Evergreen

by Belva Plain

  “I guess that’s so,” Eric admitted.

  Arieh was a sabra, born on the kibbutz. He was a country man, with a country man’s slight roughness and silences.

  “Everybody likes you here,” he said abruptly.

  “Do they?” Eric felt the flush rising on his neck. These people had few flowery social graces. You had to earn a compliment and even then, he had noticed, you often didn’t get it.

  “I’m glad,” he answered, “because I like people here too.”

  “Juliana says you’ve done a wonderful thing with the boy.”

  “He’s a fine child.”

  “Nobody else knew what to do with him. How did you know?”

  “I don’t think I really knew anything,” Eric said slowly. “It was just something that came to me.”

  Arieh nodded. “That’s good enough.” He reached for the light. “Mind if I turn it out? It’s been a long day.”

  Lying there in the quiet dark he thought about these simple days of his new life. Nourishing days they were, like mild and good bread eaten under a tree at noon, or perhaps in a kitchen on a winter’s night, such frozen country winter as he remembered from his childhood.

  He labored and with each week the labor became easier, his body leaner and faster. Sometimes, passing back and forth from fields to barn, he caught a glimpse of Juliana outside with children, or on some errand alone, walking with strong rapid stride, her fine long hair lifting from her shoulders. And then the day would linger interminably while he waited for the night.

  “A sound mind in a sound body.” He felt that his mind was also very strong, that there was nothing he couldn’t cope with. It wasn’t that he had made any stupendous decisions about himself; he was putting them off, and he knew he was. But when the time came for decisions he would be able to make them.

  Then he scoffed at himself for this euphoria. “Because you’re living a ‘natural’ life,” he scoffed, “because you feel healthy, you think you can solve everything.” If only she would marry him! But he knew he mustn’t ask her again, knew that he would have to wait for the fear that was in her to ebb away, whenever and if ever that might be.

  So the warm fall passed. Winter is sharp in Galilee; it came to Eric that shortly there would be no more evenings in their “green cave.”

  Their need for one another was so strong by now that there was seldom any preliminary talk between them. He would meet her where they had arranged, outside of her door, and walk down the hill, through the orchards.

  “Come,” he would say. She would spread her shawl on the tall grass and they would lie down in the shrubbery behind the great guns.

  One soft night while lying there, they heard the sound of Emmy’s piano carried down the hill by the wind. It rose and fell, sang and died. Music, Eric thought, drawing the word out in his mind’s ear, how clearly it speaks to us! With a hundred voices it speaks: of hope and courage, of old sorrow and new joy, telling without words of how man loves the earth, of his fear of dying, and of his awe beneath the stars.

  Something caught in his throat, a little gasp, and Juliana turned to him.

  “When will you marry me?” he asked her, entirely forgetting his resolution.

  And to his absolute, incredulous astonishment, she answered, “As soon as you like.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Tomorrow?”

  In the faint light from the sky he could see her smile. “Would you wait until my mother can get here? It shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

  He felt, as when pain has abruptly been relieved, or as when the flesh is warmed after searing cold, a deep, deep comfort. For a little while, in complete tranquillity, they slept. When they awoke the moon was up. Hand in hand, as they so often walked, they went quietly back together, up the hill.

  A burst of fire and thunder tore a hole into the sleeping night. The men were out of their beds and instantly awake, as though they had been expecting Armageddon.

  “It’s the gas pumps!” Arieh cried. “They’ve hit the pumps!”

  No question who “they” were.…

  The tanks caught, lifting the earth in clods, raising a tower of fire. A carpet of flame fell over the roof of the cattle barn, then the garages and the stables. By then the men were into their pants and shoes, and with rifles and grenades were halfway down the stairs.

  “Where to?” Eric whispered. “Follow you?”

  “Yes,” cried Allon. “Head down!”

  There was a crack and a ping! Then another ping! and a snapping of splintered wood as bullets slammed the walls.

  “Out the side door,” Allon ordered. “Then around by the back way to the dining hall! Quiet, heads down, on the double!”

  Eric understood. From the hall they would command the quadrangle, nerve center of the community. Anyone who tried to cross there would be in their range.

  They slid along the rear wall. From the stables came the human shrieking of the horses.

  “Can’t we—oh, Christ—can’t we get them out?” Eric whispered.

  “Are you crazy? Quiet!”

  With side vision he saw the frame of the cattle barn outlined for an instant only in a square of fire. Then it collapsed: the hay had caught. The cows! Dumb creatures. Their mild eyes.

  Guns were cracking and ripping all around them now as they ran. But whose guns, theirs or ours? A man ran out somewhere ahead and was struck down screaming, spinning like a top. There was unearthly howling from every building. Where were they, the attackers? The muffling darkness protected the enemy as well as themselves.

  They reached the dining hall and felt for the door, which was opened from the inside, where others had already gathered. Crouching, they crept in single file: Ezra, Arieh, Allon, Eric, all of them.

  And will I come through this? And will I know how to fight?

  The huddled leaders whispered. The room was quiet. Outside the guns still crackled and snapped. Where? Where were the attackers? Was there no plan to counter them? But there had to be.… Eric’s lungs burned. They had raced all the way uphill to the hall. His head itched; it was soaked with sweat.

  “You,” Allon said, “I want one of you at each window. Zack’s men are holding the south dormitory, so they can’t help here. There are twenty-nine of us altogether, but we don’t know how many those devils have. So we’ve got to send to town for help. They’ve cut the phone wires.… Ezra, can you get to the truck and roll it down hill without making a sound? When you’re on the road you can start the motor and then go like hell.”

  “I’ll do it. Where’s the dog? Get him out of the kitchen for me.”

  “He’ll make noise!”

  “Who, Rufus? I want him with me. He can tear a man’s throat out.”

  Ezra and the dog slipped out through the kitchen door.

  Diagonally across the quadrangle lay the nursery, with a cluster of firs beside its blue door. Juliana would be frantic in there, hearing all this without seeing or knowing—

  Terror almost took Eric’s voice away. “And the children? The nursery?”

  “Dan’s men are supposed to be there.”

  “I don’t see them.” Eric strained into the darkness, lit now to a smoky yellow by the dreadful light of the fires.

  “You’re not supposed to see them!” Allon spoke impatiently. “But they are there.”

  So there was a plan. Of course, of course there was. But suppose it hadn’t worked? If Dan’s men had been trapped or—?

  Again there was silence in the hall, except for loud breathing. They waited. Waited.

  “Where do you suppose they are?” Eric whispered to the man beside him.

  “Who?”

  “The Arabs.”

  “I don’t know. How should I know? Everywhere.” Avram was frightened, pretending not to be, pretending to be experienced and expert. “They’ll try to rush us, thinking we’re all holed up in here for defense. Well mow them down as they come.”

  There was faint scratching at the door, very faint. Allon, with re
adied gun, pressed himself against the wall, and opened it a crack. The dog Rufus dragged himself in, whimpered and fell: a pile of bloody, ragged fur, his belly slit open.

  “Oh, my God,” someone said. “Then Ezra—”

  They stood there, staring at each other. Someone called from a window at the front: “The south dormitory’s on fire! Oh, Lord, they’re jumping from the win—” The voice was cut off with a shattering blow and then a pretty tinkle of glass. Arieh—

  Allon crept to him on hands and knees and turned him over. “He’s dead,” he said flatly, without looking around. “He shouldn’t have been standing up.”

  “How do you know?” Eric cried, without thinking. “Maybe he—”

  “The top of his head is shot away,” Allon said. “Come and see for yourself.”

  Eric thought, We played chess last night. Then he thought, I’m going to vomit. But I can’t be sick now.

  “Listen,” Allon said, “we have got to get to town. I’ll go, and I need three, no, four with me. Who’ll come?”

  “But if they got Ezra they must be guarding the road,” someone objected. “So how can you possibly—”

  “Down through the orchard, and around to the road half a mile past the gates.”

  “It won’t work, Allon! It’s committing suicide! The orchard’s where they must have got through in the first place!”

  “Is there any other way?” Allon asked. Crouched there on his knees, wet with the blood of Arieh, he had immense authority. “Well, then, well have to chance it. Who goes?”

  “I will,” Eric said.

  “No, you don’t know the way well enough. Ben, Shimon, Zvi, Max, well go. If any one of us is hit the rest won’t stop for him. One of us has to get through. Marc, you take charge here while I’m gone.”

  As if in reply another window was smashed out at the front; glass sprayed the floor, falling on Arieh, at whom none of them dared look.

  Again they waited. Marc stood in the corner, flat against the wall, from which at an angle he could see through the farthermost window.

  “They’re crossing the quadrangle,” he whispered suddenly.

  “Who are?”

  “I—it’s too dark. For God’s sake lower that gun!” he cried to Yigel. “They may be ours!”

  They waited. Somewhere, in a history of the First World War, Eric recalled having read that the soldiers’ chief complaint was the interminable waiting. With dry mouth. Wet hands. Needing to pee.

  He crawled to the window and peered an inch or two above the sill at the side. Yes, there were men walking through shadow, crossing the quadrangle. They were heading toward the nursery door. Some of ours? Dan’s men? Reinforcements? But then why so openly and upright? They can’t be ours—His heart lurched. They must be—

  At the nursery door the men stopped. There were—he counted—five of them. No, seven? It was too dim to see. They were just standing there. Why? Who?

  A bullet slammed into the room, then another and another, a fusillade. Marc screamed, shot in the thigh. David fell; dead or wounded? There was no time to find out.

  “They’re on the roof!” Avram cried. “They’ve got up on the roof of the extension.”

  The devils! The fiends! Now they could shoot in through the windows while no one could shoot back upwards into darkness.

  There were only three whole ones left: Avram, Yigel and Eric. They crawled to the back of the room, dragging Marc with them out of reach of the bullets which were coming in now like rain.

  Suddenly the rain stopped. Into total silence a voice rang, speaking in accented Hebrew.

  “You in there! We have a proposition to make! Can you hear?”

  Avram, Yigel and Eric stood gripping each other’s arms.

  “Listen, we know you’re there! Will Allon the boss speak up? Answer! You don’t have to show yourself!”

  “How do they know Allon?” Eric whispered.

  “Arabs in town. Contacts across the border. Who can say?”

  “Allon the boss! You’d better listen! Or well burn out the rest of the place. If you give us what we want well leave you in peace.”

  Avram whispered, “Shall we answer?”

  “No,” Yigel said fiercely.

  “Yes,” Eric argued, “if we can kill time talking back and forth maybe Allon will have got through to town and well have help.”

  “What do you want?” Avram called then.

  “Are you the boss Allon?”

  “I am. What do you want?”

  “Six children. Any six. We take them back with us and hold them until your government gives back our six freedom-fighters who are in your jails.”

  “The freedom-fighters are the ones who attacked the schoolhouse two years ago,” Yigel said to Eric. And to Avram, “Tell them to go to hell.”

  “You know we aren’t going to do that!” Avram called back.

  “You might as well! Otherwise we can kill all the children, and the rest of you, too. Look, our men are already waiting at the nursery door.”

  “You won’t get away with that!” Avram shouted. “There are over a hundred of us on this place …”

  “Maybe there were. But there aren’t anymore.”

  Silence.

  “When we get in that nursery there won’t be one of them left alive. Allon boss! You’d do better to let us have six now. Any six.”

  The little ones’ beds were painted with ducks and rabbits. Clowns and baby elephants danced on the walls. And Juliana slept there. My girl.

  Somebody rattled the lock at the back door of the kitchen.

  They jumped.

  “Be careful. Don’t open it.”

  “Who’s there?” Yigel cried, pointing his revolver.

  There was a loud whisper. “It’s me! Shimon! Open up!”

  Yigel opened the door enough to admit a young Arab, with his hands in the air and a rifle, held by Shimon, in the small of his back.

  “We got this guy coming up the hill with a knife in his hand.” Shimon handed the knife to Avram. “Zvi and Allon are dead. Max and Ben kept going. Maybe they’ll get through to town.”

  “If we knew how many there were,” Eric said, “maybe we could—”

  “Could what?” Avram demanded scornfully.

  “Ask him how many there are anyway,” Eric said.

  Yigel said something in Arabic and translated. “He says he doesn’t know.”

  “Give me the knife,” Eric said, and took it from Avram. He held it against the Arab’s naked throat. The man pulled back in horror, gurgling, his eyes wild. “Yigel, tell him that if he doesn’t answer I’ll cut the way he cut the dog—and probably Ezra, too. Tell him.”

  Yigel spoke. The man mumbled, and Yigel translated, “He says ‘four.’”

  “There are at least six or seven in front of the nursery alone, and more on the roof. Tell him we want the truth,” Eric commanded.

  “He says five. He had forgotten to count himself.”

  Eric slashed the knife lightly over the Arab’s shoulder. The man screamed and Eric withdrew the bloodied knife. “Answer me,” he cried, “or the next time it will be your throat!”

  The Arab trembled, cried out, and Yigel translated once more.

  “He says there are two on the roof. He doesn’t know how many at the nursery door. The rest are dead.”

  “All right. Tie him up,” Eric said. It surprised him that Avram and Yigel obeyed without argument.

  “Allon boss! What are you waiting for? Until we set fire to the nursery?”

  “You won’t get away with it!” Avram called back.

  Christ, where were they, Max and Ben? And if they had by some miracle got through, how long would it take to reach here from town with help?

  Eric crawled to the front window. A torch had been lit at the nursery door, no doubt to fire the place. In its tossing light he could count them: five, no, seven, poised at the door and waiting. He could hear their screaming laughter. The ruffians, the savages. And those piteous women on
the other side of the door. Juliana—It came to him that he had never known such anger, such outrage.

  He stood up yelling, not recognizing his own voice, not knowing that he was yelling. “I’m going to get them! I’m going to get them!”

  “Get down!” Yigel cried. “Eric, fool, get down!”

  “The dirty, rotten, murdering scum!” Eric screamed.

  Yigel pulled him down. “Shut up! You can’t do a thing! There are seven of them.”

  “I have one grenade—”

  “But it’s too far! They’d shoot you from the roof, those others up there! You’d never get near enough to throw it, don’t waste your life—”

  Spots of red and yellow rage flickered before Eric’s eyes. The terrors of the world flashed through his mind as, it is said, in the instant before drowning a life flashes past. They knotted in his chest, all that were anguished, cruel and wrong: lost children, violence, corruption and early death. All of them, all of them—

  His shirt ripped down the back, leaving a piece of khaki cloth in Yigel’s hand as he tore out the door and down the steps with the grenade.

  The survivors told it this way: He spurted across the open space toward the nursery like a football player running for a goal. He dodged and darted while bullets slashed the earth around his feet. About five yards away from the gang at the nursery door a bullet tore into his back and he fell dead, but not before he had thrown the grenade into the middle of the gang and killed them all.

  It was over. The two snipers fled in terror from the roof and were captured in the orchard. By the time help arrived from town the fires were out and everything was quiet, except for the crying of the women, preparing the dead.

  On the other side of the world, in America, a cablegram brought the news. It was a week now since it had come, and Joseph had aged ten years. He sat at breakfast, his first full meal in days. He finished his coffee and pushed away from the table, but didn’t get up, just sat there with his mouth hanging open. Like an old man. Anna hadn’t looked in the mirror at herself. God knew what she must look like! And what difference did it make?

  And then (as though they hadn’t had enough), Celeste came in with the mail, bringing, among the piles of bills, advertisements and letters of condolence, a letter in Eric’s handwriting. It had been mailed ten days before.