Requiem (11 page)

18

'How's it going with this new boyfriend?'

'He's
not my new boyfriend,’ Sharon protested. 'He's an old friend from college days,
that's all.'

'I
don't believe it. You come in, you're late, you look a state, you look like
something's keeping you awake nights.'
Tobie
was the
founder-manager of the Bet Ha-
Kerem
rehabilitation
centre where Sharon worked as a counsellor. She had a habit of treating her
staff like clients. They were having coffee in her office.

'Stop
fishing,
Tobie
. I look perfectly well, and I was here
before you this morning.'

'So
if I was late, that makes you not late? Don't talk snot, darling.' 'Talking
snot' was an expression she'd picked up from one of her alcoholic clients.
Tobie
picked up and discarded expressions on a fortnightly
basis. 'Anyway I'm the boss. I can't be late. It's a contradiction in terms.'

'He's over from England for a while.
That's it.'

'Only I
don't want you emotionally upset. You know what happens here: you get upset;
all my women get upset, I get upset. Everyone here is like a single mind. I
despair of it. So if you're having a bad time with this English
whatsisname
—'

'Tom.'

'Sharon, you're lying.'

'No, I'm not.'

'I know
you.'
Tobie
was a plump little grey-haired woman with
spectacles permanently resting on the tip of her nose. She came over and held
Sharon's face between her hands. 'I worry. So? Are you fucking him?'

'
Tobie
!' She was the only person Sharon knew who could swear
without emphasis.

'Because if
you love him and you're not fucking him, that's bad for all of us. We all
gonna
suffer.'

'Listen, I've got to make a start. My
group is waiting.'

'Now you won't talk to me? It's worse than
I thought.'

'Look. I
don't love him. I'm not fucking him. I do want to talk to you about him, but
about some problems he's having.'

'To
hell with his problems,
darlink
,
it's
you I'm concerned for.' When
Tobie
said 'darling',
it always came out '
darlink
'. It drove Sharon crazy.

'Another time, OK,
Tobie
?'

'Sure.'

Sharon went
to join the group of women waiting for her in the meeting room.
Tobie
finished her coffee and pulled a face. Damn it, she
thought. Sharon's falling in love with this guy. Now we're in for a shit time.

19

'Get that,’ said Tom.

'Get it yourself

The
telephone rang unanswered. Katie sat on the sofa, her long, elegant legs drawn
up under her. She'd brought work home with her. Tom was sitting at the table.
He had a pillar of exercise books stacked either side of him, and he was
marking them with a red pen. The phone stopped ringing. Katie looked up at Tom,
who carried on with his marking.

A few
minutes later the phone rang again. Katie threw down her pen and got up. Tom
attended to her side of the conversation.

'Hello?
Oh, hello. No, that's quite all right. What can we do for you? Yes, he's here now.
Marking school-work. Yes, he's a teacher. No, I'm not, and I wouldn't want to
be. That's very flattering of you. I wouldn't worry about that. Yes, he's just
here. I'll get him. Hang on.'

Katie cupped
the mouthpiece. 'Tom, it's Michael Anthony.'

'Who?'

'The man in
the coffee bar. The drunk at the party. He wants to speak with you.'

'What does he want?’

'How should
I know?' She waved the phone at him and made a furious face.

Tom got up
wearily and took the handset from Katie. 'Yes?'

Katie saw
Tom listening almost in silence, for perhaps fifteen minutes, occasionally
punctuating with a grunt. Finally he wrote a number down on a pad, said goodbye
and put down the phone.

'Well?'

'He asked my
permission,' said Tom, 'to ask you if you would walk with him in the park on
Sunday afternoon.'

'What?'

'He was very
correct. Very formal. Wanted it all to be above-board.'

'Why does he want me?'

'He
said he thinks you're beautiful. He also said he's dying. The doctors have
given him between six months and a year. He made it sound like a condemned
man's last request.'

20

'I see how it's been done. The
fragments have been heat-pressed on to some very fine fabric, before being
stitched into the silk lining, to stop them from falling apart.'

'Can you tell if they're of importance?'
Tom asked.

'I've no
idea. It's Hebrew, but I can't read it,' said Sharon. 'If you want to know,
you're going to have to take the thing to someone who can.'

Sharon's tanned arms
rested on the table either side of the scroll-cloth like two temple pillars.
Tom eyed her supple muscles. He'd almost forgotten how easy was the confidence
she exuded.

'Lots of
these fragments are around,' she told him authoritatively, 'though I've never
seen any, except in the museum. Chances are all these contain are measurements
for building the temple. "And it shall be forty cubits, and thereafter
twenty cubits, and the wall shall be another ten cubits." That's all a lot
of them have to say.'

'David seemed to think they were important.'

'You also
told me he thought the Vatican was trying to poison him. I think your David was
a little bit soft in the head.'

'He didn't
say it was the Vatican. I don't know. Any ideas who might help us?'

'Decide
whether you want to turn the thing in or not. If you give it to the Hebrew or
Christian authorities, you won't see it again. That's certain. We could find a
scholar to look at them privately. But if it says anything interesting, pretty
soon everyone will know you've got it.

'Hell. What
are we
gonna
do?'

'Look,
there's this friend of mine. Ex-client, actually. I was trying to avoid
suggesting him, but. . .'

'Ahmed el-
Asmar
,' said Sharon, hammering on the door for the third
time. 'He's probably sleeping. And even if I've woken him, he won't answer
until the fourth knock. The
djinn
only
knock three times, or so he told me.'

'The
djinn
?''

They
had returned to the Muslim quarter of the Old City. In the north-eastern quadrant
Sharon had steered him to a shuttered medieval building. The narrow street
reeked of mildew and donkey. 'Demons. Ahmed is not your ordinary Palestinian
Arab. He also regards me as slightly insane.'

'Why?'

Sharon
didn't have time to answer. A shutter opened several feet above their heads,
and a sleepy Arab blinked at them. Tom saw a tousled head of black hair and a
thin moustache. The man regarded them blankly for some moments. 'The mad
Jewess,' muttered the Arab. His head withdrew from the window. A few moments
later he reappeared to toss down a key. Sharon caught it and let them in.

The interior of the
house was cool and shady. Tom followed Sharon up a flight of bare stone steps
and into a fragrant room, where the man struggled into a pair of jeans and a
T-shirt. He blinked theatrically and tried to stroke sleep from his eyes. Tom
guessed him to be about forty years old.

The other
two kissed each other on the cheek before Sharon introduced Tom. 'He's from
England.'

'England?'
said Ahmed, as if Sharon had said he was from the lost city of Atlantis.
'England?'

Tom  
extended   a hand.   The   man   stared
at the outstretched hand for a long moment of horrified fascination before
accepting it. 'Tea. I would like to offer you some tea.'

Unasked,
Sharon had already lowered herself on to one of the large cushions scattered
against the wall. Ahmed gestured that Tom should do likewise and then stumbled
away to his kitchen.

'Don't
worry,' Sharon whispered. 'He's still half asleep.'

'I heard
that,' came the shout from the kitchen. 'Are people so rude in England? I mean
as rude as this mad Jewess?'

'Yes,' said Tom, 'they are.'

'I
know. I've been there. I just wanted to see if you were a liar.'

Silence
followed as Ahmed made the tea. The solid stones of the old apartment muted any
sounds from outside, so that the interior was beautifully calm. The walls were
decorated with hangings and fabrics of geometric design. A scent like incense
hung in the air, along with another familiar but more acrid odour that Tom was
unable to identify. Ahmed returned with tray and glasses. In each glass were a
sprig of fresh mint and two cubes of sugar. Tom wanted to decline the sugar,
but Ahmed was already pouring. 'So how do you like Palestine?' He passed a glass.

'I'm still making up my mind. It's a
violent place.'

'Yes. It
will be more peaceful when we get rid of the Jews.'

Sharon
was smiling. 'We're like your demons, Ahmed. We're always going to be with
you.'

Ahmed addressed
Tom as if Sharon wasn't in the room. 'She is right. I don't know who is worse:
the
djinn
or the Jew. I wouldn't mind
if all of them were like her, but the others ...
Allah!
How is the tea?'

'Delicious!'

He pressed his chest
with the palm of his hand, as if the compliment was profound and personal. Then
he turned suddenly to Sharon. 'You haven't visited me for six months. Where
have you been, you bitch?' Sharon shrugged and sipped her tea. 'What kind of a
friend is she, Tom, that doesn't come to visit me in six months? Are people so
bastard-bitch rude to their friends in England?'

'You asked him that already.'

'Yes, I did. Sorry, Tom.'

'In
any case,' said Sharon, 'you don't visit me. I told you to come and visit me.'

'Sure! And
get my head shot off by a teenage Jew, with his Uzi machine-gun, for being an
Arab in my homeland! What do you think of that, Tom? An Arab is not safe in his
own land.'

'Ignore
him. It's not the soldiers who keep him indoors. He's afraid of the
djinn
.''

'Now she's
getting at me. If I didn't love her, I would kill her. Anyway, she's mad. Why?
Because she doesn't believe in the
djinn
.
Only
mad people don't believe in the
djinn
.
Do
you believe in the
djinn
?'

'In demons?'
Tom hesitated. 'Well, I believe in God, so I also believe in the existence of
Satan ... so, I suppose, yes is the answer.'

'There!'
said Ahmed, as if an old argument had ultimately been settled. 'More tea?'

At
length Sharon said, 'We've brought something for you to look at.'

Tom produced
the rolled cloth. Ahmed took it from him, spreading it on a low table. Before
inspecting it he reached for, and lit, a hand-rolled cigarette. Tom identified
the second smell of the apartment as that of hashish. Ahmed bit off a lungful
of smoke and gazed at the scroll fragments.

'The spiral
is unusual. How did you come by it?'

'It fell into my hands when someone died.'

He stared at
the fragments for a little while longer, then appeared to lose interest.

'Could you study it for us?' Sharon asked.

'Is there a fee?'

'No.'

Ahmed
breathed in another lungful of smoke and vented a deep sigh.

'Ahmed
is a brilliant scholar,' Sharon said to Tom. 'He knows the ancient scripts of Hebrew,
Aramaic and Arabic. He also knows Greek and Latin. Then there is English,
French, German and . . . what else, Ahmed?'

'The mad
Jewess thinks if she flatters me enough, I'll read this rag for her. She's
wrong.'

'Spanish.
Berber. Thieves' argot. What else? Really, he's a true polyglot. It's his one
shining talent. That's why we came to him.'

'Not because
I'm a nice guy? Tom, do you work for nothing?'

'We
don't know what's written on the thing. But we've reason to think it might be
important,' said Sharon. 'If it is, you can copy it and break the scholarship.
It will help with your reputation.'

'My
reputation!' Ahmed laughed cynically. 'My reputation.'

'He'll do
it,' Sharon said to Tom. 'He's already said yes.'

'She's wrong,'
said Ahmed. They were still talking to each other through Tom.

Ahmed
went away and returned with fruit on a silver tray. With a sharp knife he
carved melon and oranges into equal segments. Tom marvelled at the precision
with which he executed the task. Talk changed to other things. They discussed
the political situation, recent outrages, government policy. The question of
the scrolls was not reopened. Ahmed, well informed about British politics,
plied Tom with questions about British opinion concerning the Palestinian
question. Tom did his best to answer. Ahmed smoked two or three of his
home-rolled cigarettes during this time and was charming. Despite the banter,
it was obvious that the other two were very comfortable with each other.