Thieves in the Night (43 page)

The six aged men now proceeded to the altar and read in turn one specially selected verse from each of the saved scrolls. To find it some had to re-wind twenty or thirty yards of parchment, but they did it without hesitation, and found the verse
with the ease of opening a book on a marked page. When the reading was over, the scrolls were dressed again and carried once more round the synagogue, the bells faintly audible over the sobs of the crowd; then they were replaced in the Holy of Holies and its door was closed.

There was a silence while the congregation waited for the next canonical prayer, as laid down in the rigid rules of the service. But instead of intoning it the priest suddenly swerved round to face the crowd, and, lifting both arms above his head, in a thundering voice cried out the words of David's psalm:

“
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. Cast forth lightning, and scatter them: shoot out thine arrows, and destroy them. Rid me, and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children; whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their hand is falsehood. That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as the polished columns of a palace
….”

Facing the audience with his arms lifted up and tears running down his face, he stood in the poise of the ancient High Priests of Israel. Two attendants moved up to him from the right and the left, one holding the five-armed Maccabean candlestick with the candles aflame, the other a printed copy of the White Paper. He took the paper first and with a wrathful gesture of his narrow hands tore it up; then held the candles to it and let it go up in flames.

It was an unorthodox and unheard-of thing to do; a roar broke from the crowd, which, after a few reverberations, shaped itself into the old incantation “Hear Israel, the Lord is God and God is one”. They said it thrice; then, as if a miracle had just been performed under their eyes, the men in the crowd fell into each other's arms, shouting and crying with joy.

They left the synagogue comforted, happily convinced that now all would be well. They clung to symbols as their fathers had done whose faith alone had enabled them to survive; and
like their ancestors not so long ago, they believed in the power of the symbol to smite Pharaoh's hosts and bring their children and grandchildren safely across the sea.

Proudly carrying their flags and streamers, the other procession marched from the football ground to the centre of modern Jerusalem; when they reached Zion Circus they were disbanded by their leaders and told to go home. They were disappointed with this peaceful anticlimax, for all morning they had been exhorted to fight without being told whom or how; but it was luncheon-time and very hot, and they were tired and hungry, so they went home without demurring.

In the afternoon, however, when it became cooler, they began to flock back. By five o'clock the crowd had become so dense in Zion Circus that all traffic had to be diverted.

Zion Circus is a white, hot and dusty expanse of asphalt at the intersection of the town's main artery, Jaffa Road, with the shopping centre of Eliezer Ben Yehuda Street. The houses are in concrete or Jerusalem stone, white or sulphur. When the sun is high, people without sun-glasses cross it with eyes, narrowed to slits. There are two cafés and a cinema. It is mainly frequented by Hebrews and on this day no Moslem ventured near it, except the Arab shoeblacks sitting in a row in the narrow shadow of the façades, and using their brushes as drumsticks on their wooden boxes to attract customers.

The crowd shouted slogans and milled round the square between the Café Europe, Café Vienna and Zion Cinema, aimless, angry and frustrated. The Police had thrown a cordon across Jaffa Road to protect the District Commissioner's Offices which were about a hundred yards down the road from the square, and this provoked the crowd whose only aim now became to break through the cordon and march to the District Offices. They pressed forward, were pushed back by the Police and re-formed, more defiant than ever.

By 6 P.M. the Police had to make use of their batons and a score of people had to be carried across the square with
blood-covered faces. This incensed the crowd even more and they began to throw stones and bricks at the Police, a few of whom were injured. The Police charged. For hours they had obeyed the order to stand put and face the jeering crowd with restraint; now they obeyed the order to charge, and they let fly. They attacked the crowd in groups, hitting out right and left, blind to age or sex, and the screams of their victims seemed only to increase their fury. As always when the jovial guardians of peace and order are turned loose, they were more savage than the mob, for in them brutality was paired with a good conscience. Where the crowd thinned out towards its fringes, they gave chase to single men and women running for shelter into side streets; but when they succeeded in grabbing one, a ring formed round them which tore the screaming victim from their hands, and they had to beat their way out of the ring to rejoin their panting colleagues. Several of them had their uniforms torn to shreds and a few lost their helmets and batons to the crowd.

By 7 P.M. the crowd was smashing shop windows, among them those of a German restaurant and a British department store in Jaffa Road. The whole square was now a boiling cauldron with scuffling groups moving across it like bubbles. Then, with the fall of dusk, came a temporary lull.

The first line of the Police had been broken, but the second stood firm, protecting the District Offices. They stood astride Jaffa Road at its intersection with a narrow side street called Queen Melisande Lane. They were armed with rifles, and though so far they had not been ordered to make use of them, the ominous dark hole of the muzzles kept the front of the crowd at a distance of about fifteen yards. Most of them had only arrived in the country a few weeks before and were rather bewildered by what they saw.

Second from the right in the line stood young Constable Turner, a fair, good-looking lad from a village in Suffolk. Holding his rifle with a firm grip in the at-ease position, he looked at the undulating crowd before him with his wide-open,
slightly bulging eyes. He had never before seen a mob behave like that and he did not know what all this shouting was about, except that one of the fellows had said that the Jews here wanted Independence, and he had added that if British rule wasn't good enough for them, all they had to do was to buy their tickets and go home where they came from and see whether Hitler was better. That was fair enough. Not that he had any grudge against Jews, queer fish though they were; he had known one in the Force, from Whitechapel, who had been a very decent, regular fellow. And back home in Suffolk on embarkation leave he had listened to a sermon by the vicar against Hitler and Race, and how the poor blighters had their synagogues burnt down; so he had arrived in this country with pity for them and open-minded like.

But on the other hand there was what the sergeant had said when he had given them a talk after debarkation—a regular eye-opener it had been, for the sarge knew what he was talking about, what with five years in the country and knowing the lingo and the ropes.

“You'll have to look out sharp,” he had said to them, “for this is a hot country. If there is no trouble with Johnny Arab, there is trouble with Moishe Jew. Johnny Arab is easy enough to get along with but he is excitable like, and when he gets excited he does a bit of shooting. He is a clean fighter though, who does most of his shooting in the open hills. Moishe Jew is a, different customer, all smiles into your face but sly. He likes planting time-bombs which go off when you don't expect it, and ambushing in dark streets, gangster fashion. He's also got helpers everywhere. Johnny Arab is quiet just now, but the Jew has something up his sleeve; so watch your step….”

Constable Turner had been watching his step ever since, and if a Jewish shopkeeper or waiter talked to him, all smiles and “please” and “thank you”, he would just look at him and think that he knew what he knew.

Just now they were all screaming again on the square like a lot of monkeys in the zoo. Having finished with the shop
windows they were now smashing the telephone-boxes and street lamps. One after the other the lamps went out; then there was a flash like from a short-circuit and the rest of the lamps went out together. The square was plunged into sudden twilight, and as it grew darker the yelling and screaming increased. Young Constable Turner confessed to himself that he didn't like it.

In the first row of the crowd, directly opposite him, Turner had remarked an oddly dressed boy with black love-locks and black cotton stockings fixed with strings. He was pressing a velvet bag to his hips, the like of those they always carried on their way to the synagogue. The boy looked and behaved like a devil, yelling and gesticulating, and jumping up and down. Several times he was pushed forward by the pressure of the crowd almost into Turner's arms, and then he elbowed himself back into the crowd, but he didn't seem to be frightened. On the contrary, he was pulling faces at Constable Turner. Turner tried to look the other way, but for some reason his gaze had always to return to the boy's face. Just now the boy was sticking his tongue out at him—there could be no doubt about it though it was almost dark—and what with his dangling side-locks framing the dark-eyed face, and the long, pointed tongue sticking out, it was an ugly sight which almost gave one the creeps. Presently the boy started yelling at him, or rather chanting something in their lingo which Turner did not understand; nor did he guess that he, Turner, had sung those very same words himself, though in translation, back home in church. “
Cast forth lightning and scatter them
,” the boy yelled, dancing in a frenzy on his toes, “
shoot out thine arrows, and deliver me from the hand of strange children
.” Turner wished he could collar that boy, and give him a good shaking maybe, to teach him some manners. But just to stand and stare and dodge the stones thrown at you, with that grimacing devil under your nose, it kind of got you down. Well, that's how it is, the policeman's lot, always—or nearly.

Now they'd started singing again, all together—their anthem or whatever it was—it sounded as if they meant to bring the houses down. And as they sang, they advanced. One could not properly see the crowd moving forward from the square, but one could see the pressure increase on those in front. They tried to hold their place, butting back with elbows and buttocks, but the pressure was too strong for them and a few lost their balance and fell, squirming on the asphalt while others tumbled over them; there were now less than ten yards of open space left and it was almost completely dark. Turner squinted at the faces of his fellow policemen; they stood rigid as if the whole show didn't concern them. The mob was throwing stones again, not from the front, of course, but from further back where it was safe; Turner had to dodge a brick which came hurtling at him like shrapnel and missed his head by inches. And all the while the singing went on—part seemed to do the singing, part the throwing; now it swelled even more and there was a new violent push forward. Those in front were swept forward by a big wave, the whole dark mass was moving; then there was a shot followed by two others and the second man to Turner's right gave out a yell and went down in a queer kind of spiralling slow-motion.

Almost at the same second the sergeant yelled out a command and Turner felt his rifle fly upward and dig its butt firmly into his shoulder, as if the rifle had obeyed of its own accord. The next command followed immediately and Turner pulled the trigger—whether he felt regret or relief for having been ordered to fire only over the heads of the crowd he couldn't say, for simultaneously with the flash he saw a dark and supple mass, like a jumping wild-cat, fly at him, and felt a hot stinging pain in his left knuckle. He screamed and let go of the rifle; then he saw as if in a crazy dream that the boy with the grimacing devil's face was hanging on to his neck and biting into his knuckle, holding fast with his teeth. Crazed with fright and frantically trying to wrench his hand free, young Constable Turner suddenly remembered the words of the psalm:
Deliver
me from the hand of strange children
; then he lifted his right fist and gave the devil a whacking blow on the head.

The boy tottered and let go, but before Turner could grab him some of the mob had torn the boy back, and Turner's rifle had gone too. He looked round with dazed eyes and saw that there still was a number of separate skirmishes going on in the street, but the mass of the crowd was floating back and the cordon had re-formed. The volley had after all had its effect, and a minute or so later there were again about twenty yards of free space in front. “Order arms,” the sergeant shouted; but Turner had no longer any arms to order. “I'll pay them back for this,” he muttered under his breath; then he saw the blood trickling from his hand, and reported for permission to fall out.

Later in the same night Joseph was walking home to his dingy hotel in the Street of the Prophets, chuckling to himself. A week ago the utter futility of this demonstration would have filled him with despair; since the action last Friday he did not mind. But how like the Glicksteins that this day of days should end in such a contemptible and humiliating manner! Bauman's organisation had taken no part in it; they believed in action, not in demonstrations. The official leaders had all made speeches about “deeds and not words” and “resistance to the last drop of blood”; the only thing they had forgotten to say was what deeds they expected from the people and what form their resistance should take. The crowd, keyed up and then left without a lead, had acted under its own confused impulses; and to-morrow the Glicksteins would issue a statement against rowdyism and for order and discipline, and everything would go on as before.