Come To The War (2 page)

^{There is no doubt that I have more young fans than anyone playing on the concert circuit today. They are loyal and noisy, but I need them more than they need me. The critics have described me as a child of the moment and the longer the childhood, the better.}

^{There were still small slopes of snow on my suede coat and I was brushing them away before the mirror when one of the mirror attendants peeped around the side and said:}

^{'You 'ad a good look, then, mate ?'}

^{'Sorry,' I said. The lift was there now. 'Was I wearing it out?'}

^{He sniffed but did not retaliate.}

^{The other man said: 'Right Will, let's get it in.'}

^{I got in after them, and in the confined cubicle of the lift found myself segregated from them once again by the broad face of the mirror.}

^{'Which one ?' one of the invisible men called to me from the other side of the glass. The button panel was on their side.}

^{'Five,' I answered. 'Thank you.'}

^{We stopped at five but I could not get out. The mirror was at an angle in the doorway and I could not squeeze by. I did not call over to them because I can be very reasonable at times and I thought it was best to wait until they had taken the mirror out at their required floor and then I would go back down to five. The doors slid together and we began to ascend again.}

^{'Queer,' said a voice from the other side of the mirror.}

^{'Long 'aired queer,' agreed the other. 'Tragic'}

^{'Tragic,' repeated the first heavily. 'Fancy 'aving 'im cuddling up to you, George ?'}

^{I
don't,'
said his friend. I
don't
fancy it at all. Right mate, this is ten.'}

^{I helped them out with the mirror. They must have been shocked to see my hands appear around the edge because their momentum ceased and there was a serious silence. Then they moved again, hurriedly, and between us we got the mirror on to the tenth-floor landing. I stepped back into the lift.}

^{'Thank you, sir,' said George, glaring at Will.}

^{'Yes,' agreed Will miserably. 'Thank you very much.'}

^{'That's all right,' I said. 'Come down for a cuddle when you've done.'}

^{It is a year today that I last saw Shoshana. That is why I
thought I would begin to write. I'm going to leave the piano
to itself at the other end of the room, at least until it gets dark this afternoon. It is very warm and enclosed in this
apartment now, elevated, five floors above the frozen ground,
with all of London, gone off to work, leaving me perched
here in the suburbs.}

^{Now the snow has grown all over my window. Before, I could see it raiding through the sky, across the common, but now it has blocked itself out. I don't want the phone to ring all day, I hope nobody calls. I hope the mirror man doesn't decide to come in for a cuddle.}

^Two

^{They say it is a small country. But it's big enough. Any country with a desert like the Negev tucked into its trousers is big enough. With the war they added another desert, the great brown gut of Sinai which belonged to the Egyptians. Dov Haran said when we saw our friends buried after the six days: 'Where's this country going to? Collecting deserts.'}

^{I arrived there a week before the battle began. The true summer heat was moving over the southern Mediterranean countries, the heavy brown heat that arrives at the conclusion of May, disturbing the sky, distorting the sea and drying the land. The plane from Athens for Lod moved irritably in the hot air across Tel Aviv. Even from the air you could sense and see its heaviness. The habitual sea pushed against it and the yellow baked buildings seemed to be tiredly pushing it back. The cars in the streets moved like furtive woodlice from the shadows of trees and houses out into the hard sunlight and seemed then to hurry for the shade.}

^{Lod Airport is the place they talk about in the Bible as Lydda. So Dov told me that day when the Arabs were trying to get us with machine-gun fire and mortars and he was giving me one of his historical-geography lessons about the country.}

^{There were jet fighters lying like hunting dogs in the enclosed heat under the trees on the farther reaches of the airport. I could see their soft snouts sniffing out of the shadows from the oval pond of the Boeing window. There were some shabby old fighters too, resting around the perimeter with beards of grass growing about them. They had little glass cabins like tomato frames. I remember them from the days of the war - our war -1 mean, the one against the Germans. They were called Blackburn Skuas. They were among my collection of model warplanes made from balsa wood and displayed on top of our piano in those days. I was a very patriotic boy and I would build only models of British and American fighting aeroplanes.}

^{I had never been in Israel before. I was going to play three concerts with the Israel Symphony Orchestra, but I knew nothing of those people. I thought they were just Jews, like Maurice Greenbaum, the librarian at the Philharmonia Library in London or Joe Kaye, my barber. I didn't know. Beneath the canopy of the arrival building there was a nervousness so distinct that I was immediately aware of it. The fluid panic of most airports was not there. Men and women in desert khaki uniforms moved seriously about, the passengers were quiet, filing through the customs channels in dumb show, porters propelled luggage trolleys with hard expressions as though they were pushing fieldguns.}

^{Abraham Metzer and three other men from the Israel Symphony Society met me. Metzer had previously come to London to arrange the tour. He was a squashed, small man; middle-aged, untidy, and with clothes too big for him. He kept tugging at his shirt sleeves and adjusting his uncomfortable shoulders as though he feared they might shiver and fall from him at any moment.}

^{'I hope your tour will be safe,' he muttered when we were in the car going towards Tel Aviv. It was getting on towards the short evening and the land was lying low, relieved after the heat, under a sky going pale. I watched it from the window. Some young girl soldiers tried to thumb a lift.}

^{'Why safe?' I said without anxiety. "The contracts are all fixed, aren't they? Everything has been agreed.'}

^{He shrugged inside his great blue shirt. 'That's all good, he said looking straight ahead over the driver's shoulder as though expecting an ambush. 'But maybe we have a war in a few days.'}

^{I waited a few minutes because I was annoyed. Then I laughed insincerely and said: 'You're always having a war in a few days.' I should have insisted on Philip or Eric coming with me. Philip was having trouble with a Brazilian soprano and Eric was ill. I had never toured without one or both of them before. And there was going to be a war.}

^{'Wars and stories. Rumours,' he mumbled. The other three men all nodded at once, and so did the driver. 'But we think that this time the pot has come too near to overflowing. In a few days it may all take place, Mr Hollings, and we will be fighting, killing for our lives.'}

^{Well I won't, I thought. They had better keep a seat on a plane for London.}

^{'Sleep tonight and perhaps tomorrow you would like to think about events,' said Metzer. 'We will keep you to nothing in the contract. We would like very much for you to stay for many people here have been waiting to hear you play. They have waited a long time.'}

^{They'll have to wait a bit longer, I thought. My God, I kept out of the way of bullets and bombs when I was frogmarched into our own bloody Army. To hell with getting caught here. In any case one of the best audiences I have ever known was in Cairo.}

^{I said: I'll have to telephone my manager. If he says I must return then I will. Tomorrow is the Tel Aviv concert?'}

^{'Tomorrow,' he confirmed. He shrugged his shirt straight again.}

^{'Can they hold up the war until then?' I asked.}

^{'For you, maybe they can,' he answered dryly. He was still looking directly ahead and so were the others. I had an idea they didn't like me very much.}

^{The orchestra did
Scheherazade,
the
Pathétique,
and mine was Beethoven's Number One in C. It was a tremendous concert, one of those occasions when it is full and thrilling. It was the first time I had felt like that for a long time. In the early days I always experienced an onrush of emotion, because of newness and nervousness, and knowing how much the audience wanted from me - even ordered from me. But with professionalism some of that goes, worn off by the cunning and the craft that the soloist gathers and needs. You regulate yourself, pace yourself, use yourself and the orchestra to every good and mean advantage. But you lose that first pointed realization, the initial joy, and only rarely does it touch you again.}

^{I don't know why it should recapture me that night. It was the people, I think. It was steamy and there were hundreds jammed in everywhere. When I was in the wings looking out I could feel them breathing. They were mixed people, all sorts of faces and tints of colour, not like Jews as you think of Jews, rag-traders, bookmakers or violinists. This was a dark people. They could have been Lebanese or Spanish. The hall was wide and magnificent and they were banked in hundreds right up to the darkest caves of the place. I had watched them coming in and thought at first how young they were. But then I realized that they were not altogether so, that I had mistaken vigour for youth, for there was in the concert hall that evening shortly before the war began, an energy coming from them that seemed itself to generate the close heat of that engulfing experience.}

^{Many were soldiers in saggy uniforms, with sub-machine-guns strangely prim across their knees as they settled untidily in the seats. There were girls in uniform too, brown girls with splendid hair and tight busts, striding into the auditorium with their military shoulder-bags. There were many people in opened shirts; people with brown necks and moving faces. And among all these a few men and women in fine, formal evening dress. They made a collective noise like all the hens of hell. From behind the curtains their voices came at me; hundreds all talking at the same time, shaking hands and recognizing friends and calling to them, settling themselves down and then theatrically getting up to attract somebody else. It looked more like a market than a concert hall.}

^{When the orchestra went out the people applauded; they cheered and jumped like children. Igor Baraneski, whom we call the Russian engine driver, was the conductor, steaming up to the rostrum and pulling his familiar invisible valves and levers when he got there. Small hands clenched and then undone, making short nervous movements close to his chest. It is his trademark. It was strange that he should be a Russian because they weren't feeling well about the Russians that night, thinking that they were oiling the guns for the Egyptians beyond Gaza and the Syrians behind the Golan Heights. But it made no difference to the people. They shouted and hooted encouragement and Igor, a fussy little bugger but a worthwhile act as a conductor, turned and bowed and busily worked his hands as though he were in the cab of a locomotive.}

^{Metzer shifted suddenly, uncomfortably at my arm. He was one of those padded men and when he moved he was quiet and smooth. It was only when he stood or sat that he began to fidget with his shirt or his zip fly or his plastic belt. He looked out with me on to the dark field of people, nodding his head at them as though bestowing some blessing.}

^{"They're going to enjoy it,' I said.}

^{He sniffed at the baking air around the curling curtains. 'They're alive and happy tonight,' he agreed. 'Tonight will be a good night in Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, next week, it could be concluded, you understand, Mr Hollings. All this. All our lives. The State and the people could be dead.'}

^{'No one will kill you like that,' I argued. I did not turn to him. I kept looking at the people settling into the hot darkness as the orchestra tuned. His words had been untheatrical and convincing. I wondered, for the first time, then, if it were possible they might all die.}

^{He continued looking through the fold in the curtains. Igor had brought the orchestra to heel now and the first slim theme of
Scheherazade
was moving like lazy smoke through the close air. Metzer whispered: 'Today Shukiary of the Palestine Liberation Army said that when the Arabs overtake the Jews the Jewish survivors will be helped to return to their original countries.' He paused and the music drifted like an aroma to us. He continued in the same voice: 'But he said that he did not believe there would be any survivors.'}