Sol watched as she waited tables. She marched the café floor. He thought she’d wear a trench. There was no spring in her step. There was no welcome in her voice. But Sol saw something in her. Her purposeful, measured steps masked emotions. Her clipped tones hid expression. It wasn’t only the Teutonic translation. Her handcuffed smile held stories, history. She was all guesswork for Sol. He had no real intelligence on this subject. He should do a full recce; blonde hair, blue eyes good legs and breasts. Back home she’d have been a shiksa, only good for practising on. With a hair-do, powder and paint she might have made it as a cigarette card beauty. Here, she was the best opportunity Sol had seen in 3 months.

Her attitude made it abundantly clear that waiting tables was not her mission in life. She resented every order, every request for clean cutlery, queries about the menu and the clientele who for her epitomised uncouth and unkempt. One of the English kept staring at her. She felt as though she’d been scrutinised for most of her life, as if she was pinned to one of the slides under her father’s microscope. Her mother had checked that every outfit was perfect and her hair always just-so. Her teachers had examined her to ensure she attained the educational standards befitting the doctor’s daughter. Her grandmamma had grilled her over etiquette that she might never bring the family reputation into disrepute. Her classmates had quizzed her on why she couldn’t go with them to the ice-cream parlour anymore. The police had questioned her on why she wasn’t wearing her yellow star more prominently.

No-one had inquired of her whether she wanted to be sent from Berlin. She hadn’t seen or heard from any member of her family since the day she’d left. There had been no high standards to live up to since that day, just a series of instructions that were not open to discussion.

Go there, wear this, say that, this is your new name, keep your head down, don’t sneeze, you live here now, you work in this café, don’t contact your family unless you want to put their lives at risk, you’ll be safe here, we’ll look after you.

When she’d left Berlin in the March spring had barely been visible. By the time she was met on the Tel Aviv beach it was a warm evening in May and she was barely recognisable. She looked, dressed and smelled like a peasant but here, in a combination of euphemism and optimism, they called her a pioneer. The group of ten had been led from Berlin by Moshe. She had no idea how much this pied piper had been paid. He spoke German, Russian and Polish and on the journey that took them through Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey on foot, by truck and by boat he was teaching them the language that they would need for their new life, the life in the land that promised safety and which delivered her into solitude. That had been two and half years ago, she was now eighteen. Her hands and feet hadn’t been cold since she’d arrived but she so missed skating in winter. The imitations of splendid boulevards and grand architecture that she’d taken for granted back home seemed like cheap replicas here. They might have been designed by Bauhaus graduates but to site them incongruously in this Mediterranean mayhem made her choke at the unfairness of it all.

‘I’m Sol’, he told her, his middle finger on his sternum and his head nodding, ‘Ani Sol’.
‘Ata zol’, she smirked, raising an eyebrow. It was the closest she’d been to human expression all evening. Sol wasn’t getting the joke.

‘You know what is zol?’

‘Sol, it’s short for Solomon, like the king. The airman sensed he was floundering but had no idea how he’d come a cropper after a simple introduction. The smirk generated a semi audible, derisive snort which stopped well before it turned into a giggle. She might look like a shiksa, a gentile, but the smirk and glint he’d seen in his mother and four sisters, even the younger ones. She had something on him and was going to make him suffer using that most cutting of weapons, the Jewish wit, as perfected by the Jewish women.

‘Sol, Solly, Solomon, Shlomo, Shlaime’. He’d given his credentials in English, Hebrew and Yiddish. Family and friends called him Sol or Solly. Solomon was for formal documents and business meetings. Shlomo was his Hebrew name, Shlomo ben Binyamin Meir to be precise, which had last been used when Sol was godfather at his nephew’s circumcision ceremony a year an a half ago. Shlaime was the Yiddish version of his name, which he hated as much as his sister hated Peshy and for the same reasons.

‘Shlaime! Ha! You live village. You no have luck. You Shlaime Shlimazel.’ She was quick. She’d recognised an Achilles heel instantly and added another Yiddish word to turn him into the luckless Shlaime. At that moment he was every inch the unlucky schlimazel. It was bad luck to face public humiliation but that fate in front of his oldest sister would be a tale of woe certain to follow him around family gatherings forever in the spirit of revenge and retaliation that brings cruel joy to siblings.

‘Zol is for no money’

‘Do you mean poor?’

‘Nooooo is ship’

The airman frowned in puzzlement at the nautical reference.

‘She’s telling you that zol, in Hebrew, means cheap you dolt. It’s clear you haven’t been to any local markets since you landed here or you’d have learnt that by now.’

His sister, the perennial pedagogue, had explained the punch line.

‘Nu Zol, you tell me you chip man’.

‘Why don’t you call me Solomon or Shlomo, like the King, Solomon the wise.’

‘Hamelech Shlomo? I see you zol but I no see you chacham, how you say, wise, like the King Shlomo. You Shlaime Shlimazel and zol. Feh!

The ethnic interjection added to both the injury and insult she’d bestowed on him in her unique naming ceremony. His sister’s glee was tangible and uncontrollable. She’d be writing to the others post haste. His one hope was that their mother might abort their ridicule and he was thankful that the men from his unit hadn’t witnessed him being shot down without having fired even one round in his own defence.