The Mandelbaum Gate (21 page)

Freddy,
then, looked at these two letters and felt, as he commonly did, that he wanted
to shove them out of sight. But as usual he decided to open them and answer
them right away so that the job would not be hanging over him. He was annoyed
with his mother for having written a second letter in one week, without waiting
for a reply to the first; he was afraid she was getting very forgetful.

Freddy
sighed. He hung his coat on a chair and sat down in his shirt sleeves, feeling
cooler and more as one getting down to business. He put on his
reading-glasses. Benny first: he smoothed the thin sheets and began reading.
The old story, only worse. He skimmed over it.

Dear Mr Freddy, the time has come at last to tell you
my Temptations are getting beyond human endurance…. Yesterday your Mother
said … and on Tuesday, do you know what she did when I went over to the chest
of drawers? She … Your mother is … I hear those Voices again in my dreams
and in the early morning … Blood … Mr Freddy and those temptations come
back to me that I told you of last month … You had better come, Mr Freddy …
Mr Desmond says to pray … I dare not tell him all my mind as he is so good …
but I have prayed … I started to speak of my fears to your sister Elsie. Rut
you know how bossy she is, she would have me in a Home, so I shut up after
that. Your Mother goads me on, she is a true friend of the
Devil…She…She…She…I am afraid … afraid… There will be Bloodshed
come out of it….

Really,
Benny is letting her imagination run wild, Freddy thought. As if the heat and
humidity of Jerusalem isn’t enough to try one’s reason, without those letters….
Elsie is probably quite right to suggest Benny’s going into a Home, but that
would leave Ma without a companion. Let them both go into a Home, Benny and Ma,
too. Ma, of course, Freddy thought, is behind all this religious excess of
Benny’s. She would goad anyone to strangle her or slit her throat, and in a way
one quite sees how poor Benny feels. Freddy, looking up from Benny’s letter to
reach out for the other one, caught a glimpse of himself, smiling, in the little
looking-glass on the dressing table. The smile disappeared. He opened his
mother’s letter.

I fear that Benny is … isn’t quite … Benny, I’m
afraid, is definitely … She has, of course, pilfered my garnet brooch again.
Three pounds were missing from my purse and nobody but Benny had access;
literally nobody. Elsie is, I’m afraid, most unsympathetic. She has a heart of
iron although I write of my own daughter. I see no alternative for you but to
come … Benny … Benny …

Freddy
took his letter-pad and wrote:

DEAR BENNY,

I have your letter and am sorry to hear you
are feeling unwell just now. I hope Mr Desmond has advised you to see the
doctor. You should tell Mr Desmond all your troubles you know, Benny, and if he
is a good man, as I know he is, he will understand. These Ministers of Religion
know that very good Christians have troubled minds from time to time.

You must bear with my mother. She is
getting old, you know, like all of us.

I am extremely occupied just now on some
important Government business, but as soon as I can get leave I shall come to
join you for a few weeks at Harrogate, and we shall have a merry time.

You know how much we all appreciate you.
You must look upon me, and upon my sisters, as your friends. We depend upon
you. Don’t let us down after all these years.

Your devoted,

FREDDY

He
wrote to his mother’s doctor:

DEAR DR ARLINGTON,

I understand — by the tone of letters
received from my mother and our old servant Miss Bennett — that the latter is
in a somewhat troubled frame of mind. I shall be grateful if you will have a
look into her general health the next time you call in to see my mother. I’m
afraid these old people are apt to let their imaginations run away with them.

You know my sisters’ addresses of course, in case anything
serious should be found wrong with Miss Bennett. But unless she is suffering
from a serious ailment, I, for one, would prefer to keep her as active as
possible. The idea of going into a ‘home’ seems to upset her; and as, of
course, she has been with our family since her girlhood, I would like her to
end her days in the comfort provided by the hotel, and with the feeling of
being useful to us, as indeed she is.

Yours sincerely,

FREDERICK HAMILTON

Next,
he wrote to his mother:

…
be
patient, dearest Ma. You
know that Benny will give you back the brooch eventually. Are you quite sure
you did not make Benny a present of this brooch? You are always so marvellous.
Remember, only a few weeks ago, there was a question of the garnet brooch. I do
not recall how it was resolved (if indeed you informed me) but you see Ma,
Benny is … You are, of
course,
Ma dearest, the only one who …

Freddy
put these letters in envelopes, one by one, and addressed and stamped them. He
then put them in his pocket. He went out for a walk intending to post them.

It was
nearly half past five, and a great sunset had begun to blaze across the hills
of Jerusalem, darkening the valley of Gehenna that ran beneath him to join the
valley of Jehosophat in the East. Freddy crossed the sandy motor track which
led to the Cartwrights’ front door and picked his way to the footpath, the
short-cut from the city, up which he had trudged on all his visits. He stood
there, on the stony path on a ridge of the Hill of Evil Counsel which rose
behind him to its summit at Haceldama, the Potter’s Field, bought, by repute,
with the unwanted blood-money of Judas and serving, throughout subsequent
generations, both the dead and the living, as a graveyard for itinerant paupers
and a hide-out for smugglers. The all-over properties and associations of this
spot were hallowed by a small, musty Greek Orthodox shrine and that ancient,
frail monk who was sublimely unaware of anything in the world around him except
his hen-coop and God; within the latter category were included all of the human
race who crossed his territory on their sightseeing tours or smuggling
business, for he seemed to look right through them into God, and treated all
accordingly with mesmerized awe, having very few words actually to say to them.
Freddy had always found this old monk extremely satisfying company. One could
talk to him without the effort of conversation; the monk would express all that
was necessary in the pose of his shrivelled body under its loose blue robe, and
in the light of his dark eyes, enormous in their deep bony sockets. Freddy had
once said, looking round him, ‘This is called the Hill of Evil Counsel but it
should be called the Hill of Good Counsel.’ Not that the monk had ever given
him any counsel, but that was how Freddy felt about the man’s responsive
silence. The time Freddy had stood in the doorway of the dark Orthodox chapel
and, regarding the heavy-laden altar and the exotic clusters of coloured lamps
hung round it, said, ‘It’s not really my cup of tea, you know,’ the old man had
conveyed his complete endorsement of that idea by some emanative gesture that
Freddy could not locate in any particular movement the monk had made. Freddy,
in this first hour of his absence, turned and looked up towards the field; he see
from where he stood on the footpath a projecting angle of the monk’s quarters,
and caught a glimpse of the blue cassock as it seemed to potter about the yard,
bearing the old man’s spiritual bones and constitution inside it. He is
rounding up his hens for the night, thought Freddy, and at that moment the
thought also went through his head that, if necessary, he could spend the night
up there. He was quite sure the monk would give him a bed and would not mind
being waken up at however late an hour, since everyone was the sweet Lord to
him.

It did
not occur to Freddy that there was something irrational in this notion. But as
if he recalled a decision already reached by a form of reasoning, he returned
to the Cartwrights’ house and packed his clothes into his zipper-bag. Next he
took his writing-pad to write a note of excuse to Joanna. None of the house servants
was evident, but they were probably hanging around, and would witness his two
departures from the house, one without his bag and the other with it. He took a
little thought, then wrote:

JOANNA DEAR,

I’ve decided to return earlier than
expected to attend to some private business that’s cropped up. I’ll write next
week. Forgive haste. Bless you, Joanna dear.

FREDDY

That
would not mystify. Joanna must have seen his letters on the tray before she
left. He put his writing-pad into the zipper. bag and zipped it up, leaving out
the letters he had received from his mother and Benny, now replaced in their
envelopes. These he put in his pocket, stuffing them in with a rustle of
air-mail paper, beside the three unposted letters he had written.

Freddy
went to the lavatory, not from need, but in case there should be a long journey
ahead of him without access to a lavatory. Then he took up his zipper-bag and
went down, leaving his note to Joanna on the letter tray. As he walked out of
the door he could still hear the gurgle of the lavatory drain behind him; it
was a newly installed system, but even so, Joanna had been complaining that it
was too noisy and not really very reliable; one had to yank the chain in a
certain way or it wouldn’t work; one had to acquire the knack.

He
crossed the motor road and saw below, where the evening had deepened, the
lights of a car; it was most probably the Cartwrights’, since the road only
existed to serve a few residents in the area. They were returning and he would
be gone. He picked his way cautiously over a few feet of scrub-land to the
rocky footpath which branched away from the main road, winding down the Hill of
Evil Counsel. The sunset was at its climax, touching the spires and hills of
Jerusalem so that they seemed to rise from vague darkness; in the east the
Mount of Olives with its three summits, the Hill of Offence, the Hill of
Olivet, and the Hill known as the Viri Galilaei; to the west, Mount Gareb; and
in the north, the Scopus range. Freddy went down as it were to meet them, for
in the illusory light the mountains had seemed to mingle with the domes and
minarets of Old Jerusalem. He suddenly knew what he was looking for, he knew
his first task, but he began to puzzle about where he could find it without
going too far, or encountering any difficulty, or having to go to an hotel and
waste money on a drink. Then an idea occurred to him:

Alexandros.
Freddy experienced a great sense of relief that puzzled and amused him; he
entered the windy streets of the Old City feeling very young and happy — more wide-awake
than he had felt for years. The letters were in his pocket, those to his
mother, Benny, and his mother’s doctor, together with those from his mother and
Benny. To dispose of them quickly was his first object.

It was
twenty minutes to seven when he reached Alexandros. Most curio shops in the
area were still open, but Alexandros seemed to have shut early. A light was on in
the shop window and at the back of the premises. Freddy peered inside the
doorway and knocked. No one seemed to be in the shop. He rattled the letter
box. A few passing tourists stared at him and at the shop, and loitered, as if
wondering what sort of bargain this man was after, and whether they themselves
were missing something. A voice from above his head called something in Arabic.
Freddy stepped back on to the street and looked up.

‘My
friend!’ said Alexandros.

‘Am I
disturbing you?’ Freddy said.

‘I come.’

As he
let Freddy in, a middle-aged European couple with an Arab guide tried to
follow. Alexandros spoke to the guide in Arabic, the drift of which Freddy was
able to understand. As Alexandros was apparently about to refuse these late
customers, Freddy said, ‘I would like to speak to you privately, Alexandros.

Attend
to them first.’ Freddy retreated towards the dark far end of the shop, as one
not wishing to be observed.

The man
and woman, conversing with each other in German, pressed into the shop, sensing
resistance.

‘I will
deal with them quickly,’ Alexandros murmured. ‘They are not a serious type of
customer, but perhaps they buy.’

‘May I
use your lavatory?’ Freddy said.

‘Of
course.’ Alexandros then spoke to the guide, instructing him in Arabic to wait
with his tourists inside the shop and see that they did not touch anything. He
led the way to the small closet behind the shop and Freddy followed.

‘It is
the western style as you see,’ Alexandros said, and Freddy realized that this
was indeed an unusual feature for an Arab establishment, where one would
normally expect the system of sanitation set into the floor. ‘The last tenant
of the shop was a Jew,’ said Alexandros with his French-Arab gesture of the
hands and shoulders that so much conveyed his impartiality to the humours and
chances of war, fate and life.

Freddy
tore up first the letters from his mother and Benny. Down they went, He waited
for the cistern to refill, rightly judging it to be a slow one. He did not want
to block up Alexandros’s lavatory, or force the cistern to work by repeatedly
yanking the chain. While he waited, he realized that the contents of the three
sealed envelopes he had in his hand would probably not go down so easily as had
the air-mail paper from Harrogate that he had just got rid of, since his own
writing-paper was heavier stuff. So he took out his cigarette lighter and,
thankful to find it was in working condition, burned up the three letters he
had written that afternoon, holding them over the lavatory pan, and dropping in
the charred remains one by one, first Benny’s, then the doctor’s and lastly Ma’s.
He pulled the chain. Down they went. But not quite. A few charred fragments —
those last corners of paper that he had held between finger and thumb —
remained floating. Freddy waited for a further four minutes until the gurgle
faded to a whisper, pulled sharply and hoped. His total effort was doomed to
success. The last of the Harrogate relics disappeared. He emerged from the tiny
cabinet to find Alexandros hovering anxiously outside the door.