Safekeeping (49 page)

Claudette leaned forward in her chair, well aware that any of these stories might be Ziva's last. “What happened?”

“I've never told anyone this. It was the day the United Nations voted on whether to partition Palestine. A very important day. The vote was broadcast live over the wireless, and all over the world Jews huddled around their radios.”

As Ziva described the people crowded around the wooden radio in the dining hall, she doubted she could ever get this young Canadian, this Catholic girl, to understand what she and the others felt that night, listening to the tinny voices coming through the round speaker, no bigger than a dessert plate.

Afghanistan.

No.

Argentina.

Abstain.

To encourage communal listening, the kibbutz had only the one radio, and its reception was good on that unseasonably mild and cloudless November night, so good Ziva could close her eyes and imagine that she stood in the grand hall in Flushing Meadows, New York, that there weren't ten thousand miles between Palestine and the strangers deciding its fate.

Only the one yes from the United States and the ten noes from the Muslim nations were certainties; every other country was a question mark. They needed two-thirds to vote yes for there to be a Jewish state, and that seemed impossible to the kibbutzniks and survivors clustered around the dining hall radio. They had long ago come to expect the rest of the human race to either turn their backs on them or actively seek their destruction.

Costa Rica.

Yes.

Cuba.

No.

Could the Jews soon have a country that could vote like this? Ziva hunched, holding her ear as close to the speaker as she could without blocking it. Dov stood behind her, hand on her shoulder, grip tightening every time a country announced its decision. When a delegate said yes, they all looked to one another in excitement; when the answer was no or abstain, Ziva didn't know what the others did, because she remained still, head bowed, waiting for the next vote. It was all happening in a matter of minutes, but to Ziva it felt as if they'd had their ears pressed against that speaker for two thousand years.

France—

Only when France announced yes did a hubbub sweep through the UN assembly and the kibbutz dining hall. France had Arab colonies, and
they still voted yes. Next Greece voted no, and everyone quieted down again and remained quiet until it was announced:
The resolution of the partition for Palestine is adopted by thirty-three votes, thirteen against, ten abstentions.

The dining hall burst into chaos. People rushed into one another's arms, jumped, shouted, sobbed, climbed on top of the tables, broke into song. Some stood, too shocked to move, hands in front of their mouths or pressed against their chests. Friends clasped arms, saying,
I can't believe it! Can you believe it? If only my father were alive to see this! My wife, my sister, my little boy.

Ziva and Dov hugged each other, tightly, as if to squeeze out the disbelief. Beside them a survivor, a former yeshiva bocher, read aloud from the Bible:
In that day . . . the LORD shall set his hand . . . recover the remnant of his people . . . the outcasts of Israel . . . from the four corners of the earth . . .

Ziva gazed up at Dov. “God had nothing to do with this.”

Dov took her face into his hands. “I know. It was all us.”

Ziva smiled. “And maybe a few others.”

Dov lifted her, and she laughed as he spun them around. When he returned her to the ground, they joined the others singing and marching out of the dining hall. Ziva sang as loud as she could:
Our hope is not yet lost
.
To be a free people in our own land.

Ziva glanced around for Franz. American Danny grabbed her hand and pulled her into the dancing. The hora drew her along, and she sang and smiled and returned hurrahs while scanning for her secret lover of the last two years. Where could he be? The more she searched for Franz, the angrier she became, not at him so much as at herself. Here she was in the middle of a historical moment, the climax to one of humanity's most epic stories, a story of literally biblical dimensions, and what was she doing? Being distracted by her own sordid little side story.

It would be two hours before she spied Franz leaning against the new medical clinic, hands in his trouser pockets. When he caught sight of her pushing through the crowd toward him, he didn't wave, didn't move, only watched her with a despondent face.

Panting, she said, “Where have you been?”

He shrugged, still leaning on the wall, hands in his pockets.

“Franz! What's the matter with you? Where have you been?”

He smiled, sadly, then nodded his head as if agreeing with one of his own thoughts. “I've been so stupid. I actually thought maybe my yearning, my little personal yearning, could compete with this.”

“Franz, I don't understand you. The world could be bursting into flames, and you sing and dance like Fred Astaire, and now here we have the first good news of the century, maybe the first good news our people have had in two thousand years, and you stand there with a long face.”

“Exactly. Two thousand years of yearning. It's stupendous. Truly.”

“Why are you being sarcastic?”

“Because, Dagmar, now I have no chance.”

“No chance of what?”

He looked off to the side. “No chance of having you come to America with me.”

Why did this have to happen now? On what should be the happiest day of her life? She had always known, of course, that their affair would have to end someday, that it couldn't go on forever, but then she had also begun to wonder why not. Everyone knew about them. It wasn't referred to aloud, but they knew. She and Franz never kissed in public, but neither did she and Dov. Dov had never mentioned Franz, never asked her to stop seeing him. And she knew that he never would, because Dov believed no one should be owned. She didn't even know if the affair hurt him; if it did, he couldn't let on, because then she would have stopped, and that would have been a form of control. She should have known from the beginning that it would be Franz who forced its end. He had never hidden his want to own things, and the healthier he got, the more he wanted—his own home, his own clothes, his own wife.

Ziva looked to the dancers, where she should be. “Can't we please talk about this tomorrow?”

“I watched you listening to the radio. I was in the room, and you didn't even notice. Your face when they announced the results . . .” He shook his head. “I've never made you that happy. And it was grandiose—ridiculous—of me to think I ever could. I've been living in a world of wishful thinking, Dagmar. I was always going to America alone.”

Ziva stared at Franz leaning against the white wall, his glistening black eyes looking anywhere but at her, his face unshaven for once. She couldn't bear the idea of never seeing him again. It was wrong of him to do this to
her right now. She deserved to be happy today, and he knew that. If he had been fooling himself for two years, what was one day more?

She crossed her arms. “Maybe I'm more likely to go to America with you now. Now that I've done my duty. Now that I'm not needed as much.”

Franz dropped his head. “It's not like you to say things you don't mean, Dagmar. I'm in enough pain as it is.”

He was in pain. She saw a glimpse of the fragility he had that day he arrived in his oversized beige suit.

“I think what I'm saying makes sense.” She didn't say it was true, only that it made sense.

Franz lifted his head. “Dagmar, what exactly are you saying?”

Not the truth. Obviously she would never leave the new Jewish state. She would never go off with him to do whatever it was people without a mission did with their days. She should tell him that if she did go to America to hang off his arm and love him the way he yearned to be loved, she would cease being the Dagmar he loved. But she didn't say that. She stood, thinking, please, not tonight.

Seeming to take courage from her silence, he pushed off the wall. “I just can't be a part of all this. Singing anthems together. I can't even go to sports games; it makes me so uncomfortable to be a part of a cheering crowd. I know it's not the same for you, but I still thought . . . Well, like I said, it was stupid, but in my stupid daydreaming, I thought in America, we could just be Franz and Dagmar, whoever they are when they're allowed to just be, to just live. Aren't you curious who you would be without all these . . . distractions? It never ends. Do you really think a hundred million Arabs are going to sit back while you set up your little Jewish country? You could be fighting Arabs for the next five or ten years. Aren't you sick of it? Aren't you sick of fighting every day just to stay alive? I know I am. I'm sorry, but I can't do it anymore. I can't stay here.”

Ziva didn't know where to begin, didn't see how she could respond without ending everything right here. And she had already decided that she couldn't say goodbye to him now. She couldn't ruin this night. Tomorrow, all right, but not tonight.

“Franz, I don't need to hear anymore. I told you, I want to be with you.”

Ziva cringed at her voice, her words.
I want to be with you.
It was the dialogue of a silly girl in a romance novel. So cliché. Bourgeois.

“Am I hearing you right, Dagmar? Are you saying you love me, want me, more than—” He gestured at the people singing and dancing the hora, the small white houses Ziva had helped build with her own hands, the dark fields beyond the houses, the silhouette of Mount Carmel. Boys and girls lit gunpowder, filling the air with the crackle and smell of battle and celebration.

She could take it back. She could still answer his question honestly, snuff the hope in his eyes. For the first and last time in her life, Ziva lied to spare someone's feelings. And they weren't Franz's. “I'll go with you.”

Franz didn't speak immediately. He allowed the words to sink in. Then, eyes brimming, he dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out the brooch.

This wasn't the first time Ziva was seeing it. He had shown it to her one Saturday afternoon while they lolled by the river under the twisted branches of an old juniper tree. When he claimed the brooch had been in his family since the Black Plague, she had teased him for proof, but she stopped teasing him when he choked up, saying his biggest regret was not listening to his mother when she told him the history, especially the story about the yellow butterflies.

“I promised my mother that I wouldn't let it end up in the wrong hands, that I would only give it to a worthy woman, someone special. And you, Dagmar, are special.” The brooch sat in his hand, glinting up at her with accusation—gaudy accusation. “According to Jewish law, if a man hands an object to the woman he wants to marry, and she accepts it, that's it, they're betrothed. The truth is you and Dov were never legally married, not by a rabbi or a state. We can still be man and wife.”

Ziva didn't reach for the brooch. How could she? Franz waited. She knew he must be wondering why she wasn't taking it. Did he think she was too beside herself to move? Did he fear she was changing her mind? When his hand started to tremble—she was surprised to see love make a man tremble—she grabbed it.

Now it was her turn to see him happier than she had ever seen him before. In a flurry of words, they agreed to meet the next morning by the front gate. They would catch the noon boat from Haifa to Athens. Franz insisted they get on a boat right away, because who knew what was going to happen to the ports after tonight's vote.

She put the brooch in her pocket. “Tomorrow, Franz.”

“Tomorrow, Dagmar.”

Not caring who saw, she pressed her lips against his, pressed with all her being. He must have thought the force of feeling came from the prospect of soon being his wife. He couldn't have known that she was trying to put a whole lifetime into that last kiss.

She returned to the hora, joining the outer circle, next to Dov, who gave her a smile too tepid for the occasion. Was that in her head, or had he seen her kissing Franz? It would be all right. Franz was going. And she and Dov still had decades to be together, years in which to mend. The hora circled around so that Ziva could see Franz walking away. His gait was jaunty, full of things to do and the joy of getting out of here. This was the last glimpse she would have of him.

Hours later, when the birds cheeped under a pale yellow sky and the last of the revelers had gone to bed, Ziva sat at her desk. She wrote her farewell note while Dov slept in the next room. Standing in her doorway, she called to a boy collecting the spoils of the celebrations, the fallen coins and cigarette butts. The boy stuffed his findings in his pockets and scampered over. Yes, he said, he would like a secret mission. No, he would not make any detours or lose the brooch. Yes, he promised to go directly to Franz, waiting by the gate. Ziva watched the boy bicycle away, thinking, so this is what it feels like to be a coward.

Claudette sat on the edge of the visitor's chair, looking pensive. Ziva wondered if her regret had disappointed her.

“I suppose it might not sound like the most monstrous mistake to you. When you're young, you fear making these big mistakes. You don't realize how many of your deepest regrets are going to come down to a few words you wished you hadn't said, small things you wished you'd done or didn't do that would have made all the difference. If I could change those ten minutes . . . All I wish is that we'd had a proper goodbye. For years, I waited for a letter from America, so I could write to him, tell him what I just told you. But I never got a letter. I don't know why. Did he forgive me, love me, and not write because he knew that was the best thing he could do for me? Leave me alone? Or did he never write because he hated me, regretted having ever loved me, believed I never really loved him? Maybe it was neither of these things. Maybe he simply forgot about me. I could have spared myself decades of wondering. I could have given the time we had together the dignity it deserved. If I had just looked him in the eye that night and said, ‘Goodbye, Franz. I am going to miss you.'”