Exodus

“Shalom, Ari!” Harriet Saltzman said, prancing from behind her desk with an agility that belied her years. She stood on her toes, put her arms around Ari’s neck, and kissed his cheek heartily. “Oh, what a job you did on them at Cyprus. You are a good boy.”

Kitty watched quietly in the doorway. The old woman turned to her.

“So this is Katherine Fremont. My child, you are very lovely.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Saltzman.”

“Don’t make with the ‘Mrs. Saltzman.’ Only Englishmen and Arabs call me that. It makes me feel old. Sit down, sit down. I’ll order tea. Or perhaps you would rather have coffee.”

“Tea is fine.”

“So you see, Ari … this is what an American girl looks like.” Harriet made a gesture of tribute to Kitty’s beauty with mischief twinkling in her eyes.

“I am certain that not all American girls are as pretty as Kitty …”

“Stop it, both of you. You are embarrassing me.”

“You girls don’t need me. I have a few things to do, so I’ll just beat it. Kitty, if I’m not back for you would you mind taking a taxi back to the hotel?”

“Go already,” the old woman said. “Kitty and I are going to have dinner together at my flat. Who needs you?”

Ari smiled and left.

“That’s a fine boy,” Harriet Saltzman said. “We have lots of good boys like Ari. They work too hard, they die too young.” She lit a cigarette and offered Kitty one. “And where do you hail from?”

“Indiana.”

“San Francisco, here.”

“It is a lovely city,” Kitty said. “I visited it once with my husband. I always hoped to go back someday.”

“I do too,” the old woman said. “It seems that I miss the States more every year. For fifteen years I have sworn I would go back for a while, but the work never seems to stop here. All these poor babies coming in. But I get homesick. Senility is creeping up on me, I guess.”

“Hardly.”

“It is good to be a Jew working for the rebirth of a Jewish nation but it is also a very good thing to be an American and don’t you ever forget that, young lady. Ever since the Exodus incident started I’ve been very anxious to meet you, Katherine Fremont, and I must say I am tremendously surprised and I don’t surprise easily.”

“I am afraid that the reports overromanticized me.”

Behind Harriet Saltzman’s disarming friendliness functioned a shrewd brain, and even though Kitty was completely at ease she realized how carefully the old woman was estimating her. They sipped their tea and chatted, mostly about America. Harriet became nostalgic. “I go home next year. I will find an excuse. Maybe a fund-raising drive. We are always having fund-raising drives. Do you know that the American Jews give us more than all Americans give to the Red Cross? So why should I bore you with these things? So you want to go to work for us?”

“I am sorry that I don’t have my credentials with me.”

“You don’t need them. We know all about you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We have a half dozen reports already on file.”

“I don’t know whether to be pleased or offended.”

“Don’t be offended. It is the times. We must be sure of everyone. You will find that we are really a small community here and very little happens that doesn’t come back to these ancient ears. As a matter of fact I was reading our files on you before you came this afternoon and I was wondering why you have come to us.”

“I am a nurse and you need nurses.”

Harriet Saltzman shook her head. “Outsiders don’t come to us for that reason. There must be another one. Did you come to Palestine for Ari Ben Canaan?”

“No … of course I am fond of him.”

“A hundred women are fond of him. You happen to be the woman he is fond of.”

“I don’t think so, Harriet.”

“Well … I am glad, Katherine. It is a long way from Yad El to Indiana. He is a sabra and only another sabra could really understand him.”

“Sabra?”

“It is a term we use for the native born. A sabra is the

fruit of a wild cactus you will find all over Palestine. The sabra is hard on the outside … but inside, it is very tender and sweet.”

“That is a good description.”

“Ari and the other sabras have no conception of American life, just as you have no conception of what his life has been.

“Let me be very candid. When a gentile comes to us, he comes as a friend. You are not a friend, you are not one of us. You are a very beautiful American girl who is completely puzzled by these strange people called Jews. Now why are you here?”

“It’s not that mysterious. I am very fond of a young girl. She came over on the Exodus. We met earlier in Caraolos. I am afraid her attempts to reunite with her father may end very unhappily. If she is unable to find her father I want to adopt her and take her to America.”

“I see. Well, you are on the level. Let us talk turkey. There is an opening for a head nurse in one of our Youth Villages in the northern Galilee. It is a lovely place. The director is one of my oldest and dearest friends, Dr. Ernest Lieberman. The village is called Gan Dafna. We have four hundred children there and most of them are concentration-camp bred. They need help badly. I do hope you will take this assignment. The pay and the facilities are very good.”

“I … I … would like to know about …”

“Karen Hansen?”

“How did you know?”

“I told you we were a small community. Karen is at Gan Dafna.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Thank Ari. He is the one who arranged it all. Ari will take you up there. It is very close to his home.”

The old woman emptied her teacup and leaned back in her chair. “Could I give you one last piece of advice?”

“Of course.”

“I have been working with orphans since 1933. The attachment they form for Palestine may be something very difficult for you to understand. Once they have breathed the air of freedom … once they are filled with this patriotism it is extremely difficult for them to leave, and if and when they do most of them never become adjusted to living away from Palestine. Their devotion is a fierce thing. Americans take so many things about America for granted. Here, a person wakes up every morning in doubt and tension-not knowing if all he has slaved for will be taken from him. Their country is with them twenty-four hours a day. It is the focal point of their lives, the very meaning of their existence.”

“Are you trying to say I may not be able to persuade the girl to leave?”

“I am trying to make you aware that you are fighting tremendous odds.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

David Ben Ami entered. “Shalom, Harriet. Shalom, Kitty. Ari told me that I could find you here. Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, we’ve finished our business. I am sending Katherine to Gan Dafna.”

“Splendid. I thought that it would be a good idea to show Kitty around Mea Shearim when the Sabbath starts.”

“An excellent idea, David.”

“Then we had better get started. Will you come with us, Harriet?”

“Lug these old bones around? Not on your life. You have Katherine at my flat for dinner in two hours.”

Kitty stood up and shook hands with the old woman and thanked her and then turned to David. He stared at her.

“Is something wrong, David?” Kitty asked.

“I have never seen you dressed up. You look very beautiful.” He looked at himself awkwardly. “Perhaps I am not dressed well enough to walk around with you.”

“Nonsense. I was just trying to show off for my new boss.”

“Shalom, children. I will see you later.”

Kitty was pleased that David had come for her. She felt more comfortable around him than with any of the other Jews. They walked from the Zion Settlement Society and crossed to the Street of the Prophets. Kitty took his arm, but it seemed as though David was the one who was the sightseer. He was rediscovering everything about Jerusalem and he was as delighted as a child. “It is so good to be home again,” he said. “How do you like my city?”

“Are there words? It is overwhelming and a little frightening.”

“Yes, that is the way I have always felt about Jerusalem ever since I was a boy. It never fails to thrill me and to haunt me.”

“It was very kind of you to take time away from your family.”

“We are not all assembled yet. I have six brothers, you know. Most of them are in the Palmach. I am the baby of the family so there will be a reunion. All of us except one … I will have to see him alone later.”

“Is he ill?”

“He is a terrorist. He is with the Maccabees. My father

will not permit him to enter our house. He is with Ben Moshe, a leader of the Maccabees. Ben Moshe was once my professor at the Hebrew University.” David stopped and pointed to Mount Scopus beyond the Hadassah Medical Center and beyond the Valley of Kidron. “There is the university.”

“You miss it very much, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. Someday I will have the chance to go back.”

The froggy sound of a horn blasted as it turned dusk.

“Sabbath! Sabbath!” a call went up along the streets.

All over Jerusalem the sound of the ancient horn could be heard. David put on a small skull cap and led Kitty to the street of Mea Shearim-the Hundred Gates of the ultra-Orthodox.

“Here in Mea Shearim you will be able to look into the synagogues and see the men pray in many different ways. Some of the Yemenites pray with a swaying motion as though they were riding on a camel. This was their way of getting even, as Jews were not allowed to ride camels because it would make their heads higher than a Moslem’s.”

“I am impressed.”

“Take the descendants of Spanish Jews… . During the Inquisition they were forced to convert to Catholicism on pain of death. They said their Latin prayers aloud but at the end of each sentence they whispered a Hebrew prayer under their breaths. They still pray in silence at the end of each sentence.”

Kitty was speechless when they turned into Mea Shearim. The street comprised connected two-story stone dwellings, all displaying iron grillwork on their balconies.

The men were bearded and wore side curls and fur-brimmed hats and long black satin coats. There were Yemenites in Arabic dress and Kurds and Bokharans and Persians in riotous-colored silks. Everyone walked from the ritual bath with a quick-paced bobbing motion, as though swaying in prayer.

In a few moments the street emptied into the synagogues, small rooms for the most part and several on each block. There were congregations from Italy and Afghanistan and Poland and Hungary and Morocco. The Mea Shearim was filled with the chanting of prayers and Sabbath songs and weeping voices of anguished Hasidim who whipped themselves into a furor. Women were not permitted to enter rooms of prayer, so David and Kitty had to content themselves with peeking through iron-grilled windows.

What strange rooms-what strange people. Kitty watched near-hysterical men cluster about the Sefer Torah wailing and moaning. She saw the angelic faces of Yemenites who

sat cross-legged on pillows, softly praying. She saw old men weaving back and forth emitting a stream of Hebrew in monotone read from decrepit prayer books: How different and how far away they all were from the handsome men and women of Tel Aviv.

“We have all kinds of Jews,” David Ben Ami said. “I wanted to bring you here because I know that Ari wouldn’t. He and many of the sabras despise them. They do not farm the land, they do not bear arms. They shove an ancient brand of Judaism down our throats. They are a force of reaction against what we are trying to do. Yet, when one lives in Jerusalem as I have, we learn to tolerate them and even appreciate the horrible things in the past that could drive men to such fanaticism.”

Ari Ben Canaan waited near the Greek Church in the Russian compound. It turned dark. Bar Israel appeared from nowhere. Ari followed the contact man into an alley where a taxi waited. They got in and Bar Israel produced a large black handkerchief.

“Must I submit to this?”

“I trust you, Ari, but orders are orders.”

The blindfold was tied over Ari’s eyes and Ari was made to lie on the floor and was covered by a blanket. For a long twenty minutes the taxi moved in zigzags and circuitous routes to confuse Ari, then headed toward the Katamon district near the former German colony. The taxi stopped. Ari was quickly led into a house and into a room and was told he could remove the kerchief.

The room was bare except for a single chair, a single table which held a single flickering candle and a bottle of brandy and two glasses. It took a full moment for Ari’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. His uncle, Akiva, stood opposite him by the table. Akiva’s beard and his hair had turned snow white. He was wrinkled and bent. Ari walked to him very slowly and stopped before him.

“Hello, Uncle,” he said.

“Ari, my boy.”

The two men embraced, and the older man had to fight back choking emotion. Akiva lifted the candle and held it close to Ari’s face and he smiled. “You are looking well, Ari It was a good job you did in Cyprus.”

“Thank you.”

“You came with a girl, I hear.”

“An American woman who helped us. She is not a friend, really. How are you feeling, Uncle?”

Akiva shrugged. “As well as I can be expected to feel living in the underground. It has been too long since I have

seen you, Ari … too long. Over two years now. It was nice when Jordana was studying at the university. I saw her once each week. She must be nearly twenty now. How is she? Does she still care for that boy?”

“David Ben Ami. Yes, they are very much in love. David was with me at Cyprus. He is one of our most promising young people.”

“His brother is a Maccabee, you know. Ben Moshe used to teach him at the university. Perhaps I can meet him some-ay.”

“Of course.”

“I hear Jordana is in the Palmach.”

“Yes, she is in charge of training the children at Gan Dafna and she works on the mobile radio when it transmits from our area.”

“She must be around my kibbutz then. She must see a lot of Ein Or.”

“Yes.”

“Does she … does she ever say how it looks?”

“It is always beautiful at Ein Or.”

“Perhaps I can see it one day again.” Akiva sat down at the table and poured two brandies with an unsteady hand. Ari took a glass and they touched them. “Le chaim,” he said.

“I was with Avidan yesterday, Uncle. He showed me the British battle order. Have your people seen it?”

“We have friends in British Intelligence.”

Akiva stood up and began to pace the room slowly. “Haven-Hurst means to wipe out my organization. The British are dedicated to the destruction of the Maccabees. They torture our prisoners, they hang us, they have exiled our entire command. It is not bad enough that the Maccabees are the only ones with the courage to fight the British, we must also fight the betrayers among our own people. Oh, yes, Ari … we know the Haganah has been turning us in.”

“That is not true,” Ari gasped.

“It is true!”

“No! Just today at Yishuv Central, Haven-Hurst demanded that the Jews destroy the Maccabees and they again refused.”

Akiva’s pacing quickened and his anger rose. “Where do you think the British get their information if not from the Haganah? Those cowards at Yishuv Central let the Maccabees do the bleeding and the dying. Those cowards betray and betray. Cleverly, yes! But they betray! Betray! Betray!”

“I won’t listen to this, Uncle. Most of us in the Haganah and the Palmach are dying to fight. They restrain us until we burst, but we cannot destroy everything that has been built.”

“Say it! We destroy!”

Ari gritted his teeth and held his tongue. The old man

ranted, then suddenly he stopped and flopped his arms to his sides. “I am a master at creating arguments when I don’t mean to.”

“It is all right, Uncle.”

“I am sorry, Ari… here, have some more brandy, please.”

“No, thank you.”

Akiva turned his back and murmured, “How is my brother?”

“He was well when I saw him last. He will be going to London to join the conferences.”

“Yes, dear Barak. He will talk. He will talk to the end.” Akiva wetted his lips and hesitated. “Does he know that you and Jordana and Sarah see me?”

“I think so.”

Akiva faced his nephew. His face reflected the sorrow within him. “Does he … does he ever ask about me?”

“No.”

Akiva gave a hurt little laugh and sank into the chair and poured more brandy for himself. “How strange things are. I was always the one who angered and Barak was always the one who forgave. Ari… I am getting very tired. A year, another year, I don’t know how long it will be. Nothing can ever undo the hurt that we have brought to each other. But … he must find it in his heart to break this silence. Ari, he must forgive me for the sake of our father.”

CHAPTER THREE: A hundred church bells from the Old City and the Valley of Kidron and the Mount of Olives and Mount Zion pealed in chorus to the YMCA carillon. It was Sunday in Jerusalem, the Christian Sabbath.

David Ben Ami took Kitty into the Old City through the ornate Damascus Gate and they walked along the Via Dolorosa-the Way of the Cross-to Stephen’s Gate which looked over the Kidron Valley and the tombs of Zacharias and Absalom and Mary and to the Mount of Olives, the scene of the Ascension.

They walked through the narrow streets, through the Arab bazaar and the tiny shops and the scenes of wild bartering. At the Dome of the Rock, the Mosque of Omar, a thousand pairs of shoes covered the steps. Ancient, bearded Jews stood and wept before the Wailing Wall of their great temple.

How strange this place is, again Kitty Fremont mused. Here, so far away in these barren hills, the merging point of a hundred civilizations in its thousands of years. Of all the earth, why this place, this street, this wall, this church? Romans and Crusaders and Greeks and Turks and Arabs and

Assyrians and Babylonians and British in the city of the maligned Hebrews. It is holy, it is sacred, it is damned. Everything strong and everything weak, all that is good in man and all that is evil in him are personified. Calvary and Geth-semane, The room of the Last Supper. The last supper of Jesus, a Jewish Passover Seder.

David took Kitty to the Holy Sepulcher, the site of the crucifixion and the tiny chapel lit with ornate hanging lamps and perpetually burning candles over the marble tomb of Jesus Christ. Kitty knelt beside the tomb and kissed it as it had been kissed thin by a million pilgrims.

The next morning Ari and Kitty left Jerusalem and continued northward into the Galilee. They drove through the timeless Arab villages into the fertile carpet of the Jezreel Valley, which the Jews had turned from swamp into the finest farmland in the Middle East. As the road wound out of the Jezreel toward Nazareth again, they moved backwards in time. On one side of the hill the lush lands of the Jezreel and on the other, the sunbaked, dried-out, barren fields of the Arabs. Nazareth was much as Jesus must have found it in His youth.

Ari parked in the center of town. He brushed off a group of Arab urchins, but one child persisted.

“Guide?”

“No.”

“Souvenirs? I got wood from the cross, cloth from the robe.”

“Get lost.”

“Dirty pictures?”

Ari tried to pass the boy but he clung on and grabbed Ari by the pants leg. “Maybe you like my sister? She is a virgin.”

Ari flipped the boy a coin. “Guard the car with your life.”

Nazareth stank. The streets were littered with dung and blind beggars made wretched noises and barefoot, ragged, filthy children were underfoot. Flies were everywhere. Kitty held Ari’s arm tightly as they wound through the bazaar and to a place alleged to be Mary’s kitchen and Joseph’s carpenter shop.

Kitty was baffled as they drove from Nazareth: it was a dreadful place.

“At least the Arabs are friendly,” Ari said. “They are Christians.”

“They are Christians who need a bath.”

They stopped once more at Kafr Kanna at the church where Christ performed His first miracle of changing water to wine. It was set in a pretty and timeless Arab village.

Kitty was trying to digest all that she had seen in the past few days. It was such a small land but every inch held ghosts of blood or glory. At certain moments the very sacredness of it was gripping; at other moments exaltation turned to revulsion. Some of the holy places struck her speechless with awe and others left her with the cold suspicion of one watching a shell game in a carnival. The wailing Jews of Mea Shearim and the burning refinery. The aggressive sabras of Tel Aviv and the farmers of the Jezreel. The old and the new jammed together. There were paradoxes and contradictions at every turn.

It was very late afternoon when Ari turned into the gates of Yad El. He stopped before a flower-bedecked cottage.

“Ari, how lovely it is,” Kitty said.

The cottage door opened and Sarah Ben Canaan ran from it. “Ari! Ari!” She was swept into his arms.

“Shalom, ema.”

“Ari, Ari, Ari…”

“Now don’t cry, ema … shhhh, don’t cry, don’t cry.”

Kitty saw the massive Barak Ben Canaan rush out and throw his arms about his son.

“Shalom, abba, shalom.”

The old giant clung to his son and slapped his back again and again, repeating, “You look good, Ari, you look good.”

Sarah studied her son’s face. “He is tired. Can’t you see how tired he is, Barak?”

“I’m fine, ema. I have company. I want you to meet Mrs. Katherine Fremont. She is going to work at Gan Dafna tomorrow.”

“So you are Katherine Fremont,” Barak said, taking her hand in his two giant paws. “Welcome to Yad El.”

“Ari, you’re such a fool,” his mother said. “Why didn’t you telephone and say you were bringing Mrs. Fremont? Come in, come in … you’ll take a shower, you’ll change your clothes, I’ll make a little to eat and you’ll feel better. You’re such a fool, Ari.” Sarah put her arm around Kitty’s waist and led her toward the cottage. “Barak! Bring Mrs. Fremont’s luggage.”

Jordana Ben Canaan stood before the newly arrived Exodus children in the outdoor theater. She was tall and straight, with a statuesque carriage and long shapely legs. Jordana, with red hair hanging free below her shoulders, had a striking and classic beauty. She was nineteen years of age and had been in the Palmach since leaving the university. The Palmach assigned Jordana to Gan Dafna to head the Gadna

unit which gave military training to all children in the village over fourteen years. Gan Dafna was also one of the prime places for biding arms and smuggling them to the Huleh settlements. Jordana also worked on the mobile Voice of Israel secret radio when it transmitted in the Huleh. Jordana lived at Gan Dafna, right in her office.

“I am Jordana Ben Canaan,” she said to the Exodus children. “I am your Gadna commander. In the next weeks you will learn spying, messenger work, arms cleaning and firing, stick fighting, and we will have several cross-country hikes. You are in Palestine now and never again do you have to lower your head or know fear for being a Jew. We are going to work very hard, for Eretz Israel needs you. Tomorrow we will have our first hike. We will go over the hills north to Tel Hai. My father came to Palestine through Tef Hai nearly sixty years ago. It is the place where our great hero, Joseph Trumpledor died. Trumpledor is buried there, and a great stone lion near the graveyard looks down upon the Huleh just as the statue of Dafna looks upon the Huleh. On the lion are written the words … ‘It is good to die for one’s country.’ I might add to that: it is good to have a country to die for.”

As Jordana entered the administration building later she was called to the telephone. She lifted the receiver, “Shalom, Jordana here.”

“Shalom! This is emaf Ari is home!”

“Ari!”

Jordana ran from her office to the stable. She mounted her father’s white Arab stallion and spurred him through the gates of Gan Dafna. She galloped bareback down the road toward the village of’Abu Yesha with her scarlet hair waving in the wind behind her.

She galloped full speed into the main street of the Arab village, sending a dozen people scurrying for safety. The men at the coffeehouse turned and sneered. What a disrespectful prostitute this redheaded bitch was to dare ride through their streets wearing shorts! It was fortunate for her that she was the daughter of Barak and the sister of Ari!

Ari took Kitty’s hand and led her through the door. “Come along,” he said, “I want to show you some of the farm before it turns dark.”

“Did you have enough to eat, Mrs, Fremont?”

“I’m ready to burst.”

“And the room is comfortable?”

“I’m just fine, Mrs. Ben Canaan.”

“Well, don’t be too long, dinner will be ready when Jordana gets down from Gan Dafna.” Sarah and Barak stared

after them, then looked at each other. “She is a beautiful woman. But for our Ari?”

“Stop being a Yiddische momma. Don’t go making a shiddoch for Ari,” Barak said.

“What are you talking, Barak? Can’t you see the way he looks at her? Don’t you know your own son yet? He is so tired.”

Ari and Kitty walked through Sarah’s garden on the side of the house to the low rail fence. Ari put his foot up on the rail and looked out over the fields of the moshav. The water sprinklers were whirling a cooling spray and the orchard trembled lightly in the evening breeze. The air was scented with the fragrance of Sarah’s winter roses. Kitty watched Ari as he looked out at his land. For the first time since she had known Ari Ben Canaan he seemed to be at peace. They are rare moments for him, Kitty thought, remembering that brief period of peace in Jerusalem.

“Not much like your Indiana, I’m afraid,” Ari said.

“It will do.”

“Well … you didn’t have to build Indiana out of a swamp.” Ari wanted to say much more to Kitty. He wanted to talk about how much he longed to be able to come home and work on his land. He wanted to beg her to understand what it was for his people to own land like this.

Kitty was leaning over the fence gazing at the beauty and proud achievement that Yad El represented. She looked radiant. Ari was filled with a desire to take her in his arms and hold her, but he did nothing and said nothing. They turned away together and walked along the fence until they came to the barn buildings, where the cackle of chickens and the honk of a goose met their ears. He opened the gate. The hinge was broken.

“That needs fixing,” he said. “A lot of things need fixing. I’m away all the time and Jordana is gone too. My father is away at conferences so much. I’m afraid the Ben Canaan farm has become a village liability. The whole moshav has the responsibility. Someday we are all going to be home together … then you’ll really see something.” They stopped by a hogpen where a sow lay panting in the mud, as a dozen gluttonous pigs fought to get at her teats. “Zebras,” Ari said.

“If I wasn’t an old zebra expert I’d swear I was looking at pigs,” Kitty answered.

“Shhh … not so loud. There might be someone from the Land Fund eavesdropping. We aren’t supposed to raise … zebras … on Jewish national land. Up at Gan Dafna the children call them pelicans. At the kibbutz they are more realistic. They are spoken of as comrades.”

They walked beyond the barn, chicken house and machinery shed to the edge of the fields.

“You can see Gan Dafna from here.” Ari stood behind her and pointed to the hills near the Lebanese border.

“Those white houses?”

“No, that’s an Arab village called Abu Yesha. Now look to the right of it and farther up where those trees are, on the plateau.”

“Oh yes, I see it now. My, it’s really up in the air. What is that building behind it on top of the hill?”

“Fort Esther, a British border station. Come along. I have something else to show you.”

They walked through the fields as it began to turn dusk, and the sun played strange tricks of coloring on the hills. They came to a wooded area on the edge of the fields where a stream rushed past toward the Huleh Lake.

“Your colored people in America sing very pretty spirituals about this stream.”

“Is this the Jordan?”

“Yes.”

Ari moved close to Kitty and they looked solemnly at each other. “Do you like it? Do you like my parents?”

Kitty nodded. She waited for Ari to take her in his arms. His hands touched her shoulders.

“Ari! Ari! Ari!” a voice shouted from a distance. He released Kitty and spun around. A horse and rider were racing toward them, framed by the dying red sun. Soon they could make out the figure, the straight back, and the flaming hair.

“Jordana!”

She pulled the frothing horse to a halt, threw up both her arms and screamed for joy and leaped down on Ari so hard they both crashed to the ground. Jordana climbed on top of Ari and smothered his face with kisses.

“Cut it out,” he protested.

“Ari! I love you to pieces!”

Jordana began to tickle him and they rolled over wrestling. Ari was forced to pin her down to hold her still. Kitty watched with amusement. Suddenly Jordana saw her and her expression froze. Ari, remembering Kitty’s presence, smiled sheepishly and helped Jordana to her feet.

“My overwrought young sister. I think she mistook me for David Ben Ami.”

“Hello, Jordana,” Kitty said, “I feel as though I know you, from David …” She extended her hand.

“You are Katherine Fremont. I have heard of you, too.”

The handshake was cold and Kitty was puzzled. Jordana turned quickly and picked up the reins of her horse and led him back toward the house as Ari and Kitty followed.

“Did you see David?” Jordana turned and asked Ari.

“He is in Jerusalem for a few days. He told me to say he would phone you tonight and he will be here by the end of the week, unless you want to go to Jerusalem.”

“I can’t with those new children at Gan Dafna.”

Ari winked at Kitty. “Oh,” he continued to Jordana, “by the way, I saw Avidan in Tel Aviv. He did mention something or the other about … now let me see … yes, about transferring David to the Galilee Brigade at Ein Or.”

Jordana turned. Her blue eyes widened and for an instant she was unable to speak. “Ari, you mean it? You’re not teasing me!”

Ari shrugged. “Silly girl.”

“Oh, I hate you! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know it was that important.”

Jordana was about to jump on Ari and wrestle with him again, but Kitty’s presence obviously restrained her. “I am so happy,” she said.

Another dinner was forced upon Kitty, who did her best by it when it became apparent that refusal would come close to creating an international incident. When dinner was done Sarah brought out tables full of snacks for the company that would be arriving.

That evening almost everyone at Yad El came to the Ben Canaan home to welcome Ari and to satisfy curiosity about the American woman. There was, in discreet Hebrew, excited speculation. They were a rugged and friendly lot of people and they went out of their way to make Kitty feel like visiting nobility. Ari hovered near her during the evening with the intent of protecting her from a torrent of questions but marveled at the ease with which Kitty was able to handle the pressing group.

As the evening wore on Jordana became more obvious in the coldness she had shown Kitty earlier. She was hostile and Kitty knew it. She could almost read Jordana’s thoughts … “What kind of a woman are you who wants my brother?”

It was exactly what Jordana Ben Canaan was thinking as she watched Kitty perform perfectly, charming the curious farmers of Yad El. Kitty looked like all the soft, white, useless wives of English officers who spent their days at tea and gossip around the King David Hotel.

It was very late when the last guest left and Ari and Barak were alone and able to speak. They talked at length about the farm. It was running well despite their absences. The moshav saw to it that little was neglected during the protracted leaves of Ari, Jordana, and Barak.

Barak looked around the room for a cognac bottle with something left in it amid the shambles of the welcome-home

gathering. He poured his son a glass and one for himself. Both of them settled down and stretched their long legs out and relaxed.

“Well, what about your Mrs. Fremont? We are all bursting with curiosity.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. She is in Palestine in the interest of a girl who came over on the Exodus. I understand she is anxious to adopt the child later. We have become friends.”

“Nothing more?”

“Nothing.”

“I like her, Ari. I like her very much, but she is not our kind. Did you see Avidan in Tel Aviv?”

“Yes. I will be staying in the Huleh Palmach at Ein Or most likely. He wants to do an assessment of the strength of each village.”

“That is good. You have been away so much it will do ema good to be able to fuss over you for a while.”

“What about you, Father?”

Barak scratched his red beard and sipped his cognac. “Avidan has asked me to go to London for the conferences.”

“I imagined he would.”

“Of course we must keep stalling and fighting to gain a political victory. The Yishuv can’t take a military showdown, so I’ll go to London and add my bit. I hate to say it but I am finally coming to the conclusion that the British are going to sell us out completely.”

Ari arose and began pacing the room. He was almost sorry that Avidan hadn’t sent him away on another assignment. At least when he was working the clock around to complete a mission he did not have time to think of the realities ready to crush the Yishuv.

“Son, you had better go to Abu Yesha and see Taha.”

“I was surprised he wasn’t here tonight. Is something wrong?”

“Just what is wrong with the whole country. We have lived in peace with the people of Abu Yesha for twenty years. Kammal was my friend for a half a century. Now … there is a coldness. We know them all by first names, we have visited their homes, and they have attended our schools. We have celebrated weddings together. Ari, they are our friends. Whatever is wrong must be righted.”

“I will see him tomorrow after I take Mrs. Fremont to Gan Dafna.”

Ari leaned against the bookcases filled with classics in Hebrew, English, French, German, and Russian. He ran his fingers over them a moment and hesitated, then spun around and faced Barak. “I saw Akiva in Jerusalem.”

Barak stiffened as though he had been struck. In reflex his lips parted for an instant, but he stopped the words that would have asked how his brother was. “We will not discuss him under my roof,” Barak said softly.

“He has grown old. He cannot live too much longer. He begs for you to make peace with him in the name of your father.”

“I do not want to hear it!” Barak cried with a quiver in his voice.

“Isn’t fifteen years of silence long enough?”

Barak stood up to his towering height and looked into the eyes of his son. “He turned Jew against Jew. Now his Maccabees are turning the people of Abu Yesha against us. God may forgive him but I never will … never.”

“Please listen to me!”

“Good night, Ari.”

The next morning Kitty said good-by to the Ben Canaan family and Ari drove her from Yad El to the mountain road leading to Gan Dafna. At Abu Yesha, Ari stopped for a moment to have someone inform Taha he would be back in an hour or so.

As their car moved high into the hills Kitty grew more and more eager to see Karen, but at the same time she was apprehensive about Gan Dafna. Was Jordana Ben Canaan playing the role of a jealous sister or was she the forerunner of a kind of people who would be hostile because of their differences? Harriet Saltzman had warned her she was a stranger with no business in Palestine. Everyone and everything seemed to point out this difference. Jordana unsettled her. Kitty had tried to be sociable to everyone but perhaps underneath she was drawing lines and too thinly disguising the fact. I am what I am, Kitty thought, and I come from a place where people are judged for what they are.

As they drove into isolation she felt alone and glum.

“I must leave right away,” Ari said.

“Will we be seeing each other?” Kitty asked.

“From time to time. Do you want to see me, Kitty?”

“Yes.”

“I will try then.”

They turned the last corner and the plateau of Gan Dafna spread before them. Dr. Lieberman, the village orchestra, the staff and faculty, and the fifty children from the Exodus were all clustered around the bronze statue of Dafna on the center green. There was a warm and spontaneous welcome for Kitty Fremont, and in that moment her fears vanished. Karen rushed up to her and hugged her and handed her a bouquet

of winter roses. Then Kitty was engulfed by “her” Exodus children. She looked over her shoulder long enough to see Ari disappear.

When the welcoming ceremony was over Dr. Lieberman and Karen walked with Kitty into a tree-studded lane holding the neat little two-and three-room cottages of the staff. They came to a halt halfway down the dirt, road before a white stucco house which was deluged in blooms.

Karen ran up on the porch and opened the door and held her breath as Kitty walked in slowly. The combination living room and bedroom was simple but tasteful. The draperies and the spread over the couch-bed were of the thick Negev linen weave and the room was almost buried under fresh-cut flowers. A paper cutout was strung from one side to the other: “shalom kitty,” it read, and it was from her children of the Exodus. Karen ran to the window and pulled the draperies back and revealed a panoramic view of the valley floor two thousand feet below. There was another small room, a study, and a pullman kitchen and bath. Everything had been prepared beautifully. Kitty broke into a smile.

“Shoo, shoo, shoo,” Dr. Lieberman said, whisking Karen out of the door. “You will see Mrs. Fremont later … shoo, shoo.”

“Good-by, Kitty.”

“Good-by, dear.”

“You like it?” Dr. Lieberman asked.

“I will be very comfortable here.”

Dr. Lieberman sat on the edge of the couch. “When your children from the Exodus heard you were coming to Gan Dafna they worked day and night. They painted the cottage, they made the drapes. They brought in plants … all the plants in Gan Dafna are on your lawn. They made a big fuss. They love you very much.”

Kitty was very touched. “I don’t know why they should.”

“Children are instinctive about knowing who their friends are. You would like to see Gan Dafna now?”

“Yes, I’d love to.”

Kitty stood a head taller than Dr. Lieberman. They strolled back toward the administration buildings. He walked with his hands alternately clasped behind him and patting his pockets, searching for matches to light his pipe.

“I came from Germany in 1933. I guess I knew quite early what was going to happen. My wife passed away shortly after we arrived. I taught humanities at the university until 1940 when Harriet Saltzman asked me to come up here and found a Youth Aliyah village. Actually, I had been longing to do just that for many years. This entire plateau was given to us by the late muktar of Abu Yesha, a most generous man.

If only our relations could be a model for all Jews and Arabs… Do you have a match?”

“No, I’m sorry, not with me.”

“Never mind, I smoke too much.”

They came to the center green where the view of the Huleh Valley was the best. “Our fields are down on the floor of the valley. The land was given to us by the Yad El moshav.”

They stopped before the statue. “This is Dafna. She was a girl from Yad El who died in the Haganah. The sweetheart of Ari Ben Canaan. Our village is named for her.”

Kitty felt a flash of-yes, jealousy. The power of Dafna was there even in sculpture. Kitty could see in the bronze that rugged earthiness of a Jordana Ben Canaan and the other farm girls who were in the Ben Canaan home last night.

Dr. Lieberman waved both hands. “In all directions we are surrounded by history. Across the valley you see Mount Hermon and near it is the site of ancient Dan. I could go on for an hour … it is filled with the past.” The little hunchback looked fondly around at bis creation and took Kitty’s arm and led her on.

“We Jews have created a strange civilization in Palestine. In every other place in the world the culture of its people has almost always come from the large cities. Here, it is just the reverse. The eternal longing of the Jewish people to own land is so great that this is where our new heritage comes from. Our music, our poetry, our art, our scholars and our soldiers came from the kibbutz and the moshav. See these children’s cottages?”

“Yes.”

“You will notice how all windows face the fields of the valley so their land will be the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing they see at night. Half of the schooling here is in agriculture. From this village, groups have gone out and started or joined in four new kibbutzim. We are self-sustaining in food. We own our own dairy and poultry and cattle. We even weave much of our own cloth. We make our own furniture and we repair our farm machinery in our own shops. All this is done by the children and they govern themselves and very well, too.”

They reached the far end of the green. Just before the administration building the beautiful lawn was abruptly broken by a long trench that circled the entire area. Kitty looked around and sighted more trenches and a bomb shelter.

“It is very ugly,” Dr. Lieberman said, “and there is too much worship of fighters among our children. I am afraid that condition will last until we win our independence and can base existence on something more human than arms.”

They walked along the trench. Kitty became intrigued by

an odd phenomenon. The trench works ran past a few scraggly trees. One of the trenches had been dug close to the root system of one of the trees and the roots were bared. The trench revealed layers of solid stone under the topsoil. Sandwiched between the rock there were thin layers of earth, some only a few inches thick. The tree was stunted from trying to grow in such ground but the roots, fought a stubborn fight. They ran over and under and about the rock in thin veins, thickening wherever they found a little life-giving soil between the rock strata.

“Look how that tree fights to live,” Kitty said. “Look how it tries to dig its roots into rock.”

Dr. Lieberman observed thoughtfully for a moment. “That tree is the story of the Jews who have come back to Palestine,” he said.

Ari stood in the high-ceilinged living room of Taha, the muktar of Abu Yesha. The young Arab, his lifelong friend, nibbled on a piece of fruit from a large bowl and watched Ari begin pacing.

“There is enough double’ talk going on at the conferences in London,” Ari said. “I think that you and I can talk straight.”

Taha flipped the fruit down. “How can I explain it, Ari? Pressure is being put on me. I have resisted it.”

“Resisted it? Taha, you’re talking to Ari Ben Canaan.”

“Times are changing.”

“Now wait a minute. Our people have lived together through two sets of riots. You went to school in Yad El. You lived in my hoijie under the protection of my father.”

“Yes, I existed because of your benevolence. Now you ask my village to exist the same way. You arm yourselves. Are we not allowed to arm ourselves? Or don’t you trust us with guns as we have trusted you?”

“This isn’t even you talking.”

“I hope that I never live to see the day that you and I must fight, but you know that passiveness is a thing of the past for all of us.”

Ari spun around angrily. “Taha! What has gotten into you? All right, then. Maybe you’d better hear it again. These stone houses in your village were designed and built by us. Your children can read and write because of us. You have sewers because of us and your young don’t die before the age of six because of us. We taught you how to farm properly and live decently. We have brought you things that your own people would not give you in a thousand years. Your father knew this and he was big enough to admit that no one hates or exploits an Arab worse than another Arab. He died because 344

he knew your salvation was with the Jews and he was man enough to stand for it.”

Taha arose. “And will you guarantee me that the Maccabees will not come into Abu Yesha tonight and kill us?”

“Of course I can’t guarantee it but you know what the Maccabees stand for just as you know what the Mufti stands for.”

“I will never lift my hand against Yad El, Ari. You have my word.”

Ari left, knowing that Taha meant what he said, but Taha was not the man of the strength that his father, Kammal, had been. Even as they promised peace to each other a breach had come between Yad El and Abu Yesha, just as breaches were coming to all the Arab and Jewish villages that had lived together in peace.

Taha watched his friend leave the house and walk to the road near the stream and the mosque. He stood motionless long after Ari disappeared. Each day the pressure grew and there were even voices of dissent in his own village. He was told that he was an Arab and a Moslem and he had to choose his side. How could he turn on Ari and Barak Ben Canaan? Yet, how could he still the voices around him?

He was a brother of Ari. Or was he? This was the tormenting question. From childhood his father had groomed him to lead his village. He knew the Jews had built the great cities and the roads and the schools and they had redeemed the land and they were the enlightened ones. Was he really their equal? Or was he a second-class citizen in his own land, riding on coattails, picking up the crumbs, living in the shadows of Jewish achievement?

Yes, he had benefited from the Jews. His people had benefited more because his father had realized the Jews could give greater benefits than his own Arabs. Yet, was he a partner? Was his equality a real thing or merely a phrase? Was he being tolerated rather than accepted?

Was he really the brother of Ari Ben Canaan or the poor cousin? Taha asked himself this question more often each day. Each time the answer was more certain. He was a brother in name only.

What of this equality the Jews preached? Could he as an Arab ever declare that he had loved Jordana Ben Canaan quietly and with the heartache that comes with long silence? He had loved her since he had lived under their roof and she was but a child of thirteen.

How far did their equality extend? Would they ever accept Taha and Jordana as man and wife? Would all the democracy-preaching members of the moshav come to their Weddine?

What would happen then if Taha were to go to Jordana and tell her of his love? She would spit on him, of course.

In his heart he felt an inferiority and it tore him apart, despite the fact that the distinction was far less than that between a landowning effendi and the slave fellaheen.

He could not lift his hand against Ari and he could never declare his love for Jordana. He could not fight his friends nor could he resist the force around him which told him he was an Arab and an enemy of the Jew and he had to fight them whether it was right-or it was wrong.

CHAPTER FOUR: Dr. Ernest Lieberman, the funny little hunchback, was able to translate his tremendous love of people into a living thing at Gan Dafna. The atmosphere was as casual as a summer camp. The children were given complete freedom of movement and thought. School classes were held outdoors, and the children dressed in shorts and lay about on the grass so that even their academic study was close to nature.

Dr. Lieberman’s children had come from the stink pits of the earth, the ghetto and the concentration camp. Yet, there was never a serious disciplinary problem at Gan Dafna. Disobedience did not exist, thievery was unheard of, and promiscuity between sexes was rare. Gan Dafna was life itself to the children, and they governed and policed themselves with a pride and dignity that reflected their reaction to being loved.

The range of learning and thinking was vast at Gan Dafna; it was difficult to believe the participants were merely teenagers. The library ran from St. Thomas Aquinas to Freud. No book was barred, no subject seemed too broad. The children possessed a political awareness beyond their years.

The primary principle the staff and faculty was able to inculcate upon these children was that their lives had a purpose.

Gan Dafna had an international staff, with teachers from twenty-two countries ranging from Iranians to the rugged kibbutz-bred sabras. Kitty was the only gentile as well as the only American and this proved to be a paradox. She was looked upon with both reserve and affection. Her early fears of hostility proved unfounded. There was an air of intellectualism which seemed to make Gan Dafna more like a university than an orphanage. Kitty was welcomed as a part of a team whose prime concern was the welfare of the children. She became very friendly with many of the staff and was completely at ease in their company The problem of

the Jewishness of the village also proved smaller than she had expected. Judaism at Gan Dafna was founded upon a fierce kind of nationalism rather than upon any religious basis. There was no formal religious training or even a synagogue.

They managed to keep tension and fear out of Gan Dafna despite reports of growing violence all over Palestine. The village was physically isolated enough to form some shelter from the realities of the bloodshed. Yet, it was not completely free of the signs of danger. The border was above them. Fort Esther was always in sight. Trenches, shelters, arms, and military training were in evidence.

The medical department building was in the administration area on the edge of the center green. The building had a clinic and a well-equipped twenty-bed hospital and operating room. The doctor was shared with the Yad El moshav and came daily. There was a dentist and four trainee nurses under Kitty and a full-time psychiatrist.

Kitty ran her clinic and hospital with machinelike efficiency after completely overhauling the system. She put sick calls and hospital rounds and the dispensation of treatment on a rigid schedule. She demanded and received a respect for her position that created a ripple of talk in the village. She kept a discreet professional distance from her assistants and she refused to operate her section with the informality of the rest of the village. She discouraged the familiarity which most of the teachers encouraged. This was all strange to Gan Dafna. There was a reluctant admiration of her, for the medical section was the most efficient department the village had. In their desire to foster freedom the Jews often leaned too far back from the discipline that Kitty Fremont knew. She was not disliked for the way she ran her department. When Kitty took off her uniform she was the most sought-after companion in Gan Dafna.

If she was firm in running her section, she was the opposite when it came to “her” children. The fifty Exodus youngsters at Gan Dafna continued to keep their identification and Kitty Fremont was always to be identified with them. She was “Mother of the Exodus.” It seemed a natural step that she become personally involved in the cases of some of the more disturbed children from the Exodus. She volunteered to work with the psychiatrist in psychotherapy. With the disturbed children Kitty completely dropped her coldness and gave to them all the warmth she was capable of giving. Gan Dafna and Palestine had tremendous curative powers but the horrors of the past still brought on the nightmares, the insecurity, and the hostility that required patience and skill and love.

Once a week Kitty went down to Abu Yesha with the doctor to hold morning clinic for the Arabs. How pathetic the dirty little Arab children were beside the robust youngsters of Gan Dafna. How futile their lives seemed in contrast to the spirit of the Youth Aliyah village. There seemed to be no laughter or songs or games or purpose among the Arab children. It was a static existence-a new generation born on an eternal caravan in an endless desert. Her stomach turned over as she entered the one-room hovels shared with chickens, dogs, and donkeys. Eight or ten people on the same earth floor.

Yet Kitty could not dislike these people. They were heartwarming and gracious beyond their capacity. They too, longed for better things. She became friendly with Taha, the young muktar who was always present on clinic days. Many times Kitty felt that Taha wanted to speak to her about things other than the health problem of the village. She felt an urgency about him. But Taha was an Arab: a woman could only be confided in on certain matters and he never revealed his constant fears to her.

The days passed into the late winter of 1947.

Karen and Kitty had grown inseparably close. The young girl who had found some measure of happiness in the most abysmal places fairly bloomed at Gan Dafna. She had become overnight one of the most popular children in the village. Karen became more dependent on Kitty’s guidance through the complex stages of early maturity. Kitty was aware that each day at Gan Dafna would tend to draw Karen farther away from America. She kept America alive in the girl’s interest while the search for Karen’s father continued.

Dov Landau was a problem. Several times Kitty was tempted to step in between the boy and Karen-their relationship seemed to be deepening. But Kitty, recognizing the possibility of driving them closer together, stayed out of it. Karen’s devotion to the boy perplexed her, for Dov gave nothing in return. He was morose and withdrawn. He did talk a little more, but for practical purposes Karen was still the only one who could reach him.

Dov became obsessed with a desire to learn. His education had been almost nothing and now he seemed to want to try to make up for it with a passion. He was excused from both Gadna military training and agriculture. Dov crammed as much into himself as he could absorb. He read and studied day and night. He concentrated upon his natural gift of art with studies of anatomy and drawing and architecture and blueprinting. Occasionally a painting would furnish an escape valve and his drive would come out in effects that displayed his talent and energy. Sometimes he came near breaking through and joining into Gan Dafna society, only to withdraw again. He lived by himself, he engaged in no activities, and he saw only Karen outside classes.

Kitty took the problem to Dr. Lieberman. He had seen many boys and girls like Dov Landau. Dr. Lieberman had observed that Dov was an alert and intelligent human being who showed great talent. He felt any attempts to force attention on him would work the opposite way: so long as the boy remained harmless and grew no worse, he should be left alone.

As the weeks passed Kitty was disappointed that she did not hear from or see Ari. The statue of Dafna and the Yad El moshav below always seemed to remind her. From time to time when she had occasion to pass Yad El she dropped in on Sarah Ben Canaan, until the two women became quite friendly. Jordana learned of it and made no effort to disguise her dislike for Kitty. The beautiful young redheaded hellion made it a point to be rude whenever she spoke to Kitty.

One evening Kitty came to her cottage to find Jordana standing before the mirror, holding one of her cocktail dresses in front of her. Kitty’s sudden appearance did not bother Jordana. “It is pretty, if you like this sort of thing,” Jordana said hanging the dress back in the closet.

Kitty walked to the stove and put on some water for tea. “To what do I owe the honor of this call?”

Jordana continued to look about Kitty’s cottage, at the little touches of her femininity. “There are some Palmach troops training at the Ein Or kibbutz.”

“I’ve heard something about it,” Kitty said.

“We have a shortage of instructors. We have a shortage of everything, anyhow. I was asked to ask you if you would come to Ein Or once a week to give a course in first aid and field sanitation.”

Kitty pulled back the drapes and kicked off her shoes and settled back on the studio bed. “I would prefer not to do anything that would bring me into contact with troops.”

“Why not?” Jordana pressed.

“Well, I suppose there is no graceful way of refusing you, and I would like it better if the Palmach understood why.”

“What’s to understand?”

“My personal feelings. I don’t wish to become involved.”

Jordana laughed coldly. “I told them at Ein Or it would be a waste of time to speak to you.”

“Is it impossible for you to respect my feelings?”

“Mrs. Fremont, you can work anywhere in the world and

remain neutral. This is a strange place for you to come to work if you want to stay out of trouble. Why are you really here?”

Kitty sprang off the bed angrily. “None of your damned business!”

The teakettle whistled. Kitty snapped it off.

“I know why you are here. You want Ari.”

“You’re an insolent young lady and I think I’ve taken just about all I am going to from you.”

Jordana remained unmoved. “I’ve seen the way you looked at him.”

“If I wanted Ari, you would be the last thing in my way,”

“Tell yourself you don’t want him but don’t tell it to me. You are not Ari’s kind of woman. You don’t care for us.”

Kitty turned and lit a cigarette. Jordana came behind her,

“Dafna was Ari’s kind of woman. She understood him. No American woman ever will.”

Kitty turned around. “Because I don’t run around in shorts and hike up the sides of mountains and shoot cannons and sleep in ditches doesn’t make me one ounce less a woman than you. You or that precious statue. I know what’s the matter with you-you’re afraid of me.”

“That’s funny.”

“Don’t tell me what makes a woman-you don’t know, you aren’t one. You’re Tarzan’s mate and you behave as though you belong in a jungle. A brush and comb wouldn’t be a bad start at fixing what’s wrong with you.” Kitty pushed past Jordana and threw open her closet. “Take a good look. This is what women wear.”

Tears of anger welled in Jordana’s eyes.

“The next time you wish to see me you may come to my office,” Kitty said coldly. “I am not a kibbutznik and I like my privacy.”

Jordana slammed the door so hard it shook the cottage.

Karen came to Kitty’s office after the dinner sick call and flopped into a chair.

“Hi,” Kitty said. “How did it go today?”

Karen grabbed two imaginary cow teats and made a milking motion. “Weak hands. I am a lousy milker,” she opined with teenage sadness. “Kitty, I am truly brokenhearted. I must, must, must, talk to you.”

“Shoot.”

“Not now. We have a Gadna meeting. We are cleaning some new Hungarian rifles. What a mess!”

“The Hungarian rifles can wait a few minutes. What is troubling you, dear?”

“Yona, my roommate. Just when we are getting to be intimate friends. She’s going to join the Palmach next week.”

Kitty felt a stab of dismay. How much longer until Karen came to her and told her she was going to do the same thing? Kitty shoved her papers aside. “You know, Karen, I have been thinking that there is a real shortage of good nurses and medical aides … I mean, in the Palmach as well as in the settlements. You’ve had lots of experience working with the youngsters in the DP camps and I’ve taken on quite a crowd of the disturbed ones. Do you suppose it would make sense if I asked Dr. Lieberman to let you come to work with me and let me train you as my assistant?”

“Would it!” Karen broke into a broad grin.

“Fine. I’ll try to arrange it so you skip the agriculture work and report right to my office after school.”

Karen sobered. “Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem quite fair to the others.”

“As we say in American, they won’t be losing a farmer, they’ll be gaining a nurse.”

“Kitty, I have a terrible confession to make. Don’t tell the Youth Aliyah, the Zion Settlement Society, or the Central Kibbutz Movement but honest, I’m the worst farmer at Gan Dafna and I’d just love to be a nurse.”

Kitty got up and walked to Karen and put her arm about the girl’s shoulder. “Do you suppose that with Yona gone you would like to move into my cottage and live with me?”

The instantaneous look of happiness on Karen’s face was all the answer that Kitty needed.

Kitty left Dr. Lieberman’s cottage early to give Karen the good news. Dr. Lieberman had considered their duty to dispense love and not rules and decided the cause would not be hurt with one less farmer and one more nurse.

When she left Karen she crossed the center green and stopped before the statue of Dafna. She felt that she had hurt Dafna tonight, she had won a victory. With Karen near her she could keep the child from becoming an aggressive, angry sabra girl. It was good to live with a purpose, Kitty knew. But too much purpose could destroy womanliness. She had hit Jordana in a weak spot and she knew it. Since birth Jordana had been given a mission to carry out without question, at the price of her own personal happiness, career, and femininity. Jordana did not know how to compete with the elegant women coming into Palestine from the Continent and from America. She hated Kitty because she wanted to be more like Kitty and Kitty knew it.

“Kitty?” A voice called out in the darkness.

“Yes?”

“I hope I didn’t startle you.”

It was Ari. As he came near her she felt that same now-familiar sensation of helplessness.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get up to see you. Jordana gave you my messages?”

“Jordana? Yes, of course,” Kitty lied.

“How are you getting along?”

“Fine.”

“I came up to ask you if you would care to take the day off tomorrow. A Palmach group is going to climb Mount Tabor. It is something that should not be missed. Would you come with me?”

“Yes, I’d love to.”

CHAPTER FIVE: Ari and Kitty arrived at the kibbutz of Beth Alonim-the House of the Oaks-at the foot of Mount Tabor, shortly after dawn. It was the kibbutz which gave birth to the Palmach during the war and the place Ari had trained troops.

Tabor was odd: not high enough to be a real mountain but far too high to be a hill. It stood in the middle of flatlands arising suddenly in the shape of a thumb poking through the earth.

After breakfast at the kibbutz Ari rolled a pair of packs with rations, canteen, and blankets and drew a Sten gun from the arsenal. He planned to hike up ahead of the rest of the group during the morning hours when it was cool. The air was crisp and invigorating and Kitty was charged with the spirit of adventure. They passed through the Arab village of Dabburiya at the opposite base of Tabor from Beth Alonim and took up a narrow dirt path. Within moments they could see Nazareth in the hills several kilometers away. It stayed cool and their progress was fast, although Kitty realized her first view was deceptive. Tabor rose, to more than two thousand feet; it was going to be a long day. Dabburiya grew smaller and began to look quaint as they put distance between themselves and the village.

Suddenly Ari stopped, and tensed.

“What is it?”

“Goats. Can you smell them?”

Kitty sniffed. “No, I don’t smell anything.”

Ari’s eyes narrowed. He scanned the path ahead. It circled out of sight and there was a very gentle slope off to the blind side.

“Probably Bedouins. There was a report about them at the kibbutz. They must have moved in since yesterday. Come on.”

Around the turn they saw a dozen haired goatskin tents along the hillside and a flock of little black goats grazing around them. Two rifle-bearing nomads came up to them.

Ari spoke to them in Arabic, then followed them to the largest of the tents, which obviously belonged to the sheik. Kitty looked around. They seemed the dregs of humanity. The women were encased in black robes-and layers of dirt. She was not able to smell the goats but she was able to smell the women. Chains of Ottoman coins formed veils over their faces. The children wore dirty rags.

A grizzled individual emerged from the tent and exchanged greetings with Ari. They conversed a moment, then Ari whispered to Kitty. “We must go in or he will be insulted. Be a good girl and eat whatever he offers you. You can throw it up later.”

The inside of the tent stank even more. They sat down on goat-hair and sheep-wool rugs and exchanged amenities. The sheik was impressed that Kitty came from America and relayed the information that he once owned a photograph of Mrs. Roosevelt.

Courses of food came. A greasy lamb leg was thrust into Kitty’s hand together with marrow mixed with rice. Kitty nibbled, the sheik watched expectantly. She smiled weakly and nodded to convey how delicious it was. Unwashed fruits were served, and the meal was ended with thick, sick-eningly sweet coffee in cups so filthy they were crusted. The diners wiped hands on trousers and mouths with sleeves, and after a bit more conversation Ari begged leave.

They left the camp behind. Kitty emitted a long and loud sigh. “I feel sorry for them,” she said.

“Please don’t. They are quite sure they are the freest men on earth. Didn’t you ever see The Desert Song when you were a girl?”

“Yes, but now I know the composer never saw a Bedouin camp. What were you two men gabbing about?”

“I told him to behave tonight and not try to collect any rings and watches from the Palmach.”

“And what else?”

“He wanted to buy you. He offered me six camels.”

“Why, that old devil. What did you tell him?”

“I told him that anyone could see you were a ten-camel girl.” Ari glanced at the rising sun. “It’s going to get hot from now on. We’d better get out of these heavy clothes and pack them.”

Kitty wore a pair of the traditional blue shorts from the Gan Dafna stores.

“Damn, you look just like a sabra.”

They followed the trail which wove along the southern face of Tabor. Both of them perspired as the sun beat down; The trail broke in frequent places and they were forced to climb. Ari’s strong hands led Kitty up the steep inclines. By

late afternoon they had passed the two-thousand-foot mark.

The entire top of Tabor was a large, rounded plateau. The south edge of the plateau opened the entire Jezreel Valley to their eyes. It was a staggering sight. Kitty could follow the Jezreel, the square-cut fields, the splashes of green around the Jewish settlements, and the white clusters of Arab villages all the way to Mount Carmel and the Mediterranean. In the other direction was the Sea of Galilee, so that the entire width of Palestine was below them. Through field glasses Kitty followed Ari’s pointing out Ein Dor where Saul met the witch and the bald top of Mount Gilboa where Gideon was buried and Saul and Jonathan fell in battle to the Philistines.

“Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul…”

Kitty lowered the glasses. “Why Ari, you are poetic.”

“It is the altitude. Everything is so removed from up here. Look over there-Beth Shean Valley. Beth Shean tel holds the oldest civilized city in the world. David knows more about these than I do. There are hundreds of tels around Palestine. He says that if we were to start excavating them now our modern cities would be ruins by the time we are finished. You see, Palestine is the bridge of history here and you are standing on the center of the bridge. Tabor has been a battleground since men made axes out of stone. The Hebrews stood against the Romans here and between the Crusaders and the Arabs it changed hands fifty times. Deborah hid here with her army and swooped down on the Canaanites. The battleground of the ages … You know what we say? … that Moses should have walked the tribes for another forty years and found a decent place.”

They walked over the plateau through a pine forest with relics of Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, and Arab all around. Mosaics, pottery, a wall here, a stone there.

Two abbeys, one Greek Orthodox and one Roman Catholic, stood near the grounds believed to be the place Christ was transfigured and spoke to Moses and Elijah.

Beyond the forest they reached the highest point of Tabor. Ruins of a Crusader fort and Saracen castle occupied the site. They picked their way over the rubble and the walls until they had climbed the eastern rampart which hung over the mountain side and was called Wall of the East Winds. Here the Sea of Galilee came into full view with the Horns of Hattin where Saladin the Kurd demolished Crusader forces.

The wind blew through Kitty’s hair as she stood on the wall and the air began to cool again. They sat for over an

hour with Ari pointing out the countless points of Biblical history. Finally they retreated to that point on the edge of the forest where it met the castles, and changed back to their warmer clothing. Ari spread their blankets and Kitty stretched out and grunted with a weary happiness. “It has been a wonderful day, Ari, but I am going to ache for a week.”

Ari propped himself up on an elbow, watched her. Again he felt a desire for her but he held his silence.

By dusk, parties of threes and fours and fives began reaching the summit. There were dark and olive-skinned Orientals and Africans and there were blonds who had immigrated to Israel. There were many girls, most of them straight and high breasted. There were the sabras with their large mustaches and the stamp of aggressiveness. It was a reunion. Palmach groups had to train in small units in different kibbutzim to remain hidden. This was a chance for both friends from the city and from the same settlements to see each other again and for sweethearts to meet. The greetings were warm, with affectionate hugs and back slaps and kisses. They were a lively bunch of youngsters in their late teens and early twenties.

Joab Yarkoni and Zev Gilboa had come when they learned Kitty would be there, and she was delighted.

David and Jordana came also, and Jordana was provoked by David’s attention to Kitty, but she remained quiet to avoid creating a scene.

By dusk nearly two hundred of the young Palmach soldiers had gathered. A pit was dug near the castle wall, while some of them turned to gathering wood for an all-night fire. Three lambs were prepared and spitted for roasting. The sun plunged down behind the Jezreel Valley, the fire was lit with a single bursting blaze, and the lambs were placed over their pits and couples joined in a huge circle around the fire. Kitty, the visiting dignitary, was forced into the place of honor with Joab, Zev, and Ari around her.

Soon the plateau atop Mount Tabor rang with songs. They were the same songs that Kitty had heard the children sing at Gan Dafna. They told of the wonder of the water sprinklers that redeemed the land and they told of the beauty of the Galilee and Judea. They sang of how haunted and lovely was the Negev Desert and they sang the spirited marches of the old Guardsman and the Haganah and the Palmach. They sang a song that said that David the King still walked the land of Israel.

Joab sat cross-legged with his tambour before him. It was a clay drum with goatskin head. With his fingertips and the heels of his hand he beat a rhythm to a reed flute

playing an ancient Hebraic melody. Several of the Oriental girls danced in the same slow, swaying, sensuous gyrations that must have been danced in the palace of Solomon.

With each new song and each new dance the party quickened.

“Jordana!” someone called. “We want Jordana!”

She got into the ring and a cheer went up. An accordion played a Hungarian folk tune” and everyone clapped in beat and Jordana whirled around the edge of the ring pulling out partners for a wild czardas. One by one she danced her partners down, with her red hair flying wildly in her face, framed against the leaping fire. Faster the accordion played and faster the onlookers clapped until Jordana herself stopped in exhaustion.

A half dozen came to the center and started a hora, the dance of the Jewish peasants. The hora ring grew larger and larger until everyone was up and a second ring formed outside the first. Joab and Ari pulled Kitty into the circle. The circle moved in one direction, then stopped as the dancers made a sudden leap and changed directions.

They had been singing and dancing for four hours and there was no indication of slowing up. David and Jordana slipped away quietly to the Saracen castle and wandered through the rooms until the sounds of the music and the tambour nearly vanished. They came upon a tiny cell set in the Wall of the East Winds and now the sound of the wind from the Jezreel Valley was all that they could hear. David spread his blanket on the earth and they embraced and caressed and loved each other.

“David! David!” Jordana cried, “I love you so!”

The wind died and they could hear wild music …

“David … David … David …” she whispered over and over as her lips pressed his neck …

And David repeated her name over and over.

His hand felt for the smoothness of her body. She took the clothing from her to ea.se his way and they pressed against each other and she asked to be taken and they blended into one.

After their love, Jordana lay in his arms. His fingertips traced over her lips and her eyes and through her hair.

“Jordana.” His whisper thrilled her through her body and soul.

“Do you remember the first time, David?”

“Yes.”

“I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys… .” she whispered. “For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the

singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

It became so still that each could hear only the other’s uneven breathing and the other’s heart beating.

“Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. My beloved is mine and I am his. Oh, David … tell me, tell me.”

David whispered with his lips touching her ear, “Behold thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou has doves’ eyes within thy locks … thy lips are like a thread of scarlet …”

She squeezed his hand that rested upon her breast and he kissed her breast … “Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies… .”

And he kissed her lips … “And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those who are asleep to speak.”

David and Jordana fell into a bliss-filled sleep, locked tightly in each other’s arms.

At four o’clock in the morning the lamb was served, with hot Arabic coffee. Kitty was honored with the first cut. The fervor of song and dance had slowed a little; many of the couples lay in each other’s arms. The lamb tasted wonderful.

Joab played his tambour, and the reed flute behind him made a tune as ancient as the land itself. One of the girls who had been born in distant Yemen sang in a voice filled with the mystic and melancholy of the Hebrew, right from the pages of the Bible. Her haunting voice sang a Psalm of David.

Kitty Fremont looked at the faces in the dying firelight.

What kind of army was this? What kind of army without uniform or rank? What kind of army where the women, fought alongside their men with rifle and bayonet? Who were these young lions of Judea?

She looked at the face of Ari Ben Canaan and a chill passed through her body. An electrifying revelation bit her.

This was no army of mortals.

These were the ancient Hebrews! These were the faces of Dan and Reuben and Judah and Ephraim! These were Samsons and Deborahs and Joabs and Sauls.

It was the army of Israel, and no force on earth could stop them for the power of God was within them!

CHAPTER SIX

Chatham House

Institute Of International Relations

London

Cecil Bradshaw, the dumpy expert on the Middle East, had been studying the survey reports from a variety of sources. For three days he had been digesting the summaries. The Colonial Office, the Ministry and even Number 10 Downing Street were all bringing pressure on him. The Palestine mandate was in a muddle. A clean-cut new policy had to be formulated. Bradshaw was a man of thirty-seven years’ experience in the area. During that time he had gone through a hundred conferences with the Zionists and the Arabs. Bradshaw believed, as most of the officialdom believed, that Britain’s interests lay with the Arabs. Time and again he was able to cover up Arab blackmail and threats. This time they had gone completely wild. The current London Conferences were ending in a fiasco.

It is completely obvious that Ha] Amin el Husseini, the Mufti, is running the Palestine Higher Arab Committee from exile in Cairo. Our failure to prosecute the Mufti as a war criminal for fear of religious outbursts has now come back to haunt us. The Arab attitude has reached complete unreason. They refuse to sit at the same table with the Jews unless pre-imposed conditions are agreed upon.

Cecil Bradshaw had been at the San Remo Conference when the Middle East was divided between the British and French and he had been there when the Articles of Mandate were drawn and when the Balfour Declaration was issued. Bradshaw worked on Churchill’s group that took half the Palestine mandate and created the kingdom of Trans-Jordan. In all the years, in all the Mufti’s riots, they had never been up against a band of fighters in the class of the Maccabees. The Jewish terrorists fought with a fearsome conviction.

We have time and again demanded from the Yishuv Central and the Jewish community that they assist British authorities in stamping out the gangster elements who go under the name of the Maccabees. Whereas the Yishuv claims no authority over these people and they publicly condemn their actions it is known that a large segment of the

Jews secretly approve the gangster actions. We have received no cooperation in this matter. Maccabee activities have reached such proportion that we deem it necessary to evacuate all nonessential British personnel and families from Palestine.

Bradshaw read over the reports of the stepped-up terrorist raids which rocked the Holy Land from one end to another.

In addition to the costly gangster raids on the Haifa refinery which stopped production for two weeks, and the raid on the Lydda airdrome, which destroyed a squadron of fighter planes, ten major road ambushes and fifteen major raids on British installations have taken place. There is increasing evidence that the Haganah and its striking arm, the Palmach, is becoming restless and may even be partaking in some of the recent raids.

The leaky tubs, the floating slums of Aliyah Bet, brought loads of illegal immigrants into the shores of Palestine.

Despite increased naval patrol forces there has been a marked step-up in Aliyah Bet activity since the Exodus incident. The America, San Miguel, Ulloa, Abril, Susannah, and San Filipo have carried eight thousand illegals from European displaced-persons camps. We have reason to believe two other ships were successful in breaking the blockade and beached. Our embassies and consulates in the Mediterranean countries report that at least five more ships are being outfitted by Aliyah Bet to attempt immigrant runs on Palestine in the near future.

The British command had powerful forces in Palestine. Fifty-two vaunted Taggart forts spread an interlocking network over the tiny country. In addition, there were border forts such as Fort Esther and there was a regular police force in every town and there was the powerful Arab Legion from Trans-Jordan. Besides the Taggarts the British maintained large bases at Atlit in the Haifa area, the Schneller Barracks in Jerusalem, and the immense Sarafand camp outside Tel Aviv.

We have, in recent months, launched Operations Noah, Ark, Lobster, Mackerel, Cautious, Lonesome, Octopus, Cantonment, and Harp to keep constant pressure upon the Yishuv. These operations basically are for continued screening for illegals, cordons, and arms searches, and counterattacks where our forces have been attacked. Our success has bien

limited due to the hundred per cent organization and cooperation of every Jew in the Yishuv in their efforts. Arms are hidden in flower boxes, file cabinets, stoves, refrigerators, false table legs, and a thousand other ingenious places, making arms seizure a near impossibility. Arms are transported by women and small children who readily engage in this practice. Our efforts to obtain Jewish informers has met with total failure. On the other hand, the Jews are able not only to purchase Arab spies but are getting information from sympathetic people within the British command. The Jews are manufacturing weapons of improvised nature, and the Sten guns, land mines, and grenades are continually improving in quality and ingenuity. In a recent attempt to uncover a manufacturing plant on a kibbutz the women poured scalding water on our soldiers …

Bradshaw was not only having his trouble in controlling the mandate. Other outside factors were increasing the pressure. In England, the people were living under the hardships of austerity and the economy was failing badly. The cost of maintaining the Palestine garrison was enormous. The English were sick of the bloodshed, too. On the world political scene the American Zionists had definitely caught the ear of Truman and had in him a sympathetic ally.

Since our failure to follow the recommendation of the Anglo-American Committee to allow a hundred thousand Jews to enter Palestine, our prestige has fallen greatly among our allies. Also damaging our prestige is the manner of humiliation by the Maccabee terrorist operation. British authority has never been so badly flaunted as in the recent kidnaping of a British judge who passed sentence on a Jewish terrorist.

Cecil Bradshaw took off his horn-rimmed glasses, wiped his red eyes, and shook his head. What a mess! He thumbed through the reports once more. Jemal Husseini, the Mufti’s nephew, was again wiping out Arab opposition within Palestine through assassination. The Haganah through Aliyah Bet and the Maccabees under Akiva had made things impossible. British officers had been horsewhipped in public streets and British soldiers were hung in reprisals. The Jews who had preached and obeyed the rules of self-restraint during the two sets of prewar riots were showing less and less restraint against the Arab acts of aggression.

It was said in official circles that Cecil Bradshaw had lost his stomach for fighting the Jews after the Exodus incident.

The Palestine mandate was nearing its twelfth hour. The little country occupied a position of tremendous economic and strategic importance. It was the pivot of the empire itself. The Haifa naval base and refinery and the position in relation to the central artery of the Suez made it imperative that it be held.

The intercom buzzer went off on Bradshaw’s desk.

“General Tevor-Browne has arrived.”

Bradshaw and Tevor-Browne mumbled cold greetings. Tevor-Browne was one of the few pro-Jews in official circles. It was he who had predicted the end of the mandate in this very office at the onset of the Exodus incident and had pleaded that the Exodus be allowed to sail before the hunger strike. Tevor-Browne had always felt that the Jews and not the Arabs deserved British support for the reason that the Jews were faithful allies and could be depended upon and the Arabs could not. He had been for the building of a Jewish Commonwealth nation out of Palestine.

General Tevor-Browne’s thinking could not sway Bradshaw and the Chatham House crowd or the Colonial Office. Even at this hour they did not have the courage to reverse their drastic mistake but were standing ready to sink with it. The fear of Arab blackmail over the oil fields and the Suez Canal prevailed.

“I have been reading the summaries,” Bradshaw said.

Tevor-Browne lit a cigar. “Yes, very interesting. The Jews certainly aren’t obliging us by marching backwards into the sea.”

Bradshaw tapped his pudgy fingers on the desk top, resenting the general’s “I told you so,” attitude. “I must give a recommendation in a few weeks.”

“I don’t want your needling implications, Sir Clarence. I wanted to speak over the advisability of retaining Haven-Hurst. I think the time has come to get tougher with the Jews.”

“Haven-Hurst is fine for what you want-unless you wish to obtain the services of some SS generals in the war crimes prisons. We still maintain a civil government in Palestine, you know … we do have a high commissioner.”

Bradshaw turned crimson under the insults. He managed to hold his temper, a temper which was growing shorter and more violent each day. “I think the time has come to place greater authority with Haven-Hurst.” He handed a sheet of paper over the desk to Tevor-Browne.

It was a letter addressed to the British commander in Palestine, General Sir Arnold Haven-Hurst, KBE, CB, DSO, MC. “The situation has degenerated to such a state that unless

means can be recommended for immediate stabilization by you I will be compelled to suggest the matter be turned over to the United Nations.”

“Well said, Bradshaw,” Tevor-Browne said. “I am certain Haven-Hurst will have some rather interesting suggestions if you are a devotee of horror stories.”

SAFED, PALESTINE

The retirement order came through for Brigadier Bruce Sutherland quickly and quietly after the Exodus affair. He moved to Palestine and settled down on Mount Canaan near Safed, the ancient city at the entrance to the Huleh Valley in northern Galilee.

At long last Bruce Sutherland seemed to find a bit of peace and some respite from the years of torment since the death of his mother. For the first time he was able to sleep at night without fear. Sutherland purchased a magnificent small villa on Mount Canaan three miles from Safed proper. The air was the purest in Palestine and a constant fresh breeze kept summer’s heat from fully penetrating the area. His home was of white plaster with red tiled roof and granite floor. It was open and breezy and tastefully furnished in Mediterranean de’cor. Beyond bis rear patio there was a terraced hillside of four full dunams of land which he converted into a lush garden crowned with four hundred Galilee rosebushes.

The rear garden afforded a breathtaking view of Safed across the Valley. From here the city appeared to be a perfect cone in shape. At the wide base of Safed’s bill were the beginnings of winding roads which fought up the peak to the acropolis on top, some three thousand feet in the air. Like so many of the hilltops in Palestine, the acropolis of Safed had once been a citadel in the revolutions of the Hebrews against the Greeks and Romans.

He spent his days puttering in his rose garden, considered to be the finest in Palestine, on trips to the holy places, in studying Hebrew and Arabic, or in just wandering through the maze of crooked and aimless alleys that made up Safed. The town was a constant fascination. It was pressed against the hillside with its narrow oriental streets circling up toward the acropolis in no fixed plan, and the houses were jammed together equally haphazardly. These each with its own special design, grillwork, odd-shaped windows, doors, and balconies cluttered the strangled passageways to add up to a strange sort of charm.

The Jewish quarter, a tenth of the city, was inhabited by

the poverty-stricken pious who were content to live off the

meager offerings of coreligionists. Safed was the center of

the Cabala, the Jewish science of mysticism. The ancient ones here spent their lives in study and prayer and were as colorful as the town itself. They ambled along the rows of tiny shops dressed in outlandish oriental costumes and tattered remains of once majestic silks. They were a gentle and peaceful lot, and for this reason the Cabalists of Safed had suffered the most at the hands of the Mufti’s riots for they were least able to defend themselves.

Their history in Palestine was one of the longest unbroken records of Jewish habitation of the Holy Land. The Crusaders banished the Jews, but after their defeat the Cabalists returned to Safed and had remained ever since. The cemetery held graves of the great Cabalist scholars with tombs dating back four and five hundred years. The Cabalists all believed that anyone buried in Safed would go straight to Gan Eden-the Garden of Eden-so pure was the air in Safed.

Sutherland never tired of walking through the tortuous lanes crowded with tiny synagogues and watching the people or filling himself with the folklore and legend of the rabbis and of the Cabala itself.

The Arab section of Safed held the usual broken-down hovels that are found in every Arab city and town in the world. However, the wonderful climate and scenic beauty of Safed attracted many effendi families to build splendid and spacious homes. Mount Canaan had many homes and resorts for the Jews, Arab Safed had the same for wealthy Arabs. Sutherland had friends in both places.

Consistent with the Arab renown for building atop ruins there were, in the Arab quarters of Safed, remains of medieval buildings converted into contemporary housing. The most beautiful example of the architecture was the Mosque of the Daughters of Jacob on the ruins of a Hungarian Crusader convent.

The crown jewel of Safed was the acropolis. The paths that wound up to the hilltop passed the old Knights Templar castle and the ruins of a Hebrew fort. The very peak stood in a pine forest amid a carpet of wild flowers and commanded a view from the Sea of Galilee on the south to the Huleh Lake in the north where one could follow the winding course of the Jordan River. On the horizon was Mount Hermon, and all the valleys and hills of the Galilee were visible beyond Meron on the western side.

On this hill the ancient Hebrews came once each year to light a fire. The signal would be seen and transmitted from hill to hill to indicate the start of the Holy Days. In the days before calendars the Holy Days were determined by calculations of the chief rabbis, and the fires burned on the hilltops from Jerusalem to Tabor to Gilboa to Safed and on to Babylon to where the Jews lived in captivity.

One discordant note jarred the otherwise perfect beauty and visual poetry: a large, ugly concrete Taggart fort stood outside Safed on the road up Mount Canaan and was visible from Sutherland’s villa.

Sutherland ventured north to look at the tel of Hazor and along the Lebanese border to see the burial places of Esther at the fort and Joshua at Abu Yesha. It was by chance that he happened into Gan Dafna and friendship with Dr. Lieberman and Kitty Fremont. For Kitty and Sutherland the renewal of the brief acquaintance made at Cyprus was a welcoming thing. Sutherland was happy to develop into a patron saint of the children. Kitty prevailed upon him to let some of the more disturbed children come with her to visit his villa and Safed. In a short time the two formed a fast friendship.

One afternoon Sutherland returned from Gan Dafna and was surprised to find his former aide, Major Fred Caldwell, awaiting him.

“How long have you been in Palestine, Freddie?”

“I arrived just a bit ago.”

“Where are you serving?”

“Headquarters, Jerusalem, in Intelligence. I’m doing liaison with the Criminal Investigation Division. They’ve had a shake-up recently. Seems that some of our chaps have been working with the Haganah and even with the Maccabees, if you can imagine that.”

Sutherland could imagine it quite easily.

“Actually, sir, this visit is only partly social, although I certainly intended to drop up and see how you’ve been getting on. General Haven-Hurst asked me to see you personally because I had worked under you in the past.”

“Oh?”

“As you know we are now in the process of carrying out Operation Polly, the evacuation of nonessential British from Palestine.”

“I’ve heard it referred to as Operation Folly,” Sutherland said.

Freddie smiled politely at the jibe and cleared his throat. “General Haven-Hurst wanted to know what you planned to do.”

“I don’t plan to do a thing. This is my home and this is where I am going to remain.”

Freddie’s fingers drummed impatiently on the table top. “What I mean, sir, is that General Haven-Hurst wants it understood that once the nonessentials are gone he cannot

assume responsibility for your safety If you remain here it could pose a problem to us.”

Caldwell’s speech held obvious devious connotations: Haven-Hurst knew of Sutherland’s leanings and was afraid of his working with the Haganah. He was, in effect, advising him to get out.

“Tell General Haven-Hurst I am grateful for his concern and I fully realize his exact position.”

Freddie wanted to press the matter. Sutherland arose quickly and thanked Caldwell for the visit and walked him to the driveway, where a sergeant waited with a staff car. He watched the car drive down toward the Taggart fort. As usual, Freddie had botched his assignment. His delivery of Haven-Hurst’s warning had been clumsy, indeed.

Sutherland walked back to the villa and thought it over. He was in physical danger. The Maccabees could easily take exception to a retired British brigadier with Arab friends living alone on Mount Canaan, although the Maccabees would certainly think twice about doing him in. There was no danger from the Haganah. He had a loose contact with them and they were not only discriminate but did not go in for assassination. On the other side there was no telling what Husseini was likely to do: Sutherland had friends among the Jews. Some of them could well have been Maccabees unbeknownst to him.

Bruce Sutherland walked to his gardens. They were bursting with the early spring roses. He looked beyond the valley to Safed. He had found peace and comfort here. The hideous dreams were gone. No, he would not leave tomorrow-or ever.

Caldwell’s car entered the Taggart fort a few moments after he left Sutherland. The four outside walls held the offices and barracks. The inner court served as the assembly ground and parking lot for vehicles. He was met and asked to report to CID.

“Are you going back to Jerusalem tonight, Major Caldwell?” the Criminal Investigation Division inspector asked.

Freddie looked at his watch. “Yes, I plan to. We can make it back before evening if I leave right now.”

“Good. I have a Jew here I want taken back to CID in Jerusalem for questioning. Maccabee prisoner … dangerous one. There is a chance that the Maccabees know we are holding him here and will be watching for a convoy to transfer him. That is why it will be safer if he goes in your car.”

“Happy to do it.”

“Bring the Jew boy in.”

Two soldiers dragged in a boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age manacled with heavy chains on hands and feet. A taped gag was over his mouth. His face was bruised from a CID third degree. The inspector walked up to the prisoner. “Don’t let Ben Solomon’s angel face fool you. He’s a ruddy little bastard.”

“Ben Solomon? Ben Solomon? I don’t remember seeing his name.”

“Just got him last night. Raid on the Safed police station. They were trying to steal arms. He killed two policemen with a grenade. Yes, indeed, you’re a mean little sheeny, aren’t you?”

Ben Solomon stood calm with his eyes blazing contempt at the inspector.

“Don’t take his gag off, Major Caldwell, or he’ll start singing Psalms for you. He’s a fanatic little bastard.”

The inspector became annoyed at the boy’s steady withering glare. He took a step toward Ben Solomon and smashed him in the mouth, sending him crashing to the floor, bloody and tangled in his chains.

“Get him out of here,” the inspector snapped in a nervous voice.

The boy was shoved on the floor in the back of the car. One armed soldier sat in back with him and Caldwell sat in front next to the driver. They drove out of the Taggart fort.

“Dirty little bastard,” the driver mumbled. “Ask me, Major Caldwell, they ought to turn us loose on these Jews ‘ere a few weeks. That’s what we should do, by rights.”

“Cobber of mine got it last week,” the guard in the back said, “and a fine bloke he was, too. ‘Ad a wife and a new baby. Them Maccabees give it to him right through the ‘ead, they did.”

As they drove into the Beth Shean Valley the three men relaxed; they were now in all-Arab territory and the danger of attack was gone until they reached the Jerusalem area.

Caldwell turned around and looked at the prisoner on the floor. The juices of hatred churned in his stomach. He detested Bruce Sutherland. He knew in his heart that Sutherland was helping the Haganah. Sutherland was a Jew lover. Sutherland had intentionally let the catastrophe on Cyprus occur.

Caldwell remembered standing near the barbed wire at the Caraolos camp and a fat Jewish woman spitting out on him.

He looked back at the boy on the floor. The guard sat in the middle of the seat. One heavy boot was planted on Ben Solomon’s head and he snickered with amusement.

“Dirty Jew!” Caldwell mumbled under his breath.

He could see a parade of them. The bearded characters in London’s Whitechapel and he could smell the smell of pickles.

The line of pawn shops-they sat hunched over their benches mumbling prayers. Caldwell could see the little boys on their way to Jew school with the black caps on their heads.

They drove toward the all-Arab city of Nablus.

Caldwell smiled as he remembered the officers’ club and the sheeny jokes. He could see his mother leading him into the office of an arrogant Jew doctor.

And they think Hitler was wrong, Caldwell thought. Hitler knew what the score was. It was bloody well too bad that the war ended before he could do them all in. Caldwell remembered entering Bergen-Belsen with Sutherland. Sutherland was sick at what he saw. Well, Caldwell wasn’t sick. The more Jews dead, the better.

They passed into an Arab village with a record of known hostility toward the Yishuv. It was an Husseini strong point.

“Stop the car,” Caldwell ordered. “Now you two men listen to me. We are throwing this kike out.”

“But, Major, they’ll murder him,” the guard said.

“I admits I’m put out at the Jews, sir,” the driver said, “but we got a responsibility to deliver our prisoner, we has.”

“Shut up!” Caldwell barked, half hysterically. “I said we are throwing him out. Both of you are to swear he was taken by Maccabees who roadblocked us. If you open your mouth otherwise you’ll end up in ditches. Am I clear?”

The two soldiers merely nodded as they saw the mad look in Caldwell’s eyes.

Ben Solomon was unchained from the floor. The car slowed near the coffeehouse. The boy was hurled into the street and they sped away for Jerusalem.

It worked just as Caldwell knew it would. Within an hour Ben Solomon had been killed and mutilated. He was decapitated. The bodyless head was held up by the hair and photographed with twenty laughing Arabs around it. The picture was sent out as a warning of what was going to happen to all the Jews sooner or later.

Major Fred Caldwell made a disastrous mistake. One of the Arabs in the coffeehouse who saw the boy thrown from the car was a member of the Maccabees.

General Sir Arnold Haven-Hurst, KBE, CB, DSO, MC was infuriated. He paced the office of his headquarters in the Schneller compound in Jerusalem, then snatched Cecil Bradshaw’s letter from his desk and read it again.

The situation has degenerated to such a state that unless means can be recommended for immediate stabilization by you I will be compelled to suggest the matter be turned over to the United Nations.

The United Nations, indeed! The tall blond man snorted and crumpled the letter and threw it to the floor. A week before Haven-Hurst had ordered a boycott on all Jewish places of business.

This was to be his thanks after fighting the Jews for five years. He had warned the Home Office in World War II not to take these Jews into the British Army but no, they wouldn’t listen. Now, lose the Palestine mandate. Haven-Hurst went to his desk and began working on an answer to Bradshaw’s letter.

I propose immediate adoption of the following points, which in my opinion will stabilize Palestine.

1. Suspension of all civil courts with fines and punishments and prison terms to be dispensed by the military commander.

2. Dissolve the Yishuv Central, disband the Zion Settlement Society and all other agencies of the Jews.

3. Cessation of all Jewish newspapers and publications.

4. Swift, quiet elimination of some sixty top Yishuv leaders. Ha] Amin el Husseini has proved this method successful against his political opposition. This phase could be carried out by Arab confederates.

5. Complete use of the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan.

6. Imprisonment of several hundred secondary leaders in the Yishuv and their subsequent quick banishment to some remote African colonies.

7. Grant the military commander the right to destroy any kibbutz, moshav, village, or part of a city found with arms. Institute a nationwide screening with all illegals to be deported at once.

8. Impose collective fines against the entire Jewish population for every act of Maccabee terror, and place these fines so high the Jews will begin to co-operate in the apprehension of these gangsters.

9. Offer larger rewards for information on key Maccabee terrorists, Aliyah Bet agents, Haganah heads, etc.

10. Hang or execute every apprehended Maccabee gangster on the spot.

11. Institute a series of boycotts on Jewish business, farm products, and halt all Jewish imports and exports. Keep complete control on all the movements of all Jewish vehicles.

12. Destroy the Palmach by armed attacks on kibbutzim known to be harboring them.

My forces have been compelled to operate under most difficult circumstances. We have been made to follow the rules and restrain ourselves from the widest and most effective use of our powers. On the other hand the Maccabees, Haganah, Palmach, and Aliyah Bet observe no rules and, indeed, attack

our restraint as a weakness. If I am allowed to use my power I assure that order will be restored in short time.

General Sir Arnold Haven-Hurst

KBE, CB, DSO, MC

CHATHAM HOUSE, INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN RELATIONS, LONDON

Cecil Bradshaw’s color was a sickly gray when General Tevor-Browne finally reached his office.

“Well, Bradshaw, you asked Haven-Hurst for his ideas. You have them now.”

“Has the man gone mad? Good Lord, his report reads like Adolf Hitler’s ‘Final Solution.’ ”

Bradshaw picked up the twelve-point “Haven-Hurst Report” and shook his head. “God knows we want to keep Palestine, but murder, burning villages, hangings, starvation? I cannot recommend this beastly thing. Even if I did I don’t know whether you have enough men in the British Army who could carry it out. I’ve been for the Empire all my life, Sir Clarence, and many’s the time we’ve had to take harsh and unfair measures in our own behalf. But I also believe in God. We’re just not going to hold Palestine this way. I wash my hands of the matter. Let someone else endorse Haven-Hurst… I won’t.”

Cecil Bradshaw took the “Haven-Hurst Report” and crumpled it. He put it in his large ash tray and put a match to it and watched it burn. “Thank God, we’ve got the courage to answer for our sins,” he whispered.

The question of the Palestine mandate was thrown open to the United Nations.

CHAPTER SEVEN: Now it was the late spring of 1947 and Ari Ben Canaan disappeared from Kitty Fremont’s life. She did not see or hear from him after Mount Tabor. If Ari had given any messages to Jordana, Jordana had not delivered them. The two women scarcely spoke a word to each other. Kitty tried to be tolerant but Jordana made even that difficult.

The Palestine mandate issue was handed over for the United Nations to attempt to unscramble it. United Nations machinery was in the process of forming a committee of small, neutral nations to investigate the problem and come up with recommendations for the General Assembly. The Yishuv Central and the World Zionists accepted mediation of the problem by the United Nations. On the other side, the Arabs used threats, boycotts, blackmail, and any other pressure

they could find to keep the Palestine issue away from an impartial judgment.

At Gan Dafna the Gadna military training speeded up. The Youth Village became a chief arms depot. Rifles were brought in to be cleaned by the children and then smuggled in village tracks to Huleh settlements and the Palmach. Time and again Karen was called upon to go out on arms-smuggling missions. The assignments were accepted by her and the other children without question. Kitty’s heart was in her mouth every time Karen went out, but she had to keep her silence.

Karen doggedly continued to press the search for her father without success. The once bright promise at La Ciotat faded.

The girl retained contact with the Hansens in Denmark. Karen wrote each week, and each week a letter and often a package arrived from Copenhagen. Meta and Aage Hansen had given up all hope of ever getting her back. Even if Karen did not find her father there was something in the girl’s letters that indicated she was lost to them. Karen’s identification with Palestine and being Jewish became a nearly complete thing. The only qualification was Kitty Fremont.

Dov Landau was taking strange turns. At times he would appear to be breaking out of his reclusion, and in those moments he and Karen added a deeper dimension to their relationship. Then the very audacity of his coming into the clear light would force Dov back into his shell. Whenever he was able to reason about his role he disliked himself for what he felt he was doing to Karen. Then loyalty to him produced self-pity and he at once hated and loved her. He felt he must not contaminate Karen with himself, yet he did not wish to cut off his only link with humanity. The times he would sink back again into bitterness he often stared at the blue tattoo number on his arm by the hour. He would turn to his books and his painting with a savage concentration and close out all living things. Just as he neared the bottom, Karen would succeed in pulling him out of it. His bitterness never quite grew so deep that he could turn on her.

In the time that Kitty Fremont had been at Gan Dafna she had made herself one of the most important persons in the village. Dr. Lieberman leaned on her more each day. Looked upon as a sympathetic outsider, she was frequently able to exert the needed extra influence of someone “outside the family.” Dr. Lieberman’s friendship was becoming one of the most rewarding she had ever known. She was completely integrated into the life of Gan Dafna; she did splendid work with disturbed children. Yet a barrier still remained. She knew that she was partly responsible for it but she wanted it that way.

Kitty was far more at ease with Bruce Sutherland than she was with the people of Gan Dafna. With Sutherland she was in her own element and she looked forward with increasing impatience to those free days that she and Karen could spend at his villa. When she was with Sutherland it renewed her awareness of the difference between herself and the Jews.

Harriet Saltzman came to Gan Dafna two times. On both occasions the old woman pleaded with Kitty to take charge of one of the new Youth Aliyah Centers in the Tel Aviv area. Kitty was a wizard at organization and a stickler for routine. This, plus her over-all experience and ability was badly needed at places not so well run as Gan Dafna. Harriet Saltzman wisely calculated that the “outside” influence of a Kitty Fremont would be a tremendous asset to a Youth Aliyah Center.

Kitty refused. She was settled at Gan Dafna and Karen was completely at home. She did not seek a career in Youth Aliyah and had no aspirations.

The main reason, however, was that she did not want to be placed in a capacity where she would have to answer for Gadna activities and arms smuggling. This would put her into the category of a participant. Kitty clung to her neutrality. Her work was going to remain professional and not political.

To Karen Clement, Kitty Fremont was like an older sister who was raising her without the help of parents. Kitty made herself indispensable to the girl. The Hansens in Denmark faded from her life and there had been no progress in finding her father. This left only Dov and Dov gave nothing. Kitty encouraged this condition of dependence-she wanted Karen to need her. She wanted Karen to need her so much the need would defeat the bidden foe, the power of Eretz Israel.

With the passing of the weeks holidays came and left Gan Dafna.

There had been Tuv b’Shevat in the late winter, an arbor day, to perpetuate the fanatical tree planting of the Jews.

Late in the month of March came Hero’s Day. Jordana Ben Canaan led the Gadna troops on a hike along the border ridges to Tel Hai where Barak and Akiva had entered Palestine from Lebanon. It was now hallowed ground. At Trumpledor’s grave soldiers of the Palmach and the young soldiers of Gadna gathered to pay homage to the new heroes.

The glorious festival of Purim came. Gan Dafna erupted with Mardi gras-and Halloween-like costumes and floats and decorations that turned it into a carnival. The Purim story was told-of how Queen Esther saved the Jews, then in the Persian Empire. The evil Haman, the Amalekite, plotted to have the Jews annihilated but Esther unmasked Haman and

saved her people. The grave of Esther was on the border of Fort Esther, where part of the celebration took place. The Purim story was a real thing to the children of Gan Dafna, for almost all of them had been victims of a later-day Haman named Adolf Hitler.

Passover came and went.

The holiday of Lag Ba Omer occurred on the full moon thirty days after the end of Passover and in time became a memorial to the second uprising of the Hebrews against the Romans. Homage was paid to the great sages buried in the city of Tiberias and in Safed and in Meron. There were the graves of Moses Maimonides, the immortal philosopher and physician, and of the rabbis, Hiya, Eliezer, and Kahana and of the great revolutionary, Rabbi Akiva. There was the grave of Rabbi Meir the Miracle Maker. All these were in Tiberias where the festival started and whence it moved to Safed. From Safed the pious moved in a great gathering body to Meron and to the graves of Johanan the Sandal Maker and Hillel and Shammai. The ancient synagogue still stood in part at Meron with its door which was supposed to welcome the return of the Messiah.

Of all the rabbis praised on Lag Ba Omer, Simon Bar Yohai received the greatest reverence. Bar Yohai defied the Roman edicts which banned Judaism and he fled to the village of Peki’in where he lived in a cave and where the Lord provided him with a carob tree for food and a stream for water. He lived in hiding for seventeen years. One day each year he came to Meron to teach the forbidden Torah to his disciples. It is said by both Mohammedans and Christians that they owe the life of their religions to those rabbis who kept Judaism alive in hiding. Without Judaism and the Holy Torah neither Christianity nor Islam could have survived, for their roots were in the Torah and their very life and air and blood were the doctrines of Judaism.

While in hiding Bar Yohai wrote the Zohar-the Brightness -which was the standard work of the mystic Cabala. Hasidic and Oriental celebrants converged on the holy cities of Tiberias and Safed from all corners of Palestine and continued on to Meron to spend several days and nights in prayer and song and dance and praise of Simon Bar Yohai.

When the month of May came the rains were gone and the Huleh Valley and the hills of Syria and Lebanon turned a rich green and the valleys filled with carpets of wild flowers and the buds on the spring roses of Galilee burst into magnificent reds and whites and oranges and once again Gan Dafna prepared for a holiday. It was time for Shavuot to celebrate the bringing of the first fruits of the new year.

All holidays concerned with farming were particularly close to the hearts of the Jews of Palestine. Shavuot at Gan Dafna had become traditional for the coming of delegations from the Huleh settlements to the children’s village to share in the celebration.

Again Gan Dafna took on the air of a carnival as truckloads of farmers arrived from the Yad El moshav, Sarah Ben Canaan came.

They arrived from the border kibbutzim of Kfar Giladi up on the Lebanon border. They came from Ayelet Hashahar kikkutz on the lake and from Ein Or. They came from Dan on the Syrian border and from Manara on the mountaintop.

Dr Lieberman expressed his disappointment to Harriet Saltzman and Kitty that the Arab delegation from Abu Yesha was only half the usual size and that Taha was missing. The meaning was obvious and saddening.

Kitty managed to see each truck as it arrived. She hoped that Ari Ben Canaan would come and she was unable to mask her disappointment. Jordana in turn watched Kitty, with a cynical smirk.

Some soldiers came from Fort Esther. These were among the “friends” who always tipped off the village when an arms search was on the way.

The day was filled with merriment. There were athletic contests and open house in the classrooms and laboratories. There was hora dancing on the center green, and outdoor tables bent under the weight of food.

At sundown everyone moved to the outdoor theater cut into a hillside, set in the middle of a stand of pine trees. The theater filled to overflowing; hundreds more lay about on the surrounding lawns. As it turned dark multicolored lights came on, strung through the pines.

The Gan Dafna orchestra played “Hatikvah”-the Hope-and Dr. Lieberman spoke a brief welcome and signaled the parade of Shavuot to begin. He returned to his seat with Kitty, Sutherland, and Harriet Saltzman.

Karen led the parade. The instant Kitty saw her she felt fear. Karen sat astride a large white horse and balanced the staff of the flag with the white field and the blue Star of David. She wore dark blue slacks and an embroidered peasant’s blouse and sandals on her feet. Her thick brown hair was done in pigtails and hung to her small breasts.

Kitty gripped the arms of her chair. Karen looked the very spirit of the Jews!

Have I lost her? Have I lost her? The wind whipped the flag and her horse broke for a second, but Karen turned it into line quickly. She is gone from me as she is from the Hansens, Kitty thought.

Harriet Saltzman was looking at Kitty and Kitty lowered her eyes.

Karen passed out of the spotlight and the parade continued. The five tractors of Gan Dafna were polished and shined. Each pulled a flatcar loaded with fruits and vegetables and grains grown at the village farm.

Jeeps and trucks and station wagons buried under flowers from the gardens passed by. Trucks passed by filled with children in peasants’ clothing holding rakes and hoes and scythes and power tools.

The livestock was passed in review, led by the cows, which were decked in ribbons and flowers, and the horses were shiny with manes and tails braided. The sheep and goats were herded past and then the pet dogs and cats and a monkey and white rats and hamsters were led or carried in affectionate display.

Children passed holding cloth of material they had grown, spun, and woven and newspapers they had printed and their art work and baskets and pottery. Their athletic teams marched by.

When the parade was done there was a final rousing cheer from the audience.

Dr. Lieberman’s secretary slipped alongside him and whispered into his ear.

“Excuse me, please,” he said, “I have an important phone call.”

“Hurry back,” Harriet Saltzman called after him.

The lights in the trees were turned off, plunging the place into darkness for a moment before a spotlight shone on the stage. The curtain opened and the tambour beat and a reed flute played an ancient melody. The children began to enact the Song of Ruth. It was done in pantomime against the plaintive sound background of the two instruments.

Their costumes were authentic. The dances were the slow and sensuous movements of the days of Ruth and Naomi. Then came performers who danced with wild leaps and a passion like that of the dancers Kitty saw on top of Tabor.

How they lived for the recreation of their past, Kitty thought. How dedicated they were to regaining the glory of Israel.

Karen stepped onto the stage and commanded an instant expectant hush. Karen danced the part of Ruth. Her movements told the simple and beautiful story of the Moabite girl and her Hebrew mother-in-law who traveled to Beth Lehem -the House of Bread. The story of love and of one God had been retold at Shavuot since the days of the Maccabees.

Ruth had been a gentile in the land of the Jews. Yet Ruth was an ancestor of King David.

Kitty’s eyes were glued to Karen as she enacted Ruth’s words to Naomi that she would come to the land of the Hebrews with her.

“Whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest 1 will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.”

Kitty was dismayed as never before. Could she get Karen away from this? Kitty Fremont was the stranger. She would always be a stranger. The gentile among the Hebrews, but she could not say as Ruth had said, “Thy people shall be my people.” Would this mean losing Karen?

Dr. Lieberman’s secretary tapped Kitty’s shoulder. “Would you come to Dr. Lieberman’s office at once?” she whispered.

Kitty excused herself and slipped from her seat. She walked up to the top of the theater and looked back for a moment to see the children dancing the dance of the reapers and to watch Karen go to sleep at the feet of “Boaz.” She turned and left the theater.

The path was dark and she had to be careful of trenches. Kitty turned her pocket flashlight on the ground. She crossed the center green and passed the statue of Dafna. Behind her she could hear the beat of the tambour and the cry of the flute. She walked quickly to the administration building, led by the single light.

She opened the door to Dr. Lieberman’s office.

“Good Lord,” she said, startled at the sight of him, “what’s the matter? You look as though …”

“They have found Karen’s father,” he whispered.

CHAPTER EIGHT: Bruce Sutherland drove Kitty and Karen to Tel Aviv the next day. Kitty used the pretext that she had to do some overdue shopping and wanted to give Karen her first look at the big city. They arrived slightly before the noon hour and checked into the Gat Rimon Hotel on Hayarkon Street, on the Mediterranean. After lunch Sutherland excused himself and left. The shops were closed during the midday hours so Kitty and Karen romped along the sandy beach below the hotel, then cooled off from the heat with a refreshing swim.

At three o’clock Kitty ordered a taxi. They drove to Jaffa where one of the faculty at Gan Dafna had recommended some great buys in Arab and Persian brass-and copperware. Kitty wanted some things for the cottage. The taxi took them into a narrow, twisting street in the center of the Jaffa flea market. A row of shops were indentations in a Crusader wall. They stopped before one of the holes in the wall guarded by

a fat individual sitting asleep in the doorway, with a red fez tipped over his eyes. Kitty and Karen studied the shop. It was five feet wide and not much deeper and a mess of hanging pots, pans, plates, jugs, vases, urns, candlesticks, and what not. The floor had not been swept for at least ten years.

The fat Arab sensed the presence of customers and awakened from his sleep. He gallantly gestured to the women to enter his domain. He shoved some brassware off two boxes and offered them as seats, then ran outside and called for his oldest son to get some coffee for the honored guests. The coffee arrived. Kitty and Karen sipped it and politely exchanged smiles with the shopkeeper. The son stood by the door, a portrait in stupidity. A half dozen spectators gathered on the outside to observe the proceedings. The attempts to converse soon proved frustrating. There were grunts, gestures, and hand wavings in place of a common language. Whereas Karen spoke Danish, French, German, English, and Hebrew and Kitty spoke English, Spanish, and a smattering of Greek, the Arab was versed only in Arabic. He sent his son out once again to find the flea market interpreter and in another few minutes the intermediary was produced. The interpreter’s English was of a pidgin variety, but he was conscientious and the shopping commenced.

Kitty and Karen browsed around the shop blowing dust off encrusted antiques, some with a hundred years’ coating of dirt and tarnish to testify to their authenticity. After forty tense minutes of womanly thoroughness, every piece in the shop had been handled by one or the other shopper. They settled on a pair of vases, three long-spouted Arab coffee pots of exquisite delicacy, and an enormous Persian plate with thousands of hand-engraved figures depicting an entire legend. Kitty asked the price for the entire lot, cleaned, polished, and delivered to her hotel. The crowd on the outside pressed closer as the interpreter and the proprietor went into a huddle.

The interpreter turned and sighed. “Mr. Akim, him heart broke. These treasures to depart. Plate, he swear by Allah, three hundred years.”

“Just how much is it going to take to mend Mr. Akim’s broken heart?” Kitty asked.

“Because lady, your daughter here, so beautiful, Mr. Akim make special bargain. Take all, sixteen pounds sterling.”

“It’s a steal,” Kitty whispered to Karen.

“You can’t pay him what he asks,” Karen said with exasperation. “Do you want to ruin his day by not bartering?”

“I’m taking it and running,” Kitty whispered. “That plate alone would cost three or four hundred dollars in the States.”

“Kitty! Please!” Karen cried in disgust. She stepped in front of Kitty and the smile disappeared from Akim’s face. “Nine

pounds sterling and not a grush more,” Karen announced firmly.

The interpreter reported the counter-offer to Mr. Akim. Mr. Akim was offended. He went into wails of anguish. He had a large family to feed. Again his kind heart was being taken advantage of. The items picked by these sharp-eyed women they knew were antiques … on his honor, his father’s honor, and by Allah’s beard. Thirteen pounds.

“Twelve and that’s final.”

Akim sobbed that he was being cheated but he was a poor Arab so what could he do. He was putty in the hands of these clever women. Twelve and a half.

It was a deal.

The bartering was over and smiles bloomed within and without the shop. There was an extended handshaking ceremony. Akim blessed Kitty and Karen and all their subsequent offspring. She left the name of her hotel and advised Akim he would be paid when the cleaned and polished goods were delivered. She tipped the interpreter and the stupid son and they left.

They walked through the flea market amazed by the amount that could be jammed into the tiny shops and the degree of filth one street could collect. As they approached the end of the street a man who looked like a sabra stepped up to Karen and exchanged several words in Hebrew and walked away quickly.

“What did he want?”

“He saw by my uniform I was a Jew. He wanted to know if you were English. I told him who you were and he advised us to return to Tel Aviv. There might be trouble.”

Kitty looked down the street but the man was gone.

“He must have been a Maccabee,” Karen said.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Kitty’s heart was in her mouth until they were out of Jaffa. They drove to the intersection of Allenby Road and Rothschild Boulevard. Allenby Road was filled with new shops, and Rothschild was a wide street with a center parkway lined with ultramodern three-storied white apartment houses. It was a striking contrast to the flea market of Jaffa. Cars and buses moved in a steady flow and people walked with the big-city gait, all in a hurry.

“It is so thrilling,” Karen said. “I’m glad I was able to come. It is hard for me to realize that everyone here, bus drivers and waiters and salespeople, are all Jews. They built this whole city … a Jewish city. You don’t understand what that means, do you … a city in which everything belongs to the Jews.”

Karen’s words annoyed Kitty.

“In America we have many important Jews, Karen, and they are very happy and very much American.”

“But it’s not the same as a Jewish country. It’s not the same as knowing that wherever you go and whatever you do there is still one corner of the earth where you are wanted and that belongs to you.”

Kitty fished in her purse quickly and took out a piece of paper. “Where would this address be?”

Karen looked at the paper. “Two blocks down. When are you going to learn to read Hebrew?”

“Never, I’m afraid,” Kitty said, then added quickly, “I chipped two teeth trying to say some words yesterday.”

They found the address. It was a dress shop.

“What are you going to get?” Karen asked.

“I’m going to buy you a decent wardrobe. It’s a surprise from Brigadier Sutherland and me.”

Karen stopped dead. “I couldn’t,” she said.

“What’s the matter, dear?”

“There is nothing wrong with what I’m wearing.”

“It is fine for Gan Dafna …” Kitty said.

“I have all the clothing I need,” Karen insisted.

Sometimes she sounds like Jordana Ben Canaan, Kitty thought. “Karen, let’s not forget that you are a young lady. You won’t be betraying the cause if you dress up in something nice once in a while.”

“I am quite proud of …”

“Oh, quiet!” Kitty said with finality. “You sound more like a sabra every day. When you are away from Gan Dafna with me you are going to make me and Bruce proud of you.”

Kitty appeared angry and sounded adamant. Karen bit her lip and retreated. She peeked out of the corner of her eye at the full-skirted mannequins in the window. “It isn’t fair to the rest of the girls,” she said in a final effort.

“We’ll hide the dresses under the rifles if it will make you happy.”

A few moments later she was bouncing before the mirror, happily staging a one-woman fashion show and terribly pleased that Kitty had been insistent. It did feel so wonderful and look so wonderful! How long had it been since she wore nice things? Denmark … so long ago that she had almost forgotten. Kitty was as delighted as she watched Karen transform herself from peasant to soignee teenager. They walked the length of Allenby Road, still shopping, and turned into Ben Yehuda Street at the Mograbi Square, loaded with packages. They plopped down at a table at the first sidewalk cafe. Karen gobbled an ice-cream soda and watched the panorama of passing people with wide eyes.

She shoved a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. “This is

the nicest day I can remember,” she said. “It would be perfect if Dov and Ari were here.”

She was adorable, Kitty thought. Her heart was so filled with goodness she wanted only to give to others.

Karen meditated as she sipped from the bottom of the glass. “Sometimes I think we have picked a pair of lemons.”

“We?”

“You know … you and Ari. Me and Dov.”

“I don’t know what on earth gives you the impression there is something between Mr. Ben Canaan and myself, but you are quite, quite, quite mistaken.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Karen answered. “Is that why you twisted your neck watching every truck that came in the gate before the Shavuot celebration yesterday? Just who were you looking for if not Ari Ben Canaan?”

“Humph,” Kitty grunted, and sipped her coffee to cover her guilty confusion.

Kitty shrugged as she wiped at her lips. “Gosh, anyone could tell you are sweet on him.”

Kitty narrowed her eyes and glared at Karen. “You listen to me, Miss Smarty …”

“Deny it and I’ll run up and down the street and shout it in Hebrew.”

Kitty threw up her hands. “I can’t win. Someday you’ll realize a man can be very attractive to us older women of thirty without there being the least bit of seriousness attached to it. I like Ari, but I’m sorry to have to dispel your romantic notions.”

Karen looked at Kitty with an expression that clearly said she was simply not convinced, The girl sighed and leaned close to Kitty and held her arm as though she were going to impart a deep dark secret. Karen’s mien took on the earnest sincerity of the teenager. “Ari needs you, I can tell that.”

Kitty patted Karen’s hand and adjusted a loose strand of hair in the girl’s pigtail. “I wish I were sixteen again and things were so pure and uncomplicated. No, Karen, Ari Ben Canaan comes from a breed of supermen whose stock in trade is their self-reliance. Ari Ben Canaan hasn’t needed anyone since the day he cut his teeth on his father’s bull whip. His blood is made up of little steel and ice corpuscles and his heart is a pump like the motor in that bus over there. All this keeps him above and beyond human emotions.”

She sat .silent and very still and her eyes looked beyond Karen.

“You do care for him.”

“Yes,” Kitty sighed, “I do, and what you said is right. We’ve got a pair of lemons. We’d better get back to the hotel. I want you to dress up for me and make yourself look like a

princess. Bruce and I have a surprise for you. We’ll take the pigtails down.”

Karen indeed looked like a princess when Sutherland picked them up for dinner. The surprise was attendance at a touring French ballet company’s staging of Swan Lake at the Habima National Theater, accompanied by the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra.

Karen leaned forward and sat on the edge of her seat during the entire performance, concentrating intently on the steps of the prima ballerina as she floated her way through the fairy tale. The overpowering, haunting beauty of the score filled her brain.

How beautiful it all was, Karen thought. She had almost forgotten things like ballet were still in the world. How lucky she was to have Kitty Fremont. The stage was bathed in blue light and the music swelled into the finale with the storm and Siegfried defeating the evil Von Rotbart and the beautiful swan maidens turning into women. Tears of happiness fell down her cheeks.

Kitty watched Karen more than she watched the ballet. She sensed that she had awakened something dormant in the girl. Maybe Karen was rediscovering that there was something in the world she once had that was as important as the green of the fields of the Galilee. Kitty resolved again to keep this thing alive in Karen always; as much as the Jews had won her over there was still much of her they could never get.

Tomorrow Karen would see her father and her world would move on in another direction. Kitty won something this day.

They returned to the hotel late. Karen was bursting with happiness. She flung the hotel door open and danced through the lobby. The British officers raised their eyebrows. Kitty sent her up to get ready for bed and repaired to the bar with Sutherland for a nightcap.

“Have you told her about her father yet?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“I’d rather… alone.”

“Of course.”

“But please be there afterwards.”

“I’ll be there.”

Kitty stood up and kissed Sutherland on the cheek. “Good night, Bruce.”

Karen was still dancing in their room when Kitty arrived. “Did you see Odette in the last scene?” she said, imitating the steps.

“It’s late and you’re a tired Indian.”

“Oh, what a day!” Karen said, flopping into her bed.

Kitty walked into the bathroom and changed. She could hear Karen humming the melodies of the ballet. “Oh God,” Kitty whispered. “Why does this have to happen to her?” Kitty held her face in her hands and trembled. “Give her strength … please give her strength.”

Kitty lay wide-eyed in the darkness. She heard Karen stir and looked over to the girl’s bed. Karen arose and knelt beside Kitty’s bed and lay her head on Kitty’s bosom. “I love you so much, Kitty,” Karen said. “I couldn’t love my own mother more.”

Kitty turned her head away and stroked Karen’s hair. “You’d better go to sleep,” Kitty said shakily. “We have a busy day tomorrow.”

Kitty stayed awake smoking one cigarette after the other and occasionally pacing the floor. Each time she looked at the sleeping child her heart tightened. Long past midnight she sat by the window listening to the waves and looking at Jaffa on the bend of the coast line. It was four o’clock before Kitty fell into a restless, thrashing sleep.

In the morning she was heavy with depression, her face drawn and her eyes showing rings of sleeplessness beneath them. A dozen times she tried to broach the subject. Breakfast on the terrace was in silence. Kitty sipped her coffee.

“Where is Brigadier Sutherland?” Karen asked.

“He had to go out on business. He’ll see us later this morning.”

“What are we going to do today?”

“Oh, a little of this and a little of that.” ,.

“Kitty … it’s something about my father, isn’t it?”

Kitty lowered her eyes.

“I guess I really knew all along.”

“I didn’t mean to deceive you, dear … I …”

“What is it … please tell me … what is it?”

“He is very, very sick.”

Karen bit her finger and her mouth trembled. “I want to see him.”

“He won’t know you, Karen.”

Karen straightened up and looked off to the sea. “I’ve waited so long for this day.”

“Please …”

“Every night since I knew the war was ending over two years ago I’ve gone to sleep with the same dream. I lay in bed and pretended we were meeting each other again. I’d know just how he would look and what we are going to say to each other. At the DP camp in Caraolos and in Cyprus all those months I dreamed about it every night … my father and me. See … I always knew he was alive and … kept going over and over it.”

“Karen … stop it. It’s not going to be the way you dreamed.”

The girl trembled from head to foot. The palms of her hands were wet. She sprang from her chair. “Take me to him.”

Kitty took her arms and gripped her tightly. “You must prepare for something terrible.”

“Please … please, let’s go.”

“Try to remember … no matter what happens … no matter what you see … that I’m going to be right there. I’ll be with you, Karen. Will you remember that?”

“Yes … I’ll remember it.”

The doctor sat before Karen and Kitty.

“Your father was tortured by the Gestapo, Karen,” the doctor said. “In the early part of the war they wanted him to work for them and they made things very hard. They finally gave up. He was unable to work for them even upon threat of danger to your mother and brothers.”

“I remember now,” Karen said. “I remember the letters stopped coming to Denmark and how I was afraid to ask Aage about my family.”

“He was sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, and your mother and brothers …”

“I know about them.”

“They sent him to Theresienstadt in hope he would change his mind. After the war he found out about your mother and brothers first. He felt guilty because he had waited too long to leave Germany and had trapped your mother and brothers. When he learned what had happened to them, on top of the years of torture, his mind snapped.”

“He will get better?”

The doctor looked at Kitty. “He has a psychotic depression … extreme melancholia.”

“What does that mean?” Karen asked.

“Karen, your father is not going to get well.”

“I don’t believe you,” the girl said. “I want to see him.”

“Do you remember him at all?”

“Very little.”

“It would be far better to keep what you can remember than to see him now.”

“She must see him, Doctor, no matter how difficult it is going to be. This question cannot be left open,” Kitty said.

The doctor led them down a corridor and stopped before a door. A nurse unlocked it. He held the door open.

Karen walked into a cell-like room. The room held a chair,

a stand, and a bed. She looked around for a moment and then

she stiffened. A man was sitting on the floor in a corner. He

was barefooted and uncombed. He sat with bis back against

the wall and his arms around his knees and stared blankly at the opposite wall.

Karen took a step toward him. He was stubble-bearded and bis face was scarred. Suddenly the pounding within Karen’s heart eased. This is all a mistake, she thought… this man is a stranger … he is not my father … he cannot be. It is a mistake! A mistake! She was filled with the urge to turn around and scream out … you see, you were wrong. He is not Johann Clement, he is not my father. My father is still alive somewhere and looking for me. Karen stood before the man on the floor to assure herself. She stared into the crazed eyes. It had been so long … so very long, she could not remember. But the man she had dreamed about meeting again was not this man.

There was a fireplace and the smell of pipe tobacco. There was a big moppy dog. His name was Maximilian. A baby cried in the next room. “Miriam, see to Hans. I am reading a story for my girl and I cannot be disturbed.”

Karen Hansen Clement slowly knelt before the hulk of mindless flesh.

Grandma’s house in Bonn always smelted of newly-baked cookies. She baked all week getting ready for the family on Sunday.

The insane man continued to stare at the opposite wall as though he were alone in the room.

Look how funny the monkeys are in the Cologne Zoo! Cologne has the most wonderful zoo. When will it be carnival time again?

She studied the man from his bare feet to his scarred forehead. Nothing … nothing she saw was like her father …

“Jew! lew! Jew!” the crowd screamed as she ran into her house with the blood pouring down her face. “There, there, Karen, don’t you cry. Daddy won’t let them hurt you.”

Karen reached out and touched the man’s cheek. “Daddy?” she said. The man did not move or react.

There was a train and lots of children around and they were talking of going to Denmark but she was tired. “Good-by, Daddy,” Karen had said. “Here, you take my dolly. He will watch after you.” She stood on the platform of the train and watched her Daddy on the platform and he grew smaller and smaller.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Karen cried. “It’s Karen, Daddy! I’m your girl. I’m all grown up now, Daddy. Don’t you remember me?”

The doctor held Kitty in the doorway as she shook from head to foot. “Let me help her, please,” Kitty cried.

“Let it be done,” he said.

And Karen was filled with remembering-“Yes! Yes! He is my father! He is my father!”

“Daddy!” she screamed and threw her arms around him. “Please talk to me. Please say something to me. I beg you … beg you!”

The man who was once the living human person of Johann Clement blinked his eyes. A sudden expression of curiosity came over his face as he became aware of a person clutching at him. He held the expression for a tense moment as though he were trying, in his own way, to allow something to penetrate the blackness-and then, his look lapsed back into lifelessness.

“Daddy!” she screamed. “Daddy! Daddy!”

And her voice echoed in the empty room and down the long corridor-“Daddy!”

The strong arms of the doctor pried her loose, and she was gently dragged from the room. The door was closed and locked and Johann Clement was gone from her-forever. The girl sobbed in anguish and crumpled into Kitty’s arms. “He didn’t even know me! Oh, my God … God … why doesn’t he know me? Tell me, God … tell me!”

“It’s all right, baby, it is all right now. Kitty is here. Kitty is with you.”

“Don’t leave me, don’t ever leave me, Kitty!”

“No, baby … Kitty won’t ever leave you … ever.”

CHAPTER NINE: The news of Karen’s father had spread through Gan Dafna before she and Kitty returned. It had a shattering effect on Dov Landau. For the first time since his brother Mundek had held him in his arms in a bunker beneath the Warsaw ghetto, Dov Landau was able to feel compassion for someone other than himself. His sorrow for Karen Clement was, at last, the ray of light that illuminated his black world.

She was the one person he could trust and care for. Why of all people on earth did it have to happen to her? How many times in that stinking camp on Cyprus had Karen expressed her simple, all-powerful faith to him? Now Karen was hurt and her despair was deep pain to him.

What did she have left? Himself and Mrs. Fremont. What was he to her? He was a millstone-a nothing. There were times he wanted to hate Mrs. Fremont but he couldn’t because he knew that she was good for Karen. With Karen’s father out of the way perhaps Mrs. Fremont would take her to America.

He stood in the way. He knew Karen wouldn’t leave him. In Dov’s mind there was only one thing to do.

A youth named Mordecai was a secret recruiter, for the Maccabees at Gan Dafna. From him Dov succeeded in discovering where and how to make contact with the underground organization. The cottages of the faculty were never locked at Gan Dafna. He waited one evening until they were all at dinner, then rifled several cottages. He stole a few objects of gold jewelry and fled to Jerusalem.

Bruce Sutherland went directly to Dr. Lieberman and got him to urge Kitty to bring Karen to Sutherland’s villa for a week or two to allow her to recover from the shock.

Karen bore her grief with the same dignity and courage that had carried her through a hie filled with tragedy. Kitty Fremont was wise. She never left the girl’s side.

The fate of Karen’s father along with the disappearance of Dov Landau added up to a grim victory for Kitty. She felt that in time she would be able to get Karen to America. Kitty thought about it constantly at Sutherland’s villa, detesting herself at times for finding consolation in Karen’s tragedy, but she could not stop her thoughts. Since she had first seen Karen in the tent at Caraolos her entire life had revolved around the girl.

One day after lunch Ari Ben Canaan came to Sutherland’s villa. He waited in the study while the servant fetched Sutherland from the terrace patio. Bruce excused himself and left the girls sunning. The two men spoke for nearly an hour, transacting their business.

“I have a friend of yours here,” Sutherland said after they had concluded their discussion. “Kitty Fremont is spending a fortnight here as my house guest with the young Clement girl.”

“I heard you two had become great friends,” Ari said.

“Yes, I think Katherine Fremont is one of the finest women I have ever met. You should run up to Gan Dafna and see what she has done with some of those children. There was a boy who didn’t even talk six months ago who now has not only opened up but is starting to play a bugle for the school band.”

“I’ve heard about that too,” Ari said.

“I insisted she come here and bring the Clement girl. The child found her father. Poor chap is completely and incurably insane. It was a terrible shock, needless to say. Come on out to the garden.”

“I’m sorry. I have some other things to attend to.”

“Nonsense, won’t hear of it.” He took Ari’s arm and led him out.

Kitty had not seen Ari since the Mount Tabor affair. She was startled by the first sight of him. Ari had been neglecting himself.

She thought that Ari was amazingly gentle in his conveyance of condolence to Karen. He showed her a tenderness that he apparently reserved for his own people. He had never treated Kitty that way. Was this because Ari accepted Karen as one of them, Kitty wondered? Then she grew angry at herself. It seemed to her that she was beginning to categorize every word and situation on its meaning in relation to Karen’s Jewishness. Now perhaps she was creating meanings that did not even exist.

Kitty and Ari walked through Sutherland’s rose garden.

“How is she?” Ari asked.

“She is a very strong and courageous child,” Kitty said. “It was a shocking experience but she is doing remarkably well.”

Ari looked back to where Karen and Sutherland were playing checkers. “She is a lovely girl,” he said sincerely.

His words surprised Kitty. She had never heard that tone of appreciation from him before and she had wondered if things of beauty even reached him. They stopped at the end of the path where a low stone wall ran around the edge of the garden. Beyond the wall the valley lay at the bottom of the hill with Safed beyond. Kitty sat on the wall and stared out at the Galilee, and Ari lit a cigarette for himself and one for her.

“Ari, I’ve never asked a personal favor of you. I am about to do so.”

“Of course.”

“Karen is going to get over her father in time, but there is another thing that she may not get over. Dov Landau has run away from Gan Dafna. We assume he has gone to Jerusalem to join the Maccabees. As you know, she has taken the boy as a personal crusade. The loss of her father has magnified the loss of Dov. She is eating her heart out for him. I want you to find him for us and bring him back to Gan Dafna. I know you have the connections which can locate him. He would come back if you could convince him that Karen needs him.”

Ari blew a stream of smoke and looked at Kitty with curiosity. “I don’t think I understand you at all. The girl belongs to you now. He is the one possible person who stands in your way and he has removed himself.”

Kitty looked at him evenly. “I should be offended by what you say but I’m not because it’s true. The fact is that I can’t

build my own happiness on her misery. I can’t take her away to America with this thing with Dov unresolved.”

“That is very commendable.”

“It isn’t honorable intent, Ari. Karen is a wise girl about everything but that boy. We all have our weak spots, I suppose. She will get over him far more quickly if he is at Gan Dafna. With him away in the Maccabees she will magnify his image until it is beyond proper proportion.”

“Forgive me for thinking in simple terms, Kitty. You are shrewd.”

“I love that girl and there’s nothing sinister or devious about it.”

“You’re making sure she has no place to go but with you.”

“I’m making certain that she knows she has a better place to go. Perhaps you don’t believe this, but if I knew it was better for her to stay in Palestine, this is where she would stay.”

“Maybe I do believe that.”

“Can you in all honesty tell me that I am doing something wrong by wanting to take her to America?”

“No … it is not wrong,” Ari said.

“Then help me get Dov back.”

There was a long silence, then Ari snuffed out his cigarette on the wall. He peeled the paper, unconscious of his action and scattering the loose tobacco and balling the paper into a tiny knot which he put into his pocket. P. P. Malcolm had taught him never to leave traces of a cigarette. Cigarette butts were glaring signposts to Arabs in search of enemy troops.

“I can’t do it,” Ari said.

“You can. Dov respects you.”

“Sure, I can find him. I can even force him back to Gan Dafna and say, ‘Stay put little boy, the ladies don’t want you to get hurt.’ Dov Landau has made a personal decision that every Jew in Palestine has got to make with his own conscience. The feeling about this is very intense. My father and my uncle haven’t spoken to each other for fifteen years over it. Every fiber of Dov Landau’s being shrieks out for revenge. He is being driven with an intensity that only God or a bullet can stop.”

“You sound as though you condone the terrorists.”

“Sometimes I am in complete sympathy with them. Sometimes I detest them. Yet I would not want to be the judge of their actions. Who are you and I to say that Dov Landau is not justified? You know what they’ve done to him. You are wrong about something else. If he is brought back he can only bring more pain to that girl. Dov must do what he must do.”

Kitty got down from the wall and brushed her skirt and they walked toward the gate. “Ari,” she said at last, “you are right.”

Sutherland joined them as they walked outside to his car. “Are you going to be around long, Ben Canaan?” he asked.

“I have a few things to attend to in Safed. I better get them done.”

“Why don’t you come back and join us for dinner?”

“Well, I…”

“Please do,” Kitty said.

“Very well. Thank you.”

“Good. Come on back up just as soon as you are through in Safed.”

They waved as he drove down the hillside, past the Taggart fort and out of sight.

“He who guards Israel shall neither rest nor sleep,” Kitty said.

“Good Lord, Kitty. Have you gotten around to Biblical quotations?”

They opened the gate and walked back toward the patio.

“He looks exhausted.”

“I think he looks fine,” Sutherland said, “for a man who works a hundred and ten hours a week.”

“I’ve never seen such dedication … or would you call it fanaticism? I was surprised to see him here, Bruce. I didn’t know you were mixed up in this business.”

Sutherland stuffed a pipe full of tobacco. “I’m not really actively engaged. The Haganah came to me and asked me to make an appraisal of the Arab armies’ strength outside Palestine. They simply want a professional, nonpartisan point of view. See here, Kitty, don’t you think it is time you became honest with yourself in this matter?”

“I told you I’m not going to be partial to either side.”

“Kitty, I’m afraid you’re acting like an ostrich. You’re sitting in the middle of a battlefield and saying ‘Don’t hit my house, my blinds are drawn.’ ”

“I’m getting out, Bruce.”

“Then you’d better do it quickly. If you believe you can stay on much longer the way you have then you are living in a fool’s paradise.”

“I can’t bring myself to it just yet. I must have a little more time until Karen has recovered from this.”

“And is that the only reason?”

Kitty shook her head. “I guess I’m afraid of a showdown. There are times when I am sure I have beaten this thing of her and Palestine-and other times, like right now, I’m terrified of putting it to a test.”

From Sutherland’s villa before dinner they could see the enormous full moon hanging over the city.

“ ‘Three great gifts hath the Lord granted Israel, but every one of them will be won by suffering. One of them is the

Land of Israel,’” Sutherland said. “Those are the words of Bar Yohai two thousand years ago. I would say he was a wise man.”

“Speaking of wise men, I am going to the Sea of Galilee tomorrow. Have you been there yet, Kitty?” Ari asked.

“No, I’m afraid my travel has been rather restricted.”

“You should see it for sure. You’d better go soon. It will be too hot in a few weeks.”

“Why don’t you take her?” Karen said quickly.

There was an embarrassed silence.

“That … that’s really a good idea,” Ari said. “I could work my schedule around to take a few days off. Why don’t we all go, the four of us?”

“I don’t care to,” Karen said. “I’ve hiked there twice already with the Gadna.”

Bruce Sutherland picked up Karen’s cue. “Not me, old chap, I’ve seen the lake a dozen times.”

“Why don’t you go with Ari?” Karen said.

“I think I’d better stay here with you,” Kitty answered.

“Nonsense,” Sutherland pressed. “Karen and I will get on just fine by ourselves. As a matter of fact it will be a pleasure to get rid of you for a few days, not to mention the fact that Ari looks as though he could stand a bit of a rest.”

Kitty laughed. “Ari, I smell an underhanded plot. It appears we have a pair of matchmakers trying to make a shiddoch.”

“Listen to her!” Karen cried in excitement.

“Shucks, I’m just a sabra at heart. It looks as though you’re trapped, Ari.”

“That suits me fine,” he said.

CHAPTER TEN: Early the next morning Ari and Kitty drove to the Sea of Galilee. They entered the Genossar Valley which ran along its northern shores. Across the lake the browned-out hills of Syria loomed over this low point on the earth and the warm, sultry air hung still.

This is God’s own sea, Kitty thought. Once again she was alone with Ari Ben Canaan and once again she felt the timelessness of the land close in on her as she had felt it in the Judean hills. Why was she more affected when she was with Ari, she wondered?

At the edge of the sea he took her to the ruins of the synagogue of Capernaum. Here, Jesus walked and taught and healed. Words came to Kitty’s mind that she thought she had forgotten. Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee and saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother cast—

ing a net into the sea … And they went into Capernaum and straight away on the Sabbath He entered into the synagogue and taught.

It was as though He had never left. On the water’s edge fishermen cast their nets into the sea and a small flock of black goats grazed and the ages had not passed.

From there Ari took her to the church which marked the place of the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes a short distance from Capernaum. The floor of the church held a Byzantine mosaic depicting cormorants and herons and ducks and other wild birds which still inhabited the lake.

And then they moved on to the Mount of Beatitudes to a little chapel on the hill where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness” sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

These were His words spoken from this place. As she saw the Christian holy places the thought came to confuse her that Ari Ben Canaan and David Ben Ami and her own Karen seemed to live with a closeness to all this that she could never attain.

They sped past the sleeping Arab village of Migdal, the birthplace of Mary Magdalene, and then beneath the Horns of Hattin, which held the tomb of Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses and the chief prophet of the Druses, but Kitty’s attention was distracted by her mental turmoil.

Then the car turned away from the plains of Hattin and into a flat field where a burst of scarlet hit their eyes. The field was a red carpet of wild flowers.

“How red it is,” Kitty said. “Stop the car for a moment, Ari.”

He pulled over to the side of the road and Kitty got out. She picked one of the flowers and as she looked at it her eyes narrowed. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she whispered in a shaky voice.

“The ancient Maccabees lived in caves around here. It is the only place in the world this flower grows. It is called Blood of the Maccabees.”

Kitty examined the red bloom closely. It did look like little droplets of blood, She dropped the flower quickly and rubbed her hand on her skirt.

This land and everything about it was closing in on her! Even the wild flowers will not let you forget for a moment It

creeps into you from its very earth and its very air and it is damning and tormenting.

Kitty Fremont was frightened. She knew that she would have to leave Palestine at once: the more she resisted the place the harder it struck back at her. It was all around her and above her and beneath her and she felt stifled and crashed.

They entered Tiberias from the north through the modern Jewish suburb of Kiryat Shmuel-the Village of Samuel-and drove past another large Taggart fort and descended from the hills to the water level, into the Old City. The buildings were mostly of black basalt rock and the hills were filled with the graves and caves of ancient Hebrew greats.

Beyond the city they turned into the Galilean Hotel on the sea. It was very hot in the midday. Kitty nibbled her lunch of Galilee catfish and barely spoke a word. She wished she had not come.

“I haven’t yet shown you the holiest of the holy,” Ari said.

“Where is that?”

“Shoshanna kibbutz. That’s where I was born.”

Kitty smiled. She suspected that Ari knew she was disturbed and was trying to cheer her up. “And just where is this great shrine?”

“A few miles down the road where the Jordan River runs into the sea. Although I do hear I was almost born in the old Turkish police station in town here. This place is full of tourists in the winter. It’s a little late in the season. Anyhow, we have the whole lake to ourselves. Why don’t we take a swim?”

“That sounds like a really good idea,” Kitty said.

A long pier of basalt rock jutted out beyond the hotel for some forty yards into the lake. Ari was on the pier first after lunch. Kitty found herself looking at his body as she walked from the hotel. He waved to her. Ari had a lean build and looked hard and powerful.

“Hi,” she called. “Have you been in yet?”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“How deep is it from the end of the pier?”

“About ten feet. Can you swim as far as the raft?”

“You’ve asked for a race.”

Kitty dropped her robe and put on her bathing cap. Ari inspected her frankly just as she had measured him. Her body had not the angular sturdiness of a sabra girl. She was more of the softness and roundness one would expect from an American woman.

Their eyes met for an instant and both of them looked a little abashed.

She ran past him and dived into the water. Ari followed.

He was surprised to find that it was all he could do to catch her and get a few strokes ahead. Kitty swam with a graceful crawl and a steady stroke that pressed him to the utmost. They climbed on the raft breathless and laughing.

“You pulled a fast one on me,” he said.

“I forgot to mention it but…”

“I know, I know. You were on the girls’ swimming team in college.”

She lay on her back and took a deep breath of contentment. The water was cool and refreshing and seemed to wash her bad spirits away.

It was late in the afternoon before they returned to the hotel for cocktails on the veranda and then retired to their rooms to rest before dinner.

Ari, who had had little rest in recent weeks, was asleep the instant he lay down. In the next room Kitty paced the floor. She had recovered from much of the agitation of the morning but she was tired of this emotional drain and she was still actually a little frightened of the mystical power that this land held. Kitty longed to return to a normal, sane, planned life. She convinced herself that Karen needed the same therapy more than anything else. She made up her mind to face the issue with Karen without further delay.

By evening it had turned pleasantly cool. Kitty began to dress for dinner. She opened her closet and considered the three dresses hanging there. Slowly she took down one of them. It was the same dress that Jordana Ben Canaan had picked from her closet the day of their argument. She thought of Ari’s look on the pier today. Kitty had liked it. The dress was a strapless sheath which clung to her body and emphasized her bosom.

Every male eyebrow in the hotel lifted as Kitty drifted by, and nostrils twitched with the scent of her perfume. Ari stood like a man stunned, watching her cross the lobby. As she came up to him he suddenly became aware of the fact that he was staring at her and quickly found his voice.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said. “There is a concert at the Ein Gev kibbutz across the lake. We will go right after dinner.”

“Will this dress be all right to wear?”

“Uh … yes … yes, it will be excellent.”

Most of the full moon of the night before was left for them. Just as their motor launch left the pier it rose from behind the Syrian hills, unbelievably huge, sending a great path of light over the motionless waters.

“The sea is so still,” Kitty said.

“It is deceptive. When God gets angry He can turn it into an ocean in minutes.”

In a half hour they had crossed the water and landed at the docks of the kibbutz of Ein Gev-the Spring of the Mountain Pass. Ein Gev was a daring experiment. The kibbutz sat isolated from the rest of Palestine and directly below the mountains of Syria. A Syrian village hung above it and its fields were plowed to the border markers. It had been founded by immigrants of the German Aliyah in the year of 1937 and strategically commanded a view of the Sea of Galilee.

The kibbutz was set near a basin formed by the Yarmuk River, the border between Syria and Trans-Jordan, and the basin was the site of a cradle of man. Everyday the farmers plowed up evidences of human life, some prehistoric. They had found crude plows and pottery thousands of years old, proving the area had been farmed and there had been community life even there.

Right on the border between Ein Gev and the Syrian hills stood a small mountain shaped like a column. It was called Sussita-the Horse. Atop Sussita were the ruins of one of the nine Roman fortress cities of Palestine. Sussita still dominated the entire area.

Many of the German pioneers had been musicians in former life and they were an industrious lot. In addition to farming and fishing they hit upon another idea to augment the kibbutz income. They formed an orchestra and bought a pair of launches to bring the winter tourists of Tiberias across the lake for concerts. The idea proved successful and the tradition grew until Ein Gev drew every artist who visited Palestine. A large outdoor auditorium was built into a natural woodland setting on the edge of the lake, and additional plans called for a covered building in years to come.

Ari spread a blanket on the grass at the edge of the auditorium and the two of them lay back and looked up into the sky and watched the enormous Lag Ba Omer moon grow smaller and higher and make room for a billion stars. As the orchestra played a Beethoven concert the tension within Kitty passed away. This moment was perfection. No more beautiful setting could have been created. It seemed almost unreal and she found herself hoping that it would go on and on.

The concert ended. Ari took her hand and led her away from the crowds, down a path along the lake. The air was still and filled with a pine scent, and the Sea of Galilee was like a polished mirror. At the water’s edge there was a bench made of three slabs of stone from an ancient temple.

They sat and looked over at the twinkling lights of Tiberias. Ari brushed against her and Kitty turned and looked at him. How handsome Ari Ben Canaan was! Suddenly she wanted to hold him and to touch his cheek and stroke his hair. She wanted to tell him not to work so hard. She wanted to tell

him to unlock his heart to her. She wanted to say how she felt when he was near and to beg not to be a stranger and to find something for them to share. But Ari Ben Canaan was a stranger and she dare not ever say what she felt.

The Sea of Galilee stirred and lapped against the shore. A sudden gust of breeze caused the bulrushes at the water’s edge to sway. Kitty Fremont turned away from Ari.

A tremor passed through her body as she felt his hand touch her shoulder. “You are cold,” Ari said, holding her stole for her. Kitty slipped it over her shoulders. They stared long at each other.

Ari stood up suddenly. “It sounds like the launch is returning,” he said. “We had better go.”

As the launch pushed off, the Sea of Galilee turned from smooth to choppy with the suddenness of which Ari had spoken. Wisps of spray broke over the bow and whipped back on them. Ari put his arm about Kitty’s shoulder and brought her close to him to protect her from the water. All across the lake Kitty rested her head on his chest with her eyes closed, listening to the beat of his Heart.

They walked from the pier hand in hand along the path to the hotel. Kitty stopped beneath the willow tree whose branches spread like a giant umbrella, bending clear down into the lake. She tried to speak but her voice trembled and the words would not come out.

Ari touched her wet hair and brushed it back from her forehead. He held her shoulders gently, and the muscles of his face worked with tenseness as he drew her close. Kitty lifted her face to him.

“Ari,” she whispered, “please kiss me.”

All that had smoldered for months burst into flames of ecstasy, engulfing them, in this first embrace.

How good he feels! How strong he is! Kitty had never known a moment like this with any man-not even Tom Fremont. They kissed and they kissed again and she pressed against him and felt the power of his arms. Then they stood apart and walked in quick silence to the hotel.

Kitty stood awkwardly before the door of her room. Ari moved toward his door but she took his hand and turned him around. They stood facing each other wordlessly for a moment. Kitty nodded, and turned and entered her room quickly and closed the door behind her.

She undressed in the dark and slipped into a nightgown and walked toward her balcony, where she could see the light from his room. She could hear him pacing the floor. His light went off. Kitty fell back into the shadows. In a moment she saw him standing on her balcony.

“I want you,” Ari said.

She ran into his arms and held him tightly, trembling with desire. His kisses fell over her mouth and cheeks and neck and she exchanged kiss for kiss, touch for touch, with an abandon she had never known. Ari swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed and placed her on it and knelt beside her. Kitty felt faint. She gripped the sheets and sobbed and writhed.

Ari lowered the shoulder strap of her nightgown and caressed her breast.

With violent abruptness Kitty spun out of his grasp and staggered from the bed. “No,” she gasped.

Ari froze.

Kitty’s eyes filled with tears and she cringed against the wall, holding herself to stop the trembling. She sagged into a chair. Moments passed until the quaking within her abated and her breathing became normal. Ari stood over her and stared down.

“You must hate me,” she said at last.

He did not speak. She looked up at his towering figure and saw the hurt on his face.

“Go on, Ari … say it. Say anything.”

He did not speak.

Kitty stood up slowly and faced him. “I don’t want this, Ari. I don’t want to be made. I guess I was just overcome by the moonlight…”

“I shouldn’t have thought I was making love to a reluctant virgin,” he said.

“Ari, please …”

“I don’t have time to indulge in games and words. I am a grown man and you are a grown woman.”

“You state it so well.”

His voice was cold. “I will leave by the door if you don’t mind.”

Kitty winced with the sharp crack of the door closing. She stood for a long time by the french doors and looked out at the water. The Sea of Galilee was angry and the moon faded behind a sinister black cloud.

Kitty was numb. Why had she run from him? She had never felt so strongly for anyone and she had never lost control of herself like this. Her own recklessness had frightened her. She reasoned that Ari Ben Canaan did not really want her. Beyond a night of love he had no need of her, and no man had treated her this way before.

Then it came to her that she had been fleeing from this very feeling she had for him, this new desire for Ari which could lead her to stay in Palestine. She must never let it happen again. She was going to leave with Karen and nothing was going to stop her! She knew that she was afraid of Ari:

Ari could defeat her. If he were to show the slightest signs of really caring she might not have the strength-but the thought of his steely coldness strengthened her determination to resist, leaving her reassured and yet, perversely, at the same time resentful.

Kitty threw herself onto the bed and fell into an exhausted sleep, with the wind from over the water beating against her window.

In the morning it was calm again.

Kitty threw back the covers and jumped from bed and all the events of the night before came to her. She blushed. They did not seem so terrible now but she was embarrassed. She had created a scene and there was no doubt Ari had thought it pretty melodramatic as well as childish. The whole thing had been her doing; she would set it right by making up with him, sensibly and forthrightly. She dressed quickly and went down to the dining room to await Ari. She thought of the words she would use to apologize.

Kitty sipped coffee and waited.

A half hour passed. Ari did not come down. She snuffed out her third cigarette and walked out to the front desk.

“Have you seen Mr. Ben Canaan this morning?” she asked the clerk.

“Mr. Ben Canaan checked out at six.”

“Did he say where he was going7”

“Mr. Ben Canaan never says where he is going.”

“Perhaps he left a message for me?”

The clerk turned around and pointed to the empty key box.

“I see … well … thank you very much.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Dov Landau found a room in a dilapidated fourth-rate hotel on the Street of the Chain in the Old City of Jerusalem. As instructed, he went to the Saladin Cafe on the Nablus Road near the Damascus Gate and left his name and hotel to be given to Bar Israel.

Dov pawned the gold rings and bracelets he had stolen from the faculty at Gan Dafna and turned to the job of studying Jerusalem. To the ghetto rat and past master of thievery Jerusalem was simple. Within three days Dov knew every street and alley in the Old City and the immediate business districts around it. His sharp eye appraised and his deft hands lifted enough objects of value to keep him sustained. The matter of escape through the narrow alleyways and crowded bazaars was ridiculously easy for him.

Dov spent much of his money for books and art material

He walked along Jaffa Road searching the many bookstores for texts on art, draftsmanship, and architecture.

He locked himself in his room with his books and art material, some dried fruits and bottled soft drinks, and waited for contact from the Maccabees. Dov studied by candlelight. He was unaware of the pageantry that took place outside his window on the Street of the Chain which ran between the Jewish and Moslem quarters to the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall. He would read until his eyes burned and he could read no more, then he would lay the book on his chest and stare at the ceiling and think of Karen Clement. Dov had not realized how badly he would miss her nor that missing her could cause an actual physical pain. Karen had been with him for so long he had forgotten what it was like to be away from her. He remembered every moment with her. Those days at Caraolos and on the Exodus when she lay in his arms in the hold of the ship. He remembered how happy she was and how beautiful she looked that first day at Gan Dafna. He remembered her kind, expressive face and her gentle touch and her sharp voice when she was angry.

Dov sat on the edge of his bed and sketched a hundred pictures of Karen. He drew her in every way he remembered her but crumpled each picture and threw it on the floor, for no picture could show how beautiful she was to Dov.

Dov stayed in his room for two weeks, leaving only upon necessity. At the end of the second week he needed some more money and he left his room with some rings to pawn. As he reached the entrance to the building he saw a man standing in the shadows. Dov wrapped his hand around his pistol and walked past, poised to spin around at the first sound.

“Don’t move, don’t turn,” a voice from the shadows commanded.

Dov froze in his tracks.

“You made inquiries for Bar Israel. What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

“What is your name?”

“Landau, Dov Landau.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Gan Dafna.”

“Who sent you?”

“Mordecai.”

“How did you get into Palestine?”

“On the Exodus.”

“Keep walking out to the street and don’t look around. You will be contacted later.”

Dov became restless after the contact was made. He rose to the point of chucking it all and returning to Gan Dafna. He missed Karen terribly. He started a half dozen letters and

tore each one up. Let’s get it over with … let’s get it over with, Dov said to himself again and again.

He lay in his room reading and began to doze. Then he roused himself and lighted fresh candles: if he fell asleep and the old nightmare came he did not want to awaken in a dark room.

There was a sharp knock on his door.

Dov sprang to his feet, picked up his pistol, and stood close to the locked door.

“It is your friends,” a voice said from the hallway. Dov recognized it as the same voice that had spoken to him from the shadows. He opened the door. He could see no one.

“Turn around and face the wall,” the voice commanded from the darkness. Dov obeyed. He felt the presence of two men behind him. A blindfold was tied over his eyes and two pairs of hands led him down the stairs to a waiting car where he was shoved on the back floor and covered and driven from the Old City.

Dov concentrated on sensing where he was being driven. The car screeched into King Solomon Street, followed the Via Dolorosa to Stephen’s Gate. It was child’s play to Dov Laudau, who knew his way through a hundred alternate routes in the blackness of the sewers under Warsaw.

The car shifted into a lower gear to make a hill. They must be driving past the Tomb of the Virgin toward the Mount of Olives, Dov calculated. The road became smooth. Now Dov knew they were driving past the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus.

They drove another ten minutes and stopped.

Dov accurately pinpointed their position in the Sanhedriya section near the Tombs of the Sanhedrin, the ancient supreme court of Hebrew rabbis, almost to the precise part of the block.

He was led into a house and into a room filled with cigarette smoke where he was made to sit. He sensed at least five or six people. For two hours Dov was grilled. Questions were fired at him from around the room until he began to perspire nervously. As the questioning continued he began to piece it together. The Maccabees had learned through their infallible intelligence sources that Dov had extraordinary talent as a forger, and it was badly needed by them. He had obviously been brought before some of the highest members in the Maccabees, perhaps the commanders themselves. At last they had satisfied themselves that Dov’s qualifications and security checked.

“There is a curtain in front of you,” a voice said. “Put your hands through it.”

Dov pushed his hands through the cloth. One of his hands

was placed on a pistol and the other on a Bible. He repeated the oath of the Maccabees:

“I, Dov Landau, do give my body, my soul, my being, without reservation or qualification, to the Freedom Fighters of the Maccabees. I will obey any and all orders without question. I will subordinate myself to the authority over me. Under torture, even to death, I will never divulge the name of a fellow Maccabee or the secrets entrusted to me. I will fight the enemies of the Jewish people unto the last breath of life in my body. I will never cease in this sacred battle until realization of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, which is the natural historical right of my people. My creed to mine enemies shall be: Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning. All this I swear in the name of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachael and Leah and the prophets and of all the Jews who have been slaughtered and all my gallant brothers and sisters who have died in the name of freedom.”

The blindfold was taken from Dov’s eyes and the candles on the Menorah before him were blown out and the lights went up in the room. Dov looked into the eyes of six grim men and two women. They shook hands with him and introduced themselves. Old man Akiva himself was there and Ben Moshe, their field leader, who had lost a brother fighting for the British in the war and a sister with the Palmach. Nahum Ben Ami was one of seven brothers. The other six were in the Palmach. These men and women banded together because they were neither capable or desirous of the self-restraint of the Yishuv.

Old Akiva stepped up before Dov. “You will be of value to us, Dov Landau. That is why we took you without the usual training.”

“I did not join to draw pictures,” Dov snapped.

“You will do what you are told to do,” Ben Moshe answered.

“Dov, you are a Maccabee now,” Akiva said. “You are entitled to take a name of a Hebrew hero. Do you have such a name in mind?”

“Giora,” Dov said.

There was some laughter about the room. Dov gritted his teeth.

“Giora, is it?” Akiva said. “I am afraid there are others ahead of you.”

“How about Little Giora,” Nahum Ben Ami said, “until Dov can become Big Giora?”

“I will become Big Giora soon enough if you give me the chance.”

“You will set up a forgery plant,” Ben Moshe said, “and

travel with us. If you behave and do as you are told we may let you go out on a raid with us now and again.”

Major Fred Caldwell played, bridge in the main lounge of the British Officers’ Club at Goldsmith House in Jerusalem. Freddie was finding it difficult to concentrate on card playing. His mind kept wandering back to the CID Headquarters and on the captured Maccabee girl they had been interrogating for some three days. Her name was Ayala and she was in her early twenties and fetchingly pretty. She had been a music major at the university. At least she was pretty before the questioning started. Ayala had been another tough Jewess and she had spit defiance at the CID. Like most of the captured Maccabees she spent her time quoting biblical passages, predicting their eternal damnation, or proclaiming the righteousness of her cause.

This morning their patience had run out and Ayala began to get the third degree.

“Your play, Freddie,” his partner said across the table.

Fred Caldwell looked at’ his cards quickly. “Forgive me,” he said, and played a bad card. His mind was on the inspector standing over Ayala and flailing her with a rubber hose. He heard it thud into the girl’s face time and again until her nose was broken and her eyes blacked and swollen almost shut and her lips puffed and distorted. But Ayala would not break.

Freddie considered that he didn’t give a damn if Ayala never broke: the thought of the smashing of her Jewish face delighted him.

An orderly walked up alongside the table.

“I beg your pardon, Major Caldwell. There is a telephone call for you, sir.”

“Excuse me, chaps,” Freddie said throwing his cards face down and walking off to the phone on the other side of the lounge. He picked up the receiver. “Caldwell here.”

“Hello, Major. This is the sergeant of the guard at CID, sir. Inspector Parkington asked me to phone you right away, sir. He says the Maccabee girl is ready to talk and thought you’d best come over to headquarters right away.”

“Righto,” Freddie said.

“Inspector Parkington has already sent a car for you, sir. It will be there in a few minutes.”

Caldwell returned to the card players. “Sorry, chaps. Have to leave. Duty calls.”

“Bad luck, Freddie.”

Bad luck, hell, Freddie thought. He was looking forward to it. He walked outside Goldsmith House. The guards saluted. A

car pulled up to a stop and a soldier jumped from behind the wheel, walked to Caldwell and saluted.

“Major Caldwell?”

“Here, boy.”

“Your car from CID, sir.”

The soldier held the rear door open. Freddie got into the back seat and the soldier ran around, got behind the wheel and they drove off. Two blocks beyond Goldsmith House he pulled the car over to a curb at an intersection. In a second the doors were flung open and three men jumped into the car, slammed the doors, and the car picked up speed again.

Caldwell’s throat closed with fear. He shrieked and tried to leap across Ben Moshe. The Maccabee in the front seat turned around and slapped him with a pistol barrel and Ben Moshe snatched his collar and jerked him back into his seat. The Maccabee driver took off the military cap and looked up in the mirror.

Caldwell’s eyes bugged in terror.

“I demand to know what this is all aboutl”

“You seem upset, Major Caldwell,” Ben Moshe said coldly.

“Stop this car and let me out immediately, do you hear?”

“Shall we let you out the same way you threw out a fourteen-year-old boy named Ben Solomon in an Arab village? You see, Major Caldwell, Ben Solomon’s ghost called out to us from his grave and asked us to make retribution against the guilty.”

The sweat poured into Caldwell’s eyes. “It’s all a lie … a lie… a lie…”

Ben Moshe flipped something on Caldwell’s lap and shined his flashlight on it. It was a photograph of the decapitated boy, Ben Solomon.

Caldwell began to sob for mercy. He doubled over and vomited in fear.

“It appears that Major Caldwell is in a mood to talk. We had better take him to headquarters and let him give out with his information before settling Ben Solomon’s account.”

Caldwell blurted out all he knew about the British army plans and CID’s operations and afterwards signed a confession of the murder of the boy.

Three days after his abduction Major Fred Caldwell’s body was found on Mount Zion at the Dung Gate of the Old City. Pinned to his body was a picture of Ben Solomon and a photostat of Caldwell’s confession and across it were scribbled the words: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Major Fred Caldwell received the same fate that Sisera, the Canaanite, met at the hands of Jael when he fled from the scene of his battle with Deborah and Barak.

CHAPTER TWELVE: The revenge murder of Major Fred Caldwell had a shattering effect. No one seemed to question its justification, but the Maccabee method was more than many could condone.

In England people had become disgusted with the entire situation and were bringing pressure on the Labour government to give up the mandate. Inside Palestine the British garrison was at once enraged and worried.

Two days after Caldwell was found by the Dung Gate, a Maccabee prisoner, the girl named Ayala, died of internal hemorrhages from the beatings she had received during questioning. When the Maccabees learned of Ayala’s death, there were fourteen days of wrathful retribution. Jerusalem reeled under the impact of terrorist raids. On the last days the raids were climaxed by an audacious daylight attack on Criminal Investigation Division headquarters.

During “Hell’s Fortnight,” as the Maccabee’s wrath came to be designated, Dov Landau had displayed a reckless courage that awed even the toughest of the terrorists. Dov went out four times on raids, the last time as one of the leaders of the final assault against the CID. During Hell’s Fortnight a legend of “Little Giora” was born, in which his name became synonymous with wild fearlessness.

Palestine held its breath waiting for the next blow to fall. General Arnold Haven-Hurst was stunned at first but retaliated against the Yishuv with martial law, cordons, searches, raids, and even executions in a campaign that slowed normal industry and commerce to a crawl. His all-encompassing Operation Squid encircled Palestine.

Caldwell’s murder, Hell’s Fortnight, and the final raid on CID were obvious mockeries of British authority. As the Maccabees erupted, the Aliyah Bet brought three more illegal ships into Palestine waters. While the illegal immigration runs were not so spectacular they were just as damaging as the activities of the terrorists. British troops patrolled the streets of Jewish cities and the highways with the taut expectancy of ambush any moment.

The United Nations delegation was arriving shortly. Haven-Hurst determined to cripple the Yishuv before they came. The general obtained a list of officers and men who were known for overt anti-Jewish actions. He screened the list personally and selected six of the most vicious: two officers and four enlisted men. The six were brought to his quarters in the Schneller Barracks and sworn in on an ultrasecret mission.

For five days the affair was plotted. On the sixth day, Haven-Hurst launched his last-ditch effort.

The six men were disguised as Arabs. A pair of them drove along King George Avenue in a truck loaded with two tons of dynamite. The truck made for the Zion Settlement Building. It stopped catercorner from the building, headed at the long driveway that led into the main entrance. The driver in Arab costume locked the steering wheel, put the truck in gear, and opened the throttle; the two men jumped clear and disappeared.

The truck tore over the street, through the open gate and down the driveway. It swerved for an instant, then careened off the curbing and hit just off the main entrance. A thunderous explosion occurred. The building was demolished.

At the same moment another pair of men in another truck filled with dynamite tried the same maneuver at the Yishuv Central building just two blocks away. A meeting was in session and the building held almost the entire Yishuv leadership.

The truck bore down on the second building. At the last instant it had to jump a curb. In hitting the curb the truck was thrown far enough off course to miss the building and blow up an adjoining apartment house.

The four soldiers were scooped up in two escape cars driven by the last two of the picked team. The cars fled toward the sanctuary of British-controlled Trans-Jordan.

General Arnold Haven-Hurst had attempted in one blow to wipe out the Yishuv leadership and representation. One hundred people died at the Zion Settlement Society. None was killed at Yishuv Central. Among the dead was Harriet Saltzman, the eighty-year-old leader of Youth Aliyah.

Within moments after the explosions, Haganah and Maccabee Intelligence went into action to comb Palestine for the culprits. By the end of the day both of the organizations had identified the six “Arabs” as British soldiers. They were further able to trace the action directly to Arnold Haven-Hurst, although with no usable proof. Instead of destroying Yishuv leadership, Haven-Hurst’s desperate gamble had a reverse effect. It united the Jews of Palestine in a way they had never before been united and it drove together the two armed forces, the Haganah and Maccabees. The Haganah had obtained a copy of the “Haven-Hurst Report.” With the evidence behind the bombings they knew the general was out to destroy them if they had not known it before. Avidan dispatched Zev Gilboa to Jerusalem to seek out Bar Israel to arrange a meeting between himself and the Maccabee commanders. The procedure was almost unique: the only precedent had been at the beginning of World War II when Avid-an asked Akiva to abstain from terror for the duration.

The meeting was held at one o’clock in the morning in an open field on the road from Jerusalem on the site of what was once the Tenth Roman Legion camp. There were four men present: Akiva and Ben Moshe for the Maccabees, Avidan for the Haganah, with Zev Gilboa representing the Haganah’s striking arm, the Palmach. There were no handshakes or amenities between the two organizations’ representatives. They stood facing each other in the darkness, filled with mutual distrust. The late-night air was cold despite the coming of summer.

“I have asked this meeting with you to see if there is some basis for closer cooperation between our forces,” Avidan said.

“You mean you want us to come under your jurisdiction?” Ben Moshe asked suspiciously.

“I have long given up the idea of trying to control your group,” Avidan said. “I merely think the times call for a maximum effort. You have strength inside the three cities and are able to operate with a greater degree of freedom than we can.”

“So that’s it,” Akiva snapped. “You want us to do your dirty work.”

“Hear him out, Akiva,” bis field commander said.

“I don’t like the whole idea. I didn’t approve of this meeting, Ben Moshe. These people have betrayed us in the past and they’ll do it again.”

Avidan’s bald head turned crimson under the old man’s words. “I choose to listen to your insults tonight, Akiva, because there is too much at stake. I count on the fact that despite our differences you are a Jew and you love Eretz Israel.” He handed a copy of the “Haven-Hurst Report” to Akiva.

The old man gave it to Ben Moshe, who turned his flashlight on the paper.

“Fourteen years ago I said the British were our enemy. You didn’t believe me then,” Akiva whispered.

“I won’t argue politics with you. Will you or won’t you work with us?” Avidan demanded. . “We will try it out,” Ben Moshe said.

After the meeting liaison groups went to work to plot out a joint Haganah-Maccabee action. Two weeks after the explosions the British received their answer for the destruction of the Zion Settlement Society building and the attempted destruction of the Yishuv Central.

In one night the Haganah completely wrecked the railroad system, stopping all rail traffic to and from Palestine.

The next night the Maccabees broke into six British embassies and consulates in Mediterranean countries and destroyed records used in the fight against Aliyah Bet.

The Palmach branch of the Haganah wrecked the Mosul oil pipelines in fifteen places.

With this done, the final measure was plotted by the Maccabees-the elimination of General Sir Arnold Haven-Hurst. Maccabees observed the Schneller compound twenty-four hours a day. They charted all movement in and out, logged each car and truck, and diagramed the entire compound.

After four days it began to look like an impossible task. Haven-Hurst was locked in the center of a fortress surrounded by thousands of troops. No one but British personnel was allowed anywhere near his quarters. When Haven-Hurst did move out of the compound it was in secrecy and he was guarded by convoys so heavy the Maccabees would lose a hundred men by attacking it.