‘This morning in the hotel you wear your bracelet on your right wrist. Tonight you wear it on your left wrist. Why?’
His English was foreign and educated and courteous; his accent, so far as she could judge, Arab. A soft voice but powerful; a speaker’s voice.
‘I like to change it around,’ she said.
‘Why?’ he repeated.
‘To make it feel new.’
Dropping into a crouch, he explored her hips and legs and the inside of her thighs with the same minute attention as the rest of her; then, still only with his left hand, carefully prodded her new fur boots.
‘You know how much it is worth, that bracelet?’ he asked as he stood up again.
‘No.’
‘Stay still.’
He was standing behind her, tracing her back, her buttocks, her legs again, down to the boots.
‘You didn’t insure it?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Michel gave it to me for love. Not money.’
‘Get in the car.’
She did so; he walked round the front and climbed in beside her.
‘Okay, I take you to Khalil.’ He started the engine. ‘Door-to-door delivery. Okay?’
The van had an automatic gearbox, but she noticed he steered mainly with his left hand while the right rested on his lap. The jangle of the empties took her by surprise. He reached a crossroads and turned left into a road as straight as the first, but without lamps. His face, as much as she could see of it, reminded her of Joseph’s, not in its features but in its intentness, in the drawn-back corners of his fighter’s eyes, which kept a constant watch on the van’s three mirrors, as well as on herself.
‘You like onions?’ he called above the clatter of the bottles.
‘Quite.’
‘You like to cook? What you cook? Spaghetti? Wiener-schnitzel?’
‘Things like that.’
‘What did you cook for Michel?’
‘Steak.’
‘When?’
‘In London. The night he stayed in my flat.’
‘No onions?’ he shouted.
‘In the salad,’ she said.
They were heading back towards the city. Its glow made a pink wall under the heavy evening cloud. They descended a hill and arrived in a flat, sprawling valley suddenly without form. She saw half-built factories and huge lorry parks, unoccupied. She saw a rubbish tip that was being shaped into a mountain. She saw no shops, no pub, no lights in any window. They entered a concrete forecourt. He stopped the van but did not switch off the engine. ‘HOTEL GARNI EDEN,’ she read, in red neon letters, and above the garish doorway: ‘Willkommen! Bienvenu! Well-come!’
As he handed her the shoulder bag, an idea struck him. ‘Here – give him these. He likes them too,’ he said, fishing for the box of onions from among the crates. As he dumped it in her lap, she noticed again the stillness of his gloved right hand. ‘Room five, fourth floor. The stairs. Not the elevator. Go well.’
With the van’s engine still running, he watched her across the forecourt to the lighted entrance. The box was heavier than she had expected and claimed both her arms. The lobby was empty, the lift stood waiting, but she didn’t take it. The staircase was narrow and twisting, the carpet worn to the thread. The canned music had a panting insinuation, the fuggy air reeked of cheap scent and stale tobacco smoke. At the first landing, an old woman called, ‘Grüss Gott,’ to her from inside her glass cubicle but did not raise her head. It seemed to be a place where unexplained ladies came and went a good deal.
At the second landing, she heard music and female laughter; at the third she was overtaken by the lift and wondered why he had made her take the stairs, but she had no will any more, no resistance; her words and actions had all been written for her. The box was making her arms ache, and by the time she entered the fourth-floor corridor the ache was her greatest concern. The first door was a fire exit and the second, right beside it, was marked 5. The lift, the fire exit, the stairs, she thought automatically; he always has at least two things.
She knocked on the door, it opened, and her first thought was: Oh Christ, typical, I’ve mucked it up; because the man who stood before her was the man who had just driven her here in the Coca-Cola van, minus his hat and left glove. He took the box from her and laid it on the luggage stand. He took off her spectacles, folded them, and handed them back to her. When he had done that, he again unslung her shoulder bag and emptied its contents onto the cheap pink eiderdown, much as they had done to her in London when they put the black glasses on her. About the only other thing in the room apart from the bed was the briefcase. It was lying on the washstand, empty, its black mouth turned towards her like an open jaw. It was the one she had helped to steal from Professor Minkel, back in that big hotel with the mezzanine, when she was too young to know any better.
An utter calm had descended over the three men in their operations room. No phone calls, even from Minkel and Alexis; no desperate recantations over the cipher link with the Embassy in Bonn. In their collective imagination the whole tortuous conspiracy seemed to be holding its breath. Litvak sat slumped despondently in an office chair; Kurtz was in some kind of sunny dream, his eyes half closed, smiling like an old alligator. And Gadi Becker, as before, was the stillest of them, staring self-critically into the gathering dark, like a man examining all the promises of his past life – which had he kept? Which broken?
‘We should have given her the homer this time round,’ Litvak said. ‘They trust her by now. Why didn’t we give her the homer? – wire her up?’
‘Because he’ll search her,’ Becker said. ‘He’ll search her for weapons and wires and he’ll search her for a homer.’
Litvak roused himself enough to argue. ‘So why do they use her? You’re crazy. Why use a girl you don’t trust – for a job like this?’
‘Because she hasn’t killed,’ said Becker. ‘Because she’s clean. That’s why they use her, and that’s why they don’t trust her. For the same reason.’
Kurtz’s smile became almost human. ‘When she’s made her first kill, Shimon. When she’s no longer a novice. When she’s the wrong side of the law for ever, an illegal unto death – then they’ll trust her. Then everybody will trust her,’ he assured Litvak contentedly. ‘By nine o’clock tonight, she’ll be one of them – no problem, Shimon, no problem.’
Litvak remained unconsoled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Once more, he was beautiful. He was Michel full-grown, with Joseph’s abstinence and grace and Tayeh’s unbothered absolutism. He was everything she had imagined when she was trying to turn him into somebody she was looking forward to. He was broad-shouldered and sculptured, with the rarity of a precious object kept from sight. He could not have walked into a restaurant without the talk dying round him, or walked out of it without leaving a kind of relief in his wake. He was a man of the outdoors condemned to hiding in small rooms, with the pallor of the dungeon in his complexion.
He had drawn the curtains and put on the bedside light. There was no chair for her and he was using the bed as a carpenter’s bench. He had tossed the pillows on the floor beside the box and sat her in their place while he went to work, and he was talking all the time that he worked, half to himself and half to her. His voice knew only attack: a thrusting, forward march of thoughts and words.
‘They say Minkel’s a nice person. Maybe he is. When I read about him, I too said to myself – this old fellow Minkel, maybe he’s got some courage to say those things. Maybe I would respect him. I can respect my enemy. I can honour him. I have no problem concerning this.’
Having dumped the onions in a corner, he was fishing out a succession of small packages from the box with his left hand and unwrapping them one by one while he used his right to hold them down. Desperate to concentrate on something, Charlie tried to commit the whole lot to memory, then gave up: two new supermarket torch batteries in a single pack, one detonator of the type she had used at the fort for training,
with red wires sprouting from the crimped end. Penknife. Pliers. Screwdriver. Soldering iron. A coil of fine red wire, steel staples, copper thread. Insulating tape, a torch bulb, assorted lengths of wooden dowelling. And a rectangular piece of softwood as a base for the device. Taking the soldering iron to the handbasin, Khalil plugged it into a nearby power point, causing a smell of burning dust.
‘Do the Zionists think of all the nice people when they bomb us? I don’t think so. When they napalm our villages, kill our women? This I doubt very much. I do not think the terrorist Israeli pilot, sitting up there, says to himself, “Those poor civilians, those innocent victims.”’ He talks like this when he is alone, she thought. And he is alone a lot. He talks to keep his faith alive; and his conscience quiet. ‘I have killed many people whom I would no doubt respect,’ he said, back at the bed. ‘The Zionists have killed many more. But I kill only for love. I kill for Palestine and for her children. Try to think like this also,’ he advised her piously, interrupting himself as he glanced at her. ‘You are nervous?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s natural. I too am nervous. Are you nervous in the theatre?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is the same. Terror is theatre. We inspire, we frighten, we awaken indignation, anger, love. We enlighten. The theatre also. The guerrilla is the great actor of the world.’
‘Michel wrote me that too. It’s in his letters.’
‘But I told it to him. It was my idea.’
The next parcel was wrapped in oil paper. He opened it with respect. Three half-pound sticks of Russian plastic. He laid them in pride of place at the centre of the eiderdown.
‘The Zionists kill for fear and for hate,’ he announced. ‘Palestinians for love and justice. Remember this difference. It is important.’ The glance again, swift and commanding. ‘You will remember this when you are afraid? You will say to yourself “for justice”? If you do, you will no longer be afraid.’
‘And for Michel,’ she said.
He was not entirely satisfied. ‘And for him also, naturally,’ he conceded, and from a brown paper bag shook two household clothespegs onto the bed, then brought them to the bedside light to compare their simple mechanisms. Observing him from so near, she noticed a patch of creased white skin where the cheek and lower ear seemed to have been melted together and cooled again.
‘Why do you put your hands over your face, please?’ Khalil enquired, out of curiosity, when he had selected the better peg.
‘I was tired for a moment,’ she said.
‘Then wake up. Be alert for your mission. Also for the revolution. You know this type of bomb? Did Tayeh teach it to you?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Bubi did.’
‘Then pay attention.’ Sitting beside her on the bed, he picked up the wood base and with a ballpoint pen briskly drew some lines on it for the circuit. ‘What we make is a bomb for all occasions. It works as a timer – here – also as a booby trap – here. Trust nothing. That is our philosophy.’ Handing her a clothespeg and two drawing-pins, he watched while she pushed the pins into either side of the peg’s mouth. ‘I am not anti-Semitic, you know that?’
‘Yes.’
She gave him back the clothespeg; he took it to the hand-basin and set to work soldering wires to the heads of the two drawing-pins.
‘How do you know?’ he demanded, puzzled.
‘Tayeh told me the same. So did Michel.’ And so did about two hundred other people, she thought.
‘Anti-Semitism, this is a strictly Christian invention.’ He again returned to the bed, this time bringing Minkel’s open briefcase with him. ‘You Europeans, you are anti-everybody. Anti-Jew, anti-Arab, anti-black. We have many friends in Germany. But not because they love Palestine. Only because they hate Jews. That Helga – you like her?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither. She is very decadent, I think. You like animals?’
‘Yes.’
He sat next to her, the briefcase on the bed beside him. ‘Did Michel?’
Choose, never hesitate, Joseph had said. It is better to be inconsistent than to be uncertain.
‘We never talked about them.’
‘Not even about horses?’
And never, never correct yourself.
‘No.’
From his pocket, Khalil had pulled a folded handkerchief, and from the centre of the handkerchief a cheap pocket watch with the glass and hour hand removed. Setting it beside the explosive, he took up the red circuit wire and unwound it. She had the base-board on her lap. He took it from her, then grasped her hand and placed it so that she could hold the staples while he lightly tapped them home, fixing the red wire to the board according to the pattern he had drawn. Next, returning to the basin, he soldered the wires to the battery while she cut up lengths of insulating tape for him with the scissors.
‘See,’ he said proudly as he added the watch.
He was very near her. She felt his nearness like a heat. He was stooped like a cobbler to his last, engrossed by his work.
‘Was my brother religious with you?’ he asked, taking up a light-bulb and twisting a pared end of wire to it.
‘He was an atheist.’
‘Sometimes he was an atheist, sometimes he was religious. Other times he was a silly little boy, too much with women and ideas and cars. Tayeh says you were modest at the camp. No Cuban boys, no Germans, nobody.’
‘I wanted Michel. That’s all I wanted. Michel,’ she said, too emphatically to her own ear. But when she glanced at him, she could not help wondering whether their brotherly love had been quite as infallible as Michel had proclaimed, for his face had set into a scowl of doubt.
‘Tayeh is a great man,’ he said, implying perhaps that Michel was not. The bulb lit. ‘The circuit is good,’ he announced and, reaching gently past her, picked up the three sticks of explosive. ‘Tayeh and myself – we died together. Did Tayeh describe to you this incident?’ he asked, as with Charlie’s help he began taping the explosive tightly together.
‘No.’
‘The Syrians caught us – cut here. First they beat us. This is normal. Stand up, please.’ From the box he had extracted an old brown blanket, which he made her stretch across her chest for him while he deftly sliced it into strips. Their faces across the blanket were very close. She could smell the warm sweetness of his Arab body.
‘In the course of beating us they make themselves very angry, so they decide to break all our bones. First fingers, then arms, then legs. Then they break our ribs with rifles.’
The knife point through the blanket was inches from her body. He cut swiftly and cleanly, as if the blanket were something he had hunted and killed. ‘When they finish with us, they leave us in the desert. I am glad. At least we die in the desert! But we don’t die. A patrol of our commandos finds us. For three months Tayeh and Khalil lie side by side in hospital. Snowmen. Covered in plaster. We have some nice conversations, we become good friends, we read some good books together.’
Folding the strips into neat military piles, Khalil addressed himself to Minkel’s cheap black briefcase, which she noticed for the first time was opened from the back, by way of the hinges, while the fastenings at the front were still firmly closed. One by one he laid the folded strips inside, until he had built up a soft platform for the bomb to lie on.
‘You know what Tayeh said to me one night?’ he enquired as he did this. ‘“Khalil,” he said, “for how much longer do we play the nice guys? Nobody helps us, nobody thanks us. We make great speeches, we send fine orators to the United Nations, and if we wait another fifty years, maybe our grandchildren, if they’re alive, they get a little piece of justice.”’ Interrupting himself, he showed her how much with the fingers of his good hand. ‘“Meanwhile our brother Arabs kill us, the Zionists kill us, the Falangists kill us, and those of us who remain alive go into their diaspora. Like the Armenians. Like the Jews themselves.”’ He became cunning. ‘“But if we make a few bombs – kill a few people – make a slau
ghterhouse, just for two minutes of history –”’
Without finishing the sentence, he took up the device and solemnly, with great precision, laid it inside the case.
‘I need spectacles,’ he explained with a smile, and shook his head like an old man. ‘But where should I go for them – a man like me?’
‘If you were tortured like Tayeh, why don’t you limp like Tayeh?’ she demanded, growing suddenly loud in her nervousness.
Delicately, he removed the light-bulb from the wires, leaving the pared ends free for the detonator.
‘The reason I do not limp is because I prayed to God for strength, and God gave it me so that I could fight the real enemy and not my brother Arabs.’
Handing her the detonator, he looked on approvingly while she attached it to the circuit. When she had finished, he took what wire remained and, with a deft, almost unconscious movement, wound it like wool round the tips of his dead fingers, until he had made a little dummy. Then wound two strands horizontally for a belt.
‘You know what Michel wrote to me before he died? In his last letter?’
No, Khalil, I do not know, she replied as she watched him toss the dummy into the briefcase.
‘Please?’
‘No. I said no, I don’t know.’
‘Posted only hours before his death? “I love her. She is not like the others. It is true that when I first met her she had the paralysed conscience of a European” – here, wind the watch, please – “also she was a whore. But now she is an Arab in her soul and one day I shall show her to our people and to you.”’
There remained the booby trap, and for this they had to work in still closer intimacy, for he required her to loop a length of steel wire through the fabric of the lid, then he himself held the lid as low as possible while her small hands led the wire to the dowelling in the clothespeg. Gingerly now, he took the whole contraption to the basin once more, and, with his back to her, refitted the hinge-pins with a blob of solder for each side. They had passed the point of no return.
‘You know what I told to Tayeh once?’
The Little Drummer Girl Page 55