A Long Way to Shiloh

by Lionel Davidson

  I threw back my head and yelled ‘Help!’ It came out as a falsetto bleat in the wind, and the only effect was that the man I’d kicked bent down and picked up a rock and threw it at me.

  He couldn’t miss at that range, and he didn’t. It caught me a fearful bloody thump on the shoulder. I got my head down fast as I saw the other man bending. I stayed down, spread-eagled on the slope, protecting my head, too shocked to move as both of the bastards began stoning me. After a witless minute or two it occurred to me they were trying to drive me down, and what was good for them was bad for me, so I started wriggling up, not able to see where I was going, just protecting my head and collecting a barrage of appalling bloody thuds on the back till I made the shelter of the overhang and crouched there, moaning slightly and trying to think what the hell to do now.

  The situation was so uniquely horrible it hardly bore thinking about. All I’d done besides getting the wits stoned out of me was to ensure I’d pick up a bloody good hiding in the bargain. I’d pick that up now whatever I did. It was simply a matter of waiting for it. The only advantage of this refuge was that they couldn’t get at me immediately. They’d have to get me down first, or manoeuvre in some way round the side of the overhang.

  Which side? The left side. On the right there was no slope at all, merely a drop. On the left there was plenty of slope, littered with debris and boulders. A very large boulder, immediately under the overhang, at present cut me off from this slope. I saw suddenly that it was possible for them to get round its offside without my seeing.

  I edged towards it and tried to find a vantage point to look round. There wasn’t one. The thing stood upright like an egg, bottom sunk in the hill, broader parts concealing the view. I couldn’t get below it without exposing myself again. I tried to get above it.

  I dug my shoes in the greasy red mud and edged higher, under the overhang. It smelt damp and musty like a grave. There was a gap of about a foot between the top of the boulder and the overhang. I couldn’t squeeze into it I couldn’t see through it. Mud blocked the other side.

  A faint pattering of earth fell on the slope. I twisted round and looked down. More earth fell there. Someone coming down.

  I edged out as far as I could and tried to see round the rock. I couldn’t see round it. I shook the bloody thing.

  It moved.

  I shook it again. It moved again. Earth fell out of the gap as it moved. I could suddenly see through. I could see a foot, moving down very slowly, then another one, and then legs, and then the rest of him. It was the man who’d copped the brick. He still carried the mark on his mouth and there was blood on his chin. He stopped suddenly and looked at me. He couldn’t see me through the gap; I was in heavy shade. I could see him very clearly, not five yards away, at the other side of the rock.

  He stayed like that a moment, then looked up and waved. He didn’t wave immediately above my head. He waved over to the right, a long way over. They’d separated, then. Why? I racked tired brains and tried to work it out. While I did so, he sat down. He just sat on the slope and waited.

  There seemed to be only one answer. He’d come down to bottle me up. If I broke and ran I wasn’t going to get past him. I could only get below him. Then I’d have to run to the other side of the crater and try to get up there. The other man would be waiting there.

  If I didn’t do anything, he wouldn’t either. He’d just wait there till it was dark and come round the boulder with his gun. No need to frig about throwing rocks then. If I ran he’d simply shoot, in the right place.

  It was getting dark now. It didn’t take long to do it here. One minute it looked a bit dark and the next it was. The choice seemed to be to run now and chance it, or run later with the near certainty of a bullet in the backside. I was a bit scrambled today, but not that scrambled. I started moving down from the rock. My foot slipped. I hung on to the rock. The rock lurched. It lurched quite strongly.

  Something here; definitely something here. The thing was loose, ready to roll if I had the strength to make it.

  If the bastard at the other side could only be encouraged to shift himself to a point just below it …

  I looked down. An old toilet cistern, lidless, was half bedded in the slope. I picked up a stone and tossed it down. It clanged into the cistern and bounced out. I threw another. Then I picked up more and climbed up to the top of the boulder again and looked through the gap.

  His mouth was open and he was looking earnestly down the slope. He hadn’t moved. I leaned out as far as I could and pitched a couple more stones out. I sent them arcing up, and they hit the overhang first, breaking a bit off it. Then I looked through the gap again.

  He still hadn’t moved, but his big plain face was creased in thought as he looked down and then up, trying to follow the line of the falling earth and stones. He twisted round and tried to see the top of the overhang above me. He couldn’t see it, so he stood up and tried again. He still couldn’t see it. He turned and looked at the boulder hard, and I saw the succession of simple thoughts passing through his head. It was always possible that I’d found some way of getting up. I might have dislodged the earth and stones as I moved. Was I still under the overhang? I glared at him through the gap, silently urging him to shift himself down where he could see. Presently he did. He began to move down the slope, very cautiously. I watched him for a moment, then got in position behind the boulder.

  It wasn’t till I was there that I realized I couldn’t see him now. I’d have to guess when he got in position. Also there was nothing to hold on to here. When the boulder went, if it went, I’d go with it. If I’d guessed wrongly, he wouldn’t cop the boulder. He’d cop me.

  I attuned to his remembered rate of progress, heart thudding powerfully. I gave him about a quarter of a minute, counted ten slowly, drew a breath, and shoved.

  The thing sucked earth, tottered, went. I clutched on nothing and went with it. I saw him, not quite below, just a little to one side, but with his body angled round to peer under the overhang. He couldn’t quite get out of the way in time, got a hefty nudge under the shoulder, dropped his gun, reared up and started pattering down the slope backwards, still on his feet. I was pattering down frontwards, still on mine. I took about twenty tiny skittering steps, unable to stop, the pair of us facing each other about twenty yards apart as though giving some fancy and high-speed demonstration of the rhumba. Then I got my foot in the lavatory cistern, sat momentarily, watched him still pattering with fury backwards down the slope, and was up and out of it.

  2

  I traversed the rest of the slope like a greyhound, made the top, peered frantically for the entrance to the lane in the sudden gloaming, saw it, and was making towards it when the other man, a hundred yards away, cottoned on and came running. He fired as he ran. I saw the flash, heared the report, and took off more keenly than ever.

  The lane was empty, dark – pitch-black almost. I floundered uphill among the potholes, saw a house, the first, decided it was too convenient, and realized I’d better get out of the lane anyway. There was a pile of fruit-crates in the next entry. I dodged past them, saw an open wooden door, and ran through. I was in a garden and the fruit groves ran parallel on the left. I jumped on the low wall of the first terrace and sprinted along, screened by the dripping trees, still in line with the lane. The backs of the houses were towards me, and there were lights on in them. I saw one glimmering only dimly, made for it, jumped down off the wall, into a garden, found the door, turned the knob and went in.

  An old couple were seated at a table with candles – sabbath candles, Friday night, I realized suddenly – the only light in the room. He was reading aloud from a book and she was listening to him. The pair of them swivelled round open-mouthed and sat looking at me. I said, ‘Blow the candles out,’ too choked to say any more.

  ‘The sabbath candles?’ the woman said, and just then there was a shot, fairly close, and I blew them out. The last thing I saw was the face of the old man, disembodied almost in the can
dle flame, neck scrawny, lips bluish as he gaped at me.

  I said, gasping in the dark, ‘There are Jordanians in the lane with guns. Where’s the phone?’

  ‘The phone?’ It was the woman.

  ‘To call the police.’

  She said stupidly, ‘To call the police? On Shabat?’

  I don’t think I shook her. I don’t know what I did. We seemed to be sitting on the floor in a passage, and I had my cigarette lighter lit while she dialled. In its light I could see she was wearing a wig, the sheitel of the old orthodox Jewess, and it was slightly askew. The old man seemed to be seated on the floor, too, and a hell of a row was going on outside, firing and glass shattering and people running. The old man was rocking back and forth moaning.

  She must have made the call. I must have asked her to call a taxi, too, because one turned up, before the police; the driver on double rates for Shabat. The quality of the row had changed outside. It was all outrage and excited hubbub now, and I knew they weren’t there any more. They’d be in a car, speeding in to Jordan, where I would have been.

  For the first time almost, I suddenly realized what had happened today, and I was faint and dizzy. I could hardly stand up. Once I was up, I could hardly move.

  ‘Wait! Stay. You can’t go now. What about the police?’

  ‘Tell them to phone Professor Agrot. Professor Agrot, at the university, or at his flat.’

  ‘No. Please. You tell them. Don’t go now. You can’t go now.’

  I could. I did, too exhausted to argue.

  ‘So where are we going?’ the driver said.

  ‘I want a doctor.’

  ‘On Shabat? We can see. What happened to you?’

  ‘Just a minute. Stop there,’ I told him. ‘The telephone box.’

  He had to help me out of the cab and into the box. I leaned against the wall inside, sick and faint, horribly conscious of my head. The hat seemed to have gone. The lint had gone too. There was just a sticky mess there. There was mud all down the front of my clothes.

  The phone answered after the first ring. Agrot said, ‘Yes?’

  I said, ‘It’s me. Did you find Ike?’

  He said, ‘Caspar! Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. What’s happened to him?’

  ‘The police have the body. What’s happened to you, for God’s sake?’

  I started to tell him, appreciating dully what he’d said. I felt myself slipping down inside the box. I levered myself up, but still kept slipping. He said at last, ‘You say they had a photo of you taken in Jordan?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, but in the same moment realized it wasn’t. I had a sudden hallucinatory vision of him, the little grinning Arab I’d told to eff off in Nazareth, standing behind me in the photo; and of the friend I’d told to eff off, too, who’d taken it. The military sleeve next to mine; Shoshana’s sleeve. I heard myself telling him it, and his precise voice repeating it. He said, ‘You don’t sound good. Where are you?’

  ‘In a call box.’

  ‘Do you want me to pick you up?’

  ‘No, I’ve got a cab.’

  ‘All right, I’ll see you at the hotel in a few minutes.’

  ‘I’m not going back there.’

  He started to say, ‘What do you mean?’ and stopped and said, ‘I see. All right. Do you want to come here?’

  ‘No. I told you. They were looking for me –’

  ‘Look, you’ll be perfectly –’

  ‘Good-bye.’

  ‘Wait a minute! Where are you going?’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ I said, and hung up.

  Wherever the hell it was, it was away from here. But there was my head first.

  We met the doctor opening his front door, just returning from synagogue, a little elderly man. He looked me up and down in the street, and then at my head. ‘What’s this – a traffic accident?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘People shouldn’t ride on Shabat, then it wouldn’t happen,’ he said. ‘Come inside.’

  He cleaned my head up and put six stitches in it, and then dressed and bandaged it. The room swam as I sat there. I said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Why smoke on Shabat? Is it such a hardship, one day only, to keep your religion?’

  ‘It’s not my religion.’

  ‘It’s not?’ He had a good look at me. ‘So smoke.’

  ‘You have an excellent accent,’ he said as he worked. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘England.’

  ‘Good. That will be six pounds English. Or forty-eight pounds Israeli.’

  He wouldn’t handle money on Shabat, so I counted it out on a small side table, and looked at myself in the mirror above it. My head was like a great bandaged balloon, very identifiable if anybody happened to be looking for a head injury. I said, ‘Is there anywhere I could get a hat tonight?’

  ‘Tonight, Shabat? I don’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t want to go about like this.’

  ‘Go to bed. That’s where you should be. I’ll give you some tablets.’

  ‘I have to go out.’

  ‘It would need, anyway, to be a very big hat,’ he said smiling, and then looked at me a bit speculatively, and smiled in a different way. ‘One moment,’ he said, and went out of the room. He came back in with a shtreiml, the big round fur hat of the ultra-pious. ‘Try it,’ he said.

  I tried it. The enormous thing fitted like a glove. It seemed to carry a persona of its own. I stared rather weirdly at my features in the mirror. A medieval type rabbi stared back.

  ‘It was my father-in-law’s,’ he said. ‘Of blessed memory. The Talmud enjoins that if a man lacks a garment he should be given one.’ He seemed to be breaking up in a quiet way.

  ‘How much for the hat?’

  ‘I’m not a hat shop. Bring it back.’

  ‘All right. Thanks. Shalom.’

  ‘Shabat Shalom.’

  The taxi-driver gave a double-take at the hat. He said, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Can you take me to Tel Aviv?’

  ‘On Shabat? It’ll cost you a fortune – double fare both ways.’

  ‘How much?’

  He told me how much. He couldn’t take his eyes off the hat.

  I said, ‘All right. Let’s go.’

  ‘Have you got that much with you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was pretty sure I hadn’t, and also sure it would have to take care of itself. I was too exhausted even to think about it.

  He covered the forty-four miles to Tel Aviv very slowly, in an hour and a half. It wasn’t quite eight when we got there. He gave me a shake in the back seat.

  ‘Where is it you want?’ he said.

  I had a look out. We were cruising down Allenby Road, shuttered and deserted for Shabat. I said, ‘Is there a Yemeni quarter here?’

  ‘The Yemeni quarter? It’s behind Mograbi Square, the upper end of Carmel. Is that where you want?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned and got into Carmel Street.

  ‘Anywhere in particular?’

  ‘Stop at the phone box.’

  He stopped and I got the bit of paper out and went in the box. He got out of the cab, too, and planted himself solidly outside to watch his investment. The phone rang a long time before anybody answered.

  ‘Yes?’ a man said angrily.

  ‘Shoshana Almogi, please.’

  ‘The Almogis don’t use the phone Shabat,’ he said furiously. ‘Neither do we.’

  ‘It’s very urgent. Tell her Dr Laing.’

  ‘Wait!’

  She was there in about half a minute, breathless.

  She said, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me, love.’

  ‘Caspar! Where are you?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘In Jerusalem?’

  ‘In Tel Aviv.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful.’

  She didn’t know how wonderful. But this was very encouraging. We’d parted in a distinctly funny way. I’d been wonderin
g how to go about it.

  She said, ‘Exactly where are you?’

  ‘In a call box.’ I looked out of the window. ‘In Elyashiv Street.’

  ‘But we’re just around the corner!’

  ‘Shoshana, can you put me up?’

  She hesitated just a moment. ‘Yes, certainly. Of course. Stay where you are. I’ll come right down.’

  ‘Fine. And Shoshana?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bring a few quid with you.’

  9 Desolate and Faint All Day

  I am not able to rise up. [Lamentations 1.13,14]

  1

  The awfulness, the impossibility of having to explain, creased me up as I waited for her, but in fact I had to do very little. She seemed to get it in a trice, and only goggled fractionally at my hat as we walked to the flat. She said anxiously, ‘The only thing is – I didn’t realize – there are a few people here. They want to meet you, naturally.’

  I said, slowing in the street, ‘Shoshana, I can’t. I just want to go to bed. I didn’t know how the hotels would be, Friday night …’

  ‘It’s only relations, an uncle and aunt, my brother and his wife, their children. And Shimshon. Shimshon is here for the week-end. He won’t mind sleeping on the floor, just one night. And the rest will go soon. They always come for Shabat.’

  ‘But my clothes – look at me.’

  ‘So you had an accident!’

  ‘And my hat.’

  ‘The hat, the hat,’ she said rapidly. ‘What about the hat? A lot of serious people wear hats like that. Maybe English professors wear that kind of hat. Why else would you be wearing it? Nobody will even notice the hat.’

  But they did notice it. It was a crammed and misshapen hovel over a humus restaurant; and the full house in it stared with fascination at my shtreiml as I reeled in the doorway. Only her father, a rather wizened old body, greeted it with any animation, and only then because he thought I was a yeshiva-bocha, a member of a religious seminary, who had somehow wandered in off the street. This old body lived only for the synagogue, I gathered, as the confused evening developed. I seemed to be sitting over a plate of soup. Everybody seemed to be talking, of accidents, police inefficiency, the Pentateuchal portion for the week.