside Tel Aviv.

  She leaned against Tel Nof’s warehouse wall and shut her eyes. Her mind flashed back. She was in Arik’s office in Beersheba. He was at his desk.

  “Arik, the army has issued a call: they want nurses to volunteer to care for the soldiers.”

  He had stood up and come toward her. “You’re not thinking of—?”

  She nodded. “The soldiers need us, Arik. And since the only way I can take care of them is by joining the army, I’m going to join.”

  His voice was strangled. “I know the army needs nurses, but…”

  She didn’t wait. She wanted to tell him her decision firmly, before she could change her mind. “Besides, if war breaks out again, it won’t hurt me to have my training behind me. I can’t get it staying in Hadassah and delivering babies.”

  He repeated slowly, “I know the army needs nurses, but so do we, Raquela. And so do I.”

  He came toward her and put his arms on her shoulders.

  “It’s a fine, patriotic thing you’re doing, but that’s not the only reason. You’re leaving me. That’s part of it; isn’t it?”

  Her eyes filled. “Yes, Arik.”

  “But these six months have been so beautiful.”

  She tried to keep her voice calm. “They have, Arik. But I can’t go on—not on your terms.”

  Around her in the army warehouse the nurses were gathering up their gear. But she heard nothing. Her mind was still replaying the scene in Arik’s office.

  He’d returned to his desk and put his head in his hands.

  “I have etzes for everybody except myself,” he said. “I can’t throw off my fears.”

  He lifted his head to her. His face was distraught.

  “Oh, God, I love you so, but I feel it so clearly: some morning you’ll wake up and see, next to you on the pillow, the face of an old man. And—I don’t blame you—you might run into another man’s arms. And I would die.”

  “It’s no use, Arik. I can’t deal with your fears.”

  She moved toward the door. “The longer we go on, the more we’ll hurt each other.”

  In the warehouse, she felt again her desire for him and her frustration. Had she made the right decision? She felt an emptiness already.

  She heard a voice snap: “Come on. Get moving. You nurses sure take your time.” A young noncom with two diagonal stripes on her right sleeve tried to speed the line along. She was small, with a round baby face and huge black eyes. Her dark hair was cut short and straight.

  “Call me Miriam,” she said, bristling. “I’m the corporal in charge of your unit, and I can see I’m going to have a lot of trouble with you.”

  The tough voice coming from the baby face brought giggles from the nurses.

  “What’s funny?” she demanded. “Come on. Stuff your gear into your duffel bags and follow me to your barracks. Get moving. On the double.”

  The twenty-five nurses dragged their heavy khaki bags down one of the dirt paths that separated the rows of Nissen huts in the army compound.

  Inside their barracks, Raquela and Naomi Samueloff, a friend from Bet Hakerem who had enlisted with her, selected two empty cots. They tossed their kits on the foot of the bed and sprawled out.

  “I’m bushed,” Naomi said, and put her hands behind her head. She was strikingly handsome, with porcelain-blue eyes, ash-blond hair, and a finely carved face. Three years younger than Raquela, she had fled Hitler’s Germany with her parents in 1939, studied nursing at Hadassah, and spent six months on Mount Scopus, after the convoy massacre, nursing patients too sick to be moved.

  The barracks hummed with the voices of the nurses. They knew one another from Jerusalem, and were now busy catching up on news of their families and friends.

  The corporal shouted, “Sheket!” Silence.

  The nurses paid no attention.

  “Sheket,” I said. “Now, all of you get right into your uniforms. This minute.”

  “Where are we supposed to hang our clothes?” Raquela asked. She looked at the arched metal walls.

  “Stick them in your duffel bags.”

  “And what do we do with the duffel bag?”

  “You roll that up every morning and put it at the head of your bed—for inspection.”

  The nurses changed into uniform.

  “Crazy. Absolutely crazy,” a surgical nurse complained. “Experienced nurses like us taking orders from that kid.”

  “She looks like my twelve-year-old sister,” a nurse from Neurology griped. “I’d like to hit her across the mouth.”

  “Get cracking,” Miriam commanded.

  A tall pediatric nurse stalked up to the little corporal. “Who do you think you’re talking to? We’ve been serving our country since before Israel became a state. What are you giving us this nonsense for?”

  Miriam pulled herself up to her full five feet. She addressed the whole room: “You will all report in six minutes to the parade ground!”
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  On the parade ground the nurses were ordered into formation, the twenty-five from Hadassah and the fifty from other hospitals around the country.

  The nurses were volunteers; lining up beside them were eighteen-year-old women who’d been drafted. Raquela looked at them as they marched uncertainly to their places.

  It’s a new Israel, she thought, a mosaic of fair-skinned, olive-skinned, black-skinned young women.

  “Look at these kids,” she whispered to Naomi. “I feel like ancient history. At twenty-five I’m probably the oldest rookie in the whole army.”

  “Sheket!” Miriam commanded.

  She walked through the three-deep lines of formation, pushing bodies into alignment. “Straighten your lines. Pull in your gut!”

  Raquela stiffened her back and faced forward.

  In front of the parade ground was a small wooden platform with three flags—the flag of Israel, the flag of the army, and the flag of CHEN. CHEN was an acronym for Chail ha-Nashim,—the Women’s Army—and a play on the word “charm.”

  A mature woman colonel, flanked on each side by a captain, marched down the parade ground, climbed the small platform, and saluted.

  A lieutenant standing below the platform addressed her: “Company ready for inspection.”

  The colonel and her two captains descended the platform; accompanied by the lieutenant, they moved through the ranks, inspecting the rigid lines.

  Raquela recognized the colonel from Jerusalem; she had served in the ATS in Egypt during World War II. The colonel gave no sign that she recognized Raquela or any of the Jerusalem nurses. Her back straight, her face controlled, her inspection completed, she returned with her junior officers to the platform. “At ease!” the lieutenant blared out. Up and down the ranks the young recruits and the seventy-five nurses placed their hands behind their backs and waited.

  The colonel’s voice rang across the parade ground. “Welcome! You have just become part of CHEN. You are now soldiers in the Army of Israel. We know you will make us proud of you.”

  Soon the brief speech was over. The colonel saluted smartly and left the parade ground.

  Miriam corralled her unit of twenty-five nurses and marched them back to the warehouse to pick up sheets and blankets.