The Mandelbaum Gate (11 page)

‘Are
you sure?’ Joanna said.

‘Well,
she’s been talking about it. Young Ramdez hears everything about everyone,’
Freddy said. ‘It’s part of his business.’

‘If
young Ramdez knows, then old Ramdez will know,’ Matt said. ‘And what he knows
the government gets to know. Tell her not to come.’

They
moved indoors since it had fallen dark. At dinner, Joanna said to Freddy, ‘You
could make difficulties in Israel for young Ramdez, couldn’t you, if he made
difficulties for your Miss Vaughan?’

‘Joanna!’
said Matt.

‘Well,
I was only thinking in symbols. What would the Israelis do to him, Freddy, if
they knew he spied for the Jordanians? Shoot him? Put him in prison?’

‘Mislead
him,’ Freddy said.

‘You
could threaten him,’ Joanna said.

‘Joanna!’
said Matt.

‘I’m
thinking in symbols. I’m thinking of Freddy’s poor Miss Vaughan.’

‘She
isn’t really, you know,
my
Miss Vaughan,’ Freddy said. ‘She’s only —’

‘Now
Freddy, you know you’re involved whether you like it or —’

‘Joanna!’
said Matt. ‘Stop teasing Freddy.’

‘A very
intense person,’ Freddy said. ‘Who? Me or Miss—?’

‘Joanna!’

…
at my friends the Cartwrights.
Then after dinner this evening we had some amusement from Joanna Cartwright’s
puppet theatre. (Do you recall, dearest Ma, that house in Lewes we used to
visit, where they had some very grand puppets? — Joanna’s puppets are not quite
so grand.) She is extremely agile at managing their movements. There is also an
extraordinary series of gramophone records which, by clever timing, accompany
the puppets’ movements perfectly. They seem to speak.

By the way. earlier in the evening we were discussing
Miss Vaughan about whom I have already told you — she is staying at my hotel.
She may be coming over to Jordan, but much depends on whether we can assist her
to resolve some difficulties that have arisen over her entry into the country.
I think this will interest you, dearest Ma, since you enquire in your letter
about ‘a teacher at Miss Rick-ward’s school in Gloucestershire, very near Elsie’s’.
— Yes, that is Miss Vaughan! — Remember you asked me this question before.
Benny will remember, I’m sure. I am glad to hear Elsie brought Miss Rickward to
see you. She is decidedly the same Miss Rickward who is a close friend of Miss
Vaughan out here. You were right in assuming that Miss Vaughan’s fiancé is an
archaeologist who is working at present in the Dead Sea area where the Scrolls
were discovered. Apparently there is some hitch about the proposed marriage,
since he is divorced and she is R.C. Of course, it is quite absurd, in my
opinion, when a couple of grown-up people …

Freddy
had filled most of the pages he had to fill, and it was time for bed.

At eleven o’clock on
Saturday morning Freddy took Joanna and Matt to Alexandros’s shop to show them
the icon. Joanna, sitting at the back of the car with quantities of shopping,
waved to everyone whom she recognized, including Joe Ramdez, who stood in the
street outside his business premises, wearing a red fez, talking to another
Arab.

‘He
hasn’t set off for Amman yet,’ Freddy said.

‘They’re
going to Amman in the symbolic sense,’ said Matt.

‘He’s
waiting to pounce on Miss Vaughan,’ Joanna said, for the subject of Miss
Vaughan and her difficulties had by now taken a fantastic turn among them, from
so much talking it over. First thing in the morning Joanna had declared she had
thought about Miss Vaughan far into the night. She regretted talking to Ramdez
about Miss Vaughan’s impending visit. But she was used to dealing with other
people’s predicaments, even when she had helped to induce them, and in fact
could not easily adapt herself to the idea that anyone outside her immediate
acquaintance had no problems to be sorted out. Her imagination clung to the
intricate danger attached to Miss Vaughan’s story, and she had managed, in the
course of the morning, by batting the shuttlecock of Miss Vaughan’s name back
and forth between herself and the two men, to infect even them with a kind of
irrational excitement over the ways and means by which Miss Vaughan could be
trapped by her Jewish blood, could be arrested as an Israeli spy far beyond the
assistance of the British Foreign Office, on her arrival in Jordan.

Freddy
had begun to feel a little frightened. He certainly did not want to be involved
in an international incident. And for Miss Vaughan’s own sake, he really must,
he had decided, somehow prevent her from visiting Jordan. He had a strange
difficulty now, in remembering what she looked like; he had in his mind only
the outline of a frail, sharp, nervy, dark woman, fearfully indiscreet.

Matt
himself said to Freddy, as they drove into the Old City:

‘Can’t
you do something at the office to prevent her from coming over — take away her
passport, or something?’

‘Oh,
no,’ Freddy said. ‘Anyway, she’s nothing to do with us. ‘He did not like the
sound of his words as they were the sort of words that always, to the outsider,
suggested Pontius Pilate washing his hands of a potential source of
embarrassment; none the less, Freddy felt sympathy for Pontius Pilate, a government
officer, and for all those subordinates of Pilate who, like himself, no doubt,
had been officially dim, dutiful, and absolutely against intervention between
individuals and their doom. Freddy said, ‘If she gets into trouble we can make
a protest afterwards.’ His reflections had been unusual in the form they had
taken, and he felt they were quite absurd; it was only because Matt had now
parked the car and they were emerging from it to face the narrow Via Dolorosa
within sight of the Ecce Homo Arch, the place from where, by erroneous
tradition, Pontius Pilate had addressed the crowd. The real Judgement Palace of
Pilate had newly been excavated, and was some yards distant from the Via
Dolorosa, and some feet deeper. Miss Vaughan herself, of course, was the sort
of person who somehow induced one to think in terms of religion if one thought
about her at all.

Most of
the way to Alexandros’s shop Joanna kept referring with genuine concern to Miss
Vaughan’s predicament, hushing her voice considerably in due acknowledgement
that any mention of Jewish blood was inflammatory in these parts. The Arabs generally,
when they were obliged to talk about Jews, did not permit themselves to utter
the word Jew; instead, they quaintly spoke of ‘ex-Jews’ and of Israel as ‘Israel,
so-called’.

Matt
said, ‘It could happen by accident,’ in reply to Joanna’s inquiry as to what
means of execution was used against Israeli spies.

‘It
could happen by accident.’ Freddy believed the liquidation of spies and
suspects had nearly always taken place, as it were, by accident, unless there
was some political reason for holding a trial. And now Freddy was grateful for
the company of his friends. Joanna’s serious sense of Miss Vaughan’s impending
danger and Matt’s urgent appeals to Freddy as to what should be done, gave him
a sense of being with responsible people, whose safe conduct he could rely on.
For it had begun to gnaw at Freddy’s mind that, for all he knew, Miss Vaughan
might be an Israeli spy; he knew nothing of Miss Vaughan’s identity but what
she had told him. Of course, he could not mention this suspicion to the
Cartwrights; he would have to make official inquiries first.

At
Alexandros’s shop, the first person Freddy saw was Barbara Vaughan. She said, ‘Oh,
hallo, Mr Hamilton.’ He stared at her stupidly, as if at a complete stranger.
Then, just as she began to look puzzled Freddy pulled himself together and
said, ‘Miss Vaughan! What are you doing here?’

‘I’m
looking at some stuff,’ she said. The crib-figures, which Alexandros had evidently
failed to sell to his customer of yesterday, were spread about on the glass
top of a display cabinet. Alexandros said, ‘This lady likes the crib. She knows
it’s good. Mr Hamilton, tell your friend to take this crib and not let it go.’
And he said to Barbara Vaughan, ‘It is for the family — they will say in the
future, “This crib was when the Mama went to the Holy Land,” and that is why
you should take it.’

Barbara
Vaughan laughed. Joanna had murmured to Freddy, ‘Is that her?’ and Freddy had
nodded. He introduced Miss Vaughan to the Cartwrights. She looked plumper than
the image he had held in his mind, and it was part of the unexpectedness of the
encounter that he noticed she spoke in a natural tone pitch and moved without
furtiveness or strain.

Freddy
had recovered his senses so far as to remember what he had brought the
Cartwrights here for. They, in their well-mannered way, gave no indication that
Miss Vaughan had been the subject of their speculations all morning and most of
the night before. Everyone looked at, and admired, the icon. Barbara Vaughan
gave out, as a guess, that it was done in the early sixteenth century, not
earlier, because the Madonna was not done full length. She thought it unlikely
that any departure from the formal Byzantine mode, such as this half-figure
depiction of the Madonna, would have occurred at an earlier date.

Plainly,
the jeopardized Miss Vaughan they had been discussing was a different person
from the Miss Vaughan who stood, pointing out, in an ordinary English way, her
judgement of the date of a painting, and who then listened with untroubled interest
while Alexandros debated the question, citing a few rare icons of an earlier
date that had passed through his hands.

In the
end, Miss Vaughan declined the crib, but bought an antique silver fish on a
chain, which she put round her neck there and then. Joanna, who had immediately
adapted herself to the real Miss Vaughan, expressed admiration. Matt also added
some words of approval. Alexandros explained that the fish, to which three
small curious coins were attached, was of Turkish origin. ‘It’s a Christian
symbol,’ said Miss Vaughan. ‘That is correct,’ Alexandros said, ‘and the coins
are Turkish charms, attached by the Turkish convert in case Christianity should
not be true. He was fully covered, as they say in regard to policies for the
insurance of life.’

They
left the shop in a united wavelet of amusement, and Freddy said immediately to
Miss Vaughan, ‘When did you come?’

‘Yesterday,’
she said.

‘How
did you come?’

‘Through
the Mandelbaum Gate.’

‘Any
difficulty? Speak low.’

‘No. I’ve
got an extra passport, you know, that doesn’t show the Israeli visa. And my
baptismal certificate. A guard came and met me and said, “Welcome to Jordan!”‘

‘Did
they ask any questions? Speak low.’

‘Yes,
they asked where I’d come from. It was awfully funny, because they could see
perfectly well where I’d come from. But as long as you don’t mention Israel, it’s
all right. The formal answer in my case is “From England”, and that’s what I
said. Then they asked what I’d come for. I said, a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
They had a look at my passport and said, “Enjoy your visit”. That was all.’

‘Well,
well,’ said Freddy.

‘Jolly
good,’ said Matt.

‘Where
are you staying?’ Joanna said. They had started winding up the narrow crowded
street, Joanna walking ahead with Barbara and the two men more or less behind
them.

‘The
guest-house at St Helena’s Convent. It’s quite comfortable.’

‘You’ll
be safe there,’ Joanna said.

‘Oh
goodness, yes. I’m the safe type.’

Joanna
laughed, and Matt, who had taken both women by the arm to guide them through
the crowds, laughed too. The Cartwrights responded to any excuse for laughter.
Freddy felt very relieved. The whole question of Miss Vaughan was suddenly
normal, as if it had never been otherwise.

They
took her home to lunch, treating her as rather more than a new acquaintance,
not only because she was Freddy’s friend, but because one always did, in
foreign parts, become friendly with one’s fellow-countrymen more quickly than
one did at home.

They had coffee brought
out into the garden after lunch. As swiftly as water finds its own level, they
had already formed a small island of mutual Englishness; their intimacy had
ripened under the alien sun to the extent that the two women were addressing
each other by their first names; and when Joanna said to Barbara Vaughan, ‘I
expect you’re looking forward to seeing your fiancé again?’ it was possible for
Barbara to reply in a confiding manner which, at home, ought to have taken some
years to mature: ‘Well, d’you know, I don’t at all want to see him. I’ve been
waiting and waiting to hear about an annulment’ verdict from Rome — for as a
Catholic I can’t marry him unless his previous marriage is annulled. Then I’ve
been in a state of conflict for weeks, whether or not to come over to Jordan
and see him. One way and another, my emotions are exhausted. I simply don’t
feel anything for him any more. In fact, I’ve gone off him.’

‘It’s
perfectly understandable in the circumstances,’ Joanna said in her practised
way, ‘that you should go numb. But it’s only temporary. Your feelings will come
back.’

Freddy
found himself hoping not. This Miss Vaughan who claimed so emphatically to have
gone off her fiancé was decidedly more agreeable and relaxed than the febrile
Miss Vaughan in love.