The Nature of Blood
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Authors: Caryl Phillips
THE NATURE OF BLOOD
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, West Indies, and brought up in England. He is the author of three books of non-fiction and eight novels. His most recent book,
Dancing in the Dark,
won the 2006 PEN/Beyond Margins Award, and his previous novel,
A Distant Shore,
won the 2004 Commonwealth Prize. His other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and currently lives in New York.
ALSO BY CARYL PHILLIPS
Dancing in the Dark
A Distant Shore
A New World Order
The Atlantic Sound
Crossing the River
Cambridge
Higher Ground
The European Tribe
A State of Independence
Foreigners
CARYL PHILLIPS
Blood
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ISBN 9781409079460
Version 1.0
Published by Vintage 2008
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Caryl Phillips, 1997
Caryl Phillips has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
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First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Faber and Faber Ltd
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is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781409079460
Version 1.0
For Tony
In the course of writing this novel I referred to many works which space does not allow me to acknowledge. I would, however, like to express my debt to two books:
Trent 14.75
by R. Po-Chia Hsia (Yale University Press), and
Portobuffole
by Salomone G. Radzik (Editrice La Giuntina).
THE NATURE OF BLOOD
B
ETWEEN
us a small fire sputtered. When the wind rose, the flames occasionally danced. A pair of young men moved from fire to fire, carefully replenishing each nest of flames with sticks and twigs from a wicker basket which they bore with authority. They passed from one group to the next, eager to be seen to be efficiently carrying out their task. After they had finished with my fire, I thanked them and received their silent nods in reply. I watched as they strode away to the next group. The new kindling snapped, and the flames rose higher and illuminated the boy's face. He spoke quietly.
'Tell me, what will be the name of the country?'
'Our country,' I said. 'The country will belong to you too.'
The boy looked down at the sand, then scratched a short nervous line with his big toe.
'Tell me, what will be the name of our country?'
I paused for a moment, in the hope that he might relax. And then I whispered, as though confessing something to him.
'Israel. Our country will be called Israel.'
He looked up at me, the light from the fire reflected in his dark eyes.
Our country lay beyond this sand, beyond the black silk of the night sea, away to the south, away to the east. Distant, yet so tantalizingly close. Our troubled land. Palestine. Israel. The boy whispered the new word to himself, weighing it carefully on his tongue, rolling it from one side of his mouth to the other, until he was happy with its presence. He looked across at me.
'And in Israel the fruit is on the trees?'
'The fruit is on the trees. You may take the fruit straight from the branch.'
The formal part of the evening was over, and, together with this boy, I was sitting on a broad expanse of beach in southern Cyprus. Shoshana's concert had finished late, but the mood remained high and the atmosphere still resonated with the haunting melodies of her Yiddish songs. Mr Bellow, the camp director, had suggested that those of us who were staff might organize a picnic on the beach and enjoy the night air. We could talk and sing and, although he did not say this, he implied that those who already had some experience of the new country might educate those for whom the land beyond the water remained a mystery. We so-called staff members were all volunteers from Palestine, two dozen or so doctors, dentists, teachers and nurses, representatives of useful professions. Some linked arms as they walked through the barbed-wire gate and out of the camp, but being a little older than the others, and perhaps somewhat less idealistic, I chose to saunter by myself. Mr Bellow had arranged for a group of young men and women, trusted internees, to follow us down to the beach and light our fires. As it happened, I recognized one among them: Moshe, a tall, angular boy of Romanian origin. He had only recently arrived in the camp, and had been assigned work as a messenger boy at the makeshift hospital where I carried out my duties. Although we had passed only a few words, I invited him to forsake his fire-lighting duties and sit with me on the beach.
The boy was nervous, clearly worried about what his colleagues would think about his abandoning them in order that he might sit and talk with one of the doctors. I tried to reassure him, but the agitation in his eyes remained. Mr Bellow took a special interest in these young people – the orphaned and the unattached, as he called them – both boys and girls who were too old to be placed with families, yet too young to be treated as adults. He was forever reminding his staff volunteers that, for these people in particular, the world must seem a very difficult place. We
must endeavour to treat them as though they were our own lost children.
He could have saved his words, for most had already been quietly recruited by armed emissaries from Palestine who regularly infiltrated the camp. The majority of the 'orphaned and unattached' were now
Hagannah
trainees, secretly preparing themselves for a life of military service in the underground army that they would join once they reached Palestine. However, the American Mr Bellow preferred to imagine his 'orphaned and unattached' as innocents in need of constant protection and education. With perhaps the exception of the newly arrived Moshe, nothing could be further from the truth.
Mr Bellow had been sent to Cyprus by a New York-based Jewish aid organization, the Joint Distribution Committee. He had arrived in the Mediterranean shortly after the British had initiated their policy of turning away refugee ships from Palestine, and off-loading the passengers on to their island of Cyprus. At first there were two camps, then three, then four, and now there were almost a dozen, containing over thirty thousand refugees of all ages and nationalities, whose sole aim in life was to escape war-ravaged Europe and reach the promised land. The benevolent Mr Bellow, a large, jocular man, presided over all the camps, attending to the health, education and general welfare of the displaced and the dispossessed. He faithfully promised each internee that they would eventually reach Palestine, but the British quota of seven hundred and fifty persons per month meant that thousands would have to spend weeks, if not years, under British lock and key on Cyprus. It was Mr Bellow who had arranged for trained professionals to journey from Palestine, both to attend to the sick and to assist in social welfare and language training. Quite simply, we professionals were to prepare these internees for their future lives.
Moshe had a head that appeared to be too large for his long, thin body. He sat cross-legged, a bundle of knees and elbows, and he quietly mentioned the name of the camp from which he had been liberated by the Russians. For want of anywhere else to go, he had returned to his village, but he soon discovered that another family were living in his parents' house. They were surprised to see him, but greeted him in a cordial manner and gave him soup to drink and a bed in which to sleep. And then, in the morning, a delegation of men arrived and pressed money upon Moshe. They told him that he should leave now, and if they ever saw him again they would kill him. Moshe related his story without once meeting my eyes. And then he smiled slightly and shrugged his shoulders.
'And so I left. What else could I do?'
Up on the hill, and crouched behind the barbed-wire fence, the camp stared down at us. A dishevelled collection of tin huts and tents were illuminated by bright floodlights. However, this shower of electricity, far from conferring any glamour, served only to confirm the pitiful nature of the whole shabby enterprise. The British had taken it upon themselves to imprison the defenceless. Around the perimeter of the camp, British tanks were stationed at regular intervals, and even down here on the beach there were tanks, their guns trained, the nervous soldiers alert to the task of guarding unarmed men, women and children. A foolish posting. Back up at the camp, I could clearly see silhouettes as people moved about nervously, visiting the latrines, taking the night air, pulling on a cigarette, dreaming. From where they stood, they could gaze down at the beach and see people sitting and talking and laughing, and then they could look out beyond the beach to the sea and imagine what lay over the horizon and out of sight. During the day, these people's lives simply marked time as idleness began to eat its way into their souls. However, their nights skirted an abyss, for they now recognized that in the inescapable intimacy of the camp, human dignity was beginning to decay. Inertia was ruining them, and the old values of discretion and decency seemed to count for little. Moshe waited until the pair of young men had moved off. The new kindling snapped, and the flames rose higher and illuminated the boy's face. He spoke quietly.
'Tell me, what will be the name of the country?'
Israel. Palestine. He knew of no such country. As yet, none
of them did. Only in their minds. But at least he asked questions. And I answered.
'The fruit is on the trees. You may take it straight from the branch.' Moshe
looked up at me as though I were holding something back; as though there were
some awful secret about this imaginary country that I was refusing to share
with him. But there was nothing. I was tired, for it had already been a long
day. In fact, it had been a long two months. Tomorrow, at dawn, I would be
returning to Palestine. But I was hiding nothing from Moshe.
'Do you have an army?'
I had heard this question before. From others who were newly arrived and, as yet, untouched by emissaries. So many of these young people were ready to fight. Determined to prove that, given a gun and a uniform, there were things that they too could do.
'Yes there is an army, and it is organized and well disciplined. It will be extremely important once we have a free country.'
Moshe looked up and adjusted his position in the sand. Now he was interested, his face radiant and alive. I worried about these young men and what they might do with a gun. Even some of the women, too. Luckily they seemed to understand that here, on Cyprus, the British were not the enemy. These reluctant soldiers were captors. They inflicted no punishment, and there was neither torture nor killing. The British were bored. Bored with their Mr Bevin, bored with Cyprus, bored with Jews. They couldn't care less about breaking the power of the 'Hebrew Resistance Movement'. The war was over and they wanted to go home. But Mr Bellow's 'orphaned and unattached' were acting as though their war had yet to begin.
Moshe stretched his legs and I could now see that his trousers stopped some way above his ankles. I looked and smiled, but tried to do so surreptitiously, hoping that Moshe would not notice. But I failed, because he quickly folded his legs back underneath himself and then looked into the fire. Suddenly there was an awkward silence between us and I found myself consumed with guilt. I chastised myself for my clumsiness, and searched desperately for some mollifying phrase. And then Moshe rescued me.
'Do you think I will find a wife?'
I laughed now.
'Moshe, you will be able to choose from hundreds of pretty women.'
'Do you have a wife?'
'No,' I said. 'At least, not any more. She is in America with my daughter.'
'Why don't they come and live in Palestine?'
'Well, that is a long story, Moshe. At present, my future lies over there.'
With a swift movement of my head I nodded in the general direction of the sea. Moshe looked out over the water as though he might see something.
'You see, that is my country now. The country over the water.'
I paused for a moment and tried to picture my country. And then I realized that Moshe was staring at me. My country?
'I, too, was in the army before I became a doctor. But, Moshe, the army is not everything.
Hagannah
is not everything. A wife and child, now that is something.'
I smiled at Moshe, for the moonlight was now illuminating his face in a manner that made him appear painfully young.
'Like you, Moshe, I too once left a country behind.'
I twisted myself around in the sand, and then gazed up the hill towards the floodlit camp. The boy turned and looked.
'Many of those people have come from my old country. Now, they have nothing. I remember many things about my old country. People. Places. Suddenly you couldn't do this, you had to do that. Then you couldn't do that, you had to do this. I left early, but even before I left there were people begging in the streets, respectable people. I remember the fear. But I do not have to tell you any of this. You have seen it, yes? You remember? It was the same in your country?'
Moshe continued to stare up at the illuminated vision that was the camp on the hill. He nodded, almost imperceptibly, for his mind was clearly lost in reverie.
'You will marry a beautiful girl and have wonderful children. And, sure, you will join the army if you wish.'
Moshe turned from the camp and looked at me. I tried to make him understand.
'The old world is dead. The survivors are here. Up there, gathered together on a hillside in Cyprus. The new world is just beginning, Moshe. And you are a part of it.'
I took the boy's hand and held it between my own. I felt we
had become friends, the fire between us, the camp on the hill, the other volunteers
scattered across the beach, the British in their uniforms, the young men and
women distributing wood, the sea murmuring to us, our new country hidden beyond
the dark horizon.
I could smell food and I now wanted to eat. Not this food.
I wanted to eat the food that my wife would cook for me when I came home from
the university at the end of the day. Waiting for me with our small daughter.
In the old country. Before Palestine. Before America. In the old country,
sitting with student friends in one of the small bars near the apartment.
Drinking the full-bodied beer. Eating spiced sausage. Food. Drink. Not on
a beach in Cyprus. We had a country into whose life we slipped like a hand
into a glove. I remember. Desks were rearranged. We now had to sit at the
back, near the door. Soon after, there were young men in strange new uniforms.
Saluting each other. Bright new flags. And now. Fruit on the trees. An army.
Beautiful women. A new country to build. After two months in Cyprus, I was
leaving at dawn. To go home. To go where? Away to the south. Away to the east.
How much should I tell this boy? Truly I felt ashamed, for I had not described
my country. I had described the country that might be his. The country that
might belong to his children. The country that might belong to his children's
children. My country? At dawn, going back to beautiful trees laden with fruit.
But what about the joy of swirling snow on a cold winter's morning? And what
about the thrill of being assaulted by an icy wind that charges its way towards
you, down a narrow frost-ravaged street? And then, come springtime, the self-conscious
flamboyance of impatient buds that burst into premature life. Watch me while
I flower. No, watch me. In the parks, lakes and ducks and marching bands.
And still the occasional chilly night, which requires a collar to be flicked
skywards and the neck to be bandaged in a thick wool scarf. And then the sun-
drenched courtyards of summer. And then later, in the autumn, a rose begins
to unhinge its petals, and an apple lets go of its branch. In the old country.
I left behind my brother and his dreams of our partnership.
(Why create
another home? We can set up in practice together. The brothers Stern. We might
become the richest doctors in the country.)
But Ernst, our lives are getting
smaller. Shops and businesses are closing. You must go.
(To this primitive
British colony of Palestine? I have dutifully bought the stamps to pay for
the land that you buy from the Arabs. I have done my duty. Enough of this
foolishness.)
But Ernst, America is not a golden land. They work like
horses. It is difficult to make money. And Ernst, have you thought of your
two girls? And if not the golden land, then where? Ernst, where are you taking
them? And now in Cyprus. Where are they? Up on the hill with the rest of the
refuse from old Europe? A futile and self-corrosive guilt. Wondering what
else I might have done. Memory. That untidy room with unpredictable visiting
hours. I am forever being thrust through the door and into that untidy room.
Yes, my friend, the army will provide you with a port into which you might
ultimately dock. Yes, the army. And the army will make sure that you continue
to have a home. I was hungry. I wanted to eat now, but not in Cyprus. And
not in the new country. How could I explain? Imagine any day of my old life.
Walking on stone. Solid and secure. But now I walk on boards. Will they snap
beneath my feet? A new world of boards. No stone. Nearly eleven years in Palestine.
Two whole months in Cyprus. Boardworld. Imagine. Imagine. I still carry within
me the old world that I once cast aside. (She is in America with my daughter.)
And my two nieces. Dear Margot. Dear Eva. A world that I can never put down
to rest. A world that, even now, I seem incapable of surrendering. Moshe,
imagine. The snow. The full-bodied beer. The impatient buds. The stone beneath
my feet. The icy wind of winter.