First I extricated my shirt, one barb at a time. Then my trousers. Eventually I was free enough to apply my handkerchief to my knee and one of my arms, which were both bleeding. On the other side of the fence was the vegetable garden of the clinic, empty and neatly hoed. I lifted the barbed wire with the oak branch and crawled underneath it, smelling the watered earth and rotting vegetables. Through the clinic window I could see the upper part of the medicine cabinet. I advanced slowly between the furrows, along a narrow irrigation channel. At the edge of the garden was a ridge of loose earth. Beyond it lay the wadi at the outskirts of the village. I climbed up to the ridge to look.
"You're crushing my radishes."
I turned round. The woman was leaning on a short hoe. Her wet hair hung down to her shoulders, dampening a kind of military shirt she was wearing on top of the yellow dress. "I've just sown them," she said.
"I'm sorry..."
She did not reply. I shuffled in the loose earth, trying to find the safest way down. At every step my feet sank deeper. She sighed impatiently.
"Wait, don't move," she said and vanished with her familiar, labored walk. When she returned she was carrying a wooden plank. She threw it down at my feet. "Now you can cross."
I felt quite ridiculous, spreading my hands out to the sides, balancing myself on the narrow board. She waited in silence, her arms folded, her fingers indicating irritation. When I was down she bent and picked up the plank.
"I hope I haven't caused too much damage," I said.
She nodded in the direction of the barbed wire. "You'd better leave the way you came. The dogs won't let you pass in front."
We walked to the fence together. She looked at my bandaged knee, then at my arm. Beneath her piercing gaze I went down on my belly and crawled out of the garden. After that, as far as my painful knee would allow, I ran to the cover of the bushes.
The goat-track led in only one direction - back. In the ruined building I fell, panting, onto the straw mattress. There was no longer any point in hurrying. The sense of urgency was replaced by a great weariness. What was it about the place which made me feel so helpless? I searched through my pockets. I had lost my packet of cigarettes. I found my lighter. I collected the stubs on the floor and arranged them in front of me according to size. They were useless - old and squashed.
I lingered there for quite a while, this time thinking glumly about the man who had lain on the straw mattress smoking cheap cigarettes right down to the end. Then I went out and hobbled down the path to Dura. On the outskirts of the village the water truck picked me up. I asked the driver for a cigarette. He glanced at my bandaged knee and torn shirt, but asked no questions.
***
Actually, Scheckler reported by phone to HQ in Nabatiya - nothing of any great significance had happened. A few kids had made some holes in a petrol barrel, set it on fire with a rag and let it roll down from the petrol station at the top of the road until it burst through the gate of the Athenaeum. Everything was back to normal. The owner of the petrol station had been warned and the burned-down guard hut was being replaced and would be lined with sandbags. A detailed list of the damage would be sent forthwith.
We were up in the office. In the courtyard below soldiers were still standing around strips of twisted iron lying in a puddle of water, according it the attention that my explosion was supposed to arouse. A strip of melted soot ran along the asphalt of the road.
"What damage are you talking about?" I asked.
Scheckler put the receiver down. "You could also use some extra cash on top of your little salary..."
I opened the desk drawer. My salary slip was folded inside the brown envelope, as I had left it.
"I came across it by accident," he explained placidly. "I was looking for something else."
"What the hell were you looking for in my drawer?"
He grinned. "The doctor's letter."
"I delivered it."
"I know. You were seen."
"So why were you looking?"
"I wanted to be sure."
I studied my salary slip. Without the expenses and special allowances for living abroad it really was meager. For a moment I felt sorry for Hannah and Jonathan. I slammed the drawer shut.
"What did the letter say?" Scheckler asked.
I said nothing.
"You make such a fuss about secrets," he said dismissively, "as if they were important..." The way he spoke hinted at an additional meaning beyond what was being said. I waited patiently for him to continue.
He swallowed. "I've been thinking about it the last few days. Usually, when someone new comes, they send cables, check in advance if we have a bed, an office, a vehicle. All you brought with you were your military papers. It's as if... as if they just dumped you here..."
I examined his face carefully. He spoke without spite. His perpetual smirk had vanished. His eyes were open and sincere beneath his rust-colored hair, which was stuck to his scalp with a generous portion of hair oil. "But you needn't think it's so bad here," he added consolingly. "Till I got here I tried all kinds of things too, I got to all kinds of places, but it was just in this hole that I got lucky..."
He got up, went over to the row of locked cupboards and found the right key in his bunch. Behind a front of cardboard files marked "Secret" in red ink was a world of shiny nickel and plastic. Suddenly he was holding a small transistor radio, which he put on my desk.
"That's from me," he said nasally, "and if you need anything else..."
My lack of response embarrassed us both. Silently he shuffled a few papers on his desk and went out into the dark corridor. After a moment I could hear the usual shouts as he chided the mechanics, fawned on the drivers and complimented the cook.
I leaned back in my chair and thought. More than anything else, his attempt at intimacy offended me. It was based on the assumption that there was a similarity between us which was reflected in a shared exile. The sense of affront was soon replaced by one of discomfort: was there something in his intimated feelings that I did not have the approval of my superiors? Or was it just the surprise that people outside the system feel in view of the laconic, apparently niggardly relations between a distant agent and his operators?
One way or another, my sense of calm expectancy had been broken. My existence in that place and my evaluation of myself depended on someone else's decision to act. In my mind, Scheckler's life was about the lowest one could reach. How did one raise oneself up from there?
Something heavy and bothersome weighed upon me, a remnant which had not been exhausted in the conversation with the priest. Perhaps I had not been persistent enough, had cut off contact too quickly, not introduced myself appropriately or forgotten something essential which they had told me at the briefing. A sudden sense of urgency led me to the garage supervisor's room. I requested a vehicle for the afternoon. He led me to a command car which was parked outside.
"I don't know, you don't exactly belong to this unit. I need some authorization..."
"Scheckler's authorized it," I assured him and climbed up into the seat.
***
The priest's house was where I had guessed it would be: behind the church, in a pine wood. A road wound from the square along the edge of the cliff before disappearing behind a high hedge. I stopped the command car, climbed onto the bonnet and peered over the treetops into a tiny garden smelling of herbs. The green Morris was parked in the shade of a fir tree. The priest was poking around in its trunk with jerky, urgent movements. Then he straightened up, locked it with a key he put in his habit and hastened along an uneven path of pebbles.
Something in the scene hinted of conspiracy. I walked parallel to him along the hedge separating us, listening to the sound of his feet. In front of the iron posts by the little gate I stopped to wave off a wasp. Between the fingers protecting my face I saw him slip through the pine trees. For a long moment I hesitated. The garden and the trunk of the car were as intriguing to me as the place he was hurrying to. I advan
ced to the gate, to peep into the house. Something was shining in one of the windows. Was it a light which had been left on or the reflection of the sun's rays? At the back of the room I thought I saw a dark, square figure, perhaps a man leaning on a table and looking out? The garden was out of the bounds, then. I turned towards the wood.
The brown habit made him difficult to follow. Once or twice I had to stop and wait until he emerged from among the trees. He advanced in a straight line. When he emerged from the northern edge of the small wood, which touched the yard at the back of the church, he waited for a moment near a tree-trunk, then disappeared.
Now, there was only the empty churchyard and the back wall - gray, damp, scratched with chalk graffiti and children's drawings. Above, at twice a man's height, were windows with frames lined with moss. An impressive staircase led to what had once been a wide entrance but was now bricked up. I took one step outside the line of the trees and drew back immediately: a boy appeared from around the corner of the building. He was about fourteen years old, tall and dark. His head was adorned with a mop of hair and he was wearing jeans and a vest with a faded print. When he reached the part of the wall which was hidden by the bricked-up staircase he disappeared too, like the priest before him.
I waited with impatience and an eye on my watch. One minute, two, three. If the priest was the man, then this church, with its secret entrances, was the place. But the reality which had seemed so simple and clear in Tel Aviv was fragile and uncontrollable now. I wondered if he was watching me through one of the windows or a hole in the wall. The chance of amending the blunders of yesterday's conversation was offset by the danger of frightening him even more. After another moment's hesitation I turned back into the woods.
The command car was parked where I had left it, by the hedge. The steering wheel and the seats were still warm from the afternoon sun, which was now deep into the horizon. The windows of the priest's house were already all dark except for one, the one where an hour beforehand I had thought I had seen a light and a figure looking out. I started the engine and even began moving forward when I realized that the square, dark figure leaning on a table had been the priest.
***
Dura, like an enchanted river, flowed uphill. I drove mechanically, perturbed and confused. In the empty market square the blinds of the shops were half closed, like ailing eyelids. Beyond them shadowy figures crouched on stools sipping their evening tea. I glanced at them from the height of the command car and they returned knowing looks. On the outskirts of the village, the smell of the area struck me: dust and dryness and the fermenting of fruit in the orchards. The number nine was painted on a milestone. I stopped beside it, trying to sort out my thoughts.
It was then that the engine ominously hesitated twice and fell silent. I set the hand-brake and got out to take a look. Globs of a sticky, gray substance had accumulated beneath the carburetor. I hurried to the back of the vehicle. In the metal groove around the mouth of the petrol tank were tiny white grains. I picked one up on my fingertip and put it to my mouth. It was sweet.
An old trick.
I kicked the tire in frustration. Behind me the village was closing for the night. At that moment I could have burned it down. Three thousand people for one hoodlum.
I heard a honk.
I turned around. The woman was sitting behind the wheel of the Rolls. Her face, beneath the brim of a large, dark hat, was tense. I went over to her, walking in the line of her gaze which, predictably, exuded hostility.
"I want to pass." That lilting voice. I touched the side of the car and jumped back. It was boiling hot.
"Sugar," I pointed to the large, useless command car. "In the petrol tank."
She did not react.
"If you reverse I'll try and push it to the side." She obeyed.
When I came back to her, gesturing with my arm at the empty road, she said: "A week has passed."
"Yes." The subject of time bothered us both, though not for the same reasons.
She glanced into the mirror and put the car into forward gear, her face displaying anger and disappointment. Accidentally or by design the clutch was released suddenly and I was left in a white, dusty cloud. One of her tires threw up a stone, which hit the full pod of a lupin plant. Small seeds floated into the wind. I suddenly felt slightly itchy. The contact with the woman had begun to arouse me.
I walked in a straight line, through the refugee camp into the back yard of the Athenaeum. It was about eight o'clock. The end of the day. The air was heavy with the weariness of a summer night, an atmosphere of, "nothing of any significance is going to happen till the morning." Fragments of conversations came from the soldiers' rooms. A tow truck left with a clanking of chains to rescue the command car. The books I had brought were waiting, emptied of all power, on the windowsill in my room. I went down to the communications room, where the instruments were chirruping asthmatically.
"What's our station called?" I asked the duty officer.
"Lighthouse."
I took a telegram form and wrote:
TO: HQ
FROM: LIGHTHOUSE.
(*) REQUEST INFORMATION RE: KHAMIS, ANTON. DOCTOR. LAST PLACE OF RESIDENCE: DURA. ARRESTED ON 2 AUGUST 1982.
The duty officer numbered the telegram and fed it into the coding machine. Then he crumpled the form and threw it into an empty oil can which stood in the corner and upon which the words 'Army of the Syrian-Arab Republic - Air Force' were stamped.
An irresistible wave swept over me. For the first time since leaving Paris I felt close to the life I had loved, where reality beggars imagination.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning I awoke prepared. The Syrian oil can was a body and I was about to give it a soul. "Something small, not harmful but impressive, not painful but convincing... primitive, a little rural, giving the impression of having been produced by a local underground..." The challenge embodied in those requirements filled me with a surprising sense of joy.
First I had to get a few things. Dura was little more than a pile of junk which had been recycled over and over again and which years of battles, pillage and an erratic electricity supply had made useless. The only chance of obtaining anything of any value lay in the dawn visitors, people who crossed the firing lines in the dark, waded through battlefields which had been abandoned for the night and avoided the various armies, militia and highwaymen merely to present themselves at first light by the entrance to the Athenaeum, get past the guard and hesitantly ask for Scheckler.
I looked on as they drove cars into the safety of the courtyard, parked them at a respectful distance and then, with a mixture of eagerness and reserve, displayed their wares before him, addressing him as "sir." Scheckler examined everything patiently, in the pristine whiteness of his eternal under shirt. When he chose something he paid generously, with food from the kitchen or spare parts from the supplies store, and money too. Whatever he judged imperfect was banished with a wave of his hand to the back of the courtyard. It was there that I was waiting.
When he noticed me he crowed proudly, "Choose something, anything you want..."
At his feet were radios, watches and videos, cassettes and batteries, bottles of liquor and tins of food. In front of the pile stood two of the strongest soldiers from the repair shop, tire repairers. Their heavy hands rested on their hips, guaranteeing order and cooperation from the other soldiers.
"Something that can heat things up," I explained, "to make coffee."
Scheckler laughed. "There's nothing you have to heat." This was his moment of glory and everyone around him had to enjoy it. He put a skinny arm around my shoulders and called to the soldiers of the repair shop who were stowing the goods he had chosen into hidden compartments in the bellies of the trucks. "Whenever this guy wants coffee or anything else, give it to him. He's my friend."
"All the same," I protested, "I'd rather..."
His hand was still gesturing towards one of the soldiers, who was walking around carrying a tray laden
with cups of coffee, but his head was already involved in the purchase of a gold watch in a presentation box. "To our friend, Kamal," was engraved on the lid in letters of gold, "to mark twenty years of productive work." Further on a jumble of goods and salesmen in groups were waiting for his verdict beside their cars, sipping coffee and murmuring among themselves. As I wandered through them no one urged me to buy or even to look at the merchandise. It was a relaxed kind of market, bathed in gratitude and subdued conviviality. In the places these dawn traders had come from, young soldiers had exchanged their physical wholeness and their lives for medals and sometimes even less. Anyone who had escaped from there knew perfectly well that history might remember those who had conquered routes or opened roads, but life would smile upon those who smuggled out a transistor radio or a good watch.
I had almost given up when I saw the toaster. It was lying on the trunk of an old car together with a few other worthless, somewhat damaged, slightly burnt items. The man who was selling them stood at the side, away from the others, as though he was there by chance. After he had accepted payment from me he resumed smoking the dying cigarette in his hand. A moment later, when I returned to my room and looked out of the window, he was gone.
The others left too and the courtyard was once again the parking area of the garage. I went down to the garden, where I picked up two red bricks. In the petrol booth I filled the Syrian oil can with petrol. No one chided me; I was Scheckler's friend.
I shut myself in my room. The toaster was of some unknown make and fell apart with three turns of a screwdriver. I spread the sides, which were made of battered metal, on the floor of the cupboard, to serve as radiators and intensify the heat. I laid the heating elements across them on chips I had broken off from the bricks. On several large chips I placed the tin with its contents. Then I plugged the whole device into the electricity.
The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance Page 6