Some Here Among Us

by Peter Walker

  ‘I doubt that Bush or Cheney ever heard of Hobbes,’ said Toby.

  ‘No, but Wolfowitz has,’ said Chadwick. ‘He was the brains behind this war. And he was a pupil of Leo Strauss, who idolised Hobbes. He must have been some guy, Strauss. In fact, he didn’t have pupils: he had disciples. Everyone fell for him. There are novels written about him. He’s in the latest Saul Bellow – ‘That slight person, triply abstracted, mild goggles covering his fiery judgements’. And now his disciples are in power, and those fiery judgements are burning up the Middle East. Tell lies. Make war on the least suspicion. Assassination. Bulldozing houses. Torture. I’m hearing bad, bad stories out of Iraq, Toby. Prisoners coming in for interrogation covered in third-degree burns. They’ve been arrested by our troops and they’re brought in tied across the hoods of Humvees like deer. The engine-heat burns them and our boys don’t care. That’s the Leviathan for you. There is no providence, there is no mercy – no idle chatter about goodness as Strauss would put it – only fear, and power. Perhaps you can understand it in Israel’s case. That country was built by people who’d been in Auschwitz. But what is terrible, what I can’t stand, is that it should be the basis of our policy as well. Force and fraud. Lies and fear. The United States of America! No! It’s not acceptable.’

  ‘You mean it’s all right for Israel?’ said Toby.

  ‘I mean it’s understandable,’ said Chadwick. ‘Those people came out of Auschwitz. Buchenwald. Treblinka. No – not out of Treblinka. No one got out of Treblinka. Treblinka wasn’t a camp. It wasn’t even a place. It was a thing – a machine. If you got near it, it killed you within two hours. There was an alley lined with flowers and fir trees, and SS men. The Jews had to walk down the alley and in the sand they could see the footprints of the people who had just gone before and who had already ceased to exist. And there was a little man squatting and laughing and dancing in front of them. “Children, children! Hurry, hurry! The water’s getting cold in the bath-house!” A million Jews died at the end of that alley. The children of Israel . . . And Israel can’t forget that. It’s not behind them – it’s still in front of them. That’s what the world looks like to them.’

  ‘So it is all right for them,’ said Toby.

  ‘No, Toby, it’s a disaster for them. They’re in a Hobbesian world and they can’t get out, but as for us . . .’

  Chadwick went through the gate and Toby followed and they went down the lane a short way and watched the boys by the pond. The smoke came over to them. One of the boys ran up the slope with a piece of burnt fish in his hand. He was in a red jersey with tremendous holes at the elbows. He held out the fish. Chadwick put up his hand like a traffic cop.

  ‘Not for me,’ he said.

  The boy had sooty black eyebrows and grimy hands. He proffered the fish to Toby, laughing.

  ‘Oh God, OK,’ said Toby.

  He took the bit of fish and ate it. The boy then ran back down the shingle slope to the others. The fisherman had stood up and was packing up his rod. He left the dining chair where it was in the shingle and he came up to the lane. He was a handsome little man with a frown on a strongly formed brow. He nodded curtly to Chadwick and Toby and went past them through the gate. Toby and Chadwick turned back as well, and stopped again to look at the scene in front of them. The sun had just set and the valley had abruptly grown darker: far away across the plain little ruddy flames were glinting here and there, as if from the mouths of caves, and the indentations on the moors of Mount Lebanon now looked like great thumb-prints left by a potter. But the disco music was going as loudly and cheerfully as before.

  ‘What people forget,’ said Chadwick, ‘is just how weird Hobbes was. He was the original crooked man. Both his slippers, someone noted, were worn down on the same side. And he was fantastically timid. He admitted that himself. It was the result, he said, of his premature birth. His mother thought the Spanish were about to invade – this was six months before the Armada – and she panicked and went into labour. Hobbes was congenitally fearful. Hence, I suppose, his whole philosophy of fear. Isn’t that wonderful? Five hundred years ago a woman in a white ruff panics and goes into labour, and we’re still dealing with the consequences.’

  Chadwick did not see Toby fall. He was looking away out over the plain where little fires were glowing red in the distance and Toby buckled and slid silently to the ground just behind him. The long day, the surprises it had held, the arak, and the sudden depth of the past – a woman in a white ruff! – for the first time in his life he fainted away.

  ‘Nor was Hobbes even a very good exegete,’ said Chadwick, his back still turned. ‘He thinks, for example, that the Leviathan in the Bible means the king over the proud, who will subdue the proud, but in fact it means the king of the proud; in other words, the most proud—’

  He turned to Toby and then saw him on the ground. Chadwick gazed down at him. ‘He’s asleep,’ Chadwick thought, ‘how very odd,’ and without realising it he put his hand out to expostulate, unintentionally like a figure in an old painting. Jojo was running towards them. Later she thought that she had known something was going to happen before Toby fell, but she was never sure. She had been on the dance-floor and from time to time had turned to glance at Toby and Chadwick talking by the gate, then going out of sight, then coming back. She wished she could be there, but she didn’t like to go over uninvited. And then she saw Toby crumple, and she ran. Later she also said she had been frightened. In fact she was thinking: ‘This is the Middle East!’ She thought of the jets overhead and the boys in the trees and she had a moment of dread, absurd as it seemed, that Toby had been shot dead. And even so, at the same time, she was pleased she had an excuse to leave the prison of the dance-floor and go to Toby. She ran past Chadwick who was still standing looking down at his godson in surprise, and then Jojo was on her knees, in the grass.

  ‘Toby,’ she said.

  Toby was quite white.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ she thought. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Toby!’ she said.

  His eyes opened and then shut again. For a long moment he knew nothing – only that he had been down in the dark and that he had needed to go there for a long time, the illustrious dark. For he didn’t know anything just then – where he was at that moment, for instance, or even exactly who he was—

  Then he opened his eyes again and he did know something: he was looking into the eyes of someone he loved.

  He wanted to say so, to tell her that, but no words came.

  And he knew that was why he had fainted – in order to wake up and see the world with an ignorant eye. He was then aware of the sea. In his mind’s eye he saw the sea – grey, flat, about thirty miles away, and also girdling the whole earth. And he saw Jojo’s eyes looking at him and he was aware of her breasts and he wanted to laugh then and felt like crying as well and no words came but then out of the slowing babble he began to hear words form. ‘So that’s all words are,’ he thought. ‘Laughing and crying, slowed right down.’

  ‘Toby!’ said Jojo.

  ‘It takes a lot,’ Toby said.

  ‘What?’ said Jojo.

  ‘It takes a lot to laugh and . . .’

  ‘What?’ said Jojo.

  ‘It takes a train to cry,’ said Toby.

  ‘Toby!’ said Jojo.

  ‘That’s Dylan, Jojo,’ said Toby, slightly peevish. ‘It’s a song by Dylan.’

  6

  The next morning Jojo and Toby met on the terrace of the Palmyra hotel. They met early and by arrangement. None of the other wedding guests was up. They had croissants and coffee for breakfast, and ripe figs that had come from Egypt. It was a cool spring morning. The grape clusters in the vine above their heads were still tiny and green. They had made the arrangement to meet drily, formally, and as though there was nothing special to it. This was intended to put everyone off the scent – not only Joachim, for instance, but if necessary Jojo and Toby themselves. They both knew that something had happened, but neither knew whether the o
ther thought the same.

  ‘Do you want more coffee?’ said Jojo.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My shower was cold this morning.’

  ‘You can have hot water in the morning at the Palmyra, or the evening, but not both.’

  ‘Look, that woman’s baking bread on the hearth.’

  ‘They do that here, but they’re aware of the rustic charm and charge even more.’

  ‘It’s expensive for a hotel with no hot water in the morning.’

  ‘The Kaiser stayed here. And de Gaulle. You have to pay for that.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Jojo. ‘I forgot to see the ruins.’

  ‘We can go see them now,’ said Toby.

  ‘They’ll be shut.’

  ‘We can try.’

  They finished their coffee and left the hotel and went across the road. Behind a long concrete wall, great pillars of marble, the smokeless stacks of Roman power, stood against a blue sky. Jojo and Toby walked the perimeter of the site through a wasteland of goat-nibbled furze and broken stones.

  ‘How’s Joachim?’

  ‘Asleep.’

  ‘Do you like him?’

  ‘I like him. He’s nice. He’s good.’

  ‘He’s a whale.’

  ‘He’s a lovable whale.’

  ‘You love him?’

  ‘I don’t love him, Toby,’ said Jojo.

  There was a silence.

  ‘You know that,’ she said.

  ‘I do.’

  There was another silence. They had nearly done the full perimeter of the site and were back on the smooth road again. They stopped at the entrance.

  ‘What about you?’ he said.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You know that I knew.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you didn’t love him.’

  ‘I did. I mean I do.’

  ‘Have we . . . changed the subject?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘We both just said “I do.” ’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said a man beaming by the gate to the ruins.

  ‘You’re not open,’ said Toby.

  ‘For you – it is now open,’ he said.

  He was a middle-aged Lebanese man in a brown and green knitted cardigan, smoking a cigarette. Without quite knowing it they recognised in his disguise the one who verifies the presence of love.

  ‘We only have half an hour,’ said Jojo, further on inside the enclosure. The mini-buses would soon be gathering at the hotel to take everyone away. Jojo and Toby were holding hands again for the first time for two years. Ahead of them, as a result of that touch, waited Beirut, London, the world together. They went around the stone platforms and megaliths. The place was, strangely enough, not deserted. They caught a glimpse of another couple ahead of them in the distance, and they saw a pretty Lebanese girl, on her own, looking down from a high stone balcony into a field of long grass where two youths seemed to be loitering. The wind was blowing mildly through the trees.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ said Jojo.

  ‘This,’ said Toby, ‘is the temple of Bacchus. Possibly. I don’t think they really know. And there’s the soffit.’

  ‘The soffit?’ said Jojo. ‘What on earth’s a soffit?’

  ‘That’s a soffit,’ said Toby, pointing high above them. ‘It’s a well-known architectural term. It’s the underside of an arch, I think. Look! There’s an eagle up there, and a palm. And a god. It’s supposed to be Bacchus. But I think it might be Cupid. It looks like Cupid to me. Do you think it’s Cupid?’

  ‘Maybe it is Cupid,’ said Jojo.

  They stood under the soffit, gazing up at the winged god and the eagle and palm carved high above them. Then they remembered the time, and went back down the stairs, where they stopped in their tracks.

  Just round the corner from the bottom of the stairs someone was sitting in the dirt, leaning against the temple wall. But who was it? The figure was hooded, and was covered from head to toe in a sort of striped robe. Only the hands of the person were bare; they were dirty, and half clasped, but were they the hands of a man, a woman, a youth? You couldn’t tell. There were some roses, very dark red, growing nearby in the dry earth. The figure was silent and quite motionless. There were no eye-slits in the hood. All the same, Toby and Jojo felt they couldn’t stand and stare. They moved away.

  ‘How strange,’ said Jojo. She felt a little frightened. It was so very odd, the motionless figure in the eyeless hood. Who was it? Why were they there? What were they thinking?

  Back in Beirut by noon, the wedding party immediately began to disperse, swirl away to the ends of the earth never to form again. Some people went straight to the airport. Others took tours, to Byblos, or up into the wild gorges. Gilly disappeared into a grand Beirut world which was now hers, preparatory to flying to Brussels where she and Maro were to live. The rest of her own family and the Chadwicks went to their hotels, having arranged to meet for a late lunch at Le Sporting.

  At one o’clock Jojo arrived at Toby’s hotel with her luggage. She had left Joachim.

  ‘Where’s Joachim now?’ said Toby.

  ‘He’s seeing the minister of culture,’ Jojo said. ‘Joachim adores ministers.’

  Toby came out of the shower and dressed and they went out and walked along the Corniche. It was not even May yet, but the air was hot and dim and somewhat salty.

  ‘Look, there’s Tawfik,’ said Toby. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Where?’ said Jojo.

  ‘Just here,’ said Toby.

  Jojo could see no one immediately ahead, only a beggar without legs, on a little tray.

  Toby bent down and said hello to Tawfik. If truth be told he was rather proud of his acquaintanceship with Tawfik. It seemed to him a mark of distinction – that he and this beggar, a man in another world, so to speak, should recognise their brotherhood. Jojo, he thought, would just have to be impressed.

  But Tawfik looked Toby straight in the eye and did not return his greeting.

  Toby fished some money from his pocket and proffered it.

  ‘No,’ said Tawfik. He looked away into the distance. Toby flushed, then he straightened up and walked on with Jojo.

  ‘Search me,’ he said, foreclosing any discussion. A little further on, he shook his head. They reached the entrance of Le Sporting and went in past black-suited security. The others were sitting at tables in the sandy plaza. The outdoor furniture, wooden and concrete, had been repainted in hornet hues of red and yellow. Toby had the impression there was some heavy weight hanging over the group.

  Candy was the first to see Toby and Jojo. She had been watching out for them and she caught his eye and waved her hand.

  ‘Toby!’ she called.

  ‘My mother,’ he thought. ‘Whether we like it or not.’

  ‘Hi, Ma,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Jojo, Toby,’ said Candy. ‘Sit down.’

  She looked delighted, and yet she was distracted as well. They sat among the hornet furniture. Again Toby had the sense of something odd in the mood – something uneasy and burdened and slighted.

  The waiter came with a tray of drinks and olives and put them down on the table expressionlessly and went away without a word. Everyone watched him go.

  ‘It’s not good,’ said Candy to Toby.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  Chadwick was sitting there like a sphinx.

  ‘This,’ said Candy. She held out a newspaper. At first Toby could make no sense of the story on the front page.

  ‘A Few Bad Apples?’ said one headline. There were pictures of naked people in a pile, with grinning white faces floating above them. ‘Detainee Abuse Rocks US’ said another headline above the fold. He looked more closely at the pictures: a naked man on a dog-lead; a weeping man with a dog’s fangs at his face.

  ‘Those fools,’ said Chadwick.

  ‘What fools?’ Toby said.

  ‘In the Pentagon,’ said Chadwick.

 
; ‘Oh, Toby,’ said Jojo.

  She was looking at one of the photographs which showed a man standing on a box. He was cloaked and wearing an eyeless hood. There were wires attached to his fingers. His hands were stretched out, as if to the whole world.

  ‘Those damnable fools,’ said Chadwick.

  ‘But we saw him this morning!’ said Jojo.

  ‘Who?’ said Candy.

  ‘That man,’ said Jojo.

  Toby looked uneasy at this leap of the imagination.

  ‘Where, darling?’ said Candy, looking puzzled.

  ‘At Baalbek,’ said Jojo. ‘In the ruins. By the roses.’

  But she saw no one was listening.

  ‘It will take us a hundred years to get over this,’ said Chadwick. ‘Maybe five hundred.’

  ‘Under the soffit,’ said Jojo.

  7

  Outside the supermarket in Camden Town the heat struck down. It was mid-July, the first hot day of the English summer. Instantly, the required temperature having been reached, bare London limbs – calves, thighs, arms, navels – navels especially that year – appeared in the streets. Far and wide into the gritty distance, up to Hampstead Heath, down to Euston Road, the semi-naked, navel-baring English flowed.

  ‘Hello, darlin’,’ said a young black man to an old white woman coming out of the estate beside the supermarket. ‘Everyone’s tearing off half their clothes. Terrible innit? But what can you do?’

  Toby raced into the supermarket. He had a lecture at two. It was now twelve-thirty. He had to pick up something in Sainsbury’s then take the 91 down to Aldwych, and then he had to meet his father. Race was in town for the first time since Toby had come to live in London. He was coming to the flat at four that afternoon. Thinking through this schedule, Toby found he had forgotten what he had come to the supermarket for. What was it? Food, drink? Edible, vegetable, medical? There was enough food for them at home that night. Jojo was away on a film-set in Spain. When she came back tomorrow they would all go out for dinner. He roamed up one aisle and down the next, hoping for insight.