“Damn you, Mark! I hate that smug way you have of reading my mind.”
“You’ve been a busy little girl. You went to the British authorities to ask permission to enter Palestine. Being the gentlemen they are, they opened the door for you and bowed. You were just a clean-cut American girl doing her duty. Of course, CID doesn’t know about your little rumrunning act for Aliyah Bet. Well … are you going or not?”
“God, I don’t know.”
“You mean you haven’t talked yourself into it yet.”
“I mean I don’t know.”
“So which side do you want me to take?”
“You could stop acting like a worldly Buddha looking down on the poor tormented mortals. And you could stop sniping at me, Mark.”
Mark dropped his feet from the window sill. “Go on. . , go to Palestine. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?”
“I still don’t feel right around Jewish people , . I can’t help it.”
“You feel fine around that girl though, don’t you? Does she still remind you of your daughter?”
“Not really, not any more. She is too much of herself to be anyone else. But I love her and want her, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’ve got a loaded question for you, Mrs. Fremont . .”
“Go on.”
“Are you in love with Ari Ben Canaan?”
Love Ari Ben Canaan? She knew that he affected her whenever he was near or spoke or looked at her or even when she thought of him. She knew she had never met another man exactly like him. She knew she had a certain fear of his dark quietness and his tremendous power. She knew she admired
his daring and courage. She knew there were moments she loathed him as she had never loathed another human being. But love … ?
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “As much as I cannot walk into it … I can’t seem to be able to walk away from it and I don’t know why … I don’t know why.”
Later, Kitty spent over an hour with Karen in the hospital ward that had been set up on the second floor of the hotel. Karen had made a remarkable recovery. In fact, the doctors were amazed with the near magic effect the two words “Eretz Israel” had on all the children. It was more potent than any medicine. As Kitty sat with Karen she looked out over the faces of the children in the ward. Who were they? Where did they come from? Where were they going? What strange, strange people … what a strange, strange obsession they carried.
There were long periods of silence between Kitty and Karen in which neither of them dared broach the subject of her coming on to Palestine. At last Karen fell asleep. Kitty stared down at the girl. How lovely she was … how very lovely. She kissed Karen’s forehead and stroked her hair and Karen smiled in her sleep.
She walked out to the corridor where Dov Landau was pacing back and forth. They both halted, stared at each other, and Kitty passed on wordlessly.
The sun was setting as Kitty walked out to the quay. Across the street Zev Gilboa and Joab Yarkoni were supervising the loading of materials aboard the salvage tug. She looked about quickly to catch a glimpse of Ari. He was not in sight.
“Shalom, Kitty!” they called to her.
“Hi!” she called back.
She walked on down the quay toward the lighthouse. It was getting chilly. She put on her sweater. “I must know … I must know … I must … I must” she repeated over and over to herself. Out on the edge of the sea wall sat young David Ben Ami. He seemed lost in thought, looking out over the water and flipping pebbles.
She came up alongside him and he looked up and smiled.
“Shalom, Kitty. You look rested.”
She sat beside him. For several moments they admired the sea.
“Thinking of home?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Jordana … that’s her name, isn’t it … Ari’s sister?”
David nodded.
“Will you see her?”
“If I am lucky we will have a little time.”
“David.”
“Yes.”
“What is going to become of the children?”
“We will take good care of them. They are our future.”
“Is there danger?”
“Yes, there is great danger.”
Kitty was quiet again for many moments… .
“Are you sailing with us?” David asked.
She felt her heart skip a beat. “Why do you ask?”
“It is beginning to seem natural to have you around. Besides, Ari mentioned something or other about it.”
“If … if Ari is interested then why doesn’t he ask?”
David laughed. “Ari doesn’t ask for anything.”
“David,” she said abruptly, “you must help me. I am terribly puzzled. You seem to be the only one who understands a little…”
“I will help you if I can.”
“… I haven’t been around many Jews in my life. You people bewilder me.”
“We bewilder ourselves even more,” David said.
“Can I say something honestly? I feel so much like an outsider …”
“That is not at all strange, Kitty. Most people do. Even those few we call “friend,” even though they have a loyalty bordering on fanaticism. Some, I believe, feel guilty for all the crimes committed against us. Others want to be Jews … although Lord only knows why. We are a confusing lot.”
“But a man like Ari Ben Canaan. Who is he? Who is he really? Is he a real person?”
“Ari is quite real. He is the product of a historic abortion.”
They began walking toward the hotel, for it was supper-time. “It is difficult to know where to begin,” David said. “I suppose to really tell the story of Ari Ben Canaan we must start with Simon Rabinsky in the Jewish Pale. The Pale was an area in southwest Russia that included the Ukraine. I suppose we’d have to start before the turn of the century. I think the year of the great happening was 1884.”
CHAPTER TWO
ZHITOMIR, RUSSIA, 1884
Simon Rabinsky was a bootmaker. His wife’s name was Rachel. She was a good and a devout woman. Simon had two sons who were his greatest treasures.
Yakov, the younger, was fourteen years of age. He was a fiery lad with a whiplash tongue and a quick mind. He would argue at the slightest provocation.
Jossi, the older of the brothers, was sixteen. Jossi’s appearance was distinctive. He was a powerful giant who stood over six feet tall and had a head of flaming red hair like his mother, Rachel. Jossi was as mild as Yakov was wild. Jossi was quiet and meditative and gentle; in fact, Yakov’s fertile brain in Jossi’s powerful body could well have created a superman.
The Rabinsky family was extremely poor. They lived in that part of western Russia which included Bessarabia, the Ukraine, the Crimea, and parts of White Russia and which was known as the Jewish Pale of Settlement. The boundaries of the Pale were established in 1804 as the only place in Russia where Jews could reside. It was, in fact, one enormous ghetto, with Moscow and Petrograd off limits except to those few wealthy Jews who could bribe their way into sending a son or a daughter beyond the boundaries.
Establishment of the Jewish Pale was merely one event in a long history of discrimination. Jews first settled in Russia in the Crimea area as far back as the first century. The Khazars who ruled in that area were so taken with Judaism that they adopted it as their own religion. The Khazars’ kingdom was, in fact, a Jewish state. By the tenth century the Russians in the north had ascended to power and they swept down on the Khazars, dispersed them to oblivion, and began a sordid record against the Jews.
As Russia came to power, the flaming sword of Islam came up from the south. During those periods when the Moslems held parts of Russia the Jews knew their greatest times of peace and prosperity, for Jews had been a potent factor behind the rise of Islam.
With the final defeat of the Moslems, full power over all Russia went to the Czars and to the Greek Church. Jewish “heretics” were burned at the stake by the hundreds during the Middle Ages. The ignorant peasantry was well instructed in the fable that these Jews were magicians and witches and used Christian blood in their rituals.