overcome her initial disapproval, and finally admitted it was beautiful,
but still decadent.
They swam in the cool green waters of the oasis of Em Gedi where they
formed a deep rock pool before overflowing and running down into the
thick saline water of the sea itself.
Hannah had brought her camera and she photographed Debra and David
sitting together on the rocks beside the pool.
They were in their bathing costumes, Debra's brief bikini showing off
her fine young body as she half-turned to laugh into David's face. He
smiled back at her, his face in profile and the dark sweep of his hair
falling on to his forehead. The desert light picked out the pure
features and the boldly stated facets of his beauty.
Hannah had a print of the photograph made for each of them, and later
those squares of glossy photographic paper were all they had left of it,
all that remained of the joy and the laughter of those days, like a
lovely flower taken from the growing tree of life and pressed and dried,
flattened and desiccated, deprived of its colour and perfume.
But the future threw no shadow over their happiness on that bright day,
and with Joe driving this time they ran back for Jerusalem. Debra
insisted that they stop for a group of tank corp boys hitch-hiking home
on leave, and although David protested it was impossible, they squeezed
three of them into the small cab. It was Debra's sop to her feelings of
guilt, and she sat in the back seat with her arms around David's neck
and they all sang the song that was that year a favourite with the young
people of Israel, Let there be peace.
In the last few days while David waited to enter the airforce, he loafed
shamelessly, frittering the time away in small chores like having his
uniforms tailored. He resisted Debra's suggestion that if regulation
issue were good enough for her father, a general officer, then they
might be good enough for David. Aaron Cohen supplied him with an
introduction to his own tailor. Aaron was beginning to develop a fine
respect for David's style.
Debra had arranged membership for David at the University Athletic Club,
and he worked out in the first class modern gym every day, and finished
with twenty lengths of the Olympic-size swimming pool to keep himself in
shape.
However, at other times, David merely lay sunbathing on the terrace, or
fiddled with electrical plugs or other small tasks Debra had asked him
to see to about the house.
As he moved through the cool and pleasant rooms, he would find an item
belonging to Debra, a book or a brooch perhaps, and he would pick it up
and fondle it briefly. Once a robe of hers thrown carelessly across the
foot of the bed and redolent of her particular perfume gave him a
physical pang as it reminded him sharply of her, and he held the
silkiness to his face and breathed the scent of her, and grudged the
hours until her return.
However, it was amongst her books that he discovered more about her than
years of study would have revealed.
She had crates of these piled in the unfurnished second bedroom which
they were using as a temporary storeroom until they could find shelves
and cupboards. One afternoon David began digging around in the crates.
It was a literary mixed grill, Gibbon and Vidal, Shakespeare and Mailer,
So1zhenitsyn and Mary Stewart, amongst other strange bedfellows. There
was fiction and biography, history and poetry, Hebrew and English,
softbacks and leather-bound editions, and a thin greenjacketed volume
which he almost discarded before the author's name caught his attention.
It was by D. Mordecai and with a feeling of discovery he turned to the
flyleaf. This year, in Jerusalem, a collection of poems, by Debra
Mordecai.
He carried the book through to the bedroom, remembering to kick off his
shoes before lying on the lace cover she was very strict about that, and
he turned to the first page.
There were five poems. The first was the title piece, the
two-thousand-year promise of Jewry Next year in Jerusalem had become
reality. It was a patriotic tribute to her land and even David, whose
taste in writing ran to Maclean and Robbins, recognized that it had a
superior quality. There were lines of startling beauty, evocative
phrasing and penetrative glimpses. It was good, really good, and David
felt a strange proprietary pride, and a sense of awe. He had not
guessed at these depths within her, these hidden areas of the mind.
When he came to the last poem, he found it was the shortest of the five,
and it was a love poem, or rather it was a poem to someone dearly loved
who was gone and suddenly David was aware of the difference between that
which was good and that which was magic.
He found himself shivering to the music of her words, felt the hair on
his forearms standing erect with the haunting beauty of it, and then at
last he felt himself choking on the sadness of it, the devastation of
total loss, and the words swam is his eyes flooded, and he had to blink
rapidly as the last terrible cry of the poem pierced him to the heart.
He lowered the book on to his chest, remembering what Joe had told him
about the soldier who had died in the desert. A movement attracted his
attention and he made a guilty effort to hide the book as he sat up. it
was such a private thing, this poetry, that he felt like a thief.
Debra stood in the doorway of the bedroom watching him, leaning against
the jamb with her hands clasped in front of her, studying him quietly.
He sat up on the bed and weighed the book in his hands. It's lovely, he
said at last, his voice was gruff with the emotions that her words had
evoked.
I'm glad you like it, she said, and he realized that she was shy.
Why did you not show it to me before? 'I was afraid you might not like
it. You must have loved him very much? he asked softly.
Yes, I did, I she said, but now I love you.
Then, finally, his posting came through and the Brig's hand was evident
in it all, though Joe admitted that he had used his own family
connections to influence the orders.
He was ordered to report to Mirage squadron Lancewhich was a crack
interceptor outfit based at the same hidden airfield from which he had
first flown. Joe Morde. was on the same squadron, and when he called
at Malik Street to tell David the news, he showed no resentment that
David would out-rank him, but instead he was confident that they would
be able to fly together as a regulor team. He spent the evening
briefing David on squadron personnel, from'Le Dauphin'the commanding
officer, a French immigrant, down to the lowest mechanic. In the weeks
ahead David would find Joe's advice and help invaluable, as he settled
into his niche amongst this tightly-knit team of fliers.
The following day the tailor. delivered his uniforms, and he wore one
to surprise Debra when she backed in through the kitchen door, laden
with books and groceries, using her bottom as a door buffer, her hair
down behind and her dark glasses pushed up on top of her head.
She dropped her load by the sink, and circled him with her hands on her
hips, her head cocked at a critical angle.
I should like you to wear that, and come to pick me up at the University
tomorrow afternoon, please, she said at last.
(why? J Because there are a few little bitches that lurk around the
Lauterman Building. Some of them are my students and some are