Israel (42 page)

“I could come to your camp later, when Herschel sleeps,” Rosie suggested. “It is not so far—”

Haim was tempted. Yol and their makeshift camp were only half an hour's ride from here. He frowned. “It's too dangerous. Why take such a risk? Come, now, let's all sit together and talk, for I have only a little longer. Yol, Jibarn and I must be across the river with the others by dawn.”

It was after midnight when Haim returned to the small camp by the same narrow stream Jibarn had led him to that first time. As on that night, there was a small fire burning and a pot of tea warming in the glowing coals. Both Yol and Jibarn were still awake, sitting crosslegged on their blankets as they watched the flames.

“Everything okay?” Yol asked as Haim entered the clearing.

“Everything is fine, and you were asked for,” Haim told his friend. “You should have come.”

Yol shrugged. “I have no family waiting for me.”

“My family is waiting for you.”

Yol smiled. “You know what I mean. To go calling on all our old friends while you were with Rosie and Herschel and then to have to leave again would have caused me more pain than pleasure. When this war is over I shall return to Degania for good.”

“Well.” Haim reached beneath his tunic and set a bottle of wine before Yol. “All the halutzim said, ‘Here,
take this bottle to Yol to show him that we still remember what he is like—'”

“Haim, it is a bottle from Rishon le Zion—why, it must be one of the last!”

“Degania has a few cases hidden. They're saving it to celebrate liberation, but they insisted that we have one.”

“Now here we have a moral question, Jibarn,” Yol began. “Our comrades wait for us by the Jordan. Should we save this bottle—this tiny bottle—to share with them?”

“I think not, Yol,” Jibarn replied thoughtfully. “Such a tiny bottle would allow only one sip each for forty men. A mere taste of home would be just like your visit to Degania, it would cause more pain than pleasure.”

Yol had already pulled the cork. He took a long swallow and said, “I toast you, Jibarn. I can teach you no more.”

“You've already done enough to corrupt him,” Haim joked as he was handed the bottle. He and Yol laughed, but Haim noticed that Jibarn did not. The Arab merely watched them, his smile inscrutable.

“A drink, Jibarn?” Haim asked.

The boy shook his head. “The Koran forbids it.”

“Absolutely it does,” Yol exclaimed, snatching the bottle from Haim's grasp. “I'll drink his share.”

“Yes, go ahead and drink,” Jibarn agreed, his skulllike face disquieting in the firelight. “It will help you to sleep. Don't worry, I will wake you when the time comes.”

The wine did help Yol to sleep, but Haim, still caught up with thoughts of his family, was far too restless to close his eyes. He kept the fire going and thought about his visit home until Jibarn silently rose and came around the flames to sit down beside him.

“I am glad you got the chance to see your wife and son,” the Arab said in his own lilting tongue.

Haim glanced sideways at Jibarn and returned his gaze to the fire. “Family is important,” he replied in Arabic. “You will have a wife and son one day.”

“Oh, perhaps.” Jibarn shrugged. His shaved skull dipped down between his narrow shoulders. “It is hard to imagine such a thing, though. I have no home, Haim.”

“You know I was an orphan, too—”

“Yes, but to lose one's family goes far beyond personal tragedy for an Arab. We put great stock in tracing our lineage, you know. Like the horse, like the falcon, we are only the sum total of our fathers and grandfathers.”

Haim was silent for a moment. “I was there that night, you know.”

Now it was Jibarn's turn to glance sideways and nod shyly. “I know.”

“It was an accident, as Yol has told you. It could not have been avoided. It was dark and we were afraid of the Bedouins. Yol was all alone, guarding our mules. He heard a noise, he turned, he fired—”

“Stop,” Jibarn softly ordered. “The circumstances do not matter. Either something happened or it didn't. It is not masculine to cloud the matter with circumstances.” He paused. “This I do say: I know that it was a blunder. Yol is prone to blunders.”

“I think he made a blunder when he told you.”

Jibarn smiled ferally. “I also think that.” He shrugged. “But it is in the past, yes, Haim? Come, hand me your revolver and I will clean it for you.”

Haim nodded, reaching behind him for the holster lying on the blanket. He drew the pistol, an ancient Webley, and handed it to the boy, who nimbly extracted its cartridges, spilling them onto the blanket. Jibarn cleaned the firearms of most of the men in the group. Tonight there was no danger in being without a sidearm. Haim's rifle was nearby and there were no Turks in the area as yet.

“I turned thirteen last month,” Jibarn said as he
wiped the weapon's action with the hem of his caftan. “In my religion, as in yours, that is the age when a boy becomes a man. Until that age a boy can be neglectful if he wishes. After then, however, he is responsible for the honor of his family as well as himself.” He unscrewed the cylinder from the revolver's frame. The Webley was in two pieces. Jibarn set both down on the blanket as he turned to confront Haim.

“It is important to me that you understand everything,” the boy said, his tone oddly formal. “I respect you.”

“I'm fond of you as well,” Haim said, not altogether truthfully. There was a quality about Jibarn that he did not care for, but tonight the mellow warmth of the wine he'd drunk, combined with his sympathy for the boy's orphaned state, opened Haim's heart. “I've not forgotten the way you saved my life. When the war is over, I'll make it up to you.” He stretched to put his arm around Jibarn's shoulder.

Jibarn ducked beneath Haim's outstretched arm and rose behind him with lethal grace and speed. Haim had no time to react before Jibarn's sinewy forearm hammer-locked his throat and the boy's glittering seven-inch blade materialized from the flowing cuff of his caftan to press against Haim's ribs.

“Blood feud,” Jibarn whispered like a lover into Haim's ear. “As my enemy makes me cry, so will he weep. What he takes from me, I shall take from him. A man shall have his revenge.”

Haim tried to speak, but only hoarse, fitful croaking came out of his throat. He tried again and managed, “You don't want to do this.”

“I do not, but that fact changes nothing. At first I thought to kill Yol. I thought this years ago, when he stayed with me in my grandfather's hut in Um Jumi. ‘When I am thirteen,' I vowed to myself, ‘when I am thirteen this womanly, weeping Jew will die for my grandfather's murder.' When you joined us I realized that
the most exquisite revenge would be not to kill Yol, but to make him mourn for his great friend as I have mourned for my grandfather. In truth I did not count on becoming fond of you, Haim.”

“Jibarn—” Haim rolled his eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of Yol. He could hear his friend snoring loudly. He's drunk, Haim thought. You know how soundly he sleeps when he is drunk. You must keep the boy talking to gain time.

“Why did you save my life that time?” Haim asked as loudly as he could.

“I saved you in order to kill you myself. You must die by my hand if my grandfather is to be avenged.” He tightened his hold on Haim's throat. “Don't try to awaken Yol. If you do, I will kill him too. You know it is likely that I could, long before he could figure out what was happening.”

This is a dream, Haim thought, just a joke. Herschel! Rosie! I won't—can't—die!

“I will not let you beg. There is no dignity in that. We are too good friends. That is why I delayed this reckoning until you had a chance to see your wife and son—”

“Jibarn—” Fight him, Haim thought, panicking. Fight for the knife!

Jibarn kissed Haim's cheek as he thrust home the dagger, leaving it buried in Haim's ribs. Then he was on his feet and looking down at his work.

Haim slumped over onto his side, driving the knife in to its hilt. His fingers blindly groped for the Webley and closed around it, but then he remembered that Jibarn had dismantled the revolver. The rifle was somewhere behind him, but he didn't have the strength to lift it, even if Jibarn allowed him to.

He gazed up at the boy. He felt no pain, hadn't felt any when the blade went in; just an icy sensation. The
worst of it was hearing the grating noise as the steel ground against a rib.

“Grandfather, you are avenged,” Jibarn said softly. “Haim, I wish you a good death.” Then he turned to vanish into the darkness beyond the fire.

The world was spinning. Haim felt as pliant as rubber. He was warm and wet where his body rested in his own pooled blood.

Got to stop the bleeding—He futilely plucked at the blood-slick handle of the knife and then gathered up a handful of the blanket and pressed it against his wound. Jibam had twisted the knife as he plunged it in, making a wide, gaping hole. Haim's blood quickly soaked through the coarse woolen blanket no matter how much of the cloth he bunched around the protruding knife handle.

“Y-Yol . . .
Yol!”

“What—?” Yol stirred. “Time to leave already?” He sat up, stretching and rubbing his eyes, then stared at Haim, who was on his knees with Jibarn's knife still in his side. The blood gleamed black in the firelight.

Yol screamed.

Take care of my boy, Haim said or thought; he was too far gone to know which. He settled himself, curling into a fetal ball, and closed his eyes.

When he awoke, the sky had taken on a leaden glow that presaged the dawn. He thought it was a nightmare until he tried to move and realized he couldn't. He felt very sleepy and his arms and legs were numb. I'm so tired, he thought, as a sharp, incessant throbbing began where the knife had gone in. He felt for it and found that where the dagger had been there was now a bandage strapped tightly around his middle.

“Haim?”

It was Rosie. The sound of her voice cleared his mind. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes. There were
other people around him. Rosie was kneeling by his side and Yol was close by. Behind them stood two others from Degania.

“We're here to take you back,” Yol said. “I went to get Rosie and some men with a cart to take you home.”

“I'm dying, Rosie.” Haim gazed perplexed at his wife.

“No,” Yol said too heartily, “you'll be fine.”

“No lies,” Rosie said. She brought Haim's Fingers to her lips. “You are dying, my love.”

“Damn Jibarn! Damn him to hell!” Yol cried out.

“Yol told me why he did this,” Rosie said to Haim.

“Now listen to me. I won't let them take you back to Degania—” She paused as Haim's eyes closed.

“He should die in his own bed,” Yol said reproachfully.

“No!” she snarled. Bending close to Haim's ear, between kisses and clutching his hand, she said, “Can you hear me, my love? Can you understand? It's for Herschel I'm not taking you home. Last night he saw his father as a hero. I want you to live for him that way for a long time.” She felt the tears running but did not wipe them away, afraid to let go of Haim's hand, to stop talking to him. She tried hard to smile; even if he couldn't see her expression, he might be able to hear it in her voice. “Every day I'll tell him of your adventures. I'll make Herschel so proud of you—”

Haim's eyes fluttered open. “He'll be an orphan . . .”

“No, he won't be. I promise.”

“Orphan like me . . .”

“Like you, he'll be, but never an orphan.” She kissed him on the lips. “I'll take care of our son,” she whispered, “but what shall I do without you?”

Haim stared up at her.

He's dead. The realization sent a shock wave of panic through her. She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes until they
were raw and stinging, but the tears were gone. I have too much to do to cry, she thought. I have my son to raise.

“We've got to take his body back. Rosie,” one of the men said.

“No.”

“He must be buried in Degania's cemetery—”

“I said no!” Panther-like, she sprang up to confront them, and so fierce did she seem that without thinking the men stepped back from her. “Bury him here! Throw his corpse on the rocks! I don't care.” She realized she was crying again. It was no use trying to forbid her tears. “I won't break my promise to Haim. Herschel will not know, and none of you shall tell him that his father has died. Let everyone think Haim and Yol have gone back to the fighting. I swear, if either of you two—or you, Yol—reveals what has happened, I'll kill you, even if it takes years, just like that Arab waited so long to kill my beloved—”

“Stop it, Rosie,” one of the men pleaded, embarrassed by her grief. “We won't say anything if that's how you want it.”

“But sometime Herschel will have to know,” the other added.

“That'll be months from now,” Rosie said. “Given just three months I can make his father live in Herschel's memory forever. There will be plenty of time to say Kaddish and burn candles. For a while longer my boy and I will celebrate his life.”

The two men looked at each other and shrugged.

“Now then,” she went on, “there are shovels and a pick in the cart from today's farm work. I hate to ask you, but I cannot bury my husband alone.”

“Again you insult us,” the men chided. “We are halutzim. We will bury our brother here and now if that's what you want.”

“It is. Thank you. I'll walk back alone. The sun is coming up. It'll be safe enough.”

Yol glanced up at her from where he sat beside Haim's body. “I won't see you again until the war is finished. I'll tell the Hashomer what Jibarn has done. We'll get the bastard for this—”

“As Jibarn has gotten Haim for what happened to his grandfather? My husband is dead. What happens to his killer will not bring him back and so is a matter of indifference to me.”