The block of two-storied coffee shops and restaurants on the Tel-Aviv beach towered just above the waterline, on top of the trillions of tiny grains of sand that in a joint effort kept the Mediterranean Sea in place. The solid and somewhat dreary formation of the assemblage of those open spaced public buildings stretched parallel to the shoreline and brazenly kept the fresh sea breeze from reaching the white houses of the city behind. The ground floors of the restaurants were packed with a mass of discolored and matted clothed tables, while the narrow balconies on the upper levels offered a spectacular view of the sea, the froth of the waves crushing on the beach below, the exotic protrusion of Jaffa's harbor in the south, and the silhouettes of merchant ships that slowly plowed their way on the horizon. Bordering the northern side of this bumpy structure was Piltz, the high-class nightclub favored by the rich and the famous and where the red haired Menashke Beharav conducted his small band and poured his heart away chanting poignant Russian serf's songs. Next to it were Nusbaum and Kamnitzer.

The cool, somewhat somber looking Kamnitzer was contiguous to Piltz. If the British intelligence ever wanted to know what the different branches of the biggest, almost official, Jewish underground movement, the "Haganah", were planning, all they had to do was to send their man there to have a cup of coffee or a beer. In the evenings members from all the branches and sundry ranks of the underground filled the place. Most consisted of the suntanned and brawny members of the "Special Unit", the "musclemen" of the Haganah. The awe inspiring "Red House" near by served as a command post for the underground and the members of the special unit often stayed there before embarking on this or that "special" mission. The patrons of Kamnitzer consisted also of Palmach members who happened to be in town and many other office holders. Whenever I happened to sit there I was surprised how openly and without restraint everybody spoke about current, ongoing underground affairs and imminent planned operations, even though in their official capacity, the same people always cautioned us, the young recruits, never to speak publicly on such matters. I was reminded of it years later when, while sitting in "Fink", the Jerusalem trendy night club, I listened to Moshe Dayan, then the Minister of Defense, spilling the full content of what happened in the cabinet's meeting that had just ended, to a female fellow journalist at the table next to mine. During the War of Independence of 1948 those of the Kamnitzer crowd who managed to find themselves city jobs, far from the blazing warfare on the front, used to sit each evening in Piltz, boasting and bragging about their new positions. While flaunting their prowess on the dancing floor their glowing handguns were idly swinging on their belts, proudly pointing toward the initial stages of what would soon develop into very marked and perturbing bellies. We, who were stationed for a while in Jaffa, used to join them sometimes when we managed to misappropriate a Persian rug from one of the deserted Arab houses and sell it in Tel-Aviv for enough money to spend an evening in Piltz. By that time Kamnitzer lost its previous favorite status and after the war was no longer different from any other flashy Mediterranean coffee house and seashore restaurant.

Nusbaum was adjacent to Kamnitzer but in spite of the close proximity in space, size and countenance, the two places clearly were very different in nature. Nusbaum was the place where we went in order to escape the banal reality of day-to-day existence and get in touch with that imperceptible ingredient that made life possible, worthwhile and bearable. The place had a marvelous collection of classical music, and that when the gramophone records were 78 rpm and an ordinary piece of music could be ten records long. We went to Nusbaum when we skipped school, when we wanted to dream by ourselves, to share the spell of such moments and reveries with a sweetheart, or when we were endeavoring to get in touch with the reflection of our own fledgling image in the bottomless abyss of some alluring blue eyes. When entering the place we used to ask for one of Mozart or Beethoven's piano or violin concertos, Cesar Franck's sonata for piano and violin, Chopin or something similar. It was quite common to see young people sitting there by themselves in deep introspection or with a book of poetry or a piece of paper on which they gave vent to their own poetic feelings.

In 1949 when the fighting was over and the armed forces started playing soldiers I got tired of the navy, went home and spent my days sitting in Nusbaum. After two or three such pensive months I decided that it was time to go back and paid a visit to Yoel, then the Transportation Officer of the Navy. Yoel right away called the officer in charge of manpower, engaged him a bit in a talk about his wishes concerning his designated car, mentioned my case and in a moment I was assigned to the ship of my choice. I decided upon that ship because she was supposed to soon visit America. However, this did not happen and it took many years to get there on my own, by air.

As far as I am concerned, Yoel Liphshitz was one of the main progenitors of the Israeli navy. Not because he helped me when I returned from my self-imposed leave, but because he always was there for us all. Middle aged and of middle stature, almost bald with some bundles of white hair dwindling on top of his round albino's face and with a bit of a potbelly, Yoel did not cut a very impressive figure. He was the owner and manager of the then biggest private trucking company, "Hameneeah". He also was shrewd, wise, kind and stalwart supporter. I do not know what was the reason for his deep involvement in our affairs with sailboats, and at the time I was much too young to ask or even wonder about it. We just took him for granted. Maybe he was in charge of the marine section in our sport club, "Happoel", that was also politically oriented. Maybe his job was to train youngsters so that later they might join the navel section of the underground, whose job it was to bring illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Maybe he just wanted to help set the basis for the future Jewish merchant navy. Maybe all those calculations figured in his being there. Once he offered to some of us scholarships to the naval school in Acre. My parents got so shocked from the idea that their only son might end his days as a drunken sailor that they resolutely refused to grant me permission to take advantage of this offer. Years later, when visiting a merchant captain in his cabin and comparing his life to mine I came to terms with their judgment, but that was not what I felt then, at the ripe age of fourteen. Whatever the reason that made Yoel so involved in our sailing affairs, the fact was that he was always there, on the weekends when we sailed and in those evenings when we had our classes in navigation and naval procedures. He knew each of us personally and we often visited him in small groups in his apartment in Yavne Street where the lady who shared the flat with him, served us cup after cup of steaming tea from a Russian samovar. Many years later I learned from a third or fourth removed cousin of mine that Yoel was a distant relative of ours but I don't believe that he was ever aware of this connection.

I never saw Yoel sitting in Kamnitzer, Nusbaum or strolling along the ugly concrete walkway in front of those places. We, on the other hand, frequented that unsightly promenade almost daily, a custom we acquired already at the time of the Second World War, in the early forties. During those years the sidewalk was chock full of soldiers from all the corners of the British Empire. There were black African soldiers, such that cooked, gobbled and munched their British Sergeant Major - the one they did not like, so methodically that besides the story no other relic remained of him. There were gloomy Irishmen, solemn Canadians, South Africans, New Zealanders, fez wearing Indians, jolly Australians in broad brim hats, and yes, even some British soldiers. The most conspicuous ones were the Australians who commonly were drunk and whose rowdy shenanigans, like untying and riding the horses of the ice or kerosene wagons, greatly appealed to us, the young children. My friend Danny, who, being of American decent spoke English fluently, and I, spent many an evening roaming about the ebullient crowd at the seaside. Sometimes we exchanged words with a lonely soldier but most of the time we got immersed in the ambience of all those strange cultures and enjoyed the different pranks that we witnessed among the busy gaggle of drunken soldiers and prostitutes. There was a lot worth watching. Such for instance were the brawny British MP's who proudly trotted about in their immaculately ironed uniforms with a red strip adorning their caps, who often watched for a soldier with nice looking lass by his side. Time and again they would find a good excuse to detain such soldiers while one of their lot would stay behind to comfort the embarrassed girl and accompany her to the nearest hotel room. The Australians usually left such couples alone but would often forcibly assault any civilian male walking in a company of a female on the beach veranda. It was while watching one such occasion that I became, at least for a while, an ardent fan of everything Australian, not to speak of the Australian canned pears which I had already cherished. On this one occasion we were watching a very well dressed couple who came to enjoy the sea breeze in one of those sweltering, unbearable, humid and suffocating evenings that were so typical of Tel-Aviv during the summer time before the invention of air-conditioners. The unlucky couple happened to cross the territory of two very drunk and very violent Australian soldiers. The lady was strikingly beautiful - svelte, tall, with dark hair. With her cool and composed manner she struck me even then as goddess-like, so much so that I spent most of my life worshipping and adoring the likes of her. The man was her perfect foil - short, plump and garishly garbed. The contrast was so great that even though I was then very young, hardly a teenager, I still remember myself wondering whether she was his wife, female companion or just a high-class courtesan. Whatever the case, the two drunken Australian soldiers caught sight of the couple and their faces brightened. As soon as they lashed out in their direction, the man bolted and made off as fast as his short legs could carry him, leaving his companion behind to fend for herself. For a moment the soldiers were dumbfounded, so also were Danny and I. However, they immediately recovered their senses, left the woman and rushed after the man. What impressed us most in the whole affair was the fact that when they returned to the woman, after leaving her badly beaten companion lying helplessly on the roadside, they hailed a taxi cab, put her in with the exaggerated courtesy that often typifies the highly inebriate, and only then returned to their lair, to ambush and harass other couples.

Danny and I were then at an impressionable age, with bellies full of romantic sentiments, adoring the noble and valiant heroes who, according to the books we were avidly reading, spent their days relentlessly saving desperate fainting heroines from the clutches of evil and conniving villains. For us it was as if the two drunken Australians were noble knights that emanated straight from King Arthur's round table, the pages of Henryk Sienkiewicz's With Fire and Sword or Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. They acted exactly the way we expected such gallant and noble characters to behave in the face of such dastardly behavior, and the impression they left impinged upon our young and vulnerable souls never really faded away.

As the Second World War was nearing to its end we graduated from elementary to high school and from innocent spectators on the sidewalk to regular customers of Nusbaum and Kamitzer. The soldiers that during the war had been stationed in Palestine went home to establish new states and fight their local neighbors. After graduating from high school we did the same. Inadvertently we were drawn into a vast maelstrom that enfolded the whole scope of the now defunct British Empire. We also ardently followed the all encompassing religion of nationalism. As the British and so many of the Arabs left, or were driven away, there were lands, institutions and positions galore to grab. Many from among the previous patrons of Piltz and Kumitzer or from those who had offices in the Red House near by, excelled in the snatching. All of a sudden they were in charge of huge estates and felt that it was their patriotic duty to fend those assets from other aspiring grabbers. Envy, jealousy and avarice became the order of the day and the signposts of the patriotic fold. Mob identity and bogus ideologies spread like a plague and many innocent souls fell bitterly by the waysides of their previous high and unattainable ideals. The magic of popular slogans and the fetish worship of jingoistic emblems formed now the glue that kept together Israel as well as all the other newly formed states and their people. In its more extreme form, the Kamnitzer sentiment of common cause and conviviality turned into self-serving mindset and "patriotic" fraternities that threatened to tear the country apart. Nusbaum on the other hand no longer played classical music but the universal motifs of art and music it helped instill in us kept reverberating and kept at least some of us from falling into the narrow pitch of false patriotism and chauvinism.

After graduating from elementary school Danny's and my ways parted. I learned that he went to study in America but we did not keep in touch. Many years later, when I was approaching forty, I decided that the time (and I), were ripe for a change of career and country. I went to Claremont, California, to finish my studies and acquire a doctorate degree. A good friend of mine also moved at about the same time to Madison, Wisconsin, where she got her degree in psychology. The odd thing was that in all her communications, oral or writing, she mentioned an Israeli professor who was there on a sabbatical, working on his book.

"You must know him!"
" You are of the same age, surely you might have met in Israel of old!"
"You are very different - in looks and character, but there is something in his eyes that reminds me of you!."

It went like that for quite a while but both, he and I, denied ever meeting each other. The names were completely foreign to us. Nira, nevertheless, persisted. At Christmas vacation I went to visit her. It was cold in Madison. It also was a white Christmas. My first Christmas in the USA. The date carried a special meaning for us, as she and I were the first Jewish soldiers, ever, to visit, (armed with Uzis), the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. It happened a short time after conquering the town during the Six Days War of 1967. All other soldiers (only soldiers were admitted then to the West Bank) scattered to buy souvenirs, but when I asked her to accompany me for a visit in the church she willingly consented. It was quite a tour! The frightened priests and monks, who did not know what to expect, readily showed us everything, from the star in the spot where Jesus was purportedly born to the fourth century mosaic floor that is usually covered for preservation. Years later, after she married a Catholic and spent a Christmas with her in-laws, Nira called me one day saying: "Now I understand why you were so excited on that day"! Indeed I was. However, on that visit in Wisconsin, about midnight, Nira said: "I know for sure that the Israeli professor is now working on his book in his office at the university, so let's go! You must meet each other." We went. The streets were abundantly decorated, covered with snow and almost completely vacant. It was dark at the university but as we called him before leaving the house he came out to greet us. As far as I remember we did not say a word, we just looked at each other, smiled, went straight in and placed our elbows on the desk in Danny's office, to test each other's strength in arm wrestling. In this sense at least, we did not change much, we still were the same lost and lonely souls that almost thirty years ago wandered at night among the drunken soldiers and prostitutes, still adoring the noble and chivalrous figures of the drunken Australians, still striving to be as manly and perhaps also mannerly as all our romantic heroes presumably were. We had both changed our surnames to Hebrew ones, as was customary at the time, and therefore had not recognized each other's names.

It was an excruciating and very painful experience. Throughout the years the accounts of our nightly excursions on the beach during the Second World War acquired a fairy-tale quality, and none of us ever saw a reason to deny the very animated and embellished stories that spread about our escapades. We almost believed in them ourselves. Danny's children surely believed in those larger than life stories about their father. But now, meeting again after about a quarter of a century, we could not play games with each other. We had to face the truth that in reality we were then very lonely and sad children who roamed the streets looking for something that for various reasons we could not find at home. We were intimately acquainted with each other's real dreams and aspirations and what exactly each of us wanted to be when reaching the age of forty. We no longer could find solace in what we achieved in reality. What's more, we became glaringly aware that twenty years hence, at the age of sixty, we might again confront what happened to our promises and expectations at the age of forty. Our chance meeting inexorably turned our life into a continuous process of self-examination and awareness. The peculiar thing was that Danny also contemplated at that time a change of career. Nira indeed recognized in our eyes the same romantic yearning for something we might have dreamed together but had never acquired.