Judith

by Lawrence Durrell

  Aaron, his eyes still on the dancing kites, said: “Think, Daud. My grandfather paid your grandfather money for this valley. Then it was a desolate swamp and dangerous with fevers. With the money he paid, your own clan became rich in tents and camels and wives. Before they were not.” Daud nodded irritably. “All this is known and finished,” he said, and yawned. “Now we need it again. My brother has said so, it is so. The matter is finished.”

  “Then it will be war,” said Aaron. “I tell you that.”

  Daud’s eye flashed with sudden malice. “Those who want war will have war,” he said softly, between clenched teeth. “But not with you, Aaron.”

  “With me if necessary, Daud.”

  But the war was taking place in the heavens above them now, for with the old manoeuvre which had won him so many victories in the past, Aaron had allowed his kite to cross strings with the blue kite. They trembled and swayed in the guttering wind, as if they were two brilliant fighting-cocks attacking each other. “No!” cried Daud suddenly. “It shall not be!”

  Aaron’s kite managed at last to sever the string of the blue kite; it reeled and careened and began to settle, to fall trembling into the valley. A sob broke from Daud’s throat. They stared at one another grimly. Aaron dropped the stick to which his own kite was attached. It fell in the sand between them.

  “I leave you the omen, Daud,” he said, staring keenly at his childhood friend under his dark brows. “Now I will return. Goodbye.”

  Daud stared after him. His eyes were full of tears now, but they were tears of pique, of rage; so this is how his overtures of friendship had been greeted by his oldest friend!

  “You will see, then!” he called incoherently after the receding figure. “You will see, Aaron.” He was suddenly overtaken by a fit of coughing. He pressed his hands to his sides.

  Meanwhile, Aaron was grimly riding among the tents toward the head of the pass, keenly noticing everything: Two regiments deployed across the sand were practicing open-order advance by sections. As he passed the command tent, he came face-to-face with Donner, now dressed in the traditional Arab headgear of the army to which he had been accredited. It gave him an absurd fancy-dress air, that of a pirate in amateur theatricals. They stared at each other.

  “So you are here,” said Aaron softly.

  “Yes. I’m here,” retorted Donner with a scowl.

  Aaron rode on into the valley, deep in his reflections. That evening he made his report to the small council of at the kibbutz. They sat at an old deal kitchen table in one of the great underground bays, next to the shooting gallery where Anna plied her trade with the weapons they possessed. In spite of the new emplacements which they had tried to scoop out around the perimeter of the camp, the arrival of the armoured cars presented them with a new problem. Aaron smoked his pipe thoughtfully. He scribbled on a pad. “We haven’t got enough mines or enough know-how to lay more than a 20 x 20 field,” he said gloomily, “but we can easily lay a fake field carefully marked up for all to see; that might help.” Then he had a brainwave. “How about cleaning out those two Byzantine granaries? The ones we filled with stores — remember the time some children fell into them?”

  “What are you going to do — catch elephants?” Pete said.

  “They’d make a sort of anti-tank ditch.”

  “But they’d see that.”

  “Not if we cleared by night and camouflaged them with branches during the day. If your minefields were laid on either side with an enticing-looking fairway between...?”

  Everyone groaned. “How much more digging do you expect to get out of us?”

  “Think it over. They are full of stones, remember, not earth.”

  “It would take weeks.”

  “No, surely — days, perhaps.” After a long debate the idea was passed, not without reluctance, and that night they began work; that night too came the news that at long last the British had decided to seek a renewal of their Mandate from UNO. They heard the news as they were humping stones, men, women and children together; it sounded strange to hear the news in darkness, standing in the silence of the fields. Judith shivered with a new kind of anticipation and a surge of pleasure which she could not analyse.

  •

  Through his powerful glasses Towers, perched on a crag, carefully swept the perimeter of Ras Shamir as was his wont. Lately there had been signs of movement which suggested something more than the customary work upon the soil of those who planted, sowed and tilled. Those two toy-like tractors, for instance, had for the last week been ploughing out a crude lateral dune in the rich soil. “Outworks,” he said to himself, reminded of the shallow Roman barrows he had seen in England as a boy. With the first rain they would be covered in grass and weed — the raw marks of the tractors obliterated. Yet they would offer some sort of defensive position. “I wonder,” he said to himself. That evening, as he sat over the chessboard facing Daud, he said: “They are digging in at Ras Shamir.” Daud looked at him for a long time, but said nothing until he had made his move. Then he pursed his lips and said: “Aaron is no longer a friend.”

  But Towers did not notice the careful cleaning-out of the two old granaries, for by day they were covered in branches and the kibbutz carpenter had run supports across them strong enough to enable them to take the strain of human beings.

  •

  The autumn came slowly on them as they worked, with its deceptive promises of peace and plenty — grapes and figs to be gathered, oranges beginning to become plump. Now, too, came the first rains, and those sudden unpredictable thunderstorms when, for days at a time, the ragged clouds rolled across the rock escarpments, bursting impartially over the desert and the sown, the valley or the encircling dunes. Torrents burst out and poured for a few hours, the Jordan’s waters swelled. And, like heavy gunfire, the premonitory thunder rolled across the ranges.

  It was in November that the news of the UNO vote was first broadcast to the world, and there was a night of wild rejoicing in the kibbutz. They lit a bonfire for the children and everyone danced. But on the balcony above, looking down on the scene, Miss Peterson stood grave and preoccupied, gazing at the scene of happiness below. Aaron came and stood beside her, and placed his arm on her shoulder, saying: “What is it, Pete?”

  “It’s too soon for rejoicing,” she said quietly. “We shall have much to go through before we can do that.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Aaron. “One never knows. But it is glorious news; Israel can now emerge at last, and with the sanction of the civilized world... Worth dancing about, my love.” But Pete sighed and shook her head. “I fear they will contest it, the Arabs.”

  “Let them!” said Aaron gaily. The news had made him also faintly euphoric. But next day he too became grave, for there came news that the British were issuing orders to regroup and reform for evacuation. The young man who brought him the news added: “First Army group are off down to Haifa in a fortnight, and that leaves the valley undefended except for...

  “Well,” said Aaron with a sigh, “what can we do?”

  “Be on your toes.”

  “We are.”

  20

  Into Egypt

  David and Saul turned the black Buick southward in the direction of Beersheba. They must, it appeared, first consult Abdul Sami about ways and means, and his place of habitation was a somewhat flexible one, David explained to Grete as they drove, consisting of large and ornate tents pitched in the middle of the desert. The whole encampment moved with the flocks, with the seasons; and with it moved his two hundred wives and his dozens of impish children. Abdul Sami was a large, prosperous-looking Arab who had had his own teeth replaced by a gold set for sheer boredom, and also to impress clients. His smile was one of the most expensive ever seen. It glittered, all gold. Despite his predilection for the desert life, he was a heavily modernized man, and owned several frigidaires, a helicopter, three Rolls-Royces of different colours, which were always getting stuck in the sand, and a complete womens’ hairdressing estab
lishment. Here, in a long line under a marquee, one might see a dozen or so wives sitting under glittering globular dryers, while a French coiffeur walked sullenly up and down the row, and the mere concubines waited their fuzzy little turn.

  When they arrived, Sami himself was sitting in the open before his state tent, being manicured by a young girl dressed as a BEA air hostess. He was expecting them, and amiably waved his disengaged hand, ordering chairs to be brought. They sat down and fell to business. It was Abdul Sami alone who could (by what mysterious feat of prestidigitation they knew not) get them in and out of Egypt on an illegal mission. The whole business was second nature to him, as he was a hashish smuggler whose fortune depended on the expertise with which he could get his loads of contraband across the Canal to his clients in Cairo.

  “Yes,” he said in response to a question. “You could call it dangerous I suppose. My wives tend to worry unduly. But you know, so long as there is hashish in Syria and eager clients for it in Cairo, there will never be a completely sealed border. In the old days it was easier; and since the British installed their X-rays in order to peer into the intestines of my camels at the border, I have had to use less subtle methods. But partly by luck and partly by... He rubbed finger and thumb together. “I always find a hole in the net. My next trip will be in two days when there is no moon. If you wish, you will come with me. But if I am caught you will go to prison for smuggling, no? After all, fair is fair.”

  So it was that they found themselves walking along the dark banks of the invisible Canal, accompanied by four Arabs and a heavily laden mule. Abdul Sami led the van, steering in the most professional manner upon Vega, and co-ordinating bearings with the help of an oil compass. He puffed and blew and talked far too loudly in their opinion, but presumably he knew his business. Nevertheless, sounds seemed to carry very far in the still air. The noise of twigs crackling in a distant fire came clearly to them in the stillness. Presently they halted and Abdul Sami told them to sit down and wait, an order which they obeyed with relief, for walking across the soft sand had been arduous and chilly. Even the mule showed signs of intelligence and obedience, for, once divested of its load, it lay down quietly near them and did not stir. It was pitch dark. All that they could faintly discern were the stars.

  “Nothing to do but wait,” said Abdul Sami with resignation. “Pretty soon he will come.”

  “Who will come?” said the long-nosed and sardonic-voiced Saul, who fiddled nervously with a safety catch on a Luger.

  “The head of the Egyptian Customs, Elfi Bey Hamid,” said Sami in a courteous though laconic tone. “Who else? I pay him a big salary — much bigger than his official one.”

  Saul laughed. “Well, that’s good,” he said. “Tell him I’ll double that.” Abdul Sami shook his head. “He would not work for a Jew!” he said. “He is too patriotic. But I am an Arab. For me he will do anything.”

  They bantered for a while in this fashion, and suddenly David let out a sharp exclamation of surprise and awe.

  “My God, what is that?” he cried, and instinctively everyone crouched down. It looked as if a castle of fireflies was advancing towards them across the desert.

  “It’s a ship,” said Sami. “Stay still now.”

  They could not see the outlines of the vessel itself, so dark was it. Only this colony of lights which advanced upon them without noise, as if running on silent rails. Yes, now it was nearer they caught an oily glimpse of the Suez Canal water, and heard a band playing. It was going to pass so close that they could almost touch it with an outstretched hand. A wall of lights towered up over them now, and they heard a band softly playing Noel Coward’s “I’ll see you again”; figures in evening dress revolved slowly. Just above them a man and a woman stood deep in conversation at the dark rail.

  “I was not talking about love,” said the woman’s voice. “One does not talk about it, one makes it or not and that is all... When we get to India...

  The wall of soft light sloped steeply away from them now, sliding down the Canal, and they saw the faint outline of a funnel or two from which, like a parting signal, there came now a deep velvety lisp of sound — like the cry of some strange animal on the darkness. The music faded. The lights dwindled. Now they were alone again, with only the dark desert around them.

  “Ah, there he is,” said Sami; the sound of a small motor-boat engine was growing up from the eastern edge of the Canal.

  Sami went down to the river bank and shone a light twice, grunting with satisfaction as the invisible boat changed course. In it sat a solitary figure which did not answer their questions.

  “He is dumb,” said Sami. “They took his tongue.” He added the footnote carelessly as part of the general information of the day. “But he is a very good man, eh Mahmud?” He thumped the steersman on the back and paid him from a wad of notes. It took hardly five minutes to cross and they were in Egypt, walking towards the main road, where an agent was to meet them with a car. Now Sami grew even more confident of their safety, and talked and swore quite naturally as they manhauled the packages along. But they had one more fright in store for them. Suddenly, on a line of dunes ahead of them, they saw, outlined against the sky, a series of figures in silhouette. They were armed men, armed Egyptian soldiers spread out in a line, with about four metres between each one. Instinctively the Jewish party let out a gasp and fell to the ground. But Sami burst into a hoot of laughter and urged them on.

  “Come, we will speak to them,” he said, still uttering his side-splitting giggle. “They are all my friends.”

  Still puzzled and disbelieving, they followed him hesitantly towards the figures. As he reached the first one, he pushed it over on to the sand and turned his torch on it. It was a dummy made of wood, obviously manufactured for target practice. Sami beat his chest and laughed. “The nearest soldier is one mile,” he said.

  They reached the road and bade their guide a tender farewell; his rendezvous was in a different direction, and they heard his laughter dwindle in the darkness. Nor was it long before they saw the slow arc of headlights approaching along the desert road. David lit a cigarette as he stood beside the road, and soon they heard his low tones uttering the password “Galilee”. The mission had begun propitiously.

  •

  Horvatz, their host, and the chief agent of the Jews in Cairo, was a comfortable-looking middle-aged man, a stockbroker by profession, who owned a large and comfortable house in Maadi, outside Cairo. As they sped down the desert road towards the whistling sky he told them, in slow confident tones, what there was to be known about the object of their curiosity — Schiller alias Schmidt. Horvatz himself had been signalled from Jerusalem about Grete’s participation, and he showed evident relief that at least one person among them would be in a position to make a positive identification.

  “The Office is always so hasty,” he said. “I dreaded a mistake — for after all I spotted the man and signalled him myself; I wouldn’t like us to carry off an innocent Swiss.” By the time they reached the edge of the desert road and saw the minarets grow up on the pale-rinsed dawn air, Grete herself was asleep. She saw nothing of the town they crossed; indeed, when she awoke it was to find they had entered the grounds of a handsome white house set by the river. Here they were shown to quiet rooms with comfortable beds in them and allowed to lie down and sleep. It was four in the afternoon before they assembled once more to discuss the business in hand. It seemed absurd, incongruous, to be sitting on a green lawn eating cucumber sandwiches and drinking tea, and discussing something as momentous as the carrying off of a war criminal. Horvatz behaved very much like a banker conducting a board meeting, putting before them proposals which, he felt, must appeal to their intelligence... There was no need for special pleading, for histrionics; his case rested on pure logic. At least, that was what his tone of voice conveyed. His daughter, Eva, sat beside him, smoking.

  Horvatz said: “Whatever happens, we must not alarm him and we must — that is to say, you must, Miss Schiller —
see, without being seen. Am I right?” He waited for their low murmur of assent before going on. “Now, I think we can arrange for rather a good sighting for you. By a stroke of good luck, one wall of the Abu Sergeh Church abuts onto the garden of the Egyptian officers’ club.” He started sketching lightly with a fountain pen on the back of a cigarette box. “In these Coptic churches,” he explained, “the fenestration of the women’s gallery is — well, like it is in a synagogue. The women can see through a thick filigree carved wooden screen, while they themselves remain invisible. One such screen is in the side wall of the church directly over the lawn where our man lunches and dines every day. I have arranged for you, Miss Schiller, to visit the church and look through the screen. I hope you can identify him.”

  Grete swallowed. “A Coptic church?” she queried in surprise and dismay.

  “Yes,” said Horvatz. “My daughter Eva will go with you. Abu Sergeh is behind the bazaars and you will have to walk there. I’ve arranged for you to wear Arab clothes and a face veil. It would be wiser to cross the bazaar as inconspicuously as possible. You will have nothing to do, for Eva speaks perfect Arabic and a few piastres to the sacristan will admit you to the church. He knows Eva, for she has been going regularly all this last week — keeping the place warm for you, so to speak. The sacristan will only see two devout Coptic ladies of Cairo at their devotions. Indeed, the custom of private praying is not uncommon, and there may be another lady engaged in genuine prayers, in which case you will have to wait a while. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now then,” he continued, still sketching away. “As you know, here in Cairo in summer everything takes place outdoors. The Egyptian officers who mess at this club, lunch and dine out on the grass every day. Now, the object of our curiosity is always at the same table. Look!”