I was turning to do this when sounds outside indicated the gunman was no longer a few yards away. I heard him yelling, heard both of them yelling, quite distinctly. I peered cautiously out of the opening and went out, flat on my stomach. He was going down the ridges of the next curtain, going down fast like a man on a ladder, evidently familiar with it. He was having a shouted conversation as he did it with his colleague high on the opposite curtain. I listened.
He’d seen how I must have got into the cave. I’d got into it from the rock he was on. It needed ropes and hooks. I must have them with me. He was going down to radio to Hebron for more men, and ropes and hooks.
I edged forward and had a look down. Miles below, a little toy jeep stood on the floor of the gorge. He was scrambling rapidly down to it.
‘Tell them to bring lights!’ the other man yelled down to him.
‘Of course lights!’
Lights? I looked at my watch. Incredibly, it was three o’clock. It would be dark in less than a couple of hours. It would take them nearly that getting anybody over from Hebron. But why hadn’t they found the way I’d got up? Perhaps from the Jordanian side the ridge looked very much worse than it was. Perhaps it had always been thought to be unclimbable. Whatever the hell they thought, it looked as if I had a couple of hours’ security, at least. I went back in the cave with a certain heady relief. Two hours. Time, anyway, to have a more reasonable go at the list. Time to find some reasonable place to hide it. It suddenly seemed important to secure this first. I lit the lighter and had a look round.
There was no shortage of crevices in the place. The cave was seamed with crevices. The bats fluttered in them as I went carefully round. The difficulty was to find one that wouldn’t show disturbance to the experienced eye. I went slowly up and down the walls with the lighter. The crevices ran down to floor level. Doubtless they continued underneath. I became suddenly excited. How about tunnelling underneath the muck to find one? No disturbance would show on the surface then.
I found a promising looking crack in the wall, followed it down to floor level, and starting a couple of feet away, began excavating. Four or five inches down I turned inwards and made towards the crack, careful not to disturb the spongey surface. In no time my fingers were touching the wall. I searched carefully with them for the crevice, found it, began to scoop out the muck. A wide crevice; beautifully wide. It went in a long way, too, which was all to the good. It seemed to go in a hell of a long way. I was having to stretch full length on the floor now, my arm in almost as far as it would go. Still filled with muck; all muck. Suddenly there wasn’t any muck. There wasn’t anything. There was moving air on my fingers.
I lay stretched out on the floor and considered this. How could there be moving air in the crevice? Did the crevice continue in some way to the next cave above? Or to some unknown one below? But even if it did, why was the air moving? It wasn’t moving in this cave. It was still and dead, though outside it was blowing quite strongly. It suddenly struck me it was blowing quite strongly against my fingers, too. I thought, Oh, Jesus Christ, and pulled my arm out, and with mild hysteria began using both hands to dig like a dog. It didn’t take five minutes to see it was no crevice but a sizeable hole in the wall. At the other side of it was the gorge.
I had a quick cigarette to steady my nerves, and while I was smoking it, worked on, enlarging the hole. I had to use my penknife to chip out the hard compacted stuff underneath. Here was very ancient muck indeed. Davidian, possibly Abrahamic. Certainly it had been here when the man had popped in with his scroll; no sign of the hole would have been visible then. Millennial ages of bats had fouled it, sealing it up entirely.
There was no need to dig far into the lowest reaches. I made an opening about eighteen inches and stuck my head out. Dizzyingly far below was the front end of the jeep. I could suddenly pick out the minute figure of the man who’d gone down standing there. He seemed to be smoking a cigarette. Just as I looked he gazed casually up and away, and began strolling up and down.
My heart was bumping erratically. Just below me, below and to the right, I’d spotted something else. It was a knob of rock, one of the steps of the ‘staircase’. The rest passed at an angle. This one projected laterally across the rock face. It projected to a point only a yard to the right of the hole. It was, however, five yards below. If I could only get at it, I could get to the staircase, to the ridge, and right down, unobserved …
I knew I couldn’t. My heart failed me as I looked at it. There was no way of doing it, anyway. I couldn’t lower myself to it. There’d still be a gap nearly ten feet. I couldn’t drop to it. It was a yard to one side. I couldn’t jump to it: it was suicidal. It needed a rope. I could perhaps make a rope, of trousers, shirt, belt, and secure it to something in the cave, and lower myself on that. Perhaps I could. I’d been up to any number of boy scout feats of late. I knew I wasn’t going to. The thing was a piece of breath-taking lunacy. There was a much better than even chance of killing myself here, and for what? To spare myself trouble with the Jordanian authorities? To win a bit of glory with the scroll? To ensure that Israel got it instead of Jordan? Who cared who got it, so long as somebody did? Anyway, with the jeep sitting below, the thing wasn’t feasible. It wasn’t feasible during daylight at all. And even to think of it in darkness was such a mind-reeling absurdity that I pulled my head in again, palpitating.
I crouched there for a moment and then shambled to the front and had a look out. The other fellow was still on the rock platform of the opposite curtain. He’d made himself comfortable there and was having a leisurely cigarette as he lay, legs crossed and back to the rock, taking in the late afternoon sun. He saw me, but didn’t bother picking up his gun. He was simply keeping an eye on the front door. He knew there was no other way out.
I went back in and sat on the floor and had another cigarette myself. I didn’t look at the scroll. I didn’t even think about it. What I was thinking about precluded thinking about anything else. I just sat and dragged hungrily on the cigarette, palpitating.
2
The reinforcements from Hebron turned up in a couple of jeeps around half past four. I remained inside the entrance and heard them. In the sunset the jumbled peaks of Judea had turned to coppery cinders. I couldn’t see the man who still remained on the opposite curtain, but could hear him well enough. He was carrying on an interested conversation with the men below, to ensure they not only had lights to illuminate the scaleable rock, but one for him on a long lead so that he could keep me under observation. They apparently had it, and started up with it.
I withdrew into the cave and hopped about, shivering. With evening the air had turned brisk, and I was hopping about in my shoes, socks and underpants. The rest of my clothes were tied together in a bulky and dangerous-looking rope, at present fixed to a spur of rock at the bottom of the back exit. The only other article I carried was the scroll, now strapped to my chest with the adhesive tape the doctor had given me in Jerusalem.
My teeth chattered in short rhythmic spasms as I sprang about. It would almost be better to be getting on with it than to hang about here. But I hung on a bit longer. The sun was setting fast; but it was setting against my back exit, at the moment beaming in through it like a blood-tinted searchlight. Anyone chancing to look up from below might see the fluttering rope and the figure dangling from it, like some maniac taking the short route from the eighty-eighth floor.
In the front the peaks were already turning a plummy maroon. Energetic cries came from the men climbing up with equipment. I scurried from one exit to the other, teeth horribly a-chatter, trying to gauge whether it was dark enough. Below in the gorge it was grey-purple dusk. As I looked down, through the back exit, the headlights sprang suddenly to life on the jeep, and the thing moved. It turned round in a couple of sharp movements like some ray-eyed insect and went back the way it had come, no doubt to add more candlepower to the scene at the front. At the same moment, the entrance of the cave lit up with a pale milky luminescence.
The lamp in position on the opposite curtain: not long before they’d be climbing round. Now, then.
With the strangest sensation of watching the thing happen to someone else, I went numbly into the routine. I gave a series of strong tugs on the rope to see it was thoroughly fixed. I tugged sideways, downwards, jerked the thing from side to side. Then I hung on to it and went backwards out of the window, kneeling, feet first. I got one foot out and then the other, and lay over on my stomach and wriggled the rest out, till I was on my elbows; and then slowly eased off them, too.
I went down the rope hand over hand, feet walking down the rock, till I’d come almost to the end of it; then I let my feet down and dangled.
My teeth had stopped chattering now, and I wasn’t shivering any more. With the weirdest sensation of normality, I hung from my familiar trousers over the gorge, and felt sideways with my foot for the step. The step wasn’t there. Not far enough over.
I came up a bit on the rope, got my feet on the rock and walked myself farther over to the left. It was a long way over, farther than the yard I’d estimated. I could just feel it, feel the beginning of it with my toe. I let myself down on the rope again, got my foot flat on it, tried to get the other one on, couldn’t, was suddenly swinging on the rope, both feet away, swinging nightmarishly on a pendulum, knees barking on the rock, hearing the hideous creaking of the belt above, and a peculiar stretching sound from the shirt next in the line to it.
Still now. No floundering. No further strain on the rope. Just hang. The pendulum came to rest. I hung. Shoulders, arms, wrists, ached as I hung. Sweat trickled into my eyes. What, in God’s name, now? Hanging, I tried to work it out.
I could very carefully get one foot up on the rock. I could very carefully walk myself over and make another try for the step. If no good, back up the rope as soon as possible, while arms still capable.
Very carefully, I got the foot up. Very carefully I walked myself to the left, felt with the left foot for the step, and found it. Then the right foot, agonizingly careful. My arms seemed practically out of their sockets, fully extended and straining on the rope. Just as I got both feet on, perched at an angle and ready to swing if I lost the foothold again, I heard the shirt slowly rip.
Wordless prayers at once went up. There wouldn’t be any swinging now. There wouldn’t be any climbing back up, either. One way or another, I’d be going down.
With mindless horror, teetering at an angle of forty-five degrees with my hands grasping my trouser turn-ups and my feet just on the step, I saw the sequence of operations. I was going to have to throw myself to the left. One enormous heave on the rope, and with its last bit of goodness working for me I’d be over there, to land on my stomach. It wouldn’t do the scrolls a lot of good if it worked. It would do me so much less if it didn’t that there was really no thinking about it. I simply did it.
With a single grunt and a disc-slipping heave, I pushed off from the rope, lurched over, and turned in to the step. I didn’t roll, trip, slide, bounce, judder, ricochet or do anything else Charleyish. I simply landed, flat on my stomach, with a dismal crackling from the scroll on my chest, and lay there, horribly winded. I lay for several minutes till the night air on my underclothed torso awoke a realization of the position. We weren’t home yet. We were simply alive. Any minute now someone would enter the cave and find my trousers, belt and shirt (an Israeli shirt, acquired in Tiberias), and realize not only how I’d got out, but where I’d be heading. This was an evil turn-up. I’d planned to unhitch the clothes. They were fluttering now out of reach. The thing to do now was to try and get down before they got up.
I picked myself up on the step and got moving. The passage from the bottom step back to the ledge, after all my qualms, was no more difficult than it had been getting up, and in no time I was shuffling briskly down, the thing such a piece of cake after my ordeal on the rope that I wondered why the hell it had given me any bad moments during the ascent.
Shouting had been going on from above as the men flung hooks, but nobody seemed to have entered the cave yet. I climbed down from the crags, moved cautiously up the inlet and peered out. The three jeeps were in a semi-circle, nosing in to the front of the Curtain, headlights on and motors running to provide the power for the lights that were beamed up on the rock. Two men were standing gaping up at the operations. I bent low and nipped across to the other side of the gorge, made the opposite inlet and paused there a moment, looking up.
They’d got one hook attached. A man was swinging on the rope now, pulling himself up on to the lip of the curtain. In minutes he’d be calling down. No time for me to run for the border. The jeeps would get there before me; at an obvious advantage on the plateau. What I’d better do was get off the plateau; down the cliffs to sea level where my slight start would be of some use.
The inlet was a cleft in the gorge, open on both sides. I went haring down it, came out on to the plateau and made off to the east towards the cliffs. I ran till I was out of breath, and just as I slowed down, heard a tumult start up behind me, and took off again. It was dark, very dark, and in the maze of rock very easy to run round in a circle to where I’d started. I found a wadi bed and ran beside it: the wadi was bound to lead to the cliffs. And presently it did. It was half past six by the dim figures on my watch-face as I came out to the Dead Sea. Across the gap, slightly darker than the dark sky, the Mountains of Moab crouched.
I went down the cliffs via the wadi bed, on my backside. My legs were already badly scratched and bruised, and my behind was soon worse. But the journey was enlivened by noisy goings-on on the plateau. Distant cries had been audible, and before I hit the bottom a burst of firing broke out. God knew what flights of fancy were being indulged, or what poor bastards were getting it in the neck. They were liable to be Beduin bastards, of course. It suddenly struck me there might be some here, along the shore, offshoots of the Ta’amireh. And that a stranger dressed mainly in a valuable scroll would appear a veritable gift from Allah.
I came out on to the dark shore and looked very carefully around. Away over to the right, in the direction of the border, something was gleaming. It might be phosphorescent rock. Or it might not. My own underpants were glimmering in the dark. I took them off and shoved them under a rock. It was warm down here, a sulphurous closeness in the air. The border, slanting sharply up to the sea, couldn’t be more than a kilometre away. A dangerous kilometre. All manner of authorities might have been alerted on the jeep radios by this time. It was nearly a couple of hours since the Israeli spy had made his escape. Crossing the border was not going to be such a piece of cake, apart from the Beduin-type hazards of getting to it.
I was looking at the sea when this thought occurred, and I started walking down to it. I’d certainly never be better dressed for it than now. The salt flats on the way down, crisp and sun-cracked on the surface, gave underfoot and I was soon clumping leadenly with my shoes covered in the underlying black bitumen. I kicked them off. I picked the adhesive tape off my chest as I walked, and re-applied it with the scrolls to the more familiar position on top of my head. While I was doing it, my socks got sucked off too, so that by the time I entered the water I was clothed only in the holy tongue. Let it be unto me as a shield, I thought, and kicked off.
3
The water was warm and greasy, with the consistency of blood and the sea-bed was a sediment of thick slime; both so peculiarly repellent I nearly got out again. This wouldn’t do, of course. It had to be borne. I’d seen the patients lolling in it at the health station of Ein Bokek farther down the coast. But nobody forced them to swim a couple of miles in it at Ein Bokek. It looked to me now that I’d have to swim at least that. The border wasn’t discernible, and Ein Gedi was three kilometres past it. There was no way of gauging distance here. Until I saw the lights of the kibbutz it wouldn’t be safe to come out.
Some of the water had splashed in my face at the first kick and I could taste it on my lips, bitter rather than salt, a flat acrid bitterness; manganese an
d potash. Trying to swim in it was like striking out in a vat of treacle; dark chemical treacle. The stuff was so uncannily buoyant that at waist level it was a major job even to touch bottom: you simply bobbed up like a cork. Swimming on your front simply gave you a crick in the neck and a sensation of doing press-ups. I turned on my back.
This was definitely better. It wasn’t swimming. It was more in the nature of punting, but it certainly got you along. Restful, too, after the exertion, if the stuff didn’t also have the effect of seeking out every scratch and abrasion on the body. My behind came practically on fire suddenly; arms and legs meticulously flayed. I punted on, hissing with the maddening irritation, eyes on the beach. The little gleam had come closer. I could suddenly identify it as a fire, a tiny fire smouldering, occasionally flickering with flame.
I stopped, sitting in the water, and peered at it Nobody seemed to be at it, nothing at all near it; but the Beduin tents were black, black as the night: somebody had lit the fire.
I swore softly to myself, wriggling with the exquisite agony. Nothing to be done about it. There was certainly no getting out here. I’d have to put up with it. Maybe it would ease off when it had done its worst. I lay back and punted a bit farther out, watching the fire. Nothing moved; not a soul to be seen. But were eyes now curiously regarding me? I punted far enough out to be lost in the darkness and then turned parallel with the beach again. Could somebody be keeping pace with me there in the darkness?
I concentrated on making no disturbance, pushing very slowly, legs kept effortfully under. The fire passed. The exquisite agony passed slowly with it, leaving just an overall rawness. I punted slowly on. When you came to think of it, it was more like riding a bicycle, slowly, backwards. The stars came out. I lay back, and watched them, and rode the bicycle backwards, through the warm sulphurous night.
A Long Way to Shiloh Page 22