“What’s befallen the lrgun is its own fault,” Dayan insisted. “Begin was given every opportunity to fall into line behind the establishment. He had his chance—”
“Like I’m having mine?”
Dayan regarded him. “I told you you’d be released no matter what, and I meant it. I am offering you a chance to aid your organization by helping us. So far we’ve been able to hold our own against the Arabs, but Jewish boys repelling a Bedouin raid on an agricultural settlement is one thing; the Jewish people defending themselves against tens of thousands of British-trained soldiers of the Arab Legion is quite something else. We—Haganah, lrgun and LEHI—can train the manpower, but we don’t have the guns.”
It was all true, of course. Herschel had just spent a year at various lrgun training camps and had helped write a manual on the Bren gun, but not enough of these weapons were available. Fewer than one in ten had been issued a weapon, and most of those were revolvers.
“You said that by helping you, I can also help the lrgun. How so?”
“The three resistance organizations will all be in the same boat when the British break their word. They—we—will form the core of the army that will win the homeland. Don’t you agree?”
“I suppose,” Herschel replied, “but where do I fit in?”
“You’ve become something of a weapons-expert in the last year. You know not only how to use existing weapons but how to make rudimentary arms. Isn’t that correct?”
Herschel shrugged. “Pipe bombs, very primitive single-shot pistols, a crude mortar—I tell you, Moshe, it was more for morale than anything. You give a man a weapon—any weapon—and he doesn’t feel so powerless.”
Dayan nodded, smiling. “Yes.” His fingertips nervously tapped the tabletop. “Before I tell you what it is we want from you, I’ll tell you what we can do for you. Our relationship with the British is such that we could get you a pardon. Your record would be clean. There’d be no more threat of prison.”
“That would be very nice for me. Now suppose you tell me what it is you want.”
“We are establishing a network all across the world to search for weapons. We will import all we can. Some of our people are finding guns and others are finding the money to pay for them. The arms we acquire will be distributed equally.”
“So you want me to act as the Haganah’s arms buyer?” Herschel asked.
“As one of them, yes. As I’ve said, there will be a network and you would be a part of it.”
“Why are you doing this? For me, I mean. Here you are offering me what amounts to a full pardon to join in a cooperative effort that could proceed very well without me.”
“We have no shortage of volunteers, but not so many are technically knowledgeable. We will come across many arms brokers who want to sell us junk, so men like you, who can tell what’s good from what isn’t, are very valuable.” Dayan looked down at the table. “But it’s more than that, Herschel. You see, I remember a conversation we had when we were boys. I was bragging about being named after a hero. You shamed me by telling me about your father. ‘He’s the real hero,’ you maintained.”
“I remember that very well,” Herschel said. “I was still mourning him, I suppose.”
“I’m offering you an opportunity to be just as much of a hero as your father. He did not shirk his duty and you must not. You speak English and you have the technical expertise to do the job, and so you must do it. The old generation were giants, and now we must be giants if the dream is to endure.”
“Enough.” Herschel smiled. “I’ll do it. After all, my father did not hesitate to go to the rescue of his Moshe.”
“Good.” They shook hands, but when Dayan mentioned that Herschel should join Haganah, he refused.
“No more oaths. What use are they? Is it kiss the Bible and touch the pistol or the other way around, comrade?”
“You needn’t join if you don’t want it,” Dayan said neutrally.
“You mentioned speaking English as a qualification for the job. I take it you’re sending me to London?”
Dayan shook his head. “America.”
PART IV
DREAMS REALIZED
Chapter 49
New York, 1945
Carl left the lobby of the East Side apartment building and after a moment’s indecision decided to walk home. He had given his driver the weekend off and taken a taxi to Sonnebom’s brunch. The temperature was in the nineties on this Sunday afternoon in July, but he was dressed for the weather in a white linen suit Becky had coerced onto his back. Well, he guessed man could not live in dark blue tropical worsted alone, and his suit did tie in with the festive mood of the city since V-E Day. Besides, linen was rather comfortable if one was intent on strolling Manhattan during a heat wave.
He did his second-best thinking on his feet. He did his best thinking on horseback, but it was late in the afternoon, too late to squeeze in a ride and still be on time at Becky’s.
As he walked up Fifth Avenue, his mind went back over the extraordinary events of the morning. He had only a nodding acquaintance with Rudolf Sonneborn. He knew the family had made its money in oil and chemicals and that Sonneborn had an interest in Palestine. Carl doubted he would have thought to invite him if it hadn’t been for their mutual friend Wendell Pearlmutter.
Wendell had a chain of tanneries and had supplied shoe leather to the government during the war. Yes, it was Wendell who got him the invitation to the brunch, although at this point Carl wasn’t at all sure he appreciated it.
There were twenty or so others there. Some of the men Carl more or less knew from around town or at Jewish affairs. Others from out of town he knew by reputation only. The guest of honor was an elfin, white-haired little Palestinian who would have made a good Santa Claus for Pickman’s Christmas season—If Ben-Gurion consented to grow a white beard and exchange his open-necked shirt and baggy pants for a red suit and cap.
Carl and the others listened to the spokesman for the Jews of Palestine. His speech was one part history lesson and one part predictions for Zionism.
“As the Jews have been betrayed before, they will be betrayed again. The Jews of Palestine can no longer beg the world’s permission to survive. The world in which we all live is a barbaric place, and we Jews must make our own way and fend for ourselves if the homeland is to exist. The refugees will be brought to Palestine in defiance of the British, and a Jewish army will be formed to defend its people when the British turn loose the Arabs to do their dirty work.”
Carl and the others listened, leaning forward in their chairs and straining to make out what the fast-talking, emotional Ben-Gurion was saying in his thick English as he restlessly paced the parquet floor of Sonneborn’s crowded penthouse apartment. A cloud of smoke hovered in the still, sweltering air although the windows were thrown open in the hope of catching a breeze.
From where Carl was seated he could see a barge peacefully making its way along the East River. He watched it and was mesmerized by its wake as the talk of DP camps and duplicitous British officials and fairytale armies marching under the Star of David swirled around him. Finally he lost himself in thoughts of Becky.
How exquisite it was to make love to her. How delicious it would be to make love tonight. He’d been bedding her at her little aerie overlooking the Hudson twice or thrice weekly. He was a silver-haired stallion perhaps, but a stallion nevertheless. He almost always used precautions, but occasionally not. Those were the warmest, sweetest, best times, when Becky said it was safe for her. Carl secretly hoped she was wrong and would get pregnant. He fully intended to ask her to marry him when his divorce was final. Perhaps if she was pregnant she’d accept.
When he was with her he hadn’t a care in the world, but as soon as they parted the most awful ruminations entered his mind: that she would succumb to the charms of a damnable young war hero with a brawny chest full of medals.
If such adolescent heartsick pangs were unseemly for a man of his age and stature, so be it. Carl was marking his six
tieth year, and so he welcomed this second adolescence as a gift.
It was Becky who persuaded him to accept Sonneborn’s invitation. He didn’t want to come, but the plight of the refugees and Palestine in general was very close to Becky’s heart. She said he should go to the meeting, and so he had. He could refuse her nothing, even if his instincts had warned him that something more than his money was going to be asked of him.
Wendell, seated nearby, jolted Carl out of his fantasies by loudly questioning Ben-Gurion. Carl blushed as if his romantic reveries were revealed to the room at large. At that point he brought his attention back to the present.
“All this talk about fighting the Arabs.” Pearlmutter looked both angry and disgusted. “With all due respect, we Americans have just fought a war, and it looks as if we still have a nasty time ahead of us in the Pacific. When that’s over we’d like to forget about fighting.”
“You must not,” Ben-Gurion said. “It was the Jews’ tendency to avoid violence, to abhor fighting, that led them to the extermination camps.”
“Very well,” Pearlmutter allowed grudgingly. “We all mourned the loss of our President in April, but since Truman was inaugurated there’s been some flexibility on the United States’ position concerning the refugees. Truman has ordered Eisenhower to alleviate conditions in the European DP camps, and he’s pressuring London to reopen Palestine—”
“Listen to me,” Ben-Gurion broke in. “In February, when Roosevelt—may he rest in peace—was returning from Yalta, he stopped to pay a visit in Saudi Arabia, where he told the king that the United States supported an Arab Palestine. Your State Department is not so much in love with Jews, I think, and they wish America to have its share of Arab oil. Roosevelt was a nice man. Truman is a nice man as well, I suppose, but his good intentions will not bring about the homeland. That we must do for ourselves.”
Ben-Gurion paused then; to Carl Pickman the little man looked very haggard indeed. “I know that what I’m asking is very difficult,” he admitted. “You are all important men, highly visible in American Jewish society. You probably endorse assimilation, for look how well America has done by you. But will America embrace the refugees? No. Will England or France or any of the Allied nations? No. Can we send them back to Germany or Poland? Of course not. There is, however, one country that calls out in welcome to these Jews without a home. That country is Palestine. We will put the healthy to work and heal the sick. We will train them all to defend themselves so that what has just happened to the Jewish people will never happen again.”
“What is it you want?” Carl Pickman heard himself asking. “Is it money?”
“Money is always necessary,” Ben-Gurion admitted, “but I want none from any of you just now. I do ask that you keep in mind what we have discussed, that you talk among yourselves about these issues during the coming months. When the time is right, we will be in contact with you. Until then I ask that you keep our discussion confidential. The more enthusiastic among you may want to keep a list of potential recruits, but approach no one until things can be spelled out to you.”
At that point the meeting broke up into small clusters. Ben-Gurion circulated while Sonneborn’s servants began to set out a cold buffet. Carl had always hated that point when the time for business had passed and he was expected to make small talk. Anyway, he had no appetite for cold cuts and cheeses after listening to Ben-Gurion’s unsettling speech. He sought out his host and thanked him; Pearlmutter approached and offered to show Carl to the door.
“What do you think?” Pearlmutter asked him once they were alone in Sonneborn’s hallway.
“I think we’ve been involved in some kind of conspiracy, and I don’t like it one bit,” Carl muttered. “Old Henry Ford—damn him and his miserable Protocols of Zion—would have the last laugh if this meeting ever got to the newspapers.” He shivered.
“I think it’s worse than that,” Wendell replied as they reached the door. “A little tame conspiracy is one thing.” He sighed morosely. “You know what? I think he’s expecting us to break the law.”
* * *
On Becky’s terrace that night she begged him to tell her everything. Carl tried to explain that it was confidential, but he did admit that Ben-Gurion had been there. Becky’s lovely dark eyes went wide at that tidbit. She pestered him, and the night was sultry, and her perfume and silken dressing gown so intoxicating, and of course he could never deny her anything, so why even try?
After he told her, she led him to her bed and unwound her silky wrap, and there was nothing she denied him.
Chapter 50
New York
“Rebecca, you haven’t heard a word I said,” Carl scolded.
“Of course I have,” Becky lied, then exploded with embarrassed laughter. “I’m sorry, darling.” She squeezed his arm as they strolled through Central Park. “My mind is still on this morning’s headlines about the new Labour government in England. Oh, how I despise that man Bevin. He gets to be prime minister, and then he breaks his word and upholds the white paper. He has the gall to say that if the Jews get too pushy it’ll lead to anti-Semitism—”
“My dear, I’m afraid you’re obsessed with this Palestine refugee situation.”
“I am not.” She paused. “Sonneborn hasn’t been in touch yet, I suppose?”
“Becky!” Carl led her toward a park bench. “I don’t disapprove of your interest in the matter, but you are obsessed.”
“I’m sorry.” She leaned against him, resting her head on the velvet collar of his overcoat. “I appreciate how much the Pickmans have done for the needy all over the world, but to you personally the plight of the refugees is impossibly remote. You’ve got to understand, Carl, that where I grew up, the goings-on in Palestine and the pros and cons of the various forms of Zionism were discussed as if the Mideast were part of the neighborhood. As a kid I walked past the Palestine Relief Collection Agency storefronts on East Broadway. I’ve moved away from there, but the old neighborhood is still a part of me.”
“I don’t see how that can be more important to you than our relationship.”
“You don’t understand.” She dug into her purse for a cigarette.
It was a fine fall afternoon, a Thursday. They’d left the store a little early in order to enjoy the foliage gone crimson and gold beneath autumn’s cool caress. All of the hoopla of V-J Day—of Japan’s will to fight being broken by America’s secret weapon, the A-bomb—had begun to fade with summer. The soldiers had come home and the nation was gearing down for peacetime.
Not far from where they were sitting a few boys were playing catch. The blustery weather had fanned the youngsters’ cheeks to a rosy glow. They laughed and shouted, and Becky and Carl sat stolidly on their park bench and pretended to watch. They always felt uncomfortable with each other when the differences in their upbringings and outlooks sprang up between them, when they realized that more separated them than the few miles between upper Fifth Avenue and the Lower East Side.
One of the boys playing ball threw wild and the eraser-pink spauldeen went off-course toward their bench. Carl caught it and pegged it back.
“Not bad,” Becky ventured.
“My dear girl,” Carl began, his green eyes glittering in the frosty sunshine, “the mere fact that I’ve never enjoyed the dubious pleasure of playing stickball in the slimy gutters of your nasty neighborhood—”
Becky, hugging him, threw back her head and laughed richly. A cavorting Dalmatian, attracted by the sound, veered toward them. Its coal-black nose was wet and shiny and its breath puffed clouds. The dog rested its head momentarily in each of their laps and then bounded off. Its master tipped his hat to them as he ambled along the path.
“We’ve got a brace of Irish setters at the house,” Carl observed mildly, flicking doghairs off his coat.
“The house?”
“What I was asking you while you were off battling Mr. Bevin in Parliament was whether you’d care to spend this weekend in the country.”
“At your house?”
“Yes, of course. I would have asked you long before this, but my wife and daughters were there for most of the season. Now my children are back at school and my wife is in Atlanta.”
How odd, Becky thought. There was still so much about Carl and his world that she didn’t know and never thought to ask about. He must think her terribly naive, but maybe it was her way of keeping him at arm’s length. And isn’t that an odd way to think about the man you take to bed, she chided herself. She was certainly very fond of him. He was physically attractive; he was a masterful, powerful man, and yet sometimes ingenuous.
Nonetheless, what she felt for him wasn’t love. When she and Carl made love she felt warm and motherly toward him, and that was all she felt. She didn’t know if that was her fault or his; maybe fault was the wrong word. She couldn’t bring herself to ask advice on the matter; she would rather die than suffer the humiliation of discussing such private things with someone else.
Their relationship was common knowledge at work by now, but nobody dared to say anything. Anyway, nobody could snicker at her for being a kept woman; she was still more than earning her salary as Pickman’s advertising manager. Last summer the women’s magazines had been running such articles as “Welcoming Home the Returning Veteran” and “How to Redecorate the Boudoir” and “Recipes to Convince Your Man that He’s Not in the Army Now.” It was on the basis of those magazines Becky had scheduled her promotions for the store’s restocked cookware assortments and the new, frilly decorating fabrics in Domestics. Her best idea, which had gotten Pickman’s some newspaper publicity, was her ad offering a free pair of argyle socks to any serviceman who wore his uniform into Pickman’s and bought a set of civvies. Their stock of suits was snatched off the racks in three days.
“Never underestimate the power of the word ‘free,’” Becky said when the business reporter for the Times interviewed her for the article. The next day there she was, quoted in black and white, just like a VIP.
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