was fraught with significance.
Her restraint was impressive, and it was only after they had eaten the
main course of savoury meats wrapped in vine leaves and swimming in
creamy lemon sauce that she suggested that David might like to finance
her next movie.
Let's find some place where we can talk about it she murmured, and what
better place than her suite?
John Dinopoulos waved them away with a grin and a knowing wink, a
gesture that annoyed David for it made him see the whole episode for the
emptiness that it was.
The star's suite was pretentious, with thick white carpets and bulky
black leather furniture. David poured himself a drink while she went to
change into clothing more suitable for a discussion of high finance.
David tasted the drink, realized that he did not want it and left it on
the bar counter.
The star came out of the bedroom in a bedrobe of white satin which was
cut back from arm and bosom, and was so sheer that her flesh gleamed
with a pearly pink sheen through the material. Her hair was loose, a
great wild mane of swirling curls, and suddenly David was sick of the
whole business.
I'm sorry, he said. John was joking, I'm not a millionaire, and I
really prefer boys.
He heard his untouched glass shatter against the door of the suite as he
closed it behind him.
Back at his own hotel he ordered coffee from room service, and then on
an impulse he picked up the telephone again and placed a Cape Town call.
It came through with surprising speed, and the girl's voice on the other
end was thickened with sleep. Mitzi, he laughed. How's the girl?
'Where are you, warrior? Are you home? 'I'm in Athens, doll. 'Athens,
God! How's the action? 'It's a drag. Yeah! I bet, she scoffed. The
Greek girls are never going to be the same again. 'How are you, Mitzi?
I'm in love, Davey.
I mean really in love, it's far out.
We are going to be married. Isn't that just something else? David felt
a spur of anger, jealous of the happiness in her voice. That's great,
doll. Do I know him? Cecil Lawley, you know him. He's one of Daddy's
accountants. David recalled a large, pale-faced, bespectacled man with
a serious manner.
Congratulations, said David. He felt very much alone again. Far from
home, and aware that life there flowed on without his presence.
You want to talk to him? Mitzi asked. I'll wake him up There was a
murmur and mutter on the other end, then Cecil came on.
Nice work, David told him, and it really was. Mitzi's share of Morgan
Group would be considerably larger than David's. Cecil had drilled
himself an oil well in a most unconventional manner.
Thanks, Davey. Cecil's embarrassment at being caught tending his oil
well carried clearly over five thousand miles of telephone cable.
Listen, lover. You do anything to hurt that girl, I'll personally tear
out your liver and stuff it down your throat, okay?
Okay, said Cecil, and his alarm was brittle in his tone. I'll put you
back to Mitzi.
She prattled on for another fifty dollars worth before hanging up. David
lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and thought about his
dumpy soft-hearted cousin and her new happiness. Then quite suddenly he
made the decision which had been lurking at the edge of his
consciousness all these weeks since leaving Spain.
He picked up the phone again and asked for the porter's desk.
I'm sorry to trouble you at this time in the morning, he said, but I
should like to get on a flight to Israel as soon as possible, will you
please arrange that.
The sky was filled with a soft golden haze that came off the desert. The
gigantic T. W. A. 747 came down through it, and David had a glimpse
of dark green citrus orchards before the solid jolt of the touch-down.
Lad was like any other airport in the world but beyond its doors was a
land like no other he had ever known. The crowd who fought him for a
seat in one of the big black sheruts, communal taxis plastered with
stickers and hung with gewgaws, made even the Italians seem shining
towers of restrained good manners.
Once aboard, however, it was as though they were on a family outing, and
he a member of that family. on one side of him a paratrooper in beret
and blouse with his winged insignia on the breast and an Uzzi
submachine-gun slung about his neck offered him a cigarette, on the
other a big strapping lass also in khaki uniform and with the dark
gazelle eyes of an Israeli, which became even darker and more soulful
when she looked at David, which was often, shared a sandwich of unleaven
bread and balls of fried chick-peas, the ubiquitous pita and falafel,
with him and practised her English upon him.
All the occupants of the front seat turned around to join the
conversation, and this included the driver who nevertheless did not
allow his speed to diminish in the slightest and who punctuated his
remarks with fierce blasts of his horn and cries of outrage at
pedestrians and other drivers.
The perfume of orange blossom lay as heavily as sea mist upon the
coastal lowlands, and always afterwards it would be for David the smell
of Israel.
Then they climbed into the Judaean hills, and David felt a sense of
nostalgia as they followed the winding highway through pine forests and
across the pale shining slopes where the white stone gleamed like bone
in the sunlight and the silver olive trees twisted their trunks in
graceful agony upon the terraces which were the monuments to six
thousand years of man's patient labour.
It was so familiar and yet subtly different from those fair and
well-beloved hills of the southern cape he called home. There were
flowers he did not recognize, crimson blooms like spilled blood, and
bursts of sunshine-yellow blossoms upon the slopes, then suddenly a pang
that was like a physical pain as he glimpsed the bright flight of
chocolate and white wings amongst the trees, and he recognized the
crested head of an African hoopoe, a bird which was a symbol of home.
He felt a sense of excitement building within him, unformed and
undirected as yet but growing, as he drew closer to the woman he had
come to see, and to something else of which he was as yet uncertain.
There was, at last, a sense of belonging. He felt in sympathy with the
young persons who crowded close to him in the cab.
See, cried the girl, touching his arm and pointing to the wreckage of
war still strewn along the roadside, the burned-out carapaces of trucks
and armoured vehicles, preserved as a memorial to the men who died on
the road to Jerusalem. There was fighting here. David turned in the
seat to study her face, and he saw again the strength and certainty that
he had so admired in Debra. These were a people who lived each day to
its limit, and only at its close did they consider the next.
Will there be more fighting? he asked.
Yes, she answered him without hesitation.
Why?
Because, if it is good, you must fight for it, and she made a wide
gesture that seemed to embrace the land and all its people, and this is
ours, and it is good, she said.
Right on, doll, David agreed with her, and they grinned at each other.
So they came to Jerusalem with its tall, severe apartment blocks of
custard-yellow stone, standing like monuments upon the hills, grouped
about the massive walled citadel that was its heart.
T. W. A. had reserved a room at the Intercontinental Hotel for David
while on board the inward flight. From his window he looked across the
garden of Gethsemane at the old city, at its turrets and spires and the
blazing golden Dome of the Rock, centre of Christianity and Judaism,
holy place of the Moslems, battleground of two A thousand years, ancient
land reborn, and David felt a sense of awe. For the first time in his
life, he recognized and examined that portion of himself that was
Jewish, and he thought it was right that he should have come to this
city.
Perhaps, he said aloud, it's just possible that this is where it's all
at.
It was early evening when David paid off the cab in the car park of the
University and submitted to a perfunctory search by a guard at the main
gate. Here body search was a routine that would soon become so familiar
as to pass unnoticed. He was surprised to find the campus almost
deserted, until he remembered it was Friday and that the whole tempo was
slowing for the Sabbath.
The red-bud trees were in full bloom around the main plaza and the
ornamental pool, as David crossed to the admin block and asked for her
at the inquiries desk where the porter was on the point of leaving his
post.
Miss Mordecai, the porter checked his list. Yes.
English Department. On the second floor of the Lauterman building. He
pointed out through the glass doors. Third building on your right. Go
right on in. Debra was in a students tutorial, and while he waited for
her, he found a seat on the terrace in the warmth of the sun. It was as
well, for suddenly he felt a breath of uncertainty cooling his spine.
For the first time since leaving Athens, he wondered if he had much
cause to expect a hearty welcome from Debra Mordecai. Even at this
remove in time, David had difficulty in judging his own behaviour
towards her. Self-criticism was an art which David had never seriously
practised; with a face and fortune such as his, it was seldom necessary.
In this time of waiting he found it novel and uncomfortable to admit
that it was just possible that his behaviour may have been, as Debra had
told him, that of a spoiled child.
He was still exploring this thought, when a burst of voices and the
clatter of heels upon the flags distracted him and a group of students
came out on to the terrace, hugging their books to their chests, and
most of the girls glanced at him with quick speculative attention as
they passed.
There was a pause then before Debra came. She carried books under her
arm and a sling bag over one shoulder, and her hair was pulled back
severely at the nape of her neck; she wore no make-up, but her skirt was
brightly coloured in big summery whorls of orange.
Her legs were bare and her feet were thrust into leather sandals. She
was in deep conversation with the two students who flanked her, and she
did not see David until he stood up from the parapet. Then she froze
into that special stillness he had first noticed in the cantina at
Zaragoza.
David was surprised to find how awkward he felt, as though his feet and
hands had grown a dozen sizes. He grinned and made a shrugging,
self-deprecatory gesture.
Hello, Debs. His voice sounded gruff in his own ears, and Debra stirred
and made a panicky attempt to brush back the wisps of hair at her
temples, but the books hampered her.
David, She started towards him, a pace before she hesitated and stopped,
glancing at her students. Then sensed her confusion and melted, and she
swung back at him.
David, she repeated, and then her expression crumbled into utter
desolation. Oh God, and I haven't even a shred of lipstick on. David
laughed with relief and went towards her, spreading his arms, and she
flew at him and it was all confusion with books and sling bag muddled,
and Debra making breathless exclamations of frustration before she could
divest herself of them. Then at last they embraced.
David, she murmured with both arms wound tightly around his neck. You
beast, what on earth took you so long? I had almost given you up. Debra
had a motor scooter which she drove with such murderous abandon that she
frightened even the Jerusalem taxi-drivers who crossed her path, men
with a reputation for steel nerves and disregard for danger.
Perched on the pillion David clung to her waist and remonstrated with
her gently as she overtook a solid line of traffic and then cut smartly
across a stream coming in the opposite direction with her exhaust
popping merrily. I'm happy, she explained over her shoulder. Fine!
Then let's live to enjoy it. "Joe will be surprised to see you. Jr we
ever get there. 'What's happened to your nerve? 'I've just this minute
lost it. She went down the twisting road into the valley of Em Karem,
as though she was driving a Mirage, and called a travelogue back to him
as she went.
That's the Monastery of Mary's Well where she met the mother of John the
Baptist, according to the Christian tradition in which you are a
professed expert. Hold the history, pleaded David.
There's a bus around that bend.
The village was timeless amongst the olive trees, dug into the slope
with its churches and monasteries and high-walled gardens, an oasis of
the picturesque, while the skyline above it was cluttered with the
high-rise apartments of modern Jerusalem.
From the main street Debra scooted into the mouth of a narrow lane,
where high walls of time-worn stone rose on each hand, and braked to a
halt outside a forbidding iron gate.
Home, she said, and wheeled the scooter into the gatehouse and locked it
away before letting them in through a side gate hidden in a corner of
the wall.
They came out into a large garden court enclosed by the high rough
plastered walls which were lime-washed to glaring white. There were
olive trees growing in the court with thick twisted trunks. Vines
climbed the walls and spread their boughs overhead; already there were
bunches of green grapes forming upon them.
The Brig is a crazy keen amateur archaeologist, Debra indicated the
Roman and Greek statues that stood amongst the olive trees, the exhibits
of pottery arnphorae arranged around the walls, and the ancient mosaic
tiles which paved the pathway to the house, It's strictly against the
law, of course, but he spends all his spare time digging around in the
old sites. The kitchen was cavernous with an enormous open fireplace in
which a modern electric stove looked out of place, but the copper pots
were burnished until they glowed and the tiled floor was polished and
sweet smelling.
Debra's mother was a tall slim woman with a quiet manner, who looked
like Debra's older sister. The family resemblance was striking and, as
she greeted them, David thought with pleasure that this was how Debra
would look at the same age. Debra introduced them and announced that
David was a guest for dinner, a fact of which he had been unaware until
that moment.
Please, he protested quickly, I don't want to intrude. He knew that
Friday was a special night in the Jewish home.
You don't intrude. We will be honoured, she brushed aside his protest.
This house is home for most of the boys on Joe's squadron, we enjoy it.
Debra fetched David a Goldstar beer and they were sitting on the terrace
together when her father arrived.
He came in through the wicket gate, stooping his tall frame under the
stone lintel and taking off his uniform cap as he entered the garden.