Джеймс Миченер - The Source

But Reich’s sense of victory was shattered when Vered Yevneski came crying, “Gottesmann’s gone out of his mind!” She said that at the edge of town he had found an abandoned English Land Rover and was now driving down the road to Damascus, pleading with the fleeing Arabs to come back to Safad. It was an act of lunacy and would surely get him killed.

Reich sent Bagdadi to investigate, and the Iraqi Jew, trailed by Ilana and Vered, ran out of town, where they finally overtook the English car, and just as Vered had reported, Gottesmann was driving slowly along the road, pleading with the Arab refugees to come back to their homes. “We need you,” he said over and over in Yiddish, but the frightened Arabs continued their flight.

Patiently Nissim turned the car around and drove the Jews back in triumph, but Gottesmann sat silent, for he knew that if the Arabs had left permanently, the triumph was somehow tarnished.

In only one spot in all of Safad did the Arabs hold fast—in the great fortress on the mountain back of the town; and when Bagdadi and Gottesmann rejoined Teddy Reich they stared across the wadi at this ominous monster, and Reich could not repress a cry of triumph. “I told you!” he exulted. “Right now they’re the worried ones, not us,” but the Jewish lieutenants were also worried, for they knew that before long they would have to storm that final fortress, too.

At seven that morning Reich and his leaders met at the head of the stairs, and Bagdadi confessed to Ilana, “You won your bet. Gottesmann took the plateau before I entered the station.” Then he asked, “How’d it go up there?”

“You know Gottesmann,” she said with pride, “Start him down a trench …” Quietly she added, “He was responsible for the Arab collapse. Jumped into the middle of a headquarters area, blazing.”

At this moment one of the Arabs who had been left isolated on the roof of the police station drew a fine bead on Nissim Bagdadi, and the men about Reich heard a soft ping, following which Bagdadi slumped to the ground. Ilana quickly bent over him as Jewish marksmen shot down the Arab, but as she drew her hand away from the unconscious Iraqi Jew’s chest, Gottesmann saw the fatal blood and cried, “No! No!”

He fell on Bagdadi and began tearing away the fat soldier’s clothes, but the blood kept coming. “Nissim!” he cried in an agonizing wail. His hands were smeared with the blood and he shouted, “Nissim! We need you! The fortress …” He continued with incoherent phrases until Ilana persuaded two Palmach men to carry him home, where they placed him on a bed; then they returned to help celebrate the victory of 1,214 stubborn Jews over a final force of some 19,000 Arabs.

For three days Isidore Gottesmann lay in physical and moral stupor. His body was worn out and his mind no longer tried to bring into clear focus the death of Bagdadi, who had symbolized the common destiny of Sephardim and Ashkenazim; the tall German sought the escape of sleep. But on the morning of May 13 Teddy Reich burst into the house, his eyes dancing with joy, whispering, “Lan! We’ve got to waken Gottesmann. Such news!”

“Let him sleep,” Ilana replied, and little Teddy grasped her two hands in his one, danced giddily for a moment, then kissed her. She sat him in a chair.

“It’s unbelievable, and I wanted Gottesmann to know,” the wiry leader whispered. “The fortress …”

“What about it?” Ilana asked. Although she would not tell Teddy Reich so, she suspected that Gottesmann had fled reality because the prospect of assaulting that great stone monster was more than he could face up to.

“Remember how the fortress terrified us?” Teddy looked at the sleeping man. “Maybe that’s what’s driven him to sleep.” Suddenly, out of compassion which he could not normally express, the driving commander of the Palmach lowered his head and placed his one hand over his face. An ordinary man would have had tears in his eyes. Teddy Reich merely wanted to cover the uncontrollable twitching of his chin. Then came a whisper: “This morning two boys from a village in the hills went to the great fort … door was open … nobody inside. They brought us secret papers … documents you wouldn’t believe. I went up there myself.” He started to laugh. He rose and walked with explosive passion about the narrow room. Then with his solitary hand he produced from his map holder a sheaf of papers which he spread before Ilana. They were secret orders to Arab field officers directing them to evacuate from Palestine all Arab civilians: “Command them to create maximum confusion and disrupt normal services. Assure them that within seven days Arab armies will capture all Palestine and they can then return to claim not only their old property but any Jewish holdings they desire.”

Reich jammed the incriminating papers back into his pouch, muttering, “It wasn’t the atom bomb that drove them away. It was their own corrupt leadership.” And he stood, feet apart, facing Ilana and swore, “You and I and Gottesmann could have held that fort for thirty days. But at the first sign of attack, they ran away.” He burst into idiotic laughter, the only time Ilana had heard him do so, and with disgust he pointed at himself: “The great general! For three days I’ve been biting my fingernails over that goddamned fort, and it’s been standing empty. It was finally occupied by my heroic troops … two little boys.”

Possession of the fort brought Ilana a moment of elation, but it could not extend for long, for these were the culminating days when any local victory meant not termination but the beginning of some new responsibility, and Teddy came to the point of his visit: “They need us at Acre, Lan. We’re leaving after sunset.”

Ilana, anticipating what was to be said next, protested: “Why Acre?”

“Safad all over again,” Teddy explained, “A key point. Lots of Arabs. No Jews. We’ve got to take it quickly.”

“You ordering us to help?” Ilana asked.

“I must. Is Gottesmann equal to it?”

“He will be,” she said, and when Teddy left she wakened her husband and told him, “Tonight we go to Acre.” He said nothing, but he was able to dress, and it seemed to his wife that his long sleep had restored his self-control. His nerves, at least, were steadier.

That afternoon the lovers strolled through the town they had done so much to save. They climbed to the old Crusader ruins from which they could see the lake where they had first made love, and then walked down to the mosques which the Arabs had abandoned. The arts which the Muslims had used in decorating their holy places seemed finer than anything the Jews could show in their synagogues, and Gottesmann said, “We must preserve these buildings until the Arabs come back.” They sat for some time looking at the Galilee, and Ilana whispered, “I’ve only one regret, Gottesmann. I wish I were pregnant.” Her husband started to comment, but she said, “I’d like to leave Safad tonight thinking that while you and Reich were giving birth to a new state …” He tried to say that she and Vered were doing at least as much to win the new Israel, but he could not phrase his ideas, so finally they went back to the Jewish quarter to say good-bye to Rebbe Itzik, whom they had come to think of as their friend, “our difficult friend,” Ilana called him; but on the way they passed the plaza of the police station, and when Gottesmann saw this formidable building, when he recalled how Nissim Bagdadi had taken it by force of will alone, and when he stood at the spot where Bagdadi had fallen, he trembled and again lost coherence. Then, forming fists, he quieted himself and said, “We needed him so much,” and Ilana wondered if Reich would want Gottesmann at Acre; but after a while the storm subsided and they left the spot which had affected him so harshly.