Authors: Lesley Thomas
'I'll tell you something about that windmill, love,' I said.
'What's that?'
'It's the second-best grind in Jerusalem.'
Five
Eilat lies under the sun in the south, at the pouting lip of the
blue gulf that issues from the Strait of Tiran and the Red
Sea. The Israelis call the sea the Gulf of Eilat; the Jordanians, whose port of Akaba squats across the bay, call it the
Gulf of Akaba. From the hotel at Eilat you can look over
the sea to Akaba, white under the red mountains and see the
traffic moving in the streets. Ships for Israel and Jordan
steam up the Gulf and sometimes a captain will negligently
take them into the wrong port, turning left for right or right for left at the cul-de-sac of the Gulf and have to be politely
re-directed either by the Arabs or the Jews.
Metzer had come to the hotel in Tel Aviv to pick me up and take me to the little Sede Dov Airport which was near the river bridge where the guards had stopped the car three nights before. He was fussy but cheerful.
'This week,' he announced, I think that maybe there will not be any war.'
'What makes you change your mind?' I asked. We had walked out to the car and immediately out of the shadow and the air conditioning of the hotel the sun leaped on my back like a cat. My shoulders were pink and smarting under my shirt.
Metzer and I got into the car. He smiled fondly out at the people hurrying in the sun of Hayarkon Street, and at the tired blue waves coming into the land from the belly of the sea.
'It will be all right, all nice and peaceful, I know,' he reassured. 'Now everyone is talking, all the politicians and the United Nations and everybody. Eshkol is having Government trouble here and Nasser is having the same trouble in Cairo. Nobody feels secure enough to fight. Everybody's talking and that's good. Maybe you have a good concert tour after all.'
'When the first bomb, shell or bullet goes off, I go off too,' I said conversationally.
He looked around at me. His head dropped in acknowledgement and he smiled a bit. 'I suppose that is reasonable, Mr Hollings,' he said. 'In any case I do not think there would be a lot of opportunity for music. We would make sure that we got you out. You are a neutral.'
'Most neutral,' I said.
'Would you think it rude of me if I said that you are a strange man... No that is incorrect... An unusual young man for a concert performer.'
He laughed but was obviously uncertain about going on. 'I mean it in the most kind way, you understand. But you are strange for your profession, and I have known many, as you will appreciate. You are so ordinary.'
Sometimes I get nasty and I almost let go then. But he corrected himself. 'No, that is a bad word. Excuse me, my English is sometimes limited. ..'
'Yes,' I agreed. He gave a little pout of embarrassment. I said: 'You mean that I don't seem to fit the part?'
'No, not exactly, Mr Hollings. You play like the hell. I never remember a solo like yours the other night. No, it is in everyday things that you are different.'
'Ah, you mean my image. Well I am a roughshod lad, you know, Mr Metzer. I'm not one of your eighteenth-century-candelabra, drawing-room boys, touching each note with a moonlit smile. And I'm not one of your dedicated bores who live every moment of the part. They have long hair because they practise so much they don't have time to get it cut. Mine's long because I want it long.'
He nodded agreeably. 'Ah yes. I understand well. It is El Cordobes and the Beatles and that manner of presentation. It is very modern, of course. Very modern...' His voice slackened off pensively. We had turned off a dusty road into the mouth of the small airfield. At the end of the runway there were some toy-like jet planes looking uncomfortable with a clutch of rockets under each wing. The planes looked like little men carrying too many parcels.
'Fouga Magister trainers,' said Metzer seeing me looking at them. "They are baby planes for new pilots, but we will use them in the battle, if there is a battle.'
'Every little helps,' I said. 'Somebody obviously doesn't share your confidence in the talking power of politicians.'
He shrugged miserably and kicked at a lizard on the concrete apron. 'It's just a little readiness,' he said. 'A little readiness is a good thing, Mr Hollings.'
The airport building was not much more than a wooden shed. I walked towards it and saw. two Dakotas sitting like old grey geese at the end of the runway.
'I didn't know there were any of those things still flying,' I said.
Apologies flooded into Metzer's face. 'They are very good,' he said. "The same two have been flying down the Negev for years, to Beersheba, to Masada, and up to Rosh Pina in Galilee.'
I continued walking towards the airport building. I could feel the sun seeping through my shirt and on to the sore pink of my back. Cursing Yacob Haydn I went gratefully into the cool interior.
'Well, I can't say I'd like to trust my precious hide in those grandfather things,' I said to Metzer. He went to get me a drink. He was obviously upset when he returned.
"Those grandfather things, as you so-call them,' he said nodding heavily and unhappily out of the window. "The two Dakotas, renovated only a year ago, and flying very well. Those two are for us... For you and me, and the rest of the orchestra for our journey to Eilat.'
'I thought you might tell me that,' I told him. Taking the
drink from him I looked miserably from the wooden room
first at the Fouga Magister trainers with their ungainly rocket
claws and then at the Dakotas. 'It's a great country for mak
ing-do,' I said.
He did not look as though he fully understood, but he was ready to agree with anything I said. 'Yes,' he said. 'For that it is surely a great country.'
On the Thursday Moshe Dayan became Defence Minister in Jerusalem. They were setting up the orchestra on the beach when Metzer came in by jeep from the town and shouted it in Hebrew. The musicians and the others who were out there working in the late afternoon began cheering and clamouring around Metzer. The two grey Dakotas rested on the airstrip across from the beach unperturbed by the bumpy flight over the hot air rising from the bad teeth of the Negev Desert.
I was on the balcony of the little hotel drinking tea and going through the score. There was no piano available for practising and they had only just unloaded the one to be used in the concert from the aeroplane.
Metzer ran heavily along the beach and puffed under the balcony. I leaned over. Two motor torpedo boats had just set out from Eilat harbour and were chewing their way truculently across the bay towards Akaba. I watched them.
'What's the cheering about?' I called down to Metzer. 'Have the Arabs surrendered?'
His face dropped heavily. 'No, no,' he said childishly. Then decided to make a joke of it. 'Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. By then they will hear that our new Defence Minister is Moshe Dayan; you know him, him with one eye.' He closed his right eye and put his hand across it. Then he flustered. 'No. Sorry, it is the wrong eye. Our Minister has no eye
this
side.' He changed to the left.
'I know the man,' I said amiably. 'He looks like Richard Widmark.'
'Who is that?' Metzer called up.
Instead of answering I pointed to the twin torpedo boats going like dolphins for the Arab shore. 'Where is the Jewish Navy going?' I called to him. He looked at them and returned face-up to me.
'Just for a look,' he said. 'Every day they go to look at the Arabs and then they come back. There is no trouble. They always do it. It is a habit.'
'Provocation,' I shouted down at him. He took me seriously and wobbled his big head. 'Just habit,' he replied. 'Will you come down to the beach when you are prepared, Mr Hollings. The piano is just being taken there.'
I nodded that I would be down. The afternoon was well gone now, the water in the bay was dulled and a faint rouge touch was on the table of hills behind Akaba. The desert between Israel and Jordan was still and empty, but at sea the two silver boats drove on wickedly through the outlying waves.
There was an Italian fisherman on the beach with two Abyssinians who had travelled up from Africa to work in the gulf. Time brings some strange people together. At the finish of that afternoon, as the orchestra was setting up its instruments by the sea, a tribe of fish was spotted out in the flat water.
The Italian was a miserable man with a browned and sour face, shouting in a rough tone that made his own melodic language sound bad. The Abyssinians had journeyed to Eilat in a small boat rowing the course that the Queen of Sheba had travelled. They were childish men, giggling and gesticulating, running seawards towards their boats, carrying the seine net like a dead serpent, hurt clouding their black faces when the Italian shouted at them.
Some men had carried my piano on to the beach and settled it in front of the orchestra stands. It looked illogical there, like a clever advertising picture, sitting on the shelving sand with the sea behind it, with the men rushing to trap the fish, and the two motor torpedo boats a long way out and turning back from Jordan.
Metzer was standing on the beach, exploring the notes of the piano as though testing the acoustics of that widespread place. On one side, the dull hills of the Egyptian Sinai were burned with the setting of the sun, with bloody streaks cutting through their chasms. On the other, the quick sunset caught the Jordan hills making them like livid coals. I walked across the cooling sand and stood by him. The musicians had stopped carrying things now and were grouped together like children watching the working of the fishermen.
Zoo Baby, the biggest of all the orchestra players, and the only one I knew by name, turned and shouted back to Metzer in Hebrew. Metzer laughed and returned the shout as though he were directing the fishing operation. Zoo Baby acknowledged the remark and called to the fishermen who were bending their boats in a pincer movement around the backs of the populous fish.
Metzer said to me: 'It's a fine catch of tuna. They have been waiting for three days for them. Now they are caught. Everybody down here will eat tuna.' He shook his head in admiration: 'We Israelis are good fishermen,' he said.
He was the same as all of them. Full of themselves. Any Israeli is better than ten others, from anywhere. I don't know how they got this arrogance. Perhaps in the Warsaw Ghetto when they first learned to fight and kill. They boast and they mean every word they say about themselves.
'The fishermen are not Jews,' I pointed out. I used the word Jews purposely, instead of Israelis, because I had some idea it might irritate him, but it did not. Metzer considered the correction. 'True,' he said squeezing his eyes to look out to sea, as though the next order had to come from him. 'But the methods we use down here, my friend, are our own. The Italian and the black men have come to learn them. Ah, they have the fish.'
Across the purple water the Abyssinian boys began hooting with excitement and from the other boat the Italian steadied them hoarsely. But they had the tuna, trapped and trembling, a great horde of rotund fish in the arms and fingers of the net, panicked and thrashing the water. The musicians on the beach, all in bright shirts, some with trousers rolled up like seaside fathers, were chorusing encouragement, and ran into the water when the boats returned to help tug at the aching net. They scampered and splashed and heaved with the exaggerated effort of men of a soft occupation suddenly encountering a physical task. Finding that one ear of the net was more heavily manned than the other some of them ran across, through the shallows, to reinforce the other side. Then there were too many on that side and some scampered back to their original places. At the centre Zoo Baby, the huge back heaving under a bright yellow shirt, urged them on like the captain of twin tug-of-war teams. His trousers were rolled up and the broad hairy trunks of his legs were planted apart in the sand.