THE NEXT MORNING, BEFORE the sun rose, Yossi arrived in the van that would be their utility vehicle during their stay. Rafi and Tony were already in the truck and Valerie, dressed in trim khakis, clambered into the back while Harry sat in front with Yossi.
The day soon grew swelteringly hot. Harry realized why Valerie had recommended that they leave so early.
It wasn’t until they began wending their way higher into the hills surrounding Safed that they began to feel a gentle cooling breeze blowing in from the Mediterranean.
Primitive cottages dotted the landscape. Sheep grazed on the hills amid whitewashed shrines. The town itself was nestled under the crest of the mountain, an assemblage of low white buildings with angled roofs on which the burning sun danced.
This was the ancient home of the Kabbalists, which Harry wanted to visit. But the others were eager to get to the villa to have a tall, cold drink. So they passed the town without stopping, turning instead onto a dirt road that led to the villa.
Harry emerged from the van and stopped, enchanted. The Judean hills spread themselves before him in dusky magnificence, across a vast valley. What an extraordinary choice Valerie had made! The gentle breeze, scented with juniper and myrtle, felt like velvet on his skin. As he surveyed the picturesque stone villa covered by a gentle riot of roses of Sharon, he smiled at Valerie.
“It’s perfect. Even more beautiful than you described.”
His satisfaction grew even greater as she showed him around. The stone walls were so thick that the heat barely penetrated, Persian rugs softened the floors, while the sun filtering through the pierced wood shutters made the rooms soft and welcoming. The villa was owned by a fabulously wealthy Arab who now made his home on the fashionable Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. His impeccable taste and unstinting purse were largely in evidence here.
Just as Valerie had promised, Harry’s bedroom was spacious and perfectly situated, adjoining the study, which she’d already equipped with typewriters and filing cabinets.
As they gathered on the veranda, drinks in hand, Harry complimented her on her efficiency. “On all counts, you couldn’t have done better. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Valerie blushed, secretly relishing a smug satisfaction. You’re not going to have a chance to find out, Harry Kohle, she thought.
As the pleasant, smiling houseboy replenished their drinks, Rafi, who was a native of Tel Aviv, said, “Well, it’s great to be back home.”
Holding his glass aloft, Harry said, “Long live Israel!” The four clinked their glasses in toast.
Tony intervened dryly, “We had better drink up now, because tomorrow is my first day at Masada.”
The next morning, after the researchers had gone off in the van, Valerie said, “I can’t wait to show you Safed. It’s absolutely fascinating; you’re going to fall in love with it.”
They walked into the town as the lightest of breezes was blowing. Under the blazing blue sky, Safed was as much a place of the imagination as something from the palette of Chagall.
Safed had a history that was as intriguing as it was strange. In ancient times the place had been the northernmost spot in Palestine. Huge bonfires were lit there, heralding the new month and announcing holy days. Not much mention of it was made until the time of the Crusades, when a huge castle was built on the mountain looming over the town. It had passed thereafter into the hands of the Knights Templar and later those of Saladin. After his demise, Moslems killed or expelled all the Jews, but by the sixteenth century they had returned, and it had become a center of Jewish learning during the Diaspora.
This was the birthplace of the famous Kabbalists, that strange rabbinical sect devoted to word-by-word study of Holy Writ, who believed that every letter, word, and line of the Five Books of Moses had a higher mystical meaning and offered the key to life.
Later the Jews had been driven out yet again, and by the time of the war of liberation in 1948, the town had become overwhelmingly Arab. It was one of the miracles of the war that fewer than 2,000 Jews had managed to defeat over 12,000 Arabs.
Now, Valerie explained, artists and craftsmen inhabited the quaint old Arab quarter through which they were walking, with its narrow, twisting cobbled streets, whitewashed houses, and wrought-iron balconies, through which they could hear muted Yiddish and Hebrew.
Harry was filled with wonder. These ancient walls, the small pristine whitewashed synagogue, the long-ago rabbis who had studied and kept alive Jewish learning in a hostile land. Again it struck him how little he knew of his heritage. How would he ever take in five thousand years of history in such a short time?
Later, as they stood amid the ruins of the Crusader citadel after a strenuous walk up the steep mountainside, Harry raised his eyes to the horizon and frowned. In the distance was a sparkling blue sea.
“That’s not the Mediterranean,” he said slowly.
“It’s the Sea of Galilee,” Valerie told him.
He was speechless for a long moment. They really were in the Promised Land, a place that had always seemed mythical to him. But it was real, and spreading out before his searching, yearning eyes.
Turning north, he saw snow-capped Mount Hermon above Lake Hula, a miniature echo of Galilee at the head of the Jordan River. To the east, across a flat plain, was the darker blue of the Mediterranean. “It’s—beautiful,” he finally said in awed wonder. “I can hardly wait to get out there and see it all.”
“Me too,” Valerie said, echoing his enthusiasm. “I know it’s going to be a marvelous experience.” Only she understood just how marvelous an experience she had in mind.
That evening, as Harry walked out on his balcony and felt the coolness of the stone under his feet, he relished the evening breeze against his silk robe. Then he was startled by the Arab houseboy, who had slipped up behind him on soundless feet. “Yes?” he said, almost sharply.
The boy bowed, then said in heavily accented English, “Would you like anything more tonight?”
“I could use a drink. Bring me—oh, a tall Scotch and soda.”
The interruption stirred him to think of the work the morning would bring. Sitting down, he began to sketch out an itinerary. Masada, where the Jewish inhabitants had chosen to cut their throats rather than be enslaved by the Romans, would be first. After that, Atlit, where in the early part of the century the brilliant agricultural pioneer Aaron Aaronsohn had proved the desert could be made to bloom.
Harry knew that that was only the beginning; how long it would all take, or what else he might find valuable, he had no idea. He was sure only that he had to traverse Israel until he found what he was searching for.
Geographically, the country was remarkably small; it could be covered in a weekend—or it could take years. After a few days, it seemed to Valerie that Harry had the latter time-frame in mind.
He spent endless hours at Masada in the intense heat, poring over the ruins and talking to people, the whole while writing voluminous notes and assigning various topics to Rafi or Tony to research further.
More often, however, he would simply wander about, absorbing the aura that still clung to the ancient stones. At this rate, Valerie thought in frustration, they might never get back to Safed. And she could hardly seduce him while they were camped out by the shores of the Dead Sea in a tent.
Still, she cleverly hid her irritation and made a great show of being as fascinated as he. Harry would be charmed by her devotion to the task he increasingly regarded as his mission in life.
However, to her chagrin, Valerie couldn’t help but notice that Harry’s work was blinding him to her attractions. As the weeks went by and the research continued, she began to wonder if she would ever get her chance.
When they finished at Masada, they traveled northward to the Hula Valley, just below the Golan Heights. Harry was struck by the contrasts in this historic valley. It had been reclaimed by Jewish pioneers in the early part of the century, literally dug out from the swamps. Now every inch of the land was lush farmland. The sprinklers whirred peacefully, a symbol of the human ingenuity which had overcome all nature’s obstacles.
But high above the valley in the Golan Heights, Syrian commandos and riflemen lurked, armed with submachine guns to shoot the descendants of those pioneers.
In the kibbutzim, there were children who had slept every night of their lives in concrete bunkers. It seemed incredible to Harry that a people could endure and even flourish, going about the business of daily living, with such a sword of Damocles hanging over them.
The agency had arranged that Harry be invited to the homes of sympathetic Arabs. Over cigarettes and Turkish coffee, Harry was surprised to learn that they did not seek the extermination of the Jews. Many did not advocate violence at all, but even the most educated among them were unanimous on one point: There could never be peace in the Middle East so long as Israel existed. And they clung to this conviction despite the fact that there were Arabs sitting in the Knesset, Arabs who conducted their businesses and lived happily in Israel.
All these facts came as revelations to Harry, but it was just the information that he sought. Names and dates and statistics could be found in the Jewish library in New York. They came alive to Harry only as he walked the streets of the new nation. Nothing could simulate the emotion engendered in him by seeing innocent children under threat of slaughter—and the courageous way they learned to rise above the mere struggle for survival.
The Genesis would deal with the base as well as the exalted part of man—humanity in the universal sense. As Harry envisioned it, the novel would wrestle with the ancient notion that man had a choice in his life: He could be only a little lower than the angels, or only a little higher than the beasts. During his first weeks in Israel, Harry began to absorb the mystifying truth that man could be both at the same time.
And though The Genesis concerned essentially one man in the twentieth century, choices which had been made throughout five thousand years of history and by civilizations which had long since been ground into dust were still guiding his destiny.