Raquela

by Ruth Gruber

  Standing on a mountain plateau overlooking the valley of Sorek, where once Delilah had won Samson’s heart, Ben-Gurion looked at the craggy mountains bowling around him. He saw miles of empty land.

  “Magnificent!” he said. “Build here. Jerusalem will grow toward the hospital.”

  Now the center was finished—a huge complex of buildings of honey-hued Jerusalem stone and red and white brick. The four-hundred-twenty-bed hospital was a semicircular fortress. In case of war, three floors were built underground with connecting tunnels, equipped to be converted instantly into emergency units.

  The Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, unique in the Middle East, held the hospital, the medical school, the nursing school, the dental school—and later there would be the Institute of Oncology for cancer treatment and research.

  As his gift to the people of Israel, Marc Chagall created twelve stained-glass windows, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel, to be installed in the hospital synagogue.

  Moving day to Ein Karem was June 6, 1961.

  Raquela and Arik drove to Hadassah A, to help transfer the maternity patients. Young women soldiers carried out the infants.

  The convoy with doctors, nurses, and three hundred patients set off from downtown Jerusalem to the fortress hospital in the Hills of Judea south and west of Jerusalem.

  Twenty army ambulances flew blue satin pennants with gold letters bearing the names of Hadassah chapters in America that had raised extra money for this historic day.

  Behind the ambulances, Raquela drove Arik in their car. Like a joyous, triumphant parade, the convoy moved down Jaffa Road with people waving and shouting on the streets. Then they turned into the broad expanse of Herzl Boulevard in Bet Hakerem, and snaked up and down the mountains along the newly built Henrietta Szold Road.

  Raquela drove in silence. Dr. Yassky and the ill-fated convoy to Mount Scopus flooded her mind as the convoy approached the hospital that would supplement Scopus. Would Ein Karem be safe?

  At the hospital she helped move the patients into flower-decked wards, while around her the radial corridors and huge elevators filled up as 254 doctors, 514 nurses, and the staff of 1,352 moved into their offices.

  Late in the afternoon, she stood with Arik in the broad courtyard in front of the hospital, watching the sun change the colors of the mountains blue, then pink and mauve.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” she said. “This whole panorama.”

  He put his arms around her and kissed her.

  “This is my dream,” he said. “That you and our boys will have a long life. That we can work in this new center. We’ve got the tools we need. If only—if only there will be no more war.”

  She stayed in his arms, resting her head against his shoulder.

  Then she lifted her head. Her eyes were glistening. “We have so much to live for.”

  She looked at the majestic hills, darkening as the sun disappeared behind them. “Dear God, let there be peace.”

  Arik pushed open the apartment door. They had moved to a spacious third-floor apartment on Hameyasdim Street in Bet Hakerem. “Raquela, the grant has come through!”

  She hurried toward him as he handed her the letter. She leaned against the door, her face glowing with pleasure. The National Institutes of Health of the U.S. government was happy to inform Dr. Brzezinski he had been awarded a grant for a five-year project to study the problems of toxemia in pregnancy.

  Under the controlled, scientific conditions in Israel, and with his long experience, his study could provide inestimably valuable information not only for saving lives in Israel but also for saving lives in the United States and in the rest of the world.

  “I knew,” she said. “I knew some day you’d be famous. It’s recognition you deserve.”

  He put his hands on her shoulder.

  “I want you to help me set up the program. Together we can get this project off the ground.”

  “I will, Arik. I want to work with you on this.”

  It was a good time to begin their five-year study, for the borders of Israel were relatively peaceful in 1962.

  Nasser was preoccupied. He was busy waging unsuccessful warfare in Yemen, siding with the rebels against the ruling monarch, the Imam of Yemen.

  He had had a number of failures after his defeat in Sinai. In 1958 he had joined with Syria to form the United Arab Republic, using the guns and arms his Russian patrons had given him—to replace the hardware he had lost to Israel in 1956. He was embarking on adventures in the Arab world.

  First he sought to overthrow the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Jordan.

  President Eisenhower, outraged by Nasser, whose head he had saved after Suez, now ordered U.S. Marines into Lebanon. The United States saved Lebanon.

  Next Nasser turned against King Hussein, grandson of Jordan’s King Abdullah, who had been assassinated for having begun peace negotiations with Israel. Ridiculing Hussein as “the Hashemite harlot…the treacherous dwarf,” Nasser instigated subversive acts in Jordan so threatening that Great Britain sent in troops, and the United States rushed supplies with permission from Israel to use her air space. This time three nations—England, the United States, and Israel—saved Jordan.

  With most of his army stalemated in Yemen, Nasser waged a war of words against Israel. Evenings, Raquela and Arik, working on their study at home, stopped to listen to Radio Cairo, beamed specially to Jerusalem: “ The birth of Israel is the greatest crime in history…Israel is a shame…a disgrace…a bleeding wound…a cancer.”

  “At least he’s not threatening all-out war against us this time,” Raquela said. “Remember, before 1956, the way he used to rant: ‘Weep, oh Israel, the day of extermination draws near…’”

  Arik shook his head. “Hitler taught us never to underestimate a dictator’s threats. Every time Nasser speaks, I hear Hitler’s voice.”

  “Now he’s just calling us names. We can live with that,” Raquela said, bending over to work on the papers they had spread out on the dining-room table.

  The scope of the study had broadened. While eclampsia, the toxemia of pregnancy, was their central interest, they were also studying premature births, stillbirths, and the deaths of live-born infants before they were one year old.

  Jerusalem was an ideal laboratory. It was a city of mass immigration, a population of divergent ethnic groups—native-born Sabras and babies of families from some eighty countries.

  More than 5,500 babies were born in Jerusalem in 1962 and again in 1963. Raquela and Arik studied the infant-mortality rate—22.7 for Jews, and a frightening 51.6 for Moslems and Christians. They were trying to pinpoint all infant deaths, to find out in which socioeconomic and ethnic groups morbidity was highest. Then they could plan preventive health-care services for all their pregnant women and their newborn children, Jewish, Christian, and Moslem.

  “Arik,” Raquela said, “you look so tired. With your patients at the hospital, your private patients, and this study, you’re working too hard.”

  He paid no attention. He was making notes on an outline map of Jerusalem, the Old City, and Mount Scopus.

  “Someday,” he said, “maybe we’ll be able to study infant mortality and infant morbidity in all of Jerusalem, not just in this truncated area on the map.”

  He looked up. “And how is our new house coming along?”

  “It’s speeding along. I can’t wait for us to move in.”

  It was to be Arik’s dream house. Papa had given them the land next to his cottage inside the garden. Now it was taking shape—long low lines, split level, Arik’s office and their bedroom on the lower level, the boys’ rooms on the upper level, and a spacious sunken living room whose French doors opened out to the tropical trees and calla lilies Papa had planted.

  The house was scheduled to be ready at the end of August 1963.

  Thursday, August 15.

  Arik slowly climbed the three flights of stairs to the apartment they were soon to leave.

  “Ar
ik!” Raquela ran to his side. He was hunched over with pain.

  “I’m afraid it’s my gallbladder. I’ll get into bed.”

  “Can I get you something?” Her heart pounded.

  “Do we have Demerol in the house?”

  “I’ll look.” She opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. “None. I’ll run down and pick some up at the pharmacy.”

  She raced down the stairs, grateful that this was the day her housekeeper stayed a few hours longer.

  She returned within a few minutes. Her housekeeper let her in. “While you were out,” she said, “Dr. Brzezinski asked me to bring a box from one of the drawers.”

  “What drawer?”

  She pointed to a dark chest in the foyer. The top drawer was open.

  Raquela paled. It was where Arik kept his most precious photos. Pictures of his parents, both of whom had died in the last few years. Their wedding pictures. Snapshots of Amnon and Rafi. Pictures of their stay in New York.

  Why did he want those pictures now?

  She hurried into the bedroom.

  The pictures lay on the bed, but Arik was gasping for breath. His forehead was beaded with perspiration, his body contorted with pain.

  Raquela handed him the Demerol with a glass of water. “Arik—let me call a doctor.”

  “There’s nothing a doctor can do. You know I’ve had these attacks before. They always pass. The Demerol should give me some relief. If I’m not better in the morning, we’ll call somebody.”

  Raquela wiped his forehead. “Let me call a doctor now, Arik. Why should you suffer so?”

  “You go into the living room. I’ll be all right after a while.”

  Raquela fixed the sheet on his body and bent over to kiss his forehead. He was shivering in the August heat. His eyes were glazed, his face drained of color. Fear lashed her heart.

  She called the children into the living room. Amnon, now a sturdy twelve-year-old, came toward her quietly. She felt a new surge of anguish; even his walk was like Arik’s, the slight, almost imperceptible stoop, his head inclined forward. Surely Amnon was cut out to be a doctor. Rafi, eight and a half, robust, burst into the room. She saw herself in Rafi—her mouth, her eyes, her smile, her eagerness for life.

  “Children.” She controlled her voice. “Daddy is sick. He needs a lot of quiet and rest. I’d like you to spend the night at Grandma’s house.”

  Amnon looked frightened. “Will Daddy be all right?”

  “Of course he’ll be all right. It’s his gallbladder. He probably ate something greasy at that luncheon he went to.”

  Rafi ran into her arms. “I’m scared, Mommy.”

  “He’s going to be fine. Now, both of you—get your pajamas. And take along your white shirts and khaki shorts so you’ll be all set for Friday night and Shabbat.”

  She kissed her two sons and watched them descend the three flights to the street. Then she walked to the front window. The boys looked up, saw her, and waved. “Shalom, Ima,” they called out.

  “Shalom,” she answered, watching them disappear down the hill toward Mama’s house.

  She returned to the bedroom. Arik was dozing; the Demerol had taken effect.

  She tiptoed to the balcony door, stepped out, and stared up at Mount Herzl, where Israel’s soldier-heroes lay buried.

  Her eyes blurred. “Don’t let anything happen to my husband,” she whispered.

  All night she lay beside him, watching, curbing her fears.

  He slept fitfully, waking intermittently, confessing pain. “It’s in my back and right side…as if my back wanted to come right through my skin.”

  Finally, morning came.

  Arik got out of bed. “I’ll try to walk,” he said. “That may shake up the gallstones.”

  She held his arm as they walked slowly around the apartment. “Let one of the doctors examine you, Arik. This is the worst attack you’ve had.”

  By noon he could no longer tolerate the pain. “All right, Raquela. Call.”

  The doctor arrived within minutes. Raquela led him into the bedroom, then stepped out as he examined Arik.

  She paced the living room, squeezing her fingers until they were white.

  “Yes, Doctor?” she saw the look of anxiety on his face.

  “It’s not his gallbladder. It’s his heart.”

  He telephoned for an ambulance.

  Raquela walked behind the attendants carrying Arik down the stairs on a stretcher. In the ambulance, she sat next to him, stroking his hand as the siren shrieked through Bet Hakerem up the hills to the valley of Sorek and Ein Karem.

  Arik was rushed into the emergency room.

  Raquela sat in the nurses’ station. The nurses—old friends—helped to make her comfortable. They brought her coffee, tried to divert her thoughts.

  But nothing could divert her. Why did I listen to him last night? Why didn’t I call a doctor myself? I knew—something in me knew—it was more than his gallbladder. Why does a nurse always take orders from a doctor? I’m not his nurse. I’m his wife. Why didn’t I follow my own instincts? Arik…stay alive…

  A team of doctors came out of the emergency room. “It’s a coronary, Raquela. We can’t tell yet how severe it is.”

  Vaguely, she was aware that her friends were urging her. “Have some more coffee, Raquela…would you like a sandwich…is there anything we can get you…you really should eat something…”

  “No, thank you. I just want to wait right here—until I can go in to see him.”

  All afternoon the doctors worked, barely leaving the room. Just before sundown, Raquela called Mama.

  Mama spoke comfortingly. “Tell Arik how beautiful the boys look in their white Shabbat shirts. Now I’m going to light my Friday-night candles and pray…Tell Arik.”

  Tell Arik.

  The hours dragged. At midnight the corridors were empty. Raquela waited.

  At last the special-duty nurse appeared. “Dr. Brzezinski wants to see you. Just stay a few minutes…please.”

  Raquela sped to his bedside. “I’m here, darling.”

  She pressed his hand.

  “Ra—Raquela,” he gasped. “How—how—are the boys?”

  “They’re fine. Mama wants you to know how beautiful they look for Shabbat.”

  “And you, my dearest, take…good care…”

  His voice faded. His face turned grayish blue.

  The nurse caught the erratic movement on the heart monitor. Raquela saw it.

  “Save him,” she cried out. “He’s having another heart attack.”

  “Please step outside, Mrs. Brzezinski,” the nurse said brusquely. Doctors and nurses hurried in and out of his room.

  Raquela paced the empty corridor. Don’t die, Arik…we need you…Amnon and Raft…and I…you were so happy…the grant…the house…the children…I love you, Arik; stay alive; please stay alive.

  It was one A.M., Saturday, August 17.

  The doctors and nurses filed sadly out of Arik’s room.

  Raquela screamed.

  A doctor helped her into a chair. She sat, her face stony, her eyes dry.

  Sunday morning, thousands of people filled the cemetery in the Jerusalem hills as the rabbi intoned the Kaddish. “Magnified and sanctified by God’s great name…”

  Raquela held Amnon’s and Rafi’s hands. Arik’s body was lowered into the earth.

  “Good-bye, my love,” she whispered. But she could not weep.

  The shiva—the seven days of mourning—began. Sunday afternoon hundreds of people streamed into the apartment to sit with the widow and the children.

  Women patients Raquela had never seen came to tell her how Arik had saved their lives.

  And still she could not weep.

  Monday morning, a woman appeared at the door in a threadbare black dress, a tattered black handkerchief on her head, black cotton stockings covering her legs.

  “I know one should come in the afternoon or evening for the shiva,” she said apologetically. “But I was
ashamed to be seen by all the people who will come. Please forgive me if I disturb you in the morning.”

  “Come in,” Raquela said quietly. “Come sit over here.” She led her to the sofa and poured coffee for the stranger.

  “I live in Mea Shearim,” she said.

  Raquela nodded. The religious quarter—where Zayda and Bubba Levinrad had lived.

  The woman went on. “I was pregnant, and I began to bleed. My husband knew Dr. Brzezinski was the greatest woman’s doctor in Israel. He went to your husband.”

  She stopped to look at Raquela’s face. “Your husband said he never makes house calls. But when my husband told him about me, and where we lived, and that we had no money to pay him, he came. He took care of me right away. And he told me when my time would come, he himself would deliver my baby.”

  Raquela was silent. So many women adored Arik.

  The stranger wiped her eyes with her hands. “When he left our house, he put money in my husband’s pocket and he said, ‘Go right out and buy food for your wife.’”

  Raquela wept.

  For the remaining days of the shiva, she wept.

  * * *

  *On his way home from the conference Dr. Caulker was killed in an airplane crash near Dakar,

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  SEPTEMBER, 1963

  Dr. Moshe Prywes, associate dean of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, stood up as Raquela entered. He walked around his desk in the former Bible House of the Anglican Church and offered her a chair.

  “How are you, Raquela?” He scanned her face. “Getting some rest, finally? Isa and I worry about you.”

  She took hold of his hand. “You both have been wonderful to us.”

  It was the end of the shloshim—the thirty days since Arik’s death; now she could return to work. She had moved into the new house, trying to pick up the pieces of their lives.

  Amnon and Rafi filled up their days with school, with Scouts, with good friends. But the nights were endless. Raquela sat with them at their bedside, her throat tight as she tried to help them cope with hot anger: how could our daddy leave us, abandon us, without any warning? Anger turned to despair, then tears; she held them in her arms until at last they fell asleep.