The Gates of Zion (4 page)

The lights of the coast grew more distinct, and still there was no sign of pursuit by the authorities. Moshe yanked the collar of his blue wool coat up and his cap down. The little boat slapped against a particularly large swell, and he stumbled backward … right into someone else. A woman had been behind him, and he nearly knocked her to the deck. Making a grab for the rail, he managed to keep her from falling.

The woman was one of the refugees. How long had she been standing there, watching him think?

He held her by the arm as he found his footing. “Forgive me,” he said, finding a secure handhold for her on the railing. “You should be below with the others.”

“Rough sea tonight,” she replied, avoiding his comment and moving away from his grip.

Moshe could just make out her features by the starlight. Her voice was young and her skin very white against the dark frame of her hair.

She was wrapped in a large, bulky shawl, but from their collision he knew how light—almost fragile—she was.

“Is the sea always this rough?” she asked seriously, looking up at him with bright, luminous eyes.

Did he detect apprehension in her voice? “Sometimes it is much worse than this. Nothing to worry about.”

She peered over the rail into the black, churning water. “I cannot swim.”

“So swimming is not part of your tour package.” He smiled.

She gazed at him for a moment without acknowledging his attempt at humor, then turned to watch the shoreline. “That is it, isn’t it?

Palestine?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Palestine-England. Under the control of His Majesty’s forces.”

“So close,” she said sadly. “Will they come for us?”

“Possibly,” Moshe answered. “If they catch wind …”

“I cannot swim,” she said again. “I will not be taken.”

“You should go below with the others,” he insisted, becoming anxious about what she might do if a gunboat appeared on the horizon.

“Please,” she begged, gripping the rail with a firm resolve. “I cannot. It is so close, so crowded down there. Just give me a minute to breathe free air.”

Moshe backed away from her a step and stood in silence, wondering what agonies this young woman must have passed through. “Our landing site is only a few miles to the north. Your home, your new home, is a kibbutz not far—”

“I am going to Jerusalem,” she interrupted. “I have family there. I am not the only one left. I have family—not like the rest of them!” She spat out the last words. Somehow, by her angry tone, she managed to separate herself away from the other eighty-three human beings who hoped for the Promised Land.

“I see,” said Moshe doubtfully. “You are lucky, then.”

“Lucky,” she repeated flatly. “I had forgotten there was such a word.” Staggering against the roll of the ship, she disappeared down the hatch.

Moshe scanned the horizon once again, then followed the young woman down the stairs.

Young and old sat crammed together on the floor of the hold. A small child cried and an old woman tried to comfort him, but the rest were silent. A dim lantern swung from the center beam, casting evil shadows on their gaunt faces. Every eye turned hopefully toward Moshe as he appeared on the ladder—all except the eyes of the young woman he had met on the deck.

Braced in a corner, she held herself apart from the others. Damp wisps of her long, dark hair clung to her face.
She is very beautiful,
Moshe thought fleetingly. Her nose was straight and aquiline above soft, full lips, remarkable in such a thin face. She gazed at the floor, steadfastly refusing to look at the man who had called her “lucky.”

She was, indeed, not like the others. Distractedly, she rubbed her fingers over the inevitable tattoo of her identification numbers on her forearm.
As if she hopes to rub them off.
A wave of compassion swept over Moshe. The young woman suffered still.

A ragged vagabond of a man followed Moshe’s gaze to the young woman, then asked, “Have you news for us, sir?” bringing Moshe back to reality.

“We are—,” Moshe began, swallowing the lump in his throat— “we are very near to our destination.” He smiled at the light that transformed the weary faces before the murmurs of joy rippled through the group.

Only the beautiful young woman remained unresponsive.

“How soon?” was the first question. Then, “What of the British?”

and “When will we land?”

“Maybe an hour,” answered Moshe. “We have been traveling under radio silence. So far it does not seem that the British have got wind of us. Be hopeful. We are almost home.” Moshe glanced one more time at the young woman’s downcast face before he turned on his heel to resume his topside vigil.

A welcome blast of wind struck Moshe full in the face as he came out of the stale hold. He adjusted his collar and lowered his head, then staggered forward around coils of rope and fishing nets. When this leaky vessel was not carrying illegal passengers, it doubled as a sardine

boat.
Appropriate,
mused Moshe,
the way they jam
everyone into this tin can
.

Its captain, a surly Rumanian Jew named Ehud Schiff, actually made a legitimate living as a fisherman. For his illegitimate activities, his only reward was the satisfaction that the cargo he delivered to Palestine passed right under the noses of nearly the entire British fleet. Moshe knew that Ehud ran the blockade as much to spite the English as from a sense of patriotism or compassion.

Grizzled and hairy, smelling like yesterday’s catch, Ehud Schiff was the elite of the blockade runners. He and his wretched little boat had tallied a neat total of twelve hundred refugees in the last four months alone. Considering that the British legally allowed only fifteen hundred Jews into the country each month, his was an impressive accomplishment. And Ehud Schiff was only one of many who risked the loss of their boats and imprisonment if they were caught. Bits and pieces of other small craft often floated in the water near Tel Aviv and Haifa after attempting the same feat.

Moshe looked toward Ehud at the helm and smiled. Many were the times he could remember coming in after a particularly difficult run, and as they passed the wreckage of a less fortunate vessel, Ehud would murmur to his old ship, “Close your eyes, my darling. Take no notice, my love.” Then he would run his gnarled, weather-cracked hands over the ship’s wheel as if he were caressing the face of his beloved.

Perhaps the most amusing detail about Ehud and his sardine boat was her name:
Ave Maria
. To name a Jewish sardine boat “Hail Mary”

seemed odd, to say the least.

“I bought the boat in Italy,” Ehud would growl when questioned.

“Mary was Jewish and she carried a Jewish child. Is this not a proper name for my angel?”

No one argued. A rabbi or two might have looked askance, but the British navy had never once detained the
Ave Maria
when her hold was “with child.” And those to whom she gave life in the land of Palestine blessed her barnacle-encrusted hulk.

Moshe again braced himself in the prow of the ship and gazed toward Tel Aviv. He could see the outlines of battleships resting at anchor. He strained his eyes for details, then lifted the binoculars that dangled around his neck. There, in the reflection of the city lights, he saw something that made his heart catch and then beat a hard counterpoint to his boat’s chugging engine. From between two anchored British ships, the running lights of a third ship were moving out in a direct course toward the
Ave Maria
.

One glance told him all. Moshe bounded up the ladder to where Ehud stood at the helm.

“I spotted her, too,” Ehud said as Moshe sprang to his side. “A gunboat.”

“Yes.” Moshe could feel the tingle of sweat between his shoulder blades. “She’s moving top speed out of the harbor.”

“Got someone in her gunsights.”

“We’re directly on her course. No use trying to make a run for it,”

Moshe reasoned. “We’ve got five minutes at most before she intercepts us.”

Ehud stroked the smooth wood of the wheel. “Ah, my darling,” he said sadly to the ship, “you are beautiful, but you are too slow, eh?”

“So if we can’t outrun them, we’ll have to outtalk them. They won’t board with seas like this.”

“But they can force us back into the harbor. Or blow us out of the water.”

Moshe started back down the steps. “Turn around, Ehud,” he instructed. “To sea.”

Moshe groped his way down the hatch as the
Ave Maria
swung wildly around. The swinging lantern in the hold illuminated the fear on the faces of the men and women. They needed no explanation. It was plain enough from the vessel’s change of direction and Moshe’s face that something had gone wrong. Moshe’s gaze briefly touched that of the young woman.

Why had he given them hope? her eyes seemed to say. They were shadowed with resignation and accusation. Then she quickly looked away.

“Are any of you men fishermen?” Moshe demanded. “We need a crew topside at once.”

Three thin remnants of what had once been strapping young seamen stood and picked their way to Moshe’s side.

None of the three looked the part of Mediterranean fishermen. From their worn street shoes to their long black coats and baggy vests hanging on shrunken frames, the men told the story of European Jews sneaking in the back door of Palestine. They would be spotted at once if the
Ave Maria
were stopped.

Moshe scanned the group for caps and coats that might pass the inspection of a British naval officer.

Several of the refugees wore caps that resembled those of Greek fishermen. Close enough. Moshe snatched them from the heads of their startled owners, then tore through the compartments beneath their seats in search of slickers and boots. He found one oil-soaked cable-knit sweater and a torn wool coat. He took off his own coat and handed it to one of the three who was most nearly his size.

“Put this stuff on,” he instructed them. “And keep your shoes out of sight. It wouldn’t take a detective to see that you are not shod for the deck of a sardine trawler. Stand behind the nets or something, eh?”

The motley crew followed him up the steps and took their stations— one in the wheelhouse with Ehud, the other two mending nets that littered the decks.

Moshe stood near the hatch, nursing a cold cup of coffee: the picture, he hoped, of nonchalance. It was his hope that the
Ave Maria
would be thought to be just leaving the harbor rather than returning from a long voyage.

As the small craft bobbed through the swells, the British gunboat dashed through them like a terrier after a rat.

The ominous drone of the gunboat’s engines rose and fell with the winds and seemed to growl the warning:
Run, run, run
. But there was no running. There was only the shred of hope that by some miracle the gunboat would pass by them without seeing.
God of
Abraham,
Moshe prayed,
remember us.

If that miracle did not happen, the next would be if the British let them pass as sardine fishermen heading out for the morning’s catch.

Remember how these, Your children, have suffered.

Moshe thought of the cages that lined the decks of the British deportation boats: cages for apprehended immigrants on their way to the detention camps of Cyprus. More barbed wire. More imprisonment for children, some of whom had never drawn a free breath.

“We don’t dare go over our monthly quota of Jews,” a British colonel had explained to Moshe over a beer at the King David Hotel.

“Why don’t they just go back to where they came from? Stop stirrin’

up the Arabs.”

In the eight years he had spent smuggling Jews out of Nazi-dominated Europe, Moshe had never come closer to giving himself away. With steely eyes and a fixed grin, Moshe had answered, “Back to the ovens of Auschwitz, eh?”

The colonel had laughed uneasily, self-conscious under Moshe’s glare. “You know what I mean. Man, you’re a native here. Surely you see immigration means nothin’ but trouble. We’ll have another Holocaust on our hands, and this time it’ll be the Arabs doin’ the dirty business, won’t it now?”

Yes,
thought Moshe,
under the passive eyes of the British
Mandatory Government in Palestine, the Arabs can do what they
wish.
Not only were Jews prohibited entry into the country, but the Sabra, the native Jewish Palestinians, were forbidden to carry anything even vaguely resembling a weapon. A Jew could be stopped and searched at will by British soldiers and arrested for having a pair of scissors on his person. An Arab, on the other hand, could openly sell a rifle in the marketplace.

The British predict a bloody massacre of Jews by the Arab world if
the Partition Resolution passes tonight,
Moshe thought.
Arabs
vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. Perhaps it will happen as
they prophesied, but never again will Jews die like sheep without a
fight.
“Never again,” Moshe murmured, watching the running lights of the gunboat charge through the sea like the red eyes of a bull.

Run, run, run,
chanted the gunboat.

“Never again!” answered Moshe. “We will not run again.” The heat of anger charged through his body. Like David against Goliath, if the little State of Israel was indeed born tonight, it would stand and fight. And the
Ave Maria
would also fight and die rather than give up her children to the detention camps of Cyprus. There had been enough useless suffering.

God of Abraham,
prayed Moshe,
remember us.
The gunboat was less than a quarter mile off the stern, and still it had not veered from its straight course toward the rescue vessel. Searchlights now clicked to life and split the dark night with their shafts. Moshe was reminded of the lights that had searched the skies of London for Nazi bombers during the Blitz. Now, with the same earnest determination, the lights searched for the victims of Nazi tyranny. In a flash of disbelief, Moshe said, “To them we’re all the same. All the enemy.”