The Mandelbaum Gate (2 page)

‘I
said, ‘Well, it’s a hot day.” And he replied, ‘Well, it was a hot day two
thousand years ago.”‘

Freddy was glad he had met
the couple, for he was always lonely after his week-ends on the other side. He
pushed his way up the streets among the loitering mystics and beggars whom the
Israelis in general abhorred, being bumped into quite often by the women who
inevitably darted out of the shop doors with their purchases and their
children, without looking first to right or left. He thought he might ask young
Saul Ephraim to recommend him a Hebrew teacher if Miss Vaughan remembered to
bring him back to the hotel for a drink. One ought to learn some modern Hebrew
to get along in this country. Ephraim might take on the job himself, but
Freddy, reflecting that this was highly improbable, was instantly annoyed with
himself for thinking it in the first place. One did not meet many Israelis,
only the officials and so on, but of course one had not much time. The weekly
visits to the other side took up his free days. Dr Ephraim would be thirty-one
or thirty-two. Abdul Ramdez, the life-insurance agent who kept trying, without
success, to sell Freddy a policy, but who was amusing, had undertaken to give
him lessons in Arabic. Ramdez would be in his middle twenties. One had to be
careful about one’s teachers of Hebrew and Arabic; here on the spot they were
all apt to get intense. Ramdez was an Armenian Arab, or so he claimed.

A chanting of children’s
voices came from an upper-storey window as Freddy pushed up the street towards
modernity and his hotel. This upper storey was a school; it was always in full
chant when he passed, for the children of this sect learned their lessons, all
subjects alike, by plaintive rote, singing them out in Hebrew. This always
fascinated him, at the same time as it put him off his stroke, for usually,
when he passed the spot, he was thinking of his thank-you verses. At present
his mind was already on the third stanza of his current piece, so that Joanna
could be suitably and gracefully reminded to get a visa and make sure that she
stated she was coming on a pilgrimage to the Christian shrines.

But he
could not get his rhythm right against the chanting of these children of the
Orient, even after he could hear it no longer and was out among the speedy wide
streets of people and motor traffic in the modern city. All the way back to his
hotel, when he was really too hot to bother and his thoughts were mere
heat-waves, the chant went on at the back of his head, accompanied, as always
on these return journeys, by an assertive counter-chant rising spontaneously
from something indomitable in Freddy; and so, pitting culture against culture,
the metrical precepts of Samuel Taylor Coleridge chanted themselves lovingly
round his brain:

Trochee trips from long to
short;

From long to long in solemn
sort,

Slow Spondee stalks; strong
foot! yet ill able

Ever to come up with Dactyl
trisyllable.

Iambics march from short to
long: —

With a leap and a bound the
swift Anapaests throng;

One syllable long, with one
short at each side,

Amphibrachys hastes with a
stately stride: —

First and last being long,
middle short, Amphimacer

Strikes his thundering
hoofs, like a proud high-bred racer.

Even in
his bath, when he was thinking of other things, Coleridge’s lines continued to
churn in the background — even when they had chased away the Hebrew
plain-chant; and even, although he was scarcely aware of it, when he sat out in
the small green courtyard of the hotel to await Miss Vaughan and Dr Ephraim. He
wanted to be specially agreeable to Miss Vaughan, having put his foot in it
last week on their third or fourth meeting. Freddy hated more than anything
the thought that he had hurt someone’s feelings in a direct encounter. He hoped
she would bring the archaeologist with the lean brown neck. The afternoon was
fading, and he tapped silently with his fingers on the wicker arm of his chair
and gazed up through the lofty trellis at the cooling light.

Trochee trips from long to short;

The waiter brought his
drink and Freddy dwelt for a gay and not indelicate moment on the young
Israeli, and he felt like Horace in the Ode, demanding simple service under his
lattice vine.
Persicos odi, puer….

From where he sat he saw
Miss Vaughan come into the hotel entrance, alone. She moved towards the
staircase but glanced towards the terrace. Freddy rose and raised an arm in a
welcoming way, and she turned and joined him.

‘Dr
Ephraim couldn’t manage as it was rather late and his family were expecting
him. I ought to go and change.’

What
will you drink?’ said Freddy. His first meeting with Miss Vaughan now came back
to him, fused with subsequent meetings here in the green courtyard. He saw them
all with that total perceptivity of his which might have made a poet of him,
given the missing element. His first impression had been of a pleasant English
spinster; she was a teacher of English at a girls’ school; she was on a tour of
the Holy Land; Freddy had discussed with her the dear subject of formal English
lyrical verse; he had, on another occasion, confided in her that he was
compiling an anthology in his spare time, and had before the war published a
volume of his own occasional verses. She had responded in a detached sort of
way, which was what one liked. She was edgy; she wore on her engagement finger
a ring of antique design embedded with a dark-blue stone; but for some reason
Freddy had not felt that the ring referred to an engagement to marry anyone;
such things were not unaccountable in an English spinster; it was probably
somebody killed in the war.

Now,
sitting with her near the same spot as when they had first spoken three weeks
ago, he was filled with a sense of her dangerousness; he was obscurely afraid.
He wished the young archaeologist had come with her.

But he
was obliged to be particularly civil to Miss Vaughan. He fingered the wicker
chair.

With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng …

Last week he had joined
her out here after dinner. The State of Israel had that day sent up its first
guided rocket. He remarked that there seemed to be a lot of rejoicing going on
in the streets, and one of them suggested going out later on to watch the
children dancing. The children danced in the public gardens until late every
night in any case. They fell to talking about politicians and the Bomb.

She had
said, in a lazy casual way — for by this time they were fairly at ease with
each other — ‘Sometimes I think we ought to chuck out the politicians from
world government and put in the Pope, the Chief Rabbi, the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Dalai Lama instead. They couldn’t do worse and they might do
better.’

Freddy
had reflected on this without undue seriousness. ‘There would have to be a
Greek Patriarch as well,’ he said, ‘and then the Buddhists and the Hindus would
want their say. There would be no end to it. But it’s a good idea. I imagine
there would be objections from the Jews to the Chief Rabbi. Most of these Jews
here are unbelievers, so far as I can gather.’

‘Not
quite,’ said Miss Vaughan. ‘I think they believe in a different way from what
you mean. They believe with their blood. Being a Jew isn’t something they
consider in their minds, weigh up, and give assent to as one does in the
Western Christian tradition. Being a Jew is inherent.’

‘Yes, I’m
afraid so.’ Freddy gave a little laugh.

As if
he had not spoken at all, she continued. ‘As a half-Jew myself, I think I
understand how—’

‘Oh, I
didn’t mean to say … I mean … One says things without thinking, you know.’

She
said, ‘You might have said worse.’

Freddy
felt terrible. He groped for the idea that, being a half-Jew, she might be only
half-offended. After all, one might speak in that manner of the Wogs or the
Commies, and everyone knew what one meant.

He now
noticed the Jewishness of her appearance, something dark and intense beyond her
actual shape and colouring. Freddy felt worse. It was a diplomatic as well as a
social error, here in this country. This was the first year of the Eichmann
trial. Freddy felt like a wanted man who had been found hiding in a dark
cupboard. He felt an urge to explain that he was not a mass-butcher and that he
had never desired to become a
Sturmbannführer, Obersturmbannführer,
Superobersturmbannführer.
He said, ‘I like your young guide. How did you
come by him?’

She
said, ‘He’s a friend of a friend of mine, another archaeologist who’s working
on the stuff at Qumran just now.’ Plainly, she was embarrassed by his
embarrassment.

Freddy
clutched at the subject of the Dead Sea scrolls as at a slice of melon in the
Sahara. He said: ‘That must be enormously exciting. I want to visit the place
myself some time soon.’

But she
was occupied with her reaction to Freddy’s distress. She began to speak, with
furious exasperation, about the Israeli, a former Czech, who had been allotted
to her as a guide to the holy places. He had been overbearing. He had been
obstructive. He had taken her on a trip to Nazareth and had wanted her to whizz
through the whole scene in half an hour, whereas she had insisted on spending
the day there. He was a fanatical Christian-hater who had wanted to show her
the cement factories and pipelines of Israel instead of the shrines, and had
been reluctant to drive her to the top of Mount Tabor, the probable scene of
the Transfiguration, and she had not insisted because this in-sufferable man …
It emerged that she herself was a Roman Catholic.

Anxious
about the extremity and urgency of her tone, Freddy looked round for the
waiter. He said to her: ‘Let’s try the white wine.’ He ordered two glasses, and
called after the waiter, ‘But it should be chilled.’ He said to Miss Vaughan, ‘They
are inclined to serve it warm.’

The
waiter appeared with two glasses of local white wine. In them were floating two
chips of ice, rapidly melting from their original cubic form. Freddy and Miss
Vaughan were silent until the waiter had gone. The ice melted entirely in the
hot evening air. Freddy smiled at the two glasses on the table. Eventually,
they even sipped the lukewarm mixture. ‘They simply don’t understand about wine
at most of these hotels,’ Freddy said. Well, it was a relief, at least, that
they could have an English giggle about something.

Freddy now wondered if it
was his long walk through the Orthodox quarter in the afternoon heat that had
put him on edge. He felt decidedly afraid of Miss Vaughan. She fidgeted with
the ring on her engagement finger. She looked very strained. Perhaps she, too,
was feeling the heat. However, he was resolved to be agreeable in view of his
blunder last week.

She
said, ‘Your geraniums are flourishing.’

He had
given her two of his pots of geraniums before leaving for Jordan last week.
They were special geraniums. He had smuggled them across from Joanna’s prize
collection.

He said
‘Good. I was hoping Dr Ephraim would look in. I want to consult him about a
Hebrew teacher.’

‘He had
to return to his wife and family.’

‘Oh
yes, quite.’

‘He
might give you Hebrew lessons himself. They don’t get well paid at the
University here.’

Well, I
was sort of hoping that.’

She
said: ‘Before I go to Jordan we must arrange a meeting.’

‘When
are you going?’ he said.

‘I don’t
know yet.’

It was
a puzzle to him that she had not already gone to Jordan. She kept saying she
was ‘waiting to go to Jordan’. He wondered if she waited for a visa. If they
suspected her Jewish blood she would not get a visa. But, on the other hand, if
she had a certificate of baptism and kept quiet it should be easy.

He saw
that she was pulling at a fraying piece of wicker on the arm of her chair.

Iambics march from short to long …

She
said, ‘I’m glad to have the geraniums. I water them every morning when the post
arrives. It takes my mind off things. I’m waiting for a letter to arrive before
I can go off to Jordan.’

‘If it’s
a question of a visa, perhaps I could help,’ said Freddy.

‘Thank
you, but you can’t help,’ she said.

‘The
Christian shrines over there are far more interesting than here,’ he said. ‘At
least, there are more of them.’

‘I
know,’ she said, ‘I hope to be able to see them soon. In fact, I’m hoping to
get married quite soon to an archaeologist who’s working over there. The one
who’s at the Dead Sea area.’

‘I’m
sure I could help if it’s only a matter of a visa.’

‘I’m
waiting for news from Rome,’ she said. ‘He has been married and is divorced. It’s
a question of whether his marriage can be annulled or whether it can’t be
annulled. I mean annulled by the Church. If it isn’t annulled by the Church
then the marriage is off. There’s a fifty-fifty chance.’