January 1969
On Allenby Street, shoppers carry heavy food baskets from the nearby produce market, and pedestrians stroll leisurely before sunset. The sun sets early this time of year, but today, at least, the weather has been unseasonably mild, and Sharon took Savta to her favorite fabric store. They concluded the successful trip with fabric for a new suit for Sharon, a Simplicity paper pattern, beautiful buttons, and soft material for the lining. Now they are celebrating in a café with milkshakes and airy chocolate cakes under mounds of whipped cream.
Sharon tucks several liroth under her saucer and picks up their packages. “Enough excitement for you for one day,” she tells Savta and pulls her to her feet. She helps her button up her coat. “We’ll start the sewing tomorrow.”
Savta scans the crowd. “It reminds me of my evenings in Paris. Did I tell you about my time there?”
“Plenty, except that you keep the juicy details to yourself.”
“I was young once, you know.” A smile bunches up Savta’s slack cheeks. “Paris was at her best. The avant-garde era. Like La Bohème without the starvation.”
Just last week they attended that opera. “I’m dying to hear what you did.” Sharon raises her arm to hail a taxi. She wishes she had known the young Esther as a friend, a woman who was her own person, not just a wife and mother.
She forgets about it when the two of them slide into a taxi, where the radio is blaring, and the driver greets them with enthusiasm. “Another one is home!”
“Another what?” asks Savta.
“A Saar. Saar Seven is here!”
What? Excitement and pride course through Sharon, and Savta whispers in her ear, “Is that related to what you did in Cherbourg?”
Sharon blinks her eyes in an affirmative response, a wide grin on her face.
They hurry up the stairs to the apartment, and Sharon vaults to the TV. She wastes precious minutes readjusting the rabbit-ear antennas before the grainy screen finally comes into focus.
There is only one Hebrew station, a government one, and in the evening, after its daylong school programming, the channel broadcasts a documentary, an experts’ roundtable, or an artistic performance. Right now, the black-and-white picture that Sharon is staring at is of Danny standing in front of a battery of journalists. Behind him, she recognizes the side of a Saar. On the deck above are seamen whose faces she can’t make out. Danny.
“That’s your commander!” Savta exclaims when she catches up with her.
“Yes, Danny Yarden.” Even his name sounds sensuous to Sharon’s ears. It’s been only a month since she left, and here he is, in her living room. She recalls his friendly goodbye hug. She wishes she hadn’t held back the desire to tighten her arms around him in a message he would have understood.
Even before hearing the details of Saar Seven’s arrival, Sharon knows that, in the same maneuver that was used to snatch Saar Six from under the nose of the French, Danny captained Saar Seven to Israel. But this time, no one is praised for it; Danny is questioned by a journalist from a leading newspaper about this second act of defiance. “Why strain Israel’s relationship with France any further, especially before the French election that might bring to power a more accommodating partner?”
“We’ve acted legally. Our contract with the French government is not under dispute.”
The film clip loops and restarts with the boat’s arrival in the Kishon port a couple of hours earlier. Then it’s back to Danny responding to a barrage of reporters’ questions. He is unfazed and completely at ease despite the microphones shoved into his face.
“That’s a mensch,” Savta says, meaning a man of honor and integrity.
Sharon is glued to yet another rerun when the phone rings.
“You must have heard,” Danny says with no preliminaries.
“I’m watching you talking to reporters.” She laughs, loving his voice, basking in their camaraderie. “Some real jerks.”
“We wouldn’t be Jews if we didn’t disagree with one another in a dozen different ways,” he replies. “Listen, sweetheart. I’m heading to Jerusalem to brief the prime minister. In the morning I’ll be taking the train to Tel Aviv to catch a bus to Ayelet HaShachar to see my parents. Let’s meet at nine hundred hours at the same café where you surprised me by taking the job.” She hears the smile in his voice.
He just called her sweetheart, not kiddo.
She telephones a cousin to stay with Savta tomorrow for a couple of hours. The pool of available relatives is still large when Savta is mobile. It won’t be this easy, Sharon knows, when the cancer progresses and caring for Savta means hands-on nursing. Savta has refused any aggressive, debilitating treatment. The prognosis is clear.
In the morning, excitement runs in Sharon’s veins while she feathers her eyelashes with mascara and zips up the new wool skirt she sewed under Savta’s guidance. The fact that Danny is squeezing this meeting into his very tight schedule—the bus ride to his kibbutz in the Galilee will take hours—makes her feel appreciated, a chosen friend. Deeper, there’s their bond of orphanhood, even if it matters only to her. There is so much she plans to tell him.
First, she’ll confess about Uzi Yarden’s letter. Surely when Danny visits, his father will mention her request. Sharon will also report to Danny what she discovered: Pelletier, Châtillon-sur-Indre, Robillard. It will be up to him to pursue it further. The geographical distance from France has given her perspective, and what she sees is embarrassing. Her nosing around was beyond chutzpah; it was obnoxiously prying. It was her need, not Danny’s, that made her home in on his past like a searchlight beam. The worst yenta, Savta would have said.
The temperatures have dropped, and the clouds seem to be wrapped in dripping cheesecloth. Sharon heads out, and minutes later, in the steam-filled café, she secures a spot by the large window. She wipes the fog off the glass pane with a napkin, and through the cleared arch, she sees Danny approach. His shoulders are hunched forward against the wind, and the hood of his jacket doesn’t fully cover the face she’s so often peered into over mugs of coffee and steins of beer.
He enters, takes off his wet glasses, wipes them while scanning the room, then puts them back on and crosses the space between them in a few long strides.
“You’re looking great!” He holds her at arm’s length and scrutinizes her face with a softer gaze than she would have expected. Then he gives her la bise. His cheek exudes chill and dampness, like a puppy’s nose, and it feels intimate.
She laughs. “It’s been only a month since I left.”
“It feels longer.” He peels off his jacket while asking the waiter, who just brought coffee to their table, “Is the cinnamon cake already baked? I have only half an hour.”
“Thirty minutes?” Sharon asks when the waiter walks away. She has so many questions—how the Hanukkah party she missed went, who her replacement is, whether Rina had a boy or a girl. She wants to know if there’s any news about Rachelle and Ehud and whether Dominique finally landed a “male” assignment.
First, though, she must reveal to Danny his name!
“Actually, forty-five minutes till my bus departs.” Before Sharon has a chance to bring up her questions, he asks, “How are you doing with your math?”
“Hardly cracking the book. My savta—”
He places his hand on hers, and she feels the warmth of the rough skin. “It’s been a year since the Dakar’s disappearance,” he says.
She withdraws her hand. “Eleven and a half months.”
“Almost a year,” he corrects himself. The waiter brings his cake, and when he’s gone, Danny says, “You have the rest of the winter to study. Take the math exam in late June and apply to the Technion to start in September.”
