Requiem (4 page)

'No.'

'Not everybody can be.'

He
was wearing sweltering layers of cardigans and carpet slippers two sizes too
large. The waistband of his trousers reached almost to his armpits, secured by
a slim leather belt, knotted rather than buckled. His jaw dropped easily into a
smile. A few peg-like yellow teeth remained defiantly in a moist, pink mouth,
like grizzled but loyal troops. He had the physique of a boy but a jaunty,
professorial air.

Tom liked him
instantly. 'Can I walk to the Old City from here?'

'By
foot is best. In the foyer we have some maps. Permit me.' He fetched a tourist
map and spread it across a table, marking it with a pencil stub conjured from
the pocket of his trousers. 'Here are we, in our small lives.' He licked his
pencil stub. 'Continue here and you will surely arrive at Damascus Gate.'

Damascus
Gate! Every place name in Jerusalem was electrically charged. The old man began
marking other places of interest but stopped when he sensed Tom's impatience.
'It's been there for thousands of years. It's not going to go away.' He smiled
as he folded the map. Tom thanked him and was followed to the door. 'Were you
thinking of walking the wall,
monsieur?'

'Tom. My name is Tom. Why do you ask?'

'I
don't want to alarm you, but at this time of day it's not a good idea. There
have been incidents. Attacks on tourists. The Arabs have found a new way of
disrupting the economy. Better to do it in the morning, when there are more
people around. Of course, if I were younger, it would have been a grand
pleasure to escort you. But with this leg . . .'

Tom
smiled at the idea of the old man as a minder. I understand. Thanks for the
advice.'

David Feldberg escorted him as far as the
hotel door.

As he
reached the brow of the hill on his way in, the Old City was unveiled. The
bone-coloured castellated walls. The Golden Dome. The sky a spiritual blue. The
city was a polished, faceted stone, hovering in a pearly mist accreted by the
centuries. History was a nacreous substance still in the process of delivering
the city.

Odd:
the flags and banners and fluttering pennants had been taken down. Though, now
he came to think about it, perhaps there were no banners. Perhaps he'd imagined
them on glimpsing the Old City from the back of the speeding taxi. Perhaps it
was only his own elation he'd seen on the battlements. He knew how easy it was
to see things which weren't there.

Damascus Gate was in
everyday tumult, thronged with people, a riot of motion and colour and cries.
The bridge spanning the ancient moat was lined with
marketeers
.
Tea vendors bore huge, ornate silver urns on their backs. Spice dealers
competed with flower sellers and fruit stalls. Falafel stands belched small
clouds of hot oil. Rug traders and bead
pedlars
spread their wares. The scent of the warm dust of the street was displaced by
the spices and the hot olive oil. Guttural Arabic phrases volleyed across the
sky.

A pair of eyes was on
him. He looked up to see the silhouette of an Israeli soldier high on the
parapet of the wall overhead, automatic weapon trailing from his hip. The
boiling sun was descending behind the soldier. His face and uniform were in
shadow. The image was timeless; his automatic could have been a short Roman
sword. Or he could have been a Crusader, or one of Saladin's guard. He was
the
soldier on the wall. He had always been there.

Someone
pressed against him - there was a strong whiff of masculine body odour, a root
smell. He switched his wallet from one pocket to another. Meanwhile a hand
palmed his buttock. He looked for the groper, but everyone seemed to be
absorbed in trading activity. A small Arab boy, blowing wildly on a penny
whistle, stared at him. It was not until he'd passed through the archway of the
gate that he realized he'd been holding his breath against this sensory
onslaught.

 "Beyond
the gate the street was cooler and a little quieter, giving way to labyrinthine
alleyways. He bought himself a falafel from a vendor near the gate. It seemed
ill-advised. But he wanted to cram himself with authentic spices and aromas.

In
the teeming Arab
souk
knots of Arab
women in
purdah
crept about the street, wraiths in
black veils. Shutters were going up, and he sensed the crowd thinning. A hand
brushed his thigh; he turned angrily but, as before, all possible candidates
for blame were thoroughly busy.

He
left the
souk
,
threading through a few
gloomy, dirty, narrow streets before finding himself on the Via Dolorosa, the
processional route of Christ's Crucifixion. The sacred path! His eyes fell on a
plaque describing the spot as one of the Stations of the Cross.

A
handsome young Arab approached. 'Beautiful, isn't it?'

He
was still looking around him in astonishment. 'It's sensational.'

'English?
I like English people. What you're looking at is nothing. Come here. I'm going
to show you something even more amazing.'

He immediately became suspicious. 'What?'

'Believe me.
Just five metres away.' The Arab stepped up the incline of the Via Dolorosa and
indicated something on the ground. Tom followed cautiously. The Arab was
pointing at striations in the paving slabs. 'That,' he announced, smiling
proudly, 'is the spot where the Roman soldiers cast dice for Jesus' clothes.'

'You're
joking!' cried Tom, squatting down to look more closely. Sure enough, there
were rough carvings, undoubtedly ancient, of squares and circles divided into
segments.

'I don't
joke,' said the boy. 'It's famous. It was a game they played with dice.'

Tom
ran a finger along the striations in the warm stone. When he stood up again,
two other boys came to see what the fuss was about. 'Do you like it?' said the
first.

'It's amazing.'

'My
pleasure. I enjoy showing it to friends from England.'

'Thank you.'

He smiled
broadly. His friend smiled too, nodding approval. 'Do you want a guide?'

The light
suddenly dawned on Tom. He stepped back. 'No. Sorry. I can't afford a guide.'

The young
man was still smiling. 'Really? I'm a good guide. I know everything in this
city.'

'Thanks, but no.'

The Arab's
features darkened. His friends' faces also darkened. 'Would you like,' he said,
'to give me something for this?'

'For what?'

'For showing
you this.' He held out a leathery hand for money. Now he appeared less than
handsome. Tom looked round. No one else was near.

Tom was a
tall man, and, though never violent, he liked to think he could take care of
himself. Yet it seemed senseless for a coin. He handed over a couple of shekels
and chalked the slate of experience.

'It's not enough,' said the Arab, moving
in.

Tom locked
eyes with him. 'Suppose I just smack your head against the wall instead?'

The Arab boy
jumped aside as Tom made a half-hearted effort to snatch back his coin. Tom
moved on, ignoring the
mouthings
from behind him.

He knew that
if he followed the Via Dolorosa, he would come at last to the Holy Sepulchre,
but the encounter with the Arab youth had unnerved him. He walked quickly along
the Via, ignoring the plaques and the history and the antiquities accruing
around him. Here there were more tourists. Another Arab made a hissing noise,
beckoning. He played deaf.

At the Holy Sepulchre he
was dismayed to see an enormous queue of pilgrims waiting to go into the tomb.
It was possible to enter the church built over the sepulchre, a vast, domed
structure owned by the Greek Orthodoxy, so long as he didn't want to go into
the tomb itself. The air was heavy with incense; icons winked in the russet
gloom. Some untoward scene was taking place at the front of the queue.
Uniformed church guards were dragging away weeping elderly Greek women in
widows' black who evidently didn't want to leave the tomb. The pilgrims at the
front of the queue looked sheepish; the guards behaved as though this was a
daily occurrence.

Tom felt
slightly sickened by the brawl. He wandered behind the tomb, where, at the back
of the rock, a small shrine was sunk into the floor. He peered in at a tiny
altar resplendent with gold and silver icons. Candles flickered within, and the
crevice was smoky with incense. By stooping he could just about squeeze into
the darkened shrine.

'Welcome!' A
fat black spider with a human head popped up from the shadowy recess. Tom
stepped back and cracked his head on the rock. 'Welcome!' It was a priest in
Eastern Orthodox stovepipe hat, crouched in the far corner of the shrine,
swathed in black robes. His grey beard reached to his waist and tucked into his
belt. Eyes glittering, he nodded enthusiastically at Tom.

'Fuck!' said
Tom, nursing his head. His harsh words to the Arab youth echoed back at him.
'Fuck!' Then he remembered where he was, so he said, 'Shit! Oh, Jesus!'

'Yes!
Welcome!' This was obviously the limit of the holy man's English. The
spider-priest reached up and touched Tom's brow. He removed his hand quickly,
making a hissing sound and shaking his head. 'Bad!' Then he pressed into Tom's
palm a small plastic crucifix. 'Donation!' he said, holding out his hand,
smiling brightly.

Tom
glared back before fumbling for a few shekels. The spider-priest accepted the
shekels and gave him another plastic cross. I'm tired, Tom thought, as he left
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is all too much for a first day.

He studied
his map, looking for the shortest route back to Damascus Gate. The sun had
dipped behind the rooftops. Sharp-edged shadows crept from rancid walls. With
streets and alleys almost empty now, he traced his route with a finger on the
map, hesitating, sensing he'd made a mistake. He passed under a series of
crumbling arches and then along a narrow, high-sided section of cobbled street,
a passage smelling of piss and chlorine and rotting vegetables. His footsteps
echoed hollowly. Emerging on to a deserted thoroughfare, he stopped to check
the map. The street should have been straight like an arrow, but he'd just made
two left-hand turns. He'd entered some gloomy zone of the Old City where, it
seemed, the sun never penetrated.

He was
distracted by a movement some yards away, where a truncated alley ended under a
scrolled arch. A locked and rotting gate stood to one side of the arch. In the
shadows beneath, a veiled Arab woman beckoned.

The
gesture was feeble, yet compelling; His instincts told him not to be caught,
but something held him, something mesmerizing in her gesture. He took a step
forward and was assailed by an odour of spice, deep, pungent spice, like
balsam.

The woman
was dressed in rough clothes. Her black veil fell below her chin. She was an
old woman, with hands like crumpled, tanned hide. He caught the lustre of an eye
through the veil.

But
something was wrong. Tom's stomach turned. Something about the old woman
frightened him.

She beckoned
again. Then she raised her hand to her mouth, touching her dry finger to her
tongue through the black material of the veil. She turned slowly and with her
index finger wrote something on the wall at the back of the arch. The corroded
stone crumbled to powder at her touch. It was a D.

'I have to
go,' Tom tried. 'I have to . . .'

The woman
continued to write. More figures began to appear on the wall, as if chiselled
there by a mason. But the letters were unfamiliar, maybe Hebrew or Arabic,
indecipherable to Tom. The odour of spice became almost sickening. Tom dropped
his map, retreating quickly, leaving the old woman scratching on the wall.

Within
moments Tom had found his way back to Damascus Gate. He stopped to lean against
a wall. He was breathing heavily. He felt ashamed of himself. Two small boys
mounted on a donkey trotted by, staring.

At the recollection of
the old woman, his stomach contracted. Feeling ridiculous, he made his way out
of the gate. The crowds had gone. The sun was spilled across a low bank of
cloud.

When
he reached his hotel room, he locked the door behind him and closed the shutters.
He took off his shoes, lay down on the bed and thought about Katie. He wept
before falling asleep.

Then he heard the voice.

5

'I'm trying to
tell you what happened,' said Katie.

6

'It's simple. I quit.'

'But,
monsieur.
To be a teacher is a state of mind. It is not a toga to be put on and taken
off. One does not cease to be a teacher because this or that government stops
paying you.'

'Call me Tom.'

'May one ask
why you turned your back on prestigious and rewarding work?'

'Shall I
make more coffee?' Tom got up. 'It was never prestigious and only occasionally
rewarding.'

Conversation, Tom was
learning, was what David Feldberg lived for. He lurked in the kitchen, waiting
for subjects. He was skilled in leading quickly from innocuous remarks about
the weather to matters of contention, until you realized you'd been recruited
into a set-piece conversation. It was like-finding yourself seated in front of
a backgammon board, with your fingers being gently closed around a dice-shaker.
There was a frame and certain rules to this type of conversation: no loose
remarks permitted, words all carefully selected and any throw-away comment
held up to the light for a bout of sporting criticism.