Erich Segal - The Class

A lithe young man with black curly hair, wearing a half-open shirt and carrying a walkie-talkie, came up to them and in a slightly accented voice asked, “Are you all three passengers?”

“No,” said Jason, “only me.”

“Then I’m afraid those other people have to go,” he said politely. “Only passengers allowed here. For security reasons.”

This upset the elder Gilbert. “Look at this terminal,” he complained, as he reluctantly began to leave. “There are policemen everywhere, and at least a dozen types like that fellow. This must be the most dangerous airline in the world.”

Before Jason could respond, the security agent turned and addressed them. “Excuse me, but I think we are the safest airline in the world because we take the most precautions.”

“Do you always eavesdrop on other people’s conversations?” Jason’s father snapped.

“Only when I’m at work, sir. It’s part of the job.”

Unchastened, Mr. Gilbert turned to his son and said, “Promise me you’ll take an American airline back.”

“Dad, please, I’d be grateful if I could just be left alone.”

“Yes, son,” he said quietly. “Of course.”

They embraced their son and quickly left.

Jason sighed as he watched the two female security officials carefully empty the contents of his little overnight bag — three shirts, some underwear, two ties, a toilet kit — onto the bench and meticulously examine them. One even checked his tubes of toothpaste and shaving cream.

Finally they repacked it, far more neatly than he himself had done.

“Can I go now?” he asked, trying to suppress his impatience.

“Yes, sir,” replied the young woman, “right to that booth. For the body search.”

The flight was long and crowded. Children chased one another up and down the aisles. Old bearded men — and a few young bearded men — paced up and back as well, no doubt meditating on some vital point of the Talmud or a passage in the Prophets.

Inexplicably, Jason got up and walked with them. He wondered at the various faces that he saw among the passengers. Besides the stereotyped patriarchs straight from the pages of the Old Testament, there were tanned and muscular young men. He sensed that many of those open-shirted athletic types were security guards. There were also faces black as any Negro he had ever seen. (He learned later they were Yemenites.)

But what struck him most was that he also recognized himself. For here and there were blond and blue-eyed passengers conversing rapidly in Hebrew.

They were all different. Yet they were all Jews. And he was among them.

Fourteen hours later, when the pilot announced they were beginning their final approach to Tel Aviv airport, Jason perceived sobs among the people sitting near him. In fact, they were audible from many corners of the plane. And when they disembarked, walking across the tarmac past rows of heavily armed soldiers, he saw an old man bend and kiss the earth.

Jason noticed that the passengers felt such emotion at having arrived in this hot and muggy place that they could express it only by one of two extremes. Tears or laughter. He himself was too stunned to feel anything.

The customs officer who stamped his passport smiled and said, “Welcome home.”

Instinctively Jason replied, “I’m just a tourist, sir.”

“Yes,” said the officer, “but you’re a Jew. And you have come home.”

Having no baggage to pick up, he walked directly past customs to the sliding doors. They opened into an ecstatic mob of shouting people, greeting their arriving relatives in a babel of languages.

He stood on tiptoe and caught sight of Anton van der Post waiting off to the side with a fat, balding, middle-aged man. He hurried over to them.

The only conversation they could manage without crying was an exchange of platitudes.

“How was the flight?”

“Fine, Anton. How are your parents taking it?”

“All right, considering. Oh, this gentleman is Yossi Ron, the secretary of the kibbutz.”

Jason and the elder man shook hands.

“Shalom, Mr. Gilbert,” he said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am …”

He, too, was at a loss for words. They climbed silently into an old kibbutz truck and began to drive.

About an hour later they ascended a steep hill as the road bent to the right. Jerusalem came into view, its peach-white stone shimmering in the early morning sun.

Then Anton spoke for the first time in the entire journey. “We thought she would want to be buried with your ring, Jason. Is that all right?”

He nodded. And in a sudden rush of grief, his thoughts collided with the awful truth of what had brought him to this so-called holy place.

She was buried in a simple ceremony behind the towering trees of the Protestant cemetery on Emek Refaim.

A delegation had driven down from the kibbutz during the night and now were gathered at the graveside. They all were tanned and open-shirted. Jason felt slightly out-of-place in his dark suit and tie. Standing in the first row with his parents were Anton, his arm around his mother, and a short, darkhaired Israeli girl clinging to Mr. van der Post’s hand. Clearly, this must be Eva Goudsmit.

The faces of the Dutch visitors were etched with pain. The kibbutzniks wept openly at the loss of a friend.

But she was only that to them. They could never dream what Fanny had meant to Jason Gilbert. When they lowered the coffin into the grave, something inside him was buried with her.

His grief was too deep for tears.

As the service ended and the mourners began to leave, he and Eva were drawn instinctively to each other. No introductions were necessary.

“Fanny spoke of you often,” she said in a hoarse voice. “If anyone deserved a happy life it was she. I should have been the one to die in that explosion.”

“That’s the way I feel too,” Jason murmured. They continued walking, passed through the cemetery gate, and turned right. When they reached the Bethlehem Road he said, “I’d like to see where it happened.”

“You mean the kibbutz?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You can come back on the bus with us this afternoon.”

“No,” he replied, “I want to be with her family until they leave in the morning. I’ll rent a car and drive up to the Galilee on my own.”

“I’ll tell Yossi to make some arrangements for you. How long will you be staying?”

Jason Gilbert looked up as the rooftops of the Old City came into view, and answered, “I don’t know.”

At 5:00 A.M. the next day, Jason drove the three people who would have been his in-laws to their flight home.

Though they exchanged promises to keep in touch, both parties understood that there would be little, if any, contact. Because they had lost the person who linked their lives.

With a map spread out on the empty seat beside him, Jason proceeded northward. First along the Mediterranean coast, the blue sea on his left. Then east after Caesarea, through Nazareth, and across the Galilee until he reached the sea where two millennia ago Christ had walked upon the water. He then turned north again, the Jordan River on his right, through Kiryat Shmona.

By noon he reached the gates of Vered Ha-Galil, drove in, and parked his car.

Except for the lush greenery and flowers, the place reminded him of a small army installation. For it was ringed with barbed wire, Only when he looked out over the Jordan did he feel a sense of its tranquility.

The kibbutz seemed deserted. He glanced at his watch and understood why. It was lunchtime. The dining room had to be in the single large structure standing at the edge of the bungalows.

Inside, there was a din of animated conversation. He scanned the tables and soon found Eva, dressed like everyone else, in a T-shirt and shorts.