A Long Way to Shiloh (13 page)

I traversed the rest of the slope like a greyhound, made the top, peered frantically for the entrance to the lane in the sudden gloaming, saw it, and was making towards it when the other man, a hundred yards away, cottoned on and came running. He fired as he ran. I saw the flash, heared the report, and took off more keenly than ever.

The lane was empty, dark – pitch-black almost. I floundered uphill among the potholes, saw a house, the first, decided it was too convenient, and realized I’d better get out of the lane
anyway
. There was a pile of fruit-crates in the next entry. I dodged past them, saw an open wooden door, and ran through. I was in a garden and the fruit groves ran parallel on the left. I jumped on the low wall of the first terrace and sprinted along, screened by the dripping trees, still in line with the lane. The backs of the houses were towards me, and there were lights on in them. I saw one glimmering only dimly, made for it, jumped down off the wall, into a garden, found the door, turned the knob and went in.

An old couple were seated at a table with candles – sabbath candles, Friday night, I realized suddenly – the only light in the room. He was reading aloud from a book and she was listening to him. The pair of them swivelled round open-mouthed and sat looking at me. I said, ‘Blow the candles out,’ too choked to say any more.

‘The sabbath candles?’ the woman said, and just then there was a shot, fairly close, and I blew them out. The last thing I saw was the face of the old man, disembodied almost in the candle flame, neck scrawny, lips bluish as he gaped at me.

I said, gasping in the dark, ‘There are Jordanians in the lane with guns. Where’s the phone?’

‘The phone?’ It was the woman.

‘To call the police.’

She said stupidly, ‘To call the police? On Shabat?’

I don’t think I shook her. I don’t know what I did. We seemed to be sitting on the floor in a passage, and I had my cigarette lighter lit while she dialled. In its light I could see she was wearing a wig, the
sheitel
of the old orthodox Jewess, and it was slightly askew. The old man seemed to be seated on the floor, too, and a hell of a row was going on outside, firing and glass shattering and people running. The old man was rocking back and forth moaning.

She must have made the call. I must have asked her to call a taxi, too, because one turned up, before the police; the driver on double rates for Shabat. The quality of the row had changed outside. It was all outrage and excited hubbub now, and I knew they weren’t there any more. They’d be in a car, speeding in to Jordan, where I would have been.

For the first time almost, I suddenly realized what had
happened
today, and I was faint and dizzy. I could hardly stand up. Once I was up, I could hardly move.

‘Wait! Stay. You can’t go now. What about the police?’

‘Tell them to phone Professor Agrot. Professor Agrot, at the university, or at his flat.’

‘No. Please. You tell them. Don’t go now. You can’t go now.’

I could. I did, too exhausted to argue.

‘So where are we going?’ the driver said.

‘I want a doctor.’

‘On Shabat? We can see. What happened to you?’

‘Just a minute. Stop there,’ I told him. ‘The telephone box.’

He had to help me out of the cab and into the box. I leaned against the wall inside, sick and faint, horribly conscious of my head. The hat seemed to have gone. The lint had gone too. There was just a sticky mess there. There was mud all down the front of my clothes.

The phone answered after the first ring. Agrot said, ‘Yes?’

I said, ‘It’s me. Did you find Ike?’

He said, ‘Caspar! Are you all right?’

‘Yes. What’s happened to him?’

‘The police have the body. What’s happened to you, for God’s sake?’

I started to tell him, appreciating dully what he’d said. I felt myself slipping down inside the box. I levered myself up, but still kept slipping. He said at last, ‘You say they had a photo of you taken in Jordan?’

‘Yes,’ I said, but in the same moment realized it wasn’t. I had a sudden hallucinatory vision of him, the little grinning Arab I’d told to eff off in Nazareth, standing behind me in the photo; and of the friend I’d told to eff off, too, who’d taken it. The military sleeve next to mine; Shoshana’s sleeve. I heard myself telling him it, and his precise voice repeating it. He said, ‘You don’t sound good. Where are you?’

‘In a call box.’

‘Do you want me to pick you up?’

‘No, I’ve got a cab.’

‘All right, I’ll see you at the hotel in a few minutes.’

‘I’m not going back there.’

He started to say, ‘What do you mean?’ and stopped and said, ‘I see. All right. Do you want to come here?’

‘No. I told you. They were
looking
for me –’

‘Look, you’ll be perfectly –’

‘Good-bye.’

‘Wait a minute! Where are you going?’

‘I’ll let you know,’ I said, and hung up.

Wherever the hell it was, it was away from here. But there was my head first.

We met the doctor opening his front door, just returning from synagogue, a little elderly man. He looked me up and down in the street, and then at my head. ‘What’s this – a traffic
accident
?’

‘Kind of.’

‘People shouldn’t ride on Shabat, then it wouldn’t happen,’ he said. ‘Come inside.’

He cleaned my head up and put six stitches in it, and then dressed and bandaged it. The room swam as I sat there. I said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Why smoke on Shabat? Is it such a hardship, one day only, to keep your religion?’

‘It’s not my religion.’

‘It’s not?’ He had a good look at me. ‘So smoke.’

‘You have an excellent accent,’ he said as he worked. ‘Where are you from?’

‘England.’

‘Good. That will be six pounds English. Or forty-eight pounds Israeli.’

He wouldn’t handle money on Shabat, so I counted it out on a small side table, and looked at myself in the mirror above it. My head was like a great bandaged balloon, very identifiable if anybody happened to be looking for a head injury. I said, ‘Is there anywhere I could get a hat tonight?’

‘Tonight, Shabat? I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t want to go about like this.’

‘Go to bed. That’s where you should be. I’ll give you some tablets.’

‘I have to go out.’

‘It would need, anyway, to be a very big hat,’ he said smiling, and then looked at me a bit speculatively, and smiled in a different way. ‘One moment,’ he said, and went out of the room. He came back in with a
shtreiml
, the big round fur hat of the ultra-pious. ‘Try it,’ he said.

I tried it. The enormous thing fitted like a glove. It seemed to carry a persona of its own. I stared rather weirdly at my features in the mirror. A medieval type rabbi stared back.

‘It was my father-in-law’s,’ he said. ‘Of blessed memory. The Talmud enjoins that if a man lacks a garment he should be given one.’ He seemed to be breaking up in a quiet way.

‘How much for the hat?’

‘I’m not a hat shop. Bring it back.’

‘All right. Thanks. Shalom.’

‘Shabat Shalom.’

The taxi-driver gave a double-take at the hat. He said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Can you take me to Tel Aviv?’

‘On Shabat? It’ll cost you a fortune – double fare both ways.’

‘How much?’

He told me how much. He couldn’t take his eyes off the hat.

I said, ‘All right. Let’s go.’

‘Have you got that much with you?’

‘Yes.’ I was pretty sure I hadn’t, and also sure it would have to take care of itself. I was too exhausted even to think about it.

He covered the forty-four miles to Tel Aviv very slowly, in an hour and a half. It wasn’t quite eight when we got there. He gave me a shake in the back seat.

‘Where is it you want?’ he said.

I had a look out. We were cruising down Allenby Road, shuttered and deserted for Shabat. I said, ‘Is there a Yemeni quarter here?’

‘The Yemeni quarter? It’s behind Mograbi Square, the upper end of Carmel. Is that where you want?’

‘Yes.’

He turned and got into Carmel Street.

‘Anywhere in particular?’

‘Stop at the phone box.’

He stopped and I got the bit of paper out and went in the box. He got out of the cab, too, and planted himself solidly outside to watch his investment. The phone rang a long time before anybody answered.

‘Yes?’ a man said angrily.

‘Shoshana Almogi, please.’

‘The Almogis don’t use the phone Shabat,’ he said furiously. ‘Neither do we.’

‘It’s very urgent. Tell her Dr Laing.’

‘Wait!’

She was there in about half a minute, breathless.

She said, ‘
Who
is it?’

‘Me, love.’

‘Caspar! Where are you?’

‘I’m here.’

‘In Jerusalem?’

‘In Tel Aviv.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful.’

She didn’t know how wonderful. But this was very
encouraging
. We’d parted in a distinctly funny way. I’d been
wondering
how to go about it.

She said, ‘Exactly where are you?’

‘In a call box.’ I looked out of the window. ‘In Elyashiv Street.’

‘But we’re just around the corner!’

‘Shoshana, can you put me up?’

She hesitated just a moment. ‘Yes, certainly. Of course. Stay where you are. I’ll come right down.’

‘Fine. And Shoshana?’

‘Yes?’

‘Bring a few quid with you.’

The awfulness, the impossibility of having to explain, creased me up as I waited for her, but in fact I had to do very little. She seemed to get it in a trice, and only goggled fractionally at my hat as we walked to the flat. She said anxiously, ‘The only thing is – I didn’t realize – there are a few people here. They want to meet you, naturally.’

I said, slowing in the street, ‘Shoshana, I can’t. I just want to go to bed. I didn’t know how the hotels would be, Friday night …’

‘It’s only relations, an uncle and aunt, my brother and his wife, their children. And Shimshon. Shimshon is here for the week-end. He won’t mind sleeping on the floor, just one night. And the rest will go soon. They always come for Shabat.’

‘But my clothes – look at me.’

‘So you had an accident!’

‘And my hat.’

‘The hat, the hat,’ she said rapidly. ‘What about the hat? A lot of serious people wear hats like that. Maybe English
professors
wear
that kind of hat. Why else would you be wearing it? Nobody will even notice the hat.’

But they did notice it. It was a crammed and misshapen hovel over a humus restaurant; and the full house in it stared with fascination at my
shtreiml
as I reeled in the doorway. Only her father, a rather wizened old body, greeted it with any animation, and only then because he thought I was a
yeshiva-bocha
, a member of a religious seminary, who had
somehow
wandered in off the street. This old body lived only for the synagogue, I gathered, as the confused evening developed. I seemed to be sitting over a plate of soup. Everybody seemed to be talking, of accidents, police inefficiency, the Pentateuchal portion for the week.

‘It’s terrible the drivers here. They should put still more taxes …’

‘For instance, in
Vayishlach
in Genesis today, something puzzles me. Ibn Ezra interprets the attitude of Esau …’

‘
Idiot
, you’ve been told – he’s not Jewish …’

‘They go like lunatics. If the police prosecuted every time an accident …’

‘She’s proud to work with you, our Shana. Look at her …’

I looked at her. She wasn’t wearing uniform now. She was in pale blue slacks, pink jumper, tiny Shield of David on a thin gold chain round her neck, black, black hair. Shimshon was looking at her, too. A big morose character, khaki rig, captain’s stars, smouldering eyes, red beret; all the males covered in this religious household.

‘So he goes to greet his brother Jacob, taking
four hundred
men
with him. Why? Because …’

‘A little chicken, a spoonful of rice – Come, what can the doctor object …’

‘If the police won’t take an action, go to your own people, the embassy. These liberty-takers in big cars …’

‘Again, why do the rabbis put dots over each letter of
vayishakeihu
– “And he kissed him”? Because it wasn’t a genuine kiss! Tell me …’

‘How many times more –
idiot
! Excuse him – he lives only for the synagogue …’

‘So take my advice, make them prosecute …’

‘Do you want to go to bed now?’ she said, brown eyes watching me.

‘Yes.’

‘Shimshon won’t mind sleeping on the floor, just one night. You won’t mind sleeping on the floor, Shimshon, just one night?’

‘So what does he do? Does he trust him, never mind the brotherly kiss? Does he stay with him …?’

‘No, not for a night,’ Shimshon said.

‘Exactly! You see? The military mind! Which Jacob had. Not for a night even! A clever man. They were all clever men in those days. When they said something plainly, all right. Otherwise they said one thing and meant another. So explain to me, why does Ibn Ezra …’

‘Come on,’ she said.

‘What – already going?’ her father said

‘Of course, idiot. To bed. He’s ill, can’t you see? So sleep well, we’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘The
bocha
stays here tonight?’

‘I told you already – he’s the professor of Shana!’

‘Fine. So we’ll go together to synagogue.’

‘Idiot – Pay no attention. He lives only …’

‘There’s no light,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave the door open till you undress.’

‘No, Shoshana, close it a minute. I want to talk to you.’

She closed it, pitch blackness.

‘Shoshana, listen, I don’t want to go back yet. I’ve got to think. Will you fix me up with an hotel tomorrow?’

‘Stay here.’

‘It’s Shimshon’s bed.’

She didn’t say anything. She just leaned on me, soft jumper, soft little breasts. My knees gave. I was sitting, in a jangle of springs. She was sitting beside me, lips touching mine, just touching. She said against them, ‘Oh, Caspar, Caspar, I’m so glad you’re here,’ hands cool on my neck.

‘Shoshana.’

‘Stay here.’

‘Yes.’

I had no clear idea when she went. It wasn’t so dark suddenly. I seemed to be swooping about the room getting undressed. I had my trousers off before my jacket, was in bed before I
remembered
the hat. I levered the hat off and lay back, in some confusion of mind.

The kiss, the crater, the gushing face on the carpet. I seemed to be obsessed with a need to return the hat, to prosecute liberty-takers. The softness of breast, of arm, next to mine in the photo, who wouldn’t eff off. Would he ever eff off, sitting smouldering next door while she kissed me here? Not a sisterly kiss, or a brotherly, like the clever man, like all the clever men, who couldn’t be believed unless they spoke plainly, saying one thing and meaning another.

Tablets. Needed to take tablets. I’d roused up, but sank back again. No real need. Could manage without. Could easily manage, a filmy veil parting then, and under the veil a gulf, and down the gulf me, leaving the awful day, endlessly leaving it, endlessly floating in endless gulf on big balloon head.