Barak Ben Canaan, the old warrior and negotiator, was once again pressed into service by the Yishuv. He joined Ben Gurion and Dr. Weizmann on the advisory committee to UNSCOP.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Kitty and Karen returned to Gan Dafna. Kitty waited for the right moment to have it out with Karen. When the letter from Dov Landau arrived, she decided to delay it no longer.
Kitty poured a lemon rinse over Karen’s head and wrung out her long, thick brown hair and rubbed the girl’s head briskly with a big towel.
“Phew,” Karen said, taking a corner of the towel to wipe the soap from her eyes.
The water boiled in the teakettle. Karen got up and tied the towel around her head and brewed a pot of tea. Kitty sat at the kitchen table filing her fingernails. She began to paint them carefully with polish.
“What’s bothering you?” Karen said disarmingly.
“Good Lord, I’m not even allowed the privacy of my own thoughts.”
“Something is wrong. Something’s been wrong since you came back from your trip to the Sea of Galilee. Did something happen between you and Ari?”
“Plenty happened between me and Ari but that’s not what is disturbing me. Karen, we have to have a talk about us, and our futures. I guess we’d better do it right now.”
“I don’t understand.”
Kitty waved her hands to dry her fingernails. She stood up and lit a cigarette awkwardly. “You know how much you mean to me and how much I love you?”
“I think so,” the girl whispered.
“Since that first day at Caraolos I’ve wanted you to be my girl.”
“I’ve wanted it that way too, Kitty.”
“Then you’ll believe that I have thought this all out carefully and what I want to do is for your own good. You must have faith in me.”
“I do … you know that.”
“What I am about to say will be hard for you to appreciate fully. It is hard for me to come to this, too, for I am very fond of many children here and I have grown quite attached to Gan Dafna. Karen, I want to take you home to America with me.”
The girl stared at Kitty as though she had been slapped. For a moment she did not even understand or believe she had heard it right.
“Home? But … but this is my home. I have no other home.”
“I want your home to be with me-always.”
“I want that too, Kitty. I want it more than anything. It is so strange.”
“What is, dear?”
“When you said home, in America.”
“But I am an American, Karen, and I miss my home.”
Karen bit her lip to keep from crying. “That’s funny, isn’t it? I thought we would go on like we were. You would be at Gan Dafna and …”
“And you would go off into the Palmach … and then to some kibbutz out on a border?”
“I guess that’s what I thought.”
“There are many things I have learned to love here, but this is not my country and these are not my people.”
“I guess I have been selfish,” Karen said. “I never thought of you as getting homesick or wanting anything for yourself.”
“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Karen poured two cups of tea and tried to think. Kitty was everything to her … but leave?
“I don’t know how to say it, Kitty, but ever since I was old enough to read in Denmark I’ve asked myself the question about being Jewish. I still don’t know the answer. I only know that I have something here that is mine … no one is going
to take it from me. Whatever it is, it’s the most important thing in the world. Someday I might know the words for it-but I can’t leave Palestine.”
“Whatever you have, you will still have it. Jews in America and I suppose Jews everywhere have this same belonging that you have. Going away won’t change that.”
“But they are exiles.”
“No, baby … don’t you understand that Jews in America love their country?”
“The Jews of Germany loved their country too.”
“Stop it!” Kitty cried suddenly. “We are not that kind of people and I will not listen to those lies they fill you with!” She caught herself quickly. “There are Jews in America who love their country so much they would prefer death to ever living to see what happened to Germany come to America.” She walked up behind the girl’s chair and touched her shoulder. “Don’t you think I know how difficult this is for you? Do you believe I would do anything to hurt you?”
“No,” Karen whispered.
Kitty faced Karen and knelt before her chair. “Oh, Karen. You don’t even know the meaning of peace. In all your life you have never been able to walk in the light of the sun without fear. Do you think it will be any better here? Do you think it will ever be better? Karen, I want you to go on being a Jew and I want you to go on loving your land, but there are other things I want for you too.”
Karen turned her eyes away from Kitty.
“If you stay here you’ll spend your whole life with a gun in your hands. You’ll turn hard and cynical like Ari and Jordana.”
“I guess it isn’t fair of me to have expected you would stay.”
“Come with me, Karen. Give us both a chance. We need each other. We’ve both had enough suffering.”
“I don’t know if I can leave … I don’t know … I just don’t,” she said with a shaky voice.
“Oh, Karen … I want so much to see you in saddle shoes and pleated skirts, going out to a football game in a cut-down Ford. I want to hear the phone ringing and you giggling and talking to your boy friend. I want you full of delicious nonsense as a teenage girl should be-not carrying a gun in your hands or smuggling ammunition. There are so many things that you are missing. You must at least find out they are in the world before you make your final decision. Please, Karen … please.”
Karen was pale. She walked away from Kitty. “What about Dov?”
Kitty took Dov’s letter from her pocket and handed it to
Karen. “I found this on my desk. I don’t know how it got there.”
Mrs. Fremont:
This letter is being written by someone who knows more better how to say in English than I do but copy it to show it is my writing. This letter must be sent to you in a special way for reasons you know of. I am very busy these days. I am with friends. My friends are the first 1 have in a long time and they are real good friends. Now that I am permanent situated, I want to write to you and to say how glad 1 am not to be at Gan Dafna no more where everybody makes me sick, including you and Karen Clement. 1 write to say 1 won’t see Karen Clement no more as I am too busy and with real friends. I don’t want Karen Clement to think I am going to come back and take care of her. She is nothing but a kid. I have a real woman of my own age and we live together and everything. Why don’t you go with Karen Clement to America because she doesnt belong here.
Dov Landau
Kitty took the letter from Karen’s hand and ripped it to shreds. “I will tell Dr. Lieberman that I am resigning. As soon as we can straighten up matters here we will book passage to America.”
“All right, Kitty. I’ll go with you,” Karen said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Every few weeks the Maccabee high command changed its headquarters. After “Hell’s Fortnight” and the assassination of Arnold Haven-Hurst, Ben Moshe and Akiva thought it would be best to get out of Jerusalem for a while. The Maccabees were a small organization, a few hundred full-time members and a few thousand part-time with a few thousand more sympathizers. Because they had to remain constantly on the move the headquarters command group carried no more than a half dozen of the top men. Now the pressure was so great that the command split up and only four persons went to Tel Aviv. There was Akiva and Ben Moshe and Nahum Ben Ami, the brother of David, and there was Little Giora-Dov Landau. Dov had become a personal favorite of Akiva. He had gained the inner circle of the Maccabee command by his fame in the raids and by the usefulness of his talents in forgery.