The Mandelbaum Gate (27 page)

She had
almost decided then not to go on with the pilgrimage but to remain in Israel
until at least she heard from Harry in Rome. Her cousin Michael was due to
arrive in Israel that afternoon, nine days before the small hours of this
Sunday morning, when the stars were flickering out in the early light while the
many-shaped furnishings round the camp-bed on which she lay gradually cropped
up again, pale blue, and while from all quarters live sounds of cockcrow had
come to pass, and of monastery cats supremely celebrating.

Michael
had arrived in Israel in the late afternoon of that Wednesday, his welcome,
full-faced bespectacled self. He was immediately immersed in his legal
business, and would not be free until dinner. Barbara filled in the hours by
driving round Jerusalem, as she had so often done in the past weeks. She now
went everywhere without a guide in a hired car, and had revisited most of the
ancient sites up and down the small narrow country where layers of Rome and
Byzantium reclined a few feet beneath the soil. She was brown from the sun of
Tiberias on the shores of Galilee and the sea-walk at Acre She had sat in the
cool shade of the ruined synagogue at Capharnaum and waded among the pebbles.
Most of all she had sat in the cool churches of Israel, where sometimes a
priest, one of the Franciscan custodians of the Catholic shrines in the Holy
Land, would come and sit beside her and talk about the only sphere he knew, the
Christian Incarnation whose physical centre, for the time being, was that
particular spot. Nazareth: this is where it really began, the mission of Jesus
to the world. Cana: this is where Jesus turned the water into wine for the
wedding, his first miracle, and everything begins with that. Capharnaum: all
the important teaching and miracles of Jesus took place here, in the synagogue
and round about; it was here St Matthew worked in the customs house, a
publican, and was called to follow Jesus; Peter and Andrew came from Capharnaum;
here in the synagogue that must have been here before these ruins were built,
Jesus gave the New Testament, here in the synagogue, pledging himself to be the
Bread of Life to the people of the world, and that was the new Covenant; and he
walked on the water at Capharnaum, stilled the storm, raised Jairus’s daughter
from the dead, and the centurion’s steward, Peter’s mother-in-law, the man with
the withered hand, the man possessed by an unclean spirit … Barbara looked
out beyond the ruins to where the antique sea sparkled, and fully assented that
here precisely at Capharnaum, as at Nazareth, as at Cana, the spiritual
liberation of the human race had begun. And here at Capharnaum, said the
Franciscan friar … the man sick of the palsy, and numerous other sick and
possessed … just behind the sea-road, the Sermon of the Beatitudes … the
multiplication of the loaves and fishes; all at Capharnaum; and here is a
curious thing that you find in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: Jesus said of
it, ‘Thou, Capharnaum, which art exalted unto heaven, thou shalt be thrust down
to hell.’ A little way up, at Bethsaida, was where James and John lived, and
Peter, Philip and Andrew were born. Mary Magdalen came from Magdala, along the
lake.

At the
place of Mary Magdalen Barbara had found locked gates and a high wire-net
fence; peering through she saw a black car with the white diplomatic number
plate. This site was in the hands of the Russian Orthodox; at that time the
Russians in Israel were particularly suspicious and it was quite common for the
Russian-held shrines to be closed to the public. Barbara waited a while in the
sun to see if there was any sign of life in the small conventual house. Not a
curtain stirred. Here, too, at this birthplace of doubtful authenticity there
had undoubtedly been a beginning. She had driven along the coast to Tiberias
and had gone for a swim in Galilee, and afterwards eaten one of its fish,
sitting in her bathing-dress at a shoreside café; there she was joined by a
young woman, also wearing a swimming-suit, whom she had known casually years
before in London, and had met again briefly a few days ago in Jerusalem, Ruth
Gardnor, now the wife of someone in the British Foreign Service; she was
spending a few days at Tiberias. Barbara sat and talked to her about their only
mutual acquaintance in this country, Freddy Hamilton, and after they had agreed
several times that he was sweet, and Ruth Gardnor had sighed, said ‘Poor Freddy!’
and explained that the man had been crushed, ruined, by a dominant mother, they
parted with . amiable insignificant promises to meet again soon.

In the
last few days before Michael’s arrival Barbara had concentrated her driving in
the area round Jerusalem, partly to have access to her hotel while awaiting the
smuggled news from Harry Clegg, and partly because she was anxious to get away
across the border into new territory, the other part of the Holy Land, and
enjoyed gazing over to Bethlehem or to the Mount of Olives, and, on a clear
day, the domes and walls and rooftops of Old Jerusalem. She would stop the car
at various points, day after day, as she discovered the best angles for
sighting her target.

Jerusalem, my happy home,

When shall I come to thee?

The
lines sped to mind, and simultaneously seeing in her mind’s eye the medieval
text to which she was accustomed and, with her outward eye, an actual
Gethsemane passively laid out on the Mount of Olives across the border, she
sensed their figurative meaning piled upon the literal — ‘O my sweete home,
Hierusalem’ — and yearned for that magnetic field, Jerusalem, Old and New in
one.

When shall I look into thy
face,

Thy joys when shall I see?

Saul
Ephraim, finding her hired car parked one day near the Hebrew University, drew
up his own battered vehicle beside it and sounded his horn till she appeared
from among the thick-leaved bushes where she had been standing, some yards off
the road, to get a better view. Saul said, ‘If you stand there long enough you’ll
get shot. It’s practically on the border.’

‘Has
anyone been shot standing there?’

‘Maybe
not exactly on that spot, but shooting incidents occur from time to time. Someone
gets shot, then we retaliate, and someone else gets shot, maybe two, three.
Keep away from the border.’

She had
asked Saul Ephraim to look in after dinner on the night of Michael’s arrival,
hoping to arrange a small guided tour of the country-side during Michael’s
visit. Her memory now played on Michael’s arrival as she lay on the camp-bed,
yielding her present excitement to a passive in-gathering of past facts as did
the stars their bright pointedness to the first blue light of dawn.

‘I’ve
given up my job.’

Michael
said, ‘Tired of it?’

She had
explained or tried to explain the very involved and subtle affair of Ricky, and
how it had crept on her, become intolerable, Ricky’s personality … Ricky’s
incredible letter finally … finally … She gestured the inarticulate end of
her sentences — ‘It’s difficult, Michael, to explain; Ricky’s been a good
friend, but it’s just —’

Michael
took the words out of her hands.

‘She
was too possessive,’ he said, as if there were no subtle, unique, inexplicable
quality about the relationship. And of course, when he said it, she knew this
was the ultimate definition and felt relieved. Michael resembled Harry in his
habit of making obvious rational comments about difficulties he did not feel
were worth the trouble of analysing. Harry, who would give years to a problem
of archaeology, would dismiss most personal complications with a brief, banal,
but altogether reassuring phrase or two; Barbara never failed to feel consoled
by his common sense, so very like Michael’s now, when she was beset by some
interior burden that didn’t really matter: ‘She was too possessive.’ Barbara
laughed.

‘Well, I’ve
left the job. I’m not even giving a term’s notice; just not going back.’

‘Are
you still thinking of getting married?’

‘I hope
… the Church … this annulment … the documents … Harry’s in Rome … the
…’ The jagged edges of the celluloid Taj Mahal, seen from the side, took
shape in the pale first light over the Potter’s Field and looked like the
half-profile of a face she had never seen before; all around her, conical,
circular and angular bulges began to appear; she distinguished the
field-glasses that she had seen by the light of the paraffin lamp an hour ago.
It would soon be bright morning. Michael had said, ‘You really must stop
messing the poor fellow about, you know, Barbara. If you want to marry him,
marry him. He’s free and you’re free to be married according to the laws of the
land.’

‘You
know that to me marriage is a sacrament. If I marry outside the Church I’ll
have to remain outside the Church. That’s going to be difficult for me. Year
after year — it will be difficult.’

‘Yes
but what else are you going to do?’

‘He’s
gone to Rome … annulment … questions … his marriage; it’s just possible
that it could be found invalid … his wife’s married again, she’s quite
cooperative about everything. It’s a legal question, you know, like any other
legal question.’ Michael quite saw that. He was never obtuse about the legal
formations of the Catholic Church.

Someone
shuffled in the house below, and she knew it was five in the morning. She was
to be ready by ten. Suzi Ramdez would arrive at ten. Barbara thought she might
sleep now, but it didn’t matter if she missed a night’s sleep, it was worth it.
She had taken her last look at Jerusalem from the other side of the Mandelbaum
Gate that afternoon of Michael’s arrival when, before returning to the hotel to
meet him, she had gone to the top of Mount Zion where David’s Tomb was
preserved, and had seen, in the Abbey of the Dormition the reputed room of the
Last Supper and the crypt where by tradition the Blessed Virgin lay before her
death or, as some said, her falling asleep before her assumption into heaven,
whatever that taking up might be, to wherever heaven was. It was from this site
of the Dormition in Israel that Barbara had seen Old Jerusalem, distant yet not
far, where she now lay waiting in the early morning for her new guide on the
pilgrimage.

‘I
wouldn’t go to Jordan if I were you,’ Michael said. ‘All things considered, I
wouldn’t go.’ Saul Ephraim had joined them with his Israel-born wife, who spoke
only Hebrew. Saul said, ‘They’re bound to know by now that you’ve got Jewish
relations. The Arabs have their messengers, you know.’ He looked round, and
Barbara caught sight of an Arab porter, far away in the entrance hail. Their
own party was now sitting in the open, under the leafy trellis, and one could
see through to the adjoining room, and through again to the hall. The Arab
porter was talking to someone, a familiar outline; it was Freddy Hamilton’s
Arabic teacher, the blue-eyed young man called Abdul. Saul said, ‘They could
make a lot of trouble for you. There is a definite danger from police
officials, they are armed, they act in hot blood and explain afterwards. People
who come here do not realize that. Particularly, you have come from England
first to Israel, then you go to Jordan. The normal route is from Jordan to
Israel. They suspect Israeli spies. Why didn’t you go to Jordan first?’

‘Oh,
personal reasons, you know.’

It was
through Harry Clegg that she had come to know Saul Ephraim, his former
colleague. Saul looked at his wife and said something evidently witty in
Hebrew, for she laughed. Saul explained, ‘I’m telling her that your fiancé’s
over in Jordan, and that’s why you came here first.’

Michael
had turned thoughtful since Saul had urged the probable danger of her
appearance in Jordan, and lawyer that he was, he protested. ‘But look here, you
know, there are internal laws and international laws. Even if Barbara was a
full Jew she couldn’t be touched if she possessed a British passport. It’s the
Israelis they’re against, it’s a political matter, not a religious or racial
one. The Arab States don’t recognize Israel, they claim that the Jews in Israel
are usurpers of their territory. The worst that could happen to Barbara, by
law, is deportation as a spy, and only then on the combined evidence of her
Jewish blood and her entrance into the country via Israel — that might create
reasonable grounds for suspicion. But otherwise she couldn’t be touched. Not
legally.’

‘Not
legally,’ said Saul, spreading his fingers in irony; he explained the argument
to his wife, who replied vivaciously. ‘She says,’ said Saul, ‘that they carried
off a couple of men from the kibbutz she worked on before we were married. They
raided and captured the men. One was a Britisher. They didn’t do it legally, of
course.’

There
was talk, talk, talk. It became an academic subject, absorbing them for over an
hour. Barbara said, ‘It’s difficult to separate the apocryphal from the true in
this part of the world. It always has been.’

‘Anyway,
all things considered, don’t go,’ Michael said.

‘And
you say Harry’s in Rome. So what’s the point?’ said Saul. ‘Yes, what’s the
point? But I’m on a pilgrimage. The other Christian shrines are over there —’ On,
on, on. ‘But we have Nazareth. We have a Christian shrine up on Mount Zion,’
Saul said, and repeated this to his wife, who showed interest. Barbara said, ‘It’s
the crypt of the Dormition,’ and explained to Michael the legend of the Virgin’s
Falling Asleep. ‘Some say she actually died, some say she only fell asleep. The
Church has left it open. I was up there today, in fact …’ She had been to
pray at the crypt of the Failing Asleep. The noises of the first light over the
Potter’s Field had halted now, pausing for the authentic dawn. The shuffling in
the house had stopped. The recumbent statue of the Virgin at the crypt was an
unusual representation. The two suitcases, one small, one large, stood beside a
much larger, open box with her clothes spilling out of them; then she perceived
they were not her clothes, but those vestments bulging from the hamper that she
had noted by the light of the oil lamp.