PETER

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

August 1950

The tense young man called Willi Stinglwagner boarded the plane in his dark suit and Peter Nesher got off. Blistering heat shimmered off the tarmac, beads of sweat rolled from Peter’s hairline, but he swung his heavy bag like a bunch of feathers. He couldn’t wait to change into shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He looked proudly at the letters “El Al” painted in blue on the converted DC-4 that had flown him from London to Lod Airport: Israel, my country, my home!

Peter smiled to himself as he presented his passport to the bearded Jew in the booth, back among his own people, but minutes later, outside the arrival shed, he recoiled at the yelling, sweating mob of porters grabbing at his case, the cabdrivers and lollipop vendors pushing and shoving for business.

A familiar voice yelled and the Office driver elbowed his way through, leading Peter to the car, where Peter sat back with a deep sigh. It was sweltering, but, thank God, he thought, no more Germans. For now, anyway. Three days earlier he had received the message to return home quickly, and had rushed to London to catch a direct flight on Israel’s new national airline.

But even as he relaxed among his own, a painful thought inserted itself: Own? Who? He was happy to see his brother again, his best friend in the world, but who else? He had had no time to make friends. He could barely summon up a vision of Tamara. Would he even recognize her in a crowd? The note he had left for her seemed pitiful now. It had been half a year. If once he had dared hope she would wait for him, he had dismissed that hope months ago. He had lost her, he knew that. But … maybe … part of him held on to a vestige of hope like a drowning man grabs at a twig.

*   *   *

Waiting all afternoon in the familiar anteroom at the Office in Ben-Yehuda Street, Peter wondered why Shiloah wanted to see him so urgently this time. He hadn’t even been home yet. In Germany he had sent regular reports directly to Shiloah: the Info File, on who he had recruited, what they had said, how they could one day be activated; and the Ops Report, the nitty-gritty details about where the meetings were held, who knew about them, what else had happened in the meetings, especially the two that had gone badly. He had even submitted his expenses report; although they were all taught to lie, steal, and cheat for Israel, God help them if they did the same for themselves. They operated on a shoestring, forever fighting for bigger budgets, which is why the high living of the Paris office was so distressful. The reports were all routine though.

It was not routine for a lowly operative to have a private meeting with the big boss just when rumor had it a massive reorganization of the secret services was under way. Unless Shiloah had another below-the-radar job in mind. Peter groaned. All he wanted was to go home.

That thought made him squirm: He had transformed one chance encounter with a complete stranger who probably didn’t remember he existed into an imagined love affair. But that was six months ago, and he had gotten over her. Or had he? Peter lay on the daybed, one hand beneath his head, the other hanging over the side with a cigarette, staring at the ceiling. It was embarrassing. He must be very hard up to concoct a phantom affair out of such thin gruel.

But: He could still feel the softness of her body when he’d stopped and she had bumped into him in the corridor. He remembered, how could he not, her delicate hands pulling her coat to cover her bare throat; her naked feet; her coy and shy smile and how she blushed when she said she was entering the same apartment. And then, inside, everything about her. Dressing while he and Arie looked away. Her saying, “Now you can turn around.” She had looked so beautiful, with her shiny big eyes, her wet hair around her shoulders, and then, holding her hair, enjoying every damp strand, its soapy fragrance, his hand cupping her head, her naked shoulders, her breasts barely covered by the little towel, a moment of such intimacy, the memory of which in his lonely bed had helped him fall asleep many a time. So tender, young, and exciting. And then, they had made love, gloriously. She didn’t say, and there had been no blood, but he was sure it had been her first time.

Still, it’s over. In his note he had asked her to wait, but so what? He wondered where she was. What she was doing.

And Arie. What crookedness was he up to now to get rich? Was the apartment a mess?

Yes, that was the one certainty in his life, when he got home he’d have to clean up. The thought made him chuckle. It would be good to see his brother again.

At the tap on the door he stood and accompanied the girl to Shiloah’s office, a bare impersonal room: a simple wooden desk, four chairs, two landscapes of Jerusalem, and the obligatory portrait of the country’s leader, his white mane framed by a halo of light. On a side table sat a cheap hanukiah, with a pile of colored candles next to it, which reminded Peter that it was Hanukah; he would be home for the holidays. He had better buy some presents. But who for? Arie? He’s already got everything.

Shiloah came in, pointed to a chair, and didn’t waste words. “That Steinhoff bastard, what happened?”

Peter replied in kind. “It was clean. Quick. Quiet. As I wrote in the report, the hotel was close to the train station, that’s why we chose it, so I took the first train that left, it was going north to Hamburg. I got off at the next stop and made my way by bus and another train to the fallback rendezvous with Veronique. Why? Is that a problem?”

“No, not at all. Pity it came to that, that’s all, we could have used him, but no, no problem. You did well, what you had to do. I want to talk to you about some things. Veronique. Karla. In other words, Diana Greenberg.”

Peter leaned back in relief. It wasn’t another job. He could stay home, for now, anyway. He caught himself and sat straighter. Shiloah wouldn’t miss a thing but could get the wrong impression. With him you always had to be raring to go.

“Tired, Peter? It was a long job.”

“Not too much. But well, it’s nice to be home for the holidays.”

“Good. Enjoy it. While you can.”

Peter tensed. Maybe he wouldn’t tidy up the apartment, after all. It may not be worth it.

“First, I’m going to tell you something that I don’t want you to repeat,” Shiloah said. “It will all come out in due course, but I want to make sure you continue to be available to me for special operations. The prime minister has instructed me to reorganize the intelligence community. I’m sure you’ve heard that already. I’m bringing all foreign intelligence gathering under one roof: The Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks. It’s a bit of a misnomer, though, because for now, at least, I have to be sensitive politically. So the institute will gather the information while actual foreign jobs will still be carried out by military intelligence, which will have the new name of Aman.

“I will head the new institute. It will be known as Mossad. Now, some jobs must remain secret, even from Aman. And that’s where you come in. You will be my first operational hire. For special ops, answerable directly to me. No title yet. Do you accept?”

Peter felt his nerve ends tingle. He’s looking right through me, he thought. He knows I’d never say no. His brother flashed into his mind. His response would be: What’s the pay raise?

Peter stood up. He didn’t know why, but he looked Shiloah directly in the eyes and saluted. A rigid American salute, palm out, fingers together, thumb snug along the hand, he snapped his right hand till the tip of his forefinger touched his right eyebrow, just as he did in the 45th. It wasn’t a gesture of servility, but of respect and trust, and it was about as un-Israeli as you could get. Here, to show respect to an officer, you didn’t punch him.

Shiloah said, in a laconic voice, “I take it that’s a yes.”

Peter dropped his arm to his side, and thought better of shaking Shiloah’s hand. “I couldn’t be more honored, sir,” he said.

“Good. Consider it done. The paperwork will be drawn up in due course and until then, this stays between us. Only one other person knows about this: none other than David Ben-Gurion himself. He knows you did important work in Europe, especially in Germany. He appreciates your discretion and, shall we say, decisiveness in the heat of the moment. Let’s leave it at that. For now.”

Shiloah went on to the other item. “Diana Greenberg. She’s asked to move to Israel. But she’s valuable in Europe.”

Peter suppressed a smile. “She certainly is.”

“Tell me about her…”

“You’ve read in the reports what she did. Invaluable. But beyond that, what can I say? She’s beautiful, sexy, intelligent, I’d say a keeper.”

Shiloah raised an eyebrow, and said with a sniff, “Tell me more that relates to her fieldwork, where she could serve us best.”

*   *   *

Peter had left his apartment with a backpack, and now he returned with the same backpack, unopened. The clothes he really traveled with, European suits and ties and shirts, he had returned to the office rack, ready for the next slim agent of average size who needed to melt into a European crowd. He searched his pockets for the key to the apartment and found it caught in the paper packaging of the little present he had bought Arie at the bus station. By chance, the day was Sunday, December third, in the Hebrew calendar, the twenty-fifth night of Kislev, the first day of Hanukah. He was looking forward to surprising Arie and lighting the first candle together.

But it was Peter who was surprised. The flat was neat and tidy, the surfaces clear, the sink empty, the beds made, as if nobody lived there, and indeed that was almost the case, for Arie had moved out. Peter found a note beneath a saucer on the kitchen table dated two months earlier:

Peter, Welcome Home. A lot has happened. Come to see us right away at 224, Dizengoff, top floor, apartment 8.

Us?

It was six o’clock in the afternoon and still muggy, so after a brief cold shower Peter dressed in his light clothes: white shirt, khaki slacks, and sandals, remembering at the last moment to take the little gift. He walked along Rothschild Boulevard, in the shade of the ficus trees, stopping for a quick iced soda at a corner kiosk, and continued the length of Dizengoff to the corner of Arlozorov Street.

The cafés along Tel Aviv’s main shopping street were beginning to close, as families prepared at home for the Hanukah meal. Only Café Kassit was crowded with its usual bohemian crowd. The roads were all but empty of cars and buses. The few people he shared the streets with hurried along bearing plates of covered food, their contributions to family meals.

Peter walked slowly, savoring the calm, shedding one skin and growing another, from secret agent to upright civilian.

He looked left as he passed Keren Hakayemet Street, the boulevard where the prime minister lived when he wasn’t in Jerusalem, and thought: The Old Man knows I exist. Strange how much has happened, and how fast. A boy in Germany, and in America, a soldier in Europe, and now an agent of the secret service of the Jewish State of Israel, which didn’t even exist two years ago. How did that happen? Where did the time go? He was twenty-seven, and all he really wanted was to be in love.

He thought of his mother, the last time he saw her, thirteen years earlier, tearful, yet beautiful. He couldn’t bear to think of her behind barbed wire, abandoned and filthy and terrified, starving and beaten. He had searched for her, and everyone else, among the diseased survivors of Dachau when his 45th Thunderbird Division had liberated the concentration camp, but he had found none of his family. Later he heard she had been murdered in Latvia, and his father in Riga. Three of his four grandparents were exterminated in Auschwitz, taken on the same transport from Lodz. His grandfather on his mother’s side had jumped from the train and was shot while fleeing. Renata and Ruth, his two younger sisters, were on no lists, they had simply disappeared, like millions more. His cousins, aunts, and uncles? Surely someone must have survived, besides his brother?

The only thing he knew for certain was: Never again. Then there was nowhere to run to. Now, there is: Israel. And he would do all he could to defend the Jewish haven. He straightened as he walked.

He reached the squat building at number 224. There were balconies with flowers. It must be an upscale building, he thought, otherwise the tenants would have turned the balconies into bedrooms. But of course Arie would only live in the best; his greatest fear was to be mediocre.

And again he thought of the note: Us. Who is “Us”?

He climbed the stairs and from each apartment heard voices, laughter, music, all the family sounds he craved. A baby cried and a dog barked. It made him feel even more alone. Through a thin door he heard a child’s shrill voice: “It’s mine, give it to me!”

Peter reached apartment eight on the top floor and his heart beat faster. What would he find? He felt breathless, and it wasn’t from exertion, but anticipation. After all he had been through, now he was nervous? He cleared his head and rapped on the door, which seemed to be shaking.

Immediately a little boy opened it and looked up at him, a ball at his feet.

“Shalom,” Peter said.

“Are you Peter?”

Surprised, Peter nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am. How did you know?”

“I am Ido,” the boy said and hugged Peter’s leg. Peter looked down and stroked his head.

“We’ve been waiting for you. Every day. Did you bring me a present?”

“Yes, I did,” and Peter gave him the present he had brought Arie. “Try not to open it yet, though. Can I come in?”

Ido took him by the hand, through the living room, and to the balcony, where a dozen adults were gathered and children played on the floor. There was a tantalizing aroma of sizzling meat. Arie, with his back to Peter, was flipping steaks on the barbeque. But Peter wasn’t looking at him.

He was numbed by the girl sitting between an older couple. She was as he remembered, beautiful, and sweet, he could feel the beating of his heart; the two hours that were still ticking in his breast. Tamara stood slowly, staring at Peter. Her breasts heaved as she said, quietly, “Arie.” She had put on weight, or more likely, Peter knew immediately, she was pregnant. He felt a shiver of dismay.

There was a hiss of meat as Arie basted four chicken wings and Tamara said again, “Arie.” This time he heard and saw her staring and turned and saw his brother. His look went quickly back to Tamara, then settled on Peter. He stabbed the meat and left the fork in the heat, as a slow smile came to his lips that grew and took over his entire face.

“Sof sof!” he said. At last!

“Arie,” Peter said. “Barbeque? Can this be? For Hanukah?”

“I got hold of two plump chickens. Too good not to eat. Fresh. And don’t worry. We’ll have latkes too. With apple sauce. Just like Mama made. Sour cream too. Well, no cream, but still…” Arie spread his arms and shouted to all, “Peter, it’s my brother Peter, at last he’s come home.” All heads turned, and the couple at Tamara’s side, who he now realized must be her parents, jumped up, beaming. The father grabbed his hand and pumped it in welcome. Everybody was talking at once, Ido began to unwrap his present while his bigger sister, Estie, shouted, “What about me, what about me, where’s my present!”

Arie pulled Peter into his arms while Peter felt a stab of pain.

So. “Us” is Tamara. Of course it is.

“You’re married, then?” Peter said, holding Arie away, looking at him as if he must have changed.

“Oh yes, to the most beautiful girl in the world. And soon to be a father. Three months to go, inshallah.” If Allah wills it. He beamed at Tamara and she smiled back shyly, her hands resting on her belly. “You’ll be an uncle,” he said.

“But I’m the older brother, I’m supposed to do everything first.”

“Well, too bad, if you stayed in one place long enough, maybe you would. We married very soon after you left. Can you imagine? Crazy.” He smiled at Tamara. “Crazy, but the best thing I have ever done.”

Peter felt like vomiting. “How many months?” Peter asked, patting his stomach.

“Six. It’s going to be a big one, that’s for sure.”

Peter nodded, looking at Tamara, who looked away.

Arie lowered his voice, as if speaking to a conspirator. “How did it go this time?”

“Good. All good.”

“But half a year? That’s crazy. And no problems? Can you say anything?”

“No, to both. How about you?”

“You can see,” Arie said with a grin. “You do remember Tamara, of course.”

“How could I forget?” He felt his blood rising. Was he blushing? He hoped not. Should he go to her? Kiss her on the cheek? Congratulate her? After a nodded greeting, he tried not to glance over again and failed. He just caught Tamara’s eye as she tried to avoid his. He felt faint. They had made love and never would again.

“What is it?” Ido shouted, pulling at Peter’s trouser leg. He was waving the present, a little silver hand on a chain.

“It’s a hamsa,” Peter said, gathering himself. “It’s for good luck. See, it’s an open hand, five fingers, hamsa means five in Arabic. It’s against the evil eye, it means that God protects you.”

Arie pulled him by the arm. “Let me introduce you to everyone.”

There was Tamara’s father, Moshe, a professor of Arabic literature and philosophy, who pointed out sadly that such subjects didn’t yet figure highly in the Jewish state’s needs.

“If Moshe is my father-in-law and we’re brothers, that must make him yours too, is that right?” Arie said. “Or uncle-in-law. Is there such a thing?”

“Probably not, but I’ll take it,” Peter said. “Any family is better than none.”

He accepted a glass of orange juice from someone, and asked, “So, are you teaching now?”

Moshe laughed. “No, I work for a new company that makes feather pillows and bedcovers. We hope to export heavy feather bedcovers to the Arab world, where ten months of the year they die from the heat. Next we’ll sell them sand.” He hooted with laughter. “Arie is nothing if not a dreamer.”

Peter liked the old man, who he guessed to be around fifty. He complimented him on his Hebrew, while Arie broke in, “You’ll see, we’ll export to Europe and America. We have to create jobs. And with the export subsidies the government is offering, we can’t lose. They’re paying me to work, they’re desperate for foreign exchange.”

He took Peter by the elbow and they leaned over Rachel, Tamara’s mother, who was sitting on the sofa next to Tamara. Rachel spoke passable Hebrew, but she hadn’t found a job and didn’t particularly want one, although they could use the money. She said she was busy at home with her two smaller children, Ido and Estie, who loved school. She took Peter’s hand and covered it with her other and said she knew a nice young girl for him.

“What about me?” Arie said with a guffaw.

Rachel ignored him. “But first, eat,“she said to Peter. “We hardly get by on rations, while here, Arie always has a full fridge. We don’t even have a fridge. Eat while you can.”

With the egg sandwich Rachel pressed on him in one hand, Peter now found himself before Tamara, who was looking up at him, and in embarrassment he offered her the sandwich. She declined, so he took a bite and chewed. When he could speak, he congratulated her: on the marriage, on the baby to come, on her new home, this lovely apartment; in fact, he was thinking, all the things I’d love to have. With you. Oh, why didn’t you wait? He put his lips to her cheek, and inhaled the sweet fragrance of lavender. Did he smell of egg?

Sitting to the side, bemused by the tumult, was an American couple with one child who had moved to Israel but were finding it too tough and said they may give up and go back to Cleveland. He was in car spare parts but there weren’t enough cars, there wasn’t enough volume to make a decent living. Arie called out, “Anyone who leaves America to make a decent living in Israel should have their head examined.”

Next to them was Arie’s friend, Natanel Ben-Tsion, the former Sammy Schnitzler from Frankfurt, who, usefully for Arie, worked in the Herzliya city hall. His position of trust there was helpful for Arie’s local business ventures. Ben-Tsion didn’t have any family and wanted to celebrate Hanukah with nice people. He added, after a dramatic pause, “So I don’t know why I came here.” They laughed and moved on.

Arie said, “I saved the best for last. Apart from Tamara, that is.”

Peter had noticed the young man staring at him but had been distracted by meeting his new family-in-law. Arie beckoned to the man, who approached with a bottle of beer and a broad smile. He had an expectant look, and he raised his eyebrows as if waiting to be recognized.

“So,” Arie said. “Peter, do you know who this is?”

Peter smiled back, looking from the young man to Arie and back again. “Should I?”

“From München. We used to play together in the garden,” the man said, and waited. He was a couple of years younger than Peter, twenty-four or -five.

Peter crinkled his eyes, made a show of struggling with his memory, and finally shook his head. “I’m sorry, klum, nothing.” And then, “Wait. Wait.”

Something was falling into place … children. Playing in their large garden when the Nazis banned Jews from parks and pools. A tree, a branch, falling. Shouting. His mother running to see if he was hurt. A child crying. The boy. Peter put his arm on the man’s shoulder, his mouth opened, his eyes widened, and he stretched out the name: “Wolfie?”

The man nodded, swigging the beer.

Peter said, “The branch broke and I fell on you? Everyone was shouting at the same time. Oh no! It’s you, Wolfie. I mean, oh yes!”

Wolfie and Arie hooted with laughter. Everyone was looking. Peter fell into Wolfie’s arms.

His old neighbor. “But what happened to you? How did you survive? When did you come here? How did you find Aren? Sorry, Arie? What about your family? Your parents? And what is your brother’s name again…?”

“Was. Was my brother’s name,” Wolfie said.

Arie said, “Slow down, another time, lots to hear, Peter. The main thing is he’s here with us. Let’s light the candles. Celebrate the miracle. Miracles. Tamara, to you goes the honor of the first blessing.”

Moshe said, “The first candle of the first Hanukah of the first year of marriage. And the first baby soon. Inshallah. Many more, inshallah.”

“You mean, ‘Bezrat Hashem,’” Tamara said, “this is Israel,” and everyone laughed.

As they gathered around the silver hanukiah on the windowsill facing the street, as was the custom, Tamara lit the first candle of Hanukah. As she did this she recited the same prayer her ancestors did on the same day for thousands of years, and her voice was soft and firm:

Baruch Atah Adonai Ehloheinu Mehlech Haolam Shehasa Neesim Laavoteinoo Bayamim Hahem Beez’man Hazeh.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.

Didn’t enable enough of us though, Peter thought, looking from Arie to Wolfie, who were chanting the prayer with closed eyes. He could barely summon the faces of his mother and father, or Renata and Ruth. Not a day passed that he didn’t think of them, if for only an instant, but as shadows, they glided past like silent birds, and they were gone. Still, who would have thought it? The family was all but wiped out. When he left he had just a brother. Now he came back to a brother, a sister-in-law and her parents, her brother and sister, plus a niece or nephew on the way. And even an old neighbor. Lonely no more. Or, more alone? His stomach clenched.

“Amen,” they said, and as he gazed at Tamara, over the dancing flames, it occurred to Peter: Light and life returns, that’s the miracle of nature. And so a nation is rebuilt, family by family. But for all the gains he saw around him, he felt only a sickening sense of his own loss.

Tamara and Arie kissed in the flickering of the hanukiah, and Peter had to look away.