The Mandelbaum Gate (13 page)

‘You
could try the next exercises on page fifty-three,’ Abdul said to scentless Mr
Hamilton. But he smelt again, and suddenly, holding up his index finger, said ‘Oh!’

What’s
the matter?’ said the Englishman, looking up from page fifty-three.

‘I
smell your new suit, the fabric.’

‘No, it’s
an old suit.’ Mr Hamilton opened the jacket and squinted inside the inside
pocket. ‘1934,’ he said. ‘It’s marked 1934, so that means I’ve had it for
twenty-seven years. It’s older than you, Abdul.’

‘It
smells,’ Abdul said, groping for the association of the smell, not remotely
reflecting that he was, in fact, older than the suit.

‘I’ve
had it in moth-balls during the summer. I’ve just got it out as the nights seem
to be getting chilly.’

‘I like
moth-ball scent,’ Abdul said. ‘When I served at the altar in Cairo, the Coptic
priests smelled of moth-balls as they kept moth-balls among their fine
resplendent vestments.’

‘I
thought you belonged to the Armenian Church.’

‘No,
the Coptic Church.’ Abdul did not see any need to explain why, a few weeks ago,
he had given Hamilton a long account of how he had broken with the Moslem faith
to run away with an Armenian girl, to further the wooing of whom he had adopted
Armenian Christianity. He did not see any need to refrain from so enjoyably
muddling up his friend and he continued to talk of the Coptic Church in Egypt: ‘You
see, my father sent me to school in Cairo when he saw that I was too far
advanced for any of the schools in Palestine. Many of my friends were sent to
school in Beirut but I was sent to Cairo, where I was baptized a Christian in
the Coptic Church.’

‘What I
am not sure about —’ said Mr Hamilton. He was flicking through the notebook on
which he had been writing his Arabic exercises for four months since April
last.

It
occurred to Abdul that Hamilton was not well. He had already perceived this
when he had come into the room, but had immediately veiled the idea from his
thoughts, since Hamilton had behaved normally, had said, ‘Well, Abdul, how are
you ?’, had got up, smiled in his usual way and sat down, partly distrustful,
as usual, and partly enchanted. In the meantime Abdul had sat down, too, and
then started to talk about himself, so that the sense of Mr Hamilton’s being
not well had passed from him. Abdul noticed now that the man’s hair was not
combed well, as it usually was. Otherwise, he looked the same.

‘What I’m
uncertain about,’ said Hamilton, flicking through his notebook, ‘is whether I’m
getting anywhere. It took me a month to learn the Arabic characters. By the end
of May I could read and write “The house is small,” “The king is angry with the
doctor” and “Is the bride ready? No!”‘

Abdul
laughed and Hamilton smiled eagerly, as If surprised at the success of what he
had said.

“‘News
about the experiments reached the upright princes yesterday,”‘ said Hamilton,
reading aloud from the textbook. ‘That was last month. Since then I’ve done “Mohammed
(may God pray for him!) was a good man”, “Your speech was delightful but you
did not mention the blood which flowed in the Arabs’ battles” and so on.’ Abdul
laughed again, which Hamilton seemed to appreciate. ‘But I never have occasion
to use phrases like that,’ said Hamilton, putting on a sad air; ‘I ought to
learn some vocabulary and understand what the Arabs around me are saying, and
talk to them, perhaps.’

Abdul
said, ‘The Arabic for the street you learn later, Mr Hamilton. I’m laughing at
these exercises as you read them in English, as you make them sound like poetry
that means much. Read some more.’

Hamilton
said, ‘What does it mean, that phrase “May God pray for him!”? Do the Moslems
ask God to pray? Who does God pray to?’

‘It’s
only a saying,’ Abdul said, ‘of the elderly people. They say “May God pray for
him and save him!” all day, as they speak of their dead relations all the day
long.’

He was
watching the Englishman to see how unwell he was, and in what precise way he
was afflicted. Hamilton read another exercise: ‘“The students of Damascus
University have arrived in Cairo for an important meeting with their Egyptian
brethren.” Of course,’ he said, ‘it isn’t true to say I’ve made no progress,
but I can’t say that I’m learning enough to mix with ordinary Arabs. I don’t
want to master the language like a scholar, I only want to he able to make
myself understood while I’m out here, during the next few years. Now I managed
to pick up enough Hungarian to get along with when I was posted to Hungary, and
I did that by means of conversational lessons rather than schoolroom stuff, and
I’m wondering if our best plan isn’t to adopt that method, and —’

‘You
wish to spy among the Arabs of Israel to report their pro-Israel activities in
Jordan,’ stated Abdul, ‘or else you report them to the Israelis for anti-Israel
talk.’

Hamilton
said, ‘Good gracious me!’

Abdul
said, ‘I don’t think you are a spy.’

‘I
should hope not,’ the man replied.

‘Then
you shouldn’t entertain suspicions of me.’

‘Why,
Abdul! Why, of course I simply never —’

‘I’m
difficult for you to understand,’ Abdul said. ‘And we should be turning to page
fifty-four.’

Hamilton
translated, ‘Despite what the unbelievers say, the righteous are under the
protection of Allah.’

‘It’s
boring,’ Abdul said. ‘We should make our own exercises, and you could talk
better with the Arabs in the street.’

‘Entirely
what I’ve been thinking,’ said Hamilton. He looked so unwell that Abdul wanted
to give him some kindness or make him laugh as one would do a sick child.

‘Let us
try, for the next lesson, before we come on to particles and conjunctions, some
exercises with new words in them. Bad words.’

This
sort of suggestion usually cheered Hamilton up although he always refused to
let Abdul go further than that. Once, Hamilton had said, ‘Where did you learn
English?’

‘Some
from my father, some from my mother, but most from a beautiful English
schoolmistress that I had when I was fifteen. Her father was a colonel in the
British army.’

Mr
Hamilton had said, ‘Did she plant English wild-flower seeds in the countryside,
by any chance?’

‘I don’t
know,’ Abdul said. ‘But I planted Arab wild-flower seeds in her. She was my
first woman.’

Hamilton
had said, ‘Now, now, now,’ but nebulously smiling meanwhile, as if at some
reflection of his own which Abdul could not share. Hamilton had then seemed to
realize with sudden alarm that Abdul’s words had been uttered in the presence
of the geraniums, for he looked at them in a guilty way and said, ‘I ought not
really to permit such things to be said about an English girl.’ But Hamilton
was not making any big issue out of it and seemed to be cheered up, on the
whole.

‘Bad
words,’ Abdul now said. Hamilton smiled faintly. Plainly, he was not well.
Abdul was neither glad nor sorry, partly because he had become unaccustomed to
having any emotions during the hours of daylight. For that, he needed his
company of friends at Acre, and some dancing with a little howling maybe, with
the long chants going on in the background.

In the
meantime he said with a giggle. ‘Bad words next week. You could throw away your
grammar book if it bores you.’

‘I don’t
want bad words,’ said Hamilton, looking round the room in a disorganized way. ‘What
I must do, obviously, is master a larger vocabulary.’

‘True,’
said Abdul. ‘Take a set of conversational sentences, then, like for instance, “I
am an honest man, but you are a deceiver.” “Why do you call me a deceiver ?” “Because
you have promised me to take out a life-insurance policy through my father’s
agency, and you have said to your English friends in Jordan that you do not
intend to do so.” “How do you know of this?” “Because the servants of your
English friends are spies for my father.” Of course,’ Abdul said, ‘this group
of sentences would be better expressed in conversational Arabic, but you might
as well try to put them together in the formal style.’

Hamilton
said, ‘I have not promised to take out any life-insurance policy.’ But his
voice was tired.

‘My
father,’ said Abdul, ‘sends messages to me at risk to his life to persevere
with you about the policy. So I fulfil a pious duty to my father, and finish. I
do not care personally about insurance policies, they’re crazy things.’

Hamilton’s
head rested on the back of his chair, since he was slumped low in it this
afternoon, not, as usual, sitting alertly. He let his head rest back, as if
about to close his eyes which, however, remained half-open, focused on Abdul
between their lids.

Abdul
sat in silence, experiencing the torpor and boredom of afternoon life, much as
he had very often done in the presence of his elders during his childhood. It
seemed reasonable, after a while, to suppose that Mr Hamilton had fallen into a
kind of doze, for although his eyes were not entirely closed, his breathing
became more rhythmical and loud, as one in sleep. Abdul’s eyes slid to the
round table beside him, where Hamilton had been writing letters. Two were
sealed in envelopes, ready stamped for posting, they lay one on top of another
at an angle, the top envelope concealing the address on the lower. The top
envelope was addressed to Professor M. S. Dexter, All Souls College, Oxford,
England. Beside these sealed envelopes lay some pages of unfinished letters
which Abdul had already noticed in a contributory way to his sense of Hamilton’s
being out of sorts; usually Hamilton was a man who finished doing one thing
before starting another.

The man
was now nearly asleep. Abdul sat in a deliberate, breath-held stillness,
looking at his Englishman. He found himself wondering if Hamilton was going to
die, tomorrow or next week, or now, his soul wafting away from him, preserved
in a faint moth-ball atmosphere. Abdul turned his head silently so that he could
read, by squinting obliquely, the nearest of the three unfinished pages on the
table, evidently a continuation on the back of the first sheet.

have just written to a friend at All Souls, a Fellow,
to tell him I’ve discovered a rhyme for ‘Capricorn’. My friend, Sam Dexter,
probably knows more about rhyme than anyone in the country, although of course,
his subject’s Old French. Goodness knows what he’ll think of this rhyme for ‘Capricorn’
— I saw it in an American picture magazine, in an advertisement for a
breakfast food called ‘Apricorn’. (I understand Apricorn is, as its name
implies, a kind of packed cereal food flavoured, by some process, with apricot
essence). Whether Dexter will allow ‘Apricorn’ as a word at all, I very much
doubt.

But you see, dearest Joanna, I must keep my mind
occupied with something. To be suddenly confronted with a doctor’s order of two
week’s rest is not, in itself, conducive to peace of mind. As you say, I could
have gone to Greece. But I am unused to moving about without previous plans. I
could think of nothing to do on the spur of the moment but wait here. Besides,
there is always a chance that if any news of Miss Vaughan should reach us I may
be of some assistance. Until the mystery of her disappearance has been cleared
up, one is bound to experience some anxiety, merely from having recently been
acquainted with her, however little actual connexion one has had with the
person. The newspapers seem to have dropped it in the last few days, I expect
by special compliance with the investigating authorities and our Embassy in
Amman — I have had no further trouble from the reporters, as I trust you have
not. I expect at least some news will emerge before long. One must hope for the
best but it is impossible not to fear the worst.

I have been making every attempt to regain my powers
of concentration even to the extent of attempting (in vain, alas!) a verse or
two in terza rima to say some pleasant things to you, dearest Joanna, who have
been so good since my stupid collapse. To lose one’s entire memory, even for a
couple of days, is disconcerting to reflect upon
afterwards.
One’s
confidence is greatly undermined. I still have no recollections of how those
two days passed. I am advised against mental effort for the time being but of course,
it is impossible to resist attempting to solve the mystery. I must have slept —
I must have shaved, and so on. When I got to the hotel I felt tired and hot as
usual after my walk from the Mandelbaum Gate on Sunday afternoons. But it was
Tuesday, and they had been looking for me, I am convinced that I had an attack
of sunstroke and it must have affected my memory. But where did I sleep? Where
is Barbara Vaughan? Please, by the way, thank Matt for his note. But I do not
think I would wish to consult the psychiatrist although I am sure, as Matt
says, he is brilliant. Psychiatry is too abstract for me to take up at my age,
I’m afraid. When I go to a doctor I like to come away with a bottle of medicine
or some pills, or a prescription to be made up. However, the suggestion has…

The
letter had been left off half-way down the second page. Abdul looked over to
Hamilton, who had now fully closed his eyes in sleep. He began to read again,
carefully, the first part of the letter only — ‘Apricorn’ … ‘Capricorn’….
He dwelt on the glamour of the name ‘All Souls’ which he knew to be that of an
Oxford college. For he was less interested in the rest of the letter and the
evident personal crisis that had occurred to Hamilton than he was fascinated by
the entire vision of that state of heart in which one wrote to a Fellow of All
Souls about a rhyme for Capricorn. It could not result in any large benefit to
Hamilton or his friends, nor could this piece of information damage Hamilton’s
enemies. It was disinterested and therefore beautiful, even if it was useless
to the immediate world. And this was something Abdul could never make his
middle-class Arab acquaintance understand — how it was possible to do things
for their own sake, not only possible but sometimes necessary for the
affirmation of one’s personal identity. The ideal reposed in their religion,
but somewhere in the long trail of Islam, the knack of disinterestedness had
been lost, and with it a large portion of the joy of life, His father would
never accept that Hamilton’s activities were as meaningless as they looked.
What is his motive? Is it political? Why does he write those verses to send to
the Cartwright house? Are they in code? Why does he spend so much time in
Jordan? Have you found out why he is learning Arabic? Have you read any of his
private correspondence? Has he agreed to take out a policy yet, will he come to
see me and complete the form? Why does he want to know street Arabic? Why does
he stay on at a hotel, this Hamilton? This Hamilton, why does he walk
everywhere instead of taking a taxi? There must be a reason, everything means
something. Is it political? Does he practise a vice? But me, Abdul thought — if
my father, cousins, uncles, had any knowledge about me, it would be the same
thing. Have you joined the nationalists then? Are you in with the Sufis? Have
you turned in with the Jews, after all, like the Sheik of the Negev? What do
you do at Acre? What have you done, did you do, are doing, might, will do at
Acre with those youths of mixed blood, mixed sexes, those young Jewesses, those
Arabs, those Jews, those Arab girls, those Yemenites, Syrians, those
Israelites, Samaritans, those boys, girls, boys…. Are you a nationalist?