And here is once again one of these cases where Bureau IV—B—4 only served as a kind of through station, transit station.
This must have been written in the report received from the Government General area, because. Because otherwise….
Presently, a slight hesitation occurred in the court proceedings, a pause. The counsel for the defence looked courteously towards the tribunal, as if waiting for one of the judges to say something, while they, in turn, were under the impression that he was about to speak. The presiding judge then leaned forward and accompanied a sign for the lawyer to proceed with a brief remark in German. ‘What are we waiting for?’ duly said the English translator’s voice in the earphones.
— What are we waiting for?
— We’re waiting for Godot.
The lawyer proceeded: ‘I come now to the matter of the Jewess Cozzi —’
It was a highly religious trial.
To get through by telephone that night to Harry Clegg’s hotel in Rome, she had kept Michael waiting for three-quarters of an hour; they were to go out to dine at a restaurant. When she had finally made her telephone call she found him sitting in the courtyard with Saul Ephraim, a white-haired wiry woman who turned out to be a reporter from an Israeli newspaper, and a young rabbi who was learned in the archaeology of the Dead Sea, and who had met Harry Clegg several times. When he had introduced Barbara, Michael said to her:
‘You won’t be going to Jordan?’
‘Yes, of course, it’s all settled.’
‘What did he think of the idea?’
‘Well, he knows I want to go, and he sees the point.’
The lady-reporter, whom Saul had brought to interview Michael, said she did not see the point, that a Jew should go to an enemy country in a time of war, ‘and we have war conditions right now. ‘She had come to Palestine in 1936, she said, and did not know of any time when there was not a state of war with the Arabs. The young rabbi said he understood she was a Catholic with a British passport; there would be no difficulty for her in Jordan. Saul and Michael had obviously spoken generally about her position, while she had been upstairs getting through to Harry in Rome The young rabbi said, if she was going on a pilgrimage, she was going on a pilgrimage.
Which was exactly what she had said to Harry a few moments before when eventually she had got through to the Regina Carlton Hotel in Rome and he had been brought to the telephone. He said he was in the middle of dining with a priest.
‘What priest?’
‘How do I know what priest? They all look the same.’
She did not pursue the question, but inquired how things were going.
He said, ‘Fine. But I don’t think you’ll get your divorce.’
She said, ‘I’m not trying to get a divorce, I’m not even married. It’s you who are divorced and you are trying to get the Church to recognize it by annulling the marriage, Harry dear.’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean. It’s you that wants it, that’s what I mean.’
She said, ‘I’m going to marry you anyway.’
He said, ‘I know.’
She said, ‘How do you know?’
He said, ‘Well, I just haven’t any doubt about it. It’s all on the cards.’
She started to laugh, but stopped as soon as possible because of the expense by long-distance telephone. It was so much part of his charm that he was very innocent of chivalrous attitudes, and also, she thought it funny that he had reached this conclusion by ordinary deduction while she, delicate probing instrument that she was, had taken a year to settle on the fact that she would marry him anyway. She said, ‘The only point at issue is whether we can get married by the Church or not, that’s to say, whether I’m going to have peace of mind for the rest of my life or not.’
He said, ‘I know. That’s what I’m here for. I went along at nine this morning and I’ve got another appointment for tomorrow.’
‘Along where?’
‘To see the officials, they’re all high-up priests, at the Congregation of the Rota. It’s all supposed to be secret, I had to give a promise of secrecy about the proceedings. But they were very civil. “If you please, Signor”, and “Yes, Signor”. They asked a lot of questions. I was there for four hours, then a break, then two hours, and I’ve got to go tomorrow.’
‘I think you’re a hero.’
‘Oh, it’s all right. This priest I’m dining with says there isn’t a hope. He’s got nothing to do with it, of course, only he’s a Belgian staying at this hotel, and I’ve been telling him the case. He says there’s always a long delay unless the divorced party was a Catholic married in another Church. That’s the only occasion when it’s easy.’
She said, ‘I know.’
He said, ‘Did you get a message from me through Fonteyn at the American Embassy in Amman?’
She said, ‘Yes, but I’m going on to Jordan next week. I’m going to finish the pilgrimage’
He said, ‘I don’t think you should. Something might blow up and you might find yourself in trouble.’
She said, ‘Not with a British passport’; and she said, ‘I went to the Eichmann trial today. Michael’s here, and —’
He said, ‘Michael who?’
She said, ‘My cousin Michael. He’s here as a consultant on the Eichmann trial. It made me feel rather sick. It’s more appalling than you’d think from the papers.’
‘It makes everyone sick. Why don’t you go home to England?’
‘I’ve given up my job. I’ll tell you about it when I see you, maybe in Jordan.’
‘I’ll be here for two or three weeks. I’ve got some manuscript business to see to besides this game at the Rota.’
‘Well, I’m going to Jordan, anyway. I feel a terrible need to do something positive, and if I’m going on a pilgrimage, I’m going on a pilgrimage, that’s all.’
‘I understand,’ he said, ‘only take care of yourself, dear girl.’
‘I’ll write to you tonight,’ she said.
Saul Ephraim’s friend, the young rabbi, said, ‘If she’s going on a pilgrimage, she’s going on a pilgrimage,’ and shrugged, smiling. She smiled back. The woman reporter’s hand rested on a notebook that lay on the broad wicker arm of her chair. She said to Michael, Will you see something of our country? Israel is for a Jew also the Holy Land, not only for your Catholic cousin.’
It passed through Barbara’s mind that this woman might put something about herself in the report she was going to write about Michael. She did not want to be reported in the Israeli newspaper as Aaronson’s convert cousin who was about to continue her pilgrimage in Jordan, but she was too much afraid of the woman’s irony to mention this thought, and felt certain that any plea for discretion would be distorted to mean that she was denying her Jewish relations. Instead, she asked the rabbi about his work in archaeology, and they talked of Harry, and the rabbi said he had got much private information from Harry about the latest discoveries at Qumran; all the men on the spot, he said, were against the conditions of keeping the Jewish scholars out of it, but they were forced to comply.
The woman reporter departed and they went to eat. Barbara walked along with Saul Ephraim, and said, ‘I hope that reporter won’t mention me in connexion with Michael. There’s no point in drawing attention to oneself.’
‘Why should she mention you?’ Saul said. ‘Your cousin is the one she’s interested in, he’s the legal expert, and they make some. thing of his visit in the paper in connexion with the trial. But who are you, Miss Vaughan?’
Barbara was silent. She had always found Saul Ephraim to be friendly and confiding, but there was now a touch of quick-fire resentment in his tone and words. She could not find the cause of it, and in the newly bright morning at the Potter’s Field, remembering what Saul had said, she rested in that question, as she knew one must from time to time.
She was getting hungry as the noises of the morning clattered in the house below; she could hear evidence of the chickens being fed in the old monk’s
house at the other end of the yard. She remembered the names of the various sorts of food on the menu the last night she had spent in Israel with Michael and Saul Ephraim. Since her arrival in Jordan less than two days ago she had eaten very little, largely because of the heat and the exhaustion of the preceding days. Her only square meal had been lunch on Saturday at the Cartwrights, those desperately well-meaning friends of Freddy Hamilton. She felt very hungry and wondered if they would be offered anything to eat before departing from this hideout. Philaphel, Chamous, Eggplant in Sesame-seed, Sanich, Kebab, Pila, Tchina: the names had been spelt in Roman characters beside the Hebrew on the menu of the last meal she had eaten in Israel, with Saul Ephraim and Michael. Michael was to leave the next day, by night flight. She left before him; he had accompanied her, with Saul, as far as the Israeli customs shed at the Mandelbaum Gate. Saul said to her, Touch the Wailing Wall on my behalf, and pray. When we have cause for grief, all the old people among us, and many of the young, grieve still more that we are separated from our Wall of Lamentation.’ She had been to touch the Wailing Wall on Saturday morning, alone. The nuns in the convent had been surprised when she asked to be directed there; they had said that the guides were not often requested to take pilgrims to this spot, but it was a holy place of the Jews and very ancient, and they would send a guide with her who would show her the Wall and the Temple area as well. Barbara declined a guide, and she said she would see everything properly next week. She had walked round the Old City, alone, marking her route by a tourist map she had obtained from a travel agent, Ramdez, recommended by various Catholic organizations in England as well as by the convent nuns here, as specializing in the provision of guides who understood the Christian shrines. A woman at the Ramdez office had given her the map, and she had wandered round alone, planning a more detailed tour of the city; she had touched the Wailing Wall for Saul Ephraim and prayed, but unobtrusively, since she was watched by numerous loafing Arabs, in various stages of under-nourishment and deformity, who slowly sidled up, apparently to befriend her; she had been at first astonished that their attitude was not at all hostile, considering their plight; then she had felt very nervous. So she had wandered up the Via Dolorosa until she had come to Alexandros’s shop, and there had been found by Freddy, in the process of buying a silver fish on a chain … by Freddy and the Cartwrights, and had been taken home by them, and entertained, and finally been involved in that absurd discussion in the garden. The change in Freddy, she thought, occurred there in the garden, where that clump of wild flowers, carefully tended wild flowers, frequently watered wild flowers … she couldn’t remember what they had been exactly but she had recognized them at the time; silvery dimpled leaves, Umbilicus rupestris, Navelwort; spiky pink flowers, Epilobium angustifolium of the Willow-herb family…. Freddy said, ‘Jewish blood or Gentile blood, the point is it’s hers.’ That was unexpected. Barbara had thought she had recognized his type, and knew him through and through; but no. And the Cartwrights, who had known him far longer, were decidedly taken aback. ‘Your trouble,’ Freddy had said to them, ‘is this. You blow neither cold nor hot. How does it go, Miss Vaughan? — Neither hot nor cold. You’re lukewarm. Lukewarm, and I will vomit thee out of my mouth.’ It had been an embarrassing moment, exhilarating moment, an interesting … Barbara closed her eyes against the glare of the risen sun beating its rays through the window. I’d better get up now and see what’s going on, she thought. Freddy’s trouble was obviously his overbearing mother. It was truly exhilarating to think of his tearing up all those letters and putting them down Alexandros’s lavatory, it made one’s pulse beat cheers for Freddy. His mother, like Ricky. Only Ricky had not got away with much from her, not for long, Ricky hadn’t. Freddy had been weak for too long. ‘Crushed,’ Ruth Gardnor had said, crossing her long brown legs under the open beach-robe at Tiberias on the shores of Galilee. ‘Poor Freddy has let himself be crushed by her.’ She might, herself, have been crushed by Ricky, If she had not had so much of her stubborn, hard-riding father in her. Ricky was altogether too masculine and too feminine; both and neither. Poor Ricky would have had her letter by now. Barbara opened her eyes and moved to rise from the camp-bed….
She woke, blinking in the sunlight, upon the opening of the attic door and moved to rise from the bed. A young woman, a blue-eyed, brown-skinned Israeli, came in. No, a blue-eyed Arab woman, dressed in a blue shirt and dark skirt, like a lithe Israeli. She was carrying, over her arms, some cloth that looked like the black-out curtains of war-time England. ‘What’s the time?’ Barbara said, feeling down into the pocket of her dressing-gown for her watch, and realizing, then, that the young woman was Suzi Ramdez.
Suzi dumped the black stuff and sat down on the horse-hair arm-chair. ‘Ten minutes past ten o’clock. We arrive at the Holy Sepulchre at eleven for the Mass. That’s first stop. Have you slept good? It’s a beautiful day, Barbara. I call you Kyra for the rest of the trip. Kyra is my servant. I have sent her to far away on request from Alexandros. In Jerusalem everyone knows Kyra, but we will not remain long in Jerusalem. I do this by arrangement with Alexandros because I am the secret lover of Alexandros. Alexandros is beautiful. My father would kill me to know what we do, but Alexandros would prevent him. Do you bring news of my brother Abdul? You must wear these black clothes. I laugh to think of this, like playing children again. You are my Arab servantwoman and you must be deaf and dumb so you do not understand Arabic when addressed to you by Arabs. Kyra is not deaf and dumb, but I say to any friend that speaks to you, stand back, she has a sick throat and chest. I shall be always by your side. Alexandros has given all this instruction, to be at your side. So don’t speak. What is the news from my brother? Are you the lover of Freddy? He is quite a great beauty, a real man. I read many English books, German and Italian also, poetry particular in original language. Alexandros has told my mother I am the most intelligent woman in the kingdom of Jordan; he does not say to my mother the best lover, believe me. I am too proud to marry a man of fine family but no education. Freddy has said to tell you we are under starter’s orders: what is starter’s orders?’
‘A horse-racing term,’ Barbara said. ‘He means —’
‘Yes, true, I guess the meaning, we better hurry up.’
‘I’m only half-awake,’ said Barbara, getting off the bed and tentatively picking at the black garments she was to wear. ‘But I’ll thank you properly when I wake up properly.’
‘You are to be a deaf-mute anyway,’ Suzi said. ‘So we talk only in private, in the car, where your lips are hid by the thick veil. You must be like a servant to me always, you keep by me like you are humble. I hope your God Jesus is going to be sincerely grateful for all this business you make for him. We pack your silken dressing-gown in the bag and you put all of your clothes off first. It is right to be an Arab woman from the body outwards. This next to your skin is from Kyra’s box, almost new from the shop but these two garments, the robe and the veil, are dusty like for Kyra. Myself, I would not wear those black, old-fashioned clothes If I had a million pounds for it, but you are a woman of great principle and determination like Alexandros has informed me at our meeting in the night.’
Barbara dressed in the black garments, which were bulky but not as heavy as they seemed. ‘How can I see through the black veil?’ she said.
‘In the light, the veil will be no more difficult than sun-glasses, you will discover.’
‘I ought to have practised the part.’ The robe was shorter than that worn by most Arab women of the old order. ‘Is it too short?’
‘It is like a poor woman’s dress that has been given it for alms by another lady. It’s all right.’
‘I caught a glimpse of your brother the other day, but I didn’t see him to speak to,’ Barbara said, feeling that this was the first piece of information due.
‘That is a pity.’
‘I didn’t know I was going to see you.’
‘Abdul must have been doubtful of you for a friend, or else he would have sent a message. He
’s my favourite man like Alexandros. Now you come and eat some breakfast. Do you drink coffee or tea? There is tea but it is not like English tea. Come, follow.’
There was no time to think; it was a lovely feeling, and Barbara was still sleepy. It was good to be in other peoples’ hands, responsible only for a plausible wearing of the servant’s clothes and the representation of a deaf-mute Arab woman. There was no time, as she dressed up and listened to Suzi’s talk, to reflect on what was happening; her thoughts merely fluttered, like a moth approaching and retreating from a bright light. She dipped her face-cloth below the surface of the dusty film on the water in the jug and wiped it over her face, saying, ‘Where can I wash?’ while Suzi said, There’s a water-tap downstairs, but you get a big wash tonight, it’s not so necessary for you to be washed just now.’ And indeed, it mattered so little that Barbara laughed with Suzi, put on the veil, then lift ed it so that she could see better to pack the dressing-gown in her suitcase.
‘Give me the passport and the money. The luggage and belongings we leave here; they are safe,’ Suzi said. ‘Freddy is ready. Come, follow.’ Suzi arranged the veil over Barbara’s eyes once more.
She was afraid to descend the dark wooden staircase with this veil covering her face, and she lifted it again as she followed Suzi downstairs. Freddy was there, drinking coffee at a table in a large whitewashed room. Before he could see her she covered her face again, to make an effect. Freddy looked up. ‘Is she coming?’ he said. Suzi’s laughter rippled; it was the laugh of a cultivated woman. Barbara thought then, it’s going to be all right, and astonished herself by her confidence in this unknown Arab girl; and it seemed the tone and quality of Suzi’s laughter was the reason.
Freddy said, ‘Oh, of course, there you are, it’s you, Barbara.’ She threw back the veil and said, ‘Does it work?’ He said, ‘You look absolutely splendid. I wish Alexandros could see you.’ He said something about her being hot in all that stuff. Suzi began explaining that it was quite light in weight, and moreover very well designed for hot weather as the folds could billow and catch the breeze: ‘The Arab women of this old type are no fools.’