Come To The War (15 page)

^{'
You
must put something to the stew,' she said brightly, kneeling up and leaving me lying. 'Your nose, for a beginning. It is like something, some vegetable, but I do not know the name.'}

^{'You're the sort who throws anything in a stew,' I said. She kissed my nose. Then my neck. 'That tastes good also. It will be a good stew,' she said.}

^{She moved down my body, pushing her impudent tongue into my navel and decided it was some Hebrew vegetable, something I had never heard about, and then lower, muttering about egg-plant and carrot and finally lying with her face buried between my legs and laughing.}

^{'It is no good,' I said. 'Not kosher.'}

^{She raised herself on her hands. She looked magnificent like that, her face open towards me, which was the best way to see her, her shoulders and arms shaped and brown, her trunk arched away and her breasts hanging full.}

^{'The game is finished,' she announced. 'I must go to my correct room. It is too early to make stew.' She raised herself to the side of the bed and then bent and kissed me primly. I touched her, one final contact, and then she dressed and went.}

^{It was ten past five and I meant to sleep until breakfast, but I only drifted into uncomfortable shallows, and then was awakened by further noise from the beach. There was, finally, a round of excited shouting from below the window. At first I imagined that the Italian and his Abyssinians had gathered around another netful of fish and I thought that I was glad I was returning to the eating of the northern cities that day. I was still conscious of the smell and the feel of Shoshana, moving about the expansive and untidy bed feeling for her in half-sleep and then knowing that she had gone.}

^{The noise outside did not diminish, but seemed to spread itself. I rose tiredJy from the bed and rubbing at my sore eyes went to the window and looked out upon the exquisite morning. The land on either side was sitting calmly upon the warm sea, the air clear blue and settled, and the small currents of the gulf nudging waves upon the beach in front of the hotel.}

^{There were rounds of people standing before the hotel and on the beach, everyone talking. I had a momentary thought that they were the musicians and others waiting for the bus for the airstrip and that I had overslept and would have to hurry. Then I saw Metzer and he saw me at the same moment, pulling himself away from the group in which he had been talking.}

^{'War!' He called the word up to me, hoarsely, half whispering, as though he were giving news of someone's death. 'The war has commenced, Mr Hollings.'}

^{I did the instinctive thing. I looked immediately across the radiant sea towards Jordan, towards Akaba, clear in the early sun. Perhaps I expected to see great guns protruding from it or to see black fires burning there. But it was not changed. I could see the cars moving in its streets. Then I turned to Eilat, on our side (I thought: 'our' side) and looked for the motor torpedo boats but I could not see them.}

^{Instead, sitting in quiet brightness on the shingled edge of the sea was a blue and white amphibian, a lumbering water-vehicle which, Zoo Baby had told me, was used to give tourists a ride in the desert and then a trip in the bay. I was to see more of that.}

^{Zoo Baby was standing with his meaty hands on his hips talking with Dov. I had a thought about Zoo Baby now having to get into his tight uniform.}

^{Dov had said that usually the Israeli reserve troops were
only permitted to retain their boots in normal times, receiving their uniforms when they were called to service. But the musicians, who often travelled, kept their soldier uniforms with them.}

^{The men gathered below began looking towards the Jordan border, where we had been at the wire the day before, and calling in Hebrew to each other. A moving bloom of dust was travelling towards us. From my place on the balcony I could see it was a single vehicle coming along the road between the shore and the desert. I went back into the room and got into the shower. I talked to myself.}

^{'You've got to get out of here, son. And very smartly. Dinner in London tonight, I fancy.'}

^{There was no point, of course, in me, a neutral, becoming involved in any shooting between two alien enemies. 'Yids versus Wogs,' I recited quietly as I towelled my legs. 'Wogs and Yids. Imagine being stuck here now. "Will you play for our troops, Mr Hollings ?" '}

^{Shoshana came to the door, arriving at the entrance to the bathroom briskly and with a stony face. All the softness was gone.}

^{'Did you come back for some more stew?' I tried.}

^{'We are at war.' She sounded very hard.}

^{'So I gather. Serious?'}

^{'Our Air Force has bombed many Egyptian bases,' she answered. 'We have had great success already.'}

^{'Naturally,' I said. I was still naked. I walked into the bedroom and began to dress. 'Tomorrow you will be in Amman and in Cairo.'}

^{'It is possible,' she nodded. 'Perhaps a day or so more.'}

^{I laughed directly at her. I was nervous myself and her confidence seemed preposterous. 'What will you do for the rest of the week ?' I asked.}

^{'You make too many jokes, Christopher. The war is only an hour started. You will see.'}

^{'Not if I can help it.'}

^{'You will go?'}

^{'Of course. It's not my war.' Then I added lightly: 'Some of my best friends are Arabs.'}

^{"That is not true!' She screamed it angrily.}

^{'How the hell do you know it's not true?' A sharp anger took over from my nervousness. 'I have played in Beirut and in Cairo. Why should I not have friends there ?'}

^{Her face had stiffened. 'I did not know this,' she said.}

^{'Oh come, Shoshana. You cannot expect all my concerts to be kosher.'}

^{'This is not hilarious!'
she bawled at me. She used her new words whenever she could. I had noticed before, when we were playing at making stew and I said it was not kosher, how she had iced a little. 'Why do you make these jokes about Israel?'}

^{I calmed her. I was dressed now. 'Who started it?' I asked her taking her arm. "The war, I mean, not the jokes.' Even her arm seemed to have hardened. She was wearing the khaki denims she had worn the previous day, but her shirt was clean. I looked at the shirt's fullness at her bust and imagined her breasts lying enclosed there.}

^{'The war?' she asked. 'Who started it?'}

^'Yes.'

^{'It was started many years ago, by the Arabs.'}

^{I insisted: 'Who started it
today?}

<sup>'Our aircraft are raiding the enemy because of provocation and threats. It was on
Kol Israel
- on the radio.'</sup>

^{'So
you
started it. You have struck the first blow.'}

^{'It matters nothing.' She stopped on the stairs and, suddenly full and human again, pressed herself against me. 'Just think, Christopher. We could have all of Jerusalem again. I want to see it for my newspaper.' She sounded like a selfish child coveting a toy.}

^{I kissed her. 'And you may have none of it.'}

^{She remained very tender and close to me. 'That cannot happen,' she said. 'The city will be for Israel. You see, Christopher. I am going there today. I am going there for my newspaper. It will be something for history, my Englishman, something for history.'}

^{Suddenly I felt very sorry for her. To me patriotism, when I had thought about it at all, had seemed like wearing underpants; a fact, but a properly concealed fact. I was on nodding terms with my country's requirements of her sons, but reasonably sure that I would never be equal to these requirements or even desire to be equal to them.}

^{But here was Shoshana, the warm, wet Shoshana of the night before, striding now eagerly down the stairs, her arse tight in her denim trousers, longing to be off to the war, desperate for her country, urgent to follow the call to bloodshed in the sacred city of Jerusalem. And she was going gladly as a child going to the fair.}

^{A few steps behind her I followed. Her hand trailed seeking mine, but I kept mine away. Her brown face shone like a coin, her eyes were loaded with joy, her smile was wide and happy. I felt old myself. I wanted to get to Lod, or any other airport, and get on the nearest BO AC jet heading for London. I did not want any part of Jerusalem. They could keep it. Either of them could keep it.}

^{O'Sullivan, the border guard we had met down at the barbed wire the day before the concert, had arrived in a big truck. He had made the mushrooms of dust I had watched from the balcony. The nine o'clock sun was making the first sweat run down the well-used channels of his face. The skin over his protruding cheekbones was white at the tightest spots. He was sitting crookedly at the wheel of the truck and looking out to sea as though he expected an enemy fleet or a shoal of fish.}

^{"Morning, Mister Hollings,' he said. When he said 'Mister' he said the whole word, elongated it, not making it into a polite abbreviation.}

^{'Where's the war?' I asked. I tried to be breezy. Zoo Baby and Dov and some of the others were loading suitcases into the back of the truck.}

^{'We're going in the general direction,' said O'Sullivan. He grinned and his awry teeth seemed to be hanging on to the very parapet of his gums.}

^{'It's very peaceful,' I said turning a half-circle. Down there by the beach the gulf was spread out like a beautifully worked bib, the sand and the mountains looked firm and settled and Akaba and Eilat were crouched under the sun, waiting for its full heat. The Italian fisherman and the Abyssinian boys were moving along the beach carrying nets, slowly, as they would do any other, quiet, hot morning, as though the fish could wait or they knew there were no fish swimming in that part of the sea. The amphibian squatted like a bulky toy.}

^{A skein of jet fighters, Israeli jets, suddenly exploded across the desert and then the sea, curling impudently over the Egyptian mountains far out to the west. They were low over the water when they first passed us standing before the hotel. Then they rose a little in the fine air as though they had sudden pains in their guts and then drove on until they became small as currants in the remote sky.}

^{i
Sharm el-Sheikh,'
murmured O'Sullivan. The Irish voice was careful with the Eastern vowels. 'That's where they'll be having the action, Mister Hollings. And which side will you be playin' your piana for?' I caught his eye. He had said it purposely like that - 'piana' - and he looked at me with eyes as crooked as his teeth.}

^{'I'm getting out,' I explained firmly, logically. 'I'm not playing the piana for any side, old friend. I'll be on the first seven-o-seven going towards peace and tranquillity. The first one out of Lod.'}

^{'That's if there is any Lod,' he said. The sweat from his hands had smeared about the rim of the wheel and he wiped at it with the same hands, as though it would make the surface better. 'Maybe it will be bein' bombed at this very hour, Mister Hollings. Maybe you won't get an aeroplane to your peace and tranquillity.'}

^{'I shall try,' I said. 'Is there nothing at all flying from here? From Eilat?'}

^{He made as though to crane his neck to look across the mile of red rock and sand to the airstrip. 'Well, not unless they could get that old lorry in the sky,' he said. 'There's nothing with wings though. I think maybe they cleared all the aeroplanes away so that the Arabs won't drop things on them and maybe to use it as an emergency landing place.'}

^{'Nothing there?' I said.}

^{'No. Not a thing to fly. Exceptin' a few birds of the desert.’}

^{He leaned forward towards me. The remainder of the luggage was being humped into the rear of the truck. I could see my suitcases going in. 'They're very methodical, you know,' he said. 'These Jews. They like everything to be good and businesslike, even a war.}