The Jerusalem inception

by Avraham Azrieli

  Chapter 27

  “As of this moment, you will forget your mommy and daddy and your coochie-moochie girlfriend!” The officer, stout with a freckled face, paced down the three-deep line of fresh recruits, holding up his machine gun in the air. “Your Uzi is your new mother, father, and girlfriend!”

  “Yes, sir!” Lemmy yelled in chorus with the others.

  “Hug your Uzi every morning, kiss it every evening, and sleep with it every night!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Now, get around the building! Thirty seconds!”

  “Yes, sir!” The company of about sixty soldiers broke into a sprint, raising dust and spinning pebbles. Lemmy held the Uzi to his chest and ran as fast as he could. Beside him, a dark-skinned recruit tripped over a rock. Lemmy stopped and helped him up, and they chased after the others around the building, rejoining the line in attention.

  “You!” The officer pointed at Lemmy. “Did you have a nice stroll? Did you enjoy the view? Shall I call a taxi for you next time?”

  Lemmy yelled, “Yes, sir!”

  Everyone burst out laughing. Even the officer laughed, suddenly appearing almost as young as the recruits. “Thirty seconds! Go!”

  This time, Lemmy was the first to return. When the rest arrived and lined up, the officer clapped slowly. “A bunch of old ladies. Do you want to play bingo now?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He grinned. “My name is Captain Zigelnick. But you can call me God.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Drop and give me twenty pushups. Now!”

  Lemmy kneeled carefully and strapped on the Uzi so that it rested against his back while he dropped forward on his hands. He heard the officer berating the soldiers who had put their machine guns on the ground.

  By the tenth pushup, he was surrounded by grunts and groans. Lemmy gritted his teeth, ignored the burning in his muscles, and counted in his mind. At twenty, he stood up.

  Zigelnick pointed at him. “Give me another twenty!”

  After more running and pushups, they marched into a rectangular building with bathrooms and showers at one end, an office at the other, and rows of metal-framed beds with foam mattresses in between. Lemmy picked a bed next to the soldier he had helped-Sanani, who spoke Hebrew with the crisp accent of a Yemenite Jew, which also explained his dark complexion.

  It rained outside as they lined up. Captain Zigelnick led them down a rocky crevice. Soon, their new boots were caked in mud, and the rain soaked their uniforms. Some of the trainees cursed under their breath, but to Lemmy the wet uniform felt better than any dry black coat. They started up a new hill. Sanani raced him to the top. When the rest of the company gathered, they lined up three-deep and someone started singing, “ Jerusalem of Gold, and of bronze, and of light… ”

  It was a popular song by poet Naomi Shemer, infused with Jewish longing for the Old City, as if the threatened war with the Arabs was not about Israel’s very survival, but about recovering the ancient Israelite capital.

  Others joined. “ The enchanted city, which sits alone, a wall across her heart. ”

  Captain Zigelnick joined the singing. “ And no one travels to the Dead Sea, by way of Jericho. ”

  Their voices rose louder, echoing from the surrounding, barren hills. “ Jerusalem, which is made of gold. ”

  Lemmy stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellow paratroopers-in-the-making, a chorus of devotion to the Old City he had watched from across the border every Friday of his young life, listening to his father’s prayers. He thought of the narrow alleys and the smell of fish from his mother’s hands. And the sound of Benjamin’s laughter.

  “R ead our history, and you’ll know the future!” Elie watched the two agents push aside their cups of coffee and gaze at the open book. This page of Samuel II told of a hot day in Jerusalem, when King David had enjoyed the cool evening breeze on the roof of his royal palace. He noticed a beautiful woman bathing in a pool of rainwater on a nearby roof and sent a courtier to summon her to his royal bed. When she became pregnant, the king assigned her husband to the front line, where he died in battle. The widow married the king and gave birth to an heir. ‘ And God disapproved of the evil which King David had committed.’

  The younger agent, Dor, looked up with a grin. “Naughty boy, the king of Israel.”

  “Like he had a choice? Bathsheba was irresistible.” Yosh was an older man, whom Elie had recruited over a decade earlier.

  Elie closed the book. “Great men are all alike-three thousand years ago, and yesterday. You know the rumors about Moshe Dayan. I want facts about his affairs: Who he’s seduced, where, when, and what happened to their husbands-names, ranks, and service records, especially if they died.”

  “It’s not going to be easy,” Dor said. “Dayan is a popular man and a member of the Knesset. We’ll have to sniff around his former military staff, his driver, his neighbors, his friends-”

  “I don’t like it.” Yosh pushed Samuel II aside. “I didn’t sign up with your department to assist inept politicians in a lascivious blackmail operation to keep Dayan out of the defense ministry.”

  “Who said anything about the defense ministry?”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “And you signed up with me because you were kicked out of Shin Bet for equally lascivious activities.” Elie paused to let his rebuke sink in. “Now go and do your job!”

  Chapter 28

  Three weeks after she had accompanied Lemmy on his first day in the army, Tanya found a letter from him in her mailbox. He described how the harshness of boot camp had forged the company into a tight-knit group. He was learning new skills and growing stronger after a bout of the stomach flu. There was a long paragraph about a five-day hike they had taken in the desert as part of a drill involving a mock attack on a tank-battalion base which, he wrote, was a lot of fun! As if anticipating her question, Lemmy added at the end of the letter that he had been thinking of his parents and wondered whether Tanya could find out how they were, especially my mother. From this Tanya deduced that he had received no letters.

  Late that night, after the chatter on the UN radio dwindled down to silence, Tanya turned on the automatic recording device and called a taxi.

  When they reached Meah Shearim, she asked the driver to wait for her at the gate. Dressed in an overcoat and a knitted wool cap, she walked quickly through the alleys and climbed the stairs to the third-floor apartment.

  Rabbi Abraham Gerster opened the door wearing black pants, a white, button-down shirt, and a black yarmulke.

  “Shalom, Abraham.”

  He glared at her. She feared he would slam the door in her face. But he beckoned her into his study.

  “You got some nerve coming here.” He leaned on his desk. “How is my son?”

  “He’s in basic training. Paratroopers corps.” A reading lamp by the cot shed light on an open book by his pillow, but otherwise the small room was dim. She could not decipher the expression on Abraham’s bearded face. “He’s doing well,” she added.

  “I can’t say the same for us.”

  She pulled off the wool cap and unbuttoned her coat. “I had to rescue him from this fundamentalist concentration camp.”

  Abraham grimaced and stepped forward, coming at her with quickness she had not expected. She retreated, her back hitting the book shelves. He closed his arms around her, tightly, as if trying to smother her. But then he uttered a deep, painful sigh, and she gave in to his embrace, placing her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest, which rose and sank with quick, halting breaths.

  After a long time, they let go of each other. Abraham blew his nose into a handkerchief and sat on his cot. She sat next to him.

  He took her hand and kissed it. “You did him a favor. He deserved better. I should have sent him away years ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “How could you? Parents can never let go, even under the best of circumstances.”

  “Not only that. I was afraid for hi
m. Still am.”

  “Basic training will take six months,” she said. “He’ll be safe when the war comes-if it comes. Eshkol will do anything to avoid war.”

  “It’s not war that I fear. This place is close to the border.” Abraham gestured at the walls. “He would be more likely to get hit by a Jordanian cannonball here than while serving in the IDF.”

  “So?”

  “It’s Elie. I’ve always worried that he would somehow ensnare Lemmy, turn him into another cog in his machine. That’s why I kept my son here.”

  “You don’t need to worry about Elie.” Tanya squeezed his hand. “I made him swear that he won’t interfere with the boy. And I paid dearly for it.”

  Abraham turned sharply. “You gave him the ledger?”

  She nodded.

  “God almighty!” He stood up, suddenly regaining the stature of Rabbi Abraham Gerster, leader of Neturay Karta. “Think of how he gave those grenades to Redhead Dan! Now, with this kind of money, there’s no limit to what he’ll do!”

  “Elie won’t get the money.” Tanya stood, facing him. “Klaus chose his banker carefully-a schoolmate whose personal loyalty is to Klaus. The Swiss will find an excuse to deny Elie access to the account.”

  “But he has the ledger!”

  “It won’t be enough.” Tanya gestured at the open door. “How is your wife?”

  “She barely eats, doesn’t go out, keeps crying. During the day, the women of the sect care for her, and the men pray.”

  “Why hasn’t she written to Lemmy? I asked Elie to tell you.”

  “I haven’t seen Elie since before the grenades debacle.”

  “That’s odd.” Tanya reflected on Elie’s description of Abraham’s anger. Should she mention it? He didn’t seem hostile now, but raising it could reignite his anger. Her visit had one purpose, and Elie’s games were no longer important. “Maybe I misunderstood him,” she said. “Anyway, please tell your wife to write to Lemmy. It will be good for him and good for her. Address it to the IDF and write his name and military ID number on the envelope.” Tanya jotted down the number.

  “I’ll do it first thing in the morning.” He caressed her hair. “You are kind and generous. In my heart, we are forever together, you and me-”

  “ Abraham! ” Temimah Gerster stood at the door, wrapped in a sheet, her shaved scalp exposed.

  He moved fast, catching her as she collapsed.

  “You touched her,” Temimah cried.

  “She brought us news from Jerusalem.” He lifted her in his arms, cradling her as a child.

  “Tell her to go!”

  “He is in the army. A soldier.”

  “My Lemmy?”

  “He’s doing very well.” He carried her down the hallway. “We’ll write to him tomorrow. It will make you happy, yes?”

  Tanya buttoned up her coat, slipped on the wool cap, and left the apartment.

  Chapter 29

  “I’m not doing this!” Sanani pointed up at a wooden platform affixed to the summit of a giant eucalyptus tree. A thick rope came down from the platform, across a wide gulch, ending in a knot around the trunk of another eucalyptus.

  “I need a volunteer,” Captain Zigelnick said, “to show Sanani how to be a man.”

  The soldiers looked up. No one stepped forward.

  “I’ll show him.” Lemmy raised his hand, and the captain tossed him a bent steel bar.

  Short sections of wood were nailed to the trunk, forming a makeshift ladder. He stuck the metal bar in his belt, shifted the Uzi so it rested on his lower back, and started climbing. The trunk was smooth. It had a sharp smell. He climbed one rung after another. His muscles began to ache.

  His friends clapped rhythmically. “Gerster! Gerster! Gerster!”

  Lemmy paused and looked down. Their upturned faces surrounded the base of the tree, approximately four stories below him. He held on with one hand, his feet planted securely, and pretended to unzip his fly. They scattered, hooting.

  A light breeze was blowing from the north, and the tree swung from side to side. The platform was built like a raft of rough-cut logs tied together with wires, the cracks between the logs wide enough to put his hand through. He made the mistake of looking down. Far below, his friends seemed small.

  He reached up to the rope, which was tied to the trunk over his head, and slowly rose to stand on the platform. It swayed under his weight, creaking in protest. The rope was as thick as his arm. It dropped steeply about two-thirds of the way then curved in a gradual slope before leveling off near the opposite tree.

  Gripping the rope with both hands above his head, Lemmy inched forward until the tips of his boots lined up with the edge of the platform. The chanting below stopped. He heard Zigelnick yell something.

  Acting against every survival instinct, Lemmy let go of the rope with one hand and pulled the hooked bar from his belt. Slowly, without disturbing his careful balance, he slipped the hooked bar over the rope, slid his other hand to the opposite end of the bar, and eased forward into the air.

  The acceleration was blinding. The friction of the metal bar on the rope produced a high-pitched whizzing. He heard himself howling.

  The pressure on his arms and shoulders grew as his slide changed direction and leveled off. The deceleration was as drastic as the initial acceleration, and his vision cleared just in time to see that he was hurtling head-on toward the trunk of the opposite eucalyptus. He let go before colliding with the tree, curled up, and rolled on the ground several times, coming to rest in a cloud of dust.

  A moment later, his friends were all over him, and someone emptied a bucket of water on his head.

  Cursing and laughing at the same time, Lemmy got up. His knees were weak and his hands trembled, but he knew he could climb all the way up to the flimsy platform and rappel down again right now. But it was Sanani’s turn, and everyone goaded him up the eucalyptus tree.

  E lie was summoned to a strategy conference at the King David Hotel. From the top-floor suite, the border with Jordan passed practically under the windows, which offered sweeping views of East Jerusalem and the Old City. A light breeze diluted the smoke of cigarettes.

  Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abba Eban, who had arrived straight from the airport, spoke first. “My consultations in Paris left me with an unequivocal conviction that King Hussein has in fact received our non-aggression communique through the French consular intermediary.”

  “You mean,” Eshkol said, “they told Jordan we don’t want war?”

  “Precisely. The French ambassador to Amman personally conveyed our fervent preference for a non-confrontational detente in lieu of Jordanian participation in the belligerent military campaigns currently contemplated by Egypt and Syria.”

  “And?”

  “The Elysee Palace remains utterly concerned.” Eban’s British accent, usually a cause for chuckles among the sabra generals, somehow seemed appropriate in this opulent hotel suite. “Our diplomatic overtures, notwithstanding their sincerity, have been spurned decisively by the royal Jordanian court. The king’s counselors misinterpreted the message as insidious machinations, contrived merely to lure His Majesty toward injurious inaction while we surreptitiously prepare to launch the IDF at his prized territorial and theological possessions.”

  “You mean,” Eshkol concluded, “the Jordanians think we’re bluffing.”

  “A poignant understatement,” Abba Eban said. “The Jordanian consorts infused their analysis with undertones that historically have been accorded to our Jewish race, such as underhandedness in commerce and money lending. They advised King Hussein to array his armed forces in a forthcoming posture, cohesive with the other Arab armies, and to issue a proclamation soliciting the incursion of Iraqi and Saudi battalions into the West Bank as fortification of Jordan’s combat units.”

  “Hussein is inviting the Iraqis into Jordan?” General Rabin threw his cigarette out the window. “If they reinforce the existing Jordanian units in the West Bank, we’re doomed. There’s
no way we can defend the coastal strip. They’ll cut us in half between Natanya and Herzlia, then march south and north to take Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

  “During our meeting,” Abba Eban continued, “President De Gaulle was lucidly unambiguous about the pertinence of Israeli non-aggression. He assured me that he’s a loyal friend of l’Etat Hebreu, but insisted that we unequivocally forgo war. When I left, De Gaulle pressed my hand and admonished me: Ne faites pas la guerre! ”

  “The French want to teach us national defense?” Prime Minister Levi Eshkol looked around the table. “It took Hitler three days to conquer France and gobble up all their baguettes!”

  In the midst of laughter, Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin remained serious. “De Gaulle might be right. If Jordan fights us, the war will be a blood bath.”

  “But look at this!” General Ezer Weitzman, CO of operations, went to the window and pointed. “How can we pass up the opportunity to recover the Old City? Return to our historic capital? It’s crazy!”

  Now Elie understood why the prime minister had chosen to hold this strategy meeting on the top floor of the King David Hotel rather than at the Pit. The unobstructed views created an irresistible temptation for the sabra generals, whose lives had been dedicated to recreating the ancient Jewish kingdom in the Land of Israel. The glorious sights provoked them to say what they really had in mind.

  “We must,” Weitzman said, “recapture our ancestral land, all the way to the Jordan River.”

  “That’s enough,” Rabin said.

  But Weitzman couldn’t hold back, “What kind of a Jewish state is it without Jerusalem? What kind of Jewish warriors are we without the courage to restore King David’s glory?”

  “That’s a political question.” The prime minister shook his finger like a scolding teacher. “You boys harbor impossible dreams!”