“Yes, I am,” she said softly.
“Do you hate me?”
“Hate you, Ari? Haven’t I made it quite obvious how I feel about you? Please, I’m tired…”
“What is it? Tell me?”
“I despise myself for caring for you. … Is there anything else you want to know?”
“You can be a terribly complicated woman, Kitty Fremont.”
“I suppose I am.”
“Why do you and I always have to confront each other with our guards up, ready to swing … ready to run?”
Kitty regarded him steadily for a moment. “Maybe because I don’t live by your simple, uncluttered standards of I-like-you-and-you-like-me-so-let’s-go-to-bed. Page four forty-four of the Palmach manuaclass="underline" boys and girls should not indulge in coyness. Women of Palestine, be forthright. If you love him, sleep with him.”
“We aren’t hypocrites.”
“I’m not so advanced in my thinking as Jordana or your immortal Dafna.”
“Stop it,” Ari snapped. “How do you dare to imply that my sister and Dafna were-tramps? Jordana has loved only one man in her life. Is it wrong to give her love when she does not know if either of them will be alive at the end of the week? Don’t you think I would have preferred to live in peace at Yad El with my Dafna than have her killed by Arab gangs?”
“I don’t live my life as a noble mission. It is very simple with me, Ari. I have to be needed by the man I love.”
“Let’s quit this,” Ari said. “Haven’t I made it plain to you that I needed you?”
Kitty laughed shortly with bitterness. “Yes, you needed me, Ari. You needed me on Cyprus to smuggle forged papers out of Caraolos and you needed me again … to pull a bullet out of you. It is remarkable, that mind of yours. Even half dead and rolling in pain you could figure out all the angles. You could plot out the course … fill the truck up with children to avoid suspicion. You didn’t need me, Ari. You needed a candidate to get through the British roadblocks.
“I’m not blaming you,” she continued. “I am the number-one damned fool. We all have our crosses to bear and I guess you are mine. I just can’t take it with the straight-faced unconcern of a sabra.”
“Does that make it necessary to treat me like an animal?”
“Yes … because that’s what you are. You’re a mechanical animal, too infested with the second coming of the Israelites to be a human being. You don’t know the meaning of giving love. You know only fighting. Well, I’m fighting you, Brother Ben Canaan, and I’m going to beat you, and I’m going to forget you, in spades.”
Ari remained silent as she walked to the bed and stood over him with tears of anger welling in her eyes. “Some bright day you’re really going to need someone and it’s going to be a terrible thing because you don’t have the capacity to truly ask for help.”
“Why don’t you take that walk?” he said.
“I’m taking it and I’m going to keep on walking. Good Nurse Fremont is through. Somebody from the Palmach will come up to take care of you in a few days. You’ll live till then.”
She spun around and opened the door.
“Kitty, this great vision of man you have … what do you want?”
“I want a man who knows what it is to cry. I feel sorry for you, Ari Ben Canaan.”
Kitty left Daliyat el Karmil the same morning.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Bruce Sutherland had been waiting for Kitty at the Zion Hotel in Haifa for two days. It seemed to her that she had never been happier to see anyone. After dinner Sutherland drove up to Har Hacarmel, the Jewish sector of the city which was spread on the slopes of Mount Carmel.
They went into a night club which was built with a view of Panorama Road, where the city below, the harbor, and the sweep of the bay could be seen to Acre and beyond it, to the hills of Lebanon.
“How’s the girl?”
“Much better, thank you, Bruce. I do appreciate your coming.” She looked at the view. “I came up here to Har Hacarmel the first night I was in Palestine. Ari brought me up. I think our conversation had something to do with living with tension.”
“The Jews here have learned to live under the gun the way you Americans live with baseball. It’s made them a hard lot.”
“This place has got me so I can’t think straight any more. The more 1 try to reason, the more I am trapped by sentiment and unexplainable forces. I’ve got to get out of here before it swallows me up.”
“Kitty, we know that Dov Landau is safe. He is hiding up at Mishmar. I haven’t told Karen yet.”
“I guess she’s got to know. Bruce, what’s going to happen here?”
“Who knows?”
“You think the UN will give in to the Arabs?”
“There will be a war.”
There was a fanfare at the bandstand. A master of ceremonies came out and told a few stories in Hebrew and then introduced a tall, handsome sabra youth. The young man wore the traditional white shirt opened at the throat and he had a black mustache and a small chain was around his neck with a Star of David pendant. He strummed a guitar and sang a song of passionate patriotism about the Jews coming back to their Promised Land.
“I must know what is going to happen at Gan Dafna.”
“The Arabs can raise an army of fifty thousand Palestinians and perhaps twenty thousand irregulars from over the border. There was a chap named Kawukji who led irregulars in the ‘36-‘39 riots. He’s already busy getting another gang of cutthroats together. It is easier to get arms to the Arabs than to the Jews … they have friendly territory all around them.”
“And the rest of it, Bruce?” Kitty demanded.
“The rest of it? Egypt and Iraq both have armies of around fifty thousand men. There will be some Saudi Arabian troops in the Egyptian Army. Syria and Lebanon will put another twenty thousand men on the field. Trans-Jordan has the Arab Legion … crack soldiers with the latest arms. According to present-day definitions the Arabs do not have first-class
armies; none the less they have many modern units with artillery, armament, and aircraft.”
“You advised the Haganah, Bruce. What did you tell them?”
“I told them to form a defense line between Tel Aviv and Haifa and try to hold that strip of territory. Kitty, the other side of the picture is not pretty. The Jews have four or five thousand Palmach troops and a paper army of fifty thousand in the Haganah, but they only have ten thousand rifles. The Maccabees can put a thousand men out, no more, with light arms. They have no artillery, their air force is three Piper Cubs, and their navy is those illegal-immigrant runners tied up at Haifa. The Jews are outnumbered in soldiers forty to one, in population a hundred to one, in equipment a thousand to one, and in area five thousand to one. The Haganah has turned down my advice and the advice of every military man who has told them to pull in to a tight defense line. They are going to fight it out at every moshav, every kibbutz, every village. That means Gan Dafna, too. Do you want to hear any more?”
Kitty’s voice was shaky. “No … I’ve heard enough. Isn’t it strange, Bruce? One night when I was up on Mount Tabor with those young Palmach people I had the feeling that they were invincible … the soldiers of God. Firelight and moonlight does things to me.”
“It does to me too, Kitty. Everything I’ve ever learned in my life in the service tells me that the Jews cannot win. Yet when you see what they have done with this land you are not a realist if you do not believe in miracles.”
“Oh, Bruce … if I only could believe that way.”
“What an army these Jews have! Boys and girls without guns, without rank and uniform, and without pay. The Palmach commander is all of thirty years of age and his three brigade commanders are all under twenty-five. But there are things no military man counts that the Arabs must reckon with. The Jews are willing to lose every man, woman, and child to hold what they have. How much blood are Arabs willing to pay?”
“Can they win? Do you really believe it?”