Exodus - Leon Uris [339]
She was even more beautiful than the memory he held of her.
Kitty became aware of Ari’s fixed gaze.
“I ... am really quite ashamed of myself. I have never been to Elath. The commander at Beersheba has offered to fly me down a half dozen times. I should see it, I suppose.”
“The water and the mountains are quite beautiful.”
“Is the town growing?”
“It would be the fastest-growing town in the world if we could break the blockade and open her as a port to the Orient.”
“Ari,” Kitty said seriously, “what is the situation down there?”
“What it has always been ... as it will always be.”
“The fedayeen gangs are getting worse, aren’t they?”
“Those poor devils aren’t our real worry. They’re massing to overrun the entire Middle East from Sinai. We’re going to have to hit them first if we expect to survive.” Ari smiled. “My boys tell me we should cross the border and find Mount Sinai and give the Ten Commandments back to God ... it’s all caused us enough trouble.”
Kitty stared at the bubbling stream for a long time. She sighed unevenly. “I am sick with worry over Karen. She is on the Gaza Strip ... Nahal Midbar.”
“Nasty place,” Ari muttered. “But they are tough youngsters. They’ll make out.”
Yes, that is the way that Ari would answer, Kitty thought.
“I hear you are returning to America.”
Kitty nodded.
“You’ve become a woman of renown.”
“More of a curiosity,” Kitty said.
“You’re modest.”
“I’m sure Israel will survive without me.”
“Why are you leaving?”
“You saw Dov ... Major Dov Landau now. He’s a fine young man. Karen is being left in good hands. I don’t know ... maybe I just don’t want to wear out my welcome. Maybe I still don’t fully belong here. Maybe I’m homesick. There are lots of reasons and no reasons. Anyhow, I just want a year to take off and spend the time thinking ... just thinking.”
“Perhaps you are doing a wise thing. It is good for a person to think without the pressures imposed by daily living. It was a luxury my father was denied until his last two years.”
Suddenly they seemed to run out of words to say.
“We had better start back for the house,” Kitty said. “I want to be there when Karen arrives. Besides, I am expecting visits from some of my children.”
“Kitty ... a moment, please.”
“Yes?”
“Let me say that I am grateful for the friendship you have given Jordana. You have been good for her. I have been worried about this restlessness of hers.”
“She is a very unhappy girl. No one can ever really know how much she loved that boy.”
“When will it end?”
“I don’t know, Ari. But I have lived here so long that I have become a cockeyed optimist. There will be happiness again for Jordana, someday.”
The unspoken question—the unasked words—hung between them. Would there be happiness for her ... and for him, someday, too?
“We had better go back,” Kitty said.
All through the morning and afternoon Kitty’s children came from Gan Dafna and from a dozen Huleh settlements to see her. The people of Yad El came to see Ari. There was a constant flow of traffic through the Ben Canaan house. They all remembered the first time they had seen Kitty, aloof and awkward. Now she spoke to them in their language and they all looked up to her in admiration.
Many of her children had traveled a long distance to spend a few minutes with her. Some showed off new husbands or wives. Almost all of them were in the uniform of the army of Israel.
As the afternoon passed, Kitty became concerned at the failure of Karen to appear. Several times Dov went out to the main road to look for a sign of her.
By late afternoon all the visitors had left to get ready for their own Seders.
“Where the devil is that girl?” Kitty snapped, expressing her worry in annoyance.
“She’s probably just a little way off,” Dov said.
“The least she could have done was to phone and let us know she was delayed. It isn’t like Karen to be thoughtless,” Kitty said.
“Come now, Kitty,” Sutherland said, “you know it would take an act of Parliament to put a phone call through today.”
Ari saw Kitty’s discomfort. “Look ... I’ll run down to