Tongues of Fire Read Free

kept bumping Sergeant Levy’s bad leg, so he gave it up. Above the night sky shone in many unnatural colors. Isaac Rehv never forgot the way the sky looked that night.
    After a while he had to stop.
    â€œCan you tread water?”
    â€œSure.”
    But Sergeant Levy couldn’t, and Rehv had to bring him up, the two of them sputtering and splashing. He knew he had kicked Sergeant Levy again. The big man didn’t say anything, but his face turned to tallow.
    Rehv looked at the lights of the waiting ships. They were no closer than before.
    They began again. Sergeant Levy was very heavy. Rehv tried a modified sidestroke. They seemed to move faster.
    â€œNow we’re doing it,” Sergeant Levy said.
    Rehv could hardly hear him. He heard only his own grunting, the screaming, and from time to time odd sounds like a hand smacking the water with force.
    They stopped again, and turned to the lights. They were no closer.
    â€œI think we’ll do better if I try some swimming on my own,” Sergeant Levy said.
    â€œYou told me you can’t swim.”
    â€œI was exaggerating.”
    â€œI don’t believe you.”
    â€œIt’s true.” Sergeant Levy pushed himself free. He made some movements in the water. He didn’t sink.
    â€œAll right,” Rehv said.
    He swam beside Sergeant Levy. He felt the cold sucking all the strength out of his body. He felt his heart beating faster to keep him warm. He didn’t even know why he was exerting all this effort. Then he remembered: Sergeant Levy.
    He heard more of those odd splashes around him. He tried the breaststroke. Something bumped him in the back. What? Something.
    â€œSergeant Levy,” he called. “Still swimming?”
    â€œRight,” came Levy’s voice. It sounded far away. Perhaps it was the screaming.
    He swam and screamed, swam and screamed, swam and screamed. “Sergeant Levy. Still swimming?”
    â€œWay ahead of you,” came the big man’s reply, from very far away.
    So he swam and screamed some more.
    He felt a hand touch his shoulder. “Sergeant Levy?” he said.
    â€œHere’s a live one for a change.” An American voice.
    â€œHave you got Levy?” Rehv asked in English.
    Two sailors in white pulled him into a lifeboat. He glanced around. “You haven’t got Levy.”
    â€œLook how blue the bastard is,” one of them said. “Better get some blankets.”
    â€œThere’s no time. Levy’s still out there.”
    â€œSure, pal.”
    Isaac Rehv looked back at the coast. Mount Carmel burned like a funeral pyre. High above its summit tongues of fire blazed in the night. Their reflections licked toward him across the dark sea, touched him, held him, baptized his body in cold fire. In the mirrored glare he could see that Sergeant Levy was gone. Even at that moment he knew that Sergeant Levy was one of the lucky ones.

PART ONE
    BABYLON

CHAPTER ONE
    Slowly the sleeping pill released its grip. “Try these,” Quentin Katz had said. “You’ll sleep like the dead.” And he did every night. No nightmares, no dreams, no renewal. “You look like hell,” Katz told him one day. “Are you taking those pills?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBetter double the dosage.”
    He lay with his eyes closed, watching green spots jump across the salmon-colored insides of his eyelids. He heard heavy traffic grumbling in the street below. Gasoline was a dollar a gallon.
    He didn’t want to get up, fold the camp cot, and put it in the storage room. He didn’t want to turn on the coffee machine and sweep the polished pine floor. He didn’t want to see the latest exhibit: four clapboard cabins the size and shape of telephone booths, standing in a row in the center of the high-ceilinged room.
    â€œYou like?” Quentin Katz had asked after they had carried the booths up the stairs.
    He hadn’t known what to say.
    â€œYou go