Jerusalem Interlude (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  The Jewish refugees inside the cage let their dark eyes linger on the group of officials. Hostile glances were returned by the British in reply to such impudence. Did these Jews dare to sing their little song to the government of England?

  “There are procedures for immigration,” remarked yet another commission member. His aristocratic face was unmoved. “If they want to get into the British Mandate, they should have followed the procedures.” The man eyed Orde. “Isn’t that right, Captain Orde?”

  Orde hesitated, resisting the impulse to shove the entire lot of these haughty gentlemen into the water. “Hitler at their backs with clubs . . . ” His voice cracked. He was having difficulty finding words. “What choice have they?”

  The man in the Panama hat interrupted. He was irritated. “None of our business,” he sniffed, turning his back on the captain.

  ***

  “Feldstein! Leah and Shimon Feldstein!” The harsh voice of the British immigrations officer echoed through the enormous tin building.

  The sound of her own name and the din of a thousand voices startled Leah. Shimon nudged her slightly, urging her back to reality.

  She nodded and tucked her pen back into the thin writing case. She would finish the letter later. There was so much she wanted to share with Elisa. Paper would not hold the myriad thoughts and emotions that assaulted her every passing moment.

  The long lines of immigrants at the ten desks had diminished. One by one the holders of legal documents were passing from one side of the shed to the other, where representatives of the Jewish Agency gathered them into groups for transportation to tent cities where they would be initiated into the life of a Zionist in Palestine.

  “FELDSTEIN!” the Englishman roared impatiently.

  “Hurry, Leah.” Shimon was nervous. He had not recovered from the thought that these British immigration fellows had the authority to throw them behind wire for deportation. Such power must not be kept waiting!

  “Yes. Shimon and Leah Feldstein.” Shimon presented passports with visas to the tight-lipped officer who barely glanced up as he checked the official seals against the names on his clipboard.

  “You have family in Jerusalem,” he said flatly.

  “My great-aunt,” Shimon answered softly.

  “All the same, with the Arab demonstrations, you are required to stay at one of the refugee centers.” He shrugged and stamped the papers.

  Shimon and Leah exchanged looks of relief at the thump of the rubber stamp on their documents. So. It was official. They could pass through to the other side of the desk. Only two desks to the right, a young couple with two children had been escorted into a private office. Such a procedure did not bode well for the little family.

  “How long will we be delayed from entering Jerusalem?” Shimon asked, almost bowing. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

  “Out of my hands.” The officer slapped the documents into Shimon’s palm. “Up to the colonial office. They’ll decide when it’s safe enough. Quite common, these delays. A little welcome from the Arabs for the Woodhead Commission from England.”

  “That is all?” Leah laughed. How very different this was, compared to the brutality they had witnessed toward illegal immigrants. Once again her heart measured out the vastness of their good fortune. The contrast was amazing. How could they mind a slight delay?

  Luggage, including Leah’s precious cello, was stacked in giant piles in the center of the concrete floor. Each item was marked with blue chalk to indicate that it had passed inspection for contraband.

  Leah stood in front of the jumbled heap as she searched for her cello case. They had already informed her that all luggage would be hauled separately to the induction center, but she could hardly imagine traveling without her instrument.

  Holding Shimon’s uninjured hand, she slowly circled the pyramid until at last she spotted the case near the top.

  Only then could she turn her attention toward the groups of immigrants gathered beneath signs that named their countries of origin: GERMANY. AUSTRIA. HUNGARY. POLAND. FRANCE. ENGLAND.

  A babble of European languages filled the room. A thousand questions were being hurled at the Jewish Agency representatives all at the same moment. Answers to panicked voices were always calm, always polite—always meant to quell the fears of those who had come from the verdant beauty of Europe to this forbidding place.

  “Tents! Nu! We are going to live in tents?”

  “Will the tents have floors?”

  “Can I stay with my husband?”

  “Do we stay together by families?”

  “You mean we have left Warsaw to come live in tents? Oy!”

  Within each language group, smaller cliques of Orthodox Jews stood beside angry young students who were eager and ready to take their places in the wilderness settlements. All had reasons why they should not be confined to the indoctrination center. The Hasidim were eager to pray in Jerusalem. The socialists had already studied farming and the principles of Zionism.

  How brave these Jewish Agency representatives were to come here and take on such a group of disillusioned pilgrims, Leah thought as she and Shimon made their way through the confusion.

  Shimon squeezed her hand. He had seen this before. Onboard the Darien, he had learned that the title Jew had a thousand variations and nuances. Onboard the Darien they had somehow ironed out their differences. They had become one working unit that had lived together in relative peace and had finally died together. It would be so for these would-be Zionists. It must be so if they were to survive!

  Leah had never imagined so many different kinds of Chosen People all trying to be heard at the same moment. Moses had it easy compared to this, she thought, making a mental note that she must write Elisa about the odd assortment of people who all called themselves Jews.

  As if he had read her thoughts, Shimon leaned down and whispered in Leah’s ear, “Like an orchestra tuning up. That is all. You will see, Leah. We will all find the same note eventually.”

  6

  Watchdogs

  Only the occasional crack of rifle fire broke the utter stillness of the Jerusalem streets. Wedged tightly into his refuge, Rabbi Lebowitz wondered how it was possible that a city the size of Jerusalem could be so silent, as if a giant hand had reached down to scoop up every living creature. Only he remained, and ten feet farther back in the spacer, a calico cat nursed five kittens.

  The old man was grateful for the mother cat, who seemed unperturbed by his presence or the events unfolding beyond this shelter. When the rattle of guns erupted and his heart began to pound like a hammer, he looked at the cat. The cat looked back and blinked pleasantly at the intruder.

  Three kittens were gray. One was calico, a duplicate of the mother, and one kitten was purest white with wide blue eyes. Certainly this was an ecumenical group; all shared equally in the bounty of the mother cat. They tumbled blissfully over one another and occasionally toddled forward in a coy attack on the rabbi’s cuffs.

  A burst of machine-gun fire rattled in the street. The rabbi gasped and instinctively covered his head as a bullet whistled by the opening. There was not enough room for him to crouch down between the buildings. He could only stand and lean against the cool hewn stone of the souvenir shop wall. His legs and back ached in this position, but there was no help for that. He felt lucky to be alive.

  The kittens purred and meowed. They arched their backs and hopped about in mock warfare. The old man watched them. Amazingly he was able to smile. Who would believe this? he wondered. An old man caught between two buildings in the middle of a cross fire, and I can smile! If he lived through this day he must make a prayer of blessing for the cats of Jerusalem who kept him from going crazy!

  Machine guns again. Closer. A block away. A scream of someone who must be dying. English? Arab? Jew? Was it someone like him who only wanted to go home?

  The old man blinked and forced himself to look at the kittens. The white wide-eyed piece of fluff moved cautiously
toward the big strange thing that shivered at the door of their den. Paws danced sideways toward him, then stopped and backed and started forward again more slowly. The kittens had seen thousands of human feet pass by, but none had ever stopped and stayed so long!

  “Come, little one,” the old man whispered as he extended a foot toward it. His own whisper sounded too loud. More bullets whistled by. He had not heard the report of a gun, but the bullets seemed to be flying up the street all the same. He dared not stretch his head out for even a quick look.

  The white kitten was attacked from the rear by a gray brother, and the two tumbled over and over in a clawless battle.

  Rabbi Lebowitz heard the engines of a vehicle—the grinding of gears just beyond Jaffa Gate. His heart lifted. British! It must be British soldiers!

  Did he dare run to them? He imagined himself slipping from the hiding place and crouching to run toward the British vehicle. Across Omar Square? Every gun must be trained on the Square. Snipers would have their rifles aimed at Jaffa Gate, where he must pass.

  The end of the imagined sprint to the English side of the lines left the old man certain that he would be dead before he took two steps from this place.

  Sweat dripped from his gray hair. He was thirsty. His tongue felt swollen and parched like leather. The kittens nursed happily again as the old man watched. It would be a long time until he could drink again, if ever, God willing. Maybe tonight he could sneak out and somehow make it through the Armenian Quarter that bordered his own neighborhood. Maybe.

  The engine of the vehicle roared away down Jaffa Road. The city fell silent again. Not even the birds dared to sing. The pigeons roosting on the spires of the minarets and the domes of churches and synagogues alike remained in their nests as if to see which of their hosts would be victorious. The bells of the great churches did not ring out the hours.

  There was only one certain sign that time passed. Afternoon shadows lengthened across the cobblestone of Omar Square like the finger of a sundial. The old man guessed that it was nearly four o’clock. The others would be frantic with worry, and somehow this knowledge was a comfort to Rabbi Shlomo Lebowitz.

  God had sent the kittens to help him get through the ordeal. He would personally see to it that this mother cat was fed scraps every day . . . that is, if he could only get back to Tipat Chalev alive!

  More gunfire rattled clearly from the rooftops not a block away, answered from David’s Tower. Another scream . . .

  The old man groaned and closed his eyes. Death was a near and tangible presence. Eighteen inches from him, the street was alive with fresh volleys!

  He whispered the Shema: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord!” This he said for the sake of the dying even though he could not know if they were Christian or Muslim or Jew. Death was turning its hollow black eyes slowly around Omar Square to see whom it might devour. The old man’s breath was shallow as he felt death probe this small space between the souvenir shop and tourist information building. Yes! Death had noticed that someone might be hiding there! Had it seen the old rabbi?

  He trembled. He turned his head away and again watched the frolicking little family. He forced himself to study the colors and markings. White paws on the littlest gray kitten. White snip on the nose of another. The last strutting, brazen, gray kitten was without even a dash of white. The little calico was shy and sweet. She nestled beneath the chin of her mother while the white kitten batted at the mother cat’s tail.

  I thank you, O Eternal, for kittens and cats! The rabbi’s prayer was silent. He did not want to tempt the ominous darkness that strolled the streets. It might hear and stop to look.

  ***

  The London morning was scented with the imminent rain, damp wool coats, and the diesel fumes of the unwieldy double-decker buses that roared past.

  Elisa inhaled deeply. It seemed like months since she had felt such freedom. To work again! To play in an orchestra conducted by the great Sir Thomas Beecham! How Elisa had admired the man at the Bayreuth festivals as he had conducted the works of Wagner! He was, like Toscanini, one of the maestros of Europe who was beyond politics, but not beyond honor. Elisa heard that he had made room for at least thirty Jewish musicians who had been expelled from Germany’s orchestras over the last four years. Elisa was number thirty-one.

  A raindrop landed on her cheek and then another and another. So many tears had been shed, but the London rain was washing those memories away.

  She put up her umbrella, but only for the sake of the precious Guarnerius violin. She did not mind the downpour that followed a few seconds later. No morning had ever seemed as perfect as this one.

  ***

  Elisa’s Friday rehearsal had been a day to look forward to for Charles and Louis. Theo had promised he and Anna would take them to the zoo.

  But the London rain poured down, sending lions and tigers scurrying to the shelter of their caves. American grizzly bears shook themselves and peered out at the empty bars where normally thousands of spectators stood. This was a day when all sensible creatures remained indoors.

  “I’d rather be drinking a cup of tea before a fire,” Anna said as Theo took Charles and Louis by the hand and dashed through the puddled sidewalk to the subway station.

  “I should have known when my leg began to complain last night.” Theo paid the fare as Anna shook the water from their umbrella. “Ah, well. We will be the only tourists in London today! Probably the only ones in the entire British Museum.”

  This thought was exciting to the boys, who had heard tales of treasures from Egyptian pyramids and golden coffins with mummies inside. For such a sight they would gladly forego seeing dripping elephants and slimy reptiles.

  Bubbe Rosenfelt had taken Charles to three museums in New York. None of them had mummies, so this excursion might surpass any other for the two Kronenberger boys. Louis had never been to a museum; he could not imagine the vastness with which the British Museum was described by Theo. And when he first laid eyes on the huge building with its Ionic portico, he could not imagine that all this had been built just for a place to store old mummies.

  Only a handful of die-hard tourists stood at the ticket kiosk. All were older people, Charles observed—American, mostly. He could tell by their comparatively stylish clothes and conversations in the peculiar dialect that Murphy used. There were no children. English children were all in school today. Perhaps there would be tours of schoolchildren later, but such a possibility made Charles hope that the rain would never stop. He still did not enjoy the thought of meeting other children.

  The marbled entrance of the British Museum went up and up. The rain from the boys’ slickers made puddles on the floor while they craned their necks backward.

  Theo studied the map in search of the Egyptian antiquities sections. “Books and manuscripts to the right. Roman sculptures to the left. Upper floor . . . medieval . . . glass and ceramics . . . Ha! North wing!” he cried and set off across the foyer with his peculiar limp, looking like a wounded explorer.

  They followed arrows and signs up the broad staircases, through rooms with ancient bronze statues and golden masks, past shining armor and cases displaying weapons that might well have killed Spanish conquistadors in an Aztec temple. Onward marched the four solitary tourists; onward toward the Egyptian antiquities department.

  It was Charles who first noticed they were not alone. In each room, along each corridor, another tourist followed at a discreet distance. When Theo paused to read and explain a sign, the small man in the English tweed jacket and trousers also paused, leaned forward to examine something, cast a look toward the little group, then resumed walking when Theo progressed to another display.

  Perhaps it was a lifetime of being followed, stared at and pursued, that made Charles finally tug at Theo’s sleeve and nod toward the man. Theo was also attuned to being tailed. But here in London? He had hoped it would not be the case.

  From ceramics to prints, from Etruscan artifacts to Phoenician antiquities,
the little man did not deviate from their path. He did not attempt to conceal the fact that he was tailing them. If anything, his routine—pause, look, glance sideways, and walk on—was so obvious that at last Theo exchanged unhappy looks with Anna, turned, and walked directly toward the man.

  The little man smiled as Theo spoke to him in an impatient whisper. The man inclined his head slightly and looked toward Anna and the boys, who stared back openly. His smile broadened. He nodded as if to greet them. He gestured with an open hand toward the entrance to the extensive collection of mummies. Theo bowed slightly as if to thank him and then returned to their little party.

  “Well?” Anna asked softly.

  “Polite people, these English,” Theo answered.

  “Well?” she asked again, this time in French so that the boys would not understand Theo’s reply.

  He answered in French. “Yes. We are being followed. Watched. This fellow makes it sound as if it is all for my own good.”

  “Perhaps it is. The Nazis have not stopped raving about you, Theo. Perhaps it is not a bad thing to have the British government take an interest.”

  Theo took her hand. He nudged Charles gently and encouraged them to run ahead into the hall where the mummies were displayed. Then he led her back alone to where the Englishman had remained at a discreet distance.

  “Mr. Beckham,” Theo said, not unkindly, “please explain to my wife the purpose of your assignment.”

  Mr. Beckham was as pleasant as a shopkeeper—polite, soft-spoken, and straightforward. “Your connections with the immigration of Jewish illegals is quite well known. You are guests in our country. My superiors hope you will be respectful of our laws. It would be a pity if you were approached by some underground organization and because of a misunderstanding violated our laws. I am simply a reminder to you, as I understand it. You are a public figure, after all, Mr. Lindheim.”