Exodus - Leon Uris [271]
Suddenly there came a sound of voices singing from outside.
“What on earth is that?” Kitty asked.
“It is for you,” Karen smiled. “They have been practicing in secret for two weeks.”
Kitty walked to the window. Fifty of her children stood outside the cottage holding candles in their hands, singing a Christmas carol.
Kitty put on her coat and walked out on the porch with Karen. Behind the children she could see the lights of the valley settlements over two thousand feet below. One by one the cottage doors opened with curious onlookers. She did not understand the words but the melody was very old.
“Merry Christmas, Kitty,” Karen said.
Tears fell down Kitty’s cheek. “I never thought I would live to hear ‘Silent Night’ sung in Hebrew. This is the most beautiful Christmas present I have ever had.”
Karen was assigned to a post in the outer trenches beyond Gan Dafna’s gates. She walked out of the village and down the road to a point where the earthworks commanded a view of the valley floor.
“Halt!”
She stopped.
“Who is there?”
“Karen Clement.”
“What is the pass word?”
“Chag sameach.”
Karen relieved the guard, jumped down in the trench, put a clip of bullets into the chamber of the rifle, closed the bolt, and put on her mittens.
It was nice standing guard, Karen thought. She looked through the tangle of barbed wire toward Abu Yesha. It was nice being alone out here with nothing to do but think for four hours and look down on the Huleh Valley. Karen could hear the faint voices of the children floating over the quiet winter air from Kitty’s cottage. It was a most wonderful, wonderful Christmas.
Soon the voices were still and it was very silent all about. The snowfall thickened, building a white carpet over the mountainside.
Karen heard movement in the trees behind her. She turned quietly and squinted in the darkness. She sensed something alive moving about. She froze and watched. Yes! Something was there in the trees! A shadow ... perhaps it is a hungry jackal, she thought.
Karen flicked the safety catch off her rifle, put it to her shoulder, and sighted it. The shadow moved closer.
“Halt!” her voice snapped out.
The figure stopped.
“What is the password?”
“Karen!” a voice called out.
“Dov!”
She climbed from the trench and ran through the snow toward him and he ran toward her and they fell into each other’s arms.
“Dov! Dov! I can’t believe it is you!”
They jumped down into the trench together and she strained in the darkness to make out his face.
“Dov ... I don’t know what to say ...”
“I got here an hour ago,” he said. “I waited outside your cottage until you left for guard duty. Then I followed you here.”
Karen looked around, startled. “It isn’t safe! You’ll have to hide from the British!”
“It’s all right now, Karen, it’s all right. The British can’t hurt me any more.”
Her fingers trembled as she felt him in the darkness. “Dov, you’re cold. You haven’t even a sweater on. You must be freezing.”
“No ... no ... I’m fine.”
The snow fell into the trench and suddenly the moon appeared and they could see each other.
“I’ve been hiding at the caves outside Mishmar.”
“I know.”
“I ... I thought you were in America.”
“We couldn’t go.”
“I guess you wonder what I’m doing here. Karen ... I ... I want to come back to Gan Dafna but I took some watches and rings when I left and I guess they think I’m a thief.”
“Oh no, Dov. As long as you are safe and alive that is all that matters.”
“You see ... I’ll pay everyone back.”
“It doesn’t matter. No one is angry with you.”
Dov sat in the trench and lowered his head. “All the time I was in the Acre prison and all the time I was in the caves I thought to myself. I thought: Dov, no one is mad at you. It’s just Dov that’s mad ... mad at himself. When I saw you in Acre I said then ... I said I didn’t want to die any more. I didn’t want to die and I didn’t want to kill anyone.”
“Oh, Dov ...”
“Karen ... I never really had another girl. I ... I just said that to make you go away.”
“I know.”
“Did you really know it all along?”
“I made myself believe that, Dov,