Relationship between Ilana Sommo and Volodya Gudonski

The relationship between Ilana Sommo and Volodya Gudonski begins at her 1959 visit to meet Alexander Gideon’s father, but it does not remain a simple encounter between a future daughter-in-law and her prospective father-in-law. Volodya makes Ilana the focus of an elaborate welcome, then later seeks private time with her after her marriage to Alexander. She refuses that request; Volodya responds by insulting her. The recollection, narrated by Alexander years afterward, presents the relationship through both Ilana’s visible attempts to manage Volodya and Alexander’s persistent sense that she joined in a dynamic from which he was excluded.

The First Meeting

Ilana arrives at Volodya’s estate between Binyamina and Zikhron Yaakov with Alexander, a young army major who has brought his intended to meet his father. The visit takes place under the shadow of Volodya’s reputation. He is a wealthy land dealer and iron importer, and stories about his temper and forceful conduct have reached Ilana before the meeting. Alexander’s account therefore presents her as anxious about the reception she may receive. She chooses a bright blouse and a spring skirt, hoping, in the narrator’s telling, to emphasize an air of youthful innocence.

Volodya greets the couple with iced pomegranate juice and leads them on a lengthy tour of the estate. He talks incessantly, showing Ilana the cultivated grounds, including a fountain pool and a rose garden, and gives her flowers when she shows interest in them. His attention is expansive and theatrical: he praises her appearance, adopts an affectionate manner, and makes demands that turn the visit into a performance organized around her. This display is also a demonstration of control. Volodya determines the pace and subject of the encounter, while his son is left with almost no opportunity to speak.

The visit continues through a large meal in the dining room, where the couple are served an elaborate succession of food and drinks. Alexander recalls that refusals or apologies brought out Volodya’s anger. Later, Volodya keeps Ilana occupied with music, poetry, questions about literature, politics, and art, and dancing. She responds readily and good-humoredly, as if trying to please a child. Alexander’s account makes her accommodation central to the scene, but also filters it through his own discomfort: he remembers being silenced, watching his father command the evening, and seeing Ilana respond with laughter.

A Relationship Organized by Volodya’s Attention

Alexander remembers the first visit not only as a meeting between Ilana and her future father-in-law but as an occasion on which Volodya’s attention displaced the couple’s own purpose. They had come so that Volodya could meet Ilana; they had not settled whether to marry, and Alexander says that, if marriage had been discussed, Ilana had spoken while he hesitated. Yet Volodya takes charge of the future as though it were his decision to make. After the visit, he wakes Manfred Zakheim in the middle of the night and instructs him to arrange an apartment in Jerusalem and prepare for a wedding within ninety days.

The wedding does take place three months later, although Volodya forgets to attend. Alexander says that his father has taken a new mistress on a trip to the Norwegian fjords. This contrast complicates the extravagant welcome: Volodya had appeared to lavish attention on Ilana and to direct the couple’s future, but his attendance at their wedding does not match that earlier intensity. His involvement is powerful in the moment, yet erratic and governed by his own pursuits.

Alexander’s account also makes clear that the memory is not emotionally neutral. Writing in Chicago seventeen years after the first meeting, he recalls his own enforced silence and describes the resentment that returns when he imagines how pleased Ilana seemed to be participating in his father’s game. That is Alexander’s interpretation of her response, not an independent account of Ilana’s private feelings. The narrative thus places a limit on what can be concluded about her: her laughter and cooperation are visible in his recollection, while her inward judgment remains unreported.

The Later Invitation and Refusal

A short time after the wedding, while Alexander is away on brigade maneuvers in the Negev, Volodya visits Ilana in Jerusalem. He tells her that he sees a special affinity between them and asks her to spend a night with him. He presents the proposal as a private, romantic excursion: he promises not to touch her and describes listening to her play music and read poetry, walking in the surrounding mountains, and watching sunrise from the YMCA tower. The planned intimacy is framed by him as an exceptional meeting of temperament, in contrast to his son’s supposed reserve.

Ilana refuses. Volodya then turns the exchange into an accusation, calling her a social-climbing deceiver who has trapped Alexander. Her refusal marks a sharp change from the first visit, when she had responded agreeably to his demands. Whatever accommodation characterized that long evening, it does not establish consent to Volodya’s later request. His reaction shows how quickly the attentive host can become hostile when Ilana does not accept the arrangement he proposes. He leaves after insulting her, and the episode leaves their relationship defined by a boundary she asserts and a rejection he answers with contempt.

Alexander’s Retrospective and the Limits of the Record

Alexander links Volodya’s invitation to the couple’s early imaginings about sexual arrangements involving a third person, and wonders whether his father had become part of those fantasies. He also questions whether Ilana had lied to him. The passage supplies these doubts as Alexander’s retrospective speculation; it does not establish that Ilana had an affair with Volodya or that she concealed one. The distinction matters because the relationship is presented through a narrator whose memory of the first meeting remains charged with jealousy, humiliation, and anger.

Taken together, the episodes show a relationship that changes from performative welcome to rejected overture and insult. Volodya first gives Ilana conspicuous attention in his own home, while restricting Alexander’s participation; later, he tries to arrange a private encounter on terms he defines, and turns against her when she refuses. Ilana’s actions, as the narrative records them, move from accommodating his demands during the visit to declining his later proposal. Their connection is therefore brief but consequential in Alexander’s story: it becomes part of his recollection of his father’s domination and a source of suspicion that he cannot resolve from the evidence he recounts.