Israel (56 page)

On her way home Becky decided she'd stumbled upon a cardinal rule for a woman who meant to make her way up the ladder of success. To lose graciously was admirable, but to win graciously was crucial.

Now, if only she could apply the rule to tonight's confrontation with her father.

She broke the news to him after supper. She was careful to present her tale the way she had rehearsed it, as a
fait accompli
. Not once did she ask his permission or opinion of her decision, nor did she imply that her mind could be changed. Her father said nothing as she calmly explained the hours she'd be working at Malden's. Danny listened silently, his wide eyes restlessly shifting between his stony-faced, sullen father and his wondrous sister.

When Becky was done Abe asked, “You'll work in the store until you go to the nickel-and-dime?”

“I said I would.” She caught the strident note in her voice. Calm down, she told herself. I think you won.

She watched her father gaze at Danny. How cold and aloof his eyes were. Danny began to fidget, and Becky felt
for him, remembering all the times she'd suffered their father's dispassionate evaluation.

“Right from Hebrew school you'll have to come to help me,” Abe warned. “No more running with the other boys.”

“I know.”

“When you'll have time to study I don't know,” Abe sighed. “Ask your sister. Maybe she knows. She's got all the answers.”

“Pa, I don't study anyway—”

“You hear?” Abe grumbled to Becky. “And who'll make the supper?”

“When I come home I'll make the supper,” Becky said patiently.

Abe shook his head, rapping his knuckles on the table. “You don't ask my permission so I don't give it. Do what you want.”

After her initial enthusiasm wore off, Becky found working at Malden's disappointingly dull. Wilkerson seized upon her experience to make her a cashier. Becky hardly talked to the customers and never got a chance to try and sell them anything. All she did was punch in the numbers on her register. She found her days at the Cherry Street Market to be more fun. There she knew who she was selling to and got to move around at least.

It was Thursday night three weeks after she began her job. Becky was leaving with the other girls via the employees' entrance. She heard a car horn beep, and saw Benny Talkin grinning at her from the driver's seat of a maroon convertible that glistened like a garnet beneath the streetlamps.

“Who's that?” one of the girls cooed enviously. “He's waiting for you?”

“I guess,” Becky said, feeling nervous as she crossed the street.

“I thought I'd come by to see how you were doing,” Benny greeted her.

“I'm okay.” Becky said shyly. Since the first and last time she met him she'd compiled imaginary lists of clever things to say in case she got this chance. Now her mind was blank. She should have written those lists down. Looking at scraps of notes was only half as foolish as standing like a tongue-tied idiot.

“I know who you look like,” she blurted. “It's been bothering me—I mean, you looked familiar, but I knew we'd never met. You look just like John Garfield in
Four Daughters.”

“An actor!” Benny laughed, not displeased.

“Did you see it?” Becky demanded. “I saw it twice—”

“Get in.” Benny didn't get out of the car, but leaned across the gleaming leather front seat to open the passenger door. When he sat upright he saw that Becky had not moved. “Come on, it's cold out there. I ain't going to bite you.”

“Okay.” She came around and got into the car, shut the door and leaned against it. The interior of the car smelled of leather and Benny's cologne. His suit was grey flannel. His arm and shoulder muscles strained the fabric as he ran his hands over the steering wheel. His hands were large, strong and capable-looking. The gold pinky ring with its large, glittering stone looked out of place on such fingers.

“You like it?” Benny asked.

“What?” Becky asked, startled. “The car? Sure, it's great.”

“It's a '39 Cadillac. I get a new one every year. Do you know how much it cost me?” When Becky shook her head, he laughed. “I didn't think so.”

The conversation lagged for a moment. “You want a
smoke?” he asked, taking a packet of Chesterfields from the top of the dash.

Becky accepted a cigarette and Benny lit it. She was very conscious of her fingers touching his as she steadied the flame. He watched her exhale.

“You don't look old enough to smoke.”

“I'm old enough to vote,” Becky sighed. “But I know what you mean.”

“I like how you look,” Benny murmured. “A pretty girl don't need much to set her off, and you're real pretty, Becky.” He was sliding closer to her across the leather.

During the silence that ensued, Becky set her cigarette into the ashtray and leaned back.
This-is-it-I'm-going-to-be-kissed—

Benny Talkin froze with his arm halfway around her shoulder as a long, gurgling growl reverberated from the depths of Becky's stomach. He began to hoot with laughter as Becky blinked back mortified tears.

“When did you eat last?” he managed to demand.

“This morning. I don't have time to eat lunch.”

Benny waved her quiet. “You're gonna waste away to nothing' He made a point of giving her buxom figure a lascivious once-over to make her laugh. “A girl like you oughtn't to be skin and bones.” He winked.

“Not much chance of that,” Becky demurred.

“I guess the first stop is this little steakhouse I know.” He pulled away from the curb.

Becky felt a brief twinge of guilt. Her father and her brother were waiting for her at home, waiting for their supper. They're not crippled, she told herself. Let them make their own supper for once. She would telephone from the restaurant and tell them that she and some of the other girls had gone out for a bite.

And if her father complained, he would just have to get used to the change. She'd been his dutiful daughter long enough.

“You'll like it better in the spring,” Benny said, cutting through her thoughts. “Pardon?”

“The convertible,” he said cheerfully as he put the powerful Cadillac through its paces. “When the weather turns warm and we put the top down, that's when you'll really enjoy it.”

At a stop light Benny finally did kiss her. He patted the seat next to him, and Becky sidled close as if she'd been doing it forever.

The British police held Herschel for two months and subjected him to daily interrogations. Sometimes he was beaten. Often the promise of imprisonment instead of execution was held out to him. Throughout the ordeal Herschel thought of Frieda and told his captors nothing.

He was tried before a military tribunal. A British major served as prosecutor and three other officers were his judges. No spectators were allowed, not even Rosie.

The trial lasted less than twenty minutes. The rug vendor identified Herschel as “the man who pretended to be English, the man who threw the bombs.” Another Arab seemed to know Herschel by name and also placed him at the scene of the explosion. Herschel's attorney waived the right to cross-examination. The best they could hope for was to keep him from the gallows, so the attorney had no desire to antagonize the court.

After the witnesses were heard the judges whispered among themselves for a few minutes. Herschel was ordered to stand. He would not hang; it was not the administration's goal to create martyrs. Herschel was sentenced
to twenty-five years in prison. The gavel came down, he was led away, and that was that.

At Jerusalem's Central Prison they shaved his head and issued him brown sandals, baggy trousers, a collarless pullover shirt and a cloth cap. He was assigned to a communal cell in which there were already four Jews and two Arabs. The first week Herschel was cautious, keeping quiet until he knew what was what. Then one of the Arabs took sick and the Jews joined with the other Arab in donating a portion of their meager food to the invalid until he was well. The clash between the two peoples could wait. The inmates' common enemy was the British prison.

The days took on a numbing sameness as Herschel's world shrank down to dark, narrow vaulted halls, iron grates and grey stone. There were no books allowed, no writing materials. At sunrise there was morning exercise, a brief walk in the yard under guard. Next came a work period until the first meal, at midmorning. There was another brief walk, more work until late afternoon, a final meal and sleep until roll call at sunrise the next day.

Anyone on good behavior was allowed a visitor once a month. Herschel's visitor was invariably his mother. She was only in her fifties, but a long hard life had prematurely aged her and his sentencing had sapped the last reserves of her youth and strength. During one of her visits she broke down.

“I remember when we first moved to Jerusalem,” she wept. Herschel stared at the multitude of fine lines etching her translucent skin. “I remember how we would sit on the bare wooden floor of my studio with a plate of fruit and cheese between us. You would tell me about the university. How you made me laugh. How silly we got, like drunkards. You remember, don't you? It's not just an old woman remaking her memories, is it? We were friends, yes?”

“It happened, Mama,” Herschel quietly agreed. “We're still friends.”

“No!” Her fingers were like claws rattling the mesh. “Mother and son, perhaps, and we still may love one another, but we are no longer friends.” She smiled, wiping her tears, and suddenly despite her wrinkles and grey hair the ghost of her youth seemed to appear in her red-rimmed sable eyes.

“I'm a painter, yes? Not a great one, perhaps, but nevertheless an artist. You, my son, were my greatest work. When your father was killed you became my creation, one that I would never finish. I thought I could never lose you. Then along came that girl—”

“Mama—”

“She stole you away, she did. And now this prison has you for twenty-five years. Never again will we embrace. Herschel, there is no point to my existence if yours is to be spent in a cage.”

Months passed. His mother's visits continued. Herschel became increasingly concerned over Frieda's well-being. Rumors had circulated the prison that new ordinances allowed the British to fire on ships carrying illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Many discounted the rumors. Even the most virulently anti-British Zionists had a hard time believing that defenseless refugees would be shot. Still, Herschel worried. As best he knew, his beloved was still smuggling in Jews. His mother knew nothing about Frieda, of course, and Herschel understood that even if Frieda had returned to Jerusalem, she could not visit him without drawing suspicion to herself.

In the fall the prison's grapevine buzzed with the news that a refugee ship, the
Tiger Hill
, had been attacked by the Palestine Coast Guard. Two people were killed. A scrap of newspaper was smuggled in and passed along
through most of the inmate population before it was confiscated by a guard. The scrap quoted the British colonial secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, as saying that the responsibility for these and future deaths rested with those who were organizing illegal immigration.

One month Herschel was surprised to find that his visitor was none other than Yol Popovich. The old man had come all the way from Degania.

“How fine you look,” Herschel laughed as Yol smiled at him from the other side of the wire mesh. “Like a patriarch, like Moses himself, with your walking stick and that grand grey bushy beard.”

“Patriarch, eh?” Yol grimaced. “It's baldness. Makes the skull look bigger.”

“How is Degania?”

“It thrives, boy. You see how old I look, and now I'll confess how old I feel—I cannot wait to get back to that quiet little corner of the world.” His dark eyes narrowed as he peered through the mesh. “Herschel, you are so gaunt.”

“The food is poor, and there's not enough of it.”

“But you're holding up? You can survive?”

“We're strong, so strong that on Yom Kippur we fasted.”

Yol was truly appalled. “Good socialists like you fasted?”

Herschel laughed. “You should have seen the looks on the faces of the guards when we all refused our meals—us! With our ribs sticking out, yes? Of whom not one had ever fasted when we were free. The guards were curious, so we explained to them that it was the Day of Atonement. The guards nodded. They thought we were atoning for our crimes, but it was really for getting caught.”

“It's good your spirit is strong,” Yol grinned, then began to fidget in his chair. “I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you,” he muttered uneasily.

Herschel felt the chill of Yol's words dancing along his spine. “What?” he demanded.

“Your mother received a message. I'm sorry to say that your friend Frieda Litvinoff is dead.”

“Oh, no.”

“The letter was brief and there was no signature. It seems that Frieda and her comrades were in Jaffa, rowing out to ferry refugees from their steamer to shore. It was night, of course. There was no moon and the sea was rough. The little rowboats, as always, were overcrowded. The one Frieda was in capsized. In the dark, in the confusion, in the tossing waves—well, she was lost. The next morning her body was found on the beach.”

“You came to tell me because my mother could not. Is that it, Yol?” Herschel asked. It was a struggle to control his grief, but he was not surprised. That was the worst of it, that he was not at all surprised. “You came all the way from Galilee. I'm very appreciative.”

“I would have come no matter what,” Yol replied, “before this unpleasantness, but that would have meant depriving Rosie of one of her visits to you.”

“She's very lonely.”

“Yes, boy, she is lonely. That's something I want to talk to you about.” Yol took a deep breath. “I intend to ask her to return with me to Degania. She's wasting away here, and to tell the truth, I myself find life very drab when deprived of her companionship.”