Mitla Pass (59 page)

“From there the party went to Jaffa ... for atmosphere, you know. You were determined to find the sleaziest Arab hotel in the Middle East. We came very, very close ... then Tel Aviv, that part of the city where the gangsters hang out, near the beachfront, and then to Herzlia to the Accadia, where you read me twenty-two letters from your father. My, my, my, Nathan is quite a chap.”

Gideon now remembered. He tried to take Natasha to his home, but she had refused to enter, much less make love in Val’s bed. From then on, things became fuzzy in his memory.

“So, here we are on good old Cyprus, the next jewel to fall out of the king’s crown,” Gideon said.

Suddenly the battle for Mitla Pass took over. Shlomo took over. Major Ben Asher and Zechariah and Val and his daughters, now waiting in Rome, took over. And there was the woman across from him, her emerald eyes glowing and singing with love for her wayward cowboy.

They made love again. This time it was sober and hungry and deep. No more little “chicken” contests of who would give up first and have an orgasm, stretching their powers for three, four, five hours before one of them had to quit and explode. No fantasies, no toys, no costumes, no ropes, chains, cuffs, no drugs, no mock wrestling matches, no slaps, no mirrors, no belly dancers in Nicosia’s fleshpots, no more pickups in dark cobblestone alleyways, no more sex in the elevator between the first and fourth floors, no more rolling in the fields off the Jerusalem highway, in sight of the Christian Brothers Monastery, no more flashing exhibitions, no more watching paid performances, no more getting it on in the lavatory of the airplanes, no more fingering each other under the tables in restaurants, no more oils, wigs, backs of taxicabs.

They’d done all that. Now it was just plain, raw, naked, screaming sex.

And they collapsed in each other’s willing arms, weeping from the continued magic of it, all day, late into the evening.

They went down to the harbor and climbed the steps to the parapets of the old fort. She became entranced watching Gideon’s movements; he was like a lion stalking forward, speaking under his breath as his mind whipped the fort and harbor into chapters of a story.

They returned to the Dome Hotel, thought it best to round up their driver and get to the airport at Nicosia, but as they packed they went after each other again and made love and fell asleep, clinging to each other. And darkness came.

Natasha woke up with a start! Gideon was not beside her. She flung off the sheet and leaped from the bed, heart pounding. No! It was all right. He was outside, feet up on the railing looking out to the sea, off again on one of his mystical journeys in that strange world of his own making.

“Hi, cowboy.”

“Hello, sweetheart. Jesus, I’ve got a super first chapter.”

She pulled up a chair alongside him and only then saw how troubled he was.

“What’s going on inside there?” she asked.

Natasha had caught him cold. He couldn’t speak.

“Well, out with it.”

He shook his head for her to leave him alone.

“Shlomo?”

“I suppose ... he didn’t have to go into the Pass ... nobody did.”

“You’ve already said that a hundred times in the past week.”

“So I did. At least ... at least ...”

“What?” she pressed.

“Nothing,” he answered sharply.

“Something’s choking you, Gideon. There’s a lump in there. I knew it the first time we met. I’ve known it every time we’ve made love. I think it’s time you let it go.”

It was quite chilly, but perspiration broke out on his face.

“Gideon, I’ve learned so much from you. You were the first man to understand the pain I was in. You were the first man who knew I hated my father and taught me to stop trying to kill him through other men. Pussy power is an awesome thing, you said. Don’t kill with it. Find a man you can love in a precious way ... wild as you want it ... but let him live. You held my shoulders and shook me and made me shout aloud to stop destroying ... myself ... and my lovers.”

Gideon grunted.

“What is it, man!”

“At least,” he cried with a sudden sound that was not his voice, “I didn’t disgrace myself! At least I didn’t let Shlomo down!”

“So, that’s it. Just let it happen. Natasha is here!”

“I can’t,” he said shivering.

“Who was Pedro?”

Gideon reacted as though he had been shot. He spun from his chair, jammed his hands in his pockets, and shook. “It’s ... c ... c ... cold out here. I’m going inside.” She came after him. “Don’t turn on the lights,” he ordered.

Natasha found a match and lit the candle on the dresser. The breeze caught the flame and hurled a wild shadow off the white walls and ceiling. Gideon was silhouetted, sitting on the edge of the bed, his shoulders slumped in grief, his hair falling into his eyes, a Hamlet of Cyprus.

“Pedro was my buddy-buddy,” he moaned like a ghost. “I loved him like a brother. We were in it together from the start, boot camp, radio school, and then the 6th Marines ... I was so proud to go into the 6th ... that was my Uncle Lazar’s regiment in the First World War ... Belleau Wood ... I got to wear a
fourragère
around my left shoulder ... but he was the one who won it. Pedro and I ... we were something else ... he was just a Mexican kid from San Antonio, but he had one of those voices only Mexicans have ... it was like a nightingale ... La Paloma ... Cookoo Rookoo Coo ... he could melt the heart of an iron maiden when he sang ... hell, we’d have broads waiting for us at the Wellington train station, and they’d just grab us by the stacking swivels and march us off to bed. I was seventeen, Pedro was nineteen. Can you imagine our chutzpah? Pedro and I and two other guys rented the God-damned Wellington Opera House and then conned the commanding general of the division into letting us put on a review ... I wrote a good part of it ... funnier than hell... but the moment of the night was when Pedro came out in front of the curtain with just a spotlight on his face ... and his guitar ... and he sang. ...”

Gideon sang the song to the tune of “Road to Mandalay” in not much more than a whisper... .

“on the road to Gizo Bay, ... where the Jap flotillas lay, ...

and the dawn comes up like thunder, ...

out of Burma cross the way... .

“ship me somewhere east of Lunga, ...

where the best ain’t like the worst, ...

where there ain’t no Doug MacArthur, ...

a gyrene can drown his thirst, ...

oh, the Army takes the medals, ...

and the Navy takes the queens, ...

but the guys that take the fucking, ...

are United States Marines. ...”

“He’d made buck sergeant by the time we hit Tarawa. Me? I was a PFC, one rank lower than Hitler. Oh, I got to corporal twice and got busted back to PFC twice. I was always in some kind of mischief. Nothing big ... AWOL a few hours here and there, ducking mess duty, that kind of stuff.”

The silence was awful as he tried to force more words up. His chin dropped to his chest.

“... he was in a clearing. He had to expose himself because the fucking radios were some kind of asshole models unfit for combat ... the Marines always got shit gear. So he had to find a clearing to the water, and he was transmitting a message, a very important one. A landing boat bringing us ammo was heading into Jap lines. Pedro was steering them into us. I was on the generator. The Japs opened fire. He kept on transmitting. I kept on winding the generator. Not until he got the message to them did he quit. I started to break down the generator to shag ass, when Pedro toppled over ... maybe twenty yards from me ... I stood there and gaped ... gaped ... I was frozen. Before I could move Captain Farney and Corporal Burns dashed out from cover, passed me, and reached him. They got hit too. All three of them dead.”

Gideon suddenly stopped speaking. He stood up and screamed in anguish. “I didn’t get to him! I let my buddy down!”

He fell on the bed, rolled onto his stomach, and babbled. They sent the division to Hawaii to recuperate. I didn’t want to go on anymore. I wanted to quit and go home. I had a bad case of dengue fever on Tarawa ... it’s a kind of shit disease where all your joints, elbows, knees, knuckles, all swell up and you’ve got this crazy fever ... I wasn’t any good to anyone, anymore. Then my asthma came back from the volcanic dust in our camp. So they sent me home. My outfit went on to the invasion of Saipan, and all my buddies got slaughtered on the beach. The guy carrying my radio got his guts blown out. And there I was, safe in the hospital in Oakland, putting on another fucking play!”

He felt her loving hand.

“Don’t touch me! I’m no good! I’m a fucking fake! I’ve faked my way through everything!”

“Don’t you know that all soldiers want to go home?” Natasha said. “From the beginning of time, all soldiers want to go home.”

“But I ...”

“What?”

“I was a coward! I was a Jew coward!”

“Shut up, Gideon! Sit up and look at me! I said look at me, God damn you, look at me!”

He rolled over slowly and stared up at her. Natasha’s face was wild, and the light and shadows whirling around her were wild.

“What happened to Pedro! He was killed, right!”

“He was killed!”

“How many bullet holes?”

“Just one.”

“So he was already dead when Captain Farney and Corporal Burns reached him, wasn’t he?”

“He’d been shot through the head.”

“And if you had gone out to get him, you would have been killed, just like Farney and Burns, isn’t that right? Well, tell me, isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know ... maybe I could’ve ... maybe if I had acted faster ... maybe ...”

“But you stayed on the generator until the message got through. You didn’t run. They were shooting at you too.”

“We had to save the ammo boat.”

“So you stuck in until your job was done. Pedro was dead and the men who went after him got killed. And you’ve let yourself be filled with guilt because you survived. Darling, remember when you said to me ... Natasha ... you can’t be guilty because you lost everyone in the gas chambers. You told me that. All survivors have a guilt syndrome. I have it from Auschwitz, you have it from Tarawa. It has nothing to do with you being a Jew. All your life, that’s been pounded into you. I’m a Jew, so I’m a coward. So, to absolve yourself of your guilt, you had to write a book, a great book, to redeem yourself in your own eyes and win the respect of your fellow Marines. And then you had to come to Israel and go to Mitla Pass to redeem yourself as a Jew and win the respect of the Jewish people. Why can’t you see that, man!”

“Oh, Natasha,” he cried, “hold me, hold me, hold me.”

Natasha rocked him in her arms, and after a long time Gideon fell into a dead sleep. A knock on the door and she opened it a crack.

“Waiter, ma’am. You asked for the dinner menu.”

“Just a moment, please,” Natasha said and looked about for a bill to tip him. She went to the armoir, reached inside Gideon’s jacket pocket, and took out his wallet. His airline ticket fell to the floor.

She tipped the waiter. “I’ll call down when we are ready to order.”

“Thank you,” he said and closed the door behind him. Natasha returned to the armoir and picked up his ticket, then became curiously entranced by it. As she read it, she paled.

Gideon reached for her on the bed and, feeling nothing, opened his eyes, got his bearings, sat up, and yawned. Natasha advanced toward him ever so slowly.

“Hi, honey,” he said. “Must have conked out.”

“Bastard!” she said and flung the ticket in his face. Gideon avoided her eyes.

“You were going to take me back to Israel, then head for Rome alone, if I read your ticket right.”

“You read it right.”

“I was under the illusion that we were on our way to St. Barths to write a book.”

“Somewhere along the line during this binge, I had a few moments of clarity,” he said. “Natasha, you are every fantasy I ever imagined. But you and I are going to kill each other.”

“Why,
habibi,
what makes you say something like that? You know Natasha like a book.”

“That’s the problem. We seem to have death wishes, you against your father, me against my mother. We can’t control them. You’re too tough for me and I’m too tough for you. Let’s call it a draw.”

“You think that little cock of yours is a lethal weapon!”

“We’re a shit pair, Natasha.”

“You fucking cowboy bastard! You son of a bitch!”

“Don’t curse in Hungarian and don’t start throwing things.”

“Huh! Me! So, go back to your lily-white puritan Protestant wife.

You’ll come back to me, always! You’ll come back to me crawling and I’ll make you bark like a dog! They all did!”

“It’s a blood sport with us, honey. Sorry to deny you the kill. I guess we’d better round up that driver and get back to Nicosia.”

“What’s the hurry, cowboy? Let’s you and me have one for the road.”

ROME

November 15, 1956

“T
HERE HE IS!”

“Where?”

“Over there!”

“Look, Mommy, he’s got Grover Vandover with him!”

“Daddy!”

“Gideon! Here we are!”

“Daddy!”

“Val! Penny! Roxy!”

V
AL’S HAND SHOOK SO
, she couldn’t turn the key. Their room in the Excelsior Hotel was large and splendid and overlooked the elegant Via Veneto thoroughfare. The girls had a smaller connecting room.

“Pretty fancy for poor folks,” Gideon said.

“Mother sent me the money,” Val said. “And our fare to get home. She’s very anxious to support us while you’re writing. She really wants to help.”

“That’s nice, but I’ll pick up some screen work. How is your mother?”

“She is in good shape. We’ll talk about it later,” Val said.

“We’ve been going to the American school here, Daddy.”