Arabesque (15 page)

The Sabbath peace was over the house. There was not a sound from the tenants replete with lunch and patriotic piety. Sergeant Prayle gingerly opened the furnace doors. It seemed impossible to
heat a poker in the oil jets. He twiddled a cock in the same abstracted curiosity with which he opened the throttle, and produced a blast of flame that seemed, for a panic-stricken second,
uncontrollable. By nervous trial and error he mastered the mechanism, then heated a thin bar of old iron, and bored a hole in the top let-hand corner of the door, above the hinge.

As evening drew nearer, the house awoke. A plump and pretty woman, all smiles and dirndl, came gamboling down the stairs with a merry little daughter. Two old men with beards followed, and hung
about arguing in the hall before they surrendered to the winter sun. Then entered four earnest and respectable citizens with portfolios of music under their arms; they stopped at the floor where a
Dr. Finkelkraut (of Philosophy) had one flat, and a Dr. Pincas (of Economics) the other. Shortly afterwards came Abu Tisein. He walked straight to the boiler room, threw open the door and looked
inside. When Prayle, flattened against the wall, recovered from his surprise at this decisive and evidently habitual precaution, Abu Tisein’s steps were travelling upwards. The sergeant
waited long enough to be sure of Nachmias’s destination, then hastily put a block of buildings between himself and Armande’s roof.

He returned to the office in a dream of Armande. There was a smack of youth in this Fouad business, just sheer, impulsive, generous youth. Impulsive and alone—didn’t that give the
key to the fate of Wadiah’s arms? She was an adorable, blazing little fool, for all those mannerisms which provoked him, a fine little fool going her own way boldly up the wrong street.
Whatever she had done, he was certain that she was justified by his own standards, but those standards were a damned sight too intangible for the army.

He found Sergeant MacKinnon very ready to leave the office in charge of a duty clerk, and to start the Saturday evening’s serious drinking. They settled down in the back room of an Arab
hotel, which catered specially for quiet and thirsty sergeants. Prayle laid himself out to be entertaining. He found this only too easy, as the double whiskies came in and the empty glasses went
out, until the sober observer within him questioned whether he was being amusing to anyone but himself. That bottomless pit of a Scot, however, was at last slowly mellowing, and began to talk
Palestine. That was where Prayle wanted him.

“How’s the local recruiting going?” Prayle asked.

“More Jews than Arabs we’re getting.”

“Nice, clean fun for them to be at the right end of a tommy gun for once.”

“Well, I wouldna’ say that doesna’ count for the poor bastards,” said MacKinnon judiciously. “But ’ties also a grand chance to hae the Hagana trained by
British sergeant-majors. A fine little army the Jews will have after the war, Sergeant Prayle, for they’ve Scots instructors at the depot.”

“No trouble in getting a man into one of the Arab companies, I suppose?”

“Verra few questions asked. But what question d’ye think would be hard for him to answer?” asked MacKinnon acutely.

Sergeant Prayle took refuge in obscurities until two more doubles had strengthened the bonds of good fellowship.

“Well,” he said at last, “the truth is, bo, that the man’s got a good name, but he’d better have another.”

“Ye’ll answer for him in all that matters? And I dinna mean their national sports of rape and murder.”

“He’s O.K. He’s a fighting man, and he’ll take to his officers.”

“Now ye shouldna’ tell me nor the skipper unnecessary details. Our responsibility for this country is verra grave. Here’s to ye, Sergeant Prayle! Ye’re a credit to the
Corps, mon, Ye’ll be wanting some papers for him, I take it?”

“Difficult?”

“If he were a Jew, he couldna’ get a false identity without the order of the Jewish Agency. But Johnny Arab is an old soldier—he puts finance before politics, if ye see what I
mean. Has your chum five pounds to spare?”

“If I can get a casual.”

“Aye, the skipper will do that for you. Well now, I’ve a friend—” MacKinnon looked fiercely at Sergeant Prayle—“and she’s a schoolteacher and a
respectable girl, and I’ll thank ye not to mention her name in the office, for there’s my own reputation to be considered as well as hers. Her father is the
mukhtar
of a
Christian village—if ye can call them Christian, for to my way of thinking it’s wog popery and naething more. Now if ye see him and say ye come from me, maybe he’ll do your
dir-r-rty business. And if ye’ll gie your glass to the black man with the grin on his face, he’ll fill it for ye, and then we’ll have a bite to eat.”

Prayle downed another double whisky, got up and grimly focussed the door. Not for anything would he have it said or admit that he could not mix business with pleasure without passing out.
Sergeant MacKinnon rose with no less dignity. He drew himself to attention and stood bold upright. Prayle’s sober observer noticed with admiration that MacKinnon was not even swaying.

“Mon Prayle,” said the Scot, “I dinna hold with foul language to foreigners. But”—his indignant voice rang clear and steady as a bugle—“there has been
ar-r-raq in the whusky!”

MacKinnon, still holding himself with soldierly stiffness, leaned from the perpendicular and crashed full length to the floor; once there, he wriggled twice, curled up his legs and settled down
with a comfortable snore to the sleep of a professional soldier who was accustomed, whatever the night had brought, to parade at 6 a.m., smart, clear-eyed and clean-shaven.

Sergeant Prayle took him home in a taxi, receiving sympathetic assistance at both ends of the journey, and put him, still sleeping, to bed. Methodically he wrote down the Mukhtar’s name
and address, and himself rolled into his blankets.

In the morning he took an Arab bus to the village. He could not read his own writing of the night before, but fortunately remembered the name. It was a peaceful hollow among the hills, some ten
miles from Jerusalem, seeming much as the Crusaders had left it, with trees, an eager spring and a church built over the imprint of Elijah’s head. From his fellow passengers of all three
religions Prayle learned that originally the village had been a Moslem holy place (for to them, too, Elijah was a respectable prophet) and had been handed over to the Christians by one of the
sporting bargains common in the twelfth century. The Jews, for once in a position to apply the higher criticism, pointed out that the mark of a head which really existed, was imprinted in late
Roman concrete.

The Mukhtar had an exaggerated respect for Sergeant MacKinnon and all his works; the sergeant’s name and the cap badge of the Intelligence Corps were sufficient introductions for any
business. Prayle’s courtesies were cut short as the Mukhtar plied him with a light white wine, which did a world of good to his aching head, and then hurried out to kill chickens for a
feast.

After lunch the identity card had only to be mentioned to be given free of charge. This, as Prayle knew, was mere politeness. He kept the conversation on its level of beautiful altruism, and
before leaving produced a fiver “for local charities.” The Muhktar unobtrusively pocketed the first identity card and made out another in the name of George Nadim Salibah—a poor
orphan, he explained, who had emigrated to America ten years earlier and had never been heard of since. The document was proof against any ordinary bureaucratic inquiries. Fouad would have a real
identity as good as his own.

Travelling back to Jerusalem, Prayle resisted the temptation to find out why the bus driver was wearing bicycle clips round the calves of his riding breeches, and devoted himself to a series of
mental pictures representing his future acts. He enjoyed the excitement of being once more, as in peacetime, an individual pursuing his own path through a disapproving society, but he had no right
to take any avoidable risk. The police, he had observed, were still taking an interest in Armande’s street.

Armande, poor unsupported child, had plenty of trouble coming to her anyway. If on the top of this trafficking in arms she was caught hiding fugitives, she’d be wanting false identity
cards for her own use. As for himself, the least punishment that could be handed out would be transfer to some awful station of heat and boredom on the Red Sea. It was scandalous for Security to
protect a man wanted by the police—unless, of course, Security wanted him. Well, he did need a talk with Fouad. That was a loophole. The army at bottom was humane. Give it an excuse that
could possibly be believed, and it always did its best to believe it.

When the bus stopped at the Jaffa Gate, the chain of pictures—Prayle complacently described them as a chain of reasoning—was complete. He dived into the bazaar of the Old City and
bought the black outer garment and thin, black veil of a respectable and old-fashioned Moslem woman. Then he reconnoitred the hillside at the end of Armande’s street, and found a pit among
the rocks, full of filth and rubbish, where he could change out of sight of the houses. He disturbed Captain Fairfather’s Sunday evening leisure to demand the loan of the section truck to
take him to the recruiting depot at Sarafand, where, he said, he wanted to interrogate a witness; and when Fairfather let him go, at midnight, with permission to use the truck, a lot of unwanted
drinks and a lecture on the contradictory aspects of Jewish womanhood in bed and in politics, Prayle telephoned Armande, woke her up, and told her not to go to the office in the morning. He then
went to bed himself, full of admiration for his own swift and efficient staff work.

At nine next morning he emerged from the hollow among the rocks as an Arab woman, carrying his hat and boots in a basket under a neat white cloth. Half an hour’s patient waiting was
necessary before he spotted the plain-clothes man who was watching Armande’s street, and had him where he wanted him—at the far end of the street and about to stroll back. It was
essential that the man should see him enter Armande’s block, but not too closely. Prayle shrunk his height so far as he could, hobbling along with bent knees and imitating the gait of a worn
village woman with the usual varicose legs. He turned into the house when the watcher was looking straight at him from a distance of two hundred yards.

He rang Armande’s bell.

“Any rags, bones or bottles today, mum?”

His cockney accent did not get a laugh. Armande smiled, wan and puzzled. Her slim, tense body had no life in it. Hell, thought Prayle, my little ship’s in harbour again!

“Just slipping Fouad into something loose,” he said, “and then we’re off.”

Fouad was not easily recognisable. His moustache had gone, and his hair was a dirty golden-brown. Prayle dressed him in the female clothing and veil, and himself returned to his uniform. He gave
Fouad an exhibition of the gait with which he had entered the house, and warned him to imitate it until he was clear of the immediate quarter.

“Walk out of town by the Jaffa Road,” he told him. “I’ll pass you in a truck and pick you up in about half an hour.”

Fouad said an emotional good-bye to Armande, his halting French made more incoherent than ever by tears of gratitude She took his hand, gently smiling, but untouched by the femininely Arab
outburst as if she herself had been some just and grimly masculine administrator. Prayle was astonished at her lack of warmth. What had happened to her since the day before yesterday? Never had
been so evident that detachment of which Loujon spoke. The only explanation was that she just died and departed into a hell of her own when things went wrong. That in his experience was a common
trick of sensitive men. Possibly it was equally common among women. But what the devil had gone wrong?

He looked out of the window. The plain-clothes man was talking to a shopkeeper halfway up the street.

“Now, Fouad!” he ordered. “Hobble! Let that man see you come out! Don’t forget the basket with your clothes in it!
Imshi!”

Fouad again seized Armande’s hands, and then dashed down the stairs.

“I’ll follow him in a few minutes,” said Prayle, “and then come back and see you tonight.”

“I can tell you now.” Armande spoke with such a cold regret that it was obvious to him she was hurting even herself. “My department, whatever it is, will explain the whole
thing to your security chiefs. I’m sorry. It’s so discourteous to tell you nothing. But Wadiah’s arms were a matter of High Policy.”

“Why are you so upset about it?” he asked.

“I am not.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Mrs. Herne, do you believe everything Abu Tisein tells you?”

“You said I could trust him,” she answered, seeing that he knew of some recent connection between them.

“I never told you to take his orders. Who did tell you?”

“I never said I took them. I don’t want to discuss the subject, Sergeant Prayle. The whole thing will be settled, and I want to forget it.”

“Give me a hint. Did British troops collect Wadiah’s arms?”

“I hope to God they did not,” she answered bitterly. “I hope the French themselves collected them. And there’s your hint, and I am not going to say any more. What are you
doing with Fouad?”

“Enlisting him. Private Nadim Salibah of the Palestine Buffs.”

“And you won’t be caught? Are you sure?”

“Keeping my fingers crossed.”

He went out on to the roof and saw Fouad in the distance, well away from the police and stepping boldly. Fouad’s slight build made a presentable woman of him; he was unlikely to attract
attention.

“The worst is over,” Prayle said.

“I am so grateful. You’ve been an angel, a guardian angel. And I stand here like a stuffed owl,” she cried with a flash of spirit, “while you take such risks for me, and
gratitude is just another ache that I can’t satisfy. I mustn’t answer your questions. I can’t say a word of what you have done. May I even pay what you’ve spent on Fouad
without it seeming an insult?”

“You’ll need it more than you do now.”