I won't be here to see,' I said decisively. I have things to do all over the place.'
She looked at me, then hooked her arm comfortably in mine. 'Of course you have,' she said reasonably. 'And you must go on and do them. It is important.'
We had reached the corner of one of the short tree-crowded roads that runs to Dezingov. Shoshana stopped. She fumbled in her trouser pocket like a man. She took something from the pocket, something small. She had it between her finger and her thumb. I realized it was a ring. She worked it on to the third ringer of her left hand.
'My wedding ring,' she said. She gave a tight smile. 'I wear it tonight because I go now to my husband. Just a few houses down this place.'
'I did not know you were married,' I said quietly.
'There is very little to it,' she shrugged. 'This country is a bad place for marriage. Too much falling in and out. Divorce is very big. We marry too young and for not long enough. Soon, after the war has come and gone, Uri and I will divorce. That is if we are still here and such things matter.'
I said: 'But you are going to him now?'
'Yes,' she said simply. 'It is the right thing tonight. We have an apartment along here and we were very happy once. Sometimes we still find something in each other. We meet only sometimes because of my work and because he is also away. He is one of the Israeli Air Force. But tonight we are meeting because we are still in marriage. Erav tov, goodnight Christopher. I hope you play well in the concerts.'
She walked under the deep black of the lined trees. There were no lights in the little street. I remained at the corner and watched her walk, calling, 'Goodnight Shoshana,' after her. She answered only by waving her hand in the deep-cut shadows and without turning about. Then I could not see her at all, only a slice of light suddenly thrusting from a door and then vanishing again.
I walked back along the Dezingov. I was almost alone now, although I could hear the taxi men laughing farther down the wide street. At the cafe the two girls were with the third young man and the two soldiers had gone. It was five days before the war.
* * *
Mrs Haydn sent her chauffeur and her Mercedes for me at noon. It is surprising how many Mercedes and Volkswagen cars there are in Israel. We went along the sea road again, over the bridge guarded by the young soldiers and along the flowing hem of the sand dunes. It was a brilliantly hot day, still and stainless, petrified beneath the sun; the only moving things the languid sea and Mrs Haydn's car.
We ran quickly past Herzliya and to Natanya, a small town with a beach. The house was a mile outside the town, on the sea's fringe, set on a small cape of green land where, from somewhere, came a light touch of breeze. It touched the cedars in the garden giving them some refreshment from the bronze sun.
'My own private zephyr,' said Mrs Haydn waving her hand at the breeze. 'This is the only place from Haifa to Ashkelon which has a breath of air today.'
'All modern conveniences,' I said walking up the white steps of the house towards her. She was wearing a blue and white towelling jacket over a two-piece swimsuit. It was almost open at the front, held loosely by the tied belt, and when she moved towards me the tanned stomach underneath pressed against the narrow aperture, her navel peering out at me like a lone spying eye.
'This little piece of land sticks out just far enough to catch a whiff of whatever breezes are blowing on the sea. There is nearly always something and we can commandeer it.'
The walls within the house were cool green and there was a creamy marble floor, wooden furniture, softened with big bright cushions in traditional Eastern patterns. She walked with me, her sandals clapping lightly against the floor, her arms moving to and fro together as though she were pushing the air away. We walked into a slim and elegant room with white chairs, light rugs, and french windows embracing a square of fierce sun lying across a profuse flower garden and a blue swimming-pool. The water in the pool rubbed fondly against its tiles.
'A drink, Christopher,' Mrs Haydn suggested. She moved towards a cocktail cabinet.
'A Martini. Dry, please.'
Along the wall was a parade of twisted ornaments in what appeared to be dark metals, red, black and brown each with a subdued sinning surface. I walked to them and saw they were glass tubes and bowls and bulbs, turned and stretched imaginatively. They were filled tightly with the red, brown and black.
'Earth,' explained Selma from the cabinet. 'Earth from all parts of the world. I told you about my husband, didn't I? He's a soil scientist and they're his. You might say he collects dirt.' She smiled thinly. 'Actually that's bis joke not mine.
'They're different,' I said. She brought a Martini over and sat down.
'The place is full of them,' she said. 'Red dirt from this desert and black dirt from that mountain. We've even got some green dirt upstairs. It's in one of the bathrooms. My husband thought it was suitable for a bathroom. None of them are labelled, so no one but he knows what the hell they are or where they've come from. He knows them by heart. Which bit of the planet, when dug up, when bottled, and all that sort of thing. He treats the bloody stuff like some people treat a stock of wine. To me it's just dirt.'
She laughed. She looked more her age today without her evening make-up. 'Here's to the rest of your concert tour,' she said tipping her glass.
'Your health and happiness,' I responded.
'It's a very quiet day,' she said. 'When it gets too hot the day, especially at this time, becomes almost ghostly.'
I stood and looked out beyond the emblazoned garden and the pool to the sea climbing indolently up the legs of the beach. There was a white flagpole at the end of the garden, standing out like a seam of the sky. Its blue and white pennant moved with the unconscious stirring of a curled animal. There were no other people.
I don't even have any house help today,' she said. "The two men have gone off to be soldiers in the Negev and the two women are down in Natanya learning how to be bloody air-raid wardens. Now the chauffeur has gone to fill sandbags. It was all I could do to persuade him to fetch you.'
'This could be the day before the war,' I said.
'It has a certain feeling about it, I admit,' she shrugged. She pulled her naked legs up underneath her using her left hand to tuck them in and cover them with her towel coat. 'It's an empty feeling. Usually from here you can hear the people shouting from the beach down below.'
'That's just it,' I said. 'Empty. Days-before-wars must have always been like this. When our war broke out...'
She smiled at my pause. 'You mean the one / missed? Of course I know about it. I may not have contributed, but I heard.'
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean that,' I protested knowing that I had meant it. She laughed silently. I continued: 'Anyway I remember the Saturday before the Sunday. We lived in a village in the West Country and it was deserted that day. I was about six years old and I walked along the road wondering where everybody had gone. It was like a place struck by the plague. It was a hot day too and the village was full of the smell of dandelions and grass and the cows were out grazing.'
She shifted and got up, walking gracefully to the french windows and looking out at the weary sea. 'There was some sort of regatta in Bermuda that day,' she said. 'I remember going down Front Street, alongside Hamilton Harbour, with my old man to see the start of one of the races. I was wearing my first American bra. My father stopped to talk to an old boy who was sprawled in one of the wicker chairs outside one of the stores. They do that there, you know. They have chairs under the shop awnings. It's a nice idea.'
'Revolutionary,' I said. She pivoted on the marble floor. 'This old man telling my father that the storm clouds were gathering, or some such thing, and in my teenage uncaring way I thought, "Jesus Christ, this will bugger up the regatta".'
I laughed and walked towards her at the window. 'In our village that afternoon,' I said, 'I met one other boy. He was a bit older than me and he was dragging along in the dust at the side of the road. He had a hell of a stutter, this kid. I remember we us
ed to call him Tut-Tut and at school the teacher made him sing everything because he couldn't get started by merely saying it.
'He was coming towards me, at a shuffling run, his mouth opening and shutting like a haddock. When he reached me his eyes were bulging and he put his hand out to me to tell me what was so momentous. I remember he started off saying, "W ... w ... w ... war," and I stood there, arms folded, and waited for him to get the next bit out. We stood facing each other in the middle of this deserted village street, me six, him about ten, and he couldn't say the next syllable.'
Selma laughed. 'It sounds like the politicians of the world,' she said. 'Trying to say things and nothing being said.' We walked down towards the pool and I could see a table set out under a blue and white beach umbrella. 'Everything is blue and white,' she sighed. 'My husband is intensely patriotic. Then what?'
'I couldn't stand the suspense,' I said. 'So I told him to sing it, just as he did at school.'
We had reached the table. Her eyes widened with amusement. 'And he did? He sang it?'
'Exactly. I remember him looking defiantly at me for a while and then he began to tap out the time with his foot -that was another thing he had to do. That was the way he got the rhythm. Bang, bang, bang, went his foot and he started to sing it:
' "There's goin' t'be a war termorrer. All the German bombs will come down and kill everybody. My dad says ..." '
Selma was laughing into her brown fingers. 'My God,' she said. 'What a scene! That's really awful.'
We had walked into a vivid band of sun now. You could never call it sunshine in Israel for it never had any gentleness, no mild well-being about it. It seared across my back and burned my neck and ears.
Selma said: 'Perhaps you would like to swim before lunch?'
'I think I would,' I said. She pointed out a pair of blue and white changing cubicles far back beyond some vines. I changed into a pair of Yacob's bathing trunks there and returned across the hot stones to the pool. There were bulb-eyed lizards squatting on the stones, stony themselves. My feet sent them running.
She was already in the pool moving delicately on her back, the underside of her bra, the topside of her breasts and her pelvis clear of the lucid water, her face staring at the lurid sky, her toes propelling her. The sun poured over my white skin, running like a liquid streak along my backbone and flowing over the backs of my thighs.
I dropped into the water quietly and swam the length of the pool and back again. The water had a velvet warmth, it was thick and rich, there were no sharp edges to it. It pumped away from my arms and legs, from beneath my armpits and from the channel of my crotch. Selma paid no attention to me, but floated regally still looking up, pushed by the merest action of her toes. From my new level her breasts in their white satin cups looked like islands on the water.
I paddled towards her and floated alongside. Our feet collided and I wheeled clumsily away. She said: I would like to show you Jerusalem before they destroy it. We have a house there.'
I said: 'I would enjoy that.'
'You are free tomorrow?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'Then I shall call at the hotel for you and we can drive there.'
'Good. Then I go down to Eilat. On the following day.'
'At Eilat you will play in the desert, then. Or on the beach, which is really the same thing. The beach and the desert are one,' she said.
I stood on the floor tiles of the pool. 'No concert hall? No one mentioned that.'
'The beach is a good concert hall, Christopher,' she said. She stood on the bottom tiles now, facing me, her face three feet away across the surface. I knew if I put my hands out I would touch her body. 'The acoustics are perhaps not what you would like, but it will be an unique experience for you, won't it?'
'I'm full of the pioneer spirit,' I said. 'I'll be wearing an open-necked shirt like Ben Gurion next.'
She splashed towards the side. 'They would like that,' she said. 'This lot, I mean. My God that would impress them! Not that I can see you doing it.'
I followed her to the side and caught hold of the rail. 'The open neck doesn't go very well with the tails,' I said.
'Perhaps the white tie and tails will seem odd in the desert too,' she said. We were standing very close now, side by side, like two people in a queue. I intended to touch her then, to put my hands to her. But she began speaking again.
'Actually I have two houses in Jerusalem,' she said. 'The one I like best is quite small, but white and very beautiful, with a small walled garden and a terrace with a well. It's at the foot of Mount Zion. But I haven't been in it for a couple of years. It's all shut up.'
'Why is that?' I asked.
She stared straight across the glassy, low-bumped surface of the pool, her eyes just above water level. She said: 'It's in the Arab sector.'
I whistled and blew a furrow across the water. 'Only someone like you could say that,' I said.
'Of course no one here knows, least of all my husband. He would kill me on the spot. When I went two years ago - I just wanted to see the house because I was very happy there -I had to go to Cyprus and then fly to Beirut and go to Amman from there and then Jerusalem. I have a British passport and a separate one for Israel and there was no bother. When I returned I came back the same way. It seemed very strange because the other Jerusalem house, my husband's house, is only a few hundred yards away in the Israeli sector, in the New City. I can see each house from the other. But they are a long journey apart.'
'How did you get the house?'
'My mother married a second time, a Greek, just after the war,' said Selma. 'He was a jeweller and he spent a long time in Jordan, mostly in Jerusalem, and the house was his. When he died he left it to my mother and when she died it came to me. It has some fine furniture and other things and an old man who was a friend of my stepfather's has a key and goes into it sometimes to look around. It's all shut up and quite safe. The people over there are very good.'
She swam out towards the centre of the pool leaving me by the wall. She turned gracefully, with a kick of her legs, and faced me. Then her smile dropped. A voice came from the house and she looked up guiltily, then looked at me.
'My husband,' she said across the water.
'Selma!' I heard him call. His Army boots struck heavily across the marble and out on to the terrace. He stopped just above my head. He must have been a couple of feet back from the edge because he did not see me close against the tiles at the side.
'Yacob,' said Selma uncertainly. 'Have you finished the war?'
'That's not funny,' I heard him say. 'It does not seem to disturb your life very much. I am going into Tel Aviv so I came in. I have only half an hour. There is some lunch?'
'There is,' she said pushing out her arm towards the laden table at the end of the pool. I heard him go over there.
'A big lunch!' he called back. 'You have guests coming?'
'My guest is here,' Selma said. I had thought of trying to escape and she must have thought of the possibility too, but rejected it. I heard him turn about on the concrete.
'Where?' he called to her.
I peeped out. Hell, I thought, I'm only in his swimming-pool, not in his bed. 'Here I am,' I said with unconvincing cheerfulness. 'Just here.'
Now I could see him, a tall warrior, with Jaffa-coloured hair, a ginger moustache and heavy brown freckles plastered all over his burned face; a fighter in a shapeless uniform, an officer's cap pushed casually back from staring blue eyes. He had an automatic rifle slung like an usherette's tray about his neck and a string of casual grenades over his shoulder.
We stood without moving, two in the pool, one on the side, a trio in the rough sunlight.
His forearms were like pieces of husky wood, layered with shining red hairs. From the table he had taken a great slab of potato salad. Now he began to eat it from his hand, and some of the raw pieces stuck to his extravagant moustache.
He marched with an exaggerated military stride towards me and looked down at my
pale face and shoulders in the pool. Then he squatted as a visitor squats by the seal tank at the zoo.
'This,' said Selma thinly, 'is Mr Christopher Hollings, the English concert pianist. He has come to lunch.'
Yacob pushed some more potato salad from his hand into his face. 'Shalom, Mr Hollings,' he said deeply, offering me the cream-stuck palm in which he had held the food. I made to put my hand up to shake it when Selma said stiffly, 'Yacob. Your hand. For God's sake!'
'Oh, I am so sorry,' he laughed withdrawing it. 'Shalom. Shalom anyway. Are you coming out of my pool? Let us have some lunch. All of us.'
'Oh yes, of course,' I said. I could have waded to the steps but because he was watching me I heaved myself up on the swimming-pool rail and got my knee on to the wet concrete just at his feet. Then I slipped ignominiously and rolled back into the water. Furious with myself at the stupidity, I tried again, became fixed halfway, and eventually had to accept the assisting hand offered to me by Yacob. The hand in which he had held the potato salad.
Four
She telephoned me in the night when I was asleep at the hotel. She said: 'He's cleared off now, thank Christ.'
'Who has?' I asked stupidly because I had been sleeping.
'Yacob,' she said. 'You've been sleeping.'
I looked at my watch. "That's reasonable,' I said. 'It's ten past three.'
'Yes,' she said. 'And I've just got rid of him. He hung on here for hours. I think he expected that you would be back.'
'I thought he was on military duty,' I said pulling myself up in the bed. 'He only dropped in for lunch, didn't he?'
"That's what I argued, but apparently the Army can wait for proof of adultery. So he waited. He mooned about all the evening, looking at his bloody samples of dirt. Then we went to bed - he wanted to - and after that was all finished he cleared off. I suppose he thought that once he had been to bed with me that would lock up the shop for the night. So he felt safe to go.'
Drowsily I said: 'I don't seem to remember us behaving in any way improperly. Unless swimming in your pool is improper.'
'It must have looked strange,' she said.
Come To The War Page 4