Erich Segal - The Class

“You act as if you’re a slave to your own fate, I mean, you don’t have to make so many guest appearances all over the place, do you?”

How could he make her understand?

“Maria, darling, you know that old chestnut about music being an international language? Well, nowadays it’s an international business. I have to do a certain amount of traveling — just to keep up my contacts.”

Maria looked at him. Her face grew flushed.

“Danny, I thought marriage would change you. And then when it didn’t, I thought at least being a father would. Why the hell can’t you grow up?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why do you keep buzzing around the world like a bee from flower to flower? Do you still need that much adulation? if I’m not enough, there are plenty of local women to worship you.”

Danny did not feel compelled to justify the lifestyle of an artist.

“Maria, I assume this whole outburst is just the product of postpartum depression.”

Then, realizing he had wounded her, Danny came over and knelt by her side.

“Hey, that was shitty of me to say. Please forgive me. I really love you, Maria. Don’t you believe that?”

She nodded. “I just wish it were only me.”

Scarcely five months later, Maria was pregnant again. And the following year gave birth to a second daughter.

This time, Danny was in New York when she went into labor and made it to the hospital before the child arrived.

By January 1964 Jason had completed his six months of language training in the Ulpan. Having exercised the utmost discipline, using English only to write weekly letters to his parents, he found himself reasonably fluent in Hebrew.

The elder Gilberts had exerted frequent epistolary pressure on him to come home for Christmas. Jason had demurred, arguing that his course did not break for anything but the Jewish holidays in September. Now he once again avoided the possibility of returning to the States, even for a short visit, by saying that he was about to undertake “a very important job.”

He discussed it with Eva and Yossi — in Hebrew —on his first visit to the kibbutz since the summer.

“I’m going to join the army,” he announced.

“Good,” the kibbutz secretary exclaimed. “They can use an experienced man like you.”

Eva said nothing.

Yossi noticed the stern expression on her face and asked, “What’s the matter, aren’t you pleased with his decision?”

“I’m glad he’s staying,” she replied. “But I’ve a feeling he’s doing it for the wrong reason.”

“And what may that be?” Jason inquired.

“As a personal vendetta — to revenge Fanny’s death.”

“I don’t care what his reasons are,” Yossi retorted defensively. “Besides, doesn’t the Bible allow us an eye for an eye?”

“That’s primitive and you know it,” Eva countered. “It’s a metaphor, not to be taken literally.”

“The Arabs take it literally,” Yossi interposed.

“Hey, let’s cut the polemics. Do I have your blessings to enlist or not?” Jason asked.

“Not mine,” Eva stated adamantly.

“Well, you have mine,” Yossi countered, “and that of your whole kibbutz.”

“But I’m not a member of the kibbutz,” Jason replied.

“You will be after this week’s meeting,” the secretary responded. “That is, if you want to.”

“Yes. I want very much to belong.”

Though it was winter, Jason spent the next weeks in punishing, self-imposed, pre-basic training: getting up early to run in the freezing rain, lifting weights in the primitive kibbutz exercise room, and then running again before dinner.

He spent a lot of time talking to Eva, trying to convince her that his dedication was sincere. And pleading with her to make him less ignorant about the country’s history. Sometimes, at night, their conversation tentatively approached the personal.

He asked about her childhood. How it had been during the war with Fanny’s family. How she had been able to recover from the trauma of the Holocaust and the discovery that her parents had been slaughtered.

She told him how shattered she had been by the news of her parents’ fate. Still, she now felt she had been luckier than most. During the war, she had been blessed with the loving protection of the van der Post family. And afterward the establishment of Israel meant that her children would never suffer as she had.

Her talk of children led Jason to ask hesitantly why she was not married. At first she told him that like so many others, she had emerged from the Holocaust with her emotions deadened. But Jason sensed she was hiding something. And one night Eva told him the truth.

When she was in the army she had known a young officer named Mordechai. They had become very close. He was killed during his last month of active duty. And not by enemy fire, but during a training exercise with live ammunition.

“ I’m going to come back,” Jason assured her, assuaging a fear she had not even dared articulate.

“Oh, I know you will,” she said, unconvincingly. “Nobody gets killed working in a clothing depot.”

“What makes you think I’m joining the Quartermaster Corps?” he asked.

“I told you,” she replied. “I’ve been in the army. Most recruits go in at eighteen. A man like you is considered practically senile. You’ll be lucky if they don’t make you check handbags at the cinemas.”

“I was a U.S. Marine,” he said, smiling. “I finished training with the fifth highest grade in my battalion. Want to make a bet?”

“You’d lose,” she smiled, “because you’re about to encounter the best thing in Israel — its army. And the very worst — its bureaucracy.”

On a raw February day, Jason Gilbert stepped off the bus at the Kelet, the army induction center just outside Tel Aviv. The camp was large and sprawling, consisting of corrugated-roofed huts, occasional eucalyptus trees, and a series of tents.

Up north at the local army office, he had enlisted for the mid-winter induction and passed a series of preliminary mental and medical tests.

Now he stood on line with another member of the kibbutz, eighteen-year-old Tuvia Ben-Ami, who was manifestly nervous. Not about the army as much as being away from home for the first time.

“Keep calm, Tuvi,” said Jason, pointing at the long line of adolescents waiting to be processed. “You’re going to find a lot of new friends in this kindergarten.”

When the recruits were assigned to small groups, the young kibbutznik practically held on to Jason’s belt to ensure they would not be separated.

Then they all went to the “butcher’s shop” to have their hair mercilessly sheared. For some of the urban Casanovas, it was the trauma of their lives, Jason had to laugh as he watched them suppress tears as their Elvis-like plumage dropped to the floor.

He in turn simply sat down and let the army lawnmower relandscape his locks.

Then it was time for the dog tags. The dispensing officer suggested that Jason consider changing his name to something more biblical and more patriotic.

“In Hellenistic times, when the Jews all aspired to be sophisticated Greeks, every Jacob changed his name to Jason. Think about that, soldier.”

After donning their khakis, they were led by their supervising corporal to the tents where they would be staying for the next three days.

Tuvia whispered to Jason, “You can tell who are kibbutzniks, and who are soft boys from the cities, just by the way they look at the sleeping bags. I think some of them expected feather beds.”

After dinner they strolled through the camp to look at the recruiting huts where they would be interviewed for special units. Over one shack a sign boasted THE BRAVE TO THE PARATROOPS.