SHARONA BEN-TOY
597
buildings subsided, grumbling and roaring through squalls of shattered
glass, just as everyone thought they had their losses counted.
One vision filled Avram's mind: a string of pebbles, unworthy of
notice, mere bumps on any road . They were the invisible mine.
Ben Yehuda Street was the second time that a British Hell Car had
been detonated in Jewish territory. Avram was determined to stop
British cars . Since it was against the law for Jews to man roadblocks, the
best alternative was a landmine; since the law also forbade Jews to carry
weapons, the mine had to be invisible. Avram's mine is still used today,
and he would not describe it. When I asked, he answered in the mode I
have come to call the Israeli Security Tautology: "The mine was invisi–
ble because. . .it was designed not to be seen." My description comes
from hints and a Yiddish nickname which you surely don't expect me to
repeat.
Not a Platonic Symposium
"I
WAS THERE,"
Avram continued as I sat jotting down his tale, "at the
precise moment your father came to the Science Corps ."
I wrote a new heading, underlining it several times.
"I met your father in the Studio. That was the Science Corps' first
headquarters, a shed on the roof of an actor's apartment in downtown
Tel Aviv. I had come there because I'd received an order from Genka
Ratner." Ratner, Avram explained, was a Haifa native who had worked
for the British Navy at Portsmouth, where he had invented the limpet
mine. After the Second World War, Ratner's requests to return to Pales–
tine were denied until he faked a serious illness and begged his superior
officers to let him die in the land of his fathers. "Thanks to the senti–
mentality of the English," Avram mused, "we got Genka, the only qual–
ified inventor in the country, to command us . He was famed for his
Russian cursing. We lived in fear that a British agent would overhear
Genka when he was in full cry. He gave me an assistant, a boy called Uri
Paltiel. "
I said, "Oh my!" just as Avram had expected, and he looked smug.
"Back then," he confided, "Uri was only a skinny squirt who irritated
me because he criticized my mine."
Impatient to hear about my father, I was still beguiled by the scene
that rose to my eyes: a rooftop, at the hour when the upper stories of
Tel Aviv are glazed in a red glow. Three men lurked among the ducts,
watertanks and clearings of orange sky. Avram, doughty, sandals
