36 – Brooklin, Maine
The two couples - the Goldberg-Goldhershes and Levi and Reuben - got into Abram Goldhersh’s Nissan Pathfinder and drove to the waterfront area near where the sailboat was anchored. Levi had not decided whether he was ready to tell the Americans about the bomb hidden in the sailboat’s water tank, but the decision was soon taken from him when Reuben took his hand, leaned close and whispered in his ear.
“Don’t tell them about IT,” she said. “Not yet. I have more thinking to do about that first. OK?”
Levi nodded.
“That’s our boat out there,” Levi said, pointing at the Hinckley riding calmly at anchor a hundred yards or so from the shore. “Home sweet home for the two of us.”
He placed his arm around Reuben’s waist and drew her closer to him, emboldened perhaps by the wine, by her whispering in his ear or just by the expectation that she would not pull away in front of her friends. Levi was surprised when Reuben did not resist but, instead, leaned her head to the side to rest momentarily on his shoulder. She barely smiles at me when we’re living in a box together for two months, now we get on shore and she acts like my girlfriend, Levi thought. Well, I like it better this way.
Debra Reuben basked in the afterglow of the second bottle of wine and the two rum and cokes. During the recent sober weeks on the sailboat she’d had no way of dimming her memory of the decision she made at Dimona. The brain fog from the alcohol was warm, comforting, like aspirin cutting the burning of a persistent toothache she’d grown used to.
“Debbie, I can’t believe you came all the way from Israel in that tiny boat,” Sarah Goldberg-Goldhersh said. “Weren’t you frightened to death?”
“Actually, I was surprised at how comfortable it was, once you got used to being stuck in such a small area,” Reuben said. “I suppose we were lucky on the weather. We only went through one storm the whole time.” She chose not to go into detail about the way the waves crashed over the cabin rooftop and tore loose the liferaft, and how scared she was when Levi crawled on deck in the middle of the storm to retrieve the raft.
“It wasn’t too bad, at least until the Bacardi ran out.”
She also did not mention how, looking back at the experience from dry land, the time she spent on the sailboat seemed like a refuge between two storms, the storm she’d left behind in Israel and the storm she felt she was about to come into in America.
“And we didn’t quite sail all the way from Israel,” Reuben replied. After her initial telephone conversation with her former sorority sister, Reuben prepared a carefully edited version of her story. She wasn’t ready to disclose the existence of the nuclear device and she did not want anybody to have any inkling of the role she’d played in the decision to dispatch the two jets from the base at Dimona. As far as Reuben knew, Levi was the only person who knew about that, and she somewhat regretted having told him. A secret is a secret, her father had told her, only when nobody else knows it.
“Chaim was the one who found the boat, before we met,” she said. It sounded odd to refer to Levi by his first name. From the beginning she only called him “Levi,” if she referred to him at all. When two people are alone together for an extended period of time, names become extraneous. If you speak, it is obvious that you are speaking to the only other person within hundreds of miles.
“Chaim is, or I suppose was, in the Israeli navy. He escaped in a naval vessel. He hasn’t given me any details of that escape, but I have a feeling that it wasn’t a pleasant affair.
“As you know, I was with the government myself. Luckily for me I was away from Tel Aviv, in the Negev in fact, when the bomb went off. I was with some, well, some military people and they helped me get out of the country. As far as I know, and I spent a few weeks looking, I am the only surviving member of the Prime Minister’s cabinet, which I suppose makes me the highest ranking official of the government of the State of Israel.”
A smile crossed Reuben’s face.
“I guess you could call me Golda Meir.”
“I suggest that you keep that information under your hat,” Abram Goldhersh said harshly. The skinny woman he considered to be a slightly grown up Jewish American Princess was nothing like the woman he’d revered as the Founding Mother of Israel. “There are quite a few people in quite a few governments who would like to speak with you.
“They haven’t found anybody to hold responsible for Damascus, not that I think anybody needs to be held responsible for it. In my mind, whoever did that should receive Israel’s highest decoration. My regret is that since Israel had a hundred atom bombs, why did we only use one. Why didn’t we blast every Arab village back to the Stone Age where they deserve to be?”
Reuben was frightened to see how little control the huge man had over his anger. He seemed to have a bubbling pool of rage in his gut, rage that rose as unconsciously as a belch after a glass of seltzer.
“Debbie, I don’t know if you had anything to do with Damascus, after all, I kind of doubt whether the Minister for Tourism was given the code for launching the missiles or fighters or whatever,” Goldhersh continued. “But it seems you’re the only person still alive who could be linked to that decision.
“You’d better be plain Debbie Reuben, or chose some other name, while we see which way the wind is blowing.”
Reuben smiled at him, nodding her head.
“We’re in agreement on that,” she said. “Just being Debbie from Long Island sounds pretty nice to me right now.”
“Oh no, no no,” Abram started. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. This is no time for any Jew, especially an Israeli Jew, to look for rest and quiet. We have serious work to do, perhaps dangerous work, especially after what happened to all those Jews in Boston. I’m not saying to run away. I’m saying be careful, that’s all.”
Reuben nodded. She seemed like a pencil when she stood next to the huge man. Levi’s arm around her waist comforted her, hinting that she had a defender in case Abram’s anger focused on her for some reason.
“I know, I know,” Reuben said. “Forgive me a passing fantasy. That’s all that was.”
“So,” Levi interrupted. “Tell us all about what happened in Boston. And tell us what people, what Jews are doing about it.”
“We’re organizing a massive demonstration, a march on Washington,” Sarah said. “We want to get media coverage across the country to shine a light on what our government has done. I’m organizing the Portland contingent.”
Reuben recalled how in college Sarah could organize a march on almost anywhere over almost anything in almost no time at all. She had a way with slogans and chants and signs.
Nothing ever came of them, though, Reuben thought.
“And I’m organizing a different kind of demonstration,” Abram added in a soft voice, not that there was anybody around to overhear their conversation. “I have a warehouse full of little items that were waiting for shipment to Israel. I expect we’ll find a use right here for all my goodies. Sarah can march and carry the most clever of signs as long as she wants to, but this country’s government was the first to use force against Jews. The government can’t expect force to be met only with words and songs.
“After all, we didn’t conquer the West Bank with words, except maybe the words of the tank commanders to move forward and fire accurately.”
He tapped Levi on the shoulder conspiratorially.
“Lieutenant Levi, I have some things that will get President Quaid’s attention. I would not be surprised if other people have attention getters of their own, would you Levi?” Abram asked.
“Not in the least, Abram,” Levi replied. “Not in the least.”