My Father, His Daughter

by Yaël Dayan

  Mother flooded us with gifts from the nothing she had, and my father charged for everything. I went to Paris to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Alain de Rothschild, one of the most sensitive, dearest, and kindest leaders of the Jewish Diaspora, and I paid Father for an oil lamp to bring as a gift. They were selling a Bokhara rug, slightly damaged, and were happy to sell it to me at the “bargain price” the rug merchant had offered them. Another “bargain” didn’t materialize when I paid for an Eames armchair and had to return it to Zahala, having found it was an imitation, not leather, and cracked. A visit from my father and Rahel to Assi gained them back a Dali which was on Assi’s wall, given to him by my mother a few years earlier; and a Hanukkah lamp in silver which Mother gave me and the children used was spotted by Father on a visit to my apartment, and I was asked to return it. (Not before making sure it was made of silver, and claiming he wanted it for sentimental reasons, as it was inscribed to him.) Those were petty things perhaps, and as such not worth mentioning, but hurt is very often triggered by the trivial.

  Assi divorced; my cousin Uzi—Zorik’s son—married; my mother’s parents moved permanently to Herzlia in the Tel Aviv area; and Father’s book Breakthrough was published. Early in the summer of 1981, new elections were to be held, and Father had to make a decision concerning his public life.

  When he resigned from the Likud cabinet, he said he would never run again; he was against splinter parties, and his “mother” Labor Party would not forgive him for crossing the lines. What made him ultimately decide to head his own party and present a list to the electorate, I can’t really say. His own statement was satisfactory enough: he felt the issues were grave; he couldn’t sit on the fence and watch. Writing articles was not enough, and as long as he could be heard from the Knesset floor, he felt it was his obligation to voice his opinions and offer his criticisms and suggestions. He was backed, financially and otherwise, by a good group of followers and announced that he would run. The campaign was a heartbreaking experience. I joined, reluctantly, and for purely personal reasons. His political platform didn’t offer anything one couldn’t find in the larger parties, and the best of the independent people declined to join. Father’s voice was sound and clear on the unilateral autonomy issue and the Palestinian problem, but the internal socioeconomic issues were major and demanding, and Telem, Father’s party, had little to offer in the way of renovation or revolution in this area. Father said, when debating whether to join Ben-Gurion’s last political adventure, the Rafi Party, that he couldn’t see himself waking up every morning concerned solely with the security mishap in Egypt and the old man’s demand for truth and justice. His followers now had to wake up in the morning to place on top of their agendas the question of Palestinian autonomy …

  His presence was sufficient reason for those who loved or admired him in the past to join, regardless of the vague “functional solution” for the West Bank or the obvious “extreme measures and imposed austerity which would lead to productivity” which were his economic platform. Here was Moshe Dayan, a complex national hero, who could hardly see, whose stride was hesitant, whose voice was hoarse, whose cheeks were sunken in, whose head was almost bald. He asked for confidence, he wanted to be heard, and we had to give him the floor with love and respect. We voted for him to remind ourselves of our youthful daring; we voted for him with compassion but without optimism or even enthusiasm for the party he led. It was wrong to deny him the right to strive and at least claim a personal victory. The polls predicted ten to twelve seats, then five or perhaps six, but he was more knowledgeable. For once, his pessimism was accurate. On the morning of the elections—and I had spent the month campaigning with all the ardor and conviction I could muster—we sat in the garden, and he talked about two Knesset seats, which was precisely what Telem got. Everybody but Father was disappointed. The objective of being a “balancing factor,” without which a coalition could not be formed, was not attained; and the campaign was costly, deflating to the morale and spirits, and took an enormous toll on Father’s health.

  My own personal efforts to establish a dialogue between leading Laborites and my father, with the chance in mind of some reconciliation between them, failed. Labor finally lost the elections and lacked the generosity—which perhaps only victors can afford—to offer him a return to where he belonged.

  In the twenty years of his political life, there were many times when he could have put up a fight and might have been in the lead. For twenty years he had refused to do so, and waited to be called upon to perform, never as number-one, always loyal to and hence dependent on a higher authority, the Prime Minister. Three months before his death, he took the initiative and faced the people’s verdict. He had no illusions, but somehow he owed it to himself. In terms of the courage to admit failure, his whimper was a bang.

  Looking at my father, after the elections, there was no way to think he was not being devoured by cancer. His sagging skin had a gray tint; his clothes hung on him; and he was exhausted. I talked to Rahel, I talked to his doctors, I talked to my doctors; I felt everybody knew something I did not, and could not be reassured. The results of a variety of tests were unanimous. His body was clean, as was his blood. There were no tumors, no metastases, and no indication of malignancy. His heart condition did not explain the rapid deterioration in his health, and I was bewildered. If Rahel knew more than I did, she was no less puzzled, and we shared the throbbing pain of helplessness. The more dependent he grew on her physically, the less kind he was to her, at least in my presence, and it was heartbreaking. He cut her short; he wanted full attention and then resented it; he sneered and complained and was unkind. She took it all with great love and understanding, knowing, probably, that he was not fighting her but clinging to life. I have seen it happen with my mother, and I was sure that he regretted, made up, and compensated in private, and she endured with the bravery and determination reserved for a woman in love.

  He talked to me about his heart, almost with wonderment. He was amazed at the fact that he could simply not wake up, that the bullet had an address and wouldn’t miss, but would hit him without warning. At times he mentioned his will, but there were obviously a great number of them. He told us—Dov was present—that he felt he could entrust to me the archaeological collection, because I would do the right thing with it, not elaborating. On other occasions he mentioned Udi’s children with reference to the apartment he owned. He talked in general about being very fair to Rahel, as she had a long life ahead of her, and her well-being was his responsibility. He wasn’t concerned with her daughters’ future, as much as he cared for them and genuinely liked them, because they had a wealthy and attentive father. I later found out, from a friend who witnessed the will, that he was in fact referring to a previous paper, written and signed after he was married to Rahel, in which he split his earthly belongings three ways—a third to Rahel, a third to Udi’s two firstborn children, and a third to my brothers and myself. All these words were a monologue. I did not discuss; I did not relate or question or comment upon. He spoke of a future I did not care to admit existed, a future in which he would not be present.

  In the summer I was offered a job with a large advertising company, and accepted it willingly. It had become impossible to manage on one salary, and I was studying—rather than writing for income—which exhausted savings I didn’t want to touch.

  “Don’t tell him,” Rahel said, “that you are taking a job for the sake of a salary. He would be so upset, thinking of you the way he does—as independent and well off …” So I said I found advertising interesting, a whole new field I’d like to study, and left it at that. Although I knew he resented it and misinterpreted it, I did take the children for short summer vacations in Europe. We stayed at the Epsteins’ apartment in Paris, drove to the Loire Valley’s châteaus, and joined our Geneva friends in a house they rented in the South of France. He did not manage to make me feel guilty about my choice of priorities. I was not in debt; we did not live above our means
; and I was not imposing myself on anybody. We were accepting hospitality that was given wholeheartedly, with joy and gratitude.

  Driving through Arles and Avignon marveling at the Chagalls and Matisses in Nice, I tried to treat my children to new tastes and sounds, and myself to a holiday, trying to put aside and suppress the pain that came with the knowledge that it was my father’s last summer.

  We returned at the end of August. I resumed my office job, and Dan began to take lessons for his bar mitzvah, which was to take place three months later. On August 27, my father signed his last will, canceling all previous ones and leaving everything he owned, and whatever was due to him in the way of pension or royalties, to his second wife. He was clear of mind and sane when he did so. He asked to be buried in Nahalal and not have eulogies read or spoken at the graveside. He was in full control of his faculties, and if he did not know his worth, and surely he did not know how independent, well off, or utterly broke his three children were, it was not due to senility or forgetfulness or even—as so many people suggested—to the influence of drugs.

  My brothers and I were not aware of any of this, and we shared the concern and the frustration of our helplessness regarding his health. Udi’s life was a mess. He wanted a divorce, and it was likely that he would lose the Nahalal farm in the process. “Don’t tell your father, it’ll break his heart,” Rahel suggested, and looking at him, I knew this was not a figure of speech. Assi was wiser and more blunt. He was in debt, and the obvious place to seek backing or a loan was his father. He went to see him, had a showdown, accusing and being accused, airing responsibilities and the meaning of parenthood, felt better for it, and was promised the money he asked for. Father grumbled, was upset and maybe hurt, even shattered, but the confrontation was long due, and Assi was the only one of us to dare cash in—albeit for small change—the token we had all been given.

  Summer lingered on with southerly, dry winds and whirlpools of sand. The vines in our Ein Hod garden shed their orange-green leaves, as if stripping would tempt the clouds and the rain. I always found the end of summer, like sunset, sadder than the autumn or night. Jewish New Year, always at the end of summer, adds little to my mood as I go through the festive routine. New Year, like birthdays, calls for stock-taking of the past year, and planning and setting objectives for the year ahead. Two things I wasn’t up to. My father agreed—reluctantly, for obvious reasons of ill health—to have all the grandchildren for a New Year gathering, provided it was short and didn’t include a meal. Rahel took to her bed with bad flu the day before, and I handled the logistics, except for little packages of sweets, which were nicely gift-wrapped, one for each child.

  Father sat on the garden swing, surrounded by his offspring, a tribal patriarch. Udi and his three children and two wives; Assi with his daughter and son; Dov and I with Dan and Raheli. Our cousin Jonathan, Aviva’s son, was there with his family, and Rahel’s daughters, one with two children. The children were all over the place, climbing into Roman sarcophagi and sitting on Byzantine gravestones and church pillars, dipping apples in honey, as is our New Year custom, and having a good enough time. How could they know that this was the last hour they had with their illustrious grandfather? Assi went to Rahel’s bedroom, where she handed him an envelope with the money he needed. The other children, obedient and well-mannered, stood at her bedroom door briefly to wish her a happy New Year, and my father seemed relaxed enough, patting a child here, complimenting another, and mostly talking to us. About rainfall, about his new collection of stones, about a book he intended to write. Through his dimmed sight and bad hearing, the commotion surrounding him may have been a fuzz. Pretty little creatures floating in and out of focus. “All these are yours?” He smiled at us. “Yours too,” we said. “Now, now, don’t exaggerate …”

  How I missed my mother then. She loved the ceremonial aspects of family gatherings, be it a birthday, a holiday, or a regular Friday evening meal. In her absence, we had Seder in my house, where the food was good and the traditional Haggada reading absent, at my father’s insistence. We celebrated Hanukkah with a party—potato pancakes, candles, and songs—in our apartment, and on Independence Day we held a barbecue in Ein Hod. I did it with pleasure, but my father never seemed comfortable. It was an ordeal to tolerate, not much more. Then he had said he would rather not have had a family, and watching him look at us, I had no doubt that he still felt the same way. It was at that moment that it occurred to me that to accept death, to be reconciled with it and not fear it, was perhaps the greatest expression of selfishness. My own concern with death was similar to his, until I had children. It didn’t really matter to me when or how I ceased to be, and I could only hope that it would come with a sudden blow, rather than in small portions of agony and suffering. The only reason to fight death, to avoid danger, to prolong life was not in order to achieve something but rather because of a kind of responsibility. A debt of love to those who may benefit from the fact that I am alive, or suffer at my absence. Father had no such debt or concern. He would rather not have had children. Once we were grown, he owed us nothing, and in his egotistical, self-centered pattern it was not his duty to contribute to our happiness when he was alive or consider our pain and distress when he was gone.

  We talked about state affairs, and he foresaw mostly doom. All these lovely children would have to fight to survive, and their children after them. He was not desperate: we’ll fight and win, but not for many generations to come, if at all, shall we sit under our vines and fig trees in peace. The epic of Massada, where Jews died by their own hand rather than yield to the Romans, was alien to my father all his life. Now, on the eve of death, he wrote an article in which he set Massada as a spiritual example. Its title was really what he predicted, not wished us: “The Victory of the Vanquished.” I looked at the children in the garden, and I could define exactly the distance between Father and myself. I did not wish them to be vanquished victors. I did not see death as a peak of life. I believed in the sanctity of life, and sacrificing one’s life was justified only when it contributed to the continuity of other lives. As in no-choice wars. Dan was studying for his bar mitzvah, not because we were Orthodox—he would probably never attend a service after his Saturday-morning ceremony in December—but because his family was not one of the families in the wadi of Beersheba, or among the suicides on the Massada cliff. His family were also people who could survive without the land. We drove home in silence. Even the children noticed how unwell their grandfather was. Raheli fell asleep in the car, her way of fending off thoughts and premonitions she dreaded.

  Mother called from somewhere to wish us a happy New Year, and promised to be around for the next New Year celebration. In spite of the enormous difference in style and values, my father’s two wives had something in common. Their love for him was uncompromising and total. Mother’s expertise was self-deprivation, and Rahel’s self-indulgence, and he admired both qualities equally as long as he benefited from the results. Mother rejected the advantages that came with Father’s position, but only seemingly and in a righteous way. Rahel claimed them, taking them for granted. Where my mother criticized his shortcomings, Rahel absolved him, and they both shared the comforting notion that he was trapped and seduced by other women rather than attracted to them. In different periods of his life, they both fitted his poor naïve village boy’s ideal of a “princess”—only that my mother was a princess whose ideal was to be Cinderella, and Rahel perhaps wanted to be a queen. Had they ever compared notes, they would have discovered there wasn’t a Rahel’s Moshe, different from Ruth’s Moshe. It was he who chose what facet to expose to each and what to deprive them of, according to what suited him at a given time, with the degree of love he was capable of.

  I was assured of my mother’s unconditional love, time and time again, but I don’t know that she really likes me, or feels entirely at ease with me. Rahel tried to like me, and perhaps succeeded occasionally. The worst thing she ever said to me was to quote a friend to whom my mother had
said: “I don’t envy Rahel for getting Moshe, for she got Yaël as well, as part of the package.” It is irrelevant whether the quote was true, but to say it to me, one had to be insensitive, vicious, or plain stupid. The rest were undercurrents that lose importance in perspective, as she disappeared from my life and I from hers, leaving no trace of damage or contribution. The vacuum I felt in Zahala on New Year’s Eve had to do with some abstract notion I had of “family life,” and Rahel could not fill it anyway. Her place in Father’s life had nothing to do with family, and could in no way be shared with, or inspire, us.

  We went to Ein Hod for a couple of days, and again on Yom Kippur. The pomegranates were exploding in red, and with a prayer for rain I planted winter bulbs. The holiday of Succoth, which lasts for seven days, began on Tuesday and the children had no school. I had to hand in a laboratory report on cell membrane and managed to visit Father once or twice during the week. He talked about the new book he was going to write. It would be about the “heroes of my people.” Men and women, his own selection, those he regarded as exemplary. In excellence, in achievement, in values. Heroes of all times. Hanna Senesh, Meir Har-Zion, Yoni Netanyahu, and others. While we were talking, he noticed a bougainvillea branch which had detached itself from the wire that held it high, and he agreed it should be I, rather than he, who would climb the shaking ladder and put it in place. He held the ladder and only said: As high as you can! Don’t worry, I’m holding the ladder. I wasn’t worried. He was holding the ladder, and I climbed as high as I could.