Exodus - Leon Uris [218]
Kitty narrowed her eyes and glared at Karen. “You listen to me, Miss Smarty ...”
“Deny it and I’ll run up and down the street and shout it in Hebrew.”
Kitty threw up her hands. “I can’t win. Someday you’ll realize a man can be very attractive to us older women of thirty without there being the least bit of seriousness attached to it. I like Ari, but I’m sorry to have to dispel your romantic notions.”
Karen looked at Kitty with an expression that clearly said she was simply not convinced. The girl sighed and leaned close to Kitty and held her arm as though she were going to impart a deep dark secret. Karen’s mien took on the earnest sincerity of the teen-ager. “Ari needs you, I can tell that.”
Kitty patted Karen’s hand and adjusted a loose strand of hair in the girl’s pigtail. “I wish I were sixteen again and things were so pure and uncomplicated. No, Karen, Ari Ben Canaan comes from a breed of supermen whose stock in trade is their self-reliance. Ari Ben Canaan hasn’t needed anyone since the day he cut his teeth on his father’s bull whip. His blood is made up of little steel and ice corpuscles and his heart is a pump like the motor in that bus over there. All this keeps him above and beyond human emotions.”
She sat silent and very still and her eyes looked beyond Karen.
“You do care for him.”
“Yes,” Kitty sighed, “I do, and what you said is right. We’ve got a pair of lemons. We’d better get back to the hotel. I want you to dress up for me and make yourself look like a princess. Bruce and I have a surprise for you. We’ll take the pigtails down.”
Karen indeed looked like a princess when Sutherland picked them up for dinner. The surprise was attendance at a touring French ballet company’s staging of Swan Lake at the Habima National Theater, accompanied by the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra.
Karen leaned forward and sat on the edge of her seat during the entire performance, concentrating intently on the steps of the prima ballerina as she floated her way through the fairy tale. The overpowering, haunting beauty of the score filled her brain.
How beautiful it all was, Karen thought. She had almost forgotten things like ballet were still in the world. How lucky she was to have Kitty Fremont. The stage was bathed in blue light and the music swelled into the finale with the storm and Siegfried defeating the evil Von Rotbart and the beautiful swan maidens turning into women. Tears of happiness fell down her cheeks.
Kitty watched Karen more than she watched the ballet. She sensed that she had awakened something dormant in the girl. Maybe Karen was rediscovering that there was something in the world she once had that was as important as the green of the fields of the Galilee. Kitty resolved again to keep this thing alive in Karen always; as much as the Jews had won her over there was still much of her they could never get.
Tomorrow Karen would see her father and her world would move on in another direction. Kitty won something this day.
They returned to the hotel late. Karen was bursting with happiness. She flung the hotel door open and danced through the lobby. The British officers raised their eyebrows. Kitty sent her up to get ready for bed and repaired to the bar with Sutherland for a nightcap.
“Have you told her about her father yet?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“I’d rather ... alone.”
“Of course.”
“But please be there afterwards.”
“I’ll be there.”
Kitty stood up and kissed Sutherland on the cheek. “Good night, Bruce.”
Karen was still dancing in their room when Kitty arrived. “Did you see Odette in the last scene?” she said, imitating the steps.
“It’s late and you’re a tired Indian.”
“Oh, what a day!” Karen said, flopping into her bed.
Kitty walked into the bathroom and changed. She could hear Karen humming the melodies of the ballet. “Oh God,” Kitty whispered. “Why does this have to happen to her?” Kitty held her face in her hands and trembled. “Give her strength ... please give her strength.”
Kitty lay wide-eyed in the darkness. She heard Karen stir and looked over to the girl