by Wilbur Smith
‘Have you written a word since you took young Mars to your heart? What of the novel we discussed on this very terrace a year ago? Have your animal passions swamped all else? Has the screeching of your ovaries—’
‘Stop it, Ella!’ Debra was angry now, her cheeks flushed and her brown eyes snapping.
‘Yes! Yes!’ Ella tossed the bone aside and sucked her fingers noisily. ‘Ashamed you should be, angry with yourself—’
‘Damn you,’ Debra flared at her.
‘Damn me if you will – but you are damned yourself if you do not write! Write, woman, write!’ She sat back and the wicker chair protested at the movement of her vast body. ‘All right, now we will all go for a swim. David has not seen me in a bikini yet – much he will care for that skinny little wench when he does!’
They drove back to Jerusalem in the night, flushed with the sun, and although the Mercedes seats had not been designed for lovers, Debra managed to sit close up against him.
‘She’s right, you know,’ David broke a long contented silence. ‘You must write, Debs.’
‘Oh, I will,’ she answered lightly.
‘When?’ he persisted, and to distract him she snuggled a little closer.
‘One of these days,’ she whispered as she made her dark head comfortable on his shoulder.
‘One of these days,’ he mimicked her.
‘Don’t bug me, Morgan.’ She was already half-asleep.
‘Stop being evasive.’ He stroked her hair with his free hand. ‘And don’t go to sleep while I’m talking to you.’
‘David, my darling, we have a lifetime – and more,’ she murmured. ‘You have made me immortal. You and I shall live for a thousand years, and there will be time for everything.’
Perhaps the dark gods heard her boast, and they chuckled sardonically and nudged each other.
On Saturday Joe and Hannah came to the house on Malik Street, and after lunch they decided on a tourist excursion for David and the four of them climbed Mount Zion across the valley. They entered the labyrinth of corridors that led to David’s tomb, covered with splendid embroidered cloth and silver crowns and Torah covers. From there it was a few steps to the room of Christ’s last supper in the same building, so closely interwoven were the traditions of Judaism and Christianity in this citadel.
Afterwards they entered the old city through the Zion gate and followed the wall around to the centre of Judaism, the tall cliff of massive stone blocks, bevelled in the fashion of Herodian times, which was all that remained of the fabulous second temple of Herod, destroyed two thousand years before by the Romans.
They were searched at the gate and then joined the stream of worshippers flocking down towards the wall. At the barrier they stood for a long time in silence. David felt again the stirring of a deep race memory, a hollow feeling of the soul which longed to be filled.
The men prayed facing the wall, many of them in the long black coats of the Orthodox Jew with the ringlets dangling against their cheeks as they rocked and swayed in religious ecstasy. Within the enclosure of the right-hand side, the women seemed more reserved in their devotions.
Joe spoke at last, a little embarrassed and in a gruff tone. ‘I think I’ll just go say a sh’ma.’
‘Yes,’ Hannah agreed. ‘Are you coming with me, Debra?’
‘A moment.’ Debra turned to David, and took something from her handbag. ‘I made it for you for the wedding,’ she said. ‘But wear it now.’
It was a yarmulke, an embroidered prayer cap of black satin.
‘Go with Joe,’ she said. ‘He will show you what to do.’
The girls moved off to the women’s enclosure and David placed the cap upon his head and followed Joe down to the wall.
A shamash came to them, an old man with a long silver beard, and he helped David bind upon his right arm a tiny leather box containing a portion of the Torah.
‘So you shall lay these words upon your heart and your soul, and you shall bind them upon your right arm—’
Then he spread a tallit across David’s shoulders, a tasselled shawl of woven wool, and he led him to the wall, and he began to repeat after the shamash:
‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one—’
His voice grew surer as he remembered the words from long ago, and he looked up at the wall of massive stone blocks that towered high above him. Thousands of previous worshippers had written down their prayers on scraps of paper and wedged them into the joints between the blocks, and around him rose the plaintive voices of spoken prayer. It seemed to David that in his imagination a golden beam of prayer rose from this holy place towards the heavens.
Afterwards they left the enclosure and climbed the stairs into the Jewish quarter, and the good feeling remained with David, glowing warmly in his belly.
That evening they sat together on the terrace drinking Goldstar beer and splitting sunflower seeds for the nutty kernels, and naturally the talk turned to God and religion.
Joe said, ‘I’m an Israeli and then a Jew. First my country, and a long way behind that comes my religion.’
But David remembered the expression on his face as he prayed against the wailing wall.
The talk lasted until late, and David glimpsed the vast body of his religious heritage.
‘I would like to learn a little more about it all,’ he admitted, and Debra said nothing but when she packed for him to go on base that night she placed a copy of Herman Wouk’s This is My God on top of his clean uniforms.
He read it and when next he returned to Malik Street, he asked for more. She picked them for him, English works at first but then Hebrew, as his grip upon the language became stronger. They were not religious works only, but histories and historical novels that excited his interest in this ancient centre of civilization which for three thousand years had been a crossroads and a battleground.
He read anything and everything that she put into his case, from Josephus Flavius to Leon Uris.
This led to a desire to see and inspect the ground. It became so that much of the time that they were free together was spent in these explorations. They began with the hill-top fortress of Herod at Masada where the zealots had killed each other rather than submit to Rome, and from there they moved off the tourist beat to the lesser-known historical sites.
In those long sunlit days they might eat their basket lunch sitting on the ruins of a Roman aqueduct and watching a falcon working the thermals that rose off the floor of the desert, after they had searched the bed of a dry wadi for coins and arrowheads brought down by the last rains.
Around them rose the tall cliffs of orange and golden stone, and the light was so clean and stark that it seemed they could see for ever, and the silence so vast that they were the only living things in the world.
They were the happiest days that David had ever known, and they gave point and meaning to the weary hours of squadron standby, and when the day had ended there was always the house on Malik Street with its warmth and laughter and love.
Joe and David arranged leave of absence from the base for the wedding. It was a time of quiet, and Le Dauphin let them go without protest, for he would be a guest.
They drove up to Jerusalem the day before and were immediately conscripted to assist with the arrangements. David laboured mightily as a taxi-driver and trucker. The Mercedes transported everything from flowers to musical instruments and distant relatives.
The Brig’s garden was decorated with palm leaves and coloured bunting. In the centre stood the huppah, a canopy worked with religious symbols in blue and gold, the Star of David and the grapes and ears of wheat, the pomegranates and all the other symbols of fertility. Beneath it, the marriage ceremony would take place. Trestle tables covered with bright cloths and set with bowls of flowers and dishes of fruit were arranged beneath the olive trees. There were places for three hundred guests, an open space for the dancing, a raised timber stand hung with flags for the band.
The catering was contracted out to a
professional firm and the menu had been carefully decided upon by the chef and the women. It would have two high points – an enormous stuffed tuna, again a symbol of fertility, and a lamb dish in the bedouin style served upon enormous copper salvers.
On the Sunday of the wedding, David drove Debra to the home of the chief surgeon of Hadassah Hospital. Hannah was one of his theatre sisters and he had insisted that she use his home to prepare for the wedding. Debra was to assist her, and David left them and drove on to Ein Karem. The lane leading to the house was cordoned off and thick with Secret Service men and paratroopers.
While he watched Joe dressing, losing and finding the ring, and sweating with nerves, David lay on Joe’s bed and gave him bad advice. They could hear the guests gathering in the garden below, and David stood up and went to the window. He watched an air force colonel being carefully scrutinized and searched at the gates, but taking it all in good part.
‘They are being pretty thorough,’ David remarked.
‘Hannah has asked to have as few as possible of the guards in the garden. So they are being damned careful about who they let in.’ Joe had at last completed dressing and already he was beginning to sweat through the armpits of his uniform.
‘How do I look?’ he asked anxiously.
‘God, you handsome beast,’ David told him.
‘Piss off, Morgan,’ Joe grinned at him, crammed his cap on to his head and glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
The Chief Rabbi of the army was waiting with the Brig and the others in the Brig’s study. The Rabbi was the mild-mannered man who had personally liberated the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the war of ‘67. During the advance on Hebron, he had driven a jeep through the disintegrating Arab lines, shot open the door to the tomb with a submachine-gun and chased the Arab guards screaming over the rear wall.
Joe sat at the Brig’s desk and signed the ketubbah, the marriage contract, then the Rabbi handed him a silken cloth which Joe lifted in a formal act of acquisition to a chorus of congratulatory ‘Mazal tovs’ from the witnesses.
The bridegroom’s party trooped out into the crowded garden now to await the arrival of the bride, and she came accompanied by the chief surgeon standing in for her dead father, and a party of festively dressed women, including Debra and her mother. They all carried lighted candles.
To David, Hannah had never been particularly attractive, she was too tall and severe in body and expression; however, in her white bridal dress and veil she was transformed.
She seemed to float cloudlike upon the billowing white skirts, and her face was softened by the veil and by the inner happiness that seemed to glow through her green eyes. Red-gold hair framed her cheeks, and the freckles were disguised under make-up applied by Debra’s cunning hand. She had used it to mute the rather harsh lines of Hannah’s bony nose, and the result was that Hannah was as near to beautiful as she would ever come.
Joe, looking big and handsome in his air force tans, went forward eagerly to meet her at the gate to the garden and to lower the veil over her face in the ceremony of bedeken dikalle.
Joe moved to the chuppah canopy where the Rabbi waited with a tallit over his shoulders. After Joe the women led Hannah, each of them still carrying a burning candle, and the Rabbi chanted a blessing as the women and the bride circled Joe seven times in a magical circle which in olden times would serve to ward off evil spirits. At last bride and groom stood side by side, facing towards the site of the Temple with the guests and witness pressed closely about them and the ceremony proper began.
The Rabbi spoke the benediction over a goblet of wine from which bride and groom both drank. Then Joe turned to Hannah, her face still veiled, and he placed the plain gold ring upon her right forefinger.
‘Behold you are consecrated unto me by this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel.’
Then Joe broke the glass under his heel and the sharp crunch was a signal for an outburst of music and song and gaiety. David left Joe’s side and worked his way through the joyous crowd of guests to where Debra waited for him.
She wore a gown of yellow and she had fresh flowers in the dark sheen of her hair. David smelled their perfume as he hugged her surreptitiously about the waist and whispered in her ear, ‘You next, my beauty!’ and she whispered back, ‘Yes, please!’
Joe took Hannah on his arm, and then went to the improvised dance floor. The band began with a light bouncy tune and all the younger ones flocked to join them – while the elders spread out at the tables beneath the palm-decked trellis.
Yet amongst all the laughter and the gaiety, the uniforms added a sombre touch; almost every second man was adorned with the trappings of war, and at the garden gate and the entrance to the kitchens were uniformed paratrooper guards each with an Uzi submachine-gun slung at his shoulder. It was easy to pick out the Secret Service men. They were the ones in civilian clothes who moved without smiling, alert and vigilant, amongst the guests.
David and Debra danced together, and she was so light and warm and strong in his arms that when the band paused for breath he resented it. He led her to a quiet corner, and they stood together, discussing the other guests in the most disrespectful terms until Debra giggled at some particularly outrageous remark and struck his arm lightly.
‘You are terrible.’ She leaned against him. ‘I’m dying of thirst, won’t you get me something to drink?’
‘A glass of cold white wine?’ he suggested.
‘Lovely,’ she said, smiling up into his face. For a moment they studied each other, and suddenly David felt something dark welling up from within him, a terrible despair, a premonition of impending loss. It was a physical thing and he could feel the chill of it enclose his chest and squeeze out all the happiness and the joy.
‘What is it, David?’ Her own expression altered in sympathy with his, and she tightened her grip on his arm.
‘Nothing.’ Abruptly he pulled away from her, trying to fight off the feeling. ‘It’s nothing,’ he repeated, but it was still strong in his belly and he felt a wave of nausea from it. ‘I’ll get you the wine,’ he said and turned away.
He made his way towards the bar, pushing gently through the throng. The Brig caught his eye and smiled bleakly across the garden at him. Joe was with his father and he called to David, laughing, with one arm around his bride. Hannah had her veil pushed up and her freckles were beginning to emerge from under the make-up, glowing vividly against the snow-white lace. David waved at them but went on towards the open-air bar at the end of the garden, the mood of sadness was still on him and he didn’t want to talk to Joe now.
So he was cut off from Debra at the moment when, with a flourish, a procession of white-jacketed waiters came in through the iron gate of the garden. Each of them carried a huge copper salver from which, even in the warm sun, rose tendrils of steam, and the odour of meat and fish and spices filled the garden. There were gasps and cries of appreciation from the guests.
A way opened for them towards the high table on the raised terrace which led to the kitchen doors and the house.
The procession of waiters passed close to David, and suddenly his attention was drawn from the display of fine food to the face of the second waiter in line. He was a man of medium height and dark complexion, a mahogany face with a thickly drooping moustache.
He was sweating. That was what had drawn David’s attention, his face was shiny with sweat. Droplets clung in his moustache and slid down his cheeks. The white jacket was sodden at the armpits as he lifted the gigantic platter on high.
At the moment that he drew level with David their eyes met for an instant. David realized that the man was in the grip of some deep emotion – fear, perhaps, or exhilaration. Then the waiter seemed to become aware of David’s scrutiny and his eyes slid nervously away.
David felt suspicion begin to chill his arms as the three figures climbed the stone stairs, and filed behind the table.
The waiter glanced again at David, saw that his gaze was still locke
d upon his face, and then he said something out of the corner of his mouth to one of his companions. He also glanced at David, and caught his stare, and his expression was sufficient to send alarm flaring urgently through David’s chest and brain. Something was happening, something dangerous and ugly, he was certain of it.
Wildly he looked about for the guards. There were two of them on the terrace behind the line of waiters, and one near David beside the gate.
David shoved his way desperately towards him, mindless of the outraged comments of those in his way. He was watching the three waiters and so he saw it begin to happen.
It had obviously been carefully rehearsed, for as the three waiters placed the salvers upon the table to the laughter and applause of the guests crowded in the garden below them, so they drew back the sheets of plastic on which a thin display of food had been arranged to cover the deadly load that each copper salver carried.
The brown-faced waiter lifted a machine-pistol from under the plastic sheet, and turned swiftly to fire a traversing burst into the two paratroopers behind him at point-blank range. The clattering thunder of automatic fire was deafening in the walled garden, and the stream of bullets slashed through the bellies of the two guards like a monstrous cleaver, almost cutting them in half.
The waiter on David’s left was a wizened monkey-faced man, with bright black berries for eyes. He, too, lifted a machine pistol from his salver, and he crouched over it and fired a burst at the paratrooper by the gate.
They were going for the guards, taking them out first. The pistol shook and roared in his fists, and the bullets socked into human flesh with a rubbery thumping sound.
The guard had cleared his Uzi, and was trying to aim as a bullet hit him in the mouth and snapped his head back, his paratrooper beret spinning high into the air. The machine-gun flew from his arms as he fell, and it slid across the tiles towards David. David dropped flat below the stone steps of the terrace as the Arab gunners turned their pistols on the wedding crowd, hosing the courtyard with a triple stream of bullets, and unleashing a hurricane of screams and shouts and desperate cries to join the roar of the guns.