Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (166 page)

She opened her eyes, her breathing as laboured as his. For
a moment she looked surprised, as though she did not know
where she was. She let out a weak cry and drew back. 'Oh, damn!' she said softly. Her eyes were helpless. 'I didn't mean
for this . . .' She shook her head to clear it.

His breathing was still rapid; she could feel his pulse racing.
'It was beautiful,' he whispered. He curled a tendril of her
hair around his index finger. 'It was very, very beautiful.' He
leaned forward to kiss her lips, but she drew back.

She shook her head again. It
was
good. God, was it ever
good! The best ever. But still . . .

Still, it could not be.

'Please,' she said huskily. 'Go now. Get dressed and go!'

'Why? I love you, Daliah.'

'You . . . love me? You . . . cannot say things like that.'
Her voice trembled and she clenched her teeth. 'You can . . .
not!'

'Why can't I?' he asked gently. He drew up closer to her so
that his face was level with hers. 'If it's the truth—'

'The truth!' Her voice was a plaintive wail, and she turned
her face away as the tears rolled silently from her beautiful
eyes.

'Do you not feel the same way about me that I do about
you? Daliah . . . look at me!' When she refused, he reached
out and turned her face back to his. 'Can you look me in the
eye and tell me you do not love me back?' he whispered. 'After
what we have just done?'

She heard his voice, but it sounded far away, muffled. 'Can
you be impervious to the voice of your heart?' he was asking.
'You have every right to despise me. If I were you, I would
probably want to kill me, and with all rights.' He gave a mirth
less little laugh. 'But, Daliah'—his voice dropped to a
whisper—'despite the nightmare you have been thrust into
here, please, I beg of you: do not turn a deaf ear to your heart!'

Her eyes were like those of a somnambulist, curiously
vacant and listlessly remote.
I
am not getting through to her.
Something inside her has snapped, and she has switched off.

'I want you to listen to me, Daliah. I need for you to under
stand . . .' His heart pounded quicker inside him, but he for
ced himself to speak slowly. 'Then, afterward, when I have told you what I must, only then should you decide whether
you should still hate me or love me. Are you willing to give
me that?' He reached for her hand.

Her touch was cold and unwilling.

'It began long ago,' he started, speaking slowly and thought
fully; then, gradually, the pictures of the past became clearer. His voice began to quicken with the events, his words sketch
ing swift, lucid explanations. 'It was before either of us was
born, you see. Our grandparents knew each other, Daliah.
There was a time when they
were
friends.'

It was probably the longest monologue he had ever recited,
and certainly the most emotional and tortured. He told her
everything he knew—about his grandparents, Naemuddin al-
Ameer and his wife, nursing Schmarya Boralevi back to
health, the drain of Ein Shmona on the oasis' water supply,
resulting in the slow but steady parching of al-Najaf. He told her of what he knew about Abdullah's long-ago attack on the
kibbutz, and of the counterattack upon al-Najaf in which Iffat
had been killed. He told of Abdullah's sending him away to
England to boarding school, and then to Harvard. He tried to
explain, as forthrightly as he could, the vows which bound him
to Abdullah, and the hold his half-uncle had over him. He left nothing out—not his previous loveless marriage, nor even the
plot for vengeance he had become embroiled in. He tried
neither to soften anything nor to paint himself better than he
was. He was brutal in his frankness. He told her how Abdullah
had gone a step beyond their planned vengeance, using her
capture to increase his power. And last of all, as much as it
hurt him to say the word, he told her, too, that Abdullah
would never release her alive.

When he was finished, the silence was intense.

'Now you know everything,' he said at long last. He felt
suddenly drained and yet exhilarated. The pain of laying open
the truth was immense, and at the same time, he felt oddly at
peace for the first time in his life. It was as though he'd been
to confession and a great burden was lifted from his shoulders.

He took her hands in his, bent his head in a kind of bow, as
though her fingers were something holy, murmuring, 'Now
that you know it all, you can judge. If you still hate me . . .'
He looked pained, but shrugged. 'Well, that is up to you. But
if
you love me, as I suspect you do . .
.'He
let go of her hands
and rose to his feet.

Daliah had heard it all without moving. Her face had been
totally devoid of expression, but her mind had been a frenzy
of emotions, alternately surging with outraged anger, recoiling
in shock, and burning with pity. But outwardly, no matter what he'd told her, she hadn't shown any reaction. Not even
at the end, when he admitted that Abdullah would never
release her.

Peculiarly, at the moment her own doom didn't seem to
matter all that much to her. At any rate, there was little she
could do about it. What
did
impress her was the candour, the unvarnished truth. Slowly she looked at him and thought: No man, ever, has been this frank. It took more than mere cour
age—it took guts. How many men like that could there be?
One in a billion? Not even that?

She shut her eyes. It had been so easy to hate and want to
hurt him while he had been a stranger. Why couldn't he have
stayed one? It would have been so much simpler and less
painful. But with the unburdening of his heart and his quiet
explanations, she had felt him evolving more and more into a
real person of dimensions, one with feelings as intense as hers,
one alive with passions and tortured with recriminations—a
man teetering at the edge of two worlds.

Why couldn't he have stayed the heartless stranger he had
been? And he loves me. He told me he loves me . .
.

I
do love you!
she almost cried aloud.
I
need you and want
you!
But she bit it back. Another part of her mind, the part
dominated by common sense and learned behaviour, held her
in check. She sat rigid and silent, the conflicts roaring and
pounding and thrashing.

'Daliah . .
.'he
said softly.

And she looked up, no longer listless, but in lively con
fusion. She shook her head. 'It cannot be. Please—don't make
this any harder than it already is,' she sighed. 'Whatever we
may feel ... it doesn't matter.'

He stared at her, his bleak face ageing in front of her eyes. 'How can you say such a thing?' he whispered.

'I only know what must be and what must never be.' She
looked into his face and saw him flinch, saw the muscles below
his skin sag, and such pain came into his eyes that she felt as
if she had struck him.

Swiftly she looked away, unable to face the hurt.

'Oh, Daliah, are we forever going to be trapped in a cage
of someone else's making? Will you not wake up and joyfully
take what is rightfully ours?'

'Ours?' Despite herself, she sounded quite calm. 'We came
from opposing worlds!'

His face became earnest, and she knew that within himself
he had grappled with this problem already, and had worked it
out for himself.

But for her it was no use. She had not come to terms with it, nor did she think she ever could. The gulf between them
was too great. She was Jewish. Israeli. And whether or not
she practised her faith, and whether or not she spent time in
Israel anymore, being Israeli was still a state of mind.

'Please,'she begged softly, 'just go. For both our sakes . . .'
She swallowed and shut her eyes for an instant. 'Forget about
me and . . . and don't come back.'

'Daliah. Listen to me!' He sat on the arm of her chair and
put a hand on her shoulder.

She drew away. 'Najib—' She halted suddenly, cursing her
self for saying his first name. For even thinking of him in such
intimate terms.
What is happening to me?

He hadn't missed it. The sound of her soft voice intoning
his name—two syllables that had jumped unbidden off her
tongue—only proved to him that she felt the same way he felt,
but was trying to evade him. Her not allowing herself the
pleasures of her heart—that, more than her struggle to turn
him down, tormented him. Would she live her life like this?
Unhappy? Afraid? He couldn't bear to think that she would.

'Just listen a little longer,' he begged. 'It won't take
long . .
.'He
swallowed, then continued. 'I understand the
way you feel. Your being held hostage, no future to think of—
perhaps that is why you will not allow yourself to be happy.
But I'll get us out of this.' He lowered his voice to a forceful
whisper. 'Don't you understand? I've been working on your
escape . . .'

Despite her surge of excitement, whispers of suspicion ling
ered. She looked at him doubtfully. 'Escape?' she repeated
absently. Then, when it sank in, she breathed in sharply. She
blinked and gave her head a little shake. 'You're going to help
me to escape?'

'Yes,' he said.

She sat in perfect stillness.