Exodus - Leon Uris [334]
“I have some wonderful news,” he said.
She looked up. “What could be more wonderful than this minute?”
“Sit up,” he commanded teasingly.
“What is it, Dov?”
“You know about me being transferred to the Huleh Project?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I was called in yesterday. They want me to stay up there until the end of the summer only ... then they want me to go to America for advanced studies! The Massachusetts Institute of Technology!”
Karen blinked her eyes.
“America? To study?”
“Yes ... for two years. I could hardly wait to get here and tell you.”
She forced herself to smile—quickly. “How wonderful, Dov. I am so proud. Then you will be going in about six or seven months.”
“I didn’t give them an answer,” he said. “I wanted to talk it over with you.”
“Two years isn’t forever,” Karen said. “Why, by the time you get back the kibbutz will all be built up. We’ll have two thousand dunams under cultivation and a library and a children’s house full of babies.”
“Wait a minute ...” Dov said. “I’m not going to America or anywhere else without you. We will get married right now. Of course, it will be difficult in America. They can’t give me much of an allowance. I’ll have to work after classes but you can study nursing and work too ... we’ll make it.”
Karen was very quiet. She looked out and saw the rise of Gaza in the distance and the guard towers and the trenches.
“I can’t leave Nahal Midbar,” she whispered. “We have only started here. The boys are working twenty hours a day.”
“Karen ... you’ve got to take leave.”
“No, I can’t, Dov. If I go it makes it that much harder on everyone else.”
“You’ve got to. I’m not going without you. Don’t you understand what this means? I’ll come back here in two years and I’ll know everything there is to know about water tables and drilling and pipes. It will be perfect. We’ll live in Nahal Midbar together and I’ll be working around close by in the desert. The kibbutz will have my salary. Karen ... I’ll be worth fifty times the value I am now to Israel.”
She stood up and turned her back to him. “It’s right for you. It’s important for you to go to America. I’m more important here, now.”
Dov turned pale and his shoulders sagged. “I thought I would make you happy ...”
She faced him. “You know you have to go and you know I have to stay.”
“No, dammit! I can’t be away from you for two years! I can’t even take it for two days any more.” He stood and seized her in his arms and covered her mouth with kisses and she returned kiss for kiss and both of them cried, “I love you” over and over and their cheeks were wet with perspiration and tears and their hands felt for each other’s bodies and they slipped to the floor.
“Yes! Now!” she cried.
Dov sprang to his feet and stood trembling. He clenched his fists tightly. “We’ve got to stop this.”
It was still except for Karen’s soft sobbing. Dov knelt behind her. “Please don’t cry, Karen.”
“Oh, Dov, what are we going to do? It is just as though I’m not living when you are away. And now, every time we see each other it ends up the same way. When you leave me I am sick with wanting you for days.”
“It’s just as hard on me,” he said. “It’s my fault. We’ll be more careful. Nothing is going to happen until we marry.”
He helped her to her feet.
“Don’t look at me that way, Karen. I don’t want to ever hurt you.”
“I love you, Dov. I’m not ashamed or afraid of wanting you.”
“I’m not going to do what’s wrong for you,” he said.
They stood still, eyes shining with love and bodies taut with insistence.
“We had better go back to the kibbutz,” Karen said at last, with desolation in her voice.
Kitty had traveled over most of Israel and she had seen the most rugged of the settlements. She knew when she traveled to Nahal Midbar that it was the brink of hell. Yet in spite of preparing herself for the worst her heart sank at the sight of Nahal Midbar, a bake furnace planted in the path of angry Arab hordes.
Karen showed Kitty around with obvious pride over what had been accomplished in three months. There were