She packed a small bag, aglow with the anticipation she had always felt at the onset of even the briefest journey. She dreamed that night that she and Neil, hand in hand, were hiking a shaded mountain pass. Suddenly she was alone but unafraid. She walked on and crossed a mysterious border that descended into a valley. As she approached it, sunlight streaked down the incline and she stood within its folds, draped in radiance. She awakened eager to continue a journey that had already begun.
They set out at dawn, as the melancholy pastel rays of the early spring sun ribbed the sky, spreading toward the slowly vanishing moon. Sarah, wrapped in a shawl, shivered as she gave Moshe last-minute instructions.
“Don’t leave anything with Levenson at Gan Yair unless he pays you for the last shipment. Make sure Malka at Shoshanim counts everything while you’re there. Last time she said that we had shorted her two robes although I’m sure we didn’t. I credited her but I’m not going to do it again. And give my mother some time to see Caesarea. She’ll love the view,” she said.
“I will take excellent care of your mother. And of Levenson. And of Malka,” Moshe assured her good-naturedly. “And I want you to promise that you’ll take very good care of yourself. And our treasures.” He glanced up at the bedroom windows where the children slept, his farewell kisses still damp upon their foreheads.
Elaine marveled at the tenderness of his tone. Each day she grew fonder of her tall, bearded son-in-law, the brilliant scholar, the devoted husband, the gentle father.
“And Moshe—be careful,” Sarah said. “You’re sure you don’t want to take your rifle?”
“I will be very careful,” he promised and placed his hand on the gentle rise of his wife’s abdomen as though his touch might protect the unborn child sheltered there.
“You should take a weapon,” she murmured.
“No.” His voice was firm. “I have all the protection I need.”
He opened his jacket and pointed to the pocket where he had placed the leather-bound book of Psalms that had been Sarah’s wedding gift to him.
“And don’t take any side roads.” Sarah lifted her hands to his face and looked at him, her eyes narrowed with worry.
“Only the main highway,” he promised.
“All right.” Defeated, Sarah embraced him and then kissed her mother.
“Have a great time, Mom.”
“I will,” Elaine said.
She settled herself comfortably on the front seat of the van, her sketch pad on her lap, her colored drawing pencils in easy reach. She worked as Moshe drove, their silence companionable. She wanted to capture the shapes and shades of the terrain as the hills of Judea descended into the plains and flowering citrus and almond trees replaced the tall cypresses that stood guard over the ancient city. She envisioned a series of enamel tiles, each one discrete—a tree, an outcropping of rock, a vineyard trellis—together forming a tactile portrait of the lovely landscape she was slowly beginning to understand.
Sarah had introduced her to Galit, a ceramicist, who had offered her access to her studio. Elaine felt a new eagerness to work in her own medium, to create her own glazes, to feel the heat of the kiln against her face, to inhale the scent of the damp clay and the acrid chemicals. After Neil’s death, she had completed works already in progress but now, for the first time, she felt the urge to create something new. The tiles could actually be formed into a mural, perhaps a memorial to Neil. It could be placed on a wall of the hospital or perhaps in the synagogue. She imagined the plaque, etched in flowing script. In Memory of Dr. Neil Gordon, Healer of Souls. The thought pleased and soothed her. Neil would remain a presence in the lives of others. His name would not be forgotten.
She worked easily throughout the trip north, now pausing to contemplate a new view or simply to close her eyes against the sun’s fierce brightness. She accompanied Moshe as he delivered the cartons and took new orders. He introduced her to his customers, bearded shopkeepers, bewigged women who sold the robes to their neighbors, young couples who ran boutiques. Sarah’s designs were attracting buyers outside of the orthodox community.
“My wife’s mother,” he said to each of them. “She, too, is an artist.”
Elaine was moved by his pride in Sarah, his pride in her. She was amused when he addressed Levenson who owned a shop in Netanya.
“My mother-in-law is keeping our books now,” he said slyly. “And she is upset that we seem not to have received a payment for our last delivery. Myself, I don’t care but my American mother-in-law…” He shrugged and Levenson stared at her through narrowed eyes and wrote a check.
“I understand, Rav Chazani,” he said. “I, too, have a mother-in-law.”
At Malka’s market stall in Binyamina, he insisted that she count the robes in the carton.
“It’s my mother-in-law’s idea,” he explained. “That seems to be how they do business in America.”
Sullenly, Malka complied.
“And could you sign the receipt?” Elaine asked sternly.
“Moshe, I didn’t know you had it in you,” she laughed as they sped northward.
“Remember, I used to be Mike Singer and Mike Singer took a selling job every summer vacation,” he said.
“It’s interesting to see Moshe Chazani morph into Mike Singer,” she said and thought that it would be even more interesting if Sarah Chazani occasionally morphed into Sandy Gordon. It was not an idea she would share with her daughter.
They went as far north as Caesarea. Elaine followed Moshe as he explained how the ancient Roman city had been so carefully excavated. They stood atop a cliff and looked down at the clear blue-green expanse of the Mediterranean Sea and the waves that gathered momentum as they rushed to their foam-rimmed death against the dark rocks of the sea wall.
“Magnificent,” she said.
“God’s gift,” he replied and murmured a prayer.
They stayed at the home of an orthodox couple who ran a small bed-and-breakfast. It pleased Elaine that the woman wore a robe of Sarah’s design.
Moshe spoke to Sarah on his cell phone, summarized their adventures, asked about the children.
“Of course I’m being careful,” he said. “We’ll be home tomorrow before dinner.”
“Mom, make sure you leave early,” Sarah said worriedly when Moshe passed the phone to her. “There have been a couple of incidents.”
Incidents, Elaine knew, was Israeli shorthand for terrorist attacks.
“We’ll give ourselves plenty of time,” she assured her daughter.
Sarah did not answer. Instead she spoke of Leora’s excitement over her class trip.
“She looked like a little sunflower in that yellow hat.”
They did set out early, making only one stop and then once again they headed southward. Refreshed, Elaine once again took up her pad.
Her pencils flew as she worked swiftly to capture the passing scene, settling for outlines she could later fill in from memory. She was so absorbed in her work that she barely noticed the motorcycle that sped by as though to pass the school bus just ahead of them. Her pad slipped from her lap and she was jerked forward, restrained only by her seat belt, as Moshe suddenly accelerated. He bore down on the gas pedal, his hands gripping the wheel, his lips clenched.
“Moshe, be careful,” she shouted but relentlessly he drew abreast of the motorcyclist and he turned the wheel sharply.
“Moshe!” she screamed as the motorcycle swerved and careened, the rider’s head swiveling, his eyes wide with fear.
Again Moshe pressed toward him, this time crashing hard against the front wheel so that the cyclist was thrown from his seat into a culvert and the cycle itself toppled over on its side like a wounded animal.
The bus ahead stopped and Elaine saw the faces of bewildered children pressed against the window. She gasped at the sight of a small girl in a bright yellow sun hat.
“Leora,” she thought. “Our Leora.”
But Moshe was already out of the car, running toward the fallen cyc
list. The bus driver, pistol in hand, and two other men were following him. She, too, raced after them, pausing when Moshe waved them away as he bent over the inert body. The rider had fallen on his back. Blood trickled from his mouth and his eyes were closed although his hand twitched. Moshe kicked his hand away and snapped open his black leather jacket. Strapped about the youth’s waist was a leather belt laden with cartridges that glinted in the sunlight. Two wires, one blue and one orange ran from the belt into the sleeve of the jacket. An attached detonator lay on the ground.
“Elaine—the shears—in the back of the van,” Moshe shouted.
She hurried to the van, found the shears and ran back. The bus driver, his face very pale, perspiration beading his brow, handed them to Moshe. Carefully, his lips moving in silent prayer, Moshe hefted them, held them at one angle, corrected it and then, with a single lightning-swift movement, he clipped the wire.
The driver wiped his brow. One of the security guards turned away and vomited into the culvert. Moshe stood and although he still held the shears, Elaine saw that his hands were trembling.
“Move the bus,” he instructed the driver. “All the way down the road. Elaine, go with him.”
Elaine hesitated and then remembered her glimpse of the yellow sun hat. She hurried after the driver, gripping a rail as he moved the vehicle swiftly down the road and then looked at the children. The small girl who wore the yellow sun hat was blond and tears streaked her cheeks. Elaine took the child, who was not her granddaughter, Leora, into her arms, and rocked her gently, spoke to her soothingly even as her own heart beat too rapidly and her hands trembled.
Sirens sounded. An ambulance pulled up, two police cars, then an army truck. Traffic backed up as uniformed men and women filled the roadway. Moshe spoke to one officer and then another. He pointed to the belt. Delicate as surgeons, soldiers from the demolition squad cut it away from the inert body, placed it into a receptacle and sped away. A white-jacketed doctor bent over the cyclist who was then moved onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. Lights flashing, it sped down the road. A police tow truck arrived. Moshe watched as the damaged motorcycle was carted away.
An army officer boarded the bus. He spoke to the driver and the security guards in Hebrew, checked their licenses and registrations, carefully recorded their statements. Then he turned to Elaine and spoke to her in English.
“Your son-in-law is a very brave man, Mrs. Gordon,” he said. “He saved the lives of all these children. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
He patted the golden curls of the child still nestled on her lap.
“I have a daughter just her age,” he said.
“My granddaughter—she has a yellow sun hat,” Elaine confided haltingly.
Unspoken words, fragile as a spider’s web, trembled between them. They understood that all the children in their lives, all those they loved, were vulnerable to acts of insane violence, to the impact of exploding cartridges that would sever golden-curled heads from slender bodies and send yellow sun hats skittering across highways slick with blood. Elaine trembled and gently placed the child on a seat beside a window. She shook hands with the officer and walked with him back to the van where Moshe sat, the leather-bound book of Psalms in his hand. She waited patiently until he finished reading, waited again as he replaced the book in his jacket pocket and called Sarah.
“There was an incident,” he said, his voice, very calm. “But it’s over and we’re on our way home. Is Leora home? Good. Did she have a good time? Good.”
“How did you know—how could you have known that he was a suicide bomber?” Elaine asked as he drove, very slowly now, toward Jerusalem.
“His jacket was bulky—too bulky. And although he moved rapidly, he had poor control and kept zigzagging. I just knew he was heading for the school bus. Instinct, I suppose. Luckily, I was right.”
“And how did you know what to do about the wires?”
“In the army I worked in the demolition squad. I still work with them when I do reserve duty. Sarah never told you that?”
“No.” She wondered what else Sarah had neglected to tell her about her husband, about her life, about the perils of her days and the fears of her nights, all sustained by the faith that Elaine struggled still to comprehend.
She sat back and closed her eyes. The danger was over, they were safe, Leora was home, that school trip, at least, uneventful, and yet, inexplicably, she began to cry. She made no move to hide her tears from her daughter’s husband, the gentle bearded man who recited Psalms, analyzed the most difficult Talmudic tractates, spoke gently to his children and, with calm and skill, disarmed a belt loaded with explosives.
eight
The pace of life in the Chazani household accelerated as Passover drew near. In addition to the frenzied house-cleaning, the ritual emptying and reordering of every drawer and cabinet, the washing and polishing of Passover dishes and silverware, there was the press of Sarah’s business. She and her seamstresses worked furiously to complete the orders on hand. Each day there were calls from shopkeepers and boutique owners in distant parts of the country, seeking to increase their inventory.
“It’s a gift-giving season,” Sarah said wearily as she reluctantly agreed to add fifteen robes to the order of a widow who sold them from her home in Cfar Saba.
“She needs the money,” she explained to Elaine. “And you should be flattered. She especially wanted your fabric design.”
“All right. I’m flattered. But you’re doing too much,” Elaine said worriedly. “You should rest more. For the baby’s sake, for your sake.”
She looked impatiently around her daughter’s kitchen. Every surface was covered—the table with the remnants of the children’s breakfasts, the counters with cans from the pantry which Sarah was readying for Passover purchases, the worktable with tissue-paper patterns and fabric scraps.
Sarah cleared the table, thrust the dirty dishes into a pan of soapy water and turned away from her mother.
“I’m fine, Mom. Really. Aren’t you working at Galit’s studio today?”
Elaine recognized the edge in her daughter’s voice. Sarah, like herself, craved time alone, time to quietly wrench order from domestic chaos, free of the voices and needs of others. She, of course, had always been able to escape to her studio, but Sarah’s crowded home offered no such refuge.
And, Elaine acknowledged guiltily, she did want to spend the morning in Galit’s studio, engrossed in her own work. She had completed the first enamel tile for the mosaic mural, Neil’s name etched in strokes of silver and gold dancing skyward, and she hoped to fire it that day.
“I’ll be off then,” she told her daughter. “And I’ll pick up the cake for Michal’s farewell dinner tonight. My treat.”
Michal would be inducted into the army early the next morning and Ruth had invited the Chazanis and other friends to a festive meal to mark her leave-taking.
“It’s a rite of passage for Israeli kids—the beginning of their army service,” Ruth had explained to Elaine. “And it’s particularly important for Michal. Most of the Ramat Chessed girls opt for national service rather than the army. That’s usually the pattern for orthodox girls. But Michal always said that she wanted to be an officer. Maybe because of Avi…” Her voice had drifted into a worried whisper.
“I would think it would be just the opposite,” Elaine had countered. A girl whose father had been blinded in a military action, who understood the danger, might be deterred, especially if army service was not the norm in her community.
“She wants her courage to match her father’s,” Ruth replied quietly. “And like Avi, like all of us, she relies on the protection of God.”
“And perhaps the protection of Gideon,” Elaine added, smiling.
Handsome Gideon, himself an officer in an elite tank squad, had long been Michal’s boyfriend, an unusual coupling in a community which frowned on any physical intimacy between unmarried young men and women, even imposing prohibitions on their being alone
together—prohibitions which Michal and her Gideon ignored.
“Perhaps.” Ruth had smiled. She approved of Gideon and she approved of Michal and Gideon together. It pleased her that he would be at the dinner that night. He brought a glow to her beautiful daughter’s face that delighted her.
At Galit’s studio, Elaine shrugged into her bright-red smock, tied her hair back and made small corrections on the completed tile before sliding it into the kiln. It was not as sophisticated as her own but Galit, an accomplished ceramicist, was skilled at regulating the heat. Flushed and excited she began work on the second tile. The design, a crouching olive tree canopied by graceful silver leaves, some shaped like stars and others like teardrops, pleased her. The colors were somber grays and greens which would contrast dramatically with the brilliant golds and blues she envisioned for her depiction of the Jerusalem skyline.
She worked quickly, her color high, trading one stylus for another, sanding away an error and patiently correcting it. She relished her total absorption in the complex composition. She wanted to capture the gently sloping hills of the city, the skyline of spires and rooftop clotheslines, the symbols of a city consecrated to prayer and pledged to life, the city that Neil had loved. She watched her design take shape, indifferent to the passing hours, unaware of Galit’s movements from drafting table to drawing board. She was cocooned in her work, free of thought and worry, of loss and loneliness.
She did not even look up when the phone rang. Galit touched her on the shoulder.
“That was Sarah. She said to make sure the cake had a chocolate mousse icing. That’s Michal’s favorite.”
Elaine glanced at her watch.
“I had no idea it was so late,” she said.
She moved swiftly then, placing a damp cloth over the still unfinished etching, spraying fixative on the newly fired tile.
Galit looked at it approvingly.
“The glaze is exactly right,” she said. “It’s wonderful when that happens.”
“Yes, it is,” Elaine agreed.
The long months of grief, the bewilderment of sorrow, had blocked that wonder, but now it had been regained. She looked around the spacious studio, flooded with the sunshine of late afternoon. Galit had spoken to her about sharing the space. With a few renovations, this work place would suit her, Elaine thought. She could work here easily if she should decide to stay in Jerusalem for longer periods, if she could find a small house or an apartment. She would not choose to live in Ramat Chessed, of course; it was too confining, too religious, but possibly she could find something not too far away. She smiled at the idea, loosened her hair, tried briefly and unsuccessfully to brush the tangle of dark silver-edged curls into smoothness and hurried to the bakery.
Open Doors Page 11