Mitla Pass (19 page)

Gideon turned to leave.

“Don’t go away mad,” the naval attaché said. “We were just trying to make sure.”

“Are there Egyptian planes out there or not?” Gideon asked.

“We’ve got some unidentified blips. The Israelis are up patrolling. We’ll know soon. We’re not supposed to be cooperating with them, but we’re bending the rules.”

“Sorry about what I said,” Rich said.

“I’d like it better if you didn’t believe what you told me,” Gideon answered, and left.

O
NE-FORTY A.M
. The Israelis reported that no hostile craft were in their air space or off the coast.

A distant drone was heard, causing an instantaneous stir as everyone staggered to their feet and strained to hear. They’re coming! They’re landing!

Six awkward-looking C-119 Flying Boxcars were followed in by three Globemaster C-124s, opening their jaws to swallow up the refugees.

Gideon carried Penelope while Valerie guided a staggering Roxanne to the outside where they were counted off. He went back and returned with the seabags. An airman assisted them up the ramp. Val, Penny, and Roxanne were buckled in on folding canvas seats, twenty to a side. The airman tapped Gideon on the shoulder, indicating it was time to leave.

“Happy landing, baby,” Gideon said.

Val just nodded. Gideon started down the ramp.

“Gideon!” she called. He turned. “I love you,” she said.

For some reason people had become uncomfortable with all the Israeli coins in their pockets which they couldn’t spend anyhow. A bucket was passed around and soon it was half filled. An airman handed it to Gideon on the tarmac. In a moment the ramp was pulled up into the craft and the jaws of the plane clamped shut.

Runway lights shot on long enough for the planes to push skyward and disappear.

THE AMERICAN BOXCARS
and Globemasters cleared the Israeli coast and turned toward Athens into heavy squalls that sent them into violent plunges. People began vomiting. Completely fatigued, Val held on to the girls, white-lipped, fighting her own nausea. Rain found its way into the cabin, adding to the misery. Unsecured luggage skidded and banged about.

“Mommy!”

“It’s all right, honey. Hang in there!”

G
IDEON CLOSED
the living-room blinds tightly by unrolling the canvas sash, lit a candle, and picked up a packet of letters overlooked during the packing.

Grover Vandover came from the girls’ room, where schoolbooks were open, beds turned down, bathroom in slight disarray as if someone had just taken a shower. Everything in place but the people gone. Like a mining town abandoned after a sudden disaster.

Gideon tried to coax some food into Grover Vandover. No dice. He took the dog’s temperature: 104°. His most urgent business was to get the animal into Tel Aviv to the vet.

“Come on, buddy, let’s get some sleep,” he said to Grover. His bedroom was in disorder from the speed with which they had packed. The bed rumpled from her afternoon nap. He stared at it. It had been a good old bed.

“I can’t stay here,” he mumbled.

He put Grover in the car and took the short drive to the Accadia Hotel. It loomed on its cliffside setting like the grim white elephant it had become. No abandoned Scottish castle was eerier, and it was made more so by the low muffle of the sea.

Gideon opened a side door, put his fingers over the flashlight to cut its beam, and edged down to the basement to the fuse boxes. If I throw the wrong switch I could light up the whole damned place, he thought. He decided against it.

Gideon and his dog took a long, dark, scary walk up four stories in pitch blackness to his office. He bolted the door behind them and lit some candles.

A flash of dreaded loneliness returned. He reached for the phone to call Natasha but remembered the switchboard was closed. Gideon snuggled beside his dog on the couch but his eyes were wide open. He stared at a print on the wall as though he had never seen it before, then rolled to his feet, yawned his way to the desk, and poked through the mail. A letter from his father.

Gideon stared at his father’s envelope. He opened it.

My Dearest Son,

My wits have come to an end. Ten days without so much as a line, a comma. Ignoring and torturing me in such a way, I assure you, is not good for my health. If it is necessary that I should come begging, consider that I have begged. Ten days. It is impossible for you to be so busy. I reject the idea.

I have heard from my landsmen (people who came from my home town) of Wolkowysk. Some of them are among the great pioneers of Israel, such as your late Uncle Matthias (Matti), while others have escaped from brutal Nazi horrors. All of them are wonderful people. I love them. From the Wolkowysk community came a great many intellectuals, rabbis, poets, writers, etc., a small but very vital community. They have asked repeatedly to honor you with an evening but are feeling like so many
shmattes
(rags) and
shnorrers
(beggars) by your evasions that you are too busy. It would especially be good for Valerie and the girls to learn of their great cultural accomplishments and particularly so they shouldn’t go around thinking that you are an elitist snob ...

Gideon crumpled the letter angrily in his fist and felt his breath growing short and his chest tightening. He took a Tedral pill to stem the attack.

“Dad,” he cried from his foggy weariness, “for God’s sake, I’m in trouble. Tell me I’m good. Tell me you’re proud of me! Where is my wife? Where are my girls? Dad, I really need somebody to hold my head.”

The rumpled letter trembled in his fist. He took aim for the trash can, then laid the letter on his desk and straightened it out and put it in its file.

Dawn.

Gideon rolled up the wooden blinds and watched the sea outside as daylight came. He stood over the candles and worked up enough breath to blow them out, then wobbled to the couch. His heavy eyelids could no longer remain open.

“Daddy,” he said as sleep conquered him. “Daddy, I’m so cold. I’m so cold. Daddy, warm me up ... Daddy ...”

GIDEON

MITLA PASS

October 29, 1956

D DAY, H HOUR MINUS 40 MINUTES

T
HE FORMATION OF
D
AKOTAS
plodded deeper into the Sinai, crisscrossing the paths of Moses. The sun made its final gesture, blinking behind the mountains.

The cabin of our plane plunged into darkness. Heat of the day rose off the desert floor and clashed with night air spilling down the mountains. As the formation reached a risky altitude of five hundred feet, fits of turbulence awakened even the deepest sleeper.

Major Ben Asher, the Lions’ commander, waved his hand for Shlomo and me to come up front, where they were crammed in over the navigator’s desk.

I did a double take, staring at the pilot. I hadn’t noticed before, but the pilot was a woman. Ben Asher read the latest message and beamed.

“Hello, writer, squeeze in. Everything looks good now. Our aircraft report no Egyptian air or troop movement along the entire Canal. They haven’t got a camel’s ass of suspicion.”

As Shlomo and I worked our way back to our seats, one by one the paras awoke, yawned, belched, smacked dry lips, fiddled with adjustments on their gear, patted their weapons as though they were girls’ backsides, and chatted about the promising news.

The cabin grew so dark I had only vague outlines of their faces. A few of them were bearded, like lions. Many wore kipis on their heads and had opened prayer books and bobbed and weaved, even though they could not read the words for the darkness.

I was suddenly struck by unadulterated, all-consuming terror. I felt my entire body locking up and feared that normal movement was gone. The perspiration salted my eyes and my lips turned into dry eroded cakes. I became afraid to breathe too deeply for I knew that when I exhaled I would whimper out loud.

My heart pounded audibly as the plane climbed abruptly from under the Egyptian radar range to the jumping altitude. Shlomo’s hand gripped my arm.

“You’ll be all right,” he whispered.

“What’s the Hebrew word for Geronimo?” I asked.

“Geronimo?”

“That’s the American paras’ battle cry. Aren’t we supposed to give a bloodcurdling yell as we jump?”

“Believe me, you’ll find something to scream,” Shlomo said.

The resolution of fear is one of the writer’s greatest reasons for being. What does a man fear most? Being tortured? Being locked in a ward filled with lunatics or a prison filled with rapists and murderers?

Add to these fears the fear of a surgeon’s knife.

Some years back on a routine physical examination my doctor found a tumor in my chest, maybe the size of a baseball. It was lodged between my lung and aorta. A few days later I was in Denver unpacking a small suitcase at Rose Hospital, with surgery to commence after several days of tests.

Val and I were separated at the time. We had to split every so often; a week, two. We always got back together. I was in Denver with Georgia, a screwball divorcee who had been married to a musician, among others. Musicians, as we know, did much pioneering in the use of uncontrolled substances. Georgia was a very classy lady, one of the first female oil executives at that period. She loved a wild time and had a real thing for writers. We were very comfortable with each other, never talked of marriage or heavy-duty commitments.

When the tumor was found, I talked the doctor into letting me out of the hospital every night so I could cuddle in with Georgia. What the hell, the surgeon must have thought, the poor bastard is probably loaded with cancer, so why not?

The only drug of note going in those days was marijuana. New Wave stuff. Georgia had a lot of musician buddies and a source of pot. At first I thought it grew hair in your teeth or made you jump from tall buildings. There was a movie about it in the old days called
Reefer Madness
and it scared the hell out of me as a kid.

Cancer? So, why not a little marijuana? I reverted to a lot of macho, Marine Corps bullshit. If I was going to die, I was going out with bravado.

Every night I jumped the hospital and Georgia and I would get high and hit every sleazy joint in Denver. Don’t laugh when I say Denver. It was still part cowboy town and knew how to take care of a fellow who had had a long dry spell on the dusty cow trails. Raunchy as it gets.

The day before surgery I conned my way out of the hospital on the promise I’d be back by early evening. So, who watches time? Georgia and I always loved playing fantasy and we had pretty fertile minds. We made up a wish list and damned if she didn’t go up on the runway at Jake Foxe’s, the local strip joint, on amateur night. And Georgia put on quite a show. I got off watching the guys at the front table and she got off watching me get off and damned if we didn’t pick up another stripper—but that’s another story.

What has this morbid tale of lust and vulgarity to do with the resolution of fear? I recall the exact fraction of a second it happened. The three of us were crossing Colfax Avenue. We were making for a little private club-type hideaway of black musicians to find more substance.

As we were waiting for the signal lights to change, the thought of tomorrow’s surgery flashed through my mind. I said to myself, If I could magically change my condition and trade places with anyone in the world at this moment, who would it be?

Churchill? Babe Ruth? Clark Gable? Who would I be? The answer was Gideon Zadok. Facing an operation with less than a fifty-fifty chance of survival, I just wanted to be me ...with a girl on each arm getting blasted and heading for a whorehouse motel. I was satisfied with what I had done with my life ...won a big battle ...written some very fine stuff ...never compromised as a writer. I had remorse for my sins and tried to pay them off by being a good man. I faced the rotten side of me head-on. In sum, I was damned pleased with myself and I guess I was ready to die.

In this very strange, wonderful moment waiting on Colfax Avenue for the lights to change my fear vanished. No regrets. What a wonderful way to go into an operating theater.

Sometime after midnight and before dawn I returned to my hospital room. The anesthetist was in a rage. I confessed to the various ingredients I had ingested.

“You’ve got some milkshake in you, Zadok. One more night like this and you won’t need surgery.”

The operation was postponed until I was detoxed—with an armed guard on my door.

But the main thing was—I wasn’t afraid! I wasn’t afraid when they wheeled me through those moonshot sliding stainless steel doors. I wasn’t afraid as the anesthesia swept over me ...“So long, world, it’s been a real slice.”

The wind at the Dakota jump door jolted me. I stood at the edge. I was not afraid! I hurtled out into space, then slowed. All about me chutes billowed open like a fleet of sailboats setting spinnakers.

I wanted to freeze the moment forever. Maybe even reverse my direction and float off into galaxies unknown.

As the formation of Dakotas banked and raced back to Israel, their engines hushed and faded altogether. We were alone, far behind enemy lines. I became aware of the flapping of the chutes and little whumping noises that abruptly ended the short but magnificent odyssey.