Highlander - Donna Lettow [42]
The bus ran west, away from central Tel Aviv and into the western suburbs. The line terminated near the Ben Gurion National Defense Base, where the soldiers were returning from their Passover leave. There had been no Tel Aviv when Avram was young, just a few fishing villages near the already ancient port of Jaffa. When he’d returned to liberate his homeland after World War II, the tiny hamlet founded by struggling Zionists only fifty years earlier was already a city. Now nearly a third of Israel lived in the sprawling metropolis. As the bus continued on into the suburbs, picking up and discharging passengers along its way, Avram noted that throughout the world, one modern cement suburb looked pretty much like any other.
Several stops from the military base, the last civilian got off the bus. Now only Avram and the soldiers remained. He chanced a look at them from beneath his hat. They were so young, all of them. Soldiers always were. One of the men looked even younger than Avram did. He probably didn’t need to shave yet, either. Why was it always the young, so vibrant and full of potential, who were sacrificed so the old could survive?
He caught the eye of the woman, who smiled at him, teeth white against her tawny skin. Avram noticed how attractive she looked in her olive uniform, dark hair pulled back beneath her cap, but he resisted the temptation to return her smile. While Avram had supported a young woman’s right to fight for her country since the liberation and had fought side by side with many he’d been proud to serve with, to the black hats she was anathema. He turned away from her pointedly.
It was always regrettable when soldiers had to die in war. But these Israeli soldiers, like those who had gone before them, like Avram himself, had stood among the ghosts of Masada as new Israeli recruits, had sworn the oath of allegiance to their homeland—”Never again”—and vowed to fight and to die in her defense. As long as Israel was threatened, such sacrifice would be necessary.
Avram reached up and pulled the cord, signaling his intention to leave the bus at the next stop. When the bus began to slow, Avram stood and moved toward the door as the stop neared. He looked through the glass door and stopped cold. Two young girls stood at the stop in front of a corner market carrying a cat in a small cage.
Avram took a deep, calming breath, then reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a large handful of coins. The bus pulled up to the curb and the driver opened the doors. Avram started down the top step, then tripped over his own feet, sprawling onto the pavement below. Coins clattered away in all directions.
“Please, children, can you help me?” he begged piteously, crawling on the ground to retrieve his shekels. To his vast relief, the older girl, almost a teenager, set down the cat carrier to chase after the coins, and soon her younger sister helped as well. Avram waved the bus driver on with a smile.
After the girls handed him the coins they had gathered, Avram thanked them. “And I’m so very sorry I made you miss your bus, girls,” he said, handing them each a ten-shekel piece. “Here, you should take a taxi.” He reached through the bars of the cage with one hand and began to scratch their cat under the chin. It purred against his hand. With his other hand, he reached into the pocket of his long black coat and pressed the “record” button on a small tape recorder there. “I’m told taxis are much safer than public buses.” The resulting explosion as his briefcase detonated blocks away shattered the windows of the market behind them.
Chapter