Beloved Enemy, The (House of Winslow Book #30) Read online

  The Beloved Enemy

  Gilbert Morris

  © 2003 by Gilbert Morris

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  eISBN 978-1-4412-6005-5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Scripture quotations identified KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Cover illustration by Bill Graf

  Cover design by Becky Noyes

  Dedication

  TO MARY MOYE

  How wonderful it is to meet those who are loving, cheerful, honest—and love my books!

  Johnnie and I have found a friend in you, one who brings some light into our lives.

  Gil and Johnnie Morris

  GILBERT MORRIS spent ten years as a pastor before becoming Professor of English at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas and earning a Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas. During the summers of 1984 and 1985, he did postgraduate work at the University of London. A prolific writer, he has had over 25 scholarly articles and 200 poems published in various periodicals, and over the past years he has had more than 175 novels published. His family includes three grown children, and he and his wife live in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  Kefira

  1. Dreams

  2. Sing Sing

  3. “Learn to Love God”….”

  4. Flight

  5. A Desperate Prayer

  PART TWO

  Josh

  6. The Door Opens

  7. Homecoming

  8. Two Become as One

  9. A Matter of Pride

  10. “Eternal One, You Got Me Into This!”

  11. “I Guess I Belong to You”

  12. When a Man Sees Beauty

  PART THREE

  The Dream

  13. Just a Dream

  14. A House Filled With Love

  15. A Notable Miracle

  16. Two for the Price of One

  17. Last Night in New York

  18. Meeting on Deck

  PART FOUR

  The Prize

  19. At the Dig

  20. “Jesus Held Me Together”

  21. The Find

  22. Miracle in the Desert

  23. The Needle

  24. The Prize

  Back Cover

  PART ONE

  Kefira

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dreams

  High overhead, huge billowy clouds drifted across the light blue sky, driven along by a soft summer wind. The clouds looked like giant pillows, whiter than anything Kefira had ever seen. Even the pure blue in the sky was unlike any other color, without blemish as it spread its ethereal canopy over the horizon. It was, Kefira thought, like a great round bowl set over the earth and illuminated by the glowing sun, which threw its beams upon the fertile ground beneath.

  On her left, fields stretched all the way to where the mountains, low and humpbacked, scored the blue of the sky. On her right, the fields stretched to a verdant forest, a brighter green than the mountains, so colorful it almost hurt her eyes. Far off she could see cows grazing on the emerald grass, and overhead a bird was circling slowly and majestically.

  The pungent smell of the rich, loamy earth tickled her senses. Her nostrils tingled at a sweetness she couldn’t identify, perhaps the fragrance of the red, yellow, and orange blooms that lined the roadside and spotted the landscape like fiery sparks.

  She sauntered along, her senses fully engaged with the enticing smells and sights and sounds. The road bent in a dogleg, and she picked up her pace, anticipating a new vision beyond the turn—at once wonderful, beautiful, exotic. As she passed a stand of trees around the bend, her eyes were drawn to a lone house straight ahead, with tall, stately oaks lining the road up to it. This was strange to her. In her world, houses were always crowded together, side by side, but this one stood alone, rising two stories with four columns along the front porch and chimneys on either end. The house was as fresh and white as the clouds, and puffs of pearly white smoke rose from its chimneys. A picket fence surrounded the yard, where a woman was hanging clothes on a line stretched between two trees. In the front of the house, a large bluish dog with floppy ears was reared up on a tree, barking shrilly toward the upper branches.

  Kefira had never seen such a house, but somehow she knew it was filled with people who loved each other. She broke into a run, her arms outstretched, longing to embrace the vision before her—but even as she did, the house faded from view. She looked wildly around, and the colors were fading also. The vibrant yellows, blues, and greens sank into a dull, monotonous gray. She choked out a cry as it all disappeared….

  Kefira awoke with a start and opened her eyes to the darkness, fragments of the dream still more real than the hard, narrow bed in which she lay. She could still smell the flowers, the loam-scented earth, the enticing greenery that had filled her dreamland.

  But gradually the real smells of her life assaulted her, even in her closetlike room—the sewage-filled drains, the sweat of human beings crowded closely together, the rotting stench of old cabbage, and the foul odor of leaky gas lines. She sat up in bed, throwing back the thin, moth-eaten blankets, then stopped as the damp chill of the room engulfed her. She did not move as a sense of loss came over her.

  “It was so beautiful,” she whispered aloud. “So very beautiful!” For an instant, she could still feel the earth under her feet as she moved down that road—and she knew she would never be able to forget the vivid dream of the inviting house, the woman hanging up her freshly washed laundry, and the dog barking up the tree.

  With no window in her dreary bedroom to admit the morning sun, Kefira had to depend upon her inner clock to know when to get up. Somehow she always knew the time, within a few minutes, but she could never explain why. Even throughout the day when someone asked what time it was, she could tell instinctively. It was an intuition that was not in other people. Although it was pitch black in her room, she knew with certainty that outside those brick walls, the gray January dawn was creeping up over the streets of New York City, and there was no more time for dreams.

  Climbing out of bed, she winced as her feet hit the icy floor, and when she reached up and turned on the light, the room seemed uglier to her than it had ever been. There was nothing pretty about it. A few pictures clipped from old calendars and magazines were pasted to the walls, but compared to her dream, their colors seemed faded and tired. A single bed was covered with threadbare sheets and blankets; an old chest of drawers sagged to one side, propped up by a brick. A few tattered clothes hung from pegs on the walls. A glass of artificial flowers offered its bit of color, a sad reminder of the vivid freshness of the flowers along the wayside and scattered about the fields in her dream. She at once pushed all such vain imaginings out of her mind.

  Quickly s
he shucked off her flannel gown and shivered as she pulled on the warmest underwear she had. It needed washing, but that would have to wait. Kefira loved the touch and smell of clean clothes, but washing was a luxury in her home, so she pulled on three pair of dirty woolen stockings, faded and worn thin, then a pair of awkward black shoes stiff with the cold.

  Leaving the bedroom, she passed into the main living area of the apartment. At one end was the gas stove, a cabinet nailed to the wall, and a kitchen table with four mismatched chairs. At one time they had all been painted blue, but the color had become chipped and faded, exposing the assorted layers of paint and raw wood beneath. The floor was a leprous gray, patchily covered with remnants of rugs salvaged from previous tenants. A window on the east wall admitted the first pale light of the morning sun, and Kefira noted the dust motes dancing almost merrily in the beams. Feeling no such gaiety, she turned and left the room, heading downstairs and out the back door to a smelly outhouse located in the bare and junk-filled backyard. Closing her eyes to the sights and her nose to the smell, she took care of her necessary business as hastily as she could, shivering in the icy cold, then ran back up the stairs and down the hall to the bathroom she shared with other tenants on the floor. With a sigh of relief that no one was there, she stepped inside and shut the door, bolted it, then turned to look at the bathtub. She choked back the impulse to gag at the grime that clung to its surface. She was by nature a young woman who liked cleanliness, but in this New York tenement she had to fight a daily war to salvage some bit of it for herself. Most people simply gave up and sank back into the filth that fell from skies choked with coal smoke from thousands of chimneys and that accumulated from the habits of human beings herded closely together.

  She did not have time to clean the tub now, so she quickly splashed cold water on her face from the faucet at the equally grimy sink, dried her face and hands, and took a few swipes at her thick hair with a comb. The mirror was spotted and streaked, but she stopped a moment to examine her face. Staring back at her from vacant eyes was a young woman of seventeen years with black hair dulled by the ravages of her unhealthy living conditions but still framing her face softly with its natural curl as it cascaded about her shoulders and down her back. She pinned it up quickly, looking into her own eyes as she did. In the dim light, they looked almost black, but depending on the outfit she wore, they could appear a dark blue. Over her eyes, black eyebrows arched in a way that usually only great artists could invent, but hers were natural. The eyes themselves were almond shaped, overshadowed by thick black lashes. Her mouth was wide and mobile—too wide, she thought. The fashion plates she saw in the few magazines that came her way showed women with pouty, tiny mouths. She tightened her lips to imitate a tiny pout, but the look was comical and made her smile.

  “Too late to try to have a little mouth,” she murmured, laughing at her own foolishness. Her face was oval, and her skin smooth, though her sallow complexion revealed the hard living conditions she suffered. She pinched her cheeks in an effort to make them rosy and bit her lips slightly to redden them. Despite the toll that tenement life had taken on her appearance, she knew she was still pretty. Men’s heads turned her way as she walked down the street, and ever since she had begun to blossom into a young woman at the age of twelve or thirteen, men had told her how beautiful she was—some in ways she did not want to think about now. She finished pinning up her rebellious hair, opened the door, and turned out the light, promising herself a hot bath in a freshly scrubbed tub when she came home after work.

  Going back to her bedroom, she shut and latched the door behind her. She glanced around the room, feeling a touch of despair at how ugly it was. It gave her no comfort to know that the other rooms and apartments in the tenement were no more attractive. Survival was of paramount importance on the Lower East Side of New York in the early weeks of 1931. In this world there was little time and no money for fresh frilly curtains, new rugs, and fine furniture. Any neighbor who stepped into this room would not feel out of place, for theirs looked much the same.

  Moving back into the living area, she glanced at the closed door of her mother’s bedroom, then quickly at the clock. As she had guessed, it was only a few minutes past five, and she hurried to the larder to examine its scanty contents.

  Years ago her father had managed to procure a pie safe with a pierced tin door to keep out the flies and insects. Opening it, she took out a deep covered bowl and saw with satisfaction that there was plenty of kugel left. She had made the bread, suet, and raisin pudding the day before, and she and her mother had dined on it the previous night, but there was plenty left for breakfast and for another supper. Grabbing a kitchen knife, she pulled out what was left of a loaf of dark bread and sliced off two thin portions, making a sandwich for her lunch with a few slices of dried beef and some horseradish. She wrapped it in brown paper and put it in a sack.

  A door creaked open behind her, and Kefira quickly turned. “Good morning, Mother.” She walked over and kissed her mother, then said, “Come and sit down. I’ll heat up some kugel for your breakfast and make you some tea. In the meantime, you can have the last of the milk.”

  Kefira’s mother, Rachel Reis, was only forty-nine, but she looked much older. She too had been a beauty in her day, but now her hair was gray and brittle. Her face was lined with weariness and fatigue, and her eyes seemed sunk too far back in her head. She smiled faintly and sat down. When Kefira put the glass of milk before her, Rachel said, “You have some too, dear.”

  “Oh, I’ve already had mine,” Kefira said, feeling no compunction about telling this untruth. She did not want to worry her mother and often invented fanciful lies to keep her from doing so.

  Kefira took out two saucers, spooned a small serving of kugel into each, and heated them over the stove. She made tea, using the last of it and reminding herself she would have to bring some more home. Kefira sat down and, as always, bowed her head while her mother whispered a brief prayer, continuing the family tradition that had been the role of her father when he was alive. As her mother began her prayer with the usual words “Eternal God,” Kefira looked up at the daguerreotype over on the wall. The old photograph showed a young man and woman bundled up in ill-fitting clothing, yet with handsome faces filled with hope. These were her parents the day they had arrived at Ellis Island. They had been excited at coming to the New World, where they’d expected to find a better life, and for a time they had, because Samuel Reis had been a skilled watchmaker. Kefira could remember living in a better apartment as a child with plenty to eat and good schooling—but since her father’s death three years ago, there had been no money.

  Her only sibling, Chaim, was twenty-five now and serving a five-year sentence in Sing Sing Prison, not too far north of the city. He had been found guilty of stealing from his employer—though Chaim maintained that his boss paid Jews less for the same work and that he had only taken the money he had coming. Chaim’s picture was on the wall also, and Kefira knew that her mother went to it every day and prayed that God would protect him in prison and deliver him. He had another year and a half to go, and Rachel Reis lived for the day when he would be free.

  Kefira leaned over to pat her mother on the arm. “I’ll be going to visit Chaim tomorrow. Do you have a letter written?”

  “Oh yes—it’s a long one. I’ve been working on it for over a week now.”

  “He’ll be so glad to get it. He misses you so much, Mother.”

  “I keep thinking,” Rachel said wistfully, “that I ought to go see him myself.”

  “Perhaps when spring comes. You’ll be feeling better then. We can both go. Won’t that be a good thing?”

  Even as Kefira said this, a dark cloud of doubt settled over her. Her mother was not getting better. She was getting worse, it seemed, almost daily. Twice Kefira had taken her to the doctor. The doctor had prescribed a tonic to ease the symptoms but offered little hope for recovery. He had said quietly, when Rachel was out of hearing, “You must prepare yourse
lf, my dear. I’m afraid she won’t live too much longer.”

  Fiercely Kefira had denied the doctor’s words, and she tried every way she knew to make life as pleasant for her mother as she could. Her mother’s well-being was the central focus of her life now, and she knew that Sing Sing Prison was no place for a sick woman.

  Hastily she arose, put on the heavy coat that had belonged to her father, and pulled an attractive shawl over her head, tying it under her chin. It was the one pretty garment she owned—a gift from Chaim for her thirteenth birthday, and now she treasured it.

  “You rest today, Mother, and when I come home I’ll bring you a surprise.”

  “Try to get off early, dear.”

  Kefira didn’t remind her mother that she had to work long hours to earn enough money for doctors and medicine. “I’ll try, Mother, but we’re very busy at this time of the year.”

  Kefira kissed her mother and left the tenement. Descending rapidly from the third floor, she realized her mother would never be able to climb back up those steps in her condition. It was a thought she had had before, but she tried to shove it away as she stepped out onto the street. As she turned and headed toward the shop where she worked, she was struck by the lack of color around her, and her dream appeared again in her mind’s eye, as vividly as when she had dreamed it. She had a gift for remembering dreams in this way. But instead of a blue sky, white clouds, and green fields, the street before her remained a monotonous gray; concrete and steel and faded brownstone buildings rose high on each side like canyon walls. There was so little color, she had almost ceased to look for it in this world. She did, however, turn to look into one particular window—almost a morning ritual. On the windowsill sat a red pot with a brilliant blue flower nestled in bright green leaves. Another pot the same size burst with white blossoms, and Kefira stopped for a moment, wistfully admiring, drinking in the color, and finding it impossible to believe at that moment that she could ever be surrounded by such things as flowers and grass. She had been out in the country only rarely as a small child. She could find grass and flowers in Central Park, but it was a long way from her apartment, and she worked so constantly, she had no opportunity for luxuries like a walk in the park.