Some Here Among Us (27 page)

But he said nothing. They watched the fisherman in silence. Then there was a shout. The angler had hooked a little fish and up it came into the air, wriggling and dancing on the line. The boys were capering and shouting.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Chadwick.

The angler stood up and unhooked the fish. He handed it to one of the boys. They crouched on the shingle bank. After a minute or so, a curl of smoke went up.

‘They’re going to cook it!’ said Toby.

‘Waste not,’ said Chadwick.

They watched the boys.

‘That was another thing,’ said Chadwick. ‘Remember that week in Washington? Remember the kids in Gaza, blown up on their way to school? And the Israelis saying: “Oh, yeah – we did that.” I was puzzled by that. I couldn’t understand it, but I had a feeling it was important. One day I decided to go and look at the place, to examine the scene, so to speak. The Israelis don’t like it if you go poking round the territories but they can’t really stop you – “US envoy inspects conditions in refugee camps” – that sort of thing – so off I went. I even made sure I was there at the same time of day the booby trap exploded. It was like the papers said . . . tumbledown houses, sandy lanes, a few greenhouses, the sun coming up through the haze. I had an Arab driver and we found the place and I started to climb up the slope to the spot, but the slope was sandy and my soles wouldn’t grip. I’d dressed the part, you see – US diplomat, dark suit, striped tie, new shoes I’d bought in Jerusalem, black Florsheim’s, and I kept sliding down in my own footprints. My driver was cracking up. He wasn’t a bad guy I guess. But I persisted. I could hardly take my shoes off, could I? American dignity was at stake. In the end I reached the top. I looked round. Now what exactly happened here, I thought. Five kids on their way to school. I could see the Israeli army post a few hundred yards away. The bomb was activated by remote control. Someone at that post had been watching those kids through high-power binoculars. The Israeli military have
very
good optics, don’t worry about that. And when the kids reached the spot where I was standing –
bang
. Later on they held an inquiry and said, “Sorry! Big mistake. We did set off the bomb, but we thought they were terrorists threatening Jewish settlements.” And I stood there, looking round, and wondering what happened, and then I remembered the blue shirt. Five boys from the same family, the eldest thirteen, the youngest six. The youngest, Akram al-Astal, was wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt. I knew that from the papers. It was a very big bomb, you see, and it blew those kids to bits. Akram’s mother said: “We knew it was Akram only because we found scraps of his sky-blue shirt.” And that was it. That was the detail I needed. Because, you know, a six-year-old in a sky-blue shirt cannot, half an hour after sunrise, be mistaken for a terrorist on his way to kill Jews, even in Gaza. In other words, it wasn’t a tragic accident. It was deliberate. The Israelis killed the children
because
they were children.’

‘No!’ said Toby.

‘Unfortunately, I believe it’s true,’ said Chadwick.

‘But why?’ said Toby.

‘They wanted a reaction,’ said Chadwick. ‘They needed some terrorism against them. The Palestinians had been quiet for months. Everyone was talking about the peace-process and Palestinian rights and so on. Prime Minister Sharon had to re-write the script. He was on his way to the US in a few days. He wanted some violence against Israel, and fast. And so he arranged something so terrible there must be a revenge attack. And he got it, right on time. He was actually sitting in the White House when the news flash came. Fifteen Jews killed on a bus in Haifa! I remember thinking: That’s incredible timing, Ariel, how did you pull that off? I was half-joking, but in fact it
was
incredible timing. The man’s a master choreographer. And it worked. Bush fell for it hook, line and sinker: “Israel’s war on terror is America’s war on terror!” Now – five Palestinian children have been slaughtered, and fifteen Jews effectively murdered by Ariel Sharon but, you know – it was worth it. That’s the thinking. Fifteen Jews die – it’s terrible, it’s awful, but it’s a sacrifice we can bear. “In war, force and fraud are the two cardinal virtues,” said Hobbes. Fifteen dead? But America’s on our side again. Forget the peace-process. Forget the Palestinians. And that’s just what happened. Make war on terror! Attack Iraq! And as for Akram al-Astal in his sky-blue shirt – well, everyone just forgot all about him.’

Toby was silent. He felt a wave of melancholy about everything just then. Murdered children. The dance music, Jojo, himself. He turned from the gate and looked back over the field, and the great valley beyond, and the sun which was about to sink behind Mount Lebanon but which still sent its beams down through the air and lit up the slopes and the gullies of the mountain, and the flights of birds crossing far away in different directions, and something like gossamer in the air which glinted here and there as if threads of silk a hundred feet long had been inserted into the wind to reveal its hidden currents.

‘In war, force and fraud are the cardinal virtues . . .’ said Chadwick. ‘You know, if I blame anyone for this mess we’re in, it’s not Israel, or the Israel lobby, or the crazy people in the Pentagon, but a single, solitary Englishman.’

‘Who?’ said Toby.

‘Thomas Hobbes,’ said Chadwick. ‘Ever read Hobbes?’

‘No,’ said Toby.

‘You should,’ said Chadwick. ‘
The basis of all morality is fear. Man is ruled by two passions – fear of violent death, and pride. The prince – Leviathan – exists to rule over the proud
.’

‘Is that what you think?’ said Toby.

‘No, Toby,’ said Chadwick patiently. ‘It’s the exact opposite of what I think. But it’s now the philosophy of the United States government, with one modern amendment – America itself is to be Leviathan and rule the world. That’s the theory of the Pentagon gang – Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld and so on. “Nature renders man apt to invade and destroy one another . . . Man deceives himself as to the horror of his natural situation by weaving a cocoon of vain dreams about himself.” There you are. Hobbes in a nutshell.’

‘I doubt that Bush or Cheney ever heard of Hobbes,’ said Toby.

‘No, but Wolfowitz has,’ said Chadwick. ‘He was the brains behind this war. And he was a pupil of Leo Strauss, who idolised Hobbes. He must have been some guy, Strauss. In fact, he didn’t have pupils: he had
disciples
. Everyone fell for him. There are novels written about him. He’s in the latest Saul Bellow – ‘
That slight person, triply abstracted, mild goggles covering his fiery judgements
’. And now his disciples are in power, and those fiery judgements are burning up the Middle East. Tell lies. Make war on the least suspicion. Assassination. Bulldozing houses. Torture. I’m hearing bad, bad stories out of Iraq, Toby. Prisoners coming in for interrogation covered in third-degree burns. They’ve been arrested by our troops and they’re brought in tied across the hoods of Humvees like deer. The engine-heat burns them and our boys don’t care. That’s the Leviathan for you. There is no providence, there is no mercy – no idle chatter about goodness as Strauss would put it – only fear, and power. Perhaps you can understand it in Israel’s case. That country was built by people who’d been in Auschwitz. But what is terrible, what I can’t stand, is that it should be the basis of our policy as well. Force and fraud. Lies and fear. The United States of America! No! It’s not acceptable.’

‘You mean it’s all right for Israel?’ said Toby.

‘I mean it’s understandable,’ said Chadwick. ‘Those people came out of Auschwitz. Buchenwald. Treblinka. No – not out of Treblinka. No one got out of Treblinka. Treblinka wasn’t a camp. It wasn’t even a place. It was a thing – a machine. If you got near it, it killed you within two hours. There was an alley lined with flowers and fir trees, and SS men. The Jews had to walk down the alley and in the sand they could see the footprints of the people who had just gone before and who had already ceased to exist. And there was a little man squatting and laughing and dancing in front of them. “Children, children! Hurry, hurry! The water’s getting cold in the bath-house!” A million Jews died at the end of that alley. The children of Israel . . . And Israel can’t forget that. It’s not behind them – it’s still in front of them. That’s what the world looks like to them.’

‘So it is all right for them,’ said Toby.

‘No, Toby, it’s a disaster for them. They’re in a Hobbesian world and they can’t get out, but as for us . . .’

Chadwick went through the gate and Toby followed and they went down the lane a short way and watched the boys by the pond. The smoke came over to them. One of the boys ran up the slope with a piece of burnt fish in his hand. He was in a red jersey with tremendous holes at the elbows. He held out the fish. Chadwick put up his hand like a traffic cop.

‘Not for me,’ he said.

The boy had sooty black eyebrows and grimy hands. He proffered the fish to Toby, laughing.

‘Oh God, OK,’ said Toby.

He took the bit of fish and ate it. The boy then ran back down the shingle slope to the others. The fisherman had stood up and was packing up his rod. He left the dining chair where it was in the shingle and he came up to the lane. He was a handsome little man with a frown on a strongly formed brow. He nodded curtly to Chadwick and Toby and went past them through the gate. Toby and Chadwick turned back as well, and stopped again to look at the scene in front of them. The sun had just set and the valley had abruptly grown darker: far away across the plain little ruddy flames were glinting here and there, as if from the mouths of caves, and the indentations on the moors of Mount Lebanon now looked like great thumb-prints left by a potter. But the disco music was going as loudly and cheerfully as before.

‘What people forget,’ said Chadwick, ‘is just how
weird
Hobbes was. He was the original crooked man. Both his slippers, someone noted, were worn down on the
same side
. And he was fantastically timid. He admitted that himself. It was the result, he said, of his premature birth. His mother thought the Spanish were about to invade – this was six months before the Armada – and she panicked and went into labour. Hobbes was
congenitally
fearful. Hence, I suppose, his whole philosophy of fear. Isn’t that wonderful? Five hundred years ago a woman in a white ruff panics and goes into labour, and we’re still dealing with the consequences.’

Chadwick did not see Toby fall. He was looking away out over the plain where little fires were glowing red in the distance and Toby buckled and slid silently to the ground just behind him. The long day, the surprises it had held, the
arak
, and the sudden depth of the past – a woman in a white ruff! – for the first time in his life he fainted away.

‘Nor was Hobbes even a very good exegete,’ said Chadwick, his back still turned. ‘He thinks, for example, that the Leviathan in the Bible means the king
over
the proud, who will subdue the proud, but in fact it means the king
of
the proud; in other words, the
most
proud—’

He turned to Toby and then saw him on the ground. Chadwick gazed down at him. ‘He’s asleep,’ Chadwick thought, ‘how very odd,’ and without realising it he put his hand out to expostulate, unintentionally like a figure in an old painting. Jojo was running towards them. Later she thought that she had known something was going to happen before Toby fell, but she was never sure. She had been on the dance-floor and from time to time had turned to glance at Toby and Chadwick talking by the gate, then going out of sight, then coming back. She wished she could be there, but she didn’t like to go over uninvited. And then she saw Toby crumple, and she ran. Later she also said she had been frightened. In fact she was thinking: ‘This
is
the Middle East!’ She thought of the jets overhead and the boys in the trees and she had a moment of dread, absurd as it seemed, that Toby had been shot dead. And even so, at the same time, she was pleased she had an excuse to leave the prison of the dance-floor and go to Toby. She ran past Chadwick who was still standing looking down at his godson in surprise, and then Jojo was on her knees, in the grass.

‘Toby,’ she said.

Toby was quite white.

‘Where’s he gone?’ she thought. ‘Where
is
he?’

‘Toby!’ she said.

His eyes opened and then shut again. For a long moment he knew nothing – only that he had been down in the dark and that he had needed to go there for a long time, the illustrious dark. For he didn’t know anything just then – where he was at that moment, for instance, or even exactly who he was—

Then he opened his eyes again and he did know something: he was looking into the eyes of someone he loved.

He wanted to say so, to tell her that, but no words came.

And he knew that was why he had fainted – in order to wake up and see the world with an ignorant eye. He was then aware of the sea. In his mind’s eye he saw the sea – grey, flat, about thirty miles away, and also girdling the whole earth. And he saw Jojo’s eyes looking at him and he was aware of her breasts and he wanted to laugh then and felt like crying as well and no words came but then out of the slowing babble he began to hear words form. ‘So that’s all words are,’ he thought. ‘Laughing and crying, slowed right down.’