The Collaborator

by Diane Armstrong

  It’s a relief when the lights are finally dimmed and Gounod’s stirring music fills the concert hall as they witness the seduction and destruction of Marguerite, the pact that Faust makes with the devil, and the inexorable downfall of the hero.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tel Aviv, 2005

  As soon as Annika returns to the hotel from the Law Library, she changes into her leggings and sneakers and heads down to the promenade to clear her head. As she strides out, a brisk breeze is whipping up the waves and carving ridges in the sand, and the umbrellas above the striped banana chairs are flapping from side to side. The wind pushes her along and, for the first time in several years, she breaks into a slow jog. She wants to block out all the thoughts that toss inside her head. What would she have done in Miklós Nagy’s place? Did making deals with Nazis amount to collaboration? Where did the truth lie? She was meant to leave Israel yesterday, but she has changed her flight, determined to get to the truth about Miklos Nagy.

  But was that the sole reason? Her thoughts turn to Dov. Whenever her phone rings she hopes to hear his pleasant baritone voice, and whenever they meet, she feels as awkward as a smitten teenager and wants to impress him. She knows there’s no future in this relationship but just the same she can’t resist prolonging it.

  Out of breath, she runs into Ari’s café and orders an orange juice and a smoked salmon bagel. ‘So, you jog now,’ he says approvingly. ‘You have problem, you jog, problem goes away.’

  She sighs. ‘I wish it was that simple.’

  It’s Friday, and she glances at her watch once again, wondering if Dov will call her about going to Jerusalem. She struggles to stifle the annoyance she feels at being left dangling, but as Cassie would say, no-one makes you dangle. It’s a choice you make yourself. She pauses to listen to the interior monologue inside her head, and is astonished by what she hears: perhaps he has forgotten, or is caught up in his investigation. Perhaps he isn’t as interested as she had imagined. As she had hoped, the little voice corrects her.

  The irony is inescapable. Back in Sydney the men she had come across were a bunch of D-listers or self-absorbed wankers, but within a couple of weeks of leaving Australia, she has become attracted to two men with whom no lasting relationship was possible.

  But perhaps it isn’t really so strange after all, she thinks, watching the lean runners jog past, leaving snatches of laughter and conversation floating in the air behind them. As Cassie might say, she is being true to form, only wanting men who are not available.

  Understanding herself has never been her forte, and she tries to figure out her feelings for Dov. She is aware that something inside her softens whenever she is with him, that he’s a kindred spirit. She likes the way he looks at her, the way he smiles. He makes her feel attractive and interesting. But has the febrile atmosphere of Israel impaired her judgement? Perhaps when she saw him again she would realise that this attachment had evolved as a result of their shared interest in journalism, and his ability to stimulate her mind and make her laugh. But she knows that this is only part of the answer. The rest is shrouded in the mists of emotional confusion.

  ‘Love problems?’ asks Ari as he brings her juice and bagel.

  ‘If I told you, you wouldn’t believe it.’ Her tone is light and teasing, but the prospect of confiding in a sympathetic stranger who lives on the other side of the world and whom she will never see again is hard to resist, and she is about to tell him about her quandary when her mobile rings.

  Ari points to the phone. ‘One of the problems is calling?’ He gives her a knowing smile, moves away, and starts vigorously polishing glasses on the other side of the café.

  ‘You remember I mentioned going to Jerusalem on a Friday?’ Dov asks. She braces herself to hear that he can’t make it when he says, ‘If you’re free, I can pick you up in about an hour. I want to make sure we get there before sunset. We’re going to the kotel so don’t wear anything revealing and don’t bring your camera — once Shabbat comes in, they won’t let you take photographs.’

  *

  In the car, he explains that usually he and Yael have Shabbat dinner at the home of Nurit’s mother, but Yael is at a school camp this week. She looks at him with interest, envy almost. Shabbat dinners with family sound like a close and warm ritual, an opportunity to share the events of the past week with people who care about each other, and once again she feels the loss of being disconnected from her Jewish roots.

  She imagines candles being lit and prayers being said, like the display she saw at the Jewish Museum in Sydney. It’s something she has never experienced, and she regrets that her mother hasn’t passed on any Jewish traditions. She supposes it’s because she didn’t experience them herself while she was growing up, so the question, as always, comes back to Marika. Why did her grandmother sever the link with her ancestors? Annika is shocked to realise that in her absorption with the Nagy trial, she has almost forgotten that it was her grandmother’s angry reaction to Miklós Nagy’s name that has led her to make this journey.

  ‘Our Shabbat dinner is more about sitting down together one night of the week than about prayers or religious ritual,’ Dov says as he removes Yael’s heavy metal CD from the audio system and inserts another. As she recognises the familiar notes and the hoarse voice, Annika sits forward and her eyes widen with astonishment. Of all the music in the world, Dov is playing her favourite CD.

  ‘That’s Leonard Cohen’s London concert!’ she exclaims. ‘I play it all the time at home.’

  ‘It’s my favourite, too,’ he smiles, and reaches for her hand. A moment later they both hum the chorus of ‘I’m Your Man’. From time to time he glances at her, and she feels blood rushing to her cheeks.

  The CD ends, and they sit in a comfortable silence. ‘I can’t get over that coincidence,’ she says after a long pause.

  ‘Maybe it’s karma,’ he says, but his mouth is twitching, and she doesn’t know whether he is joking or serious. She is still trying to figure it out when he says, ‘If you’re still here next Friday, come and have dinner with us.’

  She is touched that he wants to include her in his family dinner, and disappointed that she will miss it. She would like to meet his daughter, even though she thinks her taste in music, unlike her father’s, is atrocious. She wonders how he would have introduced her. My colleague from Sydney? The woman I’ d like to share my life with? The last thought startles her. Where did that bit of fantasy come from?

  ‘Next Friday? No chance. But thanks anyway.’

  ‘Never say never.’

  He looks down at her sandalled feet. ‘I’m glad you’re not wearing high heels because we have quite a way to walk. Being Friday, I can’t drive in the Jewish Quarter after sunset. If the ultra-Orthodox Jews see you driving on Shabbat, they throw stones at the car, so we’ll come through the Damascus Gate and walk past the Muslim Quarter.’

  Twenty minutes later, as Annika gazes at the elaborate crenellations on the ancient city wall, he says, ‘This is the most beautiful of the seven city gates. It’s been the main entrance to the city since the first century, and what you’re looking at stands on top of a wall originally erected by Hadrian.’

  ‘Why Damascus?’ she asks.

  ‘Believe it or not, once you could hop into a taxi and drive straight to Syria’s capital.’

  Inside the gate, they plunge into a narrow alleyway crowded with shoppers and push their way past barrows heaped with pita bread, stalls piled with oranges, dried apricots, olives and sesame cakes soaked in honey. In doorways, men squeeze pomegranates and they stop for a glass of the tangy red juice. They rub shoulders with Arab women in white headscarves and embroidered caftans carrying heavy bags, Bedouins in keffiyehs smoking water pipes outside their leather and brass shops, and schoolgirls eyeing bangles, earrings, and racks of dresses that hang in shops hardly bigger than closets.

  Occasionally they pass young Israeli soldiers in green uniforms, confidently toting rifles over their shoulders. All the s
igns in the bazaar are in Arabic, and most of the shoppers are Muslims, the men carrying baskets, the women holding children by the hand, and it occurs to Annika that when you see people out shopping, you realise that what connects us all is stronger than what divides us. The twisting alleys pass through a succession of medieval stone archways, and she regrets not bringing her camera.

  She is staring at an inscription in flowing Arabic script when Dov grabs her hand and pulls her to one side to avoid a handcart heaped with pita bread swerving among the shoppers on the narrow pathway. His hand is strong and warm, and she doesn’t drop it as they walk on.

  ‘It’s so crowded!’ she says.

  ‘Wait till you get to the kotel.’

  ‘Kotel?’

  ‘That’s the Hebrew for what you probably call the Western Wall.’

  The alley widens, the signs are now in English and Hebrew, and a few minutes later they reach a large open plaza. She stares and catches her breath. ‘My God, it’s the Wall,’ she whispers, suddenly overwhelmed. It’s just a wall, really, made up of huge slabs of weather-roughened sandstone, with spilling clumps of greenery that have taken root in the inhospitable cracks, but it feels as if the prayers, longings, tears and supplications of the past two thousand years have soaked into the stone, drawing her towards it.

  From somewhere in her past she recalls hearing a prayer that included the words next year in Jerusalem, and she realises that she is standing before the holiest site in Judaism, the longed-for destination for Jews all over the world for thousands of years.

  The plaza seems to be an open-air synagogue. On one side, a group of Americans are celebrating a bar mitzvah, and the bar mitzvah boy, a thin freckled kid with big ears and a striped prayer shawl draped over his skinny shoulders, is reciting his part in a tremulous sing-song voice while his kippah keeps slipping off his head. Nearby, a group of old men with wispy white beards, wrapped in prayer shawls, sway back and forth as they lean over Torah scrolls.

  From the languages she hears all around them, it’s obvious that as well as the locals, visitors have come here from all over the world — tourists, travellers and pilgrims, orthodox, reform and atheists alike. Some are praying, others are gazing at the Wall in awe. In the centre of the plaza, young soldiers have joined hands and are performing a hora, their rifles bobbing on their backs as they dance in a circle. At the Wall, men of all ages press their lips against the weathered stones, praying with impassioned voices as they insert slips of paper into crevices.

  She turns to Dov. ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Those bits of paper are called kvitls. They’re messages to God. People pray for themselves or for someone else, or to ask for a blessing, and insert it in the wall. They believe that God will read it.’

  Suddenly they hear singing, and look up. Coming down the concourse leading to the plaza, their arms around one another, are dozens of young men, all in wide-brimmed black hats and long black coats, their hair in curled sidelocks, a vision from a seventeenth-century village in Poland. Although she can’t understand the words, she is captivated by their joyous singing and the rapturous expressions on their faces. When they reach the plaza, they link arms, form a circle, and continue to sing, their coat-tails flying as they dance. Occasionally, carried away by their fervour, several dancers lift one of the men high in the air as they continue spinning around. There has never been a dance like this, she thinks, such a spontaneous expression of mystical ecstasy.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ she murmurs.

  ‘They’re welcoming in the Sabbath like a bridegroom greeting his bride,’ Dov says, and from the way his eyes linger on her face, she can tell that he is as delighted by her reaction as a parent who has arranged a special treat. ‘To religious Jews, the beginning of the Sabbath is like the entrance of the bride, to be adored and celebrated.’

  A man walks over to Dov, points at Annika, and says something in an angry voice. ‘You have to go over there, to the other part of the plaza that’s reserved for women,’ Dov says. ‘This part is for men only.’

  A high fence divides the women’s section from the rest of the plaza, and by their long skirts, long-sleeved tops, and the scarves covering their hair, she can tell that most of the women here belong to the Orthodox community. Some of them have formed a circle, and she is struck by their euphoric expressions. They are radiant, as though lit by an inner light.

  They look as if they don’t have a care in the world, as if rejoicing in the coming of the Sabbath is the highlight of their week. She can’t help smiling back, and as she stands aside to watch them dancing, one young woman stretches out her hand to her. ‘Come, dance with us,’ she says in Israeli-accented English.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Annika takes her hand and joins the circle. The last time she remembered dancing was with a guy she met at a party celebrating some journo’s Walkley award. They had all had too much to drink, and as they stumbled around to loud music, he took the opportunity to hold her too tightly against his aroused body. She smiles now, delighted to be dancing in a circle with other women just for the joy of being alive and the innocent pleasure of connecting with others. Their movements are similar to the Zorba dance, and after a few trips and missteps, she is able follow the rhythm of the hora. They smile back, encouraging her, and as they dance together, hands linked, her problems melt away, and she can’t remember the last time she had enjoyed taking part in a communal activity so much.

  When the dance is over, she walks towards the Wall. Some of the women are holding prayer books as they press their lips against the sun-warmed stone. Others place their hands over their faces as they pray with expressions of aching devotion, as if their lives depended on conveying the intensity of their faith. Having prayed, they slip their kvitl into a crevice.

  If I could insert a kvitl, what would I ask for? she wonders, and envies those who believe in an omnipotent being who answers prayers and grants wishes like a Santa Claus for adults. Just the same, she regrets her cynicism in the face of such overwhelming faith, and feels frustrated at not knowing what to wish for. Then it strikes her that if she has nothing to pray for, she already has all she needs.

  *

  As they drive back to Tel Aviv along the darkened highway, her mind goes back to the trial. ‘From the transcript I can tell that Amos Alon really had it in for Miklós Nagy,’ she says. ‘I know he hated the Ben-Gurion government after the Altalena incident, and wanted to avenge himself, but how could he accuse Nagy of collaborating, knowing that he’d saved all those people? Did he think it would have been better to let them die?’

  ‘For the people he rescued, it wouldn’t have been better,’ Dov replies, ‘but for Miklós Nagy, unfortunately yes. Heroes don’t always get the acknowledgement they deserve. How far have you got?’

  ‘I’ve nearly finished. It’s like reading a detective story. I can’t wait to get to the part where the judge gives his verdict. I’ll probably finish it on Sunday.’

  ‘And then?’

  They sit in the car in silence outside her hotel, and his question hangs in the air between them, heavy with unspoken feelings. He is playing the Leonard Cohen disc again. She turns to look at Dov, stirred by the sexy lyrics, and too restless to sit still.

  She clears her throat. ‘Would you like to come in and have a drink at the bar?’

  He looks preoccupied, and instead of answering her question, he says, ‘Annika, I’m wondering what you’re going to do after you’ve finished reading that transcript of the trial. Have you figured out yet why it’s so important to you? Or are you waiting for an epiphany?’

  Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth as she replies, ‘An epiphany would be good. No, I haven’t figured it out. Maybe I’ll never know. In the meantime I’m fascinated by the moral ambiguities of the story. That’s something I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘So it’s just a story?’

  She knows why he keeps probing, and feels annoyed, probably because he has articulated her
own doubts.

  ‘You were right about Shabbat in Jerusalem. I’ll never forget it,’ she says.

  ‘Okay, I get it. Next subject,’ he says. ‘Shabbat in Jerusalem. So did the tribal collective unconscious get under your skin?’

  She is still thinking about his question when he asks softly, ‘Is that the only thing about your stay that you’ll never forget?’ She knows what he is really asking, and she teeters on the brink of honesty, but at the last moment she backs away.

  ‘When I’ve figured that one out, I’ll let you know,’ she says lightly, and plants a light kiss on his cheek before getting out the car.

  She closes the door to her balcony to shut out the synthetic blare of disco music from the beachfront that disturbs the lingering sense of peace she feels from the outpouring of impassioned faith and joy at the Western Wall.

  Closing her eyes, she sits very still, replaying every moment of that scene, the unfathomable and eternal human quest for the divine. Something profound has stirred her soul in a way she doesn’t comprehend and cannot put into words. She has read somewhere that sometimes the deepest emotions can only be expressed in silence, and she knows that words would merely trivialise what has been the first spiritual experience in her life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Jerusalem, April 1954

  The shafts of morning light shining in parallel columns through windows high on the courtroom walls distract Miklós from the drama about to unfold on yet another day of the trial. It’s a soft light, softer than the pitiless rays that scorch Tel Aviv, and for the first time in months, he thinks of spring mornings in the Kolostór of his childhood, when the world was fresh and its possibilities unspooled before him as he jumped into the stream lined with tall reeds, and raced with friends in fields sprinkled with daisies and primroses. Sometimes, concealed among the tall grasses, he found clumps of his mother’s favourite flower, lilies-of-the-valley, whose delicate white bells exuded a scent that touched his soul. That was why he had bought them for Ilonka that day, and handed them to her as awkwardly as a teenage suitor. That memory jolts him to the present, and he shifts as his bones grind against the hard timber bench.