The Mandelbaum Gate (37 page)

Before
leaving the house he had called his wife a dumb animal, whereupon she had lit a
cigarette and blown smoke contemptuously across the teacups. He had come to a
point where he longed for a new wife and regretted having committed himself so
far to modern progress. He repeated to himself, while opening up the office:

Let him who believes in God and in the supreme Day
harm his neighbour; let him treat women well. She was made from Adam’s rib; and
it is the upper part of the rib that is the most curved. If you try to
straighten it you will break it, and if you let it alone, it will stay bent.
Let man therefore treat women well.

Joe’s
father had been adept in applying these words to every situation that concerned
a woman, and Joe was now thinking of them with a stress on the curved rib: his
second wife was a bent creature in her heart, and would never be straight. He
was in a mood to place his curse upon the emancipation from the old tradition
and, in general, the course he had permitted his family life to take with the
result that now he had only old enemies and no old comforts.

Then
had walked in that sturdy portion of English rib, Miss Rickward, presenting him
with her exceedingly interesting inquiry for the whereabouts of Miss Vaughan.

‘Be
seated, Madam,’ said Joe, ‘and I shall send for coffee.’ Immediately a rustle
in the back quarters preceded a young boy who passed through the front office
and out of the door as silent as a beam of light. By the time he returned, Joe
had gone a long way to measuring Miss Rickward’s substance, and with the
experience he had long acquired of the Englishwoman on her travels, calculated
that her cheap, shapeless, pink-and-red cotton dress, broad brown sandals,
large old dark-brown leather shoulder bag, unvarnished fingernails, short dark
curly hair, weather-pink face, a touch of lipstick, eyes the colour, near-grey,
of western spiritual compromise, and her yellowish, much-filled teeth, added up
to a woman of some authority and wealth.

Sipping
the thick coffee, she let fall the words ‘Oh, how distressed I am!’ and also a
tear. Joe Ramdez was moved, he was delighted to find that she was as vulnerable
about her friend as any high-class Arab woman would be about her most important
friend or enemy in the harem. Joe was delighted to find Miss Rickward was
vulnerable at all. Moreover, she did not look like a ferret, as so many
Englishwomen did. She said, ‘I mustn’t trouble you with my personal
difficulties. But I would so much appreciate any help you can give me in
tracing this lady.’

‘You
have my help,’ Joe said. ‘We’ll get her.’

Ricky
said, ‘She can’t be far off. Possibly she has gone to the Dead Sea, and if so,
I must follow her there. She has got herself entangled with a man who is one of
the Dead Sea Scrolls team, and she threatens to marry him. Only Miss Vaughan
doesn’t know, as I know, the type of person he is, the type of background and
so on. I’ve found out a lot about his personal history —’

Those
scholars at the Dead Sea are a gang of ruffians,’ Joe said, thinking of the one
he had fallen foul of over a deal, the first year that the scrolls were
discovered and the forgeries began.

‘You’re
extremely sympathetic,’ Miss Rickward said. Her voice was still shaky with
distress. ‘You Arabs are gifted with sympathy and a sense of brotherhood. I’ve
read quite a lot about Islam.’

Joe
said, ‘I work for the renewal of the people’s hopes and the completion of their
happiness.’

‘I
admire Islam,’ she said. ‘Barbara Vaughan is a Catholic. Catholicism, I’m
sorry, I can’t admire.’

Joe
Ramdez laid his large hand on hers and inquired closely about Barbara Vaughan.

After she had taken Freddy
to his room and left him there Suzi went on a tour of the house. She was sorry
to have to leave Freddy to cool off just when he had warmed up, but there were
certain duties to be performed before she could settle down for the night with
the easy mind she needed for that purpose.

First,
she went to Barbara’s room and opened the door to hear if the patient was
sleeping. Barbara stirred, ‘Suzi?’

‘All
right? Don’t wake up if you’re all right.’

Barbara
put on the bed-light and leaned up on her elbow. ‘What’s the time?’ Her face
was still flushed.

‘Do you
want water?’

‘Yes, a
good idea.’ Barbara poured a glass of water from the jug at her side.

Suzi
came in and closed the door.

‘How do
you feel?’

Barbara
was taking her own temperature. Eventually she said, ‘A hundred. That’s not
bad.’

‘A mild
attack,’ Suzi said, sitting on the edge of her bed. ‘Speak quiet. I wish you
could have been well enough to sleep with Freddy.’

‘I don’t
want to sleep with Freddy.’

‘Don’t
you think Freddy’s attractive?’

‘Yes,
more than he was when I met him in Israel. There’s a curious change come over
Freddy.’

‘You
wouldn’t sleep with him?’

‘No, I’ve
got the other man.’

‘I’m
the secret lover of Alexandros, but the more I sleep with Alexandros the more I
can sleep with another man. I love Alexandros so much. He gives me the idea of
love.’

‘Have
you ever defrosted an old refrigerator?’ Barbara said.

‘Yes,
we have old refrigerators.’

‘Well,
you know how it goes drip, drip, drip, very slowly. I’m like that; only just
beginning to defrost, drip, drip, drip.’

‘Have
you ever opened someone else’s combination safe?’

‘No.’

‘Me
neither, but I know how it’s done. Sleeping with Freddy would be like that. One
must find the right combination and one has to play around, try this way, try
that way, gentle, and listen with the careful ear.’

Barbara
smiled. She took a small mirror from her handbag and looked at herself in it. ‘I’m
the scarlet woman,’ she said. She giggled feebly and settled down to sleep.

‘It’s
God’s blame. Ring the little bell by your side if you feel ill at all, but don’t
go out of your room, as the servants are inquisitive about you.’

Suzi
next visited the girls’ quarters in the north-east wing of the house; this was
joined by a corridor to the south-west wing which Latifa occupied so that it
should be easy for her to supervise the girls.

The
girls had been brought in to train for night-club life and its lenient
ramifications; they were one of Joe Ramdez’s business enterprises; they came
from Morocco, Marseilles, Lebanon, Syria, and other surrounding countries,
although once a girl was brought in who had somehow originated in Vladivostok
and two others who had been from Liverpool. There were usually four or five
girls in the house at any one time. Joe Ramdez found them useful for his
special tourists. Foreign civil servants and diplomats who had become more than
usually involved with one of Joe’s pretty prostitutes instead of taking a more
sensible interest in his stable of Arab horses at Amman, were usually
persuaded, after a while, to join his Middle East Visitors’ Union Life Trust,
from which, one way or another, Joe had derived a good annual income for many
years.

No
sounds came from the girls’ wing except heavy breathing from behind the doors;
Suzi despised females who breathed noisily in sleep, she felt it was indelicate
and a sign of carelessness, for women should blow their noses and sleep in
seemly tranquillity. In general Suzi loathed the girls, not troubling to
separate them fairly from the deeper object of her antipathy, the whole
business operation in which they were involved. She had tried to persuade her
father to give them up for a more profitable and more tasteful, possibly more
subtle, form of corruption. There were many ways of tempting foreigners into a
vulnerable situation, besides these insufferable girls. Joe had replied that he
was well aware of the alternatives to girls; one of them was boys, and as far
as he was concerned he was not going to encourage the vile foreigner in his
despicable habit of coming to the Arab countries for boys. It was his duty to
the honour of his country to provide girls. Suzi said, very often, that the
girls were not even good performers in the night-clubs. But Joe barked back at
her, louder than his bite, that they were too good for the foreigners. Suzi had
realized she was up against the amorphous mixture of honour and revenge that
brewed within her father’s heart, and continued to exhale vapours of resentment
towards the girls from her own obscure heart’s brew. Her aim at the moment was
to prevent the girls from contact with Freddy and to preserve him from any hint
of contact with them. She went to find her stepmother. Latifa.

She
found her playing gin rummy with Ruth Gardnor, who lit up at the sight of Suzi.
She was evidently bored, for Latifa was slow. Latifa said, ‘Yusif is coming.’
Her eyes remained on the cards. Latifa always called Joe by his Arab name,
Yusif. Suzi was uncertain whether Latifa was making one of her mysterious
prophecies or whether she had received definite word from her father that he
was coming to the house.

She
said, ‘When? How soon?’

Latifa
did not reply. Suzi concluded that Latifa was indulging her gift for second
sight. At some time in her middle age this first wife of Joe Ramdez had been
struck by an illness which left her with a facial twitch, a diminished pace of
thought, and some extra intuition. Latifa’s prophecies were not infallible, but
they often came alarmingly true.

Suzi
did not want her father in the house at this moment; not by any means.

She
said to Ruth, ‘Listen, I don’t want my father to have anything to do with the
sick girl.’

That’s
all right. Leave it to me,’ Ruth said, warmly. Suzi was very attached to Ruth
Gardnor. She had found her to have a good heart, and to be particularly
understanding and helpful in her affair with Alexandros. She admired Ruth’s
elegant figure, and felt she brought tone to the house.

Ruth
said, ‘I doubt if your father will be coming here if you’re not expecting him.
Latifa said earlier that she felt he was on his way to the house; he hasn’t
come yet.’

Latifa
waited for the game to proceed. She never intruded on Suzi’s affairs, but did
merely what was required by her husband, and obliged Suzi if paid to do it.

Suzi
said, ‘Ruth, there is my other guest. I think you shouldn’t let him see you, as
you are maybe known to him.’

‘Who?
Alexandros?’

‘No, it
is not Alexandros. It’s an Englishman.’

‘Oh!’

‘Just
keep yourself concealed. He’ll be leaving tomorrow.’

Ruth
looked very worried. She said, ‘Well, I’m going to bed. Good night, Latifa.
Good night.’

Latifa,
a large woman, sat in her fine draperies staring at the cards. Suzi kissed her,
and followed Ruth to her room.

‘What’s
his name?’ Ruth said. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘Mr
Hamilton of the British Government office in Israel.’

‘Freddy
Hamilton!’

‘Yes.
You know him?’

‘My God!
Why did you bring him here?’

‘It’s
all right,’ said Suzi. ‘It’s all right, my dear.’ She was sure it was all
right. She said, ‘He’s not here on any business.’

‘I’ll
have to leave right away.’ Ruth walked round the room, looking carefully. ‘Has
he seen me? Does he know where my room is?’

‘No,
no, of course not. Anyway, I tell you, Ruth, he has no brains for this job. He’s
not much in your government.’

‘They
don’t need too much. They only need to be in the office.’ She went to the
wardrobe and looked inside. She said, ‘Has he had any opportunity to snoop?’

Suzi
laughed, and Ruth tried to laugh with her. Presently it emerged that Suzi thought
‘snoop’ was a sex term and that Ruth had been referring to the possibility of
Freddy’s meeting the girls. Ruth continued to laugh harshly at this mistake,
and explained in a strange tone of voice that she had meant ‘pry’. She
displayed a special anxiety to be patient and calm with Suzi, and was obviously
concealing a deeper anxiety about her business. This made Suzi feel like a
stupid little Arab girl in the other’s estimation, and she wanted to explain
her personal view, unorthodox as it was to the Arab spy-trade, that the best
way to avoid suspicion was to go about everything as naturally as possible. She
had already tried to convince Ruth Gardnor that her business, whatever it was,
could best be conducted by hand, by word-of-mouth, and by bribery. ‘Let a man
come to the door,’ Suzi had said. ‘Let him repeat his message, or let him hand
a letter. Let him take his money and go.’ But no, Ruth had devised, among other
methods, one by which she collected code-messages from the bark of the
palm-tree and deposited messages in the same place. Ruth had argued that the
messenger, if he could be bribed to contact her, could be further bribed to
describe her appearance. By no means, Ruth said, must she be seen; and anyway,
those were her instructions. She would not be brought to understand that Suzi’s
father had influence with the Arab contacts; it was unthinkable that they could
be bribed against Joe’s honour and survive. But Ruth showed no confidence in
the unspoken laws that had so far kept the Ramdez house inviolable. Suzi had
wondered for a moment if her father’s enemies were perhaps more powerful than
she believed, but she put the tepid thought aside and insisted that Ruth was
crazy in making all those intricate arrangements, and in bringing a radio transmitter
into the house, when the Arab rumour-system was so much safer.