Israel (80 page)

Becky giggled in a way that made Danny think she'd had too much of that champagne for so early in the day. Then he scolded himself. It's her wedding, after all.

“I'm surprised your husband would leave the store during the holiday season,” Abe said.

Becky burst out laughing. “What do you think, we stand by the cash registers all day?”

Abe wilted like a scolded child and Danny was overwhelmed with resentment. Who is she to patronize us? Then he remembered all the times his sister had comforted him during his childhood estrangement from their father.

“Danny, speaking of the store,” Becky said, turning to him, “I've talked to Carl about a position for you—”

“What?” Danny was appalled.

“Well, I know you're kind of at a loss for what to do with your life. I thought that if there was a job for you at Pickman's—”

“Becky,” he replied evenly, struggling to keep his
voice under control, “I think I'm hearing that champagne talking.” He smiled, trying to make a joke.

“I'm not talking about some menial position, Danny . . . .”

“We'll discuss it when you get back from Florida.”

“All right.” Becky eyed him reluctantly. “That would be better, I guess. Right now I've got to talk to Philip. I love you both very much.” She embraced her father and then turned to Danny, who pointed over her shoulder.

“I think your husband's getting jealous.”

Becky giggled. “Jealous of a runt like you? Not a chance.” She kissed him and whispered, “Think about what I've said.”

“Danny, you saw? He didn't even break a wineglass at the end.” Abe shook his head.

“That's understatement for you, Pop.”

There was food and a wedding cake, but nobody seemed very hungry, including Danny, who had skipped breakfast with thoughts of stuffing himself. He realized that nothing, not even a wedding, was powerful enough to make this group of people feel even slightly easy together.

At noon that dish Grace Turner, who'd not deigned to notice him, and not for his lack of trying, took her leave. Danny went to fetch his father. He didn't want to be here any longer, and God forbid they should be the last to go. The few seconds he'd spent chatting with Pickman about his future had been excruciating enough.

His father was standing with his nose pressed up against the glass of Cooper's floor-to-ceiling windows. He was gazing in rapturous wonder at the skyline.

“Come on, Pop.”

“Yeah, Danny,” his father murmured. “Look how beautiful the view is.”

Danny realized his father had never been in a skyscraper before. “You know what, Pop? Next week I'll
take you to the Empire State Building. It makes this view look like peanuts.”

“Yeah, son,” Abe nodded, too mesmerized to listen. “Look how tiny the cars are.” He shook his head, amazed, and the sudden sweep of his arms seemed to encompass all of Philip Cooper's abode. “This must be like what flying is, yeah, Danny?”

“For some people it is.”

It was just a bit after one o'clock in the afternoon when their taxi pulled up in front of Cherry Street. Danny paid the driver and let the cab go, thinking to walk home.

“You want to come up for some tea?” Abe asked.

“Thanks, Pop, but I've got things to do,” Danny lied. He felt like being alone.

“All right. Thanks for taking me, Danny.”

He kissed his father's cheek. “I'll see you in a couple of days.”

“Yeah.” Abe looked at his son. “It was a nice wedding, huh?”

“Sure.”

“I see now why we couldn't invite Shumel and my other friends,” Abe said to himself. “Go, then!” he told Danny. “I can climb the stairs myself.”

“Okay,” Danny said, but he still watched through the window until his father disappeared up the back stairs. He made sure the door was locked and walked off, smiling to himself. He could imagine the fanciful tale his father would tell Shumel: there would be yarmulkes, chupas, keening cantors and shattered wineglasses galore.

The day had warmed up some, so Danny decided to take a walk around the old neighborhood. He turned the corner onto Jackson, passed a couple of storefront businesses and stopped. The Palestine Relief Agency had taken the space that once housed the Eagle Pawn Shop. Today only Leo was inside working. Danny had known Leo
Haskell since he was a kid. He tapped on the window and Leo beckoned him in.

The office contained several battered desks and typewriters, boxes of Zionist literature and an ancient black candlestick telephone. Leo was maybe sixty-five. He had a bushy grey beard and was wearing a tattered sweater and a battered fedora. In hot weather the sweater would come off, but Danny had never seen him without his hat.

Leo did not stand up as Danny entered. His spine had been injured in a fall down a sweatshop freight elevator's shaft forty years ago. As Leo told it, they hadn't thought he would ever walk again, but he did, although with a pair of canes. He went to work for the relief agency and was still at it.

“Danny! Our flier is home, I see. Push aside all that crap and sit down and talk to me.”

Danny moved the stacks of newspapers and Zionist leaflets and took a seat. “How are you, Leo?”

“How should I be?”

These guys, Danny thought. “How come you moved from East Broadway?”

“Here the rent is cheaper. Also, we thought it would be better not to be so visible. Things are moving quickly over there, Danny. The great day is almost at hand.”

“That's good, Leo.” The old guy had been saying that for as long as he'd known him.

“So what are your plans?”

Danny shrugged. “I don't really know, Leo.” He unbuttoned his coat and took out a cigarette, then offered the pack to the older man.

“Don't mind if I do,” Leo said. “How old are you, Danny?” He found a match in his desk drawer and lit their smokes.

“I'll be twenty in July.”

“Twenty,” Leo chuckled, shaking his head. “And
you don't know what to do with your life in this glorious world? Didn't you train as a machinist?”

“Yeah.” Danny blew a smoke ring. “But that's not for me.” He watched Leo watching him, his hat brim pulled low so that just his two dark eyes and the smoldering Pall Mall were visible in that great expanse of beard. “What I really want to do,” Danny heard himself confessing, “is make a living as an aviator.”

“Nu?”

“It's not so easy, Leo,” Danny frowned. “After the First World War the returned pilots did okay barnstorming and giving people rides, but airplanes aren't that sort of novelty anymore. Sure, the big airlines are coming into their own, but all they're interested in are the multi-engine pilots, the guys who flew the bombers. A fighter-jock—that's me, Leo—hasn't got the training to fly a big plane. Oh, I could do it okay, but that doesn't do me much good.”

“I bet there's no kind of plane you couldn't fly.” Leo stoutly declared.

Danny grinned. “It's not like going to a Ford from a Chevy,” he cautioned. “It takes some getting used to, but sure, given a bit of time, there's no plane I can't fly.”

“You know, Danny, since you ain't got a job, maybe I got something for you.”

“I'm obliged to you, but I haven't got the patience to collect for charity.”

“I'm thinking maybe more of flying than collecting.”

Danny laughed out loud. “Flying! For you, Leo?”

“For Palestine.” The old man seemed not to mind in the least that Danny had laughed in his face. “If—I'm saying if—it turned out you were the pilot you claim to be, would you be willing to do it? It might mean leaving the country.”

Danny lit another cigarette and leaned back in his chair. What did he have to lose? The newspapers were full
of the renewed violence in Palestine despite the best efforts of the new United Nations. He'd missed the war, but maybe he could get a taste of combat there.

He had to chuckle at that. It sounded too farfetched even to make it between the covers of a
Tailspin Tommy
.

But what did he have to lose? He'd been spending his days sleeping late and smoking cigarettes, collecting his dole and borrowing from Becky—Becky! How it galled him that she would imagine he might consider working for her and that parody of a Jew, Carl Pickman.

“Leo, would this—job—pay something?”

“Maybe a little. Mainly you'd be paid in your own satisfaction at helping.”

Danny nodded. Wouldn't that be something? How their father would look up to him if he was instrumental in establishing a Jewish state. “My daughter, she's very wealthy,” Abe would tell people, “but my son—oy, there's a boy to make a father proud.” Even if that was a pipe dream, there was still the real possibility that Danny would once again get to fly.

“Leo, for old time's sake level with me. I really might get to be a pilot again?”

“If you want, I can arrange that you meet someone in a better position to say.”

Danny, chewing nervously on his bottom lip, nodded. “What have I got to lose? Okay, Leo.”

“How about Wednesday afternoon? Come at three o'clock.”

“It's okay by me, but what about the other guy? How can you be sure he's free?”

“Danny, you're a machinist and a trained pilot. He'll be free, don't worry.” Leo paused, looking troubled. “Boychic, I've known you ever since you were born. I even watched you one day right after your mother died. I ask you now not to mention this meeting we've planned to
anyone, including your father. I also ask that you use a different last name—”

“What? an alias?” Danny was enthralled. “How come?”

“I know you think I am just an old man spouting nonsense, but humor me. I will not tell this man your name, and neither should you. You'll understand better after the meeting, but until then, trust that I have your dear sister and your father in mind. We mustn't make them suffer for our activities.”

“Well, okay, sure.”

“I hope I haven't frightened you off.”

“Are you kidding, Leo?” Danny glowed. “I get an alias? That's great! Let's see, who should I be?”

“You'll be Danny Hill,” Leo said dryly.

“Swell. See you Wednesday.”

Abe Herodetzky was in the middle of retelling his story about Becky's wedding when the stranger came into the store. Abe was shocked. On a Wednesday afternoon around a quarter to three he rarely had a customer, and besides, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a customer he didn't know.

“Excuse me for disturbing you, gentlemen,” the stranger said in precise, clipped English. “I'm looking for Jackson Street.”

Abe heaved himself up out of his rocking chair to squint at the man. There was nothing all that unusual about him. He was wearing a nondescript blue suit and knitted wool tie; he had on a dark grey overcoat and no hat. He had blue eyes and dirty blond curly hair getting kind of thin on top. The premature baldness made him seem older than he was. Abe guessed that the man was in his early thirties. His accent combined with his diffident, ill-at-ease manner made him seem like a foreigner.

But he seemed familiar to Abe, pit-of-the-stomach familiar, and yet he was sure they had never met.

“You go out the door and make a left. Jackson is at
the corner. The street sign fell down. You'll see Blaustein's shoe repair, and next to that a laundry. That's Jackson.”

“Thank you,” the stranger said, and Abe nodded vaguely. He was so sure this was somebody from his past, but how could that be? This fellow was such a young man.

“Gentlemen,” the stranger addressed them all, and took his leave.

Abe was on the verge of saying something to the man, asking his name, but then he decided against it. What point? he thought. I'm getting old. Plenty of times my mind has played tricks on me already. Why should I make a fool of myself in front of everyone?

“So what else, Abe?” one of his friends asked. “What else?”

“Well.” Abe sat back down and began to rock. “You should have seen the splendid tallis my daughter gave her husband. From Jerusalem it came—”

“Abe?” Shumel asked. “You all right? You look funny.”

From Jerusalem—Abe felt confused and unsettled. Did the stranger and Palestine have some connection?

He cleared his throat. “From Jerusalem the tallis came, and it was silk, and its fringe was made of real gold.”

Herschel Kol stood on the sidewalk outside the little store and wondered why the man behind the counter seemed familiar. They'd certainly never met before, but there was something about him that struck a chord in his memory. He glanced at the window—Cherry Street Market. That wasn't much help. Below it A. something-or-other, & Son had once been painted in, but most of the lettering had worn away.

Herschel could have gone back and asked, but it was almost three o'clock and he didn't want to be late. He'd ordered his taxi driver to let him off several blocks away
from Jackson Street as a precaution; there was no need to advertise that he had business at the Palestine Agency. He'd been to the Jackson Street address before, but he'd been many places in and out of New York since his arrival months ago, and he still found himself getting lost.

Immediately on Herschel's arrival in America he got in touch with Rudolf Sonneborn, who had put together a network of sympathetic Jewish Americans. This network, the Institute, arranged for him to rent a rambling seven-room apartment on the Upper West Side near Columbia University. He was supplied with a staff of student volunteers to research what Palestine would need to set up an arms industry of its own. The information was all there; one could get it from magazines and library books and by writing to the Patent Office. The youngsters were hard workers, but they still needed to be supervised by someone with more experience in technical matters.