“What kind of a dream? I don’t like dreams, they’re expensive.” “Expensive, yes,” Morris continued, “but for what is money anyway? We want to move, daddy, and now we have enough so that we can.”
The old man began to rock in very short arcs, as though to emphasize the manner in which his mind was working. “So why should we move?” he asked. “Here it isn’t too good, but not too bad either. Morris, he has his work. To move to a better place just to live higher in society, it would be a throwaway — foolishness. We are happy here, we should stay here.”
“Daddy, you don’t understand,” Esther said. Her voice became soft as though she were about to bestow a loving gift. “We aren’t going to move just to another part of town. Brooklyn is Brooklyn. We’re going to move — to Israel!”
At first the old man did not believe her. He did not believe anything until it had been proven to him, he accepted only the words of the threadbare Talmud which lay, as it almost always did, on his lap. “Israel?” He almost croaked out the word.
“Yes,” Esther answered. “Yes!”
“Israel.” The word seemed to stun him. He considered it, then sat silently, trying to think.
Morris knew him well. “Daddy,” he said. “We have the reservations already. In two weeks we go. One day after we leave we will be in Jerusalem. Then, daddy, you can go to the Wailing Wall. All Jerusalem you can visit now. Our homeland.”
Old Ishmael Goldblatt retreated within himself. As they watched him the arcs of his rocking began to lengthen and his bony thin hands loosened their tension on top of the book in his lap. At one time in his youth he had dreamed of helping to free the Holy Land and restore it to his people. He had never seen it with his own eyes, but it had been a vivid image in his mind for fifty years.
“Maybe they won’t let us go,” he said. The words seemed to form automatically on his lips.
Morris spread his hands palms up. “So why not?” he asked. “We’ve got the money, we can pay. I’ve spoken for the tickets already. A special flight; lots of Jewish people are moving to Israel because business has not been good lately. With them we go cheaper.”
“Flight?” the old man questioned. “An airplane yet? No.” He shook his head defiantly.
“Daddy,” Esther said, “if you are wanting to go by boat, then we go by boat. But it costs a lot more; we’ll have to wait and save more money.”
Her father looked at her in suspicious disbelief. “The boat costs more?”
Esther nodded vigorously. “Yes, daddy, so many more meals they have to serve, so much longer they have to take care of you. And bedrooms for everybody yet.”
He could not dispute that evidence, but for the moment he remained unconvinced. “We came on a boat,” he said.
“Yes, daddy, and you were seasick most of the time, remember?”
“Besides,” Morris added, “they don’t have boats like that any more. Only very fancy ones for the rich, with lots of expensive servants.”
“The meals on the airplane are all free,” Moshe contributed. “You pay your fare and that’s it. That’s one reason the railroads went broke hauling passengers — too much for meals and too many tips.”
At last the things they had been telling him began to penetrate into old Ishmael’s consciousness. He sat up a little straighter and looked around the barren room in which he had lived for more than ten years. He saw its bleakness and the four walls which had shut him in for so long from an alien world he had refused to accept.
Then the first germ of a long dormant anticipation stirred deep within him. “Palestine,” he said, addressing no one.
Morris nodded; he had read the symptoms. “Daddy, we’re going home,” he said.
Esther was a little startled; for the first time in her memory she saw a tear form in her father’s eye; she rushed to embrace him so that they might share their joy together.
The Senate Office Building was curiously quiet. Technically Congress was still in session, but the President was not available to sign legislation, which would have been largely meaningless in any event. Some senators and congressmen made it a point to stay on the job, but they were largely standing by awaiting whatever future developments might come.
It was a little like walking through an elaborate play set, Hewlitt thought, as he went down the corridor toward Senator Fitzhugh’s office. All of the fixtures of reality were there, but it was now nothing but an elaborate fagade. Someday, perhaps, it would again be a center of genuine policy making, but that future time was not visible now.
Hewlitt was not happy about his errand, but he almost welcomed it as a change from the inaction which had been forced upon him. He had joined the underground to do something; now he was under strict injunction to look and listen, but to do no more until he was directed. This kind of passive role did not agree with him: it was too much like the casual life he had been living prior to the sudden outbreak of hostilities and their almost unbelievably swift result. He felt much more sure of himself now, and he wanted to put his powers to the test. The job which confronted him at the moment might be a measure of his diplomacy, but little more.
He found the door that he wanted, opened it, and discovered that the senator’s receptionist was still on the job. “Are you Mr. Hewlitt?” she asked as he approached her desk.
“Yes, I am.”
“Please sit down; the senator will be with you in a few minutes.”
Hewlitt sat and looked through a newspaper; it was close to meaningless. Censorship had closed over all of the news media and what filtered through was almost entirely devoid of interest. The receptionist waited until he had laid the thin paper aside and then offered a morsel for his consumption. “I don’t know if you’ve heard,” she said, “but the Brown hearings are off.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Seymour Brown was in here just a little while ago,” the girl went on. “He told the senator that the Air Force simply didn’t know how to fly the Ramrod, and that that was all that was wrong.”
“I don’t believe it,” Hewlitt retorted. “In the first place, the Air Force can fly anything that can be flown. Secondly, if the airplane can’t be handled by the average, properly qualified combat pilot, then it’s the plane’s fault, period.”
“I think you’re right about that,” the girl agreed. She looked at her intercom where a light had just come on. “You may go in now,” she said.
Senator Solomon Fitzhugh was almost exactly as Hewlitt had expected to find him; he was older-looking than his pictures suggested, but his familiar features were unmistakable. His manner was a bit weighty as he rose to shake hands; the government might have fallen, but Senator Fitzhugh clearly had decided not to join in the debacle. He was a United States senator and that fact had not just been impressed on his mind, it had been molded there.
“Sit down, sir,” he invited, waving toward a chair. He used the word “sir” as a convenient tool with which to demonstrate his humility. It often greatly impressed casual visitors, particularly those from his home state, and he had learned its value. “Now tell me what I can do for you.”
“I didn’t come to ask anything of you, senator,” Hewlitt said. “Mr. Zalinsky has directed me to call on you personally to discuss a matter which should not be committed to paper.”
Fitzhugh nodded with understanding. “I take it that he would like to tender his regrets for his rudeness to me the other day. Please tell him that I consider the incident closed.”
“The matter, senator, is considerably graver than that.”