Authors: Lesley Thomas
"The Jews,' said Metzer turning to me, although with no noticeable emphasis on the second word, 'have always been great fishermen. Peter and James and John, all that gang, you remember were fishers. Didn't their boss call them fishers of men?' He spread his hands. I don't know. I only hear about these incidents.'
I remember the story,' I said. 'Those fish are bleeding, they are kicking about so much.'
'Yes,' he said with interest. 'See, the water is turning to pink. And fish have little blood you know. They are killing each other trying to get out.'
The whole mess of tuna was now sprawled in the shallows about the feet of the excited musicians. They were writhing trying to find salt water with their mouths, gasping as the air drowned them. They were sturdy fish, none of them less than two feet in length and very fat about the middle. Some were very big, perhaps twenty pounds. The musicians danced with the excitement of the conquest. Then the Italian came from his boat and with a wide wave of his arms that immediately demonstrated his native nature, he silenced the musicians with all the authority of a notable maestro. They became quiet and quickly organized, catching on to the fisherman's simple Hebrew, spliced with Italian, taking the fish one by one in their hands and carrying them up the beach to a mud-coloured truck.
The Italian was smiling now he had his fish, and he made jokes with them by calling instructions in musical terms -
presto, pianissimo, profundo -
when they sorted a particularly big, limp fish from the net. They transported the tuna, one by one, about three hundred of them I suppose, carrying the smaller fish by the tails and the bigger ones across their arms, hugged to their bellies as though they were rescuing children. When the net was clear except for oddments offish flesh and debris, the Italian gave each of the orchestra a fish to himself, and they walked towards Metzer and myself carrying their prizes, smiling with achievement and pleasure and reeking with an engulfing stink.
They gathered around to show off their fish, as though seeking credit and admiration. Metzer seemed as pleased as they were and stuck his thumb and forefinger into the moribund creatures as if to test their fibre and quality.
I felt I was seeing them for the first time. At the rehearsals and at the Tel Aviv concert they had only been an orchestra, laying a carpet for my individualism, rolling it out royally so that I could march, run, dance or dawdle upon it. To me, until then, they were sounds; brass sounds, and string sounds, thin breezy sounds, and wide windy sounds. Only Zoo Baby I had noticed. You always notice the man at the back sitting over his drums like a chef fussing over his cauldrons. And you would see Zoo Baby anyway, because he was big and laughing, and was always shaking hands and making jokes, and because of his nickname which everyone called him.
The Italian had, in a joke, given him a small fish, but he regarded it with friendliness, as though he had saved its life. With his yellow shirt, his damp rolling face and his spread hips he stood out in front of the sweating group. His hands were fat, but with fine muscled fingers. He looked at me and laughed, but a little shamefaced as if he were embarrassed about their antics with the fish.
Metzer said to me with some formality: 'Everything has been conducted in the wrong fashion on this tour. It is unfortunate, but it is the war business and the worry. It is my fault.' One of the musicians had given him a specially large tuna to inspect and he looked into its surrendered eyes and sadly agape throat with the professional manner of a doctor diagnosing a head cold. He returned the fish heavily to the man.
Turning to me again, he said: 'This perhaps is a good
opportunity to introduce you to the members of the Israel
Symphony Orchestra. They all know you, Mr Hollings, but
you do not know them. Only by their music'
I met them all then. Each one coming forward and bowing politely with the fish held possessively. I shook each smelly hand and felt the small scales and pieces of silver skin sticking to mine. Some of them tucked their ogling prizes under their arms like walking sticks, some hung them by the tail, some laid them on the sand and afterwards had to brush the grains off the flesh; some handed their fish to neighbours before shaking hands with me, and two on reclaiming theirs fell to quarrelling, disputing the fattest.
What men they were. I thought it then and in the frightening days and nights that followed after I thought it many times. On that first afternoon, I know now, that my inward attitude was patronizing, watching them come forward with their personal fish to shake hands. My right hand was getting wetter and more scaly with each introduction, I got the extra wave of smell as our hands moved up and down. Metzer was watching me. It was like being an explorer meeting a coy tribe in some jungle place.
Zoo Baby had a big olive laugh that squeezed then spread generously across his wide face. He came from Budapest originally but he spoke good, if heavy, English.
'You want to look at the Arabs, maybe,' he suggested politely at the front of the hotel. Metzer glanced at me. "There is little to see,' he put in, 'but there is time enough if you like. Some of the others maybe will go too.' He moved closer to me. 'It makes them feel that perhaps they are living dangerously also, going to the frontier.' He looked at me appraisingly. 'But, no worry, there is no risk. There is hardly a frontier, just an amusing string of barbed wire.'
There was a Volkswagen van from the airstrip outside the hotel, a bright German-blue, and Metzer pulled himself into the driving seat and called me in beside him. Zoo Baby lumbered into the back of the vehicle and called out in Hebrew from there. Some of the musicians waved him away and laughed. One called in English: 'When the war begins we see all the Arabs we want, Zoo Baby!'
But half a dozen moved towards the van, two of them still clutching their fish as though they would not trust anyone else with them. They hunched into the back and Metzer set off across the road that went like stitching between the Negev desert and the sea.
We were pointing directly at Jordan and the evening grew redder across the powerful mountains. A small high-winged aeroplane, its landing lights spearing the uncertain evening in front of it, did the obligatory banana turn over the gulf and floated into the airstrip. I watched it cross us, its silver turned orange by the sunset. Then the road turned for a short distance at right angles along the peninsula and I was able to watch the plane run in across the sea, down the beach and touch with a playful bounce on to the airstrip.
'Our conductor for tonight has arrived,' said Metzer. "The noted Herr Scheerer of Munich.'
'And no Wagner on the bill?' I said.
'An accident,' said Metzer unconvincingly. 'We Israelis, of course, are great lovers of Wagner. I am glad Herr Scheerer's plane was on time at Lod. The pilot of the little aeroplane is not very good at night.'
'Herr Scheerer is very brave to risk his neck,' I said.
'He did not know.' Metzer gave his round-shouldered shrug, turned the Volkswagen off the peninsula road again and pointed it towards the growing lights of Akaba. The headlights of the cars moved in the distant streets like fireflies and there were yellow haloes about the masts of the ships in the port.
'I didn't know either,' I pointed out. I still did not know whether I liked him, I never expected to be transported down here in a clapped-out grandfather of a plane and then have to perform on the beach like a seaside concert party.'
He laughed over the almost horizontal steering wheel. 'They all say that,' he admitted. 'That is why we never tell them. We just say we are making all arrangements.'
'And you do,' I nodded.
'You are not enjoying it, this tour?' he asked as though he was worried.
'Let's say I would bring my own camel next time.'
He laughed to himself again as though that was a cliche too. Then he butted his head at the gloomy sand to our left and said: 'They've brought your camel.'
'Arabs?' I whispered. I realized how low my voice had become so I said more firmly: 'Are they Arabs?'
'Bedouin,' he nodded. A short caravan was coming across the low broken hills of the hem of the desert, dark and riding, coming towards us slowly but then veering away and moving out of our view. Metzer said: 'They come, they go. Camels, humans and goats, moving from Jordan to Israel and Israel into Egypt, as they have always done.'
'What about the frontiers, the defences ?' I said.
'Defences!' he snorted. 'You cannot guard a desert. We know that and so do the other side. The Bedouin go from one watering place to the next, from one patch for their goats to another. They smuggle drugs from Amman to Port Said, but it is too difficult to stop them. They are neither for us or the Arabs, they are for themselves.'
'So you leave them alone.'
'Everybody does. There is no other way. They cut the telephone lines between Eilat and Beersheba and used the wire to make copper bracelets to sell in Damascus. We went after them and some got shot, so they waited a month and then ambushed a bus coming across the Negev. Six people were killed. So now we don't fight them any more. It's too much difficulty. Our trouble is all around us without it is right in our belly too. So we just tell them to not cut the telephone lines and we let them take their camels across the country, out of Jordan into Egypt without trouble.'
Zoo Baby grunted from the back of the wagon. He said heavily: 'When they cut the telephone cables they said they thought it was okay because they only cut five of the six. They left the other one for us.'
It was rougher going now, with the van throwing stones and grit from its wheels. We slowed and stopped and Metzer said: 'Here we are. This is the border.'
I climbed down. I could hear the sea washing close by, but it was over a low parapet of dark amber rock and out of sight. The musicians were climbing from the back door, and came around to the front, one still holding his personal tuna fish, to look at the pathetic single strand of barbed wire which bisected the barren place. Most of Akaba was shut out by the surrounding rock, but now it was getting close to dark its lights were thrown up into the sky. The blood red of the mountains had diminished like a dying coal and some stars, early and cool, were showing.
Dov Haran, who was the leading oboe, stood by me and pointed to a tree, alone and unkempt as an urchin, standing on a flat of the desert to the north. He was a quiet, informed man, as I learned, and he liked telling things. 'That tree,' he said in slightly American English. 'You see it? It is the final tree of Asia, so they say. It is a palm of a species that grows only in Asia and that is the last one. The story is that the place where the tree has its roots is the dividing place between Africa and the Orient.'
'And you have your foot in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.' It was, astonishingly, an Irish voice. It came across the dull dunes and after it came a stumbling man in a police-blue uniform, shorts, and a peaked cap like a park keeper.
'United Nations ?' I guessed.
'Wrong,' said Dov. He had a graceful moustache and he pulled at it. 'Israeli Border Police. We have many types, Arabs, Druzes even. And English.'
'Don't tell him he's English,' I whispered. 'He's Irish.'
Metzer had gone forward and was offering explanations. The border guard listened and then walked sharply towards us. 'A party of musicians, you might be,' he said. 'But this is no time of the night for strolling players.' Only Dov laughed. 'And that man ...' he pointed directly at me, 'still has his right foot in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Will he please withdraw it. There could be what are called repercussions.'
Metzer became surprisingly pompous. 'This, officer,' he announced, 'is the very distinguished English concert pianist, Christopher Hollings.' He and the frontier guard looked towards me, Metzer with his hand outstretched towards me like a conjurer after a trick. The guard walked forward. He had his hands around a little machine gun and he now slipped it by the sling across his shoulder.
'I'm glad to see you've moved your foot, anyway,' he said. 'I'm pleased to meet you.'
'I was glad I moved,' I said. 'I didn't know I was trespassing.'
'I'm Richard O'Sullivan,
Segan-Mefakeach,
Border Police, some time of Wexford and Liverpool. We speak the same language,' he smiled.