A Long Way to Shiloh (14 page)

I didn’t hear Shimshon in the night and he wasn’t there when I woke. Shoshana was there. She said, ‘Would you like tea or something? Would you like something to eat?’

‘What – breakfast already?’

‘Lunch already.’

‘What time, for Christ’s sake?’

‘One o’clock, for Christ’s sake. You were sleeping beautifully. Do you feel beautiful now?’

‘I don’t know how I feel.’

‘You look beautiful.’ She was very gay, eyes sparkling. The door was shut and she gave me a quick kiss. I sat up. My head lurched and every hump on my spiny prehistoric back ached.

‘Is there anything you should be taking?’

‘I don’t know. I have some tablets. I don’t want them.’

‘I think a little soup and mince and then compote.’

‘All right.’

‘I’ll bring you a bowl to wash in. There’s no bathroom.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Do you want the lavatory? I’ll show you when you want it.’

I just wanted to lay there. I didn’t want mince or compote or a bowl or the lavatory, and I didn’t want to think about them. She went after a while and I lay and thought about Ike. It seemed like a bad, a terrible dream. I felt nauseated and oppressed thinking about it. I thought about it while I washed and in the toilet and when I ate.

I scarcely answered when she spoke to me, and presently she went again.

There was a religious picture on the wall, the all-seeing eye of God looking through a cloud. Great shafts of light spread from the cloud as God looked through. I gave him a bit of a look, too.

*

‘I think you should have a breath of air,’ she said. ‘I got most of the mud off your clothes.’

‘Where’s Shimshon?’

‘At the synagogue. He went with my father to
ma’ariv
. They’ll soon be back. Shabat is out. I thought we could have a little stroll and a cup of coffee. It will do you good.’

‘All right.’ I wasn’t doing myself much good in bed. I’d tried to get up, but there was nowhere to sit, no chairs, no carpet, no floor covering of any sort, just Shimshon’s neatly rolled blanket and his mattress. The only furniture in the room was an old chest of drawers, piled high with brown paper parcels
containing
, apparently, her father’s stock of prayer shawls,
phylacteries
and skull caps: he kept a little shop of religious articles.

I dressed and got my great hat on and met her father and Shimshon just coming in as I left the room.

‘Hello,
bocher
!’ The old nut was exceedingly jovial. ‘Did you miss some talk today! You’d have licked your fingers.’ He’d had a perfectly marvellous day, Shabat the best one of the week for him, scarcely out of the synagogue or the adjoining study hall for a minute of it.

‘We’re just going out, Father. He hasn’t been out today yet. We’re going for a coffee.’

‘Fine. I’ll come with you.’

‘You wouldn’t like it. We’re going to Dizengoff.’

‘Dizengoff, feh! It’s too noisy, Dizengoff.’

‘I told you you wouldn’t like it.’

‘We don’t have to go to Dizengoff,’ she said in the street.

‘What’s wrong with Dizengoff?’

‘Isn’t it too busy for you?’

‘I don’t mind Dizengoff.’ I never did mind it. Dizengoff always had a tonic effect on me. Maybe it would have one now.

It was too far to walk so we took a taxi and got off at the Circus and walked down from there.

Tel Aviv on a Saturday night is a very lively town, of course, and Dizengoff Street is the liveliest part of it. The circus is a hub, of treed lights, wheeling traffic, corner cinemas, stores; and radiating away from it, one of the spokes of five main streets, is Dizengoff.

It isn’t very broad and it isn’t very tall, but a certain dense hubbub lets you know right away that you’re in one of the streets of the world. Tree-lined, café-lined – and with flats above the cafés, so that the balcony-dwellers may call without inconvenience to friends in the street – it exudes a
gemutlich
keit
not to be found elsewhere. It isn’t the rue de la Paix, of course, but the habitués like it better; just as they prefer soft drinks to aperitifs, and lemon tea and strudel to almost
anything
.

We eased our way through the swarming strollers in the neon-lit night, passed packed tables of sports and political
experts
and found a place for ourselves in a noisy convocation of rabbinical students. My hat was not at all out of place here, I was glad to see, and I sat back and felt the accustomed
revivifying
process of a Saturday night in Tel Aviv.

There are Jerusalem people and Tel Aviv people, and it’s aesthetically proper to be one of the former. I was one of the latter. It’s an architectural outrage, of course, a mass of
Mediterranean
concrete gimcrackery, mainly shoved up too quickly, to cope with the sudden influx of people who found
themselves
alive when they hadn’t expected to be. Teitleman and his mates had helped to perpetrate much of it; but the life of a Teitleman building, thank God, was not much above twenty years.

But it’s a live town, an excitable and passionate town, swept by strange fads and fancies, dietetic, therapeutic and artistic. Any morning of the week you can see yogi and callisthenics enthusiasts intensely engaged on the beach, and any evening find packed crowds appreciating works of the most baffling obliquity in concert hall and gallery.

All over it now, its smaller class of businessman had opened up to catch the post-sabbath trade. In every hole and corner there seemed to be an oil-lit stall selling some minute requisite, elastic, shoe-laces, combs; and at every other one, bits of food, potato cakes, fried chickpea balls, fruit and vegetable juices, nuts.

It’s only twenty minutes by bomber from Cairo, and there was a fair amount of khaki in the street; and with it some less definable but very Israeli quality, a certain humorous
pugnacity
. Toughness, self-reliance, qualities greatly prized here, had also struck an echo in the girls. There was a mischievous, tomboyish look about many of them as they passed, army hats cocked modishly over one eye, egg-brown arms round the necks of male and female comrades; a strong impression of matey solidarity.

I suddenly felt myself coming alive, with a sensation of cotton wool lifting off the top of my head. Hadn’t this girl been demonstrating some rather over-matey solidarity with me of late? Was it imagination, or had she or had she not been giving me a kiss-up on Shimshon’s bed?

I had a look at her. She was tidying the giant Moroccan’s epaulets, which seemed to please him. He was smiling a fond darkling smile, anyway. It suddenly struck me as a bit rough on him, after sweltering for months in the south, to have won me for his last evening.

I said, ‘Look, I don’t want to disrupt anything. I’m fine here if you want to go ahead.’

‘So are we,’ the girl said. ‘We wouldn’t want to do anything else, would we, Shimshon?’

Shimshon opened his mouth and closed it again.

‘What had you planned to do?’

‘We had planned to go to a kebab house in Jaffa and after that to the Al Raschid nightclub,’ Shimshon said immediately.

‘I see,’ I said, a bit taken aback by his explicitness and also by the length of the speech. ‘Well, go ahead. I know my way around here. When I’m tired I’ll go back.’

‘We wouldn’t dream of it,’ the girl said. ‘We’d much sooner be with you, wouldn’t we, Shimshon?’

‘Yes,’ Shimshon said, into his coffee.

I said, ‘Look, you’ll only make me come with you if you go on like –’

‘You mean you’d like to? You really feel up to it? You don’t think it would be too much for you?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know,’I said irritably. ‘I just don’t want –’

‘Why, that would be wonderful. If you think it’s right for you. We’d love him to come, wouldn’t we, Shimshon?’

‘Yes,’ Shimshon said, and looked at me briefly. ‘If he thinks it’s right.’

There was nothing ambiguous in his look at least. Two little red points glowed murderously in his eyes for a moment. But that’s what we did, anyway.

The kebabs came up on practically red-hot skewers, and we lingered over them in the little Arab parlour, and then had Turkish coffee before wandering down the dark Jaffa lanes to the Al Raschid.

He’d booked a table, which was just as well, because it was after ten and the cellar was packed for the night. The ambience, I noted, was strictly non-rabbinic, and waves of amazed hilarity followed us as we were led to the table.

‘It’s your hat,’ Shimshon said, unnecessarily, delighted by my momentary discomfiture. ‘It surprises them here. You could take it off now.’

‘No, thanks.’ I didn’t know what she’d told him, but my Invisible-Man type bandages would surprise them even more. Also the hat had changed my face in subtle and not unpleasing ways. I’d quite taken to it.

It certainly seemed to be producing service. The first cabaret was just finishing, and the belly dancer shimmied up and to applause practically screwed herself on my knee. Also, and more usefully, it brought the wine waiter at a jovial trot as soon as signalled.

I sat and worked my way through a bottle of white wine, the others sipping abstemiously, while dancing proceeded. Nice wine, Avdat wine, from the stony uplands of the Negev. You needed to drink a certain amount to get the stony flavour. I drank a certain amount, and ordered another bottle. Some time during the course of it I began to feel wonderful.

Much better to be alive than dead. Much better to be in Tel Aviv than, say, Amman. Much better to be here drinking stony Avdat than anything else I could think of. Life went on, of course, I thought, and sighed gustily, and watched absently as Shimshon began scooping about on his knee. He seemed to be scooping cigarette ends and ash from his knee. He seemed to be putting them back in the ashtray. Definitely something wrong with this fellow’s eyes. Funny little red points in them when he looked at you.

I sighed heavily again, and saw the red points come up again as he started scooping on his knee once more. A strange sort of obsession. He was moving the ashtray away from me. I seemed to need the ashtray and took it back. Fellow didn’t want to give it, playing little games on his knee again. Definitely strange.

‘You are blowing the ash on Shimshon’s knee.’

‘Is
that
what it is?’ I said, and looked at him more kindly. ‘Good job you were there,’ I said obscurely.

‘Are you sure the wine is good for you?’

‘Something wrong with it? Tastes perfectly good to me.’

‘Your head.’

‘Ah. I see what you mean. Don’t think about it,’ I told her. ‘Life goes on, you know.’

Which it did; nilly willy. Nilly willy? Willy nilly, back to front, say one thing and mean another, like the clever fellows in
Vayishlach
. There was something about these clever fellows that it was important for me to remember. What was it …?

My head seemed to be orbiting gently like some black-ringed Saturn about a yard above my shoulders, filled with an immense life-enhancing capability. A capability for what? For posing opposings, for flashing nilly-willyisms.

‘Not dancing?’ I said to the military mind opposite.

A touch of his old eye trouble came on again.

‘Shimshon doesn’t dance,’ the girl said for him.

‘Nor you neither? Either? Nilly willy,’ I said.

‘Yes, I dance.’

‘How about a spin, then?’

She looked at me rather carefully, and then at my hat. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be better sitting quietly?’

‘Certainly not. Much better on my feet.’

So I was, I thought, springing effortlessly across the floor on them. And why not? Much better to spring across a dance floor with a lissom young thing than across a crater with a bullet in the behind. As a proposition it was self-evident, and one
requiring
celebration; except that the band seemed to have fallen into some slow confusion.

‘What on earth’s gone wrong with them?’ I said, not exactly put off but having to concentrate more on sudden inexplicable complications in my bosanova.

‘They’re supposed to be playing a tango.’

‘Is that what they’re supposed to be playing?’ I said, amused. But indeed, when you came to study the matter, which I did, amiably enough, nodding encouragement to the leader who seemed rendered uncertain by my patient ear-cupping attention, some tango-type rhythm did seem to be being attempted. The tango, of course, was my speciality, and once the facts had been established, I flowed smoothly enough into it. I fancied I knew a few steps that would interest them here.

It occurred to me while executing them that the presence of the hat was lending a certain panache to my performance, and that by swivelling up my eyeballs and gazing intently at the brim I was able not only to enhance my aesthetic enjoyment of it, but also to provide what must be an appealing picture of exaltation, very pleasing to beholders. An appreciative circle began to open up around us, and encouraged by it, I smiled and allowed my tongue to hang out in a relaxed fashion, thus transforming the expression into one of mindless rapture that I was able to retain almost indefinitely; which I did, swooping sightlessly about the floor.

The girl seemed to wilt after a bit.

‘Let’s sit down now. You’ve danced enough.’

‘Garnch enuch? I cug garnch all ni.’

‘Look, the cabaret’s ready. It’s Yemeni singers.’

‘Yengengi hinger, eh? A hewy inkerechking gialek,’ I said, not bringing my eyes down for an instant and intrigued by the unusal problem of having to produce a succession of labials with the tongue hanging out. ‘Ill gey ge hinging in gialek?’

‘Yes, yes. Of course. I’m sure. It will be very interesting. Come and sit down.’

I sat down, exercising my tongue rapidly and blowing out my cheeks, and watching curiously as a bit of further trouble developed with her unquestionably deranged escort. He seemed to be trying to shift to another table. Shoshana seemed to be trying to restrain him. They settled in the end on shifting a couple of ashtrays instead. A strange chap, ashtray fixated; no doubt to do with his conjunctival eye condition, now chronic. But no question the night was developing in unusually
interesting
ways. He’d left a single ashtray on the table, but as I began to whistle the catchy little Yemeni tune, he removed that as well. I affected not to notice, scattering my ash on the table as I listened to the song.

The fellow’s cavortings with his handkerchief, which he
began
flapping about the table, seriously interfered with my enjoyment of the number, but I was able to follow it fairly well, which was more, I prided myself, than most of the revellers in this room could do.

A tricky dialect, the Yemeni, and the words of the song didn’t mean what they said. It was one of a tradition of reversal songs – the Jewish minority of Yemen, oppressed by their Arab masters, often having to conceal their sentiments, even in song – and since this was a duet involving a lovers’ meeting and subsequent tiff, it was trickier than ever. By the end when the girl, in a rage, was telling the boy to clear off, and he was
electing
to understand her, in the spirit of the rest of the song, as meaning him to stay, the fun was pretty uproarious. I seemed to be appreciating it uproariously, having to correct them on only minor points of grammar. Excellent actors, too, the girl particularly convincing, eyes flashing as her fury mounted, voice powerfully audible even above my own. It wasn’t till she came across and struck me that I realized she wasn’t acting.

Obviously some ridiculous misunderstanding, as I was at pains to point out, in my near-perfect Yemeni. I seemed to be pointing it out to the manager, who was escorting us to the door.

I brooded over this in some bewilderment as we rode back in the taxi. Everything seemed to have become exceptionally nilly-willyish of late,
Vayishlach
-like, reversal-song-like;
otherwise
back to front, topsy-turvy, arse uppards. Something bothered me about this. I wondered what it was, staring out into Carmel Street. The cab turned the corner of Elyashiv, and I was suddenly aware the girl had been giggling surreptitiously for some time. I gave her a responsive snigger back and
affectionately
pressed her knee, almost at once receiving a
paralysing
kick on the ankle as I realized too late the knee had been Shimshon’s.

Reversal problems were still bothering me in the flat. I seemed to be backing discreetly out of the living-room to leave them alone, backing into my own room, backing on my flaming back. What kind of conjunctival clot had left a mattress lying about in the dark? I pulled myself up off the mattress, rested momentarily on the bed and closed my eyes to reorientate. Almost immediately a dreadful queasiness came over me. I half sat up, but found this even worse. It suddenly occurred to me there was nowhere to be sick here except in the chest of drawers, so I lay down again and tried to control it. I must have succeeded.

Shimshon was at no pains to conceal his waking presence next morning. A sharp kick on the bed, which nearly had me out of it, announced he was ready to return to the south. I opened slit eyes. He was looking down at me in the grey dawn, abnormally large hands holding an Uzzi sub-machine gun, eyes distinctly conjunctival.

‘Going off now?’ I said huskily.

‘Yes. I’m sorry to have wakened you. But since you are awake,’ he said heavily, ‘perhaps I will say one thing. Shoshana and I will be married.’

‘I know. She told me.’

‘I wanted to be sure you knew.’

‘Of course. Congratulations.’ My head ached cataclysmically.

‘I don’t suppose I’ll see you again.’

‘I don’t suppose so.’

He shouldered his Uzzi. ‘So. Shalom.’

He was holding out his hand and I took it. He seemed intent on leaving his mark there, smiling slightly as he slowly
pulverized
it. I couldn’t feel the hand at all as I took it back. I could only feel my head. Presently I didn’t even feel that.