Come To The War
by Leslie Thomas
Scanned by Bill
Jerusalem sits on its hills, its houses the colour of old sunlight, its television aerials reaching up like ten thousand thin arms.
The city raises its head so high that you would think it looked over the entire world instead of a few bald hills. That is how it always was. That is why they all think it is so special.
One
It can get cold in Jerusalem in midwinter. Much colder than you would think. It is a high city and it has sleet and heavy snowfalls at times. I have watched the Judean Hills vanish behind a flying storm and seen the Mount of Olives choked with snow. In the morning there would be bitter mounds of slush in Jaffa Road where Shoshana and I lived that winter.
At that season the brown of her body would fade to fawn and her breasts and small backside would not seem so white against the rest of her. She was a summer woman. The winter and the cold seemed to diminish her.
I remember when she first came to London to see me. I found her, on one February midday, at the middle of a small crowd of worried people in Waterloo Road. They were hunched around her and she was crying with the cold. I came out of the Festival Hall, where I had gone to retrieve some of my music, and I saw the people and spotted Shoshana's bright Israeli shopping basket on the pavement. I thought there had been an accident and ran, only to find London housewives clucking over her and an energetic middle-aged man actually rubbing her with his hands; to restore the circulation, he said.
She had a gift for releasing sympathy in people. The women bitterly blamed me for permitting her to be cold, just as though she were working the streets for me. 'Poor little thing,' they muttered as I took her towards a taxi with my arm around her small, lovely waist. They should have seen her throw a hand grenade.
In those first days in London when she was writing articles for her newspaper in Tel Aviv, including an uncomfortably truthful one about me, I don't think we did more than exchange two or three friendly kisses.
It was when I was sleeping with her in Jerusalem after the short war, and the summer and autumn went, that I realized the effect that the cold and winter had upon her. In the summer heat she was like a wet animal in bed, slithering and sliding as she sweated in lovemaking, and the city would be full of dry, night dust drifting into the room, clogging eyes and nostrils and adhering to sweat. She would stop loving me, at last, at about three in the morning and I would lie and let myself cool, watching the dim ceiling of the room which was like the curving, inside roof of a tomb. Then, when I was drifting into sleep, cooled and aching, she would put her hands down into my groin, work them under, and around as though she were washing them. Then we would start again. I had to sleep half the day while she was out. My performance went entirely to pieces that summer.
Not that I was playing at all. My concert programme in Europe that autumn had to be abandoned. There was a rumour that I had been killed or badly injured in the war in Jerusalem and something to this effect appeared in the papers. My agent denied it but I didn't care anyway. Philip John, my agent, and my manager, Eric Forth, sent me letters and cables, threats and promises, eventually both flying out to Israel. They went back and told people in Europe that their famous pianist was ill. I was not. I was in bed with Shoshana.
Philip and Eric actually arrived at our house in Jaffa Road in late September and stood at the bottom of the big knobbly bed while Shoshana and I sat in it, naked, with the damp sheet primly pulled up around us. They observed the hero, the idol, of the Festival Hall, the Lincoln Centre and the European concert circuit squatting nude in a dust-hung, stone bedroom in Jerusalem. They told me I was mad, which I was, and that they would sue me if they didn't kill me first. But I told them to go back to London and because they are reasonable men, friends too, and because they could see I was not going to get out of bed anyway, they went. They actually wanted to have me examined by a psychiatrist because they had some strange theory that getting my kidneys full of sand from the Negev had somehow loosened my brain. A year later I went to a psychiatrist in Boston and he told me that he thought this could be true. Having sand in your kidneys could make you a trifle strange. I think it was merely being in bed with Shoshana.
In the winter she was different. She seemed to shrink and would have our bed piled with blankets and coats and dressing-gowns and even some curtains her mother had given her. She hibernated beneath this pile, hardly getting up even to make any food. When I wanted her for love I used to have to burrow down and find her. She seemed smaller in my arms in winter and she didn't fight and want to get her mouth to me or anything. I had to take her and do it gently while she lay and then leave her to sleep in the great piled bed. I only realized that spring was coming because she abruptly bit me on the leg one Sunday morning.
Today, long after, here in London, I thought about Jerusalem because I think about it almost every day. I remembered the cold of the winter there especially this morning because as I was walking through Cannon Street at seven o'clock there was a cutting edge of snow on the wind. Early people were moving with that low, doubled-up trudge of the dawn risers, yellow oblongs of light were in office buildings where cleaning women worked and the streets belonged to the crouching bicycle pedallers.
I leave Faith's flat early because her landlady does not like anyone being there all night. God knows why Faith has to live in the City. But she's always been there and she makes a good breakfast even though it's so early. She's very wifely. Her place is in Upper Thames Street which I like because from her bed you can hear the grunting of the ships on the hollow river. Faith is a nice, short, unusual girl, a librarian at the John Colne Music Library. We met about six months ago. When I stay at her flat she gets up with the alarm clock at five-thirty and does the breakfast; then I go up to Cannon Street and get the bus.
Nowadays I invariably get the bus because it's more private than a taxi. People waiting to go over the road at traffic lights and crossings always stare or glare into the back of a taxi. On a bus nobody cares about you even if they're sitting immediately next to you. Quite a lot of people recognize me because they've seen my face in the papers or on the television, and some of them from the concerts. I've had a scrap of paper thrust through a taxi window at a December daybreak and scribbled my autograph while the half-hostile, frozen face was wondering what the hell I was doing out at that hour. Perhaps he thought I had a spare-time job at the docks.
Modesty has not been one of my noticeable features although I've been better recently (one critic said only last week that Christopher Hollings 'is maturing') but in the early morning I don't want people. I sit downstairs on the left hand of the bus, so that if I'm due to do a concert at the Albert Hall I can see how many posters they've displayed outside and how big they've made 'Christopher Hollings'. They always make it very big but you need to watch these things. I'm doing the Rachmaninov Number Three there next week with the London Symphony. Even if I'm not performing I like to see who they've got working that week.
I really would get this bloody hair cut off if I could. But Philip and Eric agree that I'd be finished in a year without the image. It is as important as technique. When the fighting in Jerusalem was going on and when we were coming up through the Negev and the Egyptian jets caught us, my hair was about the only thing Shoshana, Zoo Baby and the others could laugh about. I remember on that blind corner, just by the Garden of Gethsemane, when the five Jewish boys were killed in about two square yards, how Zoo Baby kept yelling to me to keep my hair down. Not my head, my hair.
What a man, that Zoo Baby. Six feet three, and bulging all over with great puddings of fat. Right in the middle of it all, when it was at its dustiest and bloodiest, with dead men suspended across the walls of Jerusalem and c
hildren howling in the alleys, he got very sweaty and blamed the tightness of the Army trousers up his crutch. His name was Zacharia Berensohn, and he was the timpanist with the Israel Symphony Orchestra. In the Sinai Campaign at the time of Suez he was a tank section leader - he was thinner then - and his radio call name was ZB or Zoo Baby. It was right for him. He had a big squashed face, marvellous eyes and was great and gentle. If you had seen him in the zoo you would have given him a bun.
Then there was Dov, the quiet Dov with the fine moustache and the dark face. Walking studiously through the war and the close death, compassionate and wise, one of the few who did not hate. When they took the Wailing Wall that morning he said a short prayer then went to look at the big mosque and the Via Dolorosa.
And O'Sullivan, who, like me, should never have been there at all. Only an Irishman could explain how an Irishman became an Israeli border guard. He was as thin and dry as a Negev river bed, going through the days of battle with charm and an Uzzi sub-machine-gun.
Yes, I'd have all this hair off if I could. I'm thirty-six now and it gets heavy. But Eric babbles about the damage it would do me professionally and he consoles himself artistically by saying that Chopin had long hair. In his heart, I don't think he embraces this pop-idol charade very closely because he has seen some of the finest in his time. Philip too. But we are successful. So the hair stays. Let it get in my eyes.
I got off the bus at Robin Hood Vale this morning and walked away from the roads and the people going to work. I made across the open common towards my place. The snow became more definite, I tugged up my collar and pushed against the wind. It was very solitary, although I did see a girl on a horse as I got towards the block of flats where I now live. The ponds on the common were blank and grey, gathering in the snowflakes and quietly destroying them. But the rough grass and the poor winter trees were taking the snow and keeping it.
You become more aware of animals in the snow, I suppose, because it neutralizes the background and shows them up more. If you are walking across a short desolate place like the common and you see cats or dogs, or even something wild like a rabbit, they seem like companion travellers on a journey, and you gladly leave your tracks beside theirs.
There did not seem to be much going on among the birds, but I could hear them making occasional remarks in the black bones of trees. It was a good walk because I woke up after almost dozing off on the bus, and I wanted to keep awake today because I thought I would start writing this.
When I came in out of the snow, into the foyer of the flats, there were two men waiting by the lift holding up a big mirror, full-length and the same width, done around with some curved carving. They were delivering it to somebody and I thought it surprising how early some people get things delivered. As I walked in the men were both the opposite side of the mirror, holding it up, waiting for the lift, and only their thick delivery men's fingers were showing around the edges. I saw myself come through the door, shake off some of the snow, and walk towards my reflection. The men didn't see me. They were talking and hidden behind their burden.
I strode up to the mirror and stopped in front of myself. As I said I'm thirty-six, but Eric has always told the papers and magazines, and it's written into my biographical handout, that I am thirty-one and nobody has argued. Under this hair you can lose five years without trouble.
It is not easy to examine yourself as you might examine a stranger. But I stood looking over myself. The men were still muttering around the far side of the mirror, holding it upright, waiting for the lift. Standing a yard away I fitted comfortably into the gilt frame and it was a six-foot mirror.
I'm a trifle thick from the shoulders to the waist, but it doesn't show in tails. My face is a bit square. People used to write that it showed my sense of humour, but I don't think it does now.
There is no doubt that I have more young fans than anyone playing on the concert circuit today. They are loyal and noisy, but I need them more than they need me. The critics have described me as a child of the moment and the longer the childhood, the better.
There were still small slopes of snow on my suede coat and I was brushing them away before the mirror when one of the mirror attendants peeped around the side and said:
'You 'ad a good look, then, mate ?'
'Sorry,' I said. The lift was there now. 'Was I wearing it out?'
He sniffed but did not retaliate.
The other man said: 'Right Will, let's get it in.'
I got in after them, and in the confined cubicle of the lift found myself segregated from them once again by the broad face of the mirror.
'Which one ?' one of the invisible men called to me from the other side of the glass. The button panel was on their side.
'Five,' I answered. 'Thank you.'
We stopped at five but I could not get out. The mirror was at an angle in the doorway and I could not squeeze by. I did not call over to them because I can be very reasonable at times and I thought it was best to wait until they had taken the mirror out at their required floor and then I would go back down to five. The doors slid together and we began to ascend again.
'Queer,' said a voice from the other side of the mirror.
'Long 'aired queer,' agreed the other. 'Tragic'
'Tragic,' repeated the first heavily. 'Fancy 'aving 'im cuddling up to you, George ?'
I don't,' said his friend. I don't fancy it at all. Right mate, this is ten.'
I helped them out with the mirror. They must have been shocked to see my hands appear around the edge because their momentum ceased and there was a serious silence. Then they moved again, hurriedly, and between us we got the mirror on to the tenth-floor landing. I stepped back into the lift.
'Thank you, sir,' said George, glaring at Will.
'Yes,' agreed Will miserably. 'Thank you very much.'
'That's all right,' I said. 'Come down for a cuddle when you've done.'
It is a year today that I last saw Shoshana. That is why I thought I would begin to write. I'm going to leave the piano to itself at the other end of the room, at least until it gets dark this afternoon. It is very warm and enclosed in this apartment now, elevated, five floors above the frozen ground, with all of London, gone off to work, leaving me perched here in the suburbs.
Now the snow has grown all over my window. Before, I could see it raiding through the sky, across the common, but now it has blocked itself out. I don't want the phone to ring all day, I hope nobody calls. I hope the mirror man doesn't decide to come in for a cuddle.
Two
They say it is a small country. But it's big enough. Any country with a desert like the Negev tucked into its trousers is big enough. With the war they added another desert, the great brown gut of Sinai which belonged to the Egyptians. Dov Haran said when we saw our friends buried after the six days: 'Where's this country going to? Collecting deserts.'
I arrived there a week before the battle began. The true summer heat was moving over the southern Mediterranean countries, the heavy brown heat that arrives at the conclusion of May, disturbing the sky, distorting the sea and drying the land. The plane from Athens for Lod moved irritably in the hot air across Tel Aviv. Even from the air you could sense and see its heaviness. The habitual sea pushed against it and the yellow baked buildings seemed to be tiredly pushing it back. The cars in the streets moved like furtive woodlice from the shadows of trees and houses out into the hard sunlight and seemed then to hurry for the shade.
Lod Airport is the place they talk about in the Bible as Lydda. So Dov told me that day when the Arabs were trying to get us with machine-gun fire and mortars and he was giving me one of his historical-geography lessons about the country.
There were jet fighters lying like hunting dogs in the enclosed heat under the trees on the farther reaches of the airport. I could see their soft snouts sniffing out of the shadows from the oval pond of the Boeing window. There were some shabby old fighters too, resting around the perimeter with beards of grass growing about them. They
had little glass cabins like tomato frames. I remember them from the days of the war - our war -1 mean, the one against the Germans. They were called Blackburn Skuas. They were among my collection of model warplanes made from balsa wood and displayed on top of our piano in those days. I was a very patriotic boy and I would build only models of British and American fighting aeroplanes.
I had never been in Israel before. I was going to play three concerts with the Israel Symphony Orchestra, but I knew nothing of those people. I thought they were just Jews, like Maurice Greenbaum, the librarian at the Philharmonia Library in London or Joe Kaye, my barber. I didn't know. Beneath the canopy of the arrival building there was a nervousness so distinct that I was immediately aware of it. The fluid panic of most airports was not there. Men and women in desert khaki uniforms moved seriously about, the passengers were quiet, filing through the customs channels in dumb show, porters propelled luggage trolleys with hard expressions as though they were pushing fieldguns.
Abraham Metzer and three other men from the Israel Symphony Society met me. Metzer had previously come to London to arrange the tour. He was a squashed, small man; middle-aged, untidy, and with clothes too big for him. He kept tugging at his shirt sleeves and adjusting his uncomfortable shoulders as though he feared they might shiver and fall from him at any moment.
'I hope your tour will be safe,' he muttered when we were in the car going towards Tel Aviv. It was getting on towards the short evening and the land was lying low, relieved after the heat, under a sky going pale. I watched it from the window. Some young girl soldiers tried to thumb a lift.
'Why safe?' I said without anxiety. "The contracts are all fixed, aren't they? Everything has been agreed.'
He shrugged inside his great blue shirt. 'That's all good, he said looking straight ahead over the driver's shoulder as though expecting an ambush. 'But maybe we have a war in a few days.'
I waited a few minutes because I was annoyed. Then I laughed insincerely and said: 'You're always having a war in a few days.' I should have insisted on Philip or Eric coming with me. Philip was having trouble with a Brazilian soprano and Eric was ill. I had never toured without one or both of them before. And there was going to be a war.
Come To The War Page 1