More groups scramble up; children squeeze together to make room for arriving adults. Another truck rumbles away. The rescuers run back; hundreds of passengers are still waiting to be led to safety.
As the young man shuts the truck’s low tailgate, Judith reaches over and touches his fingers. “My hero,” she whispers. “Thank you.”
“Welcome home,” he replies, and she can hear the warm smile in his voice.
Part I
UNCERTAINTY:
We sail within a vast sphere, ever adrift in uncertainty, driven from end to end.
—Blaise Pascal
Chapter One
Sharon
Tel Aviv, Israel
July 1968
Sharon enters her grandmother’s apartment—her home—expecting to escape the scorching heat outside, but the air that greets her, aromatic with the smell of baking, is warm. The radio is playing “Jerusalem of Gold,” the passionate song that became Israel’s unofficial national anthem following the liberation of Jerusalem the year before. Sharon drops her carpet satchel and kicks off her sandals to soak in the chill of the marble floor. Her skin feels sticky from the bus ride back to Tel Aviv from the suburban home of her dead fiancé.
She’s barely closed the door when Savta, her grandmother, steps out of the kitchen. “Someone from the navy was here to see you.”
Sharon swivels on her heel. “Why didn’t he go to the Golans’?” Since she hadn’t yet become Alon Golan’s wife, his parents are the next of kin. Thirty hours after the submarine Dakar sent its last signal, the commander in chief visited their house to deliver the troubling news. “The navy knows where they live,” Sharon adds.
“He left a phone number.” A bit of flour is smeared on Savta’s forehead. Sharon reaches out and wipes it off.
“Did he say what this was about?” Sharon is exhausted from six months of mourning, of waiting for the sunken Dakar to be found and for a proper burial to take place. “It must be a mistake.”
“Are you going to call?” Savta holds out the note.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Sharon mumbles. Haunting images of Alon struggling for air, his fingers clawing at the iron walls of his tomb, rush through her mind. She’s just spent another day in the only place she finds solace: his parents’ home, where dozens of friends and relatives take turns dropping by daily, bearing platters of food. They brew coffee, serve cakes, empty ashtrays, refill bowls of nuts and pickles, and pass around pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice. The television is kept on day and night for any breaking news. The Golans’ heavy silence in the midst of this activity suits Sharon’s mood. The hollow gouged in her middle is unprepared to accept her friends’ invitations for an outing of falafel and ice cream, a beach paddleball game, or a night’s campfire, where she used to play her flute.
“The officer was clear that he needed to speak with you,” Savta insists.
All Sharon wants to do now is drop on her bed and give herself over to a long cry. She kisses Savta’s cheek in a pretense of a light mood. Despite the heat, Savta’s skin is clammy and cold, smelling of vanilla. A flood of love washes over Sharon. These past two years, she’s been wrapped up in her own life: her two-year intelligence service, the Six-Day War. Operationally, the war took not a mere six days but six months of her working around the clock, rarely having time to sleep, let alone come home. Now her mourning is a bottomless sorrow, a black hole from which no light—or emotion—escapes. She has given little thought to Savta’s deepening loneliness following Grandpa Nathan’s passing.
What would a naval officer want with her? Only once, within two weeks of the Dakar’s disappearance, did an officer come here rather than to the Golans’ home. That social worker from headquarters, a woman, inquired whether Sharon was, by any chance, pregnant. No, Sharon wasn’t, and she was glad not to be faced with the dilemma. She wouldn’t have wanted to raise a child without a father. She was an orphan herself, and although her grandparents were devoted to her, they had already reared seven children and spent many days babysitting their sixteen grandchildren. Then, in 1948, in the middle of the War of Independence, between sirens, there was a knock on the door. Their twenty-three-year-old son, Amiram, and his young refugee wife, Judith, had been killed in battle defending their kibbutz. During a brief cease-fire, Sharon’s devastated grandparents rushed to pick up the six-week-old orphan from Haifa, where the kibbutz’s children had been evacuated.
“Have you eaten today?” Savta’s fingers pinch the excess fabric of Sharon’s calf-length dress. “You can’t keep losing weight.”
Sharon forces a smile. “It’s the summer heat.” She tasted only a few morsels from the plate someone at the Golans’ pressed into her hands.
The phone in the kitchen rings. She lets Savta step in and pick it up. If it’s any of Sharon’s friends, Savta will take a message. Sharon will not call back.
“That officer.” Savta’s palm covers the mouthpiece.
Sharon groans. Just take a message, she mouths impatiently, but Savta holds out the phone.
A deep voice says, “Good evening, Sharon. This is Commander Daniel Yarden.”
“I got your message. I’m sure you want to speak with the Golans.”
“I’d like to speak with you. You and I met at their home.”
Since late January, every week, officers of the various branches of the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF, have been dropping in at the Golans’ house. Some sit silently, soaking in Alon’s parents’ grief; some engage in conversation with other visitors, all of whom have military experience in their past.
Sharon has been oblivious to the visitors. “What’s this about?”
“It needs to be discussed in person.”
“I told your social worker six months ago that I wasn’t pregnant.”
He chuckles. “How about I come by in an hour?”
“Can’t it wait till tomorrow? Or next week?”
“If it’s okay with you, I’ll be over at twenty-one hundred.”
She’s puzzled by his persistence. She wants nothing to do with the navy. With a sigh, she stretches out the words, “All right.”
“Is that about your intelligence unit?” Savta asks after Sharon hangs up.
“If they needed me, they’d send a telegram, not a naval commander.” Sharon kisses Savta’s cheek. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Two carp are swimming in the tub in the bathroom. Today must be Wednesday, which is when Savta begins shopping for Friday-night dinner. Friday morning, she’ll kill, gut, and stuff the carp for her gefilte fish.
