Peter stepped to the side to gain some space. “Orange juice?” he offered.
“I know all about it!” Arie shouted. “How long’s it been going on? Behind my back. You bastard, I’ll…”
“First of all, don’t swear at me and, second, don’t talk about Tamara like that.” He was playing for time, he should have told Arie first, he knew it, but now it was too late.
“How long have you been screwing her!”
“Don’t talk like that. It’s complicated, you know it is. I…”
Arie moved fast, faster than Peter anticipated, and landed a blow on Peter’s head that spun him around and against a chair, so hard that he almost lost his balance. Before he could gather himself Arie hit him again with full force in the stomach and again on the chin, almost lifting him off the floor. Peter fell back dazed onto the sofa, desperately collecting himself, and as Arie went to grab his head Peter slipped to the side and from a lying position caught Arie with a kick in the groin that doubled him over, shocking his breath away. Arie gasped in pain as Peter pulled himself up and landed a hefty kick on Arie’s ass that toppled him onto the floor. He lay there, holding his balls, groaning and cursing. Peter stood above him, panting, holding his jaw with one hand, wiping sweat from his brow with the other.
Arie tried to force words past the groans. “That was … a pussy … kick.”
Peter fought to gain his breath. “Consider yourself lucky. You could be dead.” A flush of guilt swept Peter. Between loyalty to his brother and love for Tamara he had chosen love. Of course he had. Loyalty is for the past. Love is for the future.
“You bastard,” Arie said. “My own brother. After all I’ve done for you.”
“You haven’t done shit for me. I never let you.”
“I offered.”
Peter sat heavily on a chair, holding his chin. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“Except my wife.”
“Some marriage. How many women have you got on the side?”
“That’s my business. Stay away from her. I’m warning you.” As the threat hung in the air, the calm voice of the radio announcer broke through, reading a list of unit call-up codes to mobilize more reserves. Like all of Israel, they froze. A monotone: “Morning Dew. Early Winter. Red Rose.…”
“Red Rose. That’s me,” Arie said, speaking with a kind of wonder. “That’s my brigade.” He tried to stand but couldn’t. He kneeled on the floor, doubled over, his groin throbbing. “You think if I didn’t have such big balls it wouldn’t hurt so much?”
“Probably.”
“Next time it’ll be the other way around. I promise you, Peter, if I’m getting my ass blown off in Sinai and you’re here doing Tamara, I’ll kill you. I’ll drive my tank right up your ass.”
“Fighting words. Keep it for the Arabs. Arie, come on, let’s talk like grown-ups.” He hadn’t planned it this way but at least it was in the open at last. “Tamara and…”
“I don’t want to hear it. I have to go. Peter, listen to me. Leave her alone, or so help me God, I don’t care if you’re my brother, I’ll finish you.” Gripping the door frame, his last words were, “You understand me? I love Tamara and she’s mine.”
Peter was torn. Between: She’s yours? You don’t own her. And: You’re going to war, again? Let me hug you.
Peter ran after Arie and stopped him at the top of the stairs, pulling him into an embrace. “Arie, good luck, my brother, stay safe.”
Arie held him off with a look of contempt and ran down the stairs. Over the clatter of shoes, Peter heard the shout, “Go to hell.”
TAMARA
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
May 23, 1967
Tamara pounded through the streets, sweating in the dry heat, her heart pumping. She felt like throwing away her jacket, it was too heavy and hot. She kept looking over her shoulder but every taxi was full; men were rushing home to get their guns or racing to their units. Arie’s driver had been called up days ago, and there were no buses, they were all transporting soldiers. She passed women digging ditches in the gardens of their apartment buildings, and elderly men mixing concrete to block up windows against shrapnel. Across the road a woman clung to her uniformed man as his friends shouted at him to get into the truck. Men bent by their cars painting headlights blue. Ahead of her a man stood back, surveyed his handiwork, put the paint into the trunk, and climbed behind the wheel. She ran up and asked if by any chance he was going to Herzliya.
“No, Haifa, I’m in the navy.”
Tamara looked around with wild eyes and said, “Good luck then, sir,” and turned away.
“But it’s on the way. Jump in, I’ll take you.”
“Oh, really, that’s so kind of you. My husband has been called up and I have to say good-bye.”
“My wife said good-bye,” he said. “Three years ago.”
Tamara looked at him in alarm, but he laughed. “A joke,” he said.
“Oh, good, I was worried.”
“A man can wish, can’t he?”
“You’re joking again?”
“What else is there to do? I’m forty-nine, one year to go and I could have got out of it, instead I’m going to be sick for the next month.”
“You’re in the navy and you get seasick?”
“From the food, my dear. And I’m the cook.”
Tamara smiled, for the first time since Arie had bullied the truth out of her that morning. He had shaken her, raised his hand, shouted, threatened her, and in the end she admitted it: she was sleeping with Peter. She thought he would hit her but instead he had backed away, red with fury, and rushed out of the house. When she stopped shaking she phoned Peter at the office to warn him, but he had left for a walk. She couldn’t leave a message, he had always told her not to, so she had gone to work in Tel Aviv. And then Arie had called her, as if he had forgotten their fight. He told her he had to join the brigade, he wanted to kiss her good-bye, in case there really was a war.
“Thank you for the ride,” she said. “I couldn’t bear not kissing him,” she said, knowing despite everything it was the truth.
“Well, he’s a lucky man. Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll get you home in twenty minutes.”
But by the time she got home, Arie had left. At forty-three, he was still a tank platoon commander, he had to prepare the equipment and get tanks assigned, preferably before the crews arrived. And this wasn’t another exercise, the Arabs were coming, again. His third war, the third time only luck and God would stand between him and death, if you don’t include the Holocaust.
Tamara stood in the hall staring at the envelope she found on the side-table. She turned it over in her hand, images from that morning flooding back. We had a huge fight, she thought, maybe the worst ever, and now he’s gone to war. He must be furious, she failed him, and oh God, what if something happens to him? She didn’t even say good-bye. The last he saw, she was cursing him, crying. With trembling fingers she opened the envelope and slid out the Hebrew note:
Tamara,
You broke my heart. You cheated with my own brother. I saw him today, we had a fight. All a man wants in war is to come home again. Now I wonder, do I even have a home? I could not wait any longer so I can’t even say good-bye. So be it. I may not have been the best husband but you’ll never know how hard I tried.
Your Arie
The note took her breath away, tears came to her eyes. She sat miserably against the cushions on the sofa, drawing her legs up beneath her. What did you expect, she thought, a love letter? So Arie had a fight with Peter. A real fight? Fists? Or an argument? She could only call Peter in the evening. They knew one day they would have to have it out with Arie, and now it had come to pass, but at the worst possible time. What had she done to him? A soldier has to have a home to come back to, a reason to lay his life on the line. What would Arie be fighting for? His country, yes. His family? She hoped so. He loves Carmel and Daniel so much, he’s a wonderful father. She felt sick in the stomach.
So much
had happened since they all met—what? Seventeen years ago. What a mistake. She should have waited for Peter. But she was so young, so desperate in the refugee camp, and so afraid that Peter had made her pregnant and left her. She had been so impressed by Arie’s room. Hot water! And his old car. She shook her head in disbelief. Now look at this house, it’s a mansion, two new cars in the driveway, another in the garage. But so what? She walked to the end of the garden and stared at the horizon, where the sun hung steady, reassuring, the constant in the clear blue sky. She sighed. How she longed to live with Peter. Her reverie was broken by the clanging of the telephone. She ran into the house. Peter? Arie? She hesitated before picking it up, catching her breath. “Hello?” she said at last. There was a scratching sound, beeps and a woman’s voice. “Tamara, Tamara, is that you?” American accent.
“Yes.”
“Tamara, this is Mrs. Wilson from Taos, in America, Alice’s mother.”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Wilson, of course, how are you, is everything all right?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you. We’re hearing terrible things. It’s no place for a young girl, I want Alice to come home immediately. I couldn’t get a call through to her kibbutz. It’s near the border with Syria. I asked her to come home before but she wouldn’t. Now she must. Can you tell her? Are you in touch with her? Hello? Hello?”
Tamara laid a hand on her heart, she hadn’t realized how much stress she was under. She didn’t know who she wanted to hear from most, Peter or Arie.
“Mrs. Wilson, I can try to get a call through to her but it’s very difficult at the moment, the lines are busy all the time because of the situation. I’ll try to tell her though.”
“Please, it’s dangerous…”
After five more minutes telling Tamara she had to hang up because the phone call was so expensive, Mrs. Wilson hung up, just as Carmel came in.
“I don’t think so,” Carmel said, when her mother told her what Mrs. Wilson wanted. “I got a letter from Alice this morning. If there’s a war she volunteered to work as a hospital assistant. She said that on her kibbutz a hundred and twenty men have been called up, out of a hundred and eighty. Can you imagine? All the women afraid for their men. So she feels she has to do something too. And, Mummy, I also want to do something. So as from tomorrow, it’s all organized, I can leave school early, I’m the new mailman.”
Tears sprang into Tamara’s eyes as she hugged her daughter. Such a darling, soon this child too will be a soldier. With all her heart and soul, Tamara hoped there would be no more war. When Carmel, still in her mother’s arms, asked why she was crying, Tamara said, when she could, “for so many things, my sweet little Carmi, for so many things.”
ARIE, IDO, and ALICE
SINAI, EGYPT, AND ASHDOT YAACOV, ISRAEL
June 1, 1967
The tank column idled as the gunner of the lead tank attached a metal cable to an armored personnel carrier that had sunk to its axle in the sand. A dozen infantry, their faces swathed in khaki bandannas, caked in sweat and dust, jeered their driver, who gave them the finger. It was the hottest day so far, ninety-six degrees, and they itched and stank. The infantry captain jumped onto the tank to confer with its commander. Both wore helmets and dust goggles, their faces grimy, but their eyes lit up. “Ido!” “Arie!”
The brothers-in-law slapped each other’s shoulders, bumped helmets. “Hurry up and wait, the usual,” Arie complained. “We’ve had two singers, one dance troupe, and half-a-dozen pep talks, all we want is to get it over with. What do you think? We’ll get a chance to screw ’em?”
“Who knows?” Ido said. “Eshkol can’t decide, half the cabinet wants to get rid of him. Maybe Dayan will come in, at least as defense minister. Watch out for that. If he does, it’s a go. But I tell you something, it won’t be easy, at least, not where we were.”
“What do you mean, where you were?”
“Over there,” Ido said, raising his chin toward Egypt. “Five days. Recon.”
“Inside? Where was that?”
“Near Um Cataf. The Germans helped set it up for the Egyptians in the Fifties. Minefields, pillboxes, trenches, barbed wire for miles, thousands of the bastards, They’re waiting for us. We’d do better to go round it.”
“What did you see?”
“Not for your ears, my brother.”
“Where are you heading to now?”
“Back up north. The Golan.”
“Aha. I heard about your ‘up north.’ How is Alice? I wish I was twenty again. You did the deed?”
“Not for your ears, my brother!”
Arie laughed, then looked down sharply, pointing to his earpiece as it came to life. The stuck half-track lurched out of its desert trap onto firmer ground and the gunner ran back with the cable. Arie spoke into his mouthpiece and tapped Ido on the shoulder: “Stay safe, brother.” Ido jumped to the ground. As Arie’s Sherman tank swung forward in a billow of smoke and sand, his heart clenched at the sudden thought of Tamara. It isn’t over, no way. He saluted her little brother, and his tank column rolled south, toward the enemy.
Facing Israel across the border now was a massive force of seven Egyptian army divisions, a hundred and twenty thousand soldiers. Two thousand tanks. Nine thousand antitank guns. Arie’s mission, if war erupted, was a dash south across flat ground, wiping out any opposition, and then a swing east to join a night assault on Abu Agheila, the key junction dominating the main north–south road in Sinai. He who controlled Abu Agheila controlled Sinai.
Israel’s assault force was led by a barrel-chested thirty-eight-year-old brigadier, the youngest in the army, Ariel Sharon. He was a controversial hero of the 1956 war who had dropped his paratroopers behind enemy lines, with heavy casualties. His vastly outnumbered division today would rely on a series of overlapping attacks on four fronts to surprise the Egyptians and crush them. Surveying his own platoon of middle-aged reservists Arie couldn’t help thinking, despite his bravado with Ido: let’s hope it never happens.
* * *
Ido, back in the north now, thinking of Alice and his own affairs, prayed it would. God, let it happen, me and Alice, he muttered as he marched through the kibbutz to Alice’s room. It was two o’clock, siesta time, he had the whole afternoon off, after twenty straight days of operations. He hadn’t seen Alice in almost six weeks—when his reconnaissance unit was launched, they fell off the radar.
He had warned her that he couldn’t be in contact. He hoped she understood.
But when he knocked on her door, there was no answer. He peered inside. Empty. Oh, no. He hadn’t been able to tell her he was back, the only phone on the kibbutz was always busy. A tall blond boy walked by, he must be a foreign volunteer. “Hey,” Ido called. “Have you seen Alice?”
“No, I think she may be in Haifa. Or Zefat. A group went to work in the hospitals. In case there’s war.”
Ido’s heart sank. He had counted on seeing her. Every night he had kept up a silent conversation with her image. Alice’s cheeky grin, her sweet lips, to say nothing of her body’s promise, had sustained him through the desert, hiking through the icy nights, hiding in the sweltering day, peering through binoculars for hours, every passing shepherd boy or camel herder spelling possible disaster. Yet all the time, part of him was smiling, knowing Alice was waiting.
Now what?
“Do you know when Alice will be back?” the volunteer called to an English girl.
“Soon. She’s at the first aid class.”
“Oh, she’s back then?”
“Yes, they came back from Haifa yesterday, they were in Rambam Hospital.”
Ido’s heart leapt: there is a God. “Thank you,” he said, searching the lawn for shade where he could wait. The sun was high, the air in the Jordan valley was leaden. Flowers must be wilting; he certainly was.
“I’ll wait inside,” he said aloud, “it’s too hot.”
The only comfortable place in Alice’s room was the bed, so Ido stashed his Uzi beneath it, unlaced his brown
combat boots, took off his shirt, and lay in his combat trousers and white T-shirt, head cradled in his hands, looking at the ceiling. His metal dog tag hung from his neck. He sighed happily. The sleepless nights in the desert, the long drives, the muggy heat, soon did their work. He loosened his pants, his eyes closed, and in minutes Ido was fast asleep.
That’s how Alice found him. She opened the door and there he was at last, the boy, the man, who had made the passing of time so painful. Finally he had come. How sweet he looked, such long eyelashes, his face so relaxed, his gentle breaths, black hair from his brown chest poking over his white vest. How far she had come, she thought, so quickly. From tenth- grade football games in Taos, New Mexico, to Israel’s Jordan valley on the brink of war, with a beautiful man in her room, and a submachine gun under her bed. Thank God Mom’s not here.
Her pink-walled bedroom with her crocheted throw and collection of stuffed rabbits sitting against the pillows, her life-sized poster of Elvis bent double stamping his foot and strumming his guitar, it all seemed from another lifetime. She had argued with her mother on the phone, tried to explain how happy she was in Israel, denied the danger, refused to return home. She hadn’t said it, but it was because of Ido, and now here he was, all hers. She backed out of the room and quietly closed the door, not wanting to wake him. She looked around the lawn, wondering where she could wait. She could lie in the shade of that tree. Or drink a soda in the dining room. Or visit one of the girls. Or go over her notes from the first aid class. Or … or … do what she really wanted to do.
She gently pushed the door open, closed it quietly behind her, locked it, and stood by the bed, gazing with love at her sleeping soldier. A yearning as old as time came over her, the fear of losing her man in war before she fully knew him. She had a gift for him, and he for her. All this she felt, barely knowing it. Hesitating only a moment, Alice slipped off her shoes, and her shirt, stopping with her hands inside her waistband. Should she take off her pants? She didn’t dare. She lay beside Ido on the bed. Half of her was hanging over the side, so she snuggled against him.
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