Begin’s eyes behind the thick lenses glinted as he appraised Herschel. “I am Ben Zeev, yes? Come, sit down. Joseph, two coffees.”
Herschel was not at all surprised to see how the surly waiter rushed to do Begin’s bidding. “Ben Zeev, eh?”
“Zeev and Katz will do best for us,” Begin agreed, packing away his papers into the old briefcase. “Ah, our coffee.” He smiled at the waiter, who set down the cups and hurried away. “I’m sorry we made you wait so long, Mr. Katz, but we had to make sure you were not being followed by the British. I’m told your appearance has greatly changed, but still, you are an escaped convict.”
“I’m surprised to see you out in the open like this,” Herschel replied.
“Why should I hide? They make me sound much more inaccessible than I am.” Again he showed that abstracted, quizzical smile. “Anyway, we had to meet somewhere, and though we’ve determined that you are not being tailed, we nevertheless decided it would be better for us not to meet at headquarters.”
“Still, a cafe?”
“I have my bodyguards—”
“It’s just that I know how easy it is to blow up a place like this and everyone in it,” Herschel said, immediately feeling like an ass. Begin’s reaction was a cross between amusement and annoyance.
“I’m sorry,” Herschel muttered. “I’m trying to impress you and accomplishing exactly the opposite, I think.”
“All right, no harm done,” Begin said. “You should know that I am familiar with your record. I know you blew up that coffeehouse on instructions from the Irgun, and I know you kept your mouth shut in prison. This is all in your favor, Herschel—”
“Dov.”
Begin laughed. “This sneaking and alias business is for children, yes? Still, we must be somewhat careful. The police have yet to search for me, but soon, when we get active, I’ll be hunted. You recall what happened to Yair?”
Herschel nodded. Yair, or Abraham Stern, David Raziel’s old comrade, was leader of the radical Stern gang. The police had recently discovered him in hiding and shot him on the spot, claiming he was trying to escape.
“Yair is gone and so is Raziel,” Begin mused. “I entertained hopes of serving under Raziel. There was the consummate military man, but he’s dead. I understand that you were with him in Iraq?”
“Yes, sir.” Herschel briefly told Begin about the air raid.
Begin listened soberly. “I met Raziel in Poland—this was perhaps 1939. How I idolized him, but he’s gone and now I must take his place. You know his greatest accomplishment? His training manuals. Yes, the very ones on which he collaborated with Yair. As long as those manuals exist, they will both live forever. Do you agree, Mr. Katz?”
“I suppose.” Herschel shrugged, wondering where Begin was leading.
“Training new volunteers will be all-important to us, you know. Oh, yes. Guns and explosives and supplies we can steal, but new followers—where do we get our new soldiers, eh?”
“They’ll flock to you, sir, have no fear of that.”
“That’s not the question. I know they’ll flock; what I’m asking is what use will flocks be? Our new strategy is very simple. We will harass the authorities at every turn. We will drive them to such repressive countermeasures that their own self-disgust plus world opinion will bring about a British crisis of will. They will not like our making them act like Nazis. They will withdraw and Palestine will be liberated.”
Herschel said nothing. It could work, even if it was not very different from the system espoused in those old Irish Republican Army leaflets of Frieda Litvinoff’s.
“There is one problem,” Begin continued. “While British repression goes on there will be mass arrests, detention camps, perhaps executions. We will need a constant supply of trained soldiers if we are to keep up the pressure in the cities and towns all across Palestine.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Begin looked him in the eye. “Training camps are being set up all along the coast. I want you to revise our training manuals to take into account the new weapons we will be stealing from the British. I want you to head up one of these camps and to put together—under the supervision of my staff—a curriculum of training for the other camps. You’d be making a major contribution.”
“I think I’d be a laughingstock,” Herschel objected. “They’d all laugh at me for teaching others how to fight but not doing so myself. I don’t want to be left sitting on the sidelines of our great struggle.”
Begin waved him quiet. “You are a wanted man. Say we sent you out on a raid. There would always be the risk that you would compromise the operation if you were recognized, yes?”
Herschel was forced to agree. “But why think I’m capable of organizing your training program? What makes me a teacher?”
“You are capable because you have received university training—”
“That was in science, mathematics and engineering,” Herschel protested. “I know nothing about teaching.”
Begin shrugged. “At least you have seen it done. You also know about guns and fighting. You grew up defending Degania, didn’t you?”
“Guns I know,” Herschel admitted, “but what about explosives, radios and so on?”
Begin glanced at his watch. “Please, this is time-wasting, you know? These are all details. Experts in various areas will be assigned to the training program, and you will be our headmaster.”
“There’s no one else who could take on this job?” Herschel pleaded.
“Of course there are others. There are always others, but nobody so suitable. This assignment allows you to help the cause from behind the lines, where there will be little chance of exposure to the authorities. It also puts you where you can serve as an inspiration to our new recruits.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are a hero,” Begin snapped. “You fought valiantly and escaped to return to the fold. You are also a Palestinian born and bred, one of the few the Irgun has managed to lure away from Ben-Gurion’s Haganah. The would-be soldiers who enter our camps could do far worse than to emulate you.” Begin regarded him. “Well, yes or no? Will you follow your commander’s orders?”
“What choice do I have?”
Satisfied, Begin stood up, briefcase in hand. “Don’t forget to pay for the coffee.”
Chapter 42
New York, 1944
As Carl Pickman reviewed the sales reports stacked on his desk, a saying of his uncle Bernard’s came to mind. “You have to know the dollars and cents side of the business, but if that’s all you know, then get yourself over into accounting. You’ll never be a good merchant.”
It was amazing how sales had climbed since the store revamped its advertising. Gone was Pickman’s Promise, which had been the staple of its advertising since the Thirty-fourth Street building first opened its doors. Gone as well was his own signature at the bottom of each ad. He had to give Miss Herodetsky credit for having the gumption to suggest that particular change.
The new campaign—Becky’s series—was the talk of the business. The first one—the nylon stockings ad—had set the tone for the rest. The headline was a line from a popular song, “It decants on your pants.” The leg makeup of the day had a tendency to rub off on a man’s trouser leg. The ad went on to praise women’s patriotism and then tie in Pickman’s patriotic history, according to plan.
At first Pickman doubted that Miss Herodetsky would succeed. Her ideas were sound, but experience had taught him that turning ideas into reality was an arduous process. He expected sabotage by the advertising and merchandising departments, enough to stop her in her tracks as soon as she tried to change the comfortable status quo of the last twenty years.
Pickman, who hated disturbance, was prepared to let them sabotage her. However, that did not happen. It turned out that Miss Herodetsky possessed the rarest of all attributes, the ability to persuade others to work for her. Her style was to lead them to think she needed and was eternally grateful for the
ir help. True enough, too.
The rapid sellout of the nylons came as no surprise, but damned if Millinery and Better Dresses hadn’t also both reported an increase in sales. For the second time in Pickman’s history there was a line of customers down the block, and that line reappeared after each of her ads.
Miss Herodetsky was still at Millie Kirby’s beck and call, still doing the typing and filing in addition to running a major retail advertising campaign. She was still earning less than when she sold handbags.
It seemed she couldn’t be happier, as if the work alone was enough reward. These days she was popping into his office half a dozen times a day with proposals for approval, and she was always smiling and cheerful and in all lovely to behold.
Smiling, Pickman leaned back in his chair, savoring Miss Herodetsky’s enthusiasm. To her it was always “we” and “us,” as if she were a Pickman and had stock in the business. It seemed not to matter to her that only others were prospering by her efforts.
He suddenly remembered one other thing Bernard used to tell him. “Carl, wait until you discover how much fun it is to buy and sell.” Uncle Bernard meant it as consolation to a heartsick young man.
* * *
Carl Pickman’s grandfather, Wilhelm Licht, came to America from Austria in 1854. He traveled rural New England, peddling from a pack on his back. Eventually he changed his name to William Packman so his customers would remember him; then he went off to serve the Union in the Civil War. Just when “Packman” evolved into “Pickman” is unknown, but when William opened his dry-goods store in Salem, Massachusetts, after the war, the sign above the store read Pickman’s.
By this time William had a wife and two sons as well as a solid reputation. His sons Leonard and Bernard entered the business young. When their father died the Pickman brothers decided it was time to expand. Boston briefly beckoned, but they were young and unmarried; they had an adventurous streak. They’d lived in Massachusetts their entire lives. It was time to try something new.
Leonard, the older, went to New York City, intending to smarten up by working for an established merchant while Bernard held the fort back in Salem.
Leonard went to work at Rowe’s Emporium on Sixth Avenue near Fourteenth Street, where he met and married a young German-Jewish girl, Clara Hirsch, the daughter of a nearby optician.
Leonard saw the potential of Rowe’s Emporium, but the owner, Wentworth Rowe, had lost his wife and son to diphtheria and no longer had the will to succeed. He was quick to sell out to the Pickman brothers, who bought the property with the proceeds from the sale of their Salem store. Bernard joined Leonard in New York and they changed the name to Pickman’s Shoppers’ House. They were successful and gradually bought up adjoining property into which to expand.
Leonard and Clara had three children. The eldest, Carl, was born in 1887, followed by Deborah in 1891 and Amy in 1898. Bernard never married. He was a painfully shy, kindly man ten years younger than Leonard. He lacked his older brother’s cold pragmatism. As the Pickman brothers built up their reputation and wealth, Bernard devoted his free time to philanthropy. He also doted on his nephew Carl, who turned to his uncle for the love and attention he did not receive from his stern father.
The Pickman brothers had no trouble raising the capital to finance their Thirty-fourth Street store. By the time it was ready to open, Carl, just sixteen, was off to Amherst. He did exceedingly well in school and had hopes of going on to medical school; he had applied and been accepted to Harvard.
Bernard interceded with his brother on his nephew’s behalf, but Leonard Pickman was adamant. Up until now he had humored his son. As a boy Carl spent his summers with his mother and sisters at Sea Bright, on the New Jersey shore. As a youth he was allowed his horseback riding, even if it was a waste of time; Leonard hated the idea that his son was caught up in that blue ribbon and trophy nonsense.
In any event, all that was over and the store was what mattered. The Pickman brothers, wisely concluding that the heyday of the carriage trade and the Ladies’ Mile had come to an end, had chosen their Herald Square site to take advantage of the Sixth Avenue El and the crosstown trolley. Location told; the new store did an astounding amount of business. The loans would all be paid off in another couple of years.
Carl was the only male heir. He would go to work in the store. He began as general manager. He was twenty years old. That same year his mother died of cancer.
His father was a martinet in the office. He seemed to take grim satisfaction in belittling his son in front of outsiders. Bernard was the only bright spot in Carl’s existence, and he spent as much time with his uncle as he could. Together they went to museums and the theater; they discussed literature, music and art; through Bernard Carl savored all the finer things life had to offer a man of his station, which his father scornfully dismissed as womanly time-wasters.
Still, Leonard Pickman tolerated Carl’s time with his uncle as long as he reported to the office bright and early every morning. Carl grew to believe his father was relieved not to have him around once the workday ended.
In 1917 Bernard Pickman drowned in a boating accident. “You see?” Leonard Pickman cautioned his son. “That’s what comes of fun.”
Carl’s sisters were long since married, Amy to a surgeon and Deborah to a drone whom Leonard Pickman made comptroller and banished to the recesses of the accounting department.
With Bernard gone and his sisters in homes of their own, Carl had no one left. He withdrew into himself. He spent his nights reading and listening to his father’s tapping cane echoing off of the polished marble floors of Pickman House, on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park.
In 1930 Carl’s father sent him to Atlanta to see one of their furniture manufacturers about a shipment and to see the manufacturer’s daughter.
“Joe Hoffer’s girl is the right age, and she’s our kind,” Leonard declared. “You should have seen to this aspect of your life yourself, Carl. That’s what a man would have done, but of course you haven’t. You always have been more like Bernard. You’ve taken on all his charity work, haven’t you? Well, that’s all right; having the Pickman name prominent in philanthropy is good for the store. But you’re forty-three years old. I won’t have you ending up a bachelor. It’s all been arranged between Joe Hoffer and me. All that remains is to inspect the goods for damage before you take delivery.” He leered.
“You’ll stay with the Hoffers for three weeks. They have a farm of sorts, I’m told. You’ll like it there.” Carl still remembered his father’s sneer. “I understand they have horses.”
Gertrude Hoffer was by no means a beauty, but at twenty she was certainly pretty, with reddish-blond hair, blue eyes and a scattering of freckles across her broad face. She had a southern belle’s facility for putting a man at ease. She assured Carl that she found his shyness appealing, masculine. She filled the awkward silences in his halting conversation with her fetching drawl; she laughed at his feeble jokes; she introduced him to her friends.
The Hoffers did keep a stable. Riding was the one accomplishment Carl could claim. Trude squealed with delight and admiration when he took his mount over the hurdles. She understood when he confided to her that when he was riding, in control of a powerful steed, was the only time when he felt free and alive.
When the three weeks were up, Gertrude Hoffer sent him back with her touch stirring his memory and her lilting laughter still in his ears, back to his father’s cool disdain and staid Pickman House. Carl’s despair upon his return he took to be the pain that comes with departure from one’s sweetheart.
He and his uncle had often discussed love over brandy after a night at the theater. Bernard knew romantic passion the way he knew poverty, through diligent study and profoundly developed empathy. Nevertheless, the naive nephew believed he could realize his celibate, spinsterish uncle’s dreamy thoughts on love by marrying Gertrude Hoffer.
“I intend to propose marriage to Miss Hoffer, father.”
“I’ll take
care of the details with Mr. Hoffer, Carl. There’s no time to waste. I’m seventy-four and I intend to see my grandsons before I die.”
As it turned out, he didn’t. He died in his sleep a month after the wedding. Carl and his bride were still in Europe on their honeymoon. The new groom briefly entertained fantasies of causing a furor by not returning. He still mourned his uncle and his mother, but all he felt at his father’s passing was relief. Nevertheless, he did return.
Carl Pickman put away his sales reports. He glanced at his desk clock. It was well after closing, but he knew Miss Herodetsky was still at her desk, and not only because staying late had become her habit.
Over the months he’d found himself preoccupied with her. He found himself encouraging her visits to his office and thinking up pretexts to see her.
You’re lonely, just an old bachelor like Bernard.
He was still married, on paper at least. Whatever made him propose to Gertrude Hoffer was not love, he’d soon found out. Their thirteen years together had produced two daughters, now eleven and ten. There would be no other children. He and his wife had long since established separate bedrooms on separate floors. Carl couldn’t fathom how he had ever made love to the stranger who was his wife; he certainly couldn’t imagine ever doing so again.
He got up from his desk, stretched and went to the closet for his hat and coat. He left his office quietly. The corridor was dark. Through the glass doors he could see Miss Herodetsky at her desk. He watched her for several moments, taking in the way her dark hair shimmered in the lamplight.
Suddenly longing welled up in him. He was full of shame and guilt, but his infatuation, so long repressed, now refused to be denied. She embodies everything I never had, he thought, that I never will have.
He pushed open the glass doors. Rebecca looked up at him, smiling radiantly. At least I can give her what she doesn’t have but deserves, Pickman decided. It’s in my power to help her, and I will.
“Miss Herodetsky,” he began, his tone quite business-like, “tomorrow morning have Millie check my lunch calendar. Have her pencil you in.”
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