Rachel was an angel. She had stepped in, changed her whole life, and looked after little Diana every day. And Tamara … well; Tamara. His brother’s wife.
Don’t go there.
“Well?” he heard.
Peter snapped back. To the corner office with windows facing the boulevard, framed photographs of fighter jets swooping low over Tel Aviv and tanks bursting through clouds of sand, a picture of Amit’s mentor, Moshe Dayan, a finger rubbing behind his black eye patch over a crooked smile.
“Well?” Amit repeated. “In or out?”
“Can I be frank, sir?”
“Of course. That’s what I want, your reputation precedes you.”
Peter sighed. He didn’t like to bring this up, but he had to. “It’s about my personal circumstances. It shouldn’t count, but it does.”
“Of course, it always does. It must.”
“Yes. Well. Right now I’m relying on family help, my sister-in-law’s mother…” He stopped. He hated this. “I’m sorry, this has nothing to do with you. The fact is, on my salary here, I just couldn’t afford the help I need at home. I have three children with no mother. The hours, all day and night, traveling away from home for weeks at a time…”
“Nesher. Stop right there. Look, I’m new here, but the army, Mossad, we’re all in this world together. We help each other, we’re a family. Whatever you need to make this work, you’ll get. Frankly, we need you. The threats against Israel have entered a new stage. Economically and militarily we have never been in such a strong and stable position. But our enemies are stronger too. They are uniting under Nasser. They’ll finish Hitler’s job if they get half a chance. Our job is to think ahead and that’s where we need you. The local Arabs, the so-called ‘Palestinians,’ are organizing, saboteurs are attacking across our borders almost daily, from Jordan, Syria, Gaza, pinpricks so far but they will become a more serious threat. I am forming a new unit to deal precisely with their activities abroad. Shin Bet and Aman will deal with them at home, I want you to be in charge of all anti-Palestinian activities outside Israel. Of course there will be considerable overlap, and I want you also to coordinate all domestic and foreign activities. It’s a big job, and it is also the job of the future. You will be a department head. It prepares you for a senior executive role in Mossad. You will travel less. It’s a significant promotion that comes with a significant salary increase, and there are ways to bump that up too. You will have more money than you need to care for your children. A lot more. I want you, Peter. We need you.”
Amit laid a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “The business of plastic chairs will take care of itself. Israel’s security will not.”
ARIE and TAMARA
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
January 1964
It all blew up with a short gossip item on page nineteen of The Jerusalem Post’s weekend edition. The gossip column, a popular weekly feature, listed who was seen where and with whom, and sucked up to politicians, businessmen, and artists, praising their speeches and promoting their performances. Ido, keen to improve his English, read it every Friday. Moshe hated the column because its puerile tittle-tattle had many more readers than his consequential political analysis in Davar; he claimed it was just a way for the page editor to get free concert tickets and access to society parties.
“Look, Dad,” Ido called across the room. “Is this true about Arie?”
“Everything’s true about your brother-in-law,” Moshe said, without looking up from his newspaper.
“This better not be, though.”
“What do you mean? Read it out loud. We’ll see if my English is good enough.”
In heavily accented English, rumbling his Rs and lengthening his vowels, Ido read: “Tel Aviv society’s worst-kept secret was on open display at the Cameri Theatre Wednesday night when business big shot Arie Nesher left in the intermission with longtime ‘very close friend’ swimsuit designer Gila Goldfarb. They emerged hand in hand, apparently too impatient to wait for the end of Sammy Gronemann’s smash hit The King and the Cobbler.”
Ido looked over at Moshe, whose face was as set as the Sphinx.
“Very close friend,” Ido said. “Is that true, Dad? Holding hands?”
“Don’t tell Tamara,” Moshe said.
* * *
But Tamara already knew. Three women she rarely heard from couldn’t wait to tell her: “You must feel awful.” “Everyone’s talking about it.” “Poor you.”
“What a bastard,” the fourth caller, Cindy, from her law firm, said. “I didn’t see it myself, Rafi Kabiljo told me. His wife told him.”
So he was with that bitch again Wednesday, after he’d sworn it was over. And he hadn’t come home last night. He’ll be home tonight, though, for the Sabbath meal; he never misses that, his so-called “family time.”
Well, we’ll see about that.
* * *
The ball of fire sank beneath the sea, the sky was ablaze in streaks of orange and crimson. Arie’s face glowed in its reflection, and the bouquets of red and yellow roses he held in each hand seemed like a celebration of the heavens. They should. They cost a fortune because they were out of season and imported, but they were an investment. Thank God that garbage was in the English-language Post, which hardly anybody read. It was possible that Tamara had not heard about it. Possible but unlikely. He’d find out any moment. He looked up again at the fiery sky, which seemed to blazon a warning. Help me, God.
The setting sun and the first stars heralded the start of the Sabbath, the day of rest. He sensed he wouldn’t be getting much of that.
But where was everyone? He put the flowers in the sink, and peered around the door into the dining room. He went out onto the terrace, walked down to the pool, back to the house, calling, “Tamara? Carmel? Daniel?” Were they hiding? Was it a birthday surprise? It wasn’t his birthday. He went into their bedroom with a sinking feeling. Don’t tell me she’s gone. He looked into Tamara’s closet. Her clothes were still there, everything was in order. Her toothbrush was in the bathroom.
So where are they? What about dinner? He was starving.
* * *
As the oldest female present, Rachel lit the two candles while welcoming the Sabbath with prayer. In Arie’s absence, Moshe laid his hands on the forehead of each child and prayed for the Lord’s blessing. He recited the kiddush prayer and blessed the wine, and everybody sipped from a full cup signifying joy and overflowing bounty. Tamara broke the challah bread into pieces, sprinkled each with salt, passed portions to everyone at the table, and they got down to the serious business: matzo ball soup followed by roast chicken, roast potatoes, minutely chopped salad, and, as no Rachel meal would be complete without it, a plate of hummus with pine nuts and mushrooms.
Daniel and Carmel, who were fourteen now, kept asking, “Where’s Daddy?” Ido and Estie, eighteen and twenty years old, respectively, and both on weekend leave from the army, exchanged glances and wondered how their sister would answer. Tamara didn’t. All she thought, as the Sabbath meal progressed, the warmest, most intimate family moment of the week, was, That bastard!
How dare he?
How long could she put up with this? He would never change, so what was the point of waiting? At work she defended women with abusive husbands, while at home her own husband abused her emotionally every day. Did he really think money and comfort made up for it? Obviously he did. Well, it didn’t. Not anymore. And all his nonsense about loving her and needing her, all rubbish. He’s just afraid, he needs the security of a little wife at home while he runs after every moneygrubbing trollop in town, and God knows there are plenty of them. She knew the truth about Goldfarb, she was no “special” friend, if she was special, so was the secretary and the secretary’s secretary.
There’s something manic in his philandering. What’s he trying to prove? Well, who cares, it’s too late now, she couldn’t take it anymore. Throwing out his clothes had been comic relief, she had cackled like a witch. But then she had thrown herself onto
the bed and wept.
* * *
It took Arie a few minutes to realize that yes, Tamara’s clothes were still in the closet, but where were his? His cupboard was bare. His drawers, empty. He went back into the bathroom and saw Tamara’s toothbrush. But where was his?
He ran along the corridor to the east wing and opened the door to the guest suite. The bitch! His clothes were strewn around the bed and the room. He didn’t know he had so many, he was ankle-deep in trousers, shirts, vests and jackets. His shoes were everywhere, and yes, there was his toothbrush on the floor. He pulled back; there was broken glass: his tooth mug. She must have been in a frenzy.
So she’d seen that Jerusalem Post story after all. He’d find out what miserable bastard wrote that and wring his neck. People just can’t mind their own business.
The phone rang. At last, where were they? He didn’t mean to hurt her, it all seemed beyond him, he just could not control his restlessness. Tamara must understand, he loved her, he loved his family, he didn’t want it to be this way. She must see reason. He sat on the edge of the bed and slowly picked up the phone, hoping his voice would tremble.
“Tamara?” he said.
“Arie?”
“Gila? You’re calling me at home? Are you crazy?”
She was sobbing. “Arie, my husband left me. What shall we do?”
“We?” Arie jerked the handset away from his ear, looked at it in dismay, and hung up. He stood and kicked the bed.
* * *
At Moshe and Rachel’s, Tamara tried to evict Arie from her thoughts, to savor the family’s Sabbath meal, the festive, leisurely highlight of their week. But there was no escape: the conversation was all about men and women. It started when Ezra asked his aunt Estie what she did in the army and she replied, “I make the coffee.” She said at the Kirya, army HQ in Tel Aviv, girls were secretaries. “If I’m really good,” she said, “and make really good coffee, and lots of it, I could get promoted and then I get to make the tea. That’s a complicated balance of tea with mint and sugar, while coffee is just black and strong. But only the best girls get promoted.”
“You’re joking, I hope,” Tamara said.
“Not by much. And the way the officers talk, it’s like a school playground. They’re married men, you’d never know.”
Arie fits right in, Tamara thought.
“What do you mean?” Rachel said.
“Oh, the things they say. Leaning over you, putting their arms around you, you know…”
“No, I don’t,” Tamara said, although she did. She could just imagine Arie pawing and leering at the girls in his office. And who knew what he got up to when he toured the factories and shop floors; Big Boss in his suit and tie, with a pocketful of cash. “What do they do?” she said.
“Nothing they don’t do outside the army too,” Ido said, holding a chicken wing up to his mouth. Tamara looked at him sharply: Does he mean Arie? Everybody must know about the story in the Post, but they’re too polite, or scared, to mention it. It was humiliating. That bastard! “What about you, Ido?” she asked her brother, wanting to change the subject. “How is the Makim course going?”
“Hard. Really hard. But I love it. It’s made for me.” The Golani squad leaders course was the stepping-stone to being an officer, Ido’s ambition. Wolfie, now an infantry colonel, was keeping an eye on Ido’s progress but despite Arie’s request to his childhood friend, Wolfie had refused to put in a good word for Ido. “If he isn’t good enough to be an officer he’ll be a danger to his men. If he is good enough, he’ll make it on his own. Anyway, from what I hear, he’s excellent officer material.”
At eighteen, Ido, cropped black hair, muscular, tanned, handsome, looked the part. He was the tallest in the family, and his army training made him the fittest. He had moved smoothly from straight A’s at high school to top recruit in basic training. Moshe had written a column headed “The New Israeli” and in it had boasted, “I needn’t look far to see the future of the Jews, and how different it is from our past. The future sits on the other side of the breakfast table.”
Tamara had been furious. “What about his sister? She isn’t the future? She doesn’t exist for you?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Moshe said. “But it’s different, you know. She’s a girl.” Oh, how quickly he had tried to make amends. “I mean…”
Too late. Tamara’s summary was: “You can take the Egyptian out of Egypt, but you can’t take the misogynist out of the Egyptian.”
That had made Estie laugh. “I don’t mind, Tamara. You think the yekkes are any different? In the army the girls are all just pretty faces.”
Now at dinner Moshe asked, “Has anybody gone too far with you? Those officers, they think they’re God.”
“Depends what you mean, too far,” Estie said. “I can tell you this: All the girls talk about it, and the problem is, because they’re officers, there’s nobody to complain to.”
Tamara felt her eyes well up, she glanced around, and dabbed at them with her napkin. It was painful to hear this, it was a nasty reminder how ordinary Arie really was: just another man who could get away with anything because there was no one to stop him. Men with power were untouchable, and she was just as guilty as all the other women who didn’t stand up for themselves. Girls in the army at least had the excuse of being young and naïve—what was her excuse? She was just another weak, abused woman, and it had to stop. She frowned with determination. Throwing him out of their bedroom was just the start.
“Yes,” Moshe said. “Because who judges them? Other officers. And they’re all the same.”
“No, they aren’t,” Ido said. “At HQ maybe they have too much time on their hands. In the field, nobody’s got time to mess about. Or energy. Pass me the potatoes, please.”
“Amazing,” Rachel said. “There’s seven of us around the table, it’s full of food, and Ido has eaten half of it by himself.”
“Pass the chicken too,” Ido said. “I have to keep growing.”
“But where’s Dad?” Carmel said.
At the very mention of him Tamara’s blood rose, anger surged through her, she’d show him. All the faces at the table turned to her. Her children, their cousins, her parents, family time around the Sabbath table, with the best silverware, a clean white linen over the challah bread, glowing candles. Was this the moment to say what was in her heart, to tear their lives apart? She hesitated, torn between her anger, her humiliation, and saying something she may regret forever.
“Well?” Carmel said.
At last she said, attempting a smile, “I’m sorry. Daddy’s at home, he was busy this evening. You’ll see him later.”
CARMEL and ARIE
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
April 1964
Carmel received a letter from America. The red, brown, and blue fifteen- cent Montgomery Blair stamp thrilled her, it would be a new one for her collection. But who did she know in America? She checked again that it really was her name on the envelope, and turned it over and over. She found a knife, worked it beneath the flap, and slit the envelope open neatly to preserve the stamp.
Dear Carmel,
You don’t know me but I hope that we can become pen pals. My grandparents adopted your uncle, Peter Berg, when he was a boy in America. I heard a lot of stories about “the little Jewish boy” and now he is an important man in your government. I would love to know about you and your life and your country. I don’t even know if your English is good enough to read this, but it is certainly better than my Jewish, ha ha …
Alice Wilson explained that in a letter to her grandmother Peter had suggested she write because she and Carmel were almost the same age. She hoped it was all right. Alice wrote about her junior high school, the neat boy who lived opposite, Gadi Bronson, and her life in Taos, New Mexico. She loved to ski, hike in the mountains, swim in the lakes, although the water was icy cold, and her favorite television programs were The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gunsmoke, and Walt Disney Presents.
Ca
rmel was excited to have an American friend and wrote back immediately in the best English she could. The news that she couldn’t watch the television programs because Israel didn’t have TV both amused and horrified Alice, who replied that her greatest ambition now was to visit Israel, for a country without television must be a very special place. What did Carmel do all day?
Carmel couldn’t wait to see her parents. “Daddy, can Alice come and stay with us?”
“Of course,” Arie said. “Maybe when she’s a bit older, it’s a long way to come alone. In the meantime you could work harder at English. Would you like a private teacher? I can get someone from the office. Maybe you can go to America one day. You can run my New York office.”
“Really? I didn’t know you had one.”
“I don’t, but by the time you’re old enough, I will. That’s going to be the biggest market. Bigger than Europe.”
“Can I, really? I could leave school, go there soon…”
Arie laughed. “Not so fast. School, army, university, marriage, babies, there’s a lot to do in life. Let’s just start with English lessons, that’s important. More important than German. Which reminds me, I must go, I’m meeting Peter for lunch.”
“Tell him thank you for introducing me to Alice. I haven’t seen Peter for ages.”
“I will.” He kissed her on the forehead and each cheek and went to the car, where Yaacov was waiting to drive him to town.
“Where to, boss?”
“Dizengoff Street. Keton. Lunch with Peter.”
“Ha. Good luck.”
“I’ll need it.”
It was a silent drive. He was getting fed up with Peter. Tamara always complained that he judged her and criticized her, which he didn’t. But Peter did to him. He never stopped playing the older brother. Who needs this? What did Peter want to talk about this time? He could guess, the same old story: “Tamara, she deserves better.” What does he know; they hadn’t had sex for three months. “Spend more time with the children. Grow up. Life is about more than money.” Oh yes?
Promised Land Page 25