The Wall (17 page)

A reflected beam of sunlight, one short flash, draws my attention to a thread of water at the edge of the field. I stand and walk towards it, finding a tiny crack in the rock, from which a trickle of water is steadily flowing. A series of grooves has been chiselled into the rocky hillside, channelling this water towards a man-made pool that has been dug out of the ground. From there, a thin stream of overflow runs out and spreads into a tiny delta of trickles that descend the hillside.

The water looks almost black in this stone hollow, but when I cup my hands and lift out a handful, it comes up looking clear. I rinse my face and tip the rest over my head, the cold wetness in my hair sending a shiver of bliss down my spine. I raise a second scoop to my lips and sip. The water is sweet, cool and delicious, tasting of nothing and everything, better than any I have ever drunk. I gulp down handful after handful until my stomach feels bloated, sloshing audibly as I stand.

I feel immediately stronger, and begin to explore the fields. The six trees on the second terrace up are smaller and straighter, dotted with tiny green fruit, no bigger than a marble. These must be lemon trees. Almost like some kind of clue, the waxy leaves are the shape of ripe lemon: oval with pointed ends. Above this are two further terraces, roughly the same size, also planted with six lemon trees, but it’s clear that Leila’s father is concentrating his energies on the lowest terrace. The trees on the top terrace are all dead and leafless, with the soil given up to the encroachment of thorn bushes. The middle terrace seems semi-abandoned, the trees limp and unhappy in cracked, weedy soil.

Under a plastic tarpaulin I find a spade, a gardening fork, a few other tools I can’t identify, and a bucket. I take the bucket and set to work watering the lemon trees. I give one bucket to each tree on the lowest terrace, the parched soil sucking down the water like a hungry man would gobble a meal. By the time I’ve watered these first six trees, the pool is empty. The trickle from the spring is so feeble, it will take a long time – a day, possibly two or three – for the pool to be full again. This explains the state of the upper terraces. For each visit, it was only possible to water one terrace; with a limited number of visits, the higher trees had to go unwatered. It looks as if he gave up on the top terrace first.

I walk up to the next terrace and examine it more closely. The weeds that have grown are thorny and well rooted. Though the trees haven’t declined as badly as the ones above, it looks as if they are struggling to survive. Perhaps it’s only recently that his permits were reduced to once a month. Perhaps he’d been keeping this field going using more frequent visits, but had recently given up on it to save the trees below.

I can’t remember what he told me about the upper levels. I’m not sure if he wants me to work on this terrace as well as the one below. I don’t know if the olive trees really need no water at all. Then it strikes me that it doesn’t matter what he’s asked me to do. It doesn’t even matter what I want to do. I suddenly understand that this grove, from top to bottom, has presented itself to me as a duty. If I can look after this land, my labour and sweat might perhaps atone for what I have done. However injured he may be, however often the soldiers turn him back at the checkpoint, however cut off he is from his fields, I can keep these trees alive. I have found one small thing that I can do.

On Fridays
, school is only a half-day. Friday afternoons are the time for sport and games and visiting friends, but not for me. Not any more. Every week, now, I hurry straight to the olive grove. After school on Monday or Tuesday I sometimes sneak out there, too, just to do an hour or so of work and put on a little extra water.

From the bottom of the understairs cupboard, I have dug out and taken Liev’s winter gloves, which are made of brown leather. I’ve never actually seen him wear them, so it’s unlikely they’ll be missed. They feel big on my hands, with floppy ends at the tip of each finger, as if I need one more joint to fill them, but they’re perfect for pulling out weeds and taking on thorn bushes.

Watering the trees of the lower and middle terraces is now just the start. It’s laborious and surprisingly tiring to fill and carry the heavy bucket so many times, but once I work out a good system, with half a bucket for each tree, I can get this done reasonably fast. After emptying the pool I don’t rest, but pull on my gloves and set to work at restoring the ground of the middle terrace to look as neat and clear as the one below.

The weed that has the firmest hold is a bush with thorns as long as matchsticks. It’s impossible to touch them without gloves, and even with them you have to grip carefully, laying the thorns flat to avoid drawing blood. The tallest bushes reach my thigh and take hours to hack out of the dense, dry soil.

Today, Friday 2 June, I’m almost skipping with excitement as I hurry towards the grove. It’s the first Friday of the month, the day Leila’s father gets his pass. This is only my fifth visit to the grove, but I’ve already transformed the middle terrace, restoring it to something approaching the condition of the one below, spending more time there in three weeks than Leila’s father would be allowed in several months. And today, he’ll see for the first time what I’ve done.

As soon as I’m outside Amarias I toss aside the tennis racket I carry as a cover story and hurry on, wondering if Leila’s father has been expecting me to keep my word, wondering if he’s on his way at this moment, perhaps in line at the checkpoint, anticipating thirsty trees and cracked, dry soil. Or perhaps he could be there already, staring open-mouthed at his watered, weeded terraces.

It seems unlikely that he’d have much faith in me or my promise. Even in his most optimistic moments, he surely never hoped for anything like what he’ll find today, when he arrives and sees all the work I’ve done on his fields. My heart twinkles and aches with pride as I try to imagine his reaction.

A darker, mirroring pleasure glows inside me at the thought that Liev will never know, and how angry he’d be if he did. It gives me an extra thrill that I’ve done the work wearing his gloves, as if an enemy ghoul has taken possession of his hands and used them to perform the work of his most hated foe.

The first thing I do on arrival at the grove is always the same. I pause at the entrance, touch the wall with each hand, then cross the bottom field and kneel in front of the cistern. I cup my palms together and tip the first handful of water over my head, letting it drip wherever it wants to go, staying as still as I can, with my eyes shut, as it spills over my face, down my neck, and trickles to my torso and back. The second handful I drink, drawing the cool sweetness deep into my body, feeling it relieve the hot clench of the sun, which on the journey out often feels like a fist around a sponge, squeezing moisture from my body. No drink was ever better than this first handful from Leila’s family spring.

I sometimes think of all the people who might have drunk here. For the last few months it was perhaps only me and Leila’s father, but a hundred years, a thousand years, five thousand years, is the blink of an eye to a leaky rock. Drinking from this spring I feel myself joining a thread of people, linked together through unimaginable chasms of time, who have all knelt here, drunk here, tasted this taste, enjoyed it, been kept alive by it. If the bulldozers ever get here, that will be it. The rock will shift, the trickle will stop, the thread will snap.

I water the bottom terrace, then sit under a tree and wait, listening to the sounds of the leaves and insects. I watch a lizard squat on the side of the wall, dead still yet also tensed with life like a coiled spring. With a silent twitch, it disappears in an instant through a crack in the rocks no thicker than a key.

After a while, I walk up to examine the middle terrace. The bushes have all gone, but there’s still a dense scattering of weeds. I amble among the trees, gently touching each trunk, enjoying the roughness of the bark against the soft pads of my fingertips. This terrace looks good, but there’s still more work to do, though today I’m too excited about the arrival of Leila’s father to get on with the weeding. There’ll be plenty of time for that later, and before I can carry on, I need a little encouragement, or at least acknowledgement. I need to know I’m on the right track.

As the hours dribble slowly by, and it becomes clear that Leila’s father isn’t coming, my excitement curdles and sours. All the worst thoughts I’ve been keeping at bay over the last few weeks come creeping back.

Perhaps he’s been stopped at the checkpoint. I cling to the hope that this is the reason for his absence, but I can no longer ignore what I saw in the alley. His curled-up body. The kicks landing in frenzied pounds on his back and head. I’ve tried to make myself believe the attack ended when my view of it ended, when I jumped down into the tunnel, but I know that if it had continued, he would have come to serious harm.

This was the day of his pass, and he hasn’t come. Either the soldiers refused him at the checkpoint, or he was unable to attempt the journey. I can’t pretend to myself any more. I can no longer shut out the idea that he is still, three weeks later, too injured to come, too weak to tend his land, perhaps even still in hospital, or dead.

The acid prick of tears stings my eyeballs, but I fight them back. I will not cry. Not today. I run down to the bottom field and yank at the tarpaulin. Wedged under the handle of the spade are Liev’s gloves. I pull them on and clench my fists, feeling the dry, hot leather crackle under my joints. At my feet lies a spade and a heavy, rusted pickaxe. I haul the axe on to my shoulder and climb to the top terrace.

I haven’t been up here since my exploration on the first day. It’s narrower than the lower terraces, without any shade. Six straggly trunks sprout from the soil like tombstones, the branches blackening from the tips. A landslip has pushed out part of the perimeter wall, and the ground is strewn with stones and well-established thorn bushes. The largest one is a shoulder-high ball of dry, brown spikes, dotted with dark berries. I step towards it, swinging the axe, launching blindly into it with all my might. My first swing makes only a glancing contact with the main branch, and a clump of thorns tears a gash in my forearm, but I swing again, just as wild and hard. I slash and slash, not so much digging up the bush as smashing it to pieces. All sense of place and time, all sense of who I am and what I’m doing evaporates as I attack the bush, destroying every branch, fighting it, killing it.

Only when I find myself standing over a cracked stump, surrounded by shards of wood and thorns, do I come to my senses.

I drop the axe, toss my gloves aside and fall to the ground, flopping on to my back, looking up through the leafless branches of the dead trees at the rich blue sky, criss-crossed by two not-quite-parallel vapour trails. With the warm soil pressing into my wet back and thorny wood chips pricking at my skin, I try to imagine myself on one of those planes, flying away, shooting through the borderless sky. I imagine looking down from the aeroplane window at this faraway patch of land, seeing a boy on his back, next to a smashed-up bush, alongside a dropped axe and a pair of gloves. I imagine turning away from the window, towards a man in the next seat. He’s sipping from a heavy glass. He smiles at me. It’s my father.

Much later, I stand and look at the mess around me. I have to get home. I’m hungry, tired and in despair. I’ll clear up on my next visit.

I climb straight into
the shower before anyone can see the scratches on my arms. The steaming water drumming against my aching shoulders is hypnotically pleasurable. As the hot jets pummel my skin, I feel as if I can sense my muscles digesting the wild bout of axe-swinging, recovering and building up, readying themselves for the next test.

I stand dripping on the bathmat and examine my arms. With the dried blood washed away, the scratches aren’t too visible. I run a finger along the small, raised wounds, then give my forearm a squeeze, clenching my fist. It feels hard, and ripples under my touch as I wriggle my fingers. My hands, too, look different: wider, with a bulge at the base of my thumb and rough fingertips. In the steamed-up mirror I look at my hazy outline, still skinny, but less so – as if my hands, arms and shoulders are leading me towards a new shape.

When I come out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, Liev’s standing there in the corridor, as if he’s waiting for me.

‘I need to talk to you. Man to man,’ he says. I try not to roll my eyes, but I think my eyeballs do it anyway, on their own.

‘What?’

‘I think of you as a man now, do you realise that?’

‘I need to get dressed.’

‘Come in here. I have something important to say.’

Liev grips my arm and leads me back into the bathroom. He locks the door, puts the toilet lid down, and sits. With an open palm, he indicates that he wants me to take a seat on the edge of the bath.

The room is still steamy from the shower and I’m almost naked and this is possibly the strangest thing Liev has ever done. I stand there, looking down at him, and wonder if he’s finally lost it. I almost tell him that if he needs the toilet we can talk later, somewhere else, but I get the feeling he’d take it the wrong way. I sit, tucking the towel firmly around myself.

‘I think you know what this is about,’ he says.

The sound of the whirring fan fills the room. I have no idea what to say, but Liev doesn’t wait for a response. ‘In a word,’ he continues, ‘responsibility.’

‘OK. One word. That was easy.’ I stand and take a step to the door.

‘Sitsitsit,’ says Liev, not shouting, not even cross. ‘Please.’