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Show 213 huddling there together against the rain and wind and cold I was introduced to each of them. They asked me about John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, as though I should know them personally, and then before the crowd began to push into the theater Talma asked me once again to come to dinner. "On Shabat, tomorrow, it is a big meal. It will be good for you." All of her friends were waiting for me to answer. Please, she said. I was shivering inside my nylon jacket, actually shaking with the cold. All right, I said, I would come. They all smiled collectively and Talma happily began to tell me how to get to her house. Inside, on the dry side of the plate glass, I said I had promised to wait for someone; Talma nodded and moved off with her friends. "Three o'clock, Ian Alden," she called back. "Don't forget." I waited until they were out of sight then found an empty seat in the back of the theater where I could be alone and try to lose my chill in the heroics on the screen. But it was gray and cold there too, and I felt that it was not Normandy at all that was being assaulted, but me. The Israeli audience was excited and tense; when the first German died they cheered wildly. Somehow I fell asleep. When I awoke the battle was over, the war as good as won. Outside the sun was setting through the rain in the western hills. By the time I got back to the hotel my small lie had become a truth, I was sick. The next morning I stayed in bed until noon, coughing and dreaming and wrestling about beneath the blankets, thankful it was |