SHARONA BEN-TOV
601
"What is that contraption?" A man advanced till Weizmann could see
his soft young face and the lieutenant's bars on his shoulders.
"Automatic dog, sir," answered the boy, and added, swallowing
hard, "mechanics experiment."
"Indeed," Weizmann said, pausing, "automatic dog." He was not a
fool. There were uniformed personnel all over the grounds, but then,
there was a war on.
He shouldn't have had to deal with the cook, Mrs. Bach, rushing into
his presidential office brandishing a pan of fried cutlets. Mrs. Bach
insisted that the president do something to stop those rapscallions from
firing their cannon that made the ceiling shower plaster on her
schnitzels. Now she had nothing but salad to feed the cytobiologist from
Denmark.
Weizmann took action. The Science Corps was forbidden the use of
the Institute dining hall-let them eat with the rest of the army at Sol–
diers Restaurant. He wrote to friends and aides. He deplored the use of
science for instruments of destruction like the atomic bomb; his legacy
was meant for peaceful development, and the use of the Institute by the
army was a betrayal and a waste. But it was one thing to write indig–
nant letters while keeping the ugly facts as unobtrusive as possible.
It
was quite another thing to stumble onto the invisible mine factory.
Everyone called it the kindergarten. When Genka had asked Avram
what he needed at Weizmann, Avram had said, "Four girls and a room."
He got a room in the Institute's new building, one floor above the mar–
ble-paved lobby where a bronze bust of Einstein presided. He also got
four sixteen-year-old soldiers. A waggish colleague had drawn a large
cartoon and hung it on Avram's door. It showed four baby girls playing
with dolls, and a harassed Avram boiling diapers.
The girls spent all day assembling round, invisible mines. They
treated Avram like all commanders, with affectionate persiflage, but
mostly forgot he was there. He listened to their conversation. The work–
shop was an easy duty after the convoys, about which they chattered all
day.
"I get into Jerusalem," one of them would say, clipping wires, "and as
I leave the unloading point, someone grabs my arm, and it's my
mother,"
her voice underlined. "So I ask, 'How did you know to get here?' and
instead of answering she starts pulling my arms and saying, 'Your old
mama isn't so stupid after all, come home, you're not betraying any
secrets,' and I tell her, 'Mama, this is impossible, I have to report to
headquarters. ",
