Herman Wouk - The Glory

by The Glory(Lit)

  "By your life, no! My father's importing Hassidim to conduct services at the base. He's getting real strange. I'll stay right here, I have work to do."

  "On Yom Kippur?"

  "Noah, you know me. Why pretend?"

  "Well, come to Haifa, at least. We'll be in port, for sure-" He was fondling her hand. He stopped and pointed to her wristwatch. "What's this?"

  "Oh, that. Dzecki gave it to me,"

  "A Rolex?"

  "I tried to refuse it, motek. He insisted, the fool. He was just too sweet about it."

  "Yes, and he can afford it."

  "Oh, don't be like that, why shouldn't I have it? Dzecki's matured a lot, you know. He's staying on in the army. I admire him."

  This visit was not going at all as Noah had intended. He had come to snatch a last sweet tumble before the battle, but romance was clearly not on Daphna's agenda. Not yet. A change of mood called for, alcohol indicated. "Let's have a beer, Daph. What are you working on now?"

  "Oh, menorahs, menorahs. What else?" She went and took a bottle from a rusty icebox. "But at last through Dzecki I've got one decent commission, Samson killing a lion, for a hotel lobby. There's this rich kablan in Haifa, Avram Gulinkoff, he builds hotels and such. Dzecki and his father have formed a company with him, and-"

  "What, with Guli? They're in business with Guli Gulinkoff? Why, Guli is a gorilla, the biggest crook in Haifa! He'll eat the flesh off those Americans' bones. Then he'll use their bones for soup. For Guli you're making a Samson? And what's this, am I drinking alone?"

  "When the Mekhess gets here I have to be sharp. It'll be any minute. Drink up, motek." Daphna paced the little room. "Okay, Dzecki says Guli is sort of gross, but why a gorilla? Apparently he knows a lot about art. He owns a Degas and a Miro."

  "Did he hang them in his jail cell?"

  "Ha, you're in a sour mood. You know the indictment was dropped, and he never spent an hour in jail. Dzecki says the politicians eat out of Guli's hand. Guli gets permits, clearances, variances in a day that for other kablans can take a year - What time is it?"

  "Daphna, come here. Sit down."

  "Well, the thing is-"

  The doorbell rang. With an exasperated shrug, she answered it, and Yoram Sarak came in, carrying two falafels in paper napkins. The apparition of this hairy iconoclast in dark glasses was a most disagreeable surprise to Noah. ' 'I know I'm early, Daph, but - By my life, it's Horatio Hornblow-er," exclaimed Sarak. "Daphna didn't tell me, Admiral, or I'd have brought another falafel. No problem, you can have mine, I'm getting over a spastic colon. Ma nisnma?"

  "So you work for the Mekhess now?" Noah said.

  "Me? The Mekhess? Are you crazy?"

  "My mistake." Noah looked at Daphna, who seemed quite at her ease, except that her ears were going pink.

  "Say, Admiral, do you happen to know a navy officer, Ben-Ami Bernstein?''

  "What about Ben-Ami?"

  "He says that there'll be a war any day, hard navy intelligence. This is serious. I'm all set to hop to Athens after Yom Kippur, I've bought tickets for me and a friend. Isn't Ben-Ami out of his mind?"

  "Ben-Ami's mouth works with no connection to his mind."

  "That's reassuring." Sarak glanced from Daphna to Noah. "Well, you've got company, Daphna, and I've got a column to write. Sure you won't have my falafel, Admiral?"

  "Enjoy it, and take care of your colon."

  As Sarak closed the door Noah said, "Are you going to Athens with that bedbug?"

  "Noah, you're so cranky, and who are you, anyway, to call such a brilliant writer a bedbug? Why did you come here in such a rotten mood?"

  "I came here because the navy's on full war alert, and God knows when I'll see you again-"

  "Navy and war, navy and war, that's your whole world. It isn't mine. I have my own friends, I go my own way, and -"

  "To Athens, for instance?"

  Daphna flung out at him, "All right, to Athens. There! How often do I get to see you? What am I supposed to do with myself? If you're jealous, for God's sake, don't be. As far as all that goes, I think Yoram's despicable, why, he's got a friend of mine pregnant right now. He's an utter low-life and to me not attractive in the least, not in that way, but he's fun, fun. You don't know what fun means, except in bed."

  These two had once broken up for almost a year, and Noah felt that another break might well be imminent. Let it come, he thought. Slavery to a girl, any girl, even Daphna Luria, was not for Noah Barak. Showdown. "You're not going to Athens, Daphna."

  "Oh, no?"

  "You won't be able to, for one thing. The war will break out first, so-"

  "Foolishness." She glanced at the Rolex. "Listen, enough of this, it's no good. You're going back to Haifa now, aren't you? I have to see Guli with some sketches. Drive me there."

  "My Porsche is in the repair shop."

  She looked startled, then said slowly and coldly, "Dzecki is younger than you, darling, and he's more of a mentsch. I like him. My friends like him. He amuses Yoram like anything. Dzecki's witty, good-humored, broad-minded, he's not demanding like you-"

  "He's rich."

  "You want a fight, don't you? Have it, then. You may become chief of operations one day, Noah, you're very smart, you come from a wonderful family, but you're as narrow as this finger." She flourished it in his face. "And with a father like Zev Barak! How is it possible? I've wondered for years."

  "Athens is off, Daphna, do you hear?"

  "Oh, go to the devil."

  Noah strode out of the flat, started off in his car with a squeal and a roar, and squealed and roared to the French Embassy.

  The corridor of the Defense Ministry was lined with blown-up photographs of former ministers - Ben Gurion, Lavon, Eshkol, all canny old Labor politicians - and finally the incumbent, the world-renowned warrior with the eye patch, in suit and tie. Usually Zev Barak walked by the pictures unseeing, but today the seamed stern faces of the departed ministers seemed to be warning him that Israel's survival was now partly on his shoulders. From behind a big desk in the office next to Dayan's, Pasternak greeted him with the old sardonic grin. Barak asked as he sat down, "What's your position here, Sam, exactly?"

  "The minister's still figuring that out. Meantime I'm here, on leave from Kivshan."

  "Well, thank God you're here."

  "Thank Dayan. Not quite the same, except in this building. He kicks off Labor's election campaign tomorrow, so I'm keeping abreast of field reports of the Arab buildup while he politicks. Same drill as when he used to skitter around the

  fighting fronts. He's in there right now" - a thumb toward a side door - "working on a speech." He fixed a heavy-lidded glance on Barak. "What do you hear from Golda? How did they like her speech in Strasbourg?"

  "Sam, that's why I'm here. Now she's decided to go on from there to Vienna."

  "L'Azazel, she has? Why?"

  "To get Kreisky to reopen the transit camp."

  "That won't take long. She'll accomplish nothing, he'll just shit on her, that apostate dog. His knees tremble at the sound of Arabic."

  Chancellor Kreisky had recently closed Israel's only transit camp in Europe for the few Jews trickling out of the Soviet Union. Arab gunners had seized seven of these emigrants on a train and threatened to murder them all and explode terror all over Austria unless the Schonau Castle camp was shut down. Kreisky had at once complied and provided the terrorists air passage to Libya.

  "I've been on the phone with her," Barak said, "arguing against her going to Vienna. It's an idiocy -"

  "Well, listen, I can understand her. The election's a month away, and she's a politician. Our media are screaming Schonau, terrorists, Soviet Jews, and Kreisky. Biggest tumult in years, and she's showing action."

  "Sam, would Dayan consider telephoning Golda to come straight home?"

  "Ask him," Pasternak said, as the side door opened and Moshe Dayan walked in.

  Totally ignoring Barak, he handed Pasternak several sheets. "This is a passage I just dictate
d. Verify any fact you're not sure of. Glance at the last paragraphs right now."

  Dayan's demeanor was different here than in Golda's office, Barak observed. Here he was the most powerful man in Israel, with a budget as large as all the other ministries put together; also the master of a million Arabs in the territories. But when he was in her presence she was the boss, and Dayan knew it and showed it. It also struck Barak that Dayan was looking much happier, better groomed, and thicker in the middle since marrying again.

  "I would cut this part, Minister," said Pasternak, pointing. "Too complicated."

  "That stays. It's her policy and mine. The Galili Document in a few words." This was a Labor Party manifesto waffling on the issue of the settlements. Dayan went out with an unsmiling nod at Barak.

  "Well, why didn't you ask him?" inquired Pasternak.

  "Ha!"

  "Listen, Zev, what'U you accomplish by hurrying her back? It's one more day. The facts in the field are threatening, but that's happened before."

  "Not this threatening."

  "Well, if a blow does'come, we're ready to absorb it. We spent millions during blue/white, remember, on the new roads and the forward depots of ammunition, tanks, and supply reserves. That stuff's all in place now."

  "Golda has a nose, Sam. If she were here, she'd know whether to mobilize."

  "A nose is fine. So's our military intelligence, and she'll get seventy-two hours' warning of any turn toward war."

  "Yes, we've heard that from Zeira over and over. You believe it?"

  "I know it." Their eyes locked in confrontation. Pasternak repeated, "Seventy-two hours. I know it." The tone was hard, and the look said, Don't press me further.

  "Okay, Sam, you know it."

  Utterly exhausted, her face dead-gray, Golda arrived at the airport next night in a drenching rainstorm. Barak held his tongue, riding with her to her Ramat Aviv home. The rain lashed the car, the windshield wipers danced, and neither spoke. At last the Prime Minister growled, "Ayzeh davar akher!" ["What an unmentionable thing!" -i.e., a hog.] To my face, he turned me down. So cold, so deaf, so indifferent. Only interested in crawling to the Arabs. 'We live in different worlds,' he said. Different worlds! He'll learn one day, that apostate davar akher, that for Jews it's all one world." Both she and Pasternak were rather hard on Kreisky, Barak thought. The Austrian was frankly anti-Zionist, true, yet at times he had secretly intervened to help Jews in mortal danger. In Golda's present mood, of course, she wasn't to be argued with. Her anger once vented, her tone lightened. "Nu, Zev, so we meet tomorrow morning. It's serious?"

  "Prime Minister, Zeira's assessment stands. 'Very low probability.' But Dayan asked for this meeting."

  "To share the responsibility of not mobilizing, I'm sure." Golda's weary voice shaded into heavy irony. "Well, he's right. Let's hear what our best minds have to say." She peered at him. "Alarmed, are you?"

  "Less so, Prime Minister, now that you're back."

  "What a nice compliment."

  The morning meeting in Golda's office of the inner cabinet and army chiefs was calm, the intelligence briefing spare, the comments matter-of-fact, the mood unworried. Nobody questioned that the Arab armies were on full war alert, massed at the borders, and capable of immediate all-out attack. Israel's two most eminent soldiers, Dayan and Yigal Allon, now both ministers, flanked Golda. With them was the white-haired old Yisrael Galili, her stone-bottomed Labor cohort. They all took in stride the dark picture and heard without demur the ongoing assessment, "Still very low probability," by Zeira's head of research, a quiet-spoken general who gave the briefing since the chief of military intelligence was ill. The Prime Minister interrupted with only one edgy question, when he said, "At all events, if there's a change on the other side to a decision for war, we'll know seventy-two hours beforehand."

  "One moment." She lifted a rigid finger. "Seventy-two hours? Tell me, how will we know? By some unusual preparations?"

  "Prime Minister, we will know. With seventy-two hours' warning." He glanced at Dayan. So did Golda. Dayan gave her a nod and a subtle smile. She shrugged and asked no more.

  As the meeting was ending she asked the Ramatkhal abruptly, "Dado, two questions. Do you accept this evaluation? And in any case are we ready?"

  Elazar expressed dour confidence in his military intelligence chief, and in Zahal's readiness if the unlikely happened. "The trouble is, Madame Prime Minister, a lot is expected of us," he said wryly. "Unless we win in three days this time, we'll catch a lot of flak."

  Thereafter Zev Barak decided to suppress his anxiety, or paranoia, or whatever it was. Who was he to be alarmed, if even Golda with her "nose" accepted composedly these dire

  facts? Sabras like Allon and Dayan tended to hint that a "galutnik mentality" haunted those who feared war. Was it so, and was he after all at bottom a Viennese galutnik? Had the iron of Europe's anti-Semitism really entered his soul, or the American Jews' way of looking over their shoulders at the goyim? Or had he simply been out of the field and behind a desk too long? No more, Zev Barak resolved. This time I will shut up.

  The resolve cleared his mind, and for the next two nights he slept well. He cheered up so much that Nakhama, recently pensive and withdrawn, reflected his mood with smiles, jokes, and little affectionate ways that he thought she had forgotten. "So where will we hear Kol Nidrei?" she said over their morning coffee, very early on Yom Kippur eve. "Just the two of us, ha? Something new!'' Galia was going to Tel Nof to be with Dov, Ruti was staying at a kibbutz, and Noah's vessel would be in port on high alert, unless he went out on patrol.

  "Well, we could walk to the Wall. How about that? Nice effect it had on Dov and Galia."

  Nakhama bridled, laughed, and said, "Hm! We'll see."

  He drove to Tel Aviv that morning in his happiest frame of mind since the start of the crisis. On his desk he found a sealed despatch in a pale green military intelligence envelope, stamped urgent. He tore it open:

  ALL SOVIET DIPLOMATS LEAVING EGYPT AND SYRIA TODAY WITH FAMILIES BY AEROFLOT PLANES. MEETING AT 8:30 A.M., OFFICE OF DEFENSE MINISTER.

  The date was Friday, October 5, Yom Kippur eve.

  PART TWO

  The Awakening

  WHAT IS IT WITH THEE, O SLEEPER? RISE AND CALL UPON THY GOD...

  Jonah 1:6

  18

  Earthquake

  Yom Kippur eve, sundown. The voice of the young black-bearded Hassidic rabbi throbs through the crowded Tel Nof assembly hall, transformed to a synagogue with a Holy Ark, Torah reading platform, and even latticework to partition off the female soldiers; "the works," as Benny Luria has promised the rabbi. Everyone is standing for the ancient solemn melody...

  Kol Nidrei, v'esorei...

  Never has there been such a Yom Kippur at Tel Nof. All the pilots, instructors, ground crews, clerks, mechanics, and cooks in the male section wear the white shawls and yarmulkes furnished by the Hassidim. The base kitchens are shut down. The streets and walks are deserted. No war warning has come down from the Chief of Staff to the Air Force Command. No machine moves except the ever-rotating radar on the control tower.

  Proud and pleased with what he has wrought, Benny Luria stands between his Dov and Danny in a front row. Even the Ezrakh, he is thinking, might approve of his improvised shul. And when all is said and done, this Tel Nof base, the air force, Zahal, and Israel are more about Kol Nidrei than about the Mapam socialism in which he was

  raised; and that is true whether Golda Meir is also hearing Kol Nidrei tonight, or smoking cigarettes and drinking tea in her Ramat Aviv home.

  "Good cantor," murmurs Danny, the yarmulke precarious on his mop of red hair, as they sit down amid a noisy scraping of chairs. He is now the tallest of the three. "I liked that, but it wasn't Hebrew, was it, Abba?"

  "Aramaic," says his father. "Talmud language. There's a translation in the prayer book."

  "Poor Galia, behind that fence," says Dov.

  "Your mother's taking good care of Galia, don't worry."


  Next morning when the telephone rings by Zev Barak's bedside, he wakes disoriented, peering at his illuminated clock. Four-thirty? On Yom Kippur Day? Hearing Golda Meir's voice, he thinks at first it must be a bad dream, like others he has been having. "Zev, come to Tel Aviv." The tone is harsh, tired, level. "Be at my office by seven. Zeira just called me. The war will start at six this evening."

  His throat contracts, his spine coldly prickles. It is no dream.

  Dawn streaks the sky outside the windows of the Tel Nof commander's office. The young lieutenant with the duty watch has gone all night without food or drink and is in a foggy state. "Yom Kippur is cancelled." Benny Luria startles him, coming in clad in a G suit.