“Of course it took me all that first term to let him know he was in love with me.”
“It took me longer than that.” Kitty smiled.
“Yes, men can be a bother about such things. But by summer he knew very well who his woman was. We went out on an archaeological expedition together into the Negev Desert. We were trying to find the exact route of Moses and the ten tribes in the Wildernesses of Zin and Paran.”
“I hear it’s pretty desolate out there.”
“No, actually there are ruins of hundreds of Nabataean 498
cities. The cisterns still have water in them. If you run in luck you can find all sorts of antiquities.”
“It sounds exciting.”
“It is, but it’s terribly hard work. David loves digging for ruins. He feels the glory of our people all around us. Like so many others … that is why the Jews can never be separated from this land. David has made wonderful plans. After the War we are both going to return to the university. I will go for my master’s degree and David his doctorate, and then we shall excavate a big, big Hebrew city. He wants to open Hazor, right here in the Huleh. Of course, these are only dreams. That takes lots of money … and peace.” Then she laughed ironically. “Peace, of course, is merely an abstract word, an illusion. I wonder what peace is like?”
“Perhaps peace would be dull for you.”
“I don’t know,” Jordana said, with a trace of tiredness in her young voice. “Just once in my life I would like to see how human beings live a normal life.”
“Will you travel?”
“Travel? No. I do what David does. I go where David goes. But, Kitty, I would like to go out once. All my life I have been told that all life begins and ends in Palestine. But … every once in a while I feel strangled. Many of my friends have gone away from Palestine. It seems that we sabras are a strange breed made for fighting. We cannot adjust to living in other places. They all come back to Palestine sooner or later-but they grow old so quickly here.” Jordana cut herself short. “It must be the brandy,” she said. “As you know, sabras can’t drink at all.”
Kitty smiled at Jordana and felt her first compassion for the girl. She snuffed out her cigarette and looked at her watch again. The minutes were dragging.
“Where would they be now?”
“Still being lowered down that first cliff. It will take at least two hours to get them all down.”
Kitty sighed weakly and Jordana stared into space.
“What are you thinking?”
“About David … and children. That first summer on the desert we found a graveyard more than four thousand years old. We managed to uncover a perfect skeleton of a little child. Perhaps it died trying to find the Promised Land. David looked at the skeleton and cried. He is like that. His heart is sick day and night over the siege of Jerusalem. I know he is going to try to do something foolish. I know it. … Why don’t you lie down, Kitty? It is going to be a long time before we know anything.”
Kitty finished her brandy and stretched back on the cot
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and closed her eyes. In her mind she saw that long line of men being lowered by rope with the sleeping children dangling from their backs. And then she saw flinty-eyed Arab irregulars lurking near the column, spying on their moves-waiting for them to get close and into a trap.
It was impossible to sleep.
“I think I’ll go over to Dr. Lieberman’s bunker and see how they’re doing.”
She put on a wool-lined jacket and walked outside. There hadn’t been any shelling all evening. An alarming thought came: perhaps Mohammed Kassi knew something and had moved most of his men out of Fort Esther. She did not like it. The moon was far too bright. The night was far too clear and quiet. Ari should have waited until a foggy night to move the children. Kitty looked up the hill and made out the outlines of Fort Esther. They must have seen, she thought.
She entered one of the faculty bunkers. Dr. Lieberman and the rest of the staff all sat on the edge of their cots staring blankly, numb with tension. Not a word was spoken. It was so morbid she could not stand it and she went outside again.
Both Karen and Dov were standing sentry duty.
She returned to the command-post bunker to find that Jordana had gone.
She stretched out on the cot again and covered her legs with a blanket. The vision of the men inching down the mountainside came to her once more. The day had left her spent. She began to doze. The hours passed.
Midnight-one o’clock. Kitty thrashed about on the cot. Her brain was filled with nightmare. She saw the horde of Kassi’s men charging out at the column^shrieking, with their sabers glinting. The guards were dead and the Arabs had taken all the children and dug a huge pit for them… .
Kitty bolted up on the cot in a cold sweat with her heart pounding madly. She shook her head slowly and trembled from head to foot. Then a sound reached her ears. She cocked her head and.listened. Her eyes widened in terror!
It was a sound of distant gunfire!
She staggered to her feet. Yes! It was gunfire … coming from the direction of Abu Yesha! It was no dream! The column had been discovered!
Jordana entered the bunker just as Kitty rushed for the door.
“Let me go!” she shrieked.
“Kitty, no, no… !”
“They’re killing my babies! Murderers! Murderers!”
Jordana exerted all her strength to pin Kitty to the wall but Kitty was wild. She lashed out and tore from Jordana’s grasp. The sabra girl grabbed her, spun her around, and 500
smashed her across the shoulders, sending her to the floor sobbing.
“Listen to me! That gunfire you hear is Zev Gilboa and the Palmach making a diversionary attack. They are hitting the opposite side of Abu Yesha to draw Kassi’s men away from the convoy.”
“You’re lying!”
“It is true, I swear it. I was told not to say anything until just before the attack. I came here and saw you asleep and went to warn the others.”
Jordana knelt down and helped Kitty to her feet and led her to the cot. “There is a little brandy left. Drink it.”
Kitty swallowed it, half gagging to force it down. She brought herself under control.
“I am sorry that I struck you,” Jordana said.
“No … you did the right thing.”
Jordana sat beside Kitty and patted her hand and massaged the back of her neck. Kitty weakly lay her head on Jordana’s shoulder and cried very softly until she had cried herself out. Then she stood up and put on her heavy clothing-
“Karen and Dov will be coming off guard soon. I’ll go to my bunker and make them some tea.”
The hours of darkness dragged on and on-a night without end. Out in the blackness the men crawled on their bellies past Abu Yesha while the Palmach made its raid on the other side of the village, and then they plunged quickly down … down…
Two o’clock. Three o’clock. By now the waiters, even Jordana Ben Canaan, sat drained and empty, in a dazed silence. At five-fifteen they came out of the bunkers. The morning was icy. A thin, slick frost covered the center green. They all walked out of the main gate to that point where the lookout post hung over the edge of the mountain.
The darkness faded from the land and the lights in the valley went off one by one as a musty gray dawn revealed the floor far below.
The sentry looked through the field glasses for some sign of life down the mountain. There was nothing.
“Look!”
The sentry pointed. All of them stared toward the Yad El moshav, where dots and dashes blinked out from a signal light.
“What does it read? What does it mean?”
“It says … X1416…”
For a moment there was confusion. The message was repeated-X1416.
“They are safel” Jordana Ben Canaan said. “But lift thou
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up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. Exodus: fourteen, sixteen.” She smiled exultantly at Kitty.