Exodus - Leon Uris [284]
“Tell me about yourself and David,” Kitty said quickly.
Jordana’s eyes lit up. “Ah, my David ... my gentle, wonderful David.”
“Where did you first meet?”
“At the Hebrew University. I met him the second day I was there. I saw him and he saw me and we fell in love at that very moment and we have never fallen out of it.”
“That’s the way it was with my husband and me,” Kitty said.
“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 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 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.