Raquela

by Ruth Gruber

  “But it worked in Beersheba,” Raquela said. “We had new immigrants from one hundred countries living together.”

  “It seems to work in bigger towns where you have plenty of jobs, plenty of housing, and good schools. It doesn’t work in small villages, especially when you have unemployment. But the real integration will come with the children.”

  Raquela looked out the car window at a new village. Little yellow wooden houses stood, in a security-planned arch, on the hills and yellow sand. She saw women in colorful striped robes and men in black pantaloons, planting vegetables in their backyards.

  “They’re from the island of Djerba, in Tunis,” Moshe said. “What we’re doing now is keeping the people intact. Putting the people from one area together in single villages. Then the villages are like homogeneous satellites radiating around Kiryat Gat, which is the heterogeneous center.”

  “These little villages look so vulnerable.” Raquela was seeing her own country as if it were a new landscape. “They look like little islands—so isolated.”

  “They’re not as isolated as they seem. They’re part of our whole network of defense.”

  They drove on. The sand had almost disappeared. From the main highway, Raquela saw desert land blooming. Desert land grown fertile. Rows and rows of lush vibrant cotton and corn marching like proud soldiers straight toward the horizon.

  “One word made all of this possible,” Moshe said.

  “Water!” She said it as if it were magic.

  Moshe turned from the wheel to look at her. “Right. It’s a sacred word. We nearly went to war over it this year.”

  Nearly went to war. Raquela shuddered.

  Israel had just finished the great National Water Carrier. Giant hydraulic engines lifted the Jordan River’s water from the Sea of Galilee; pipelines conducted it over steep mountains; open sluiceways sped it down valleys. In the center of the country it linked with the huge sixty-six-inch Yarkon-Negev pipeline, which brought the water from Tel Aviv’s Yarkon River to Lachish.

  The north, blessed with water, was now irrigating the south; the once-barren desert was a harvest of crops and flowers.

  The Arabs, watching across the borders, were outraged. Water was politics. Water was life. Water must not be allowed to make the Israeli desert bloom.

  Syria corralled the Arab states, demanding they declare war on Israel.

  But the Arab states were not yet ready to go to war, fearing a third defeat. In an Arab summit conference in January 1964 they decided, instead of war, to try to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River that ran through Syria.

  War had failed to destroy Israel; diverting life-giving water might succeed.

  Israel regarded her right to the Jordan running through her land as inalienable, as vital to her existence as the waterways of the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba.

  There were now constant clashes on both sides of the biblical Jordan River.

  Would they go to war over water? Raquela wondered. Would Amnon and Rafi grow up—to be alive?

  But war seemed remote. The Syrians had thus far failed to divert the headwaters. The clashes had temporarily ended. Peace seemed in the air as they drove along the highway, smelling the fresh salt air of the Mediterranean.

  Moshe drove into Ashdod. Like the empty desert Israel was now irrigating, so ten years ago Ashdod, on the sea, had been nothing but sand dunes and biblical history. Now it was Israel’s second largest port, a completely man-made deep-water harbor. Raquela had driven through it with Arik when it was started—a raw frontier town with tin shacks and wooden houses. Now there were sunny garden apartments, ships flying flags of all nations in the harbor, and a pipeline bringing crude oil from Eilat.

  Fifteen miles down the coast, they entered Ashkelon. One of the five great Philistine cities, it lay just six miles north of the Gaza Strip. The broad avenue was lined with date palms, flower beds, and ancient marble pillars.

  “Read this.” Moshe stopped the car. They walked to a historical marker to read the dedication to the prophet Zephania:

  AND THE COAST SHALL BE FOR THE REMNANT OF THE HOUSE OF JUDAH; THEY SHALL FEED THEREUPON; IN THE HOUSES OF ASHKELON SHALL THEY LIE DOWN IN THE EVENING; FOR JEHOVAH THEIR GOD WILL VISIT THEM AND BRING BACK THEIR CAPTIVITY.

  “‘Bring back their captivity,’” she repeated. “Look at all the people who’ve returned from their captivity and discovered Ashkelon.”

  The streets were filled with newcomers. Raquela watched them as Moshe drove down the main square, with its “Afridar” (South African) cultural center, its handsome clock tower scraping the blue sky. Hundreds of tourists ambled along; Israel had become an important tourist center. Americans, Germans, French, Swiss, Africans, Asians, and Englishmen wandered through the country, now flourishing with agriculture and industry. Ashkelon, charming and rich with biblical history, lay on the tourist route.

  Moshe turned toward the beach and drove past small hotels until he reached his unfinished cottage. The contractor and his men were inside, plastering the walls.

  Raquela took over. Moshe stood aside, smiling, while she examined the balatas, the Israeli tiles, pointed out that the floor was uneven, discussed the way the doors should be installed and where to put the outlets for the stove and sink and refrigerator. The contractor began with an argument and ended with total, if reluctant, capitulation.

  They left the cottage to lunch on the side of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. This was Samson country, and the restaurant was named “Delilah.”

  They ordered a fish dinner. The breeze from the Mediterranean swept the restaurant. Through the window, Raquela could see the sand stretching for miles, bleached white against the turquoise Mediterranean.

  Her lips curled with pleasure. She felt good. Everything was good. The beautiful day. Ashkelon. The sea. Even the discussion with the contractor.

  The waiter brought the broiled sea bass, and the fish—like everything else—was good.

  But Moshe looked glum.

  “Isn’t your sea bass good? Mine’s delicious. Here, try a bite.”

  “It’s not the fish,” he snapped. “It’s you.”

  Her mouth dropped. “What have I done?”

  “If you want to know the truth, I’m hurt. You seem to be more interested in those balatas than you are in me.”

  Raquela suppressed a laugh. “You brought me here to talk to your contractor about the balatas. Now you’re complaining.”

  “You didn’t have to enjoy it so much.”

  “You’d never have seen how crookedly he was laying those balatas if I hadn’t come along.”

  A few nights later they were guests at a dinner party given by Arik’s successor as chief of gynecology, Dr. Ze’ev Polishuk. He had taken an apartment in the building next to Moshe’s, on Balfour Street.

  When the party had ended, Moshe led Raquela down the stairs.

  “Raquela,” he whispered. “Leave your car here tonight. Let’s start walking around the block so nobody will see us. I’ll drive you home in my car.”

  “Okay.” Her eyes crinkled. She had heard rumors floating around the hospital and the university linking her with Moshe. She had brushed them off. Ridiculous gossip.

  She looked up the staircase. Sonya, one of the women guests, was calling her. She waited. Sonya, tall, raven hair braided around her head, hurried down, took her arm, and walked with her toward her car. “I forgot to ask you how your boys are, Raquela.”

  “They’re fine.”

  “They must be big. Let’s see—the older one must be almost ready for Gadna.”

  Gadna was pre-military training for fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds.

  “Amnon’s in Gadna right now,” Raquela said evenly. “In fact”—she offered more information; maybe Sonya was really interested—“he’s near Eilat with his whole Gadna unit; they’re in Beer Ora planting hydroponic vegetables. Well, here’s my car.”

  She shook hands, said good-bye, opened the car door, drove a few yards a
way and stopped. She watched Sonya walk toward Moshe’s apartment house on Balfour Street. Moshe was standing in front of the building, looking at the silver-blue sky, enjoying the serenity and beauty of the Jerusalem night, waiting to join Raquela.

  Sonya chatted awhile with Moshe; Raquela watched her shake his hand and saw Moshe disappear inside the gate. Sonya walked away.

  A few minutes later, Moshe knocked on Raquela’s car window. She opened the door and slid over. He took the driver’s seat, parked her car behind his, returned her keys, and helped her into his car.

  “We’re like a couple of teenagers,” Raquela said, giggling.

  Moshe steered the car down the Jerusalem mountains. “Here we are—the beautiful young widow with two kids, the eligible widower also with two kids—fooling a gossipy neighbor. God only knows what orgies she’s picturing we’re up to…”

  “But she’s such a good friend—to both of us. She was so kind to me when Arik died.”

  Soon they were on the road to Tel Aviv. Moshe was humming a tune—maybe something from Poland, she thought.

  She tried to look at her watch. Surely it was past midnight. Tomorrow was a working day. She had to be up at six to give Rafi his breakfast, get him off to school, and get to her office before eight. She had a full day of meetings with nurses to discuss their findings. She had promised Dr. Davies a statistical report. She had never thought statistics could be so fascinating.

  Each day the study seemed to grow more meaningful. Dr. Davies was planning a book on toxemia in pregnancy, and Moshe was to be its editor.

  “We’d better turn back,” she said.

  Moshe stopped humming, screeched his brakes, made a desperate U-turn, stepped on the gas, and sped back to Jerusalem. He neither hummed nor spoke.

  Probably tired, Raquela thought. Or he’s got a million things on his mind. She was silent. Better not to break his concentration.

  At her door, he let her out of the car. “Have your brother Itzhak pick up your car tomorrow morning. I’m going to be busy.”

  He drove away.

  She unlocked the door, tiptoed to Rafi’s bedroom, assured herself he was sleeping peacefully, and hurried to her room. I won’t get much sleep for tomorrow—that’s for sure, she told herself. Yet she undressed slowly and stood for a long time in front of the mirror, putting cold cream on her face. Wonder what’s bothering Moshe? He’s been a widower for only two months. Grief makes people act in strange ways. Maybe this is the only way he’s able to cope with Isa’s death.

  The next days were hectic; a group of doctors from Washington arrived, and Raquela was delegated to chauffeur them to the hospitals and the Arab and Jewish settlements in the Jerusalem corridor. They met with the pregnant mothers, talked with the nurses. Then, late in the afternoon, Raquela took them to Musrara, a poor working-class neighborhood on the northwestern frontier of Jerusalem.

  They climbed to the roof of Notre-Dame-de-France; the stone walls were pocked with bullets and gaping holes.

  The Old City spread before them, its turrets and domes luminous, molten gold in the setting sun. Raquela felt a stab of pain; memories of the Old City swept over her.

  A Jordanian soldier, patrolling the crenellated wall, pointed his rifle at them. Raquela could look right down the muzzle.

  “Get back!” she commanded.

  The doctors huddled against the wall inside.

  Ten minutes later, Raquela led them out again. The soldier had disappeared. “On that hill up there,” she said, “northeast of us, is Mount Scopus.” They could see cars on the road, Arabs walking in long gowns. They could make out a vague cluster of buildings on Mount Scopus.

  “What a frustration it must be,” one of the doctors observed, “to have those great facilities lying idle, wasted. And so close.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s awful that Jerusalem should be truncated! That we can’t use the hospital and the school. That we can’t get to the Western Wall and our ancient synagogues in the Old City. That Christians can’t get to their holy places, though they’re just a few yards away. But someday”—she paused—“someday Jerusalem will be reunited. I hope I will be alive to see it.”

  The next day, Raquela drove the group of doctors to Tel Aviv. She took them to museums and art galleries, let them browse in the bookshops.

  “Seems there’s a bookshop on every block,” one of the doctors commented, filling his arms with books to take home.

  They walked along the beach at Hayarkon Street, lunched in an outdoor fish restaurant in Jaffa, and cruised, bumper to bumper, down Dizengoff Street and Allenby Road.

  “Traffic here’s as bad as in Washington, D.C.,” a bearded doctor said.

  “It’s not only our traffic that’s like America,” she said, laughing, remembering the sabbatical with Arik and Amnon in New York. “Our whole country has Yankee ways. My children buy American milkshakes in the Brooklyn Ice Cream bar. I take our linens to a self-service laundry and wash them in American washing machines. Our roads are full of American cars; our streets are full of American tourists; and my sons are growing up learning the facts of life from Hollywood.”

  “I tried to see a movie last night,” a portly doctor said. “But I gave up. The line went all around the block.”

  “You know who the favorite character of our children is?” she asked. “Mickey Mouse. But we call him ‘Mickey Mahoo,’ which means ‘Mickey What Is He?’

  “After a year in New York,” she went on, “I sometimes think Israel is the east coast of the United States.”

  For more than two weeks, heavy rainstorms swept the country.

  The telephone rang in Raquela’s bedroom. It was Moshe.

  “I’m worried about what this rain is doing to your beach house. I’m free tomorrow. Can you take the day off? I’ll drive you out there and we can see whether the rains have done any damage.”

  “Great idea, Moshe. I’ll get to my office at seven, show my secretary what to do, and I’ll be ready about eight o’clock.”

  “Leave your car near the last traffic light on Jaffa Road. I’ll pick you up in mine.”

  “I’ll bring sandwiches.”

  The rain had ended, but the day was raw.

  Moshe was humming again as they drove on the coastal road along the Mediterranean past Netanya. A few miles north and they were at the summer colony in Bet Yannai. It looked cold and deserted. They walked up a sandy embankment to the beach house. The waves lashed the shore.

  “First thing I’m going to do is to make us some hot coffee.” Raquela’s teeth were chattering. Moshe sat in the kitchen, rubbing his hands to warm them, watching her. They munched on sandwiches and nutcake and warmed themselves with Turkish coffee.

  “Now, let’s look around the house,” Moshe said.

  They examined the kitchen and the small living room.

  “So far, so good,” he said. “Now let’s see the bedroom.”

  He followed her into the bedroom.

  “Take off your shoes, Raquela.”

  She kicked off her pumps.

  “Now stand up on the bed!”

  Slowly she climbed up on the mattress and tried to steady herself. Moshe stood at the edge of the bed, reached up, and put his arms around her waist.

  “I think I love you, Raquela.”

  A smile seemed to rise from inside her body. For the first time since Arik’s death she felt desired.

  “I want to remember you like this for the rest of my life—standing this way, on the bed, in your green suede suit.”

  She stepped down and looked up at his face. “I think I love you, too, Moshe.”

  Each morning at six, Raquela was awakened by Moshe’s telephone call telling her how he loved her. And each night, after the children in both their houses were asleep, she telephoned him.

  Somehow that act—asking her to take off her shoes, more intimate than asking her to take off her clothes—had ignited her.

  In the next weeks he came to her late at night, parked his car
a block away, and slipped into her house. Other nights, when Jenny and Vivian were away, she drove to Balfour Street, left her car up the hill on Wingate Circle, and went up to his apartment.

  It seemed her whole life had led to this joyous mature love. The man beside her, recognized all over the world, was like a young lover. She could lie back, struck by his beauty, his manhood; they connected on every level. They discussed her work and his; they laughed like children. They took drives through the Jerusalem they loved, finding no need for words in the luminous air of the biblical land from which they drew their strength.

  “I’m a lucky woman,” Raquela said one night. She lay happily in his arms in her bedroom. Amnon and Rafi were away on an overnight hike. “Some women go through life without knowing even one great passion.” Her fingertips caressed his cheek. “I’ve known two.”

  Moshe drew her closer. “We’ve both known love before. We both loved our mates. I think that’s why we’re so good together.” He covered her face and throat with kisses. “I don’t want to be alone anymore, Raquela. I want you at my side. All the time: in Jerusalem and when I travel. I want to marry you.”

  “Not yet, Moshe.” She closed her eyes. “Not yet. I’m not ready for marriage.”

  “But we’re in love.”

  “I need time, Moshe.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “Don’t ask me. I just know it. Why can’t we go on like this?”

  He rose from the bed and dressed.

  Raquela drew her robe around her in bed.

  “I can’t go on this way, Raquela. I see it clearly now. We must make a decision. Either we get married or we stop seeing each other altogether.”

  She sat up straight. “Why? We love each other. What else matters?”

  “Many things matter. For one thing, you’re a young woman. You should be married. And people are talking.”

  “People will talk whether we sleep together or not.”