Alice stood in her hallway trying to catch the music: her hearing aid was an imperfect instrument, like memory. After a while two parts of her, memory and crumbling body, came together so that she heard the music in its perfection inside herself, as Shostakovitch had. ‘Poor wretch,’ she said.
David announced, ‘The biopsy is positive. I’ve got, they guess, maybe six months.’
‘I’ll come with you!’
No, no – he would not hear of that; she must live on.
Why?
He didn’t know.
‘In that case,’ Alice said, ‘let’s have a cup of tea.’
Nineteen
Danielle went directly from her father’s place to the Old City, through the Dung Gate. The houses that had crowded up to the Wall had been demolished and now there was a broad plaza in front of it bounded by a wide flight of steps. One could sit on them and gaze at the Wall on the other side of the plaza and see the Islamic buildings on top of the Temple Mount.
In the precincts of the Wall they had searched her handbag briefly; people wanting to go on to the Mount were submitting themselves to more thorough searches – there were sandbags and men with walkie-talkies and sharpshooter rifles on their shoulders. She did not feel like being re-searched.
She wanted a peaceful spot, somewhere in which to think about what had happened in Professor Garin’s apartment that morning. This was as good as any: a blank wall.
As walls go it was pleasant enough, about ninety feet tall, oblong cream stones more or less of the same size and undecorated.
It had an irregularity she noticed; a few feet from its base there was a band of bathtub grime at the height of the hands and foreheads that had rubbed against it. How many? How many, she wondered, since Eleazar’s revolutionary friends had set fire to the buildings above and Roman legionnaires had finished the job, wrecked the city stone by stone, and sowed its earth with salt? They had left this wall. From laziness? As a reminder of what happened to colonials who misbehaved? Maybe because they were great engineers and had some technical reason. The stones were smooth with oil from the millions who had returned to them; from where she was sitting she could see around all the lower masonry the faint white outline made by prayer slips poked into crevices.
An accommodating sort of wall, she thought. It allowed people to hammer it with their fists, inject it with demands, tell it about family tragedies. Access to it was divided by a partition, the left side for males, the smaller one, on the right, for women. No part of it looks bored, angry, or mad, she thought. Nor does it hide from view.
Danielle flung her map of Jerusalem onto the steps below.
Christ’s honey bun had opened the door to her. This will be a surprise for him,’ Marilyn had said. Danielle was invited to ‘take a seat in the salon.’ Had she read today’s Jerusalem Post?
By the time Marilyn returned she had almost finished its four pages, not that any of the stories had made sense. The words could have been lottery numbers churned in a barrel and popping out at random. But her ears had snatched and gobbled the tiniest sounds: Marilyn’s cajoling whine, male harrumphing. They switched from English to Hebrew; Danielle could tell he was asking questions and Marilyn was stalling with her replies, turning shrill. There was a long silence. A drawer banged shut; a cupboard door squealed. There was a noise of pillows being thumped.
Marilyn entered the salon with her fingers interlaced, her palms facing the floor. Fetching pose, Danielle thought. Victorian handmaiden. You need a frilly white blouse and a corset.
Why can’t you wash your damned hair?
’I don’t know how to say this, Danielle,’ Marilyn was saying. ‘But Professor Garin has a slight infection. We wouldn’t like you to catch it.’
‘It’s a risk I’ll take.’ She felt reckless enough for anything: Have a glass of arsenic? Yes! Why not? I drink it for breakfast.
‘Well, in that case.’
Professor Garin was sitting up in bed wearing a dressing gown, a red beanie, and a black eye-mask.
As she stood in the doorway Danielle thought, My legs won’t move.
Rage like a geyser spurted from her gut to her hair roots and her legs did move, carried her straight to the end of the bed and kicked it. Three times.
His arms flew up. ‘Marilyn, what’s happening? I can’t see!’
Danielle said, ‘You bastard! How dare you? You don’t want to see me? Don’t then.’ She gave the bed another kick.
‘Aaaah.’ The alarmed quaver had left his voice; the Prophet was recovering himself. ‘Is this Danielle? Shaking heaven and earth?’
She sat on the end of the bed and looked at him. What could you tell from a bit of nose, a mouth, and a chin that had not been shaved that morning and bore a winter stubble? She looked at his hands, then at her own: her fingers had a slight plumpness at the base and tapered to almond-shaped nails. She could see the resemblance to his very large ones, age-spotted on their backs.
‘Are you present, Danielle?’
Again she refused to reply.
‘Danielle, my dear girl, if you are sitting there on the end of the bed, as I feel that you are, I think you might do me the courtesy of speaking.’
‘I think you might do me the courtesy, after thirty-four years, of taking off that eye-mask and hat.’
The thin lips smiled.
‘You must try to be reasonable. Danielle. Are you there?’
I could hit him, she thought. I could pull off his bloody beanie and . . . ‘You are crazy, Father. And destructive. I think your plan for the Temple Mount is criminal.’
‘Ah-ah-ah,’ the mouth said. A pedagogic finger waved at her. ‘Criminal, you say. Stay, dear child. Hear what I have to say.’
She stood up. The action jerked her aware: I’m about to leave; I’ll never see him again – and rushing from somewhere came a bolt of love. She teetered, then moved to the head of the bed. His ear was the only part of him she could kiss without offending him more than she had already. But as she bent toward it he moved his head slightly, away from her, and suddenly the flood of affection boiled into rage again.
She bent down and uttered a piercing scream into the ear. Then she walked out. Marilyn, quite the little housewife in an apron now and a pair of yellow rubber gloves, came running from the kitchen. They collided.
‘Get out of my way,’ Danielle said.
Over there, a hundred yards away, people were talking to the stones, chanting to them, kissing them, rocking to and fro, working themselves into the rhythm of prayer. On the men’s side the base of the wall seethed with black figures; a boy was lifted onto shoulders; a whirling dance began. Women stood on tiptoe on their side of the barrier, watching the men.
That’s the way of it, ladies, Danielle was thinking. It’s a boys’ religion. But you lucky women, you’re allowed to watch. While they get drunk on God.
Her buttocks were numb with cold. She had a scarf in her handbag which she knotted under her chin before she reached the women’s section of the Wall.
There was plenty of space, empty yards of it because most of the women had left to become spectators of the performance next door. But at the moment of plunging forward she couldn’t do it – bridled, as one sometimes is at the edge of cold water, victim suddenly of an unreasoning fear. Voices cry ‘Jump!’ and ‘Come on!’ She closed her eyes and leapt.
Next moment she was reeling from a whack on the side of her face. She came to, gasping, pressed against something as slippery and hard as wax.
- Now I’m in Jerusalem!
Her face burned. Turning aside she saw an old Sephardi woman giving the stones what sounded like a scolding. Danielle waited until she felt her heart slowing then put her lips to a crack. ‘Hello,’ she said. It replied, ‘I’m here.’
She said, ‘I want to thank you.’
It was courteous.
What did I expect, she wondered – the ill-temper of the streets outside? the obsession with time?
It said, ‘I’m always here. S
tay as long as you like. I shall listen.’
After that she felt braver and began to talk without embarrassment. She told it about her father’s intolerable behavior and Bennie’s unreliability. Tm chained to Bennie: I’ve got myself into a second bad marriage with his film contract,’ she said. Patrick had been unreliable, too – when he was twenty-five he already lived on the edge of a sense of futility. ‘If he hadn’t died, we would have divorced. But I can’t divorce Bennie Kidron. He’s offered me the chance to move into the big league. . . My wretched father didn’t give me an opportunity to tell him what I’ve achieved.’
‘I know about it.’
How?
It did not answer.
She opened her eyes a little: there were the minuscule white snail shells of hundreds of slips of rolled paper pushed lengthwise into a crack. Beyond them she could see deep inside, into blackness. It was unbearably cold, her jaws trembled and her body shook, but she continued to hold her eye to the pinhead of dark where there was nothing, neither stone nor crumbs of paper. It spoke to her, saying: ‘God abides in all and governs all.’
The cold became agony. She stepped back, stamping and rubbing her hands together. Before she turned to go, she patted the wall boldly, affectionately, like a sailor patting the timbers of his boat. Dear old thing, she thought.
‘There is only the necessary and the impossible,’ it told her. There is only One Being.’ But she was not paying attention.
Grossing the plaza a young soldier began to walk alongside her. He was blond and snub-nosed, as mild as an egg. To Danielle he seemed a nice kid, unsure whether he wanted to practice his English, try to seduce her or just pass the time being helpful to a tourist. She decided for him:
‘Where’s the closest place we can buy coffee? I’ll pay.’
They ate baklavas oozing pale honey. He said he was from the north, from a kibbutz; he’d met a Swedish girl two years ago who had come as a volunteer worker. His parents would not allow them to marry, although her family had treated him like a son. He’d stayed in their house in Stockholm for six months. Now she didn’t write to him.
He wanted to pay for his share of the cakes; Danielle insisted; in return he offered to escort her to the Temple Mount. ‘You don’t go alone,’ he said. And, ‘Look.’ An Arab boy walked past with a kerosene can on his head. ‘They use their heads for that. You need your head all your life. . .’
Up on the Mount he became silent. It was a silencing place, a plateau miles above the world, acres of flagging, with here and there a delicate-archway, a stand of pine trees, a font for washing before entering the holy buildings. They looked from a distance at the Dome of the Rock. Beneath the great gold moon of roof verses from the Koran swooped around the upper walls on skis, painted in a blue so bright it stung. But as they walked closer she saw the craftsmanship was mediocre, rivets and ugly seams marred the cupola: it didn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
‘She won’t write to me because of what happened in Lebanon,’ he was saying. ‘In the camps. What can I do? I’m Israeli. I’m in the army.’
Danielle took his hand. I know what it is, she thought, to feel that your life is lived inside a tunnel scattered with booby-traps.
They had to decide which exit; there were many, with charming names – the Wool Merchants’ Gate; the Wheat Gate; the Cottonworkers’ Gate; the Chain Gate.
‘Here’s one for you,’ she said. It was the Iron Gate. There was a metal threshold to the doorway. There’s a poem in English that says, “And tear our Pleasures with rough strife, Through the Iron gates of Life.” ‘
He smiled at that. Shoulder to shoulder they could not fit through but they swiveled as a pair of fish can, and, bellies together, slid over the lintel, laughing and breathless. On the other side he kissed her on the forehead.
‘Our gate,’ he said. He wanted to kiss her lips but she drew back, shaking her head.
Twenty
At the airport Bennie said, ‘No way. Are you crazy? No way am I going to Jerusalem tonight.’
But: what about his booking at the Plaza? And where would he stay in Tel Aviv?
‘And what will I do now?’
He was looking around, grinning. Other passengers with luggage trolleys were trying to maneuver past them as they had halted to argue, blocking the exit.
People leaned over its iron railing, some watching for friends and relations, others, taxi drivers, shouting for passengers.
‘What a mess,’ Bennie said. ‘I love it.’
He was wearing blue jeans, white sneakers, and a pale pink jacket made of leather that felt like silk. ‘Rome,’ he said. ‘I went a day early. Hired the set dresser, bought this . . .’ He had sticking plaster over his eyebrow and a bruised cheek.’. . . busted my head.’ How?
Bennie giggled: he couldn’t remember. And no way was he going to Jerusalem tonight. ‘Danielle, I need sleep.’
On the way in from Lod to Tel Aviv he stopped the taxi for her to buy a toothbrush. It was raining heavily; in the beam of the headlights raindrops jumped from the black roadway like a shoal of tiny fish. Bennie said, ‘It’ll be fine tomorrow.’
He got them rooms at the Hilton, farewelling her with ‘See you at breakfast, girl,’ and ‘Ooops – this elevator hates me. You see that? It tried to bite.’
Maybe it was the sea air, maybe relief that he had actually arrived. Maybe it was something else – the lazy walk, the way he looked over women with the air of a man appraising a smorgasbord. Danielle had thought, You’ll be fat by the time you’re forty – and with all that hair on your chest you’ll be losing it on top.
While she had waited for him behind the glass partition at the airport not knowing if he were on the flight or not, she had been so anxious that when he had come into view, unshaven, beaten up like a sailor, shoving along the luggage trolley with his foot, her heart had bumped about. But not in the way she had feared it would. She’d thought: Here comes my money.
‘Hullo, Prodigal,’ she’d said.
‘Get stuffed,’ Bennie had replied. ‘I’m a sick man – cancha see?’
In her Hilton room three floors above his she had her second sound sleep in months.
At ten, when breakfast finished, his phone number was still busy. He opened the door saying, ‘Danielle – take a seat.’ Trousers and shirts were spreadeagled on the floor; he seemed to have slept in both double beds -naked as a cub, she thought. Bennie was not the sort to own a pair of pajamas. He went back to the telephone retucking the white bathtowel he wore and continued his electric shaving as he talked to Los Angeles. ‘Yeah, Sam. We’ll screw her – sorry it’s noisy here – I said, “We’re gonna screw the witch.” How’s the other thing moving? You know, in New York?’
Danielle wrote him a note: I’ll see you in the lobby.
He came sauntering toward her, hands in pockets, smiling, at eleven o’clock. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Beautiful weather. We’ll go for a walk. We’ll have lunch on the beachfront. We’ll go to Diezengoff. . .
Danielle thought, And we’ll miss the last sherut to Jerusalem, because it’s Friday. But you go ahead and screw things up – I’m not going to complain. She loathed the feeling of underwear worn for a second day; her hair was a mess because she had no brush, only a comb, and her face, without cleanser, toner, and moisturizer, felt greasy: small humiliations. Women are fated to them – by this sort of man, she thought. He commands the relationship but takes no responsibility for its details.
Bennie stared at her fox jacket. ‘Why are you wearing that thing? God, what is it? Monkey?’
She was too hot in the jacket, but only after she had handed it in at the desk did she realize: This is how he demoralizes me; he attacks my weak point.
‘Now you look great,’ Bennie said and she heard the message, I’m not going to lunch with a woman who’s ugly and wearing a tatty old fur. He was dressed in loose cream trousers and shirt, both of raw silk.
She bought a pair of sandshoes in a shop they passed and said to him, ‘Here
. You carry my boots,’ but he tipped the salesman ten dollars to take them to the hotel.
It was too cold for swimming, except for a pair of husky men who were frolicking with a ball; other people played Ping-Pong on the beach or sat in deck chairs looking at the flat green sea that seemed to move only at its edge, the little waves running forward to bow, then withdraw. Danielle cursed: It would not do at all for the opening scene, which needed a lively, bright blue surf.
‘So we’ll do it in Hawaii,’ Bennie said. ‘What’s another hundred grand for the title shots, to you?’ He snorted.
There was an esplanade paved in swirls of red and black, set out with umbrellas, and behind that restaurants and soft drink and ice-cream stalls. The tall hotels clustered together, then there were hundreds of yards of derelict buildings, buckled asphalt, and peeling walls.
‘I lost my virginity in one of those lanes. That was the big deal when you were fifteen: to go to a brothel in Tel Aviv. I was so innocent! And you know who was in the next cubicle? A guy with. . .’ He twirled his finger alongside his chin. ‘I said to him, “Hey, Curly, what are you doing here?” and he quoted Talmud at me – said, “If you have a passion you cannot master, put on a black cloak, go to another town, and indulge it there.” Isn’t that cute? I love ‘em.’
‘Did you go back?’
‘Sure. Hundreds of times. Told my folks I was going camping. Played hooky from school.’
How did he afford it?
Bennie shrugged. ‘Sold stuff. I dunno.’ He strolled along, kicking at the sand and smiling to himself. ‘You ever been to a brothel? You should. In Bangkok they’ve got special ones for women, with real nice Thai boys. You’d love it.’
‘Why would I?’ He was spoiling for a fight, she knew.
‘Aah, you want everything under control. You could say to the boy, “Do this, Do that.” You love being the boss.’ His tone was mild, oiled, almost feminine. Danielle took his arm companionably.
‘How is the terrible Mrs. Schultz treating you?’ she asked.
Winter in Jerusalem Page 14