Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (94 page)

SPECIAL TO THE HERALD EXPRESS

by John Fogel

A six-member Jewish delegation led by Schmarya Bora
levi, an outspoken Palestinian resident who is urging the
British to surrender control of the eastern Mediterranean
Mandate and turn it into a nation for the world's Jewish
peoples, will stop here as part of a nationwide tour.

Boralevi, a Russian Jew by birth, who suffered devastat
ing bodily injury at the hands of the Okhrana, the dreaded
secret police of the late Czar, and immigrated to the Holy
Land in 1918, said in a New York speech that he will attempt
to hand-deliver a detailed report to President Roosevelt during his delegation's stopover in Washington, DC. To
date, there has been no response from the White House
as to whether or not a meeting with the President will be
granted.

'Palestine is the Holy Land for the world's Christians,' an
impassioned Boralevi told a packed synagogue on Manhattan's West Side, 'but everyone forgets that it was the Israelites whom Moses led there in order to obtain freedom from
the oppression of the Pharaoh. Now, through military,
police, and immigration tactics, the British are keeping the
rightful heirs of Moses from their Promised Land.'

He denounced the British Mandate as 'a yoke of slavery and oppression, which has more than outlasted its need or
welcome'. He also claims that he is 'a fugitive of sorts' in
his adopted land.

'I am a wanted man, constantly in transit,' he said. 'For
years now, the authorities have been trying to arrest me.' According to the British, Boralevi and a band of his sup
porters are wanted for smuggling hundreds of illegal immi
grants into Palestine 'by land and by sea'. More recently, he claims to have been responsible for several air flights, originating from Greece or Cyprus, landing in deserted
areas of Palestine by night.

The problems in Palestine in general and with the British
Mandate in particular are not new. As the Great War drew
to a close, Dr. Chaim Weitzmann obtained the famous
Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, from Great
Britain, which pledged British support for the establishment
of Palestine as a 'national home' for the world's Jewish
people.

However, as the
Aliyah,
or immigration, of Jewish pion
eers to Palestine began, the British found themselves facing
a greater wave of immigrants than they expected, as well as growing Arab unrest. Clashes between the new settlers and
the old Arab inhabitants increasingly turned into bloody
battles, with fatalities on both sides.

Giving in to mounting Arab pressure, the British ex
empted Trans-Jordan from the provisions of the Mandate, thereby in a single move barring most of the territory from
both Jewish immigration and land development. In their
struggle to be impartial to both Arabs and Jews, the British
deemed it necessary to stem the flow of Jewish immigrants.
Laws specifically aimed at discouraging Jewish settlement
paved the way to higher taxes and set strict rules in the area
of agriculture.

'First the government of Great Britain wants to help us
set up a homeland,' Boralevi thundered, 'and simul
taneously they try to make it impossible for our people to
reach it, and if they do, to make carving out a decent living
nearly impossible. If this criminal charade continues, Great
Britain will have a lot to answer for in the years to come.'

Sir Colin Bentley Plimmer, Great Britain's most out
spoken critic of the Balfour Declaration, addressed a group
of anti-Zionists recently in London, claiming: 'They [the
Zionists] want nothing more than to wage war and wrest
Palestine from its rightful inhabitants, the Arabs.'

Plimmer went on to denounce Boralevi as 'a common
criminal, a gunrunner, . . . and he should be branded as
such. It is dangerous that he should be perceived as a hero. We have irrefutable proof that Mr. Boralevi and his small
band of brigands are intent on attacking Arabs and British
alike'. Plimmer says he deeply regrets the 'false sympathy'
Mr. Boralevi is stirring up among Jews. 'Under the guise
of raising money to help immigration and create a Jewish
nation, he is smuggling immigrants and arms into Palestine,
slipping in and out of the borders to make his deals. He
must be stopped.'

During his speech in New York, Boralevi denounced
Plimmer's accusations as 'ridiculous'. 'If Plimmer considers
me a criminal, then so be it. I will continue, however, to do as I have been doing. Throughout history we, the Jewish
people, have been attacked, captured, enslaved, and
slaughtered. Let it not be on my conscience that we did not
adequately protect our women and children. If our enemy
is armed, then unfortunately, so we must be armed to repel
them. If we must fight, then we must fight. I have lived
through one pogrom. I do not intend to live through
another, and if I have to, I will go down fighting.'

Slowly Tamara turned and looked Inge imploringly in the
face. 'This . . . this is my . . . father?' she whispered. 'You're
absolutely certain?'

Inge met her eyes unwaveringly. 'Yes,' she replied defi
nitely. She nodded her head. That is him. I recognize him
from the picture even without first reading name.'

'It just seems so
...
so farfetched finding him through a
newspaper article! I didn't think things like that could happen
in real life. It's like something out of the movies.'

'Often real life is stranger than make-believe,' Inge agreed.

Tamara studied the photograph some more. She found it
difficult to keep her eyes off it. Yes, her father was indeed
very handsome, in a larger-than-life Biblical kind of way. She
could well imagine why her mother had fallen in love with
him. And this handsome man had been her very own father.
He was a stranger to her. She couldn't even remember his
ever having been there.

'Do you think he'll like the food?' Tamara fretted while pacing
the room nervously, constantly rubbing her hands together.
'Maybe he just eats kosher.'

'He'll eat,' Inge assured her, keeping at her needlepoint
without looking up.

'What if he never arrives?' Tamara asked.

Inge looked irritably up over her bifocals. 'Settle
down,'
she said sharply. 'You are acting like you are going to jump out of
your skin.'

Louis said softly, 'Relax, princess. You look beautiful.'

'How can I relax? Do you have any idea when I saw him last? Inge says I was four or five. If it weren't for the picture in the paper, I wouldn't even know what he looks like. I wish
I could have gone and heard his speech. It would have made
meeting him easier.'

'You know that wasn't possible,' Louis said. 'O.T. was justi
fied in not letting you attend. The press was probably all over
the place, and someone would have been certain to make the connection between the two of you. IA just couldn't afford to take that chance. You're supposed to be the daughter of a
Russian prince, not a refugee fighting for a Jewish state. I'm
sure your father will understand.' All three of them looked up
as the telephone jangled. Louis picked up the receiver, spoke quietly into it, and hung up. He nodded. 'That was the front
gate. They're letting him in now.'

Heels clicking sharply, Tamara hurried out into the
travertine-floored foyer, where every available wall surface
was a sparkling sheet of mirror, and an ornately carved wood console held an enormous stone urn brimming with begonias.

The front doorbell rang suddenly, startling her so much that
she jumped. As she heard the brisk footsteps of the maid
approaching, she was filled with so much anxiety that she raced
on tiptoe back into the living room, where Louis and Inge had
already gotten to their feet. 'He won't like me!' she fretted,
twisting her wedding band nervously round and round her
finger. 'Louie, we should never have had him meet me here.
It's so ostentatious!'

'It's too late to worry about that, and I shouldn't think it
would matter where you met.' He reached for her hand and
gave it a reassuring squeeze. She tried to smile.

They could hear the maid's disembodied voice coming from
the foyer, and then another, deeper voice answering, and two
distant sets of footsteps ringing out on the travertine,
Esperanza's quick and steady and the other's heavy and
uneven, as though from a severe limp.

'Thank you, Esperanza,' Louis called out, 'you can go now.'

'Si, señor.'
Esperanza tucked her chins down into her chest,
turned around, and waddled off flat-footed.

Louis crossed the room with long strides to greet Schmarya
Boralevi. 'I'm Louis Ziolko,' he said, holding out his hand,
'Tamara's husband.'

The two men shook hands firmly. 'I am pleased to meet
you,' Schmarya said in thickly accented English.

Tamara stood rooted to the spot, her eyes focused on the
floor. 'Go on,' Inge whispered. 'He's your father! Go to him!'
Tamara took a deep breath and then felt Inge giving her a
little push from the back. She went hesitantly forward, and
when she had gone halfway, she looked up slowly. She stopped
and stared at him, her heart beating unevenly, her silk skirt
swaying around her ankles.

One look into her father's eyes and she knew immediately
the man he was.

There are men who remain boys, those who mature, and
a chosen few who embody the very essence of masculinity.
Schmarya Boralevi was one of those few. There was something
as unyielding as Gibraltar about him.

His intelligent pale blue eyes were at once both hard and
soft, set into taut, scarred leathery skin that on close inspection
saved him from mere handsomeness. His thick, curly hair had
been bleached white from decades spent in the sun. The high
ridges of his cheekbones could have been sculptured by an
angry artist, and his towering body was thickly slabbed with
muscles to offset the weakness of his wooden leg. And yet his
eyelashes were thick and golden and his lips were sensuous,
as though to soften the endurance-hardened man he had by
necessity become.