At the El Al departure gate, Rebecca and Aaron embraced, Leah’s children meeting again at a moment of separation.
“Tell Michael to write,” Rebecca said. “I worry about him.” Only Michael now, of the three of them, was alone and unanchored.
“I will,” Aaron said. He had found his way, and Michael, in his turn, would find his own.
“And tell Mama that I’m fine, happy.” Her voice was oddly monotonic, and dark circles shadowed her eyes. She was tired, he told himself, worried about her children, upset by the war.
He nodded obediently. He would not share his apprehensions about Rebecca with their mother. Leah had been the guardian of their childhoods. It was only fair that they protect her now from their secret sorrows.
“Shalom.”
“Goodbye.”
“Viszonlátásra.”
They embraced and kissed. Their farewells were promises of reunion. Their tears were droplets of love.
*
LYDIA AND AARON were married two months later, on a wintry afternoon. Leah filled her living room with white tulips, and the dancing flames of the fire that Michael had so carefully nurtured burnished the delicate flowers with an amber glow. The small gold emblem of the Jewish Brigade glinted in the lapel of Aaron’s dark suit. It had been delivered to his office by special messenger.
Leah, in jade velvet, nodded her approval of Lydia’s simple dress of turquoise silk. Leah had designed it, and she and Lydia had shopped for hours to find the fabric that exactly matched Lydia’s eyes. There had been instant rapport between Aaron’s mother and his bride. They had recognized each other at once; they were survivors who had witnessed death and who had chosen life. They were journeyers who crossed borders and forged new pathways. They had laughed as they shopped for the silk, and shared small secrets, gentle memories.
“She looks very beautiful, your Lydia,” Boris Zaslovsky, Leah’s Russian friend said to her. He was newly arrived from Moscow, where Leah had first met him—a gray-bearded man who looked sad even when laughter creased his face.
“She is beautiful,” Leah replied. She was suffused with contentment. Aaron was happy at last—Aaron, her firstborn son, the child of her sadness and her uncertainty, the son of Yaakov, her first husband, murdered on an Odessa street. She listened as he sang the bridegroom’s pledge, and again she heard the voice of his father, Yaakov, the youthful groom who had stood beside her beneath the marriage canopy that distant day in Odessa.
“Behold with this ring you are consecrated unto me according to the laws of Moses and of Israel.”
Tears spangled Lydia’s eyes, but her hand was steady as Aaron slipped the plain gold ring on her ringer—his pledge of love, his symbol of claim.
Michael moved closer to his mother. They both felt an almost palpable sadness at the absence of Rebecca and Yehuda. But Rebecca was pregnant again, and Yehuda was needed on the kibbutz to help in the harvest of the winter melons. They had phoned earlier in the day, their voices vibrant with warmth; Rebecca’s tone was lightly tinged with wistfulness. “We miss you.”
“I command you to live happily ever after,” Yehuda had boomed into the phone, and they heard the laughter of the child Yaakov.
“They will have a good life together, Michael,” Leah said.
“I know.”
He felt the strength in his mother’s fingers entwined about his own and followed her gaze to the window. The barren branches of the maple tree arched achingly upward, and the first snowflakes of winter swirled in dizzying dance. Leah smiled, moved anew by the mystery of changing seasons, altered lives.
Aaron’s heel smashed the white-wrapped glass, and the room resonated with shouts of “Mazel tov!” Sherry Ellenberg wept and her children clapped. Joshua whirled Lisa, his elder daughter, in an impromptu hora. Boris Zaslovsky joined them, and Leah thought that it was the first time she had seen her Russian friend’s face free of its mask of sadness.
“May you, too, find your happiness, Michael, my Michael,” she said softly. Her younger son took her hand in his own, and together they moved forward to embrace Aaron and Lydia, his bride.
RHODES
1960
THE STREET OF THE KNIGHTS on the island of Rhodes is a perfectly straight thoroughfare, carved with precision and determination into the undulating seabound hills. Yehuda Arnon proceeded down it slowly, as though with each step he continued a mysterious journey into the past. The ancient houses were decorated with the insignia and armorial bearings of those noble houses of Europe who had sent their Crusader sons to claim the island so many centuries ago. Yehuda paused and studied the facade of a building on which crossed swords had been carved. The Latin inscription had long since faded into the rose-colored stone, but the weapons, drawn with unerring symmetry, had endured.
He wondered now what had possessed the Knights of Saint John to journey eastward from the capitals of Europe and build their homes on the ancient island. Perhaps they had been intrigued by its proximity to both Greece and Jerusalem. Once he and Rebecca had stood on Mount Atairo and looked out at Mount Ida in Crete. A brief sea journey would carry them back to Haifa. Rhodes had offered the Crusaders a window on both worlds and a small island kingdom of their own. They had left their mark on the island, and even now its medieval ambience prevailed. The great stone fortifications they had erected at both the northern and southern harbors stared warningly out across the azure waters of the Aegean. The lighthouse at the Fort of Saint Elmo still radiated a monitory beam, a faint splinter of light, unaltered in intensity through the years.
Lydia Goldfeder, who would deliver the closing address to the International Conference on the Peacetime Uses of Radar, had remarked on the irony of convening the scientific assembly on Rhodes.
“It seems strange to come to an island that looks as though it still belongs to the Middle Ages for a conference on modern technology,” she said.
“I suppose it was a convenient and neutral location for most of the delegates,” Yehuda replied. “That was why it was selected in 1949.”
It was then that he and Rebecca had traveled to Rhodes with the delegation that drew up the armistice agreement among Israel, Lebanon, and Syria that terminated Israel’s war for independence. He had worn his Haganah uniform to that peace conference, but he had packed it away when they returned to Israel.
“No more uniforms,” he had told Rebecca then. “The war is over.”
He should have said, he realized now, that only that war was over, but he had been younger then and full of hope. And papers had been signed, terms agreed upon; there had been hesitant talk of a permanent peace treaty. Ralph Bunche had scurried from one conference table to another, a skillful, optimistic negotiator, an American Negro sent by the United Nations to mediate between Jew and Arab. Yehuda remembered still the party that Dr. Bunche had given for the delegates at the conclusion of the negotiations. The Egyptians had flown in a special plane from Cairo loaded with delicacies from Groppi’s. The Israelis had provided wine from the cellars of Rishon le-Zion, oranges from the orchards of Jaffa. Yehuda had tasted caviar at that party for the first time as he studied photographs of his Egyptian counterpart’s smiling dark-eyed son. In turn, he had shown the Egyptian a snapshot of Noam and Danielle. The two men had smiled happily at each other, proud fathers whose young sons might just manage to live in peace. Their smiles, their hopes, had been premature. Only seven years later their countries had been at war again, and the Sinai Campaign had not brought peace. In two years’ time Noam, too, would don a uniform, and now Yehuda himself was back on Rhodes, wearing civilian clothes but practicing the vigilance of the warrior.
“You’re listed as an adviser to the Israeli delegation,” Lydia had said that first evening on the island as they drank thick Greek coffee on the terrace of the Hotel des Roses. She added a drop of anisette and smiled, remembering that Yehuda had also had “adviser” status in Budapest.
“A wonderful term,” Yehuda said. “So all-encompassing. I did think of calling my
self an ‘observer,’ but I’m getting tired of that tide. I was an ‘observer’ at the NATO war games and during the Helsinki conference. I thought I’d be an ‘adviser’ for a change. Besides, it brought us good luck in Budapest.”
Still, he had laughed bitterly, recalling all the dining rooms and lounges where he had lingered over lukewarm coffee and melting ices as he carefully noted which delegates conferred too frequently, who drank too much, who passed documents to whom. Always, his reports were economical and concise, his observations insightful, and occasionally he happened to be in the right place at the right time. As he had been in Budapest. His assignment to Rhodes had not displeased him. It had at least given him the opportunity to spend some time with his sister-in-law, Lydia.
A woman opened the window of one of the ancient houses and shook out a dust cloth. The white fabric fanned the soft air like a banner of submission, and the woman remained at the open casement, listening as the muezzin of the mosque summoned the faithful to prayer.
Damn it, I’ll be late, Yehuda thought, and he walked rapidly now toward the hotel. Lydia was to deliver the concluding paper, and he did not want to miss it. Besides, he had noted an unlikely friendship between a Swiss physicist and a graduate student at the American University in Beirut. It would be interesting to see if they lingered again after the closing session. If they did Israeli agents in Zurich and Beirut would be apprised.
Lydia was already at the podium when he entered the conference room. She stood, as always, unselfconsciously erect, a tall woman proud of her height. Her long black hair was swept back into a silken coil, and the whiteness of her skin was emphasized by her navy-blue coat dress. She had changed since their first meeting. There was color in her cheeks now, and her turquoise eyes flashed with warmth. The few short years in America, her marriage to Aaron Goldfeder, and the birth of their daughter, Paulette, had softened and relaxed her. She laughed more easily, and she no longer started at a sudden sound or grew rigid when a stranger spoke to her. Her voice, well modulated, lightly accented, was oddly musical as she spoke to her colleagues in the mysterious terminology of their profession. Her paper was entitled “New Methods of Scanning in Microwave Radar” and was based on her research in the New York State University laboratories on Long Island.
“Her appointment at the university is ideal for Lydia,” Aaron had told Yehuda. “It’s an easy commute, she has her research, access to the finest equipment, and she works closely with graduate students. That was important to her. She feels that she is continuing Ferenc’s work, teaching Paul’s generation.”
Aaron spoke sadly but easily of Lydia’s first husband and her stepson now. He had assimilated his own grief and was no longer threatened by his wife’s past. If only Rebecca and I could do the same, Yehuda thought wearily. Sometimes it seemed to him that their marriage was frayed by too many separations; always it had been shadowed by their divergent pasts. He turned his attention back to Lydia, who was describing the work she had done in developing a new receiver.
“The ideal receiver must amplify and measure an extremely weak signal at an extremely high frequency,” she said. “Originally we assumed that such a receiver should be stable but my laboratory experiments have led me to conclude that a mobile amplifier might solve many of our problems.”
Deftly she produced charts and drawings, and the delegates leaned forward, taking rapid notes, following her pointer as it danced across the carefully marked oak-tag sheets, illustrating her explanations. She opened the floor to questions. The size of the wavelength band? Less than one centimeter. She agreed that they would have to employ a sophisticated microsound technology. They had already had some success using very small acoustic devices that substituted for electromagnetic counterparts.
The Bulgarian delegate, a short, goateed man who chewed gum incessantly, rose.
“I congratulate you, Dr. Goldfeder. Clearly, your amplifier is the most sophisticated approach we have discussed at this conference. It is exceedingly generous of your government to share this information with us. That generosity might even give rise to suspicion.” He smiled with wily insouciance and unwrapped a fresh piece of gum.
Lydia turned to him and smiled. A man would have frowned, Yehuda thought, but Lydia’s intuitive reactions were always exactly right. He himself would have responded angrily, but Lydia spoke in her soft, level voice.
“The government of my adopted country, the United States of America, is pleased to share unclassified information with the international scientific community. It is stated policy. We believe that scientific information should be shared and that all advances in our field should be directed toward peaceful purposes. Surely, there is nothing suspicious in this. Radar was developed for military purposes, but we are in a new decade now—a new decade and, we hope, a new era. Perhaps the sixties will see us harness radar and utilize it to make the world a better place to live in. My government is pleased to contribute any information that will help to control air traffic and prevent tragedy, any information that will help to detect weather patterns and monitor the health of unborn children. It is true that war coerced us into our discovery, but now we must work to confound the forces of darkness and use our knowledge for the good of man and for the survival of mankind.” Her voice rang with passion and conviction.
She sat down to a burst of applause, to the resonance of murmurs of approval, shouts of agreement.
Yehuda waited until the last of her colleagues had congratulated her before he joined her. He noticed that the Lebanese delegate and the Swiss physicist left the room together, although they did not speak.
“Your speech was worth my trip to Rhodes,” he told Lydia.
She smiled at him gratefully. “It was a successful conference.”
“I didn’t understand most of the technical material, of course,” he acknowledged ruefully. “But I did notice that there was no discussion of radar evasion techniques.”
“This was a conference on peacetime usage,” she pointed out.
“But is progress being made?”
“We are optimistic,” she said cautiously. “It may be as important for the United States in Southeast Asia as it is for Israel. It is not being ignored.”
“Work fast,” he said. “A day is a long time in the Middle East. The next time around, radar will decide the outcome of the war.” His voice was grim. The next time round, his son Noam would be a combatant—gentle Noam who loved to watch things grow, who drew diagrams of irrigation systems and experimented with hybrid melon vines.
Lydia touched his arm lightly, reassuringly.
“Enough serious talk, Yehuda. Let’s enjoy this afternoon together.”
She had a special fondness for her Israeli brother-in-law. This was not the first time they had met at an international conference; always such meetings became an occasion for catching up on family news, comparing their reactions, sharing their feelings. Always they felt the special intimacy peculiar to those who meet in a city not their own, who look out across unfamiliar landscapes and listen to strangers speak in mysterious foreign cadences. They recognized that they were linked by ties more complex than those of blood. Yehuda had married Leah’s daughter, and Lydia was wife to Leah’s son. They spoke with each other of the secrets and mysteries of the family that had become their own. They shared perceptions and insights as they struggled to understand those vanished distant years when Aaron and Rebecca had been strangers to them, children of America, safe and secure while Lydia confronted the perils of an embattled Europe and Yehuda experienced an endangered Palestine.
They offered each other pieces of the complicated puzzle that formed the Goldfeder past. It had been Lydia who told Yehuda that Joshua Ellenberg had once thought himself in love with Rebecca. And it had been Yehuda who told Lydia of the long and anguished silence that had stretched between Aaron and Leah for so many years.
Always, during the days of his boyhood, Leah had seemed at a remove from her son, studying him as though searching out a clue that
might solve an elusive mystery for her. It was not until Aaron was a grown man, returned from the war, that she had shared the truth with him, had told him that she had been the victim of a rape in Russia and that for years she had tortured herself with uncertainty as to who had fathered redheaded Aaron—Yaakov, her first husband, or the copper-haired peasant who had forced her to submit to him. Leah had waited long years before confiding her secret to Aaron, and Aaron, in turn, had not shared it with Lydia, his wife.
Lydia had understood then Aaron’s constant need for reassurance, his sudden bouts of insomnia when he seized her in the darkness and whispered earnestly. “Do you love me? Do you really love me?” She had wondered how he could doubt her love, but Yehuda’s words had explained those doubts to her. Aaron had spent his childhood never certain that his mother loved him.
They ate lunch on the patio of a taverna on Platia Martyron Evreon—the Square of the Martyred Hebrews—staring out at the fountain crowned by three bronze seahorses. Lydia wondered if the sun had shone so brightly on that July day in 1944 when the eighteen hundred Jews of Rhodes had paraded past that fountain on their way to the cattle boat that began their journey to Auschwitz. She could not finish her coffee and thrust the tiny gold-rimmed cup away. Yehuda’s hand covered her own.
“Don’t think about it,” he said. Their pulses throbbed and their hearts raced. Memories of death spurred them to life.
They drove to the archaeological ruins of Lindos and wandered through a grove of carob trees and studied the fragments of metal said to be the only remnants of the great Colossus of Rhodes. They climbed the ancient acropolis and photographed each other against the background of the medieval castle that the diligent Knights of Saint John had built there. An orange tree grew wild, and they inhaled its melancholy fragrance. He thought of the orchards of his childhood; she remembered her mother’s cologne. And then, at last, they sat in the shade of a fig tree and spoke of the Goldfeder family.
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