“This is no longer the twelfth century, father,” said Père Antoine. “One does not expect to find oneself in a holy war.”
Père Lavigne’s beard swept over his desk, and he reached to trap a sheet of paper sailing forward.
“It is not a holy war, Antoine. It was a riot. Please don’t be dramatic. The British haven’t been here very long—but I don’t know what’s the matter with this pen, it does not want to give ink all of a sudden.”
He pressed the nib onto the foolscap, leaving a thin scratch in the shape of an “I.”
“I am worried for the Christians.”
“The Christians, you are worried for?” said Lavigne, with a hint of a smile. “Ah, now this reminds me. The new Palestine Oriental Society is meeting next Thursday. Will you come? I am giving the keynote.”
“How so?”
“They have elected me the president.” His eyes had a watery tint. Perhaps it was the light.
“Wonderful. Congratulations.”
“We are hosting it here, in the convent. Alors—don’t go to Nablus, will you, just this once?”
“Of course, I will stay.”
Lavigne bore down once more on his pen. “God with you, father,” he said, without looking up.
Père Antoine ducked his head to don his hat and walked out into the heat of the cloisters. It was May, and Jerusalem was already baking. He clung to the slim shade of the walls towards to the dormitory.
Although the British civil administration over Palestine had just been ratified, Antoine remained disturbed by the Nebi Musa riot. He was here in Jerusalem when the rioters ran through, standing in the very courtyard outside the Holy Sepulchre when that stringy mass of men charged in through the high wooden doors. A gap had opened in the crowd and blasted him with the vision: a stretcher, borne out at a vicious angle. Blood falling on the stones. The body of a congregant, the lolling arm of an innocent, slaughtered at prayer.
In all his years here, he had never felt so ill at ease. Young Arabs on street corners set his heart racing. On the hospital veranda in Nablus he lost his nerve and struggled in his interviews. He had assumed it best to discuss this with his mentor. Now he saw he was mistaken, and the error was not a little painful. He climbed the steps to his room, considering how best to bring the whole thing up with Sister Louise.
He took a bus north that afternoon, and arrived at the sisters’ house before dusk. In the hallway Sister Sarah said Louise was on an extended visit to a sick child in a village seven hours’ walk away. No one knew when she might return. Antoine spent the next three days at the hospital noting down oddments of hearsay, feeling tender and strained. But with no sign of Louise, he returned to Jerusalem as he had promised Lavigne, deprived of his usual respite.
On Thursday afternoon, with half an hour to go before the meeting of Lavigne’s society, Antoine looked up from his desk in the library at L’École to see he was no longer alone. Three British policemen were coming down the library steps. Had they not so rapidly removed their hats with the trepidatious postures of men on holy ground, Antoine might have thought he was under arrest.
“Good afternoon, Father Anthony,” said the one in the middle. “Major Hodges here.”
“Good afternoon,” said Antoine.
“We’ve come to ask for your help.”
Major Hodges was not a small man. Yet he gave an impression of smallness because his head was proportionately quite large. Hair grey and white; moustache dark and trimmed far above his top lip. A little chin—or, rather, a chin dwarfed by a hammock of flesh below, which protruded from his collar and curved underneath. As he cleared his throat and turned his whole stiff body to look at one of his officers, that pad of flesh rippled.
“We’ve heard, Father Anthony, that you have something of a special expertise in Nablus.”
“Expertise? Oh, I don’t know about expertise. An interest, certainly. I have an interest.”
“Right. Thing about Nablus is—do you mind if I sit down?”
“Of course.”
“Take a seat, gentlemen.”
Three chairs screeched across the stone floor. Major Hodges sat nearest to Antoine and gripped the leather beak of his field cap.
“Thing about Nablus is they’re unruly. Is there anyone in here by the way?”
“We are alone.”
“Good. Nablus. Worst of the lot. Our trouble is, we’ve not got any …” he lowered his voice, “intelligence … from there since about nineteen seventeen or thereabouts. Asked the French nuns to keep an eye but … the thing about Nablus, as you probably know, well, it’s a town of fanatics. Lot of troublemakers. What we in the CID, that’s the Criminal Investigation Department, like to call mischief makers. Probably worse than Hebron, in fact.”
Antoine inclined his head, not in agreement, but to show he was listening.
“Catch a troublemaker in Jerusalem and chances are two out of three he’s from Nablus or thereabouts. That is not a lie. What I’m coming to is, it has been proving somewhat difficult to get many facts on the ground, so to speak. We recently set up a new department but if I’m honest with you, it doesn’t matter if any one of us doffs the uniform. No one is going to talk to us.”
Antoine glanced at the two other officers. One had big orange sideburns. The other had the tender features of an adolescent.
“We’ve been really struggling to get a local on board. But we’ve been doing the rounds and we heard you know a bit about the place. What we’re trying to do is ascertain how much recent events were planned in advance. Nablus being one of the more organised in terms of, well, activities, as well as, like I say, more unruly. So if there is any sort of plan that is what one might call systematic on behalf of these mischief makers, to agitate the people, we need to keep an eye. Do you see? On the Jewish side we all know who’s who. The Arabs are a bit different. Look, I’m going to level with you. We’re behind and we’re low on staff. We’ve started collecting fingerprints but what we really need is facts, names, alliances. Market gossip. We’ve got one report about the major families from about three years ago but things are always changing—and I’ll tell you it’s been bloody hard to find an Arab from Nablus who’ll talk to us, and who we can trust. And one who speaks English.” He took a breath, and fixed Antoine. “What we’re wanting to know is—”
“Have I heard anything.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “And also,” he gave a voluntary exhalation, “a bit more. We were wondering whether you might actually be willing to work for us. I know you’re a holy man but it’s quite common among your profession, believe it or not. And we know you speak the language, and about your considerable expertise in the study of Arabs.” He gave a sardonic smile. “You will have some compensation, it will be small, but you will be honoured of course by His Majesty’s Government for your services.”
With an air of conclusion, he pursed his lips. His fingers were very tight on his cap, Antoine noticed, and the skin under the nails was going white. Antoine turned and looked through the window on the other side of his carrel.
“What would it involve?”
“Involve,” repeated Hodges. “Lingering round the markets. Catching news here and there. Small is fine for starters, just to get a sense of … who the troublemakers might be. Next, make some friends.”
Antoine took his time, looking at the sky. Nablus was unruly. Perhaps she was. She was complex, like a beautiful engine with different parts that conflicted to make the vehicle move. These were idiotic policemen, drawn from all quarters of their empire to treat each case of colonial disorder the same. And yet, against the very force of his disdain for them, Antoine felt a glimmer of—what was that? Possibility?
The truth was he probably already had the information they were after. He knew all about the families, who had feuded, who allied. He knew the kinds of crimes committed and how they were commonly avenged. It had not occurred to him that those acts of retribution he sometimes noted might be something the British should police; he s
imply observed them from the anthropological view. And yet there they were, listed in his book, ripe for such analysis. The bloody scene of Nebi Musa pulsed in his mind.
“O Jesu, vivens in Maria veni et vive in famulis tuis. Lord God, have mercy on me in your goodness.” He placed his hands over his abdomen and bowed his head. “Hear me, O Lord. I am uncertain in my ways. Guide me on my path, in my next decisions. I am humbled before you.”
The sergeant’s eyes were wide.
“I am sorry. But, after all, I have nothing to give you.”
“Ah,” said the sergeant, in a tone of controlled surprise. “In that case. Well, if you wouldn’t mind having a think about it anyway.” He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a sealed envelope and a business card, “Major Hodges, I’m stationed at the police HQ in the old Russian compound.”
“My answer is no.”
Hodges hesitated. “Indeed. Indeed, no. Nonetheless, I’ll be back in a few days to see, to see how you’re … feeling.” Before Antoine could interrupt him again, Hodges was on his feet. “All right boys, say goodbye to the father. Goodbye, Father Anthony. Off we go.”
* * *
There were a few scholarly Jews and Arabs at Père Lavigne’s meeting, but the audience seemed to be mostly Englishmen and Frenchmen, many from L’École, and some Americans, Greeks, and Armenians, among them the priests and rabbis conspicuous by their clerical robes and headpieces, and the archaeologists and diplomats distinguishable from one another only by degrees of tidiness and the use of pomade. Although the meeting had been advertised to the public, the only obvious non-researchers Antoine could detect were four women chatting in the back row. They were shushing each other as Père Lavigne assumed the rostrum at the front of the room. Antoine slid into an empty chair by the aisle.
Alone before his lectern, Lavigne’s congenital tremor was magnified. His hand shook as it held his spectacles in place, and his head vibrated with something between a nod and a shudder.
“What are we doing?” he began, smiling widely. “We here present a truly strange spectacle. Europe, Asia, the world entire, has just been prey to the most horrific torments that history has ever known. Still, the earth trembles. Across the world, committees toil over how they shall provide the daily bread for their citizens. And here we are, gentlemen, gathered to discuss the meanings of words, and the rules of grammar, and facts of ancient geography, of wildflowers, of old melodies, of the engraved letters on the rocks of Palestine.” He breathed a laugh. “But we know that this is important work. What we are embarking on is not useless. No, on the contrary. If anything can pierce the darkness of the future, if there is anything human that can illuminate the present, guide us on our way, strengthen us in these trials, revive our noblest hopes, it is the lesson of the past. It is the light of history.” A pause as he turned over the page, and with his finger found the first line. “Only, we do not want any more of that type of history which is the child of the imagination, which paints large tableaux and tidies into a pretty sequence the melange of uncontrollable facts. No. Our method, gentlemen, is one of precision and accurate data, though these may be of a more mediocre appearance. Careful, patient study—that is the history of today. And for this, the strength of a single man will no longer suffice. Gone are the days of Herodotus, and even of Bossuet and Macaulay. We, gentlemen, will work together. Indeed, looking around me now I can say it would be assuredly difficult to assemble anywhere other than in Jerusalem such a diverse range of skills as those of you here present, on a terrain any more profoundly transformed over the ages, by such an extraordinary variety of civilisations.”
With the applause Lavigne gripped one lens of his spectacles again. He waved off the man reaching to help him down the steps, and walked delicately to a seat in the front row. He raised a heavy eyebrow to smile at the person beside him.
There was another brief speech by the American consul, and then a break was announced, before the reading of the first papers. Tea was presented in the next room.
“Just milk for me,” Antoine said to the server.
The boy looked blank.
“Bas haleeb.” Antoine pointed at the jug.
Beside a pyramid of imported biscuits, a blond man with a centre parting exclaimed: “It is an abomination. The Turks had really terrible taste.”
“It looks like a lighthouse!” said his interlocutor.
“Are you talking about the clock?” said a third, shorter man.
“Yes,” said the blond. “Storrs wants it removed.”
Antoine knew the clock tower well. It stood at Jaffa Gate, a relic from the old sultan’s reign, constructed of factory-cut stone and markedly out of keeping with the style of the old city walls. Pale and rectilinear, with a pointed horseshoe arch aiming up at a balcony that circled the clock face. A crescent moon shot from the top, cradling a star. They said it was built when the time schemes were changing hands, as a sign of the sultan’s modernity.
The end of the tea break was nigh. Someone announced the title of the first paper—“Noun Classes in the Hamitic Language”—and as the crowd began to shift, Antoine found Lavigne by the door. Holding one soft crooked hand between his own, he congratulated his mentor on the marvellous speech. It was, he said, a perfect introduction.
“You’re not staying?” Lavigne’s mouth hung open. His bottom lip was bleeding a little.
“I have things to attend to. I’m sorry. I promise I will be present at the next one.”
When he arrived at the sisters’ residence, Antoine found Sister Louise in the small dining room, alone at the table, drinking a glass of water.
The dining room of the sisters’ residence had been extended some years earlier by the removal of a partition wall to a small conservatory, which, like the glass lid of a box turned sideways, gave them a view from the dining table of the plush garden beyond, dressed now in half-darkness, a little lawn and line of flowering herbs at the side. Each wall of the dining room bore a cross, and from the ceiling hung a bowl-like copper light fixture with a battered pendant and tarnished silver beads. It was unlit.
“Sister.” Antoine sat in a chair, and the wicker squeaked. Hands on the marble tabletop, he felt a plummeting exhaustion. “Sister, I have suffered a moment of temptation.”
Sister Louise was silent. Then she said, “You know, Antoine, I cannot provide you with absolution.”
A circular mark was corroded into the marble near the edge. He touched it with his finger; it was rough. Someone had left a cut lemon face down.
“What is it you have done?” she asked.
“I have not done it.” He could not suppress the sadness in his tone. “That is my victory.” He rested his hand on the cold stone and listened carefully to make sure they were absolutely alone. Then he met Louise’s eyes, which were, he noticed, far more fearful than her words sounded. “How do you manage it?” he said. “Manage, I mean, to remain so untouched.”
“How?” She held his gaze. “I manage because I am not alone.” He broke away, and she continued: “You must not lose courage.”
“I have forgotten why I began in the first place.” He heard himself whine and felt a need to cover his face. “Lord help me. I don’t know what’s happening.”
“It is only because you are alone that you forget.”
Antoine stared at her. “Alone?”
“Would you like to tell me what has happened? We can go elsewhere—”
“No. I mean … yes. I can tell you here. I will tell you here. Would you, could I close the door?”
Sister Louise was on her feet already, and in a second had twisted the key and was seated again.
“I was in the library.” He looked up at the dark glass of the doors where, between the mullions and crossbars, their reflections were emerging. “Alone, yes. In Jerusalem, the monastery library, and a policeman came to see me. I was reading … it doesn’t matter what I was reading. He had two other men with him.” He glanced down. “Perhaps I should start further back—I don�
��t know where to begin—”
“Beginning here is fine. You were in the library.”
“In the library, yes, and the policeman came. With two other men. They asked me, would I help them. A question of expertise, you understand. They are worried about Nablus, he said, they are the most fanatical, the most … You know he said something, Sister, he said that two thirds of the troublemakers at Nebi Musa were Naplousiens. Do you believe that?”
Sister Louise was twisting a crust of toast idly on the saucer. She was not usually a woman who fiddled. “We have had problems with Nablus, as you know.” She dropped the crust and dusted her fingers. “But I must point out, before I say anything else, that we are still here.”
“But shutting down the hospital—”
“No we are not shutting it down, father, we are only passing it on. We are planning to remain, we will keep our clinic, and the school, and continue with the village visits. Father, you know our purpose has never really been to change them. We are not converting, not even preaching—we simply do the duty the Lord set in place.” She made a quick sign of the cross.
“Yes, I know that. But this question of fanatical—I mean, you have had problems, you have told me so. And there is a fervour here, that I am sure of. I love Nablus. I loved her. But you know, when I saw that terrible scene in the old city, it made me feel I had been ignoring something, pretending it was not relevant … The sergeant gave me this.”
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