The Mandelbaum Gate (29 page)

She did
not pursue the question, but inquired how things were going.

He
said, ‘Fine. But I don’t think you’ll get your divorce.’

She
said, ‘I’m not trying to get a divorce, I’m not even married. It’s you who are
divorced and you are trying to get the Church to recognize it by annulling the
marriage, Harry dear.’

‘Yes,
that’s what I mean. It’s you that wants it, that’s what I mean.’

She
said, ‘I’m going to marry you anyway.’

He
said, ‘I know.’

She
said, ‘How do you know?’

He
said, ‘Well, I just haven’t any doubt about it. It’s all on the cards.’

She
started to laugh, but stopped as soon as possible because of the expense by
long-distance telephone. It was so much part of his charm that he was very
innocent of chivalrous attitudes, and also, she thought it funny that he had
reached this conclusion by ordinary deduction while she, delicate probing
instrument that she was, had taken a year to settle on the fact that she would
marry him anyway. She said, ‘The only point at issue is whether we can get
married by the Church or not, that’s to say, whether I’m going to have peace of
mind for the rest of my life or not.’

He
said, ‘I know. That’s what I’m here for. I went along at nine this morning and I’ve
got another appointment for tomorrow.’

‘Along
where?’

‘To see
the officials, they’re all high-up priests, at the Congregation of the Rota.
It’s all supposed to be secret, I had to give a promise of secrecy about the
proceedings. But they were very civil. “If you please, Signor”, and “Yes,
Signor”. They asked a lot of questions. I was there for four hours, then a
break, then two hours, and I’ve got to go tomorrow.’

‘I
think you’re a hero.’

‘Oh, it’s
all right. This priest I’m dining with says there isn’t a hope. He’s got
nothing to do with it, of course, only he’s a Belgian staying at this hotel, and
I’ve been telling him the case. He says there’s always a long delay unless the
divorced party was a Catholic married in another Church. That’s the only
occasion when it’s easy.’

She
said, ‘I know.’

He
said, ‘Did you get a message from me through Fonteyn at the American Embassy in
Amman?’

She
said, ‘Yes, but I’m going on to Jordan next week. I’m going to finish the
pilgrimage’

He
said, ‘I don’t think you should. Something might blow up and you might find
yourself in trouble.’

She
said, ‘Not with a British passport’; and she said, ‘I went to the Eichmann
trial today. Michael’s here, and —’

He
said, ‘Michael who?’

She
said, ‘My cousin Michael. He’s here as a consultant on the Eichmann trial. It
made me feel rather sick. It’s more appalling than you’d think from the papers.’

‘It
makes everyone sick. Why don’t you go home to England?’

‘I’ve
given up my job. I’ll tell you about it when I see you, maybe in Jordan.’

‘I’ll
be here for two or three weeks. I’ve got some manuscript business to see to
besides this game at the Rota.’

‘Well,
I’m going to Jordan, anyway. I feel a terrible need to do something positive,
and if I’m going on a pilgrimage, I’m going on a pilgrimage, that’s all.’

‘I
understand,’ he said, ‘only take care of yourself, dear girl.’

‘I’ll
write to you tonight,’ she said.

Saul
Ephraim’s friend, the young rabbi, said, ‘If she’s going on a pilgrimage, she’s
going on a pilgrimage,’ and shrugged, smiling. She smiled back. The woman
reporter’s hand rested on a notebook that lay on the broad wicker arm of her
chair. She said to Michael, Will you see something of our country? Israel is
for a Jew also the Holy Land, not only for your Catholic cousin.’

It
passed through Barbara’s mind that this woman might put something about herself
in the report she was going to write about Michael. She did not want to be
reported in the Israeli newspaper as Aaronson’s convert cousin who was about to
continue her pilgrimage in Jordan, but she was too much afraid of the woman’s
irony to mention this thought, and felt certain that any plea for discretion
would be distorted to mean that she was denying her Jewish relations. Instead,
she asked the rabbi about his work in archaeology, and they talked of Harry,
and the rabbi said he had got much private information from Harry about the
latest discoveries at Qumran; all the men on the spot, he said, were against
the conditions of keeping the Jewish scholars out of it, but they were forced
to comply.

The
woman reporter departed and they went to eat. Barbara walked along with Saul
Ephraim, and said, ‘I hope that reporter won’t mention me in connexion with
Michael. There’s no point in drawing attention to oneself.’

‘Why
should she mention you?’ Saul said. ‘Your cousin is the one she’s interested
in, he’s the legal expert, and they make some. thing of his visit in the paper
in connexion with the trial. But who are you, Miss Vaughan?’

Barbara
was silent. She had always found Saul Ephraim to be friendly and confiding, but
there was now a touch of quick-fire resentment in his tone and words. She could
not find the cause of it, and in the newly bright morning at the Potter’s
Field, remembering what Saul had said, she rested in that question, as she
knew one must from time to time.

She was
getting hungry as the noises of the morning clattered in the house below; she
could hear evidence of the chickens being fed in the old monk’s house at the
other end of the yard. She remembered the names of the various sorts of food
on the menu the last night she had spent in Israel with Michael and Saul Ephraim.
Since her arrival in Jordan less than two days ago she had eaten very little,
largely because of the heat and the exhaustion of the preceding days. Her only
square meal had been lunch on Saturday at the Cartwrights, those desperately
well-meaning friends of Freddy Hamilton. She felt very hungry and wondered if
they would be offered anything to eat before departing from this hideout.
Philaphel, Chamous, Eggplant in Sesame-seed, Sanich, Kebab, Pila, Tchina: the
names had been spelt in Roman characters beside the Hebrew on the menu of the
last meal she had eaten in Israel, with Saul Ephraim and Michael. Michael was
to leave the next day, by night flight. She left before him; he had accompanied
her, with Saul, as far as the Israeli customs shed at the Mandelbaum Gate.
Saul said to her, Touch the Wailing Wall on my behalf, and pray. When we have
cause for grief, all the old people among us, and many of the young, grieve
still more that we are separated from our Wall of Lamentation.’ She had been to
touch the Wailing Wall on Saturday morning, alone. The nuns in the convent had
been surprised when she asked to be directed there; they had said that the
guides were not often requested to take pilgrims to this spot, but it was a
holy place of the Jews and very ancient, and they would send a guide with her
who would show her the Wall and the Temple area as well. Barbara declined a
guide, and she said she would see everything properly next week. She had walked
round the Old City, alone, marking her route by a tourist map she had obtained
from a travel agent, Ramdez, recommended by various Catholic organizations in
England as well as by the convent nuns here, as specializing in the provision
of guides who understood the Christian shrines. A woman at the Ramdez office had
given her the map, and she had wandered round alone, planning a more detailed
tour of the city; she had touched the Wailing Wall for Saul Ephraim and prayed,
but unobtrusively, since she was watched by numerous loafing Arabs, in various
stages of under-nourishment and deformity, who slowly sidled up, apparently to
befriend her; she had been at first astonished that their attitude was not at
all hostile, considering their plight; then she had felt very nervous. So she
had wandered up the Via Dolorosa until she had come to Alexandros’s shop, and
there had been found by Freddy, in the process of buying a silver fish on a
chain … by Freddy and the Cartwrights, and had been taken home by them, and
entertained, and finally been involved in that absurd discussion in the garden.
The change in Freddy, she thought, occurred there in the garden, where that
clump of wild flowers, carefully tended wild flowers, frequently watered wild
flowers … she couldn’t remember what they had been exactly but she had
recognized them at the time; silvery dimpled leaves,
Umbilicus
rupestris,
Navelwort; spiky pink flowers, Epilobium
angustifolium
of the
Willow-herb family…. Freddy said, ‘Jewish blood or Gentile blood, the point
is it’s hers.’ That was unexpected. Barbara had thought she had recognized his
type, and knew him through and through; but no. And the Cartwrights, who had
known him far longer, were decidedly taken aback. ‘Your trouble,’ Freddy had
said to them, ‘is this. You blow neither cold nor hot. How does it go, Miss
Vaughan? — Neither hot nor cold. You’re lukewarm. Lukewarm, and I will vomit
thee out of my mouth.’ It had been an embarrassing moment, exhilarating moment,
an interesting … Barbara closed her eyes against the glare of the risen sun
beating its rays through the window. I’d better get up now and see what’s going
on, she thought. Freddy’s trouble was obviously his overbearing mother. It was
truly exhilarating to think of his tearing up all those letters and putting
them down Alexandros’s lavatory, it made one’s pulse beat cheers for Freddy.
His mother, like Ricky. Only Ricky had not got away with much from her, not for
long, Ricky hadn’t. Freddy had been weak for too long. ‘Crushed,’ Ruth Gardnor
had said, crossing her long brown legs under the open beach-robe at Tiberias on
the shores of Galilee. ‘Poor Freddy has let himself be crushed by her.’ She
might, herself, have been crushed by Ricky, If she had not had so much of her
stubborn, hard-riding father in her. Ricky was altogether too masculine and too
feminine; both and neither. Poor Ricky would have had her letter by now.
Barbara opened her eyes and moved to rise from the camp-bed….

She
woke, blinking in the sunlight, upon the opening of the attic door and moved to
rise from the bed. A young woman, a blue-eyed, brown-skinned Israeli, came in.
No, a blue-eyed Arab woman, dressed in a blue shirt and dark skirt, like a
lithe Israeli. She was carrying, over her arms, some cloth that looked like the
black-out curtains of war-time England. ‘What’s the time?’ Barbara said,
feeling down into the pocket of her dressing-gown for her watch, and realizing,
then, that the young woman was Suzi Ramdez.

Suzi
dumped the black stuff and sat down on the horse-hair arm-chair. ‘Ten minutes
past ten o’clock. We arrive at the Holy Sepulchre at eleven for the Mass. That’s
first stop. Have you slept good? It’s a beautiful day, Barbara. I call you Kyra
for the rest of the trip. Kyra is my servant. I have sent her to far away on
request from Alexandros. In Jerusalem everyone knows Kyra, but we will not
remain long in Jerusalem. I do this by arrangement with Alexandros because I am
the secret lover of Alexandros. Alexandros is beautiful. My father would kill
me to know what we do, but Alexandros would prevent him. Do you bring news of
my brother Abdul? You must wear these black clothes. I laugh to think of this,
like playing children again. You are my Arab servantwoman and you must be deaf
and dumb so you do not understand Arabic when addressed to you by Arabs. Kyra
is not deaf and dumb, but I say to any friend that speaks to you, stand back,
she has a sick throat and chest. I shall be always by your side. Alexandros has
given all this instruction, to be at your side. So don’t speak. What is the
news from my brother? Are you the lover of Freddy? He is quite a great beauty,
a real man. I read many English books, German and Italian also, poetry
particular in original language. Alexandros has told my mother I am the most
intelligent woman in the kingdom of Jordan; he does not say to my mother the
best lover, believe me. I am too proud to marry a man of fine family but no
education. Freddy has said to tell you we are under starter’s orders: what is
starter’s orders?’

‘A
horse-racing term,’ Barbara said. ‘He means —’

‘Yes,
true, I guess the meaning, we better hurry up.’

‘I’m
only half-awake,’ said Barbara, getting off the bed and tentatively picking at
the black garments she was to wear. ‘But I’ll thank you properly when I wake up
properly.’

‘You
are to be a deaf-mute anyway,’ Suzi said. ‘So we talk only in private, in the
car, where your lips are hid by the thick veil. You must be like a servant to
me always, you keep by me like you are humble. I hope your God Jesus is going
to be sincerely grateful for all this business you make for him. We pack your
silken dressing-gown in the bag and you put all of your clothes off first. It
is right to be an Arab woman from the body outwards. This next to your skin is
from Kyra’s box, almost new from the shop but these two garments, the robe and
the veil, are dusty like for Kyra. Myself, I would not wear those black,
old-fashioned clothes If I had a million pounds for it, but you are a woman of
great principle and determination like Alexandros has informed me at our
meeting in the night.’

Barbara
dressed in the black garments, which were bulky but not as heavy as they
seemed. ‘How can I see through the black veil?’ she said.

‘In the
light, the veil will be no more difficult than sun-glasses, you will discover.’