A Long Way to Shiloh (24 page)

We didn’t do it at Barot. We did it at the university, in the
scrollery
, the two of us, with the door locked, the following day. It took us about an hour and a half to make certain, and then we just looked at each other. Agrot turned away after a moment and took another sheet of paper and studiously made out a fair copy of one paragraph. Then he read it, very
carefully
, and pushed it over.

‘You agree?’ he said.

I read it carefully, too.

‘Yes, I agree,’ I said.

It read:

It was there at Barot. It had been there while he set up the cunning doings in Galilee, there while he interrogated the infiltrators, organized the intelligence missions, scoured far and wide. There, under his nose; more accurately, under his feet. There all the time.

We looked at each other again. Agrot’s nose seemed to have become very pinched, and his mouth to have sucked in on itself like the business end of a vacuum cleaner.

All this needed a bit of adjustment, of course.

‘One moment, to see that I have it right,’ the Minister said. There were four of us in his room, Agrot, myself and the Head of the Department. ‘You’re not able to work out the position because you don’t know whether the distance should be taken from the middle of the tel or the end, and anyway the term “a thousand cubits” only indicates a rough measurement.’

‘That’s right,’ Agrot said.

‘At the same time you believe the object is in ground at
present
being bulldozed by Mr Teitleman.’

‘No,’ Agrot said. ‘He’s already bulldozed it. That’s the whole point. He’s waiting to move in with his equipment the minute the standstill order runs out.’

‘So you’re asking for an
additional
standstill order?’

‘Yes.’

‘To excavate where?’

Agrot said heatedly, ‘As I’m trying to point out –’

The Head of the Department cut in swiftly. ‘The position, Minister, is that these pyramids –’

‘Yes. I don’t understand the pyramids. You say there aren’t any pyramids.’

‘That is so, Minister. Mr Teitleman has knocked down the pyramids. They were doubtless pyramid-shaped formations of rock. Once we find where they were, excavation can proceed very quickly. Unfortunately, we don’t have drawings of the site before it was cleared. Mr Teitleman, of course, does have –’

‘Yes. Gentlemen, I’m sorry to sound so obtuse. But would it not seem to be an idea to approach Mr Teitleman first?’

‘If Mr Teitleman knows why we want the drawings,’ Agrot said, ‘then these are the first drawings to be lost.’

There was a little pause.

‘So what do you want of me?’ the Minister said.

‘
Time
,’ the Head of Department said pleadingly. ‘Just a little time, Minister. If a point could be stretched – if the order could be extended, even for a week –’

‘How? I must give grounds. You say if grounds are stated –’

‘Minister!’ the Head of Department said intensely. ‘Don’t state the grounds! It means political trouble, of course. We know this. But we’ll
get
you the grounds – before he can make a song and dance. We have to get them. God will help us!’

‘Quite,’ the Minister said. ‘On the other hand –’

‘Minister! There is a time to take risks, for the things we believe in. Your interest in the Department –’

‘Of course,’ the Minister said. ‘Of course. What I’d like you to do is leave this with me for the moment. I want to think all round it …’

‘He’s an immensely clever man. He’ll do what he can,’ the Head of the Department said as we came out. ‘I know he will.’

‘M’hm,’ Agrot said.

I said, ‘So that’s that, is it?’

Agrot looked at me. ‘Very far from it,’ he said. ‘The bastard naturally – I am presupposing this – has got to be made to give up the drawings. The question is, how?’

*

Lorries picked the work gangs up at dusk, and we watched them piling aboard. Teitleman hadn’t been dragging his feet. The lagoon was now in full flood, and so was the mikveh. The lifts were in, the elegant flooring tiles were down in the foyer, and the enormous neon sign, its Hebrew letters stark against the unpolished marble, was in position:
Malon
Kufra
, Hotel Camphire.

Teitleman’s superintendent architect met us as we were admiring the tiles in the foyer. He shook hands without warmth.

‘You asked to see me?’

‘Wonderful progress you’re making,’ Agrot said.

‘Thank you. Can I be of some help?’

‘Mr Teitleman’s not here, I suppose, at the moment?’

‘No. He is today in his office. In Ashdod.’

‘Well,’ Agrot said more cheerfully, ‘in that case you can. We’ve lost some of our sketch plans of the old approach road to the tel. The Department would esteem it a favour if we could copy yours.’

‘Mr Teitleman, of course,’ the architect said cautiously, ‘is always happy to help the Department.’

‘We’d be very grateful.’

‘When approached.’

‘Yes. The matter is actually so trivial, I thought we could quickly –’

‘There is some question of time?’ the man said.

‘Not at all. No, no. It’s simply –’

‘Then if’s not too small for Mr Teitleman. He keeps all papers in Ashdod, at headquarters, in the drafting department.’

‘What I’d hoped,’ Agrot said, ‘is that there would be no need to bother –’

‘From where they can be removed only on his signature. He remains in Ashdod all this week.’

‘I see,’ Agrot said.

We walked thoughtfully back in the dark.

‘You know,’ he mused presently, ‘experience teaches that when such a bastard as this has you, even unknowingly, by the short and curlies, something seems to let him know. It’s a sixth sense. We are going to need all our native wits.’

I said, ‘Look, is it absolutely beyond the bounds of reason to explain – even to a man like Teitleman – the fantastic
cultural
–’

For the first time since all this started, Agrot seemed to be enjoying a good laugh. ‘Caspar,’ he said, ‘stay in good health. Also, stay always as young as you are. Teitleman, of course, is very long on culture. But we’ll see,’ he added.

We ran down first thing in the morning, and arrived early; but not too early for Ashdod. In the old city of the Philistines an enormous deep-water pool is a-building, and most of Israel’s Napoleons of industry have moved in. On all sides in the early morning sun, their cheerful hoardings flashed ambitious dreams of the future; and on all sides from the sand dunes these dreams rose chaotically to fulfilment. An entire town was going up, all at once: roads, docks, apartment blocks, shopping arcades, office towers, hospitals, schools. Among the completed
buildings
, Teitleman’s was not hard to spot. It sat commandingly on the corner of a large development – a Teitleman development as each unit made clear – itself bearing the simple but dignified legend
Beit
Teitleman
: The House of Teitleman. We shot up to the fourteenth floor by express lift.

Teitleman’s office was a big office, and there was a big desk in it in front of a big picture window. None of this seemed to interfere seriously with the smaller scale of Teitleman himself. As I’d noticed before, the little bastard dominated his
environment
to an uncanny degree, and managed to do so with the sparest of equipment. On the desk sat a single telephone, a diary and a pair of white cotton gloves. The diary was open and Teitleman was reading a scrap of paper in it as we were shown in.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I can give you three minutes. I have to go out.’

‘Well. It won’t take half that,’ Agrot said amiably. ‘We’ve simply lost some sketches down at the tel and would like to copy yours. It’s a trivial matter to bother you with –’

‘So why are you?’ Teitleman said unpleasantly.

Agrot took it in his stride. ‘We were passing,’ he said. ‘On the way to Tel Aviv. So I thought, apart from the courtesy, I would give myself the pleasure –’

‘What are the sketches?’

‘The lay of the land between the tel and the lagoon. That is, the way it used to be before you –’ Agrot said, and checked
himself
slightly. ‘Before it was cleared,’ he said.

‘All the land?’ Teitleman said, looking down. ‘I thought only the old approach road.’ He was looking down at the scrap of paper. He had a pencil beside it in the diary. He’d jotted down our inquiry. Someone had been on the blower recently. I let out my breath very slowly.

Agrot’s amiability became a shade more hard-working. ‘Well, that’s what it is, basically,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we’ll need an extra section or two here and there, I’m not sure what’s missing. We’ll work it out when we see yours.’

Teitleman pondered for a moment. ‘All right. Why not?’ he said. ‘I like to do good turns to the university. Maybe one day it will occur to some of you to reciprocate. Let me have a note saying what you want, and we’ll look it out.’

‘Today, perhaps?’ Agrot said.

Teitleman’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘There’s some hurry?’ he said.

‘Not for the information. We’re packing the papers today. We leave the tel, as you know, in three days, but the
paperwork
goes to the university this afternoon. I doubt if I’ll see it again for three months, and these things drop out of mind unless attended to at once.’

‘Not out of mine,’ Teitleman said. ‘It’s a matter of mental discipline. I can carry things in my mind for twenty years. I’m surprised you can’t.’

‘You mean it won’t be possible today?’ Agrot said, his easy manner cracking slightly.

Teitleman closed the diary with a slight snap and stood up. ‘Today not. In a few days, perhaps. When we get on the tel,’ he said. ‘We’ve got work here too, you know.’

Agrot’s eye flickered. It flickered down to the diary. The slip of paper had moved in the draught as Teitleman closed it. It was now sticking out between the pages. He swallowed slightly.

He said, ‘Yes – yes, I’ve heard of your work here. You’re doing big things, I understand.’

‘Big enough,’ Teitleman said. He picked up his gloves and moved out from behind his desk, dog-like grin showing
incipiently
.

‘To do with the harbour?’ Agrot said, his eyes heavy with longing to turn the little bastard even momentarily in that direction.

‘To do with the harbour,’ Teitleman said, indulgently. ‘So now I have to go. That’s mine out there, the ship,’ he said,
nodding
negligently to the window.

A solitary ship with a yellow funnel was clanking about some useful stationary task at the end of the mole.

‘Which ship?’ Agrot said, desperately.

‘Which ship? There’s only one ship,’ Teitleman said, and turned to assure himself of the fact. ‘That bleddy ship.’

‘With the red funnel?’ Agrot said hoarsely.

‘Red funnel?’ Teitleman said. ‘There’s something the matter with your eyes. It’s a yellow funnel – isn’t it?’ He turned a little longer.

Agrot palmed the paper. I watched him with stunned
fascination
.

‘Of course yellow. I shouldn’t know?’ Teitleman said,
turning
back. ‘The tiling cost a bleddy fortune. So. Put what you want in writing. It’s the best way.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Agrot said, his hand now snugly round a specimen of Teitleman’s very own.

We rode down the fourteen floors in silence together, and went out to the street. A limousine stood waiting there.
Teitleman
disappeared into it, without ceremony and without
good-byes
, in a flash of white gloves.

‘Well,’ Agrot said, looking after the departing car, ‘God, after all, is good. Who else could make the bastard actually write it out for us? Come on.’

We went rapidly back into Beit Teitleman.

An old clerk opened the inquiry window of the drafting office at Agrot’s first buzz.

‘Ken?’

‘I want to see some plans from Barot.’ There was a slight huskiness in Agrot’s voice. ‘I have a note from Mr Teitleman.’

The clerk looked at the note. ‘It’s not signed,’ he said.

‘Don’t you know his writing?’

‘I know his writing. It still isn’t signed. Also this is irregular. There’s a printed form for withdrawals.’

‘All right call and tell him,’ Agrot said. ‘Tell him how irregular he’s being. He was in a hurry. He’s in his sweetest mood today.’

The clerk looked at Agrot and then back at the paper. ‘You’d better come inside,’ he said.

He released the catch on the door and we went in. Several dozen men sat over drawing boards in the large room. The clerk went over to one of them with the paper. The man looked at us, rubbing his chin for a few moments, and then somewhat reluctantly picked up the phone. He looked much happier when he put it down. He came across.

‘Mr Teitleman is out,’ he said, ‘and his secretary knows nothing about this.’

‘Can’t you just show me the files?’

‘It’s a difficulty,’ the man said, cheerfully. ‘If you want, wait till he gets back. I can’t turn over plans just like that.’

Agrot’s face didn’t change much. He merely said, ‘All right. So if you wouldn’t mind apologizing for me. Explain I couldn’t wait and I’m very sorry. I know he’s been trying to get me here for two weeks now, and he’ll be upset. But of course, rules are rules, I understand.’

‘Wait. Listen a minute. What rules?’ the man said, the
cheerfulness
wiping off his face. ‘I’m simply thinking aloud. If he wants you so urgently, there’s bound to be some way we can reason this out.’

‘I’m sure. If I had the time,’ Agrot said. ‘I haven’t. I could only promise him a few minutes to look at his problems
anyway
.’

‘So give me a minute!’ the man said indignantly. ‘Who’s said anything yet? Are you saying you’d be looking at the plans here?’

‘Where else?’

‘So it’s not a withdrawal. Idiot!’ he said to the clerk. ‘There’s always a reasonable solution if people will look for it,’ he said as, in a brace of shakes, we sat round a desk. ‘So what part of the project can I show you?’

We didn’t speak much on the way back. Agrot’s face was white and strained. But just as we ran into Jerusalem, he said levelly, ‘Caspar, I have dug in many places. I have dug in mountains, in valleys, in caves in the cliff and holes in the earth. I have never in my life dug through a brand new mikveh.’

‘Do you think you’ll be going to?’

‘If necessary,’ Agrot said, ‘with my bare hands. And if need be, also through his hanging gardens, observatory, bowling alley, hydro, cinema, Turkish bath, synagogue, two ballrooms and four restaurants. But something tells me that what we need first,’ he said, turning sharply into Rabbi Kook Street, ‘is a bloody good rabbi.’