The Mandelbaum Gate (12 page)

‘He’s
probably the wrong chap for you,’ he said in an avuncular manner which came
easily to him at that moment, seeing that Miss Vaughan had just declared
herself unattached.

Matt,
anxious to take some sort of possession too, said, ‘Get him up to Jerusalem.
Bring him along here. Maybe we can sort things out.’

Barbara
smiled. ‘But I’ve gone off him,’ she said. She seemed to be amused at herself
in a sophisticated way, and was pretty-looking as she leaned back in the garden
chair, holding her coffee cup.

‘Who is
the fellow, anyway?’ Freddy said. He knew the man’s name, Harry Clegg, and also
that he was a distinguished archaeologist.

Barbara
said, ‘Harry Clegg’s his name. He’s well known in archaeology.’

‘I’ve
heard of Clegg,’ Matt said.

‘Yes,
but who are the Cleggs?’ Freddy said. ‘That’s all I mean.’ Joanna said, ‘Freddy,
if you’re trying to undermine him with Barbara, she’ll get her feelings back,
and go and marry him tomorrow. That’s what I’d do.’

Freddy
said apologetically to Barbara; ‘I only wondered if you knew anything much
about his family.’

Well,
he doesn’t seem to know much, himself, about the family,’ Barbara said, ‘and he
doesn’t care. He can’t even trace his birth certificate. Really, he’s a
charming person; it’s only that I don’t feel—’

‘Good
God!’ Freddy said. ‘You should be careful who you take up with.’

An Arab
servant had appeared with a fresh pot of coffee, and they kept silence until he
had receded like a wave of the sea that had lapped against the garden wall.
Barbara got up, meanwhile, to examine the labels on Joanna’s wild flowers of
the Holy Land, and to deflect attention from herself, as the social moment
offered and required.

‘Cotyledon,’
Barbara murmured, examining a plant which grew about ten inches high. It was
not in flower, but it had, near its base, a group of curious circular leaves,
sunk in their centres, like flowers themselves. Freddy had frequently tried to
place this plant from memory, for he had seen it before. It stood in the clump
marked Bethlehem. ‘I got it on a hillside near the Shepherds’ Field,’ Joanna
said. ‘I daresay the same plant has been growing there since the time of
Christ. What’s the name of it, did you say?’

‘It’s
called pennywort, commonly. The botanical name is Cotyledon
umbilicus.
I
wonder how it got to this country.’

Joanna
took this in good part. ‘I thought it was indigenous, ‘she said.

‘It’s
possible,’ said Barbara. But she did not sound convinced. She said, ‘I’d have
to look it up.’

‘Some
sort of flowers must have been blooming here at the time of Christ,’ Joanna
said. ‘They can’t all be British imports.’

‘That’s
true.’

‘I had
a cousin used to take wild-flower seeds to India and scatter them there,’
Freddy said.

Barbara
said, ‘I do that from time to time when I go abroad. To tell the truth, I
smuggled a few Anthyllis seeds — that’s Lady’s Fingers — into Israel and
scattered them on Mount Carmel on the sea verge. They grow well by the sea.
Lovely yellow flowers. It was wildly against the regulations, but I couldn’t
resist it. I never can. It’s a habit.’

Freddy
felt happy, and was struck by the thought that Miss Vaughan was remarkably well
informed. He felt it proper that she should have scattered Lady’s Fingers in
some corner of a foreign field.

‘You
could have been arrested by the Israelis,’ Matt said. ‘They’re extremely strict
about what goes into their soil.’

Barbara
got ready to leave. She said she had an appointment with a guide.

‘Which
guide?’

‘I went
to a travel agent called Ramdez. They’ve got —’

‘You
mustn’t use Ramdez,’ Freddy said.

‘Don’t
take on a guide,’ Matt said. ‘We’ll take you round. Don’t waste your money.’

‘I’ve
engaged one, though. This afternoon he’s going to take me to see what he calls “the
tomb of Solomon, son of David, the ex-Jewish king”.’

Joanna
said, ‘Matt will go and pay him off. Stay and look at my puppets instead, then
when it’s cool we’ll go for a drive round.’

‘You
see, you mustn’t,’ Matt said quietly, ‘go round here alone. It’s a question of
your Jewish blood.’

‘Nobody
will know anything about my Jewish blood unless you talk about it.’

Freddy
said, ‘Actually we’ve discussed your position in Jordan quite a bit. Because,
you see, it’s more dangerous for you here than I thought it was. I intended to
beg you not to come. Anyone with Jewish blood is automatically arrested as an
Israeli spy.’

‘My
passport’s all right,’ Barbara said. ‘I’d call for the British consul if there
was any trouble.’

Their
island was beginning to disintegrate. Having said his piece, Freddy felt, in
reality, that Miss Vaughan was not in such danger as she had seemed to be in
their imagination. Here she stood, calmly, in flesh and blood. As for her
being, in fact, a spy…

‘I
think it would be a bit unfair,’ Joanna said, ‘to involve the British consulate
in an incident of that kind.’

‘Why?’
said Freddy. Perhaps it was the heat, or his age — he could not fathom it
afterwards, although he had no regrets — but Freddy felt much the same irate
urge to declare something at this moment as he had felt the day before in the
shop when the woman customer was being tiresome with Alexandros. ‘Why, Joanna?’
he said. ‘Why shouldn’t she appeal to the consulate in the event of her being
molested in a foreign country?’

‘It’s
so much a matter between Arabs and Jews,’ Joanna said. ‘We can’t officially
take sides, can we?’

‘It’s a
blood-feud between Semites,’ Matt said, ‘that’s all it is.’ Joanna said,
reproachfully, as if both men were at fault, ‘I’m sure this must be a very
embarrassing conversation for Barbara.’

‘It
doesn’t seem to be about me,’ Barbara said. ‘You are talking about a situation
that’s outside the scope of the consulate.’

‘Won’t
you sit down, Barbara, while we’re talking?’ Joanna said. ‘What I mean,’ she
said to Freddy, ‘is that Barbara’s Jewish blood is outside official range, in a
sense.’

‘Jewish
blood or not,’ Freddy said, ‘the point is, it’s hers, and it has got to be
protected by her country.’

‘Yes,
well, to get back to the individual case,’ Matt said, ‘we know Ramdez. He’s a
snooper for his government. He probably knows already about the Jewish part of
Barbara’s origins, through his son in Israel.’

‘The
son is a hostage, then,’ Barbara said.

‘Now I
think that’s a bit unfair,’ Matt said.

‘There
is too much talk,’ Barbara said. ‘Everything would be easy if people didn’t
talk so much.’

‘Why is
it unfair?’ Freddy said to Matt. ‘I think it’s a very good point, that Ramdez
can’t very well move against Miss Vaughan while his son is in Israel. Young
Abdul is a hostage.’

‘Because,
mad as it sounds, Jewish blood is illegal here. I —Joanna and I — we think it’s
a lunatic situation. But it seems a bit unfair of Barbara to tempt the law and
risk involving a young Arab in Israel.’

‘The
trouble with you,’ Freddy said, fully conscious and rather astonished that he
was wrecking the delightful atmosphere, ‘is that you blow neither hot nor cold,
but lukewarm — What was that passage in the Bible, Miss Vaughan? Can you recall
it? — It goes something like, you blow neither hot nor cold and I will spew
thee out of my mouth. Something like that. Very apt.’

4.
Abdul’s Orange Groves

‘I’m a man of passions and
enthusiasms, Mr Hamilton,’ said young Abdul Ramdez. ‘That is to say, I’m
passionate in general, but I don’t get worked up about any particular thing for
long. In this way I avoid the great Arab mistake, as we have obsessions that
leave us exhausted and incapable of action when the time for action comes. Do
you know what I say to my Arab friends and also to the friends of my father
when they tell me too much, do this, do that, Abdul, in the name of freedom,
revenge, unity? I say, okay, okay. But do you know what I say when they ask me
again, too much? Do you know what I say then to freedom and revenge, and to
Nasser and to Hussein and to the national spirit? Like I’ve told you before, I—’

‘Yes,
yes,’ said Hamilton, who was plainly enchanted, ‘but don’t say it here, Abdul.
There are some terms we English don’t use a great deal of.’

‘In
childhood I hear many terms by the English army,’ Abdul said.

‘Well,
of course, the army.’

‘Is it
me teach you Arabic or you teach me English?’ Abdul inquired.

Abdul
took for granted the fact that he enchanted Frederick Hamilton, because he
enchanted everyone, even those who were suspicions of him, except for the
high-minded Israelis and Arabs who disapproved of anyone like him on principle,
or the police forces of both allegiances. He observed the man who sat in the
other arm-chair in this hotel sitting-room. ‘Say me some poetry,’ Abdul said.

Mr
Hamilton sat a little more upright in his chair and recited across the space between
them, lit as it was by sunlight dustily filtered through the mosquito-wire
window:

As I ride, as I ride,

With a full heart for my guide,

So its tide rocks my side,

As I ride, as I ride,

That, as I were double-eyed,

He, in whom our Tribes confide,

Is descried, ways untried

As I ride, as I ride.

Abdul
was amused by this. Earlier in the afternoon he had been going over with
Hamilton the rudiments of Arabic versification, which, as Abdul put it, had
been handed down unchanged from the eighth century: ‘… only we could begin to
make changes now like we could make changes in government, and later on we
could change the desert wastes and the sky even, if we could first make changes
in ourselves.’

Hamilton
more or less belonged, in Abdul’s view, to that total category of the human
race known to Abdul and his companions as the System. It included their
fathers, the Pope, President Nasser, King Hussein, Mr Ben-Gurion, the Grand
Mufti, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the English Sovereign, the civil servants
and upper militia throughout the world and all the other representatives of
the police forces of life who, however beneficent, had absent-mindedly put his
generation as a whole in difficulties. Abdul spoke often of his ‘generation’.
As he was a good deal older than he claimed to be, he meant by this to measure
his state of mind rather than his years. He had come early to the conclusion
that the easiest method of dealing with the situation, and the one that best
suited his personal constitution, was to act with inscrutable folly, to mix up
his elders as to his motives, to defeat and exasperate them by transparent
guile and hypocrisy, to have no motives at all, but to be enchanting throughout
his days. It was not a lonely course; he had many like-minded friends. It had
been found and declared by an analytical witchcraftsman that Abdul’s character
contained intelligence among other ingredients; he knew largely what he was
doing. He had reflected upon himself as an Arab, and decided upon a course.
His friend, Frederick Hamilton, who sat with Abdul in the sitting-room of his
hotel in Israel, was part of the System. Nevertheless, Abdul liked him, as he
was easy to manage and did not make demands for his full money’s worth of
Arabic lessons, but rather seemed pleased to sit and talk in English to Abdul,
at his appointed hours, for himself alone. In a way, it seemed to Abdul,
Hamilton was not aware that he was part of the System.

‘Say
that poem again.’

As
I ride, as I ride—

‘It is
a fine poem, Mr Hamilton,’ Abdul said when Hamilton had finished.

‘It isn’t
considered to be so. But it’s interesting because there are forty lines with
the same rhyme. It’s by Browning, a famous Victorian poet.’

‘I have
seen “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” about Robert Browning. It was popular
with the Arabs as we have many stories in Arabic like that, where the father
forbids the marriage to the daughter and the lovers escape.’

Mr
Hamilton looked at his Arab grammar and said, ‘I suppose we should get on with
our work.’

Abdul
did not see any need to reply for a moment or two. He was smelling the room and
Mr Hamilton. There were Miss Vaughan’s geraniums, now, in addition to those
which Hamilton had always had. Abdul could never smell anything from Hamilton
himself, which was just as typical of the man as certain odours were typical of
other people. Abdul’s father had always deplored his son’s highly developed
sense of smell from his youth up. Joe Ramdez had considered it to be an
atavistic trait in Abdul, and thought it was uncivilized of him to cultivate
this habit of smelling people in rooms. Abdul claimed that he could ‘smell an
enemy’, but his father discovered that Abdul’s enemies were not his enemies,
and denied Abdul’s claim to any smelling talent in this direction.