Pursuit (39 page)

NO! STOP!

No more thoughts of Deborah. Think back instead to—what? Go back as far as you can from the present. Remember the faint memories you still retain of the place where you were born? The stables … Remember the servant who gave you riding lessons? Remember how those stables looked the last time you saw them? From that horse-drawn carriage, your aunt's arm around you. And then the curve in the road and the trees that blocked your view. Remember moving from that big house to the small one where the gateman had lived. Remember the library, where your father took the gun—

NO! NO!

Why this sudden thing about his father? He hadn't thought of his father for years. At least not consciously. Had he subconsciously thought of him? And why was he dwelling on him now? It was pointless to remember painful things. Stupid. And speaking of fathers, it was the way Ginzberg treated him most of the time. As if Shmuel Ginzberg could possibly be his father. Always with the advice. Unwanted advice. Ginzberg meant well. He wasn't a bad. old man, if you overlooked his snoring. But who needed a father? Oh, it would be foolish to deny he had needed one years before when he had been a little boy. But needing one and having one were two different things. You learned to get along without things you couldn't have—

NO! Damn it!

We said no thoughts of fathers. He felt the prickling in his eyes. God, that hadn't happened for years!

He became aware that the rain had started, a little pattering of drops against his bare head, the faintest imagined sound as they fell on the pavement, glistening on the stones, reflected by the streetlamps. There was an increase in the chill of the air sweeping down from the foothills of the distant Alps, heralding an early winter. At least Palestine—Israel—had fairly decent weather. But no thoughts of Israel. Or of Deborah, or of fathers, for God's sake!

And then the woman appeared.

She had been standing in a doorway apparently waiting for the rain to stop and had come to the conclusion it would only get worse as time went on and had therefore decided to abandon her refuge and make her move to cross the street to the protection of the doorways there, closer to home. She came from the shadows in a rush and caromed off Benjamin Grossman, tried to catch her balance awkwardly, and failed. Grossman instinctively thrust out an arm and caught at her, but the woman was too heavy, her momentum too great, and she fell to the pavement, bringing him down with her. He came to his feet in a temper, prepared to tell the woman to watch where she was going, and then noticed she was having difficulty getting to her feet. He also noticed something else; she was quite young, far younger than her heavy appearance would seem to warrant, and she was abashed at having stumbled into him. Her face was flaming with embarrassment, her eyes were the agonized eyes of a cow being led to slaughter, and her stomach bulged.

He put out a hand, ashamed of himself for his anger, and helped her struggle heavily to her feet. Her worn cloth coat was muddy from the roadway, her rough stockings were torn, and the heel had come loose from one of her cheap shoes and dangled from the upper. He wished for a second he could offer her some money to repair the damage but that, of course, was out of the question. She stood, red-faced and uncertain, trying to brush herself off, trying not to look at him.

“Verzeihung …”

“An accident,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Bitte, bitte
…”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes, yes! I'm sorry—” She looked down at her stomach in embarrassment, as if laying the blame there. “I'm clumsy …”

“It was only an accident, I assure you. Can I help you get somewhere?”

“Oh, no! No! Thank you,” she added vaguely, as if uncertain as to what she was thanking him for, and waddled hastily across the street where she paused to remove the broken shoe before limping out of sight down a side street.

Poor girl! Benjamin Grossman found his self-pity of a moment ago transferred in its entirety to the impoverished, unattractive, red-faced girl who had stumbled in the street and had had difficulty getting up. It was an odd feeling for him, a feeling he could not at the moment recall having experienced before, yet it remained. Poor girl, afraid to let him help her home, though God knew what kind of person would covet that grotesque pregnant body! Probably a husband that drank, or beat her, or both; certainly not a man who earned enough to keep a wife properly. You're getting maudlin, he told himself, and then shook his head with a faint smile. No, you're merely making comparisons. What if that sad creature had been Deborah? Yes, if he wanted to think about Deborah, he would. Now—what if that poor girl had been Deborah, out on a rainy night, all alone, afraid, nervous, pregnant—

He stopped so abruptly that a man behind him, head buried in an umbrella, bumped into him, managed to pirouette without damage, and staggered off down the street muttering imprecations.

Pregnant …

Deborah's breasts had been uncommonly heavy that last night, but she said that sometimes happened at certain times of the month; besides, he hadn't thought anything of it beyond the fact that he liked her breasts when they were fuller. And it was also evident she had been gaining weight, not that this did anything except make Deborah look more beautiful to him. He walked more slowly, unaware of where his footsteps were taking him, his mind locked on the question suddenly raised. He remembered that last night in its most minute detail.

“I have something to tell you …”

“I have something to tell you, too …”

“What is it?”

“You first …”

And he had smiled and told his something; but Deborah's something had never been told. What could she possibly have had to say to him that she decided was better left unsaid—but only after he had more or less told her he would not be coming back to Palestine when he was finished in Europe? He remembered more—

“If you want to come back to us—me—you will …”

Us!

How could he have been deaf to such blatant hints? Normally he was not stupid. Had his subconscious wanted him not to hear, not to understand? No, that could not be. But if Deborah had been pregnant, wouldn't she have said so, particularly at that moment? Some women, yes; most women, probably—but not Deborah. Never Deborah …

Pregnant!

He was going to have a child—no, a son! It had to be a son, but if it were a daughter he'd be the best father a daughter ever had—and the next one would be a son. But this one had to be a son! How could he have been so blind as to not recognize that he was going to be a father? That was something a man should know instinctively. He found himself laughing aloud in pure joy and tried to remember the last time he had laughed with joy. He could not, but it was unimportant, totally unimportant. The only important thing was that he was going to be a father. He had been searching for a future, worrying about a future; what better future could there be than simply being a father? But a proper father, not a deserting father …

He stared at the street signs, wondering where he was. He was on the Stephansplatz, near the corner of the Graben, and there was the Karntnerstrasse with all its fancy shops. How had he wandered so far? He didn't even remember crossing the river bridge. But no matter. He started to walk back to the hotel, bubbling with excitement, the rain unnoticed, and then decided that walking was too slow. He started to trot, brought his pace up to a run, and then abruptly dropped back to a sedate walk as a
Polizist
came around the corner, cape gleaming in the drizzle, baton swinging from his belt, and began to rattle the doorknobs of the shops. But as soon as the policeman disappeared into an extended store entrance, Benjamin Grossman was running again.

He burst into the hotel, rang impatiently for the ancient elevator, and then decided the stairs would be quicker. He took them three at a time and pushed open the door of their room, panting, grinning like a maniac. Ginzberg, his tight shoes and stiff collar removed, but not his hat, was sitting on the bed, propped by a pillow, reading a Yiddish newspaper. He frowned at the sight of the disheveled Grossman.

“You're out of breath,” he said disapprovingly. “You shouldn't run so soon after a meal, even if it's raining. It's bad for the health. Walk is good but running is bad.” He seemed to notice the broad smile for the first time and added suspiciously, “So what's to be so happy, all of a sudden?”

“Have you talked to Tel Aviv yet?”

“Hitler should hang as long as it takes to get a telephone call through from this place,” Ginzberg said sourly. “No, I haven't talked, yet. In another fifteen minutes it's supposed to come through, if you can believe these
lignerim
.”

“Good!” Grossman pulled up the one chair in the room and sat down facing Ginzberg. “Now, listen! When you're connected, tell them to get in touch with Deborah Assavar—that's Assavar—at Ein Tsofar by radio. She's a nurse there. Tell her I'm coming home as soon as I can get there and I expect to be married the minute I arrive.”

Ginzberg frowned. This was a changed man, and God alone knew what could have changed him in such a short time since they had dined together. But God could perform miracles; maybe this was one of them. Anyway, why argue with success?

“Fine! Then you'll build the factory for the guns?”

Grossman looked at the old man with pity for his lack of understanding.

“Build nothing!” he said. “I'm going into the army. I've got a family to protect!”

Chapter 6

Benjamin Grossman and Deborah Assavar were married in the small port town of Ashdod on a Sunday, September 26, in a small synagogue overlooking the blue Mediterranean, with Max Brodsky serving as best man and with everyone with the exception of the bride, the groom, and the rabbi wearing guns strapped across their shoulders quite as if such accessories were normal at weddings—which at that time and in that place, they were. The religious ceremony meant nothing to Grossman, he had witnessed similar ceremonies at Ein Tsofar and they had struck him as no more ridiculous than the rituals in which he had been raised. He paid no attention to the incantations of the rabbi, stepped upon the glass when Deborah squeezed his arm to indicate it was time to do so, took the ring from Max when it was handed to him with a nudge, and slipped it on Deborah's finger. He had a feeling as he did so that another door had been closed in his life, but this time a door he had willingly closed himself, rather than one slammed upon him. And when the ceremony had finally been concluded and the ritual of the
kiddish
completed with its wine and little cakes consumed, Benjamin Grossman kissed his Deborah once again, picked up his gun, waved to his new bride, and went out with his fellows to return to the war. And his pregnant bride went out to her jeep with the two nurses who had accompanied her, to return to their duties at Ein Tsofar.

The war was close to Ashdod, but then in no place in Israel was the war very far away in 1948. The Arab nations had kept their promise and had attacked in force the minute the British left; the first truce of the war had left little changed, and at the time of Ben Grossman's marriage, the second truce of the war was supposedly in effect. That truce had supposedly gone into effect at 7
P
.
M
. on the eighteenth of July, but from the moment of its inception it had been constantly breached. The Arab Legion, under the command of Glubb Pasha, had continued its shelling of the New City in Jerusalem, and had even increased the intensity of the mortar and machine-gun and cannon attacks after the truce had been agreed upon. In mid-August, even though the Latrun pumping station was supposedly under the control of the United Nations, the Arab Legion destroyed it as a means of denying water to the besieged inhabitants of the New City, but the Israeli Army soon had an auxiliary pipe line carrying water up the mountain to the thirsty Jews above. In the south the Egyptians blocked the Hatti-Karatiyya gap in their lines to the passage of Jewish convoys intent upon resupplying their
kibbutzim
and their
moshavim
in the desert; they also repeatedly attacked Israeli outposts. In the north Kaukji's Arab Liberation Army did not even consider the truce as applying to them; convinced that the Israeli Defense Force would be occupied with the Egyptians in the Negev, they attacked settlements, cut off roads, and ambushed reinforcements. Truce or no truce, the war went on.

War covered the country and in every corner of it the Jews fought back, against the Egyptians in the south; the Jordanians and the Iraqis in the east; the Syrians, the Lebanese in the north, all receiving help from the other Arab nations. And from the time of his return from Vienna, Benjamin Grossman was actively involved in the fighting. The fact that he was fighting on the side of the Jews meant nothing to him; he was fighting for Deborah and his unborn son and he was enjoying it. His total fearlessness in battle soon made him a name among soldiers whose dedication to winning the war and saving their land made heroism common. His fierceness, his obvious joy of fighting, began to earn him a reputation both among the troops as well as with the higher echelon of command. At the time of his marriage, Lieutenant Grossman was under the direct command of Major Max Brodsky in the Givati Infantry Brigade—for during the truce months officers had been given rank for the first time in the Israeli Army. The Givati, together with the Negev and the Yiftah brigades, all under the direction of Palmach Commander Yigal Allon, were responsible for the defense of the southern front.

On November 3 a third truce was declared—a “sincere” truce—whose sincerity was demonstrated by being broken as soon as the ink was dry on the paper, broken by both sides. In the weeks that followed it was as if no truce had ever been agreed upon, and as the year ended the fighting grew more fierce with each passing day. And on January 2, 1949, the settlement of Ein Tsofar was once again attacked.