A Long Way to Shiloh (8 page)

‘To me,’ Agrot said, ‘everything now looks very promising.’ We were sitting taking lemon tea
à
trois
and things had been looking increasingly promising to him all afternoon as his
return
to Barot became more imminent. ‘There are plenty of irons in the fire, and I’m sure you’ll have done wonders before I get back.’

‘About Ike Isaacs –’

‘That’s not forgotten. Leave it with me. If anything urgent comes up you can always get me on the radio-phone at Barot.’

‘Supposing I need a few extra hands?’

‘Apply to Beit Shean. Or if it’s something the military will be better at, Shoshana will arrange it.’ He’d been crossing items out of his notebook, and he now crossed the last one and shut it. ‘I think that’s everything, isn’t it?’

‘Except for my leave,’ the girl said.

‘Ah, yes. Lieutenant Almogi has leave due to her which she’d like to start taking at weekends. In general you’ll be able to let her go at mid-day on Friday and she’ll be back Sunday – Of course I hope to be back myself before then. The equipment and the papers are on her signature, and they’ll have to be turned in to the army camp. But she’ll leave you the jeep. I should try not to use it too much during the sabbath. It offends people and you don’t want to draw attention to yourself.’

I said all right, and a few minutes later was waving after him as the bus drew him in the general direction of Afula and the south.

This seemed to leave just the two of us. I looked at the girl. She looked back at me, very tuned-in.

I said, ‘What would you like to do now?’

‘If there are no further missions today –’

‘Not today.’

‘Then I’d better sign in at camp.’

‘How about having dinner with me tonight?’

‘I’m afraid it’s not possible.’

Gracious as ever; Almogi had been getting up my nose all day. I said crisply, ‘All right. Better give me your number there.’

She gave me it, and then dropped me back at the hotel.

‘What time in the morning?’ she said, as I hopped out.

‘Not too early. Ten ought to do.’

‘Ten,’ she said, and seemed to brighten up a bit. The effect was to make her mole wobble and admit a ray of sunlight. It also encouraged me to try again.

I said, ‘Lieutenant Almogi.’

‘Yes.’

‘You could, if you wished, call me Caspar.’

‘Very good.’

‘I suppose I might also call you Shoshana.’

‘If you wish.’

‘Pip-pip, then, Shoshana.’

‘Shalom,’ she said, unsmiling.

A mistake; damn her.

*

And a mistake, too, the whole caboodle, it seemed to me as I sat on the terrace, nursing a glass of arak for company, and watched night fall again. An air of melancholy hung over the lake, and it hung over me too. Without the presence of Agrot, the affair seemed suddenly to have disintegrated. The curator had never heard of any perfumeries in the area, the
topographical
people knew nothing of The Curtains, and the
geological
people said there was no marble. Agrot had supported all this very cheerfully. A perfumery called for large quantities of vials, and the curator had promised to turn up sites where these had been found. The Curtains would doubtless not be today as they were two thousand years ago: it needed a piece of research. And as for the marble, he’d never expected any. For the time being there were Sidqui’s workings to go on, and all that was required was patience and faith.

Well. I had the patience at least. With Almogi as mate it looked as if I’d be needing it.

In the dark, thoughts proliferated, with increasing gloom. How was Dr Silberstein getting on with my books in places like Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Liverpool, etc.? And how was Lady Longlegs getting on with whoever she was getting on with? And what of the intake filing in to the University of Beds?

All a long way away; a long way from the lemon-scented terrace and the darkling lake. Behind me, the diners were sharpening up again. I got up presently and joined them, gloomily.

The curator had turned up a couple of sites for investigation along the south-western shore of the lake and we buzzed along there in the beautiful morning. Thickets of pine and eucalyptus bordered the glittering water and their sharp scent filled the air. The white cupolas of Rabbi Meir’s tomb and the bath-house of the Hot Springs passed on our right, straggling lines of the devout and the rheumatic waiting to enter both establishments.

Galilee is a mournful sort of place, a late-afternoon land of hill and valley in which you expect to hear the plaintive notes of pipe and woodwind wild. There aren’t too many woodwinds wild. The Arabs in their picturesque squalor haven’t much to pipe about, and even the birds maintain a moody reserve. A sprinkling of new hotels had opened along the lake, however, and all was looking very nice today. I sang a little as the trees and hotels flashed past. Almogi remained mute, concentrating behind dark glasses on her driving.

‘Did you spend a pleasant evening?’ I asked, after a snatch of song.

‘Pardon?’

‘Did you spend a pleasant evening?’ I asked in Hebrew.

‘Very pleasant.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing special. The usual things people do off-duty.’

‘What do
you
do when you’re off-duty?’

‘Eat, read, walk, sleep.’

‘I suppose if you sign for a meal you’ve got to eat it.’

‘Of course. We can’t waste food.’

‘Quite so.’ It struck me she might have offered this
explanation
last night, but I perked up all the same. ‘What was it?’ I said.

‘What was what?’

‘Your dinner at camp last night.’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t eat there.’

She drove poker-faced on. All
right
, I said to myself. From now on we could all be official.

Menora, the promisingly-named village near the first of our sites, appeared on the right a few minutes after the Tomb of Rabbi Meir. The girl checked her dashboard, drove carefully on another three kilometres, and ran the car into the side of the road. I unfolded the plan the curator had given me. The site was on a hill above the road. We got out and climbed up.

It was a rounded hill overlooking the lake, and the ancient village had stood on the crest. A stump of wall here and there and a long narrow excavation, which revealed a pattern of crude foundations, were the only remains of it. I spent some time looking for the promised spring and finally found it: it had been capped by the Water Board and a short length of pipe carried its contents to an underground conduit.

I sat on a stump of wall and smoked a cigarette and looked around. Nothing here was as it should be, of course. According to the priest’s scroll, he’d had to climb down to the village from a height. There was little here in the way of a height; although contours of course could change. Certainly, vials had been found here in quantity – which might only mean that there had been in the village a retailer of such things. The whole area had been strong in trade, and there would have been no shortage of shops. There was a more serious objection. From the second scroll, if we’d read its curious syntax aright, there was a strong suggestion that the rock feature called The Curtains would be visible either from the village or the spring, or from some point nearby. A careful check with the map showed no possible feature of this kind.

It seemed time to put Almogi through her official paces.

I said, ‘Perhaps you’ll give me your assessment of this.’

‘I don’t think it’s right.’

‘Why not?’

She began to tell me. I’d noticed already that her Hebrew, unlike her English, was unusually harmonious. At least a tone deeper and expressed in an idiom cultivated, supple, concise and yet relaxed, it also carried undertones of something else; an
off-beat
quality I hadn’t yet fathomed. I sat on the stump and listened to it. The reasoning was not only cultivated, supple, concise, etc., but also bang-on.

‘Not bad. A reasonable analysis,’ I said, grudgingly.

She blushed.

Her pigment at least turned a shade darker, while the whites of her eyes turned a shade whiter. I regarded them with some curiosity. She put her dark glasses on.

I said in English, ‘Who did you read at university?’

‘Many people,’ she said woodenly.

‘Anything of mine?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Didn’t you do so well with me?’

‘Pardon?’

I repeated it, still in English.

She said slowly,’ I did very well with you.’

‘That’s more than I’m doing with you, isn’t it?’

‘Pardon?’

I didn’t bother answering. I just got up and started down the hill with the feeling that there were enough problems without her. Somewhat taken back, it seemed to me, she fell into step beside me.

She said, blurting it a bit, ‘I’m sorry – it’s just – I expected a different person.’

‘Too bad for you.’

‘I mean someone older –’

‘I’ll probably age a lot while I’m here.’

‘And these jokes –’

‘Too flip for you, am I?’

‘Pardon?’

I suddenly found myself pleasurably angry.

‘You work it out, love,’ I advised her warmly. ‘If you can’t understand me and my simple-minded jokes we’ll have to get someone who does. I can’t cope with your little difficulties as well as my own.’

She said in a rush and in Hebrew, ‘Oh, please – I have the greatest – I mean, it’s just I don’t know how to answer when you joke, and I don’t know when you joke. You’re so
sophisticated
and I feel you make –’

‘Eh?’ I said.

‘Fun. Of me.’

I gazed at her, much taken with this image of the
sophisticated
joker. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ I said.

‘Pardon?’

‘You’re welcome.’ I gave her a quick hug, and it seemed to do no harm so I gave her another. ‘Everything all right then, now, is it?’

‘I hope,’ she said.

‘Well, thank Christ for that,’ I said; and as far as she was concerned, for a few days at least, everything was.

It’s necessary to get the time straight now, because soon after everything went funny. I’d landed at Lod on Sunday, and it was Thursday when Agrot took off to Barot. It was the following one when I rang him and turned the job in.

He said, ‘What the hell? What’s the matter with you? What’s wrong?’

A lot of things were wrong. The main one was a growing feeling in my bones that the area was. Every minute of every day reinforced it. But there were other things. He’d phoned me a couple of times in the interim explaining why he wasn’t able to get back. The reasons were good and sufficient, but they did not make me happy. It seemed to me that if the job was urgent enough for me, then it should be urgent enough for him. Also that it was time now for him to decide whether he’d sooner ditch Himmelwasser or me. I’d woken up with the jaundiced feeling that I was being used as a witch-doctor or a water diviner, and I didn’t like it. I was pretty sure that chemical treatment of the scroll would bring up a word here or there. The cautious Himmelwasser wouldn’t undertake such
treatment
. All of a sudden it struck me that unless somebody was prepared to do
something
, I couldn’t go on. Some gesture had to be made to the boutons; their moribund condition was inducing in me a state of extreme nerviness.

None of this was easy to say and I was inhibited by the need to remember we were on an open radio-phone.

I could hear his heavy breathing at the other end. He said, ‘So what have you done so far?’

I told him a bit. I’d investigated thirteen sites. I’d examined various pillars of rock that might once have stood 600 feet. And I’d inquired zealously in Arab villages to see if the local lore provided any accounts of blue stones (the geological people not having come up with any).

‘So what is it? Have you run out of possibilities – what?’

‘No. I’m just not prepared to do any more.’

‘Come and see me.’

‘At Barot?’

‘I can’t get away. Do this for me.’

‘All right. I’ll come tomorrow.’

‘
Tov
.’ He hung up before I did.

The girl had been hovering. She said, ‘You’re going away this week-end?’

‘Yes.’ It suddenly occurred to me that what with the blaze of industry I’d overlooked the matter of her leave.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I knew there would be much to organize at the beginning.’

‘Do you want to go this week-end?’

‘Yes, I’ll go this week-end.’

‘Well, have dinner with me at the hotel tonight and tell me about it – unless you’re busy.’

‘Thank you. I’d like to,’ she said, smiling. A distinct
improvement
had come about in the social outlook of Almogi. I had carefully fostered this by preserving a certain distance during the day, and not involving her in any activities at night. I’d had my own night activities – at the dinner table of the curator at Tiberias, and at those of the C.O. in Beit Shean and the pakad in Nazareth. High Life.

‘Do you particularly want to eat in the hotel?’ she asked casually a few minutes later.

‘Not particularly. Why?’

‘Good,’ she said.

*

We ate in a clearing of eucalyptus, on the banks of the lake, a mile or so south of the tomb of Rabbi Meir. We ate fish, steaks and fruit, and then sat back with a cigarette over Turkish coffee in the glow of the charcoal tray.

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Very nice,’ I said.

So it was. Very sylvan, too, the moon glinting back off the smooth grey bark of the trees and off the pebbles on the
sloping
beach below. The barbecue and fishing kit had come out of a lockup army hut nearby. I’d noticed a couple of sleeping bags in there, too, and had begun to wonder if this girl was as
old-fashioned
as Agrot supposed.

‘I should have warned you about this,’ she said. ‘I often do it.’

‘Were you doing it the night you couldn’t dine with me?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry about that. I’d already arranged it. The food has to be eaten right away or it goes bad.’

I wondered who she’d arranged it with, and of which gender.

‘Any other girls at the camp?’ I said.

‘Four. They do clerical duties.’

‘Can they get all-night passes?’

‘Rarely, unless they’re officers. They aren’t.’

‘Easier for the men, I suppose – to stay out all night?’

‘Oh, yes. Much easier.’

I couldn’t see much of her face, which bothered me. What I could see looked merely tuned-in, which bothered me all the more. A faint suspicion developed that Almogi might be having me on.

‘Why were you so happy at not having to turn up till ten next morning?’

‘Oh, that. The fish round here are funny,’ she said, smiling. ‘They don’t bite till about nine. I like to catch them for
breakfast
.’

‘You sleep here, do you?’

‘Yes. Israelis like to sleep out when they can.’

‘I like to sleep out when I can,’ I said.

No comment.

I drew on my fag a bit and put my arm round her.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said a few moments later.

‘Why not?’

‘One thing leads to another.’

‘Why shouldn’t it?’

‘I’m engaged,’ she said.

‘That’s all right.’

‘My fiancé expects a virgin at marriage.’

This statement, as incendiary as it was unexpected, set me on with greater vigour.

‘I don’t know if you’re expert at judo,’ she said. ‘But from here I could throw you in the lake with no trouble.’

‘Why the hell should you want to?’ I said, shaken.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘How about just relaxing, then?’

‘I’m very relaxed. I don’t want to relax any more.’

‘Okay.’ I said, and after a moment took my arm away. No interloper I, except by invitation. There was also the matter of staying out of the lake. ‘What’s this about judo?’ I said.

‘Any girl of the army can take judo.’

‘Doesn’t that terrify the men of the army?’

‘Some more than others. It’s a brave army,’ she said.

I pondered this, and noticed the tuned-in look had switched on. ‘In your army, I think,’ she said, ‘the officer gives the order Advance. It’s so in every army of the world. In the army of Israel he must order Follow Me. This tells us something, I think, of the quality.’

A certain amount of this had been coming out of her of late, so no particular homily seemed intended. I looked at her curiously all the same.

‘How long have you been in Israel, Shoshana?’

‘Over fifteen years.’ She told me about her family. Her father kept a small shop in Tel Aviv, her mother had a cleaning job, an older brother worked in a road gang, and an elder sister was on a kibbutz.

‘You’re the bright one of the family, then?’

‘It isn’t brightness. Just opportunity,’ she said warmly. ‘I was the only one educated here. The others had no education.’

‘Do they look like you?’

‘There’s a family look.’

‘An Arab look?’

‘It isn’t Arab. There’s Arab blood, of course.’

‘Yes.’ Very complicating. Was it her Arab blood that made her shake her head when she meant yes and nod it when she meant no? And which of her compound linguistic signals were meant to be read – the Arab interrogatives which seemed to advise Come On, or the plain Hebrew words which said Keep Off?

‘What’s your boy-friend like?’ I said distractedly.

She dug in her shoulder bag and produced a photo. An
enormous
bruiser, somewhat dusky, smiled dourly out of it from behind a bristling moustache.

‘Is he a Yemeni, too?’

‘A Moroccan. His name is Shimshon,’ she said, smiling.

‘Samson. He’s a big fellow, isn’t he?’ I said faintly.

‘One hundred and ninety-eight centimetres.’

I bemusedly worked it out. The monster was six foot six.

‘We aren’t officially engaged,’ she said. ‘I think we will be officially engaged. He can pick me up with one hand.’

‘What else does he do? Professionally.’

‘He’s an army officer. A regular.’

‘In this area?’

‘No, no. In the south. The far south,’ she said, drawing thoughtfully on her cigarette. I looked at her. The downturned face was grave as ever, no particular emotion, sorrowful,
gladsome
or sportive crossing it.

I said, ‘And are you going to the far south for your
week-end
?’

‘Only to Ein Gedi. My sister’s on the kibbutz there. She’s married, with a baby.’

‘Ein Gedi. We can travel down together, then. Have you seen the cave there?’

‘No. They don’t know about it on the kibbutz. It was kept quite secret almost from the start.’

I gave a final glance at the man in the far south and handed him back. I said, ‘Would you like to see it?’

‘Very much,’ she said promptly.

‘All right. We’ll do it.’

‘And would
you
like – it’s more comfortable on the kibbutz than at Barot, if you’re staying overnight.’

‘Can they put me up there?’

‘I could phone my sister and find out.’

‘Well, do that. We’ll buzz off at mid-day.’

‘Good,’ she said, and looked pleased; but Shimshon and the judo both, seemed to have put the mockers on this particular idyll. We left soon after.