The Mandelbaum Gate (7 page)

She ran
down to meet Harry. They stood on the gravel path and kissed each other. She
got into the car and made him drive out of school bounds, miles away, into a
woodland clearing in the heart of Gloucestershire.

From her wall on Mount
Tabor, she looked over to the kingdom of Jordan, in the hazy blue direction of
the Dead Sea, where Harry, in his shabby old clothes, was probably peering at,
and pronouncing a fake, a square inch of papyrus placed on a table. ‘They’ve
already started to write new Dead Sea Scrolls,’ he had told her in a recent
letter to England. Here, of course, the only letters she got from him were
notes smuggled by friends. But since that Saturday afternoon, they had stopped
arguing in their letters. It was he who had recognized the fact that the
arguments, however unacceptable, stood for an immovable conviction, something
similar to his dedication to his field of scholarship. He would not, for the
love of Barbara or anyone else, attribute a date which he believed to be false
to a manuscript or object of antiquity; not to fit any theory dear to his own
heart, he wouldn’t. He recognized the same seam of hard rock in Barbara. He submitted
to her idea of having the validity of his marriage examined by the
ecclesiastical lawyers of Rome. There was a chance that the marriage could be
invalidated, although it seemed to him on ludicrous grounds, by the fact that
he had not, so far as he knew, been baptized. But he was obliged to prove this
negative fact, and it was not so easy as it sounded. And even it was considered
slim evidence towards an annulment.

Meanwhile,
Barbara, searching her own motives like a murder squad, suspected that her
refusal to marry him had been argued less from her fear of separation from the
Church than from a fear of revealing to Ricky the existence of a man in her
life. How? Why was Ricky’s astonishment to be feared? Ricky’s disappointment
in her? It was too absurd. It was real.

Barbara
dropped hints to Ricky throughout the rest of the year. ‘Dr Clegg,’ she said, ‘a
brilliant archaeologist, a friend of mine —’

‘Extremely
interesting,’ said Ricky, ‘but I wouldn’t,’ she said, ‘let it become a burden,
this letter-writing. A correspondence like this is bound to interfere with
your work in term time. Is he handsome?’

‘No,’
said Barbara, ‘not a bit.’

‘Perhaps
he can’t find a woman,’ Ricky said, with an expression of genuine academic
consideration of the matter. ‘Not handsome by vulgar standards,’ Barbara said.

Meanwhile
she had been reconciled to the Church, in a frigid sort of way, as one might
acknowledge, unsmiling, the victor in battle, in whose presence one is signing
a peace treaty. She was obliged to repent. What of — the love-affair? No,
adultery, to be precise. Yes, but to be precise, it was impossible to
distinguish the formal expression of her love from the emotion. ‘Go and repent,’
said the priest, worn-out with this involved honesty. ‘It was a love-affair,’
Barbara explained. ‘Yes, well, don’t pretend it was the Beatific Vision.’
Barbara went so far as to repent that she could not repent of the forbidden
lovemaking, and’ as is the plain expectation of all Christians she got the
benefit of the doubt on the understanding that she put an end to the sex part
of it.

By
summer-time she was standing on Mount Tabor and looked out towards the Dead Sea
where Harry Clegg was working. That morning, a letter from him had been thrust
under her door, having been smuggled through the Gate in the American embassy-bag
from Amman.

Latest bulletin from the Holy Romans — they’ll take at
least another month to decide. But for goodness’ sake, come over. You can’t
spend your whole summer holidays over there without seeing what’s going on
here, let alone seeing me. I shall not attempt any of that rotten nasty sex
stuff, in fact I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole, if I had one. Hurry up,
Barbara, there’s some interesting stuff to see here.

She looked towards the Dead
Sea and thought of his thick-featured, dark face utterly intent on the work in
front of it, and forgot, in her tenderness, that she was a spinster of no fixed
identity. She was aware only of the vulnerability peculiar to his detachment,
and of a desire to protect him in the practical aspects of his life where he
was too absorbed to protect himself. She suddenly felt to be insignificant the
business of being a Gentile and a Jewess, both and neither, and that of being a
wolf in spinster’s clothing, and the business of the letter she would have to
write to Ricky. She was thinking of the red-brick genius whose accent her
cousin Miles had mimicked with such perfect exaggeration, Harry Clegg, the
sweet scholar from an address, now extinguished by the war, in Coventry. He
would have been, to her grandmother at Bells Sands, ‘a rather common little man’
for her to take up with, to her grandfather at Golders Green a non-Jewish
disappointment for her to take up with. To the Jews a stumbling-block, a folly
to the Greeks. But it did not matter. Even the fact that the academic world
recognized his true value and standing was irrelevant. The point was, he was
entirely lovable to her, this lover from last summer’s Roman remains.

‘Go and
repent….’

Goe and catch a falling starre,

Get with child a mandrake
roote.

It is
impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist. Over at the Dead
Sea, she thought, just over there, he is ferreting about in the sand or maybe
he has discovered an inkwell used by the Essene scribes, or something.

To the east, from the top
of Tabor, was the valley of Jordan and the very blue waters of Galilee with the
mountains of Syria, a different blue, on the far side. On the west, far across
Palestine, the Carmel range rose from the Mediterranean. There seemed no mental
difficulty about the miracles, here on the spot. They seemed to be very
historic and factual, considered from this standpoint. This feeling might be
due to the mountain-top sensation. But was it any less valid than the sea-level
sensation? Scientifically speaking?

A
coach-load of organized pilgrims arrived at the Basilica. Barbara returned to
her tree-shadowed wall. They were led by a Catholic priest. One of the
Franciscan custodians of the shrine came out to meet them. The priest-guide
assembled his flock outside the church and explained to them that this was the
place where Christ was transfigured.

Only
probably, said Barbara’s mind; there’s a rival claim for Mount Hermon, over in
the distance.

In the
presence of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, said the priest. His
garments white and dazzling.

Wherever
it did take place, she thought, I believe it did take place all right.
Transfigured, and in a radiant time of metamorphosis, was seen white and
dazzling, to converse with Moses and Elias.

‘Do you
remember what he was conversing about?’ said the priest to his twenty-odd faithful.

The
death he was to die.

‘His
forthcoming death in Jerusalem,’ said the priest. ‘It’s described in Mark and
Luke.’

He read
the chapters, while the Franciscan monk waited with folded hands to escort them
into the shrine.

…
There came a cloud and
overshadowed

them. And they were afraid when they entered

into the cloud.

And a voice came out of the cloud, saying,

‘This is my beloved Son. Hear him.’

“This
is also the place,’ said the priest, dosing his book, ‘where Deborah of the Old
Testament collected an army against Sisera. You get it in the Book of Judges,
and her song of triumph, remember. Mount Tabor is the place mentioned. A good
spot, strategically, as you can see. They all camped up here. It’s only 843
feet. Looks higher from below.’

The
crowd disappeared into the church. Barbara walked out of hiding and breathed
the miraculous air. It was after receiving Harry’s letter that she had hired
the car that morning. Harry was … Her mind once more took refuge in the
anxious memory of the scene she had made with Freddy Hamilton the previous
evening. She duly felt bad about it. People should definitely not quote the
Scriptures at one.

If the
Ecclesiastical Courts were going to take at least another month to give their
verdict on the validity of his marriage, by then she would have returned to
school and started a new term. She had almost decided that morning, in the same
mental gesture as she had decided to hire a car, not to return to school at
all. She must write to Ricky soon. She would write to Michael first.

But why
don’t I go down to Jerusalem, Barbara thought, and pass through the Mandelbaum
Gate? Why is it that I’m not on my way, now, from Jerusalem, across the plains
of Sodom and Gomorrah to the Dead Sea? Why don’t I go over and see him?

Because
I’m a pilgrim to the Holy Land and one shouldn’t abuse hospitality.

Because
I’ve got to have time to think.

Because
I don’t really want to sleep with him in the present state of affairs.

But why
don’t I go?

Because
it’s dangerous there for someone of Jewish blood.

But no
one could possibly find out.

Barbara
had a separate passport issued by the Foreign Office in London, for the purpose
of entering Jordan from Israel. She had the required certificate of baptism
signed by a priest:

I declare that
Miss Barbara Vaughan is a member of the Roman Catholic Church and has been
known to me for some years.

No one
could possibly guess that I’m a half-Jew.

Then why?

Because
I’m a spinster that’s taken a religious turn. A Gentile Jewess, neither one
thing nor another, caught up in a crackpot mystique. I declare that Miss
Barbara Vaughan is a member of the Roman Catholic Church and has been known to
me for some years. Life is passing.

Then
why do I not go down to the Dead Sea?

Because
the time hasn’t yet come for me to go down to the Dead Sea. When the time
comes, I’ll go down to the Dead Sea.

I go
on, she thought, with questions and answers in the old Hebraic mode, chanting
away to myself.

She
thought, then, that it might be a pleasant gesture on her part to ask Freddy
Hamilton, as a favour, if he would get a letter across to Harry Clegg in Jordan
for her. It would save the delay of sending it by post through Cyprus. Freddy
Hamilton was the sort of person who would take it as a good gesture, the asking
of a favour.

I know of thy doings, and
find thee

neither cold nor hot …

Well,
it makes me hot and cold to think of what I said, she thought. People should
definitely not quote the Scriptures at each other.

And she
recalled, without reason, that Freddy had said to her only last week, ‘Most of
the Christian shrines are over in Jordan, of course. You really must go over
and meet these friends of mine. They love having visitors, and there’s a
delightful English atmosphere.’

She
smiled cheerfully and got back into her hired car.

3.
A Delightful English
Atmosphere

Freddy was over in Jordan
for the week-end. He sat on a wooden bench, writing a letter, in a part of the
garden that Joanna Cartwright had planted with numerous wild flowers and herbs
of the Holy Land that she picked up on her rambles. Most of them were
recognizable to Freddy as belonging to the same botanical tribes as the wild
flowers of the English fields and hedgerows of his schooldays before everything
had been changed. Indeed, some of Joanna’s finds were no different at all, so
far as he could see, from those pointed out to him, on walks, before he was
sent to school, by that governess whose name Freddy had understandably forgotten.
Joanna’s flowers were not even a larger species.

Freddy’s
writing-pad rested on his knee. ‘Dearest Ma …

…
but I hope you are not serious. Surely
Benny intends to remain with you at Harrogate! Dearest Ma, there must be very
little for her to do. I quite fail to see how it
can
be too much for
her. The hotel staff seems to do most of the doing, and all Benny has to do is
be.
I think, quite honestly, she has too little to occupy her time, and that is
mainly what is making her irritable. I wish I could be more helpful, dearest
Ma, but you must realize that things have changed and one has to put up with
much, nowadays, that would have been unthinkable in the past. Indeed, you are
fortunate in having Benny. She would not be easy — perhaps impossible — to
replace!

Only a
few of Joanna’s wild plants were still in bloom. A young Arab boy in his teens,
with skinny, deformed legs, wearing only shorts, had come out of the house
with a watering-can and was drenching the precious clumps in their dark, shady
corner; he had an air of special concentration, plainly having been instructed
in the seriousness of the job. A few yards away, on the long green that led to
the house, the lawn-spray made a whispering splash under the sun while the Arab’s
watering-can in Freddy’s cool corner splashed intermittently. The small tickets
that Joanna had stuck into the ground to mark her plants showed up in their
black capital letters under the wash of water. Joanna had categorized them by
their place of origin. Partly from familiar memory and partly by his immediate
eyesight Freddy could read the tickets from where he sat; Gethsemane, Mount of
Olives, Valley of Jehosophat, Siloam, Jericho, Bethlehem.