A Long Way to Shiloh (19 page)

I woke at three, much refreshed, and ate a small meal assembled by Shoshana, and then went in search of Agrot. He was lying under a blanket with his boots on, hands locked behind his head and eyes screwed up watching a column of smoke rising from the cigarette in his mouth. I sat in a chair and lit one of his cigarettes and waited for him to speak.

He didn’t say anything till he finished his cigarette, then he leaned over and stubbed it out and said conversationally, ‘So what do you propose doing now?’

‘Going back to Hatseva.’

‘Not by air. The pilot couldn’t get back before Shabat, and there’s no urgency.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll take a jeep.’

‘Yes. There’s nothing at Hatseva, you know.’

It seemed unnecessary to remind him that there wasn’t
anything
here, either. I said, ‘It’s a hunch, to be pursued.’

‘You still want to do it, despite my views?’

He’d told me his views yesterday. They were: (a) that in all recorded history Hatseva had never been anything other than a military fort and a staging post and that nobody in his right mind would consider growing flowers there or starting a
perfumery
; (b) that it was in the centre of a plain and there could be no question of the priest having to make a descent to get at it; and (c) that at the period in question it had been in Edomite (i.e. thieving neighbour) hands and therefore unthinkable as a hiding place for the Menorah. He’d told me all this in a quite jovial way as though correcting some well-intentioned child. He’d had his own (as yet unexploded) hopes then, of course.

He didn’t have them now, and he was nowhere near so jovial, so I told him my views. These were: (
a
) that although Hatseva might not itself be the ‘watering place’ referred to, it seemed to me to be in the right area; (
b
) that blue marble was present in the area in quantities that made a thorough examination feasible; and (
c
) the ‘watering place’ might prove to be one of the ancient springs of the Negev that had become lost and were only now being rediscovered, together with their related
industries
.

He closed his eyes while I talked, and didn’t open them when I’d finished. I said, ‘Have you any other line we might pursue?’

‘No,’ he said, sighing. ‘I haven’t. I couldn’t argue with you if you said you wanted to go home now.’

‘I haven’t said that.’

‘At least we know the Arabs are no wiser than we are.’

‘I never supposed they were.’

‘I did. That’s why I brought you in. It seemed urgent at the time. Now, of course, it isn’t.’

‘Are you saying you want me to go?’

‘It’s a matter of priorities. For me, Barot is now the main priority. You will have others yourself in England.’

‘You hired me for a specific period. The period doesn’t come to an end for two weeks.’

‘There would be no quarrel about the fee,’ he said.

I was suddenly bloody angry.

I said, ‘Stick the fee. And try and open your eyes while you do it. If you want me to stop work here, say so.’

He opened his eyes and gazed at me mildly. ‘Don’t get so excited,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe that bothered you. What do you suppose is going to happen in two weeks? What should happen? You told me you’re not a wizard or a water-diviner. It needs work – months, perhaps years, of study and
exploration
. A single setback doesn’t mean we have to fly like
madmen
looking here, there. It’s in the north – I’m sorry, that’s my conviction at the moment. I believe the scroll means what it says. Perhaps I’m wrong. We’ll see. But the single reason you’ve adduced – the one phrase of text that I believe you’ve
imperfectly
understood – this doesn’t convince me otherwise. Maybe there are some contradictions we’ve overlooked. Maybe we’ll find other things in the text. Maybe the Jordanians with their better text will find them first. But this is a matter of time. For the moment, there’s no urgency. This is all I’m saying. I myself, when I’ve interrogated the prisoners, will go to Barot. But if you want to go to Hatseva – go.’

And half an hour later I did.

*

We were past Peta Tiqvah and circuiting Tel Aviv,
headlights
on and wipers clicking, before I ventured a remark. I said hoarsely, ‘Can we get a cup of coffee anywhere?’

‘It’s Shabat already. The cafés are shut.’

‘What about an hotel?’

‘I don’t know. But if we’re going into town we might as well go home.’

‘All right, forget it.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘We’ll
go
to an hotel, then.’

‘I said forget it.’

‘It was only a suggestion.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I’m out of sorts.’

‘You shouldn’t drink so much.’

‘It isn’t that.’

‘What is it?’

‘Isn’t this bloody rain ever going to stop?’ I said.

Round about Lod I suddenly remembered I hadn’t asked her if she wanted week-end leave.

‘Never mind.’

‘Was there anything you’d planned?’

‘Nothing really.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

I put the interior light on and looked at her.

‘You’re very uncommunicative.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to talk.’

I put the light off again.

By Beersheba my mouth was so like an old Arab latrine we had to stop. She found an hotel she knew and the proprietor mingled us among his sabbath guests. It was nearly nine before we were out, and still raining. A fair number of
sabbath-breakers
had been keeping us company on the road, hurrying to week-end haunts, but in the desert we were alone. The rain blasted monotonously on the windscreen and drummed on the canvas roof as we bored through the miles of darkness. The lights of Dimona came and went.

She said, ‘Have you thought what you’ll do in Hatseva in the rain?’

‘No.’

‘It will give you time to think.’

‘I don’t want to think.’

‘What do you want to do?

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well. There won’t be a lot else.’

True. Damnably true. There would also be the bible fanatic and opportunity for hours and hours of chat. I said, ‘How long do you think the rain will go on?’

‘Who knows? It’s very unusual. The papers are saying how unusual it is. Everybody’s remarking on it.’

I remarked on it.

‘You shouldn’t swear so much,’ she said. ‘You need a rest.’

‘Yes.’

‘It isn’t raining at Eilat,’ she said.

She said it after a small pause, and another one followed it. I put the light on and looked at her.

‘What about Eilat?’ I said.

‘It’s on the Gulf, on the Red Sea.’

‘So?’

‘It’s just a place where it’s not raining.’

‘How far is it?’

‘From Hatseva a hundred and fifty kilometres.’

‘Would there be enough petrol to get there?’

‘Oh, yes. There are four cans in the back.’

H’m. I said, ‘What’s it like there?’

‘I found an old leaflet in the car, which reminded me. It’s under the seat,’ she said.

I put a hand under and found it. It was the Eilat Tourist office’s leaflet, and not all that old. It had been issued by a travel office in Tiberias. It had been issued, according to the date stamp, that very day. I assimilated this slowly, and also the information contained in the leaflet.

‘It sounds a bit lively for my state of health.’

‘Oh, it isn’t so lively. People go to bed early in Eilat.’

‘Do they?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said.

I looked at her again. The small neat head was facing front, serenely watching the headlamps dip and roll through the
rain-laced
desert. I put the light off again.

‘Quite early,’ she said thoughtfully, in the darkness.

*

We got there well after midnight.

She was quite right about Eilat.

We stayed till Monday and then the wireless said the weather had changed in the north, so after lunch we went. We slept on the beach in the morning. We’d been sleeping on the beach every morning. With bedtime at half past nine, there’d been a lot of sleep to make up for.

*

We got there about five. A journey through the Negev inspires a mood of contemplation at any time, but this time as we passed through one stark and tawny wilderness after another, contemplation had curdled into inspissated gloom. As the familiar outlines of Zin hove into view, my weighed-down spirits sank quite suddenly like a stone.

There was a lot of it! A lot of emptiness, of vast tragical nothingness, utterly dead, no vitality in it whatever; an
oppressive
sense of all passion having been spent a long time ago; of momentous things in the history of the planet having
happened
here; things that had drained it, de-energized it, left it for dead, to wheel round through all eternity, out of bounds to the human race.

Agrot was right. Who would have grown a flower here, who have started a perfumery? As well run a dancing school in a graveyard or a circus in a plague town. It was inappropriate. It was not right. It was all bloody wrong.

I thought
Oh
Jesus
Christ
, scalp crawling, toes curling, teeth nibbling frenziedly as sinking suspicion became solid
conviction
. How had I ever come to conceive it, this monstrosity of an idea? No wonder Agrot had hardly troubled to listen. No wonder he’d sooner I went home and stopped bothering him. It had been a mistake. The flaming boutons had flamed in error. I’d pressed them too hard and they’d come across with the symptoms instead of the goods, like some phantom pregnancy. And yet…And yet…The south. It was in the south. I knew it, instinctively, beyond knowledge … I had to get at the text again. I had a feverish urge to get at it now, instantly. Where had I gone wrong? The reasoning was right. The marble. The reversal of north to south. The necessity of finding a ‘watering place’ at the stated distance. At what point had I launched off into the high blue lunacy that had brought me here? There would be a clue in the text. There must be a clue there. Instinct couldn’t have let me down so badly. But Agrot had studied the text, had studied it endlessly, taking the words apart and
dusting
them over and putting them together again, without
finding
anything…

All right, this immediate area was wrong. Maps, then. The largest scale of map, to trace the smallest ditch of wadi to its tiniest possible source. A watering place, however long lost, there
had
to be; somewhere in a line sixty-five miles from
Jerusalem
. Away from this immediate doom-like area; to the west perhaps, or the east. Isolate the first. Isolate all possible places where it might have been. Maps.

Away on the horizon the scruffy little fuzz of eucalyptus grew larger.

‘Hatseva,’ the girl said.

At eleven o’clock, eyes sore and back aching, I was still bent over ruler and protractors when a knock on the door announced the C.O. He’d been dodging about since dinner, lying in wait for a promised chat about his bibles. I’d had to pass his room door (companionably left open for me) on the way to the toilet, the first time with a jolly nod, and the second with pensive face downturned in cloudy abstraction.

‘Come, Professor! You’ve worked enough. It’s time for a drink now.’

‘A drink? Good. I could do with one. What time is it? Good heavens!’ I cried with well-simulated astonishment ‘Eleven o’clock! But I’ve got to be in bed.’

‘In bed?’ he said, jaw dropping. ‘But my collection. I’ve got it all set out for you.’

‘The collection!’ I cried, clapping a hand to my forehead. ‘And I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds! I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to steal twenty minutes!’

‘Twenty minutes?’ he said, crestfallen. ‘What can be
discussed
in twenty minutes? Still, come on,’ he said, hurriedly, seeing even these twenty minutes rapidly vanishing. ‘They’re here. See.’

They were on his bed, together with a set of dealers’
certificates
and pedigrees of ownership. He began handing them over with gloomy haste, anxious that none should be
overlooked
, while I downed a couple of Stocks and made
appropriate
exclamations. It was a valuable collection, a very valuable one indeed to find at an army camp.

‘Where else should I keep them?’ he said. ‘I’m a bachelor. I love to have them near me. See this Yacov ben Manasseh, Troyes.’

‘Magnificent. A beautiful black letter.’

‘Undated but fully attested. Here is Magnus’s appraisal.’

‘No doubt about it, then. Well,’ I said, looking at my watch, ‘very regretfully I have to –’

‘Take something with you. Examine it in bed. Here,’ he said hastily. ‘A Johannes Schleef.’

‘Oh, I’d be afraid to –’

‘Please. I’d value your comments. And the Thomas Skelton. You’ll find a minute.’

‘Well, thanks,’ I said, and got out of the room, and into my own, and locked it.

A minute later he was there again, tapping.

‘Excuse me, the ben Manasseh. I can’t see it.’

‘Oh, yes. Sorry. I took it in error.’

‘Keep it, keep it. You’ll find a minute.’

‘Oh, really, I –’

‘Good night, good night.’

‘Good night.’

I waited till the sounds from his own room had died down, and then put out the room light and continued with the
desk-lamp
. I kept at it for another hour, till I could hardly see, then I sat back and smoked a cigarette and brooded over what I’d done. They were photo-copies of hand-drawn military maps, very large scale, 1 in 30,000, a couple of inches to the mile. I’d sat under the desk-lamp and wandered over every foot of the way, climbing the lines of altitude, peering over Slopes – Cliffs into Gullies, Dry Wadis, Boulder-Strewn Gulches, by way of Second-Class, All-Weather, or merely Dry-Weather Roads. I’d filled a couple of pages with co-ordinates and notes. I felt flat as a bloody pancake.

I stubbed the cigarette out and sat for a few minutes longer, at a low ebb. All this to be covered in two weeks, in less than two weeks, in ten days now. It wasn’t on, of course, unless some fluke drew me to the lucky spot right off. Well. Flukes had happened before.

I got up and put the bed lamp on and the desk lamp off and undressed and crawled in. I wasn’t going to sleep for a bit, eyes hot and jumping, mind still travelling over the dotted lines of the wadis. I lit another cigarette, but almost immediately put it out again, mouth foul. What was needed was a drink to relax me; but no drink here. I picked up the Johannes Schleef from the bedside chair instead.

Almost at once the lovely thing began to work its wonders, the very paper calming to the touch. BIBLIA SACRA.
Johannes
Schleef, Mainz, 1594. A Vulgate, of course, the Latin periods as emollient to the mind as wine to the palate. I browsed through it.
Canticum
Canticorum.
Liber
Threnorum.
Prophetae
Posteriores.
Prophetae
Priores.
Already the dotted lines were dissolving, the all-weather roads and dry wadis floating away to hell and beyond. I began to leaf through.
Jehosuah,
Judicum,
Regum
… The pages rolled like the sea, snug, slightly crimped in their binding, the black beetles of German type clear as the day Johannes Schleef impressed them. Imperceptibly the
timeless
Latin structures built their sheepcotes around the brain, the weary mind relaxed within and sleep began to drone through the words.

‘….
donec
venundaretur
caput
asini
octoginta
argenteis,
et
quarta
pars
cabi
stercoris
columbarum
quinque
argenteis
…’

I was nodding. Everybody was nodding. Johannes Schleef had nodded. I came awake slightly and read the words again. How many argenteis?
Quinque
. Five. H’m. An interesting slip. The Johannes Schleef was worth more than its proud owner realized. The figure should be ten, of course, not five. The original was quite clear on the point. Beside me on the chair sat the original, in ben Manasseh’s solid Hebrew. I picked it up and riffled through. Where were we?
Regum
. Kings.
M’lachim
. I found the passage.

‘
Verovah
ha-kav
hir’yonim
ba-hamishah
khasef
…’

How
many
khasef?
Hamishah?
Five? This was ridiculous! Both of them wrong. I’d read the passage only recently. The price should be ten pieces of silver, surely, not five. Where had I read it? In the English version – the King James’s Authorized Version. This version, fortunately, was also to hand. I picked up Thomas Skelton. Second Book of Kings, Chapter 6, verse 25.

‘And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver,
and
the
fourth
part
of
a
cab
of
dove
’
s
dung
for
five
pieces
of
silver
.’

Eh?

I read it again.
Five
pieces of silver? Five, not ten for a
quarter
of dove’s dung.

I’d been smoking too much. My heart was going too fast and my lungs not fast enough. I felt mildly suffocated. Lights flashed Everything flashed, including that area around the boutons.

I thought
Oh
,
for
God
’
s
sake
,
no.
Not
that
again
. But it was. A blinding electrical storm of bouton activity.

I’d suddenly recalled that I was remembering the passage not from the Authorized Version, but from the priest’s. I had the clearest possible image of it, and of the umpteen
transcriptions
: all agreeing on this point at least. ‘That former occasion when even birds’ dung had to be sold for food – at ten pieces a quarter, as history records,’ the priest had written.

What former occasion? And where did history record it? History, as the priest understood it, had recorded it in
Sefer
M
’
lachim
, the Book of Kings; and it had recorded the price as five pieces of silver, not ten. Could he have made an
accidental
slip? Could a man so pedantic in every other detail have erred on this one – on a point of holy scripture? Or were there other occasions when birds’ dung had been sold as food?

I was out of bed, in the passage, barefoot, hammering on his door.

‘What? What is it?’

He had his teeth out. He was wearing pyjama bottoms and an old beat-up slipover, upper arms surprisingly hairy and muscular.

‘Have you got a Concordance?’

‘A what?’

‘A Concordance – to check a biblical reference.’

‘Ah. Yes. Of course.’

He’d got an old Cruden, second edition, 1761; sound as a bell. I tore frenziedly into it

‘What is it? What are you looking for?’

‘Dung.’

‘What?’

I’d found it.
Any
thing
that
is
nauseous,
or
loathsome
. Cow’s. Men’s … My eye raced sickly down the column. Dove’s:
the
fourth part of a
cab
of
dove
’
s
d.
2
Kings 6
.
25
Any others? No others. Plenty of other dung. No other birds’ dung. In the thirty-nine books and nearly one million words of the Hebrew bible, only one reference to it. And he’d used it, precisely, critically, ingeniously. I knew him, damn it; I
knew
him; hadn’t been wrong.

‘Please. What’s wrong? A misquotation?’

I was grinning up at him, grinning like a slice of melon on a plate, unable to stop, limp, utterly spent, gloriously spent. His eyes were searching mine like a couple of brandy balls.

‘What is it? What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

‘He’s doubled up. He’s doubled his figures?’

‘He has? Who has? What are you talking about?’

‘A crafty old bastard. A lovely old cunning old bastard.’

‘Look. You’d better have a drink. Here. Hold the bottle. I’ll get a glass.’

‘Never mind about the glass,’ I said.

It was already going down; down throat, down chin, down either side of the great slice of melon that wouldn’t, that couldn’t, unsmile itself.