The Mandelbaum Gate (46 page)

Barbara
was feeling healthier and fuller. She said, The fatter I get, the more the thought
of crossing the border frightens me. Probably because there’s more life to lose
in a fat body than a thin one.

‘You
talk so silly. Abdul doesn’t get caught never.’

That
day on the return to the small room in the village near Bethany where they had spent
the previous night, and were again to stay, they passed the steep turning off
the high road where the Tomb of Lazarus stood open-mouthed by the roadside.
They had already visited the place, but Barbara said, ‘Let’s stop again for a
moment.’

She
followed Suzi down the rocky path, towards the entrance to the tomb, where two
or three Europeans were gathered, and was meanwhile watching a laughing young
Arab boy; he was trying to sell something to an American couple who were taking
an interest in him. He was offering a simple net sling, and kept repeating, ‘The
same that David killed Goli-att. Made like the same.’ He put a stone in the
sling and whizzed it beautifully, far into the air and out across the rooftops.
At the passing sound of this rapid-flung object, another woman turned to see
what it was. The woman was Ricky. Barbara was less surprised than she might
have been, and now realized that she had been expecting, at the back of her
mind, to see her, and had been looking out for her across the country as she
rode with Suzi; she had even been watching for Ricky on the scrub plains,
amongst the shaggy Bedouin and the lean, quivering camels, so obscure had been
her watchfulness.

Barbara
had been following Suzi to the tomb with automatic steps and now found that she
had disappeared. Ricky glanced towards Barbara only as part of the passing
scene. Barbara, behind her veil, her lips shut tight against conversation,
looked about her and, a short way behind, saw Suzi’s head protrude and her eyes
beckon from a low house doorway. Barbara went fairly slowly towards the door,
stooped, and entered. There, Suzi was handing out money to a large dark woman
and a child of tough honey-coloured skin and flaxen hair, one of those chance
relics of the late Occupation. Suzi whispered, ‘I saw her in time. She must be
in the car with those Americans, I think she still looks for you.’

Eventually,
the small party left and drove away. Barbara, feeling sick, went and peered
down to the musty tomb, descended a few of the steps, breathed the emptiness of
earth, but did not follow Suzi, who always thought this particular tomb was fun
to go right down into. She liked to frighten herself, she said.

This
was the last time Barbara ever saw Ricky. It was the only danger-point of their
journey. The police did not trouble them. Tourists and the population passed
them on the road, in cars, and occasionally a handsome farming Arab, tall with
billowing robes, paced along at the side of the road, his eyes fixed, even by
daylight, on the stars.

‘They’ve
stopped looking for you here,’ Suzi said, ‘as I have told so many people you go
away to Rome by Saudi Arabia.’

Barbara
already knew that Harry had been told she was no longer in Jordan. Barbara had
at first objected to this. She had hoped Suzi would get a cable or a telephone
call to him through Abdul in Israel, to tell him where she was. But Suzi had
said, ‘No, he naturally would then come and find you. He might then get in
touch with his friend at the American Embassy or with the British Embassy, and
it would be an official business to deport you and so forth. Once you have
started this you better go on and be that jolly good sport for Freddy. And you
have to be a jolly good sport to pay his money for his trip that he owes the
firm Ramdez.’

On the way
to some Graeco-Roman ruins Suzi told Barbara that the first true love of her
life was Abdul, whose story she told, and whose orange groves she explained.

Another
time, on the way to see some lovely Arab palaces and Crusader forts far inside
the Transjordan, Barbara told Suzi how she recalled her first meeting with Ruth
Gardnor and her husband seven years ago in London. There had been nothing
special to remember them by, they were guests at a private dinner party in
London, and so had Barbara been. She had not spoken much to them. But she
remembered the party, indeed she remembered every guest there, because it was
at that party she had played the cello for the last time. That was how she
remembered having first met Ruth Gardnor, Once or twice after that she had come
across her, but that dinner party, a good-looking affair, was the meeting she
distinctly remembered.

‘You
play the cello?’ said Suzi.

‘No,
not now. Not any more.’

‘You
should continue. Music is beautiful. I learned piano but gave up at thirteen.
You play good?’

‘I was
thought to be a promising cellist,’ Barbara said.

‘Not
everyone can be the best. You should continue.’

‘No, I
went to teach English about that time, at Ricky’s school. I had already decided
to give up the cello when I played at that party where I first met Ruth
Gardnor.’

‘That
woman is not good in her head,’ Suzi said. ‘She gets the sack from Cairo, I
think. I’m sorry for that. I told her you were their top agent, and I made her
messenger swear also to it. She believed it.’

‘I know
she did. And how did you make her messenger swear?’

‘Nothing.
His child is needing treatment in hospital, so I sign a document that he’s a
refugee from Palestine, then his child gets hospital treatment through UNRWA. I
do this for many poor Arabs. Only refugees get big treatments free. So I sign,
and he swears.’

On the
way into Jerusalem, to the Holy Sepulchre, and at last to the Potter’s Field,
they talked in the car and were silent outside, and talked when they drove on
again.

She said, ‘I’m afraid. Really
frightened.’

Abdul
said, ‘Why? There is no fear in me, why should you fear? I harness myself to
the cart and I take it down a hill and up a hill, and already you are in
Israel. Ten, fifteen minutes you are in the cart among the sandals. Then I
stamp these sandals with a marker that reads “Made in Israel” and you also I
stamp with this, and sell you back to your family for great profit.’

They
were to move off in the early morning mist, for there was a dangerous full moon
that night. Abdul looked out over the hills and fields of Palestine under the
moon. He said. ‘It’s beautiful but I’m sick of this beauty, as it gives me no
admiration in return and no nourishment for my soul in recognition of the
worship I give to the land. Very soon I’m going to take a certain one of my
friends who is in business with me, and we go together to Tangier and start a
café. We have the plan. He is sick, too, of the beauty, although he is a Jew
and has some chances in Israel.’

She was
too sick with fear to reply. She was wearing her own clothes again and felt
vulnerable. She had slept most of the afternoon, since Suzi’s departure, in
the same upper room near the Potter’s Field from which she had set out. Her
suitcase was there. Abdul had come to her room at six, smiling, and she thought
for a moment she was already back in Israel since she had only seen him there.

Abdul
said, ‘Take everything small that you value from the suitcase, for you won’t
see it again. We give your clothes to the poor.’

He said
they had better leave the house in a few hours’ time and start preparing for
the move at dawn, when the mists would fall. He said they could not sleep in
the house that night, but must wait in a field.

She
said then that she was frightened. He said there would soon be no time for her
to feel frightened. They must go and prepare. Meanwhile they ate bread and
cheese and drank mint-flavoured tea in the empty kitchen below, where Freddy
had once been to breakfast. Abdul made up some marijuana cigarettes and gave
one to Barbara. ‘It will make you feel good and take away fear. Have you smoked
this before?’

‘No.’

‘It’s
nothing so much.’ He showed her how to smoke it.

She
said, after a while, ‘I don’t feel the slightest effect.’

‘First
time is never an effect. Two has the effect.’

She
smoked another while Abdul talked. He said he would like to play the guitar and
sing, but there was no guitar, and singing or sound was not wise on this night.

She
said she felt sick, either from fear or the marijuana or the tea.

‘Smoke
to the end and the sickness will go. The reason I would like to play the guitar
and sing a great song is that I have just seen my father. I see him once, twice
a year. The reason I like to sing when I have just seen him, Miss Vaughan, is
that I no longer have to see him soon. I have seen him and it’s in the past
tense. You shouldn’t think I hate my father. I say only that I sing when I
leave him.’

She
said, ‘It’s having no effect whatsoever.’

‘Oh
yes. You are red around the eyes. That is the first sign of an effect. Your
friend, Mr Hamilton, is not well. I like Mr Hamilton, he’s my friend, too.’

‘What’s
wrong with him?’

‘He has
lost a piece of his memory. Some believe this, some don’t. I believe it.’

‘Is he
at the hotel?’

‘No, he’s
now here in Jordan with his friends, Mr and Mrs Cartwright. The doctor has made
him stay there. Also, his friends of the British Legation are asking themselves
what he has done with his memory. They are friends to him when he is all right
to go punctual to the job, but when he has lost his way for a time they suspect
and inquire. I hear all these things, Miss Vaughan. And he is also asking for
you. Soon we will tell him all is well. Tomorrow we send by signal a message
that you are found in Israel.’

They were among the cool
grass under the moon. Barbara dozed and woke. Abdul spoke to her when she
moved, in case she should cry out in waking. He said, ‘It’s all ready. You
climb in when I tell you.’

‘When?’

‘Two
more hours. Try to speak to me in case I catch your fear.’ He was looking
across the field as he spoke, and she now saw, where he was looking, the armed
border patrol, two men moving in their direction; they halted at a certain
point, and returned along the border-line.

She
said, ‘Are there any letters at the hotel for me, do you know?’

‘I
haven’t asked this. Soon you will be there. A great comfortable car is waiting
for us and soon you. will be in your hotel. But now I remember — you know Dr
Ephraim the archaeologist?’

‘Saul
Ephraim? — Yes.’

‘He
knows of your return and said he would not wire or phone to your husband until
you arrive safe, in case of interception by the Arabs.’

‘I’m
not married yet.’

‘Your
husband that is to become.’ Abdul started to ask many questions about her
marriage, and how she could get this marriage that her lover had been to Rome
to arrange. She thought, in passing, that he was unusually interested in the
affair, but he was not objectionably so; and he explained that as he had once
become a Roman Catholic, while a student in Cairo, he was concerned about
these things. He said, ‘I am not now a believer. I have no faith. I try to do
good a little bit, that’s all.’

She
said, ‘I’ve got a lot of faith. It’s all I’ve got. I don’t do good, very much,
somehow. I’m not cut out for it.’

He
asked again the details of the marriage. She said, ‘I doubt if he’ll get an
annulment. It’s very unlikely. I’ll marry him outside the Church.’

‘That’s
all right, anyhow.’

‘Maybe.
It remains to be seen.’

We go
to the cart now. The dawn is coming soon, Monday morning blues. You will climb
into the cart and lie still. Keep your head low, low, and never look up till I
tell you. Come now.’

The day before the news
from Harrogate was brought to the Cartwright’s house that Freddy’s mother had
been stabbed to death by a mad old servant, Miss Bennett, Joanna was up very
early and was out looking at her wild-flower garden. It was a warm, misty
morning. The Cartwrights were usually up early on week-days so that they could
get in a few busy hours at their hobbies and favourite occupations before going
off to their busy clinic. Like most childless couples they were happiest when
organized and at it all day. Monday mornings, without their quite realizing it,
were specially early-risen and active, as if to atone for their comparatively
lazy Sunday.

It was
Monday morning, the day before the men from the consulate came with the news
for Freddy. Freddy was very much on their hands now, and both Joanna and Matt
Cartwright had decided to carry on as far as possible as if nothing had gone
wrong with him. However, at five in the morning, Joanna found him already out
in the garden, walking up and down with a hand to his head, and his head bent.

‘Freddy,
darling, aren’t you feeling well?’

‘Oh, it’s
you, Joanna.’

‘You
needn’t have got up so early, Freddy. I wish you’d take breakfast in bed.’

‘I
couldn’t sleep, really. I’m afraid that puppet show set me thinking again.
Joanna, you know I keep thinking of_’