“Perhaps you are doing a wise thing. It is good for a person to think without the pressures imposed by daily living. It Was a luxury my father was denied until his last two years.”
Suddenly they seemed to run out of words to say.
“We had better start back for the house,” Kitty said. “I want to be there when Karen arrives. Besides, I am expecting visits from some of my children.”
“Kitty … a moment, please.”
“Yes?”
“Let me say that I am grateful for the friendship you have given lordana. You have been good for her. I have been worried about this restlessness of hers.”
“She is a very unhappy girl. No one can ever really know how much she loved that boy.”
“When will it end?”
“I don’t know, Ari. But I have lived here so long that I 594
have become a cockeyed optimist. There will be happiness again for Jordana, someday.”
The unspoken question-the unasked words-hung between them. Would there be happiness for her … and for him, someday, too?
“We had better go back,” Kitty said.
All through the morning and afternoon Kitty’s children came from Gan Dafna and from a dozen Huleh settlements to see her. The people of Yad El came to see Ari. There was a constant flow of traffic through the Ben Canaan house. They all remembered the first time they had seen Kitty, aloof and, awkward. Now she spoke to them in theix language and they all looked up to her in admiration.
Many of her children had traveled a long distance to spend a few minutes with her. Some showed off new husbands or wives. Almost all of them were in the uniform of the army of Israel.
As the afternoon passed, Kitty became concerned at the failure of Karen to appear. Several times Dov went out to the main road to look for a sign of her.
By late afternoon all the visitors had left to get ready for
their own Seders.
“Where the devil is that girl?” Kitty snapped, expressing
her worry in annoyance.
“She’s probably just a little way off,” Dov said.
“The least she could have done was to phone and let us know she was delayed. It isn’t like Karen to be thoughtless,”
Kitty said.
“Come now, Kitty,” Sutherland said, “you know it would take an act of Parliament to put a phone call through today.” Ari saw Kitty’s discomfort. “Look … I’ll run down to the moshav office and put in a priority call to her kibbutz. Perhaps they know where she planned to stay en route and we can track her down.”
“I would appreciate that very much,” Kitty said. Not long after Ari had left Sarah came in and announced that the Seder table was ready for everyone’s inspection. This was her moment of triumph after a month of labor. She opened the door to the dining room and the guests selfconsciously tiptoed in with a chorus of “ohs” and “ahs.” It was a table indeed fit for a Feast of Liberation.
All the silver and dishes glistened. They were used only once a year, on this holiday. The silver candlesticks shone in the center of the table. Next to the candlesticks sat a huge ornate sterling-silver goblet which was called “Elijah’s cup.” It was set there and filled with wine to welcome the prophet. When he came to drink from the cup he came as the forerunner of the Messiah.
595.
Special wine and silver goblets were at each place, to be filled four times during the Seder for the four promises of God: to bring forth, deliver, redeem, and take the Children of Israel. The wine symbolizing joy would also be sipped during the recounting of the Ten Plagues against Pharaoh, and when the Song of Miriam, of the closing of the Red Sea on Pharaoh’s army, was sung. ’
At the head seat there was a pillow, so that the teller of the story of the Exodus might relax. In ancient times only free men relaxed, while slaves were made to sit rigid.
And in the center near the candlesticks sat the gold Seder dish holding the symbolic foods. There was matzos, the unleavened bread to remind them that the Children of Israel had to leave Egypt so quickly their bread was unleavened. There was an egg to symbolize the freewill offering, and water cress for the coming of spring, and the shank of lamb bone to recall the offerings to God in the Great Temple. There was a mixture of nuts and diced apples and maror, bitter herbs. The first symbolized the mortar the Egyptians forced-them to mix for brick building, and the herbs recalled the bitterness of bondage.
Sarah shooed them all out and they returned to the living room. As they entered, it was Jordana who saw Ari first. He leaned in the doorframe, pale and with a dazed expression in his eyes. Now they all stared at him. He tried to speak but couldn’t, and as a moment passed they all knew at once.
“Karen! Where is she!” Kitty demanded.
Ari’s jaw trembled and he lowered his head.
“Where is she!”
“Karen is dead. She was murdered last night by a gang of fedayeen from Gaza.”
Kitty let out an anguished shriek and slumped to the floor.
Kitty blinked her eyes open. Bruce and Jordana knelt near her. The remembrance hit her and her eyes bulged and she turned and sobbed, “My baby … my baby …”
She sat up slowly. Jordana and Sutherland were in a-stupor of shock. They looked haggard and numb with grief.
“Karen is dead … Karen is dead …”
“If I could only have died for her,” Jordana cried.
Kitty struggled to her feet.
“Lie down, dear … please, lie down,” Sutherland said.
“No,” Kitty said, “no …” She fought clear of Sutherland. “I must see Dov. I must go to him.”
She staggered out and found Dov sitting in the corner of another room, hollow-eyed and his face contorted with pain. She rushed to him and took him in her arms.
“Dov … my poor Dov,” Kitty cried. 596
Dov buried his head in her bosom and sobbed heart-brokenly. Kitty rocked him and they cried together, untii darkness fell upon the Ben Canaan cottage and no one had any tears left.
“I’ll stay with you, Dov … I’ll take care of you,” Kitty said. “We will get through this, Dov.”
The young man stood up shakily. “I will be all right, Kitty,” he said. “I’m going on. I’ll make her proud of me.”
“I beg you, Dov. Don’t go back to the way you were because of this.”
“No,” he said. “I thought about it. I cannot hate them, because Karen could not hate them. She could not hate a living thing. We … she said we can never win by hating them…”
Sarah Ben Canaan stood at the door. “I know we are all broken,” she said pitifully, “but we should go on with the Seder.”
Kitty looked to Dov and the boy nodded.
They walked in tragic procession toward the dining room. Jordana stopped Kitty outside the door.
“Ari sits alone in the barn,” Jordana said. “Will you go to
him?”
Kitty walked from the cottage. She saw the lights of the other houses of the moshav. The Seder had begun in them. At this very moment, fathers were telling their families the age-old story of the Exodus as it had always been told by fathers and would be told for eternities to come. It began to drizzle and Kitty walked faster, toward the flickering lantern light from the barn. She entered and looked around. Ari sat with his back to her on a bale of hay. She walked up behind him and touched his shoulder. “Ari, the Seder is about to begin.”
He turned’ and looked up at her and she stepped back as though from a physical blow. She was shocked by Ari’s face, distraught with a suffering that she had never seen in a human being. Ari Ben Canaan’s eyes were filled with anguish. He looked at her but he did not seem to see her. He turned and hid his face in his hands and his shoulders sagged with defeat. “Ari … we must have the Seder …” “AH my life … all my life . . I have watched them kill everyone I love … they are all gone now … all of them.” The words came from profound depths of an unbearable despair. She was awed and half frightened by the almost tangible emotion that tortured the now-strange figure before her. “I have died with them. I have died a thousand times. I am empty inside … I have nothing left.” “Ari… Ari…”