had unexpectedly called the Soviet Union, the Arabs, and Israel to a conference in Geneva next month, and his State Department had drafted a "comprehensive peace plan" for the Russians and Americans to cosponsor. This had thrown a huge monkey wrench into Sadat's secret separate deal.
"Whatever possessed Carter to drag the Soviet Union back into the Middle East," said Pasternak, "when for years Anwar Sadat and the Nixon and Ford administrations had been pushing them out, remains a mystery, Amos. But that's why Sadat's coming to Jerusalem."
Comprehension was dawning on Amos's intent face. "Elo-him! So that's it. Sadat saw his secret negotiations through Day an going down the drain."
"You've got it. Sadat's torpedoing that Geneva conference, whatever it costs him in the Arab world, by coming out into the open as a peacemaker. Carter's driven him to it. But this way of doing it - flying to Jerusalem to address the Knesset - is a stroke of absolute political genius. He's a great man, damn him. We're going to have a peace. At high cost, but a peace."
"By my life," Amos pounded fist into palm, "then I win the argument we were having at Intelligence, when you phoned me that Eva was in labor. You're the one who made me study American history so hard, Abba, and I was comparing this visit to Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Half of them didn't know what I was talking about, and the others said I was crazy."
"Appomattox? You are crazy. Sadat will get the Sinai back for a piece of paper. Some surrender!"
"Abba, he's coming here to surrender the entire Arab war aim. Can't even you see that? He's breaking the perimeter. He's recognizing that we're back in the Land to stay. Just watch the Arab response! No matter what he says to the Knesset, no matter how tough he talks, they'll call it a catastrophe, a complete abandonment of the cause. They'll ostracize him for twenty years, wait and see, and from their viewpoint they'll be right. But it's a bad cause, just as slavery was a bad cause, and that's why I compare the visit to Appomattox. Sadat's abandoning a bad lost cause, and Robert E. Lee had to do the same -"
"It's a girl." The nurse darted in, looking as happy as if she were one of the family. "Big and pretty, and your wife is fine."
"Thank God!" Pasternak embraced his son. "Can we see her?"
"Your wife? No, not yet. The baby, sure. Come with me."
In a glassed-off room full of bassinets, a basket freshly labelled pasternak was at the window, with a yawning wrapped pink baby in it, blinking brilliant blue eyes.
"By God," murmured Amos, "how beautiful."
Barely getting the words out of his throat, Pasternak said, "I'm too old for this."
"Glad you changed your mind, Abba?"
"Might as well be glad. There she is."
Barak sat in a worn red armchair, in the parlor of Golda's little house outside Tel Aviv, remembering the old crisis days when she had slept here instead of in the Prime Minister's Jerusalem residence. Many an hour he had spent in this chair, and some entire nights, too. Now, though Golda was out of public life and under a cloud in Israel, she remained a favorite of American Jews, and she had cut short a fund-raising tour to fly home for Sadat's arrival. The same cigarette smell came wafting down the stairs, and hearing her tread, much lighter than in former days, he stood up. "How do I look?" she said as she descended.
A hard question to handle. The leukemia had been thinning her terribly, yet in a strange way it was now restoring an ethereal semblance of the beauty which had long ago made her romances the talk of the Yishuv. Her best blue wool suit hung very loose on her, her hair was carefully styled, and he thought her cheeks were touched with rouge.
"Very elegant, Madame Prime Minister."
"Yes, I'm sure. Belle of the ball," she said in her sarcastic cigarette rasp. "At least that man is not going to see me looking down and out. Will I need a coat? This suit is warm."
"It'll be windy at the airport, Golda."
She grumbled, pulling a dark cloth coat from the hall closet. "Now he comes. Did he need a war, with nearly three thousand of our boys killed and maybe twenty thousand of theirs,
to convince him? Why did he keep making those tricky peace proposals that I couldn't possibly accept? Why didn't he just do this long ago?"
"I guess he'd answer that his people first had to redeem their honor," said Barak, helping her on with the coat.
"What honor? We crushed them, didn't we? They were pleading for mercy at the end. They had the whole world forcing us to let them off." Barak did not comment, and she turned on him. "Well, am I right or wrong?"
"Golda, what they remember is October sixth. It's their new national holiday, October Sixth. They name bridges and boulevards after it. That's when they shattered our Six-Day War image and almost beat us."
"Almost." Sharp snap.
"Yes, but it took us three weeks to recover, and in their version only America saved us. So they got back their honor."
"Yes, I know that version. Ha! And now they'll get back the Sinai, too." She was tucking in her collar at a mirror. "And that they could have had, all of it, without bloodshed. Poor Levi Eshkol offered it for a peace treaty, right after we won the Six-Day War. And what was their answer? All those no's of Khartoum. 'No negotiation, no recognition, no peace, no nothing!' "
"That was Nasser's doing, Golda."
"Nasser, Sadat, is there a real difference? I hope I'll live to find out. Well, let's go."
Guli Gulinkoff possessed not only the one silver Lincoln in Israel, but also the one Hollywood-style villa with a private screening room, and the only supernew Japanese TV system projecting images the size of theater films. Invitations to watch basketball, soccer, or American miniseries at Guli's villa were much sought after among Haifa's smart set; but for the greatest TV spectacle in Israel's short turbulent history -the arrival of the President of Egypt at Ben Gurion airport to offer peace - no invitations could be had. Daphna Luria and Guli had invited, for that same night, a small party of families and friends to announce their engagement. They considered calling off the party, but decided not to. "After all, how long will it take the mamzer to land," said Guli, "and go through
all the ceremonial shit? Half an hour? No reason to cancel. That's bad luck, anyway."
"You're absolutely right, motek," said Daphna. "We'll just serve the drinks and hors d'oeuvres down in the screening room."
"Terrific idea," said Guli.
On all evidence Daphna had actually given her heart to the gorilla. At the Jericho Cafe she had endured a protracted ragging from her friends about her notorious romance with the rich Haifa kablan, twenty years older than she was, until one night she turned on them, on her feet and shaking her fists, shouting over the rock-and-roll din, "Kvetchers! Envious impotent kvetchers! Good for nothing but to sit around and criticize, and complain, and jeer, and find fault, and mock, and sneer, and eat olives, and drink beer, and belch, and talk about Brecht and Kafka, and feel each other under the table, and pretend you're in Paris or in New York! Why don't you go there? Who needs you here? You don't build like Guli, you don't work the land, you don't do anything. If somebody in this crowd turns out to be talented like Shimon he leaves, or to be brave like Yoram he dies. None of you is worth one of Guli Gulinkoff's farts. Kvetch away for the rest of your lives, I've heard your last kvetch!" And out she stalked into the rainy night, never to return. As between Guli and bohe-mia, she was going with Guli.
The Barkowes arrived early at the villa with the engaged couple, Dzecki and Galia. It was big-hearted of them to show up, for Dzecki and his father were suing Guli over a shopping mall project into which they had sunk some three hundred thousand dollars, with nothing to show for it but a vast brown hole on the outskirts of Haifa. For three years Guli had been assuring them that "it will all hang itself out." Since the court clerks of Israel were on strike again, it looked as though the thing would not hang itself out for years and years. Meanwhile Guli had their three hundred thousand or had spent it, and he remained unfailingly affable to them. "By all means sue," he had said with great good
cheer. "Maybe the courts will help me pin down those ben-zonahs [sons of whores], the subcontractors. It's all their fault."
Nevertheless Dzecki had insisted on coming to Guli's party. "The greatest favor anyone ever did me," he said,
"was when Guli started up with Daphna. I'm the world's happiest man, and we're going there to wish them well. While we're there we can snoop around, and maybe find our money stashed in the woodwork." Dzecki's parents were utterly disgusted with the Holy Land, which, aside from Guli's prestidigitation with their money, had cost their son an arm. On the other hand they loved their future daughter-in-law, and were much taken with their Barak relatives; they thought Noah dashing, Zev noble, and the women exceptionally warm and nice.
Noah and Julie came with their two babies, both yelling their heads off, and the party split up by sexes, the men going downstairs to get away from the screams and watch the doings at Ben Gurion airport, while the women huddled around in the master bedroom, calming the infants. "So where are Yossi Nitzan and Shayna?" Daphna's mother asked her. "You said you invited them."
"Shayna's at the airport because General Nitzan's there, commanding the military security for the whole visit," said Daphna, rocking Julie's older baby in her arms. "It's like a mobilization for war, Shayna told me, three thousand troops at the airport alone."
Julie said, "Look, my Sarah's quieting down. You have a way with babies, Daphna." Her Hebrew was much improved, if the French accent was ineradicable.
"Thanks, dear." Daphna ruefully laughed, the jealousy between them long since forgotten. Daphna was beautiful as ever and Julie was getting fat, but Julie had Noah and Daphna no longer wanted him. "Just don't say that around Guli. He says he wants five kids. He's got it all figured out, but who has to have them? Me, and one is frightening enough."
"The man does think big, doesn't he, darling?" Daphna's mother said a shade tartly. The Lurias were not enchanted by the match of their sabra daughter with a gross kablan of vague immigrant background, no matter whether Guli was really rich, or a fast-moving fraud. In banking circles where they had made inquiry, this was a highly moot point.
Galia said, "Me, I'll settle for one, and quit. Dzecki agrees."
When the babies were at last quieted and asleep, the women
went down broad marble stairs to the screening room. "Just in time," said Guli, as they settled in the overstuffed leather armchairs. "Golda's arriving." On the big projector screen a car with a motorcycle escort was driving up to the airfield gate, and the police were holding back a turbulent crowd.
Julie tapped Noah on the shoulder. "Look, look, cheri, there's your father."
It was a long camera shot, but the white hair was unmistakable. As Barak helped Golda from the car, the crowd broke into cheers and applause. "Golda! Golda! Golda!" The camera zoomed in on her looking around amid the general roar and waving in pleased bewilderment.
Benny Luria said, "Now they cheer her. In the war she was a rock, and afterward they spat at her. Sadat's coming only because she defeated him."
Over the noise, the excited announcer was trying to describe the scene. "I see tears on Golda's face," he enthused, "tears of joy! Surely she never expected this acclaim."
"Who did?" said Guli. "All you heard after the war was that Golda was a disaster, and that it took her too long to resign."
The Barkowes, who had never learned Hebrew, were sitting mum through all this, but now his mother exclaimed, "Jack, translate. What is the man saying?"
"Just that the people love Golda, Mom."
"Now they love her again? I lose track."
When Ruti Barak and Danny Luria, who had started going out together, arrived in the screening room, the lights of Sadat's plane were just appearing in the sky. "So you made it," Benny Luria said to his son. "Come sit by me. You too, Ruti." The Lurias were hoping that at least this second match with a Barak girl might come to pass. They made an attractive pair, Danny in uniform with his heavy red hair well groomed, Ruti in a swirling pink skirt and white sweater, both tall, both laughing as they came in.
On the screen, as the plane descended in a blaze of searchlights, Arabic markings and arab republic of egypt became plain to the eye. The airfield was a sea of color with a hundred huge flapping flags, Israeli and Egyptian. Deep lines of soldiers guarded the landing area. A red carpet stretched
from the plane ramp to the microphones, where a large military honor guard was drawn up, and the army band waited with brass instruments flashing in the TV floodlights.
The plane swooped in, the wheels touched the tarmac, and scattered applause broke out in the crowd as it slowed down with a roar, turned, and taxied back. A hush fell on the crowd, and in the screening room too. As the plane halted, Guli spoke out in his gravelly baritone. "I tell you what, people. That door will open and a monkey will come out."
On the black-and-white set in Max Roweh's Yemin Moshe house the picture was too streaky and blurry even to show the plane. Aryeh was trying in vain, with all his Sayeret Matkhal know-how in electronics, to make it work. His new girlfriend meantime had gone out to look for a TV shop, and she now returned, saying, "Hard to find a store open on Saturday night, but I did." She reached into the back of the set, fussed with its glowing entrails, and the picture sprang into sharp focus. There was the airplane under floodlights, the exit door still closed.
Yael exclaimed, "You're a genius, Bruria." The girl was sixteen or seventeen and not much to look at, short, sallow, unpainted, with heavy brown eyebrows. "Come, Max, it's working," she called. "You can see the plane."
Roweh hurried in from the balcony facing the illuminated Old City walls, the shawl around his neck flying. "Has he appeared?"
"Not yet. Bruria fixed the set."
"Kibbutzniks are handy," Aryeh said. "They have to be."
"We have that Grundig set in the kindergarten," said Bruria. "The same tube usually goes bad."
The thronged airfield was singularly quiet. A long time seemed to go by, and the door failed to open. Even the announcer's frenetic gibbering trailed off. Silence on the field. Silence on the tube.' 'Pharaoh comes to the children of Israel offering peace," Max Roweh mused aloud.
"An unusual circumstance," Yael said.
"Possibly the most unusual circumstance, my dear, in the thirty-odd centuries since we left Egypt. But not in the least supernatural."
When the door opened there was a disorderly outrush of
Egyptian journalists and photographers down the ramp and out on the field. A long pause, the empty door dark; then out stepped Sadat. He stood very erect in a well-tailored gray suit, his face grave, blinking at the strong light that engulfed him. Trumpeters blew a long spine-tingling flourish, and distant guns began to thunder a salute.
"Look how dark he is," said Aryeh, as other officials were emerging behind him.
"A son of Ham," said Roweh.
THUMP... THUMP... went the guns.
"I hope he trips coming down those stairs and breaks his neck," said Bruria.
"The man's on a peace mission, Bruria," growled Yael.
"My oldest brother was killed in Suez City," said Bruria.
"By God, there's Abba," exclaimed Aryeh, pointing.
"Where?" Yael peered through glasses she had just started wearing.
He put a finger on two figures in front of the honor guard ranks. "That's the Ramatkhal, and that's Abba."
So it was. Kishote was stiffening at attention as Sadat came down the ramp. Here was the man responsible for the graves of thousands of Jewish soldiers, including hundreds of his own men, yet he felt no hatred for Sadat. Rather, he felt something of Max Roweh's historical awe, and also a strong sense of unreality, seeing Prime Minister Begin shake hands with the Egyptian and, while flashlight bulbs popped like fireworks, exchange smiles and pleasantries.
Zev Barak, standing beside Golda Meir, did not hear the two leaders' words, nor Sadat's greeting to Motta Gur as he returned the Ramatkhal's salute. With measured step and majestic mien, Sadat came to
Moshe Dayan, and these words of his Barak heard. His English was clear and mellifluous. "Ah, General Dayan! You must let me know in advance when you're coming to Cairo." Dayan smiled, and Sadat went on, "I will have to lock up all the museums." The dig at Dayan's penchant for helping himself to ancient artifacts brought nervous chuckles among the dignitaries. Dayan made no response, and Barak thought his face fell. Sadat then shook hands with Abba Eban, and went on to Arik Sharon. "Ah, the famous Sharon. If you attempt to cross my Canal again I'll put you in jail."
Sharon was unfazed and ready with the counterpunch. "Oh, no, I'm Minister of Agriculture now, sir, a man of peace."
Sadat laughed, moved on, and came face to face with Golda Meir. His countenance hardened, and he shook hands with a bend just short of a bow. "Madame Prime Minister, I've wanted to talk to you."
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 68