Exodus - Leon Uris [335]
“In a few years,” Karen said, “there will be trees and flowers everywhere, if we can only get enough water.”
They walked out of the sun into Karen’s hospital tent and each had a drink of water. Kitty looked through the tent flap. Barbed wire and trenches. Out in the fields, boys and girls worked in the sun while others walked behind them with rifles, guarding them. One hand on the sword and one on the plow. That was the way they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Kitty looked at Karen. The girl was so young and so lovely. In a few years in this place she would age before her time.
“So you are really planning to go home. I can hardly believe it,” Karen said.
“I told them I want to take a year’s leave. I have been terribly homesick lately. And now, with you gone ... well, I just want to take things easy for a little while. I may come back to Israel, I am not sure.”
“When will you leave?”
“After Passover.”
“So soon? It will be dreadful with you gone, Kitty.”
“You are a grown woman now, Karen. You have a life of your own.”
“I can’t think of it with you away.”
“Oh, we’ll write. We will always be close. Who knows, after living in this volcano for four years, I may find the rest of the world too dull for me.”
“You must come back, Kitty.”
Kitty smiled. “Time will tell. How is Dov these days? I hear he has finished school.”
Karen avoided telling Kitty that Dov had been asked to go to America, for she knew Kitty would take Dov’s side.
“They sent him to the Huleh Lake. They are planning a project to dig channels and lower the whole lake into the Sea of Galilee and reclaim it for farmland.”
“Dov has become a very important young man. I hear tremendous things about him. Will he be able to get here for Passover?”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
Kitty snapped her fingers. “Say! I have a splendid idea. Jordana has asked me to come to Yad El for Passover and I promised I would. Dov is working close by. Why don’t you come up to Yad El?”
“I really should stay at my kibbutz for Passover.”
“You’ll be here for many Passovers. It will be a farewell present to me.”
Karen smiled. “I’ll come.”
“Good. Now, how is that young man of yours?”
“Fine ... I guess,” Karen muttered glumly.
“Did you have an argument?”
“No. He won’t argue with me. Oh, Kitty, he is so damned noble sometimes I could scream.”
“I see,” Kitty said raising her eyebrows. “You are quite the grown-up woman of eighteen.”
“I just don’t know what to do. Kitty ... I ... I go crazy thinking about him and then every time we see each other he gets noble. They ... may send him away. It may be two years before we can get married. I think I’m going to break open.”
“You love him very much, don’t you?”
“I could die for wanting him. Is it terrible for me to talk this way?”
“No, dear. To love someone that way is the most wonderful thing in the world.”
“Kitty ... I want so much to love him. Is that wrong?”
Was it wrong? Kitty remembered standing over a bed and implying to Ari that Jordana was a tramp for the moments she had stolen with David Ben Ami. Was that wrong? How many times she had regretted her words. David had been dead for three years and Jordana still grieved deeply. Even with that tough shell of sabra aggressiveness she would take a broken heart to her grave. Was it wrong? How many tomorrows would Dov and Karen have? That angry host of people beyond the barbed wire—would they let them live?
Karen ... her precious baby ...
“Love him, Karen,” Kitty said. “Love him with all the love that is in you.”
“Oh ... Kitty!”
“Yes, dear. Love him.”
“He is so afraid.”
“Then help him not to be afraid. You are his woman and that is the way it should be.”
Kitty felt empty inside her. She had given her Karen away forever. She felt Karen’s hand on her shoulder.
“Can’t you help Ari?”
Kitty’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of his name. “It is not love when one person loves and