QB VII (54 page)

“Oh, God is patient enough,” Thomas Bannister said.

“You see, we mortals are so pompous that we have deluded ourselves into believing that in all of eternity, and all of the vast universe, that we are the only ones who have undergone the human experience. I’ve always believed that it’s happened before, on this very earth.”

“Here ... how ...”

“Well, in God’s scheme what is a few billion years, here and there. Perhaps there have come and gone a dozen human civilizations in the past billion years that we know nothing about. And after this civilization we are living in destroys itself, it will all start up again in a few hundred million years when the planet has all its messes cleaned up. Then, finally, one of these civilizations, say five billion years from now, will last for eternity because people will treat each other the way they ought to.”

They were interrupted by the phone. Abe’s face became very tense. He wrote out an address and said he would come over within the hour. He set the receiver down, puzzled.

“That was Terrence Campbell. He wants to see me.”

“Well, that shouldn’t surprise you. You see, if we are going to hang on to this world for a little longer it’s going to be up to him and Kelno’s son and your son and daughter. Well, I shan’t hold you up any longer. How long will you be about? “

“I’m leaving for Israel in a few days. Back where I started, as a journalist.”

They shook hands. “I can’t say you’ve been my most restrained client, but it’s been interesting,” Bannister said, unable to find words in one of the rare instances in his life. “You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, Tom.”

“Good luck, Abe.”

ON THE WAY TO SEE TERRENCE I ASKED THE TAXI TO STOP AT THE LAW COURT. WELL, THAT’S NATURAL. TO SAY GOOD-BY TO THE ONE DECENT THING I’VE DONE IN MY LIFE, FIGHT THIS CASE.

I CANNOT SHAKE BANNISTER’S NOTION THAT THERE HAVE BEEN CIVILIZATIONS BEFORE US, AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. WHEN THIS ONE GOES, I’M GOING TO BE VERY SORRY ABOUT LONDON.

DOWN THE STREET FROM THE LAW COURT IS ST. CLEMENT DANES CHURCH. IT’S THE ROYAL AIR FORCE CHURCH, AND I KNEW IT WELL DURING THE WAR. IN FACT, I WROTE SOME COLUMNS ABOUT IT.

ST. CLEMENT DANES IS EXACTLY WHAT THOMAS BANNISTER WAS TALKING ABOUT. IT WAS BUILT BY THE DANES IN 871 OR THEREABOUTS WHEN KING ALFRED EXPELLED THEM BEYOND THE CITY WALL AND THEN IT WAS DESTROYED. IT WAS REBUILT BY WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, AND DESTROYED, AND REBUILT IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND DESTROYED IN THE FIRE OF 1666, AND REBUILT, AND DESTROYED IN 1680 AND REBUILT BY CHRISTOPHER WREN, AND STOOD UNTIL THE GERMAN BOMBERS DESTROYED IT IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR. AND IT WAS REBUILT AGAIN.

WHAT THE HELL’S THAT NURSERY RHYME SAMANTHA USED TO TELL THE CHILDREN?

ORANGES AND LEMONS,

SAY THE BELLS OF ST. CLEMENT’S

YOU OWE ME FIVE FARTHINGS

SAY THE BELLS OF ST. MARTIN’S

WHEN WELL YOU PAY ME

SAY THE BELLS OF OLD BAILEY

WHEN I GROW RICH

SAY THE BELLS OF SHOREDITCH

WHEN WILL THAT BE

SAY THE BELLS OF STEPNEY

I DO NOT KNOW

SAY THE GREAT BELLS OF BOW

HERE COMES A COPPER TO PUT YOU TO BED

HERE COMES A CHOPPER TO CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD

Tel Aviv, June 6, 1967 (AP) The Israel Defense Ministry announced that its casualties were light in the strike that destroyed the Arab air forces. Most prominent among those killed was Sergent (Captain) Ben Cady, son of the well-known author.

A Biography of Leon Uris

Leon Uris (1924–2003) was an author of fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays who wrote over a dozen books including numerous bestselling novels. His epic
Exodus
(1958) has been translated into over fifty languages. Uris’s work is notable for its focus on dramatic moments in contemporary history, including World War II and its aftermath, the birth of modern Israel, and the Cold War. Through the massive popularity of his novels and his skill as a storyteller, Uris has had enormous influence on popular understanding of twentieth-century history.

Leon Marcus Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the son of Jewish parents of recent Polish-Russian origin. As a child, Uris lived a transient and hardscrabble life. He attended schools in Baltimore, Virginia, and Philadelphia while his father worked as an unsuccessful storekeeper. Even though he was a below-average student, Uris excelled in history and was fascinated by literature; he made up his mind to be a writer at a young age.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Uris dropped out of high school to enlist in the Marine Corps. From 1942 to 1945 he served as a radio operator in the South Pacific, and after the war he settled down in San Francisco with his first wife, Betty. He began working for local papers and wrote fiction on the side. His first novel,
Battle Cry
, was published in 1953 and drew on his experience as a marine. When the book’s film rights were picked up, Uris moved to Hollywood to help with the screenplay, and he stayed to work on other film scripts, including the highly successful
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
in 1957.

Uris’s second novel,
The Angry Hills
(1955), is set in Greece but contains plot points that center on Jewish emigration to the territories that would eventually become Israel. The history that led to Israel’s earliest days is also the subject of Uris’s most commercially successful novel,
Exodus
. Not long after Israel first achieved statehood, Uris began researching the novel, traveling 12,000 miles within the country itself, interviewing over 1,200 residents, and reading hundreds of texts on Jewish history. The book would go on to sell more copies than
Gone with the Wind
.

Uris’s dedication to research became the foundation of many of his subsequent novels and nonfiction books.
Mila 18
(1961) chronicles Jewish resistance in the Nazi-occupied Warsaw ghettos, and
Armageddon
(1964) details the years of the Berlin airlift.
Topaz
(1967) explores French-American intrigue at the height of the Cold War during the Cuban Missile Crisis, while
The Haj
(1984) continues Uris’s look into Middle Eastern history. Much of Uris’s fiction also draws explicitly from his own travels and experiences:
QB VII
(1970) is a courtroom drama based on a libel case against Uris that stemmed from the publication of
Exodus
, and
Mitla Pass
follows a Uris-like author through Israel during the Suez crisis.
Ireland: A Terrible Beauty
and
Jerusalem: Song of Songs
are sensitive, nonfiction documentations of Uris’s travels and include photographs taken by his third wife, Jill.

Throughout his career Uris continued to write for Hollywood, adapting his own novels into movies, and working as a “script doctor” on films such as
Giant
and
Rebel Without a Cause
.
QB VII
was adapted for television, becoming the first ever miniseries. Uris passed away in 2003 at his home on Long Island. His papers are housed at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin.

Leon with his parents, William and Anna Uris, who divorced in 1929. William “Wolf” Uris emigrated from Russia to America in 1921 and worked a string of blue-collar jobs before settling into a position as a Communist Party organizer. Anna, who came from a close-knit Jewish family in Maryland, raised Leon and his sister, Essie, mostly in Baltimore and Norfolk, Virginia.

A young Uris in 1929, probably at his family’s home in Baltimore. Throughout much of his early life Uris was shuttled between his father in Philadelphia and his mother in Baltimore. He eventually came to regard his mother as “psychologically unhinged” and his father as a “failure.” This led him to seek success in the world at all costs. “I can say without hesitation,” he once wrote, “that, from earliest memory, I was determined not to be a failure.”

Uris as a young soldier in the Marine Corps. Uris enlisted in the Marines during the height of World War II when he was just seventeen years old. He subsequently served as a radio operator and saw combat in the South Pacific. His war experience represented a defining moment in his life, shaping his outlook on politics and providing rich material for his first book, the blockbuster novel
Battle Cry
.

Uris with his first wife, Betty Beck, in 1945. The two met during the spring of 1944 in San Francisco, where Betty was stationed as a marine sergeant and Uris was hospitalized for malaria, a disease he contracted during his tour in the Pacific theatre. Initially their relationship caused some friction between their respective families since Leon had been raised Jewish, while Betty hailed from a Lutheran family of Danish descent in rural Iowa. However in 1945 the couple tied the knot and began a happy life in the Northern California suburbs.