The Last Princess (31 page)

Shortly after the No Smoking sign was turned off, a clipped young Yankee voice came over the intercom. “This is Captain Mordecai Ben Levi speaking.”

It seemed an unlikely name, but in truth the captain had grown up in New England as Morton Benjamin and had changed his name when he had emigrated a few years before—against his family’s wishes—to join the Israeli air force in its struggle for the new nation.

“On behalf of El Al, I would like to welcome you aboard and apologize for the delay. If all goes according to schedule, and allowing for a fuel stop, we should arrive in Tel Aviv tomorrow morning about six a.m. local time. Shalom.”

After repeating the message in Hebrew and French, he switched off the intercom, unbuttoned his shirt at the neck, and relaxed behind the steering gear.

As the head stewardess came up behind him, he turned and asked in fluent Hebrew, “Well, Hava, how is everything up front?”

“Don’t ask,” she said wryly. “Nothing but complaints. Many of them are threatening never to fly El Al again. I overheard one lady say that it was ‘so typically Jewish.’”

Ben Levi frowned and said tightly, “I wish you’d told her it was ‘so typically Arab.’ It took them most of the night hours to check out that sabotage threat. They were damned decent to tip us off about a nonexistent bomb! Dirty bastards.”

Hava nodded sympathetically, then returned to the cabin, where the stewardesses had taken off their jackets and put on aprons to serve a light breakfast. They knew that there was nothing like a snack to soothe frayed nerves, and before the disgruntled passengers could say “Mazel tov,” the trays appeared in front of them.

Soon afterward, overhead lights were turned off, seats tilted back, and children and adults alike bedded down under blankets. Soon a light chorus of snores rose above the faint drone of the plane’s motors.

As the strains of the long delay were forgotten, even Harry found himself drifting off as the plane sped through the darkness. At sunrise, however, there was a rude awakening. The Hasidim had assembled for the minyan. They stood in the aisles, chanting and rocking back and forth as they began the morning prayer. All around, eyes opened and heads popped up.

Bells rang indignantly, and one of the Hadassah ladies almost hissed, “This is ridiculous! Can’t you do something to keep them quiet?”

Apologetically, the stewardesses shrugged. “I am sorry, madam. We have no right to stop them.”

“Well, at least they should be put in the back of the plane!”

“I’ll make that suggestion. Now, may I perhaps bring you a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, please—and two aspirin.”

Hers was not the worst difficulty. The minyan was stationed in front of the lavatories. One man in particular blocked the way. He made no attempt to move, even at the request of a woman whose pregnancy was so far advanced she looked about to deliver.

He continued to sway and chant. No earthly voice must come between him and his ritual. Angrily, the pregnant woman’s husband joined her and said menacingly, “My wife urgently needs to use the bathroom. Will you move, sir?”

But the man wouldn’t budge, nor would he reply. The husband was finally forced to steer the Hasid out of the way. The man continued his prayers, not missing a beat.

Harry observed the scene with growing fascination. From the moment he had entered the waiting room at the airport, he had been struck by the clash between East and West, the old customs and the new, even among the Jewish passengers. In some ways these different strains were intertwined and beholden one to another. He was determined to divine the nature of the ancient bond. It was for this reason that Israel drew him, to the source.

After a day and a night of what seemed an eternity, Captain Ben Levi’s voice finally crackled over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen … we are beginning our final descent into Tel Aviv. Please fasten your seat belts and extinguish all cigarettes. On behalf of the crew of El Al flight 638, I would like to thank you for your patience and wish you a joyous stay in Israel. Shalom.”

An “ahhhh” ran through the passengers at the thought of the Holy Land. Suddenly, without warning, several voices started to sing the Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. Other voices joined in.

Craning his neck, Harry caught his first glimpse of Israel’s shores, gleaming in the morning light, and a feeling of sudden joy suffused him. The fatigue, the inconvenience, the long wait—even parting from Lily—suddenly seemed insignificant. He was here at last!

The crowd pushed and jostled their way off the plane and then surged toward the luggage carts. The scene was overpoweringly emotional as families, friends, children, and young women cried and hugged, welcomed back their loved ones. As Harry patiently waited for his baggage to emerge, the first thrill of arrival had begun to fade. Suddenly he felt very tired. He didn’t have much hope that anyone would be there to meet him.

Then from behind him he heard a voice calling, “Harry! Harry!”

Whirling, he saw Valerie making her way through the crowd. It was good to see a familiar face.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he cried.

“I’m glad you finally made it. Christ! Talk about delays! What happened? You must be beat.”

“I certainly am. Do we have a car?”

“Outside. Everything is all arranged; you don’t have a thing to worry about.”

“Great. I think the effort of trying to hire a car and driver at this point would just about finish me off.”

“You’re going to love the villa I’ve found in Safed, or Tsefat as the Israelis call it. There’s plenty of room for all of us.”

“If you picked it out, Valerie, I’m sure that it will be fine.”

Suddenly a dark young Israeli materialized beside them. “Your bags have been taken care of, Mr. Kohle.”

“Harry, this is Yossi, our driver.” She added, “When the Jewish Agency here heard that the famous Harry Kohle was going to write a book set in Israel, they rolled out the red carpet. Be prepared. You’re going to be wined and dined.”

“I could look forward to that,” said Harry, pleased that anyone in Israel would want to make a fuss.

The main road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem led southeast through the mountains of Judea. To one side was the deep gorge that separated Israel from Jordan. On the horizon were the tower-crowned hills of Micph. The sight was as breathtaking as it was awesome: young trees, pine, eucalyptus, and cedar, had been planted among the ancient boulders.

In the growing glow of the morning sun, Harry could see burned-out trucks nestled among the rocks and trees—a jarring testimony to the thousands of brave men killed in the defense of besieged Jerusalem during the 1948 war of independence. This was the only monument these heroes had.

As they went through the Valley of Ajalon, where Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still, the highway divided. The road approaching the inn at Bab-el-Wed was open only to small vehicles. Buses and heavy trucks had to detour to the left.

As they took the narrower road upward, Harry caught his last glimpse of the Mediterranean. It seemed to him a passage back through the centuries as they made their way past Abu Ghosh with its once majestic Crusader church, near the site of the ancient Gibeonite town of Kiryath-Jearim; and then through the modern farming settlement of Kiryat Anavim.

Finally, they rounded a curve and there it was: Jerusalem.

“Pull over, Yossi,” Harry said suddenly. “I want to take a look.”

As Harry and Valerie walked together to the crest, Jerusalem stood like a jewel among the surrounding hills, golden as the sun. Harry knew that words would fail him if he tried to convey the myriad feelings the site inspired. No artist could do justice to this view, no poet could capture the image.

Far in the distance lay the old city. Above the ancient wall was the golden Dome of the Rock, the Moslem shrine. Harry could hear the muezzins calling from the minarets while the church bells of the basilica tolled somberly.

To one side lay the Mount of Olives, a gentle incline covered with ancient, twisted trees and beyond, in the distance, was the dusty white limestone line of the Judean hills.

How many millions of lives had been ground into that dust over the centuries? Harry couldn’t help but wonder.

The tinkling of a bell brought him out of his reverie. He turned to see an Arab boy leading his donkey down the hill behind them to cross the road.

Taking one last look, he savored these first impressions, committing them to memory. But as he turned away from the sight of the exalted place, his joy began to be tinged with anger and regret. Lily should have been here to share this moment with him.

An hour later, the Mercedes was gliding slowly through the streets toward the King David Hotel. It was magnificent, with high colonnaded arches, smooth stone walls and floors, all befitting the king for whom it was named. In the lobby there were huge urns of fresh flowers. Bunches of people conversed amicably together around low tables.

It was a strange irony that such an oasis of culture and civility could exist, when only twenty feet beyond, Jordanian snipers sat behind turrets above the old walled city with guns pointed toward the Israeli sector, ready to shoot on sight anyone attempting to enter the Damascus gate.

There had been no Jordan before 1918—only a sparse population of Bedouins. But after the First World War, Winston Churchill had sat—perhaps in this very spot—and decreed that Palestine was to have another Arab state.

If the stated aim of the Balfour Declaration, to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, ever became a reality, Churchill felt that a buffer state would be needed between the Jews and the Arabs.

In addition, he wanted to repay a favor to his friend Abdullah ibn Hussein for the aid he had given Britain during the war and thus had persuaded Parliament to bestow this strategic piece of real estate upon the Hussein family and allow them to establish a state and a monarchy where none had existed for centuries.

And so, Transjordan had come into existence, and instead of being a buffer, it was the bitterest enemy of the new state of Israel.

As the golden sun climbed to reach its zenith, Harry’s mind gradually drifted from the treacheries of twentieth-century politics to the Mosaic world of the first millennium. It was these thoughts he was entertaining when he saw the Wailing Wall for the first time. The Wall was not a place Harry could ever examine up close—it would be death for a Jew to approach it. But as he stared at it from a distance, it seemed to him that he could hear the prayers of the centuries.

He found himself softly repeating the prayer he had learned in that impeccably serene, sedate temple where his family had worshipped when he was a small boy, an echo from the past. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Praise be to His name, whose glorious kingdom is forever and ever. Amen.”

This wall, the last remnant of Herod’s Temple, had endured through the ages. It had stood through the long wars, the Diaspora, the cyclical destructions and rebuildings of the city—in short, millennia of upheaval. Harry trembled at the miracle of it all.

Perhaps he had dreamed of this all his life, without really knowing it. Perhaps the latent feelings of blood loyalty and a vague sense of heritage had driven him to begin
The Genesis
, but until this moment Harry had not truly appreciated what it meant to be a Jew.

And suddenly he felt a great sense of self-reproach—and tremendous, inexpressible sadness. How little he had given his children! They had been taught a basic code of ethics and morals, but they had been given no sense of the spiritual and religious. Was it because of that deprivation that his children seemed so strangely aimless? Did they perhaps need a spiritual reservoir to draw from, beyond their parents’ love?

Was it something Jeremy had longed for, however inarticulately? Harry felt a stab of pain as he reflected again that perhaps he was responsible for his boy’s death, yet not in the way he’d always assumed. And despite his own childhood training, Harry himself felt spiritually bereft. His own reservoir had run dry years ago.

Standing next to him, Valerie tried to divine the tumble of thoughts behind Harry’s troubled face. Spiritual insight was beyond her. She was a woman who lived for today, who would have scornfully dismissed the idea that there was more to life than what she could reach out and grab with her own two hands. But she was shrewd enough to sense that Harry had an extra dimension, one that was being strongly evoked by the dramatic setting of the ancient city of his forebears.

And so when he finally turned around to face her, a look of sadness in his eyes, Valerie said softly, “
The Genesis
can’t be written anywhere else but here in Israel, can it?”

Staring at her with wonder, he said, “You understand that, don’t you?” Then, with a touch of bitterness, he added, “If only Lily did.”

After he and Valerie had gone to their respective rooms, Harry napped for most of the afternoon while Valerie attended to various chores. They had arranged to meet in the dining room at seven o’clock, but Valerie was already seated before Harry arrived.

She glanced up and saw him framed in the doorway. She caught her breath at the sight of him. Valerie had never seen him in evening attire, but tonight he wore a white dinner jacket. With his dark hair and olive skin, he could have passed for an Israeli. He was certainly the most handsome man in the room.

And as he glimpsed her and strode across the room toward her, she felt a thrill of sexuality, remembering how he had felt against her naked, the power in his muscular, sensual body.

Her smile of greeting was demure, but as they ordered their drinks, she couldn’t help but think what a fool Lily had been to let Harry go halfway around the world without her. And for what? A charity ball. Clearly Lily didn’t appreciate the gravity of her situation. If, by her own admission, she and Harry hadn’t made love for such a long time, didn’t she understand how vulnerable he’d be, how susceptible he’d be to another woman’s charms?

The romantic aura of the city had already begun to work on Harry. It might not happen tonight—and Valerie had the luxury of time—but sooner or later they would become lovers again. And this time it was going to last. Valerie was sure.