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.