It was only a few feet but it seemed like miles. I had a funny prick of Godly conscience which told me if I had not made love to Shoshana, a married woman, a few hours before I might have more strength now. I suggested now that God should overlook it, and worked my way towards the sweet-smelling air at the top of the hole. I made it just in time. The yellow-flashing guns were going from both sides now, but it was three Israeli jet fighters which flung themselves across the border and flew very low over us which caused the entire tunnel to cave and collapse.
Zoo Baby patted me. Then Shoshana was about me, arms about me, kissing my dirty neck, while Dov brushed the piles of concrete dust from my hair and from behind my ears. Zoo Baby said: "Those planes fly too low. Maybe we should complain.'
The bus had gone with the two children to the hospital. Shoshana said she thought the first one had died, but they could not be certain because the Red Cross man who had arrived with the bus had been hit by a shell splinter and was dying himself. There was nobody else qualified to know for certain.
I shook myself free of some of the dirt. O'Sullivan was already brushed off and sitting sedately in the back of the jeep. I suppose that took you back ?' he said amiably as Zoo Baby started the engine.
'Back to where?' I asked.
'Well, you know, the Blitz,' he smiled. He looked twenty years older than he had looked the night when I first met him.
'Not really,' I said. 'I lived in a village in the West Country and there wasn't much of a blitz. A couple of land mines in the fields, killing a horse and some sheep, and three bombs dropped by Germans in a hurry to get home. One landed in the churchyard and threw up a lot of people we'd thought we'd seen the last of.'
He smiled. 'Christ Almighty,' he said. 'You should have been Irish.'
'And end up in the Jewish Border Police?'
He leaned close, to whisper, but as though we now had some bond and he were anxious to correct some grave misunderstanding. I was in the Congo with the Irish Army, you know. And in Cyprus. An Irishman has to go a long way before he can find an official fight.'
I thought the Irish Army was there to keep the peace,' I said.
'It's the same thing in the end,' he answered. His voice went lower. 'Before I got this job I offered my services to the Arabs but the buggers turned me down. So I rang up the Israeli Embassy and asked them. There's nothing personal in it for me.'
Fourteen
Arriving back at the Press house near the Mandelbaum Gate we discovered that half the big room had collapsed, the debris providing a convenient stage for the bouncy Major de Groucy. O'Sullivan said: 'Now doesn't he look fine and operatic up there with all the gunfire flashing behind him.' The correspondents, some of them fresh from Tel Aviv, others tired and bent from the strain of what they had seen and known, stood for a briefing under the ceiling of the remainder of the room, which had been temporarily secured by a couple of sinewy timbers. The major, in his bandages and with his martyred arm, stood on the rubble reading from a communique. He glanced up as we walked in and a little spasm of pain crossed his face, either his reaction to our arrival or part of his wounded-soldier act.
"These Jordanian donkeys are lethal,' I whispered to Shoshana. She smiled absently, but she was listening to de Groucy. Her love in the nursery and her full happiness when I managed to climb safely from the shelled house were now forgotten by her. Now she was cool and occupied again with the business of her war.
There were some American and European correspondents near the front and they asked that the details Major de Groucy had been giving should be repeated in English. He was pleased to demonstrate his lingual ability and with a small plaintive gasp and a courageous rubbing of his damaged ribs he began again, telling that more than three hundred Arab planes had been destroyed by the Israeli Air Force, something I still did not believe, and saying that the Egyptians in Sinai and Gaza were cracking under the pressure of the Jewish armoured thrust.
'We have had a good day of war,' he said modestly. 'Here in Jerusalem our tanks - they are British Centurions of course - have overcome great difficulties and are well within the Arab sector, moving both sides of the Old City. All Holy Places, Christian, Moslem, and, even Jewish, will be protected as far as possible. We hope to be at the Wailing Wall tomorrow. The Chief Military Rabbi, General Schlomo Goren, has been told by General Narkiss to prepare his trumpet.' This caused an appreciative stir among the journalists.
'Is that official - you intend to go on to Jericho, then?' asked a serious young American correspondent in a green uniform with 'Vietnam' written on a shirt flash. 'With the trumpet I mean.'
'The walls will tumble,' forecast Major de Groucy complacently.
'How bleeding Biblical,' I thought. My God, they annoyed me when they started acting up like this. Their piffling propaganda, their bristling over-confidence. You would have thought they had chosen God instead of him choosing them. I wish they had seen the two little girls we loaded into the bus half an hour before.
'What is happening now?' asked one of the new correspondents. 'Are your troops going over the wall into the Old City?'
The major shook his head solemnly. "The next action? I would not be surprised if it is against the Police School. It is heavily guarded by the Arab Legion and we have a requirement to break through so that our forces can reach Mount Scopus and cut the Jerusalem to Ramallah road.'
When he said, 'We have a requirement,' I winced because one of the Vietnam Americans had used the phrase in his question and de Groucy had salvaged it immediately.
'One more question, Major,' said one of the Americans. 'Where did you get your wounds ?'
There was a quick guilty glance at our group from de Groucy. He spread his hands and he shrugged. Then he smiled blatantly in our direction and laughed a brave but secretive laugh. 'It is nothing,' he shrugged. 'Shall we say that I collided with an Arab donkey.' A bellow of laughter came from the correspondents and some of them wrote in their notebooks.
As we left the place one American, still shaking his head and chuckling' said to me: 'Collided with an Arab donkey! They sure are something, these people, don't you think?'
'Oh, I do,' I said. 'I really do.'
We went out into the night again. The guns were busy to north and south. Zoo Baby had remained outside with the jeep. He said he had been told that the paratroops we saw at the zoo had occupied some of the gradually rising ground in the Sheikh Jarah district not far from the Mandelbaum Gate, and that we could go to one of the forward observation posts, if Shoshana required it.
As she spoke two arms of light reached across the city on to the distant Arab area. "The searchlights from the Histadrut,' said Dov. 'We will be attacking the Police School now.' Three low-bellied jet planes came from behind us almost immediately and curved like birds on to the point where the searchlights were fixed. They fired their cannons as they went in and then a second formation dropped from the hills and bomb flashes jumped among the white walls of the buildings.
'Let us watch,' said Shoshana. We followed her into the jeep. We felt we were an odd, renegade, exclusive gang, moving about the fringe of the battle. None of the other correspondents, even the women, had escorts and I was willing to wager that there were no other international, neutral, concert pianists involved in the battle for the city that night.
Zoo Baby drove up through the broken streets in the same direction as we had taken earlier in the day. We passed the Savoy Hotel and saw the robed proprietor, the man who had served us drinks, in the enclosed garden trying to clear some of the debris. Dov said: "That Arab is a businessman. Today he clears up, tomorrow he cleans and polishes and maybe paints a little. The next day he will be serving lokchen soup and gefuelltefische.'
We drove for another half a mile, the conflict spilling over to our right. In the night-time flashes of the guns we could see the Israeli tanks nudging forward and the paratroops moving behind them. Zoo Baby manoeuvred the jeep over choppy pieces of road, and curled it around shell and bomb craters. At on
e point we came upon a donkey cropping the gritty grass at the roadside and we all laughed and howled for Major de Groucy. We were near the battle, but apparently safe from it. The fighting was growing in the area to one flank, but on the other the hills were quiet in the night.
'First, I think, this place,' said Zoo Baby. He said something to Dov in Hebrew and Dov nodded after looking at O'Sullivan. Dov turned to Shoshana, but spoke in English. 'It will be no good to get too close, because of the planes arriving to bomb the Police School. I think maybe we can see everything from here.'
'But here?’ asked Shoshana doubtfully. 'It is not a good place for us.' She argued further in Hebrew, but eventually nodded doubtfully. Zoo Baby took the jeep through a narrow alley and stopped outside a wooden door. We went through the door and into a dark garden.
Dov said to me: 'I told you of this place. This is the Garden of the Tomb. This is where, so some say, Jesus was buried.' He pointed through the darkness. 'Over there, in the wall. That is the Tomb.' He walked on along a narrow path, me behind, the others following. The garden was thick with warmth and sharp with spicy smells; peaceful, hardly stirring, even though the war was only half a mile beyond its wall. We stepped carefully through the vines and the hanging flowers. Dov said: 'And beyond here, there - where you can see the dark rock - that is, so they say, Golgotha, Calvary, the place of crucifixion. From there we will watch the fighting.'
Shoshana, I now realized, had not wanted to go to the crest of the small rocky hill because it was a Jewish cemetery. We climbed a precarious set of steps cut into the side of the skull-shaped hill, and emerged above the city, looking out over the forehead of the rock.
O'Sullivan said: 'Not exactly the place I would choose to watch a battle. Dear God, I thought religion did poorly enough in the Congo.'
I said: 'Does it worry you that much?'
'Well, shall we say I never fancied myself firing a machine gun from the Holy Father's balcony in Rome. And this is a damned sight worse, mister.' He crossed himself, sincerely if hurriedly. Shoshana was looking doubtfully at the Jewish tombstones standing up like bad teeth in the dark. 'It's not a good place,' she said to Dov. 'All these dead around.'
She spoke as though there had not been enough dead all the past hours. As though the recent dead, the ones we had known and the strangers, were nothing, but that these old dead lying on top of this bald hill were different and important to her.
Dov said: 'The searchlights have got the Police School again, see?'
We stood on the crown of rock and watched the two big searchlight beams pin the walls of the school. It was like watching a gigantic cinema performance. The battle was bitter down there, the streets and alleys leading to the Police School were bursting with the orange light of fires. The tanks and the paratroops were edging forward through the diffused light and the clogging smoke. Explosions rebounded from the sector, echoed heavily against the walls of the Old City on one side and, indistinctly, against the Judean mountains on the other.
There was some protection from the Old City wall afforded by a shoulder of rock between our observation point and the wall itself. I walked gingerly along the hard summit and wondered where the middle cross had been fixed. The rock curled almost at my feet and dropped down a hundred feet or more to the place where, afterwards, they built the bus station.
The big noises of the heavier guns and the tanks now ceased and from the distance there came the playful crackle of the rifles and sub-machine-guns, the hollow cough of grenades. Small lights kept jumping up from the streets like the setting off of minor fireworks. More adult explosions were throwing sparks and flames to the Arab rooftops. All the fighting was confined in the holes and hideaways of the narrow streets. Then the Israeli jets would return and the long eyes of the searchlights would pick out the Police School. The advancing paratroopers would wait until the bombs and the cannon shells had gone into the walls of the school, and then rise and go forward again.
'Street fighting,' said O'Sullivan. 'And God knows, there's no place that has streets like this. They're more like tunnels. It will take them hours to get through to the walls of that bloody school.' He sat down heavily and patted the rock by his backside. 'Now, just imagine, this might be the very place of the crucifixion of Our Lord,' he murmured.
For another hour we watched. We could see the advance of the attacking troops by the progress of the fires and the firing. Just before the major attack on the Police School itself the Histadrut searchlights swung over the entire range of the smoking battlefield, running like white ghosts through a destroyed country, and finally, inevitably settled again on the walls they had left. Then the fighters came back, wheeling freely over the Arab slopes of Jerusalem, and firing their belching weapons at the emplacements of the legionnaires. There were fires growing within the school now and the walls were like Swiss cheese. We had one pair of field glasses - O'Sullivan's - between us, and we took them in turns.
Through the glasses I saw the first Jews go in through the rubble of the school, scampering like spiders through the breaches. Yellow and orange flashes jerked into the sky from within the walls, the sharp sounds quickly following. Then everything quietened very suddenly. The searchlights yawned lazily, and the smoke drifted across the city. There were little eruptions, disturbances, but widely spaced. The guns in the south of the city had also lapsed. For the first time since the battle began there was no great noise in Jerusalem. Standing there on Calvary I could hear the city groan and cough through its smoke.
At four o'clock the daylight began to seep back, smudging the hills and gradually touching the roofs of the city. It showed a hundred fires burning indolently among the ruins of Jerusalem's hem. Some paratroops returning with wounded from the battle of the Police School told Shoshana that forty of their men had been killed in the two hours of street fighting around the school and that more than a hundred dead Arab Legion soldiers had been counted. The lieutenant who told her said it with no great triumph over the conquest, nor over the deaths of his enemies, nor even emotion over the killing of his own friends. He merely reported it, level-voiced, and said that the Israelis were now pushing on to the American Colony and expected to capture the Ambassador Hotel before breakfast. He looked very tired and glad to drive his jeep away from the fighting.
We remained at Golgotha until the daylight strengthened. The smoke was drifting from its many roots on the battlefield. Deep grey in the pale grey dawn it had an air of hopeless resignation about it that had nothing to do with the brilliant excitement of battle, nor the joy of conquest.
The fighting was resumed to the north-east among the white box buildings and slender cypresses of the American Colony. Long puffs of smoke like trees themselves were standing up in the early daylight among the cypresses. The guns flashed paler in the growing day.
Zoo Baby had gone back with the jeep to fetch some coffee and food. Dov and O'Sullivan remained on the forehead of rock watching the movements of the armies across the spread of city and lion-coloured hill. Shoshana touched my hand and we walked down from the steep, mysterious rock, and into the sheltered garden. Now, in the sombre fight, before the sun, I could see its simplicity and sense its peace. The paths were narrow, stepped and winding, hung with tendrils and flowers. In the far wall of rock was the stark open doorway of the Tomb where they say they laid Christ. We walked that way and I saw the saucer cut in the rock worn there in ancient days by a massive cheese of a stone.
I looked in through the door, into the two chambers. Then I stepped in and Shoshana followed me. The low roof made me bend. There was an iron grille in there and stone beds, places for the dead of some far age. I touched the stone with my fingers. Some of the dust came off. It was close and uneasy for me, so I turned and touched Shoshana and we went out into the calm garden.
'Do you believe, Christopher?' she asked. She jumped lightly like a girl into the depression of an old wine press. She sat on the stones forming its side and looked at her marked and dirty face in a pocket mirror.
'Not much,' I admitted. I climbed down and sat beside her. Abruptly the sun cleared the Judean Hills and flashed against the golden dome of the Temple of the Rock in the Old City, and then with brilliant arrogance lit the other domes and towers, and gave to the walls warmth and majestic fullness.
'How do you give an answer like that?' she asked. She took my hand and laid it on her lap. I could feel the softness of her legs under the coarseness of the fatigue trousers. 'Not much.'
'I don't think about it,' I said. 'I haven't come to any conclusions.'
'But you are a Christian ?'
'In name,' I replied. 'In not much else.'
'Think,' she said. 'It is possible that this is the place where something special and sacred happened. Do you not feel anything?'
I smiled at her. 'A bit chilly,' I said.
She laughed. 'How much better it would be for you if you did believe, Christopher. Then this would be so much more for you, for your spirit'
I leaned and kissed her. 'I wish it were like that,' I said.
Shoshana made a face. 'It is more difficult being a Jew,' she said. 'At least the one that the Christians worship was in recent times - only two thousand years. When you consider our people, Moses and Aaron and David, they are all much further away, and God is more distant in history than that. It is more difficult than your faith.'
'Do you believe ?' I retaliated.
She shrugged. "The whole State is built upon religion, so it is difficult not to touch it. But I do not go to the synagogue, nor do many of my friends. One day at a time in Israel is sufficient. We take care of that, making sure we use every bit of it. Because there may be no more in stock. That is our religion now.'
I said: 'Aren't you worried about your husband? He has been flying hasn't he ?'
'I think of him,' she said. 'But I am not afraid for him. He is a soldier in the same manner as all these others. I am sure he does not fear for me.'
Come To The War Page 18