A Palestine Affair

by Jonathan Wilson

  Kirsch grasped the door handle of the car.

  Ross leaned over and grabbed Kirsch by the wrist. “Let the boy go, keep your mouth shut, and you’ll find that you can spend as much uninterrupted time as you like with Mrs. Bloomberg. It’s as simple as that.”

  Ross relaxed his grip.

  Kirsch pushed open the car door.

  “Well,” Ross said, “no doubt I’ll be hearing from you shortly.”

  Kirsch stumbled from the car and slammed the door behind him. Outside, the fields were covered with stubbled grass and dusty thorns. He knelt by the roadside and retched. Ross’s car passed through the gates and into the government compound.

  19.

  In his stifling windowless office at the station Kirsch sat and stared blankly at the wall. He had walked the three miles back from Government House; his cap, like a lost emblem of his former conative life, lay forgotten on the backseat of Ross’s car. He sat now in the dark and felt the blood beat in his head. He knew what it was right to do, and he knew what he was going to do. If he let Saud travel to Petra with Bloomberg, then his job was a sham, and so was he. It crossed his mind that there was an ugly local precedent for such behavior. Hadn’t King David sent Bathsheba’s husband into the front lines in order to get him out of the way? The king got the woman he yearned for, but spent the rest of his life paying for his murderous deception. Kirsch, however, wasn’t responsible for Bloomberg’s journey into Transjordan and Joyce wasn’t a slave to Kirsch’s desires. Far from it. He had never felt more used in his life. Equally, he had never felt more attracted to another human being. And why? His soul had no answers. Even so, whichever way you looked at it, participating in Ross’s scheme was wrong, and in some vague way Kirsch knew that his becoming a policeman had been, for him, a way to balance the scales of injustice that had tipped against his family when his brother had been killed. To bow to corruption now would provide a victory for those same malevolent forces that had taken Marcus.

  There was a sharp knock on the door. Kirsch rose to switch on the light but Cartwright entered before Kirsch could call him in. Harlap hovered in the doorway behind him. Cartwright stood before Kirsch’s desk, the door wide open; tea-green light from the dimly lit corridor surrounded Harlap’s ample frame.

  “We’ve got him. Lampard found him hiding in an empty sesame oil vat at his uncle’s place on Cush Street.”

  Kirsch looked at his two sergeants, one English, one a Palestinian Jew, but they were both sloppily dressed in the local style. Cartwright’s shirt was crumpled and his sleeves rolled up, while the top two buttons of Harlap’s tunic were missing; the hair on his chest burst out like stuffing from a mattress.

  “Is the boy here?” Kirsch asked.

  “He’s on his way.”

  “Good. As soon as he arrives you’re to transport him over to Government House.”

  “This late? What for?”

  “Never mind how late it is or what for, just do as I say.”

  As soon as Kirsch spoke Harlap left the room. Cartwright lingered a while, an expression of frustration and disdain etched on his sunburned face. Kirsch knew Cartwright was sick to death of taking orders from an officer ten years his junior, and a Jew to boot.

  “Well, go on. What are you waiting for?”

  “Just drop him at the door, then?”

  “Members of the governor’s staff will be waiting for him. The interrogation will take place at Government House.”

  “Right.”

  Kirsch had no reason to believe that Cartwright knew that he was lying about the interrogation; and yet he was sure that Cartwright did know.

  “If you want, sir, I think we could probably get out of him all you want to know in the car on the way over there.”

  “We don’t do that.”

  “No, sir, ’course not, sir.”

  The car, a green Morris Sports Tourer, one of only four vehicles owned by the force, sped down past the Convent of the Poor Clares, then slowed as Dobbins swung it onto back roads in order to avoid the scattered nails that the striking taxi drivers were still distributing on main thoroughfares. Saud sat in the backseat of the car flanked by Lampard and Cartwright. Dobbins drove in silence, breaking into speech only once to swear at a goat that was making its way slowly across the road. At the junction with a path that led to the educational farm they hooked up with the main road again and picked up speed, traveling in the direction of the Government Arab College.

  Cartwright banged Dobbins on the back. “Speed up.”

  “Fuck off,” Dobbins replied, “we’ll get there soon enough.”

  “You’re a stubborn bastard,” Cartwright said and then the first shots came pumping through the glass, into Dobbins’s arm, into Cartwright’s head. The car skidded, veered off the road, then back on as Dobbins recovered enough to steer.

  “Keep going! Keep going! Fuck! Fuck!”

  The bullet that grazed Saud’s head caught Lampard in his right shoulder. There was blood in the boy’s lap where he involuntarily cradled Cartwright’s slumped head.

  “He’s dead. He’s dead. You fucking Arabs, you fucking bastard.”

  Lampard tried to lift his arm to swipe at Saud but the wound in his shoulder brought him to a scream instead. The hole above Cartwright’s ear leaked thick dark blood down Saud’s thighs and legs and onto the floor of the car. Dobbins was weeping; one arm on the wheel, he tore down the road toward the gates of Government House. Once there, he braked and leaned his head on the horn, keeping it there until the on-duty sentries came to prize the bodies, three living and one dead, out of the car.

  The phone rang in Kirsch’s office.

  “Get Bloomberg now and bring him here. As soon as it can, the Petra party leaves.”

  Kirsch had never heard Ross so ruffled and agitated.

  “What’s going on? Why the rush?”

  “Good God, man. Haven’t you heard? Somebody shot up the car. I’ve got a dead squaddie and two others with bullets in the arm and shoulder.”

  “Who’s been killed?”

  “Your man Cartwright.”

  Kirsch closed his eyes and wiped his hand across his brow. Ross was silent on the other end.

  “And the boy?”

  “Right as rain. Lucky bugger.”

  “And who . . . ?”

  “Were the shooters? How the hell should I know? That’s your job, isn’t it? My guess is Jews. Could be entirely unrelated to our nasty little cargo. Somebody took a shot at the same car when we were in Hebron last month, clipped the bonnet. I don’t think I’m being modest when I say that it’s probably me they’re after. Or perhaps you? I imagine the local Zionists don’t have a great appreciation for what you’re doing.”

  Ross, realizing that he had probably gone too far, softened his tone a little. “Listen, get hold of Bloomberg and get him over here. Bring him in the back way. Tell no one what you’re up to. And don’t let on what happened. What Bloomberg doesn’t know can’t hurt him, and by the time someone spills the beans they’ll be halfway into the desert.”

  “Lampard and Dobbins?”

  “Lampard’s arm’s a mess. Dobbins has lost quite a bit of blood, but he’ll pull through.”

  “Cartwright. I’ll have to telegraph . . .”

  “Do it in the morning.”

  There was a click at the other end. Kirsch hung up the receiver. Ross’s explanation for the ambush didn’t quite fit. This was the first Kirsch had heard about an incident in Hebron. As far as he knew, no one had taken a potshot at a British officer or an N.C.O. in over a year, and the last culprit had been a drunk playing silly buggers, not an assassin. The scenario was unlikely, unless things were changing and he, Kirsch, had failed to notice the shift in atmosphere. That was possible, especially as in the last few days he hadn’t exactly had his ear to the ground. A subtle rearrangement of the political forces, and before you knew it you had an insurrection on your hands. Poor Cartwright. Poor sod. Once, in a moment of unpredictable sentimentality, Cartwright
had shown Kirsch a family photo: Mum, Dad, and sister outside their narrow terraced house in Bermondsey. All of them, except the balding Dad, with Cartwright’s sandy hair. The sister was pretty, a nice-looking girl with freckles and a wide smile.

  Kirsch rose from his desk and walked out into the compound where his motorbike was parked. He was about to kick-start the machine when he remembered that he wouldn’t be able to squeeze both Bloomberg and his luggage onto the backseat. All the other vehicles were out. Back in the office there was a somber air; news of Cartwright’s murder had filtered through among the night staff. For some reason, perhaps the looks he felt that he was getting as he crossed the room, Kirsch sensed that at least one or two of the British policemen were holding him to blame. But he might have been imagining this.

  He had to wait an hour for a car to come in, and it was almost nine by the time he set out for Talpiot. At first he drove with the windows closed, as if expecting bullets, but he quickly rolled down the glass on the driver’s side and as he did so the heavy odors of Jerusalem at night, crouched by the roadside, sprang up at him: camel and donkey dung, honeysuckle and jasmine. But Kirsch, tuned at this moment to memory, caught only the smell of his brother as they sat by the coal fire in the bedroom that they’d shared as children: cross-legged in underpants, Robert and Marcus held their damp vests up to dry, blocking the heat with their clothes; shivering, the scent of Marcus’s chest and the chill sweat in his armpits.

  The car’s tires ground noisily on the unpaved road that led to Bloomberg’s cottage. In the beam of the headlights that followed the terrace curve Kirsch caught a thick wall of caperbush, its blaze of white night flowers in full bloom. At sunrise they would wither away. He parked the car and jumped out, slamming the driver’s door in order to give warning of his arrival. He didn’t want to catch Joyce in bed with Bloomberg.

  “Hello! Anybody there?”

  Kirsch heard the clink of bottle on glass and walked in the direction of the noise.

  Bloomberg was sitting under a tree in a far corner of the cottage garden, a glass of wine in one hand, an almost empty bottle in the other.

  “Ross sent me. I’m afraid you have to leave sooner than expected. In fact you have to leave now.”

  Bloomberg put down the glass and ran his fingers through his shock of curly gray-black hair. He was shirtless, and Kirsch was surprised by the powerful build of his upper body. He had thought of Bloomberg as skinny—perhaps he wanted him to be weak.

  “Now? Well that’s certainly sooner than expected. What’s the hurry?”

  “There’s been . . . a change in circumstances. Some bureaucratic complication that Ross wants to avoid. I think it involves the Arab Legion N.C.O. who’s supposed to accompany you.”

  Kirsch looked around the garden and toward the cottage. A lamp burned in one of the windows.

  “She’s not here. In case you were wondering. Strange thing is I thought she was probably with you. Maybe she’s giving us both the runaround?”

  Kirsch didn’t know what to say. He could have understood if Bloomberg had tried to punch him in the face, but this was worse.

  “You need to get your things together.”

  “Oh, really.” Bloomberg took a long swig and drained the bottle to its dregs.

  Kirsch stood over him and waited. Eventually Bloomberg rose and dusted off his trousers. Kirsch noticed that there was another empty bottle of wine on the ground behind him.

  “Oh well,” he said, “orders are orders.” He stood at attention and effected a clumsy salute.

  “Corporal Mark Bloomberg. Ready to paint, sir.”

  Bloomberg toppled forward and grabbed Kirsch’s arm. He was half cut; Kirsch would never get him out of there in this condition.

  “This way, Kirschele.” Bloomberg laughed. “You know a bissel Yiddish? Es nit di lokshen far Shabbes. Don’t eat the noodles before Shabbos. Lovely, isn’t it. You get the meaning? Don’t fuck the girl before the wedding. But you’ve already done that, haven’t you? You’ve forked down a whole barrel load of lokshen. Come here.”

  Bloomberg dragged Kirsch by the arm.

  “This is where he came through the bushes. Knife right in the fucking heart.”

  Bloomberg began to beat his breast.

  “Right here. In the fucking heart.”

  Kirsch had been supporting Bloomberg, holding him up by the elbow. Bloomberg shrugged him off.

  The moon hung above a copse of thin, sickly-looking acacia trees. Bloomberg’s skin was horribly pale and his eyes red.

  “Give me fifteen minutes,” he slurred, and walked unsteadily to the cottage.

  Kirsch saw something glinting in the dry grass. It looked like a coin that had probably fallen out of Bloomberg’s pocket. Kirsch bent down to pick it up. It wasn’t a coin, it was a button, a silver button from a policeman’s tunic just like his own. Kirsch ran his hand to check his own jacket. No, he was all done up.

  A thin beam of light bisected the darkness between the poles of the garden gate. Kirsch heard someone dismount a bicycle and ring its bell. He slid the button into his pocket.

  “I’m ho-ome,” Joyce called out, far too cheerily for Kirsch’s peace of mind. Her voice was full of domestic confidence, even love.

  Kirsch took two steps in from the corner of the garden and spoke softly: “He’s inside packing. He has to leave.”

  Joyce, startled despite Kirsch’s efforts, lost and then regained her grip of the bicycle. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

  “Yes, I’ve come to accompany Mr. Bloomberg to Government House.”

  “Mr. Bloomberg?” Joyce laughed. “Are you arresting him?”

  Bloomberg’s voice carried through the open door of the cottage. He was singing: “In the morning, in the evening, ain’t we got fun?” He sang off-key, and Kirsch heard the trace of Whitechapel cockney that Bloomberg suppressed when he spoke. Then he appeared framed by the doorway, a portfolio in one hand, a clutch of brushes in the other.

  “Right, then. Off we go.”

  Joyce began to laugh again. Kirsch felt confused and angry. What game were they playing?

  “You’d better take a change of clothes,” she said.

  “Gotcha.” Bloomberg peremptorily dropped the portfolio and brushes, then turned back into the cottage. “Clothes, yes, but first a dance. Come inside, my love.”

  Joyce leaned the bicycle against a nearby wall and almost skipped up the garden path.

  Bloomberg grabbed her around the waist and began singing again. “I wonder can my baby do the Charleston, Charleston.” He twisted his knees and swung his heels sharply in and out on each step. Joyce did the same, and twirled an imaginary string of pearls. “Fo do do deo do Black Bottom!” They collapsed laughing on the bed. Kirsch stood a few feet outside the house, feeling utterly excluded, like a boy watching his parents drunk for the first time. He wanted to shout, “Get a move on, we haven’t got all night!” But Joyce’s presence discouraged him. Had he utterly compromised himself for nothing?

  Eventually, the Bloombergs composed themselves and a somber mood descended. Bloomberg and Joyce, neither bothering to challenge further either the surprise of Kirsch’s presence or the suddenness and finality of his orders, puttered about the small room gathering clothes, toiletries, paints, turpentine, brushes, rags, and canvases. Kirsch backed the car up to the gate and the two men loaded the boot while Joyce filled the floor and the backseat with Bloomberg’s surplus materials. Husband and wife did not speak. Bloomberg walked from house to car and back again with knitted brow, while Joyce’s face grew first gloomy, then blank and expressionless. By the time the car was ready Kirsch felt their silence as burdensome and oppressive, like a storm that will not break. He jumped into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered to life, overloud and thumping threateningly in an awkward rhythm that suggested the car was about to stall. Kirsch pumped the accelerator a couple of times, revving the engine to a smoother pitch.

  Bloomberg bent
to the window.

  “We’ll take a moment here,” he said, then led Joyce by the arm back into the cottage. Once inside he kicked the door shut behind them.

  Kirsch felt his heart racing. He wanted to get out of the car, break into the house and somehow interpose himself between Bloomberg and Joyce. But he did no such thing. Whatever was passing between them couldn’t matter much. In five minutes husband and wife would be apart, and then time would place a wedge between them, pushing and pushing until the space was big enough for Kirsch to enter and occupy. If Joyce thought she still loved Bloomberg, Kirsch was convinced that she couldn’t. What she had was a sickness, bohemian sickness, love of the suffering artist; it happened to women who read too much poetry, especially Americans, like Joyce. The torrid blue of an English winter, Bloomberg painting in an unheated room, a long scarf wrapped round his neck. Who wouldn’t fall for it?

  His reverie was interrupted by Bloomberg’s opening of the passenger-side door.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The two men drove in silence. It was a short ride to Government House. Kirsch, mindful of Cartwright’s fate, floored the accelerator. He took the curves in the road at high speed; the art supplies in the boot banged about. Kirsch thought that he should probably have something to say to Bloomberg, but everything that came to his mind concerned either Joyce or the ambush, so he kept his lips sealed.

  At the rear of the house they halted. A Tommy with his rifle at the ready approached from the gate.

  Bloomberg, who had been slumped in his seat, roused himself. He turned to face Kirsch. His short-sleeved blue shirt showed dark patches of sweat under the arms.

  “She’s a chameleon,” he murmured.

  Kirsch stared straight ahead.

  “She gets involved for a while and then she lets go.”

  “I’ll take the chance,” Kirsch said.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you. I know her very well. You saw how she was tonight.”

  “If she’s so fickle why did she stay with you?”