The Gathering Storm (46 page)

Eben was on his feet then, guiding me as I sat, pouring a glass of wine and thrusting it into my hand.

When the chamber stopped spinning, and I could see again, Eben was on his knees in front of me. He also gripped my chair, as if needing the prop to hold himself upright.

"He's alive," I repeated. "Wonderful news, but...but Eben, I love you.
Hove...you."

"And I you."

"We were kids, just kids, Varrick and 1.1 wasn't even the same;
I'm a different person now. Varrick and I—that was a whole lifetime
ago, after you...since you and I..."

Fiercely he said, "I won't give you up. I won't! They say I must, but I won't. I can't live without you."

And then I was in his arms. His kisses were greedy, demanding. I returned them the same way. The news—the war—shattered lives on all sides. But in this room, warmed by the fire, surrounded by sheltering walls and enclosed by Eben's arms, what did anything else matter? What could take from us our happiness? What could take us from each other?
Nothing!
I demanded of myself and God. /
won't let anything part us!

Sweeping me up in powerful arms he carried me to the bed.

"Don't stop," I urged. "I am yours. No one's but yours."

Though the rain turned to sleet and the storm slashed at the windows, all the world outside our sanctuary disappeared. Loving, dozing, awakening, and being awakened...everything I wanted was beside me.

~ 365 ~

Eben's heart kept perfect rhythm with the mantel clock above the fireplace. Lifting my head ever so carefully so as not to rouse my love, I noted the time: not quite midnight; 11:46 exactly.

That vision, when the clock hands were so near to clasping each other, and to embracing the new day, is forever engraved in my thoughts. For at the instant the time registered with me a distant air-raid siren began its wavering cry.

How could there be a raid in such a storm? No pilots could locate a target beneath such a concealing cloak. "Eben," I said drowsily, "the alarm. Shall we go to a shelter?"

"Umm?" he murmured.

Like a string of signal fires, each igniting the next, another airraid signal wailed, still closer, and then another. I remember thinking,
Why would anyone bomb Oxford?

And then a shrill whistle overcame the angry wind, driving sleet, and insistent sirens.

Eben's eyes snapped open, locking on mine in startled disbelief. And then the war, the devastation, the heartache rushed in upon us.

I don't recall hearing the bomb explode or feeling the blast. The floor suddenly was compressed toward the ceiling and the outside wall toward the fireplace.

And then I was somewhere...else.

I felt no pain. I knew no fear. I saw with a clarity unequalled in my
life. There was no sleet, no smoke, no dust, only a view down a tunnel
toward what remained of a shattered four-poster bed and fragments
of a mother-of-pearl table. Beside it, kneeling, I recognized Eben. He
was holding something to him with a desperate, frantic clutch.

He held me—my body—in his arms.

He rocked and then stopped, staring into my open, unseeing eyes. I heard him cry out and hang on even tighter than before. His shoulders bobbed, and his body swayed, as though in prayer
before the Temple. I saw his face, when he raised it towards heaven,
streaked with my blood, mingled with his tears, and creased with anguish.

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"Lora," I heard him cry. "Lora! Don't go. Don't leave me." He was
begging, pleading. "Oh, God, don't take her from me."

"Lora?" I heard another voice echoing my name.

I don't recall turning away from Eben, yet I was looking down a hallway I knew faced the opposite direction. At the end I saw someone waving, silhouetted against a bright but pleasant glow. "Lora," Papa called. "I'm here. Here I am, Loralei." Mama was beside him.

The two cries, one grieving, one welcoming, mingled.

"Lora," Eben sobbed. "God, don't take her. Please, my Lord! You said if it was Your will that we live until You come, what is that to anyone? She is everything to me! My Lord, let her live. I'll do what
ever You ask. I will give her up. Only let my Lora live again. Let her
live again. Bring her back! I surrender to You, Lord! She is not mine; she is Yours. Lora, come back!"

Time was nothing. I felt a longing to go to Mama and Papa and others whom I sensed were near. Hovering above Eben for a time, I watched as he gathered my limp body in his arms and carried me to a sofa. He smoothed my hair. Kissing my lips, he lingered over me, saying my name again and again.

Darkness.

Something was compressing my chest. I could not see what. Bits
of powder sifted onto my cheeks. Snow? Ashes? I could not move my
arms to brush it away.

When at last I summoned the strength to open my eyes I looked up
into the face of a man wearing a tin helmet bearing the initials
A.R.P.
'"ere,"
he called over his shoulder. "This 'uns alive, right enough. Bloomin'
miracle, it is. Hey, mister, you was right. She's alive. Mister? Mister?"

Where was Eben?

I drifted for a time. I knew only that four men carried me on a stretcher. It seemed that hours of hauling and pulling, digging and backtracking, were needed to maneuver me out of the wreckage of the inn.

I came to when they transferred me to a hospital bed. Something fell out of the blanket and onto the floor.

367

After the war ended and the truth of the Holocaust was revealed,
the nation of Israel was reborn in 1948, just as Eben predicted. A new war to annihilate the Jews began against Israel as the returning survivors of the death camps reached her shores. Or perhaps it was the same war against the Jews, continued in a new way.

It was six years after we had parted before I saw Varrick again. We were strangers when we embraced one another. He had grown into a man—handsome and hardened, eager to fight the new wars facing Israel.

Though I longed to remain in England, I made a new life with Varrick. I learned to love him again, and discovered the love of our youth had ripened into something rich. He needed me. I needed him. We were to one another like anchors, mooring two ships in stormy waters. Varrick was a warrior to his core and I lived the life of a soldier's wife. We had one child together, a son. Our baby was handsome and bright like his father. With the baby, the focus of my life changed. Eben receded further in my memory. Varrick was a wonderful father, and I was thankful, yes, thankful, the Lord had preserved Varrick and brought him back into my life.

My longing for Eben lay dormant during those happy years as Varrick's wife and the mother of our son.

In quiet moments, I quoted Keats:
"Was it a vision, or a waking dream?"
Only sometimes I remembered, unwillingly, our brief days of passion and love in Hampstead. When I was alone, there were nights when I thought I heard the nightingale, and I dreamed of Eben's face just above me.

Once, in Tel Aviv, I thought I saw him. He was on a passing bus

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as I was pushing a baby carriage and shopping. His profile, so cherished and distinct when we were together, seemed unmistakable to me. I shouted his name and raised my hand to hail him, but he did not hear my voice. It was probably better for both of us, I reasoned. What would I say to him? How could I thank him for sacrificing
happiness to bring back my life? Heaven had been so beautiful. Bet
ter heaven than life without Eben, I had thought in Oxford, and later, alone in London. But I was wrong. Life, even without the love of my life, was sweet. There was heaven here on earth as I held my baby in my arms.

As the years passed, I wondered if Eben would recognize me if we
ever met. Then I looked in the mirror and saw that my face had not
changed in the years since he left me lying on the bed in the room in
the Burleigh Inn that Christmas. My youth remained undimmed.

I lived on, content without him as uncounted women have lived with loss for untold centuries. Our love was written in water. I had so longed for it to be written in stone. Again the words of Keats reminded me,
"Fled is the music: do I wake or sleep?"

My world was once again turned upside down in 1956. The Sinai Campaign was fought to put an end to terrorist incursions into
Israel and to end the Egyptian blockade of Eilat. Varrick was among
the Israeli field commanders who transformed the IDF into a professional army. He was at the heart of the planning. I did not see Varrick after the first of October 1956. He was involved in creating the battle plan for the operation.

October 29, Varrick was one of the soldiers who parachuted into the eastern approaches of the Mitla Pass near the Suez Canal. The French and British gave an ultimatum to Israel and Egypt, calling on both sides to withdraw from the canal area.

On October 30, in spite of the British and French ultimatum, heavy fighting between Egyptian and Israeli units raged. In

~ 369 ~

an operation of a hundred hours, under the leadership of Moshe Dayan, the Sinai Peninsula fell into Israeli hands. The cost of our victory was the lives of 231 Israeli soldiers killed.

On October 31, 1956, there came a knock on my door in Tel
Aviv. I was faced by IDF officers, dear friends of Varrick, who gave
me the news that my husband had been killed in action. This time there was no question.

HAMFSTEAD VILLAGE, LONDON, ENGLAND

T

Moments passed. There was a footstep in the room behind me. The nightingale rustled her feathers in the cage beside the piano. It then began to sing.

I gasped and raised my eyes to meet Loralei s unwavering gaze. Beside the beautiful young woman stood a strong, dark-red-haired young man of about thirty, dressed in a brown tweed jacket and moleskin trousers.

Loralei's red lips curved in a gentle smile as she observed my expression of wonder. "The nightingale always begins to sing when Evan comes into the room, Bodie."

"Evan?" I closed my eyes again and covered my face with my hands.

Loralei answered, "My husband. Evan."

The man spoke. "Evan. A good English name, don't you think?"

"Oh," I cried. "Oh! When I saw your face at the door tonight, I thought of the photograph: Lora at the White Rose Inn. And Eben standing behind her. Look at you!"

He went to the bookshelf and removed a battered metal box. Opening it, he smiled down at the contents and passed it to Loralei.

~ 371 ~

She carefully unfolded the blue silk scarf and showed me what she had seen that night when the bombs rained down on London.

An enameled tin mask of a man's face, perfect in every detail, lay within.

I gasped. "Judah?"

Evan nodded and answered my question with a quiet compassion. "One of many names over the years."

So it was out. I began to cry quietly and asked stupidly, "Did you ever find the woman...the one pictured in the cigarette case?"

Loralei smiled. "Yes. Eben found her many years later. She was glad to have it back. Glad to know." She knelt beside me and wiped my tear with her finger, placing it to her lips. "Don't cry, my dear friend. I've wanted to tell you everything for so long. But...you understand."

"Only letters. Never face to face." My thoughts tumbled through
my mind faster than I could speak. "But I heard the voice of a woman
upstairs. An old woman's voice."

Loralei replied, "My sister, Jessica, lives with us."