The Mandelbaum Gate
Now Barbara lay awake, marvelling at her escape from the convent. She was also extremely intrigued by the change that had come over Freddy Hamilton, and by the fact that he had engineered the escape at all. She thought, it’s like the enactment of a reluctant nun’s dream, and she laughed softly in the darkness, thinking of the absurdity of the phrase ‘escape from the convent’ that had kept recurring in their conversation in the car, on the way to the Potter’s Field, and which didn’t really apply to her, a free, travelling Englishwoman, at all.
But it had been an escape of a kind, as witness to which she could cite her present sense of release. She was sure there was a certain amount of physical risk in her venture into Jordan. But try as she might, she did not care. And the urgent sense of apprehension she should be feeling, all facts considered, was lacking, try as she might to reason with herself. If she should be arrested openly there would be some sort of fuss, if she were to come to some secret harm, well that was that. The reality of the hour was her escape from the convent, and there was no room for any sense of a more immediate danger in the face of the familiar and positive dangers of heart and mind that were, in any case, likely to arise anywhere one went, across all borders and through all gates.
She thought, it was really very funny, that escape from the convent. It would make a good story to tell her cousins on the Vaughan side when they asked her about her visit to the Middle East. And the Vaughan side of herself lay on the camp-bed considering the funny aspect of the affair, since this was what they liked best to do; whenever the Vaughans were thrown, provided they managed to pick themselves up, they usually ended by making a good story of it.
For the first time since her arrival in the Middle East she felt all of a piece; Gentile and Jewess, Vaughan and Aaronson; she had caught some of Freddy’s madness, having recognized by his manner in the car, as they careered across Jerusalem, that he had regained some lost or forgotten element in his nature and was now, at last, for some reason, flowering in the full irrational norm of the stock she also derived from: unselfquestioning hierarchists, anarchistic imperialists, blood-sporting zoophiles, sceptical believers — the whole paradoxical lark that had secured, among their bones, the sane life for the dead generations of British Islanders. She had caught a bit of Freddy’s madness and for the first time in this Holy Land, felt all of a piece, a Gentile Jewess, a private-judging Catholic, a shy adventuress.
‘This is more fun,’ Freddy had said in the car, ‘than I’ve had for years.’
‘It is for me fun that I have sent to Suzi Ramdez a secret message in the middle of the night, to her bed where she sleeps. A very fine woman, Suzi Ramdez. Her father would come to me with a knife —’
‘Is there any danger of his finding out?’ Freddy said.
‘Plenty danger. But Joe Ramdez does not kill. If he comes to me tonight, tomorrow, with the knife, still he does not strike. Alexandros has plenty friends, and those friends are enemies of Ramdez,’
‘You never have a dull moment out here,’ Freddy said, meanwhile grinning at Barbara, who sat in the back with her suitcases and savoured Freddy’s phrase ‘out here’. Every place east of Europe or west of the Atlantic Ocean was more or less one of the colonies to Freddy.
‘We did that escape from the convent beautifully,’ Freddy said. ‘Great fun. We did it a treat. Every stair was creaky —’
‘Every stair,’ Barbara said. ‘I nearly died.’
‘I expect I’d have been lynched by the nuns if I’d been caught. Have they ever had a man in the convent before?’
‘Not in the sleeping quarters. Maybe, of course, the doctor.’
‘The doctor,’ said Alexandros, ‘is not a man. The doctor is permitted in the harem after sunset even. “Many doctors come by night to the rich man’s harem”: Arab proverb by author Alexandros.’
Freddy went on elaborating his version of the escape from the convent, and Barbara added her bits, slumped in her dressing-gown among the suitcases, building up, for Alexandros, the breathless suspense of the descent down the convent staircase. ‘I nearly died!’ It was not any escape from any real convent, it was an unidentified confinement of the soul she had escaped from; she knew it already and was able to indulge in her slight feeling of disappointment that they had not been caught. It was fun to get away but it would also have been fun to get caught and to have had to explain something, and for Freddy to have explained. It would have made a funny story to tell Harry later on.
She could not understand how Freddy, in the course of the few hours since she had last seen him in the Cartwrights’ garden, had so come to lose his unbecoming and boring balance, his tepid correctness. He was not at this moment so terribly drunk, and had certainly gathered enough wits to plan the night’s escapade and the elaborate course of the bright pilgrimage to come, the details of which he was now explaining with enthusiastic precision. He had thought of everything. ‘You, as Suzi’s servant, will have to be deaf and dumb, because, of course, you can’t speak Arabic. I’ll come as far as Jericho with you, then leave you with Suzi, as I ought to be back at the office Tuesday at the latest…. Suzi Ramdez apparently is experienced in Catholic pilgrimages … Marvellous plan, don’t you think?’
Barbara reclined, happily making her responses in the dialect of their tribe: ‘Absolutely brilliant … terrific idea, Freddy … Yes, honestly, I’m thrilled…’
Well, of course, Alexandros thought of it first.’
‘No, pardon me, you had the first word.’ Alexandros rushed his car into gear as they turned up the Hill of Evil Counsel.
We both cast the first stone,’ Freddy garbled lyrically, and went on to tell Barbara how he’d got some boring letters from home and written some boring replies but had put them all down Alexandros’s lavatory.
‘What a brilliant idea,’ Barbara said, and half-wished she had thought of doing the same with Ricky’s letter and her reply to it. Ricky must have received her letter early last week. Barbara had not expected to hear from Ricky, for her plan at the time of writing had been to leave Israel within the next few days. Fortunately, now, it would be ages before she knew, if she ever did know, how badly Ricky had taken it. Barbara had not supplied an address in Jordan. ‘Marvellous idea,’ Barbara said. ‘I had a ridiculous letter from England to answer last week, but I answered it. I should have put it all down the loo, reply and all, that’s what I should have done.’
‘One always should,’ Freddy advised her, as from long experience. ‘Any correspondence that’s bloody boring, just pull the chain on it. That’s my motto.’
With only a small delay after their first battering onslaught at the door, they were handed over by Alexandros to the ancient monk, who peered and smiled behind his lamp, and handed them over to his ancient friend who had turned up, crumpled from sleep in his blue robe. They were then taken over a stony path through the yard to another, more ramshackle house. There Alexandros left them, embracing Freddy on both cheeks, while Freddy, first remarking cheerfully, ‘like a couple of French generals’, responded.
It was going on towards four in the morning when she was left alone in the little attic room to which she had been taken. It contained a large, sagging horse-hair arm-chair with the stuffing emerging from both arms, two sacks which served for floor mats, a marble-topped table on which stood a basin and a ewer filled with dusty water, a wooden box on which stood a pair of field-glasses in good and shiny condition, a new cake of carbolic soap, a dented celluloid miniature of the Taj Mahal, an English novel, dated 1910, entitled Diamond Cut Diamond, a tin of lighter fuel, a broken pottery beaker, a small rough towel marked ‘Hotel Dixie’, and a pair of elephant-figure book-ends. Another large wooden box, marked ‘Fragile’, was open and contained, at the bottom, about six pairs of unused sandals; there was a large wicker hamper with the lid half-gaping to reveal a top layer of gold-embroidered ecclesiastical vestments, and the room also contained an icon hung on a nail in the wall, a tarnished silver altar-lamp, a pair of primitive mill-stones such as
the country women still used for grinding corn, and, on the flat top of this hand-mill, a well-worn pack of playing cards and a packet of drinking straws. Barbara, her luggage, the new camp-bed and a grey army blanket had now joined the company. She, having taken some note of all this, had turned out the lamp, and now lay in her dressing-gown, with the blanket folded at her feet in view of the warmth of the air that coursed in towards her from the stars, and was moved to praise the sweet Lord’s ingenuity, marvelling at her escape from the convent and at Freddy’s unexpectedness. Later, when she discovered that Freddy had obliterated these days from his memory, what shocked her most of all was that so much of that carefree and full-hearted Freddy had turned sour with guilt. She herself then reminded him of this or that delightful incident, piecing the days together for him, fragment by fragment. But they were, to him, stolen days, and not for many years could he come to think of them with total pleasure.
But even now, before the pilgrimage had begun, Barbara discerned some temporary quality in Freddy’s mood. Not knowing the cause, she formed the theory then, as she lay contemplating the early morning sky above the Potter’s Field, that Freddy was given to fluxes of temperament, and, like a man who knows he has played the fool while drunk, might presently regret or might laugh unhappily about all this wild commitment of his. Not that Freddy’s new spontaneity and forthcoming spirits resembled a fearful mania. He was decidedly at ease.
A change began to come over him, she thought, in the Cartwrights’ garden, when everyone was arguing so absurdly about the rights and wrongs of my Jewish blood: ‘Jewish blood or not,’ had said Freddy, ‘the point is, it’s hers…. And the trouble with you,’ Freddy had said, ‘is that you blow neither hot nor cold, you are lukewarm — how does it go, Miss Vaughan? — lukewarm, and I’ll vomit thee out of my mouth.’ It would make a splendid story to tell her Vaughan cousins. Freddy must meet the Vaughans; his next home leave, she would get her cousin Miles Vaughan to ask Freddy to dinner. Very likely she would be married by then. Very likely. The Vaughans would accept Harry Clegg without a murmur once she was married to him, and they had seen the funny side of everything.
The expected letter from Harry had not arrived, but a note from his friend at the American Embassy in Amman had been enclosed in the envelope, smuggled in by the American bag, which had appeared under the door last Wednesday morning. This friend, whom she had never met, was obviously well informed about their situation; he wrote informally but cautiously, and she understood that she must read between the lines:
DEAR BARBARA,
Harry asked me to let you know he has left for Rome to see some members of the Congregation of the Rota about some ancient documents. He’ll write you from there some time next week. He’ll be staying at the Hotel Regina Carlton.
He doesn’t feel, by the way. that you’d be vitally interested in the excavations at Qumran at the moment, and he isn’t there to show you around. I’ve been to that area myself, of course, but, not being an archaeologist, I get more fun out of the many books that have been written about the findings of the scrolls and the excavated Essene community offices. There’s some talk of a documentary film of it though. Some of the unit (though not the producer, of course …) who are working in the Transjordan at the moment, on the Lawrence of Arabia movie, toured the site and think there’s good material for a documentary..
Well, Harry looked fine and sends his love. But you’ll be seeing him yourself quite soon, I hope.
Sincerely yours,
MARTIN J. FONTEYN
From this, she gathered that Harry had gone to be interviewed about his plea for annulment at the Congregation of the Rota in Rome, where all the documents had been sent. And also that he did not want her to go to Jordan, not only because he was no longer there but also because he now thought it unsafe. The whole rigmarole about the film unit visiting Qumran was plainly an occasion for citing the case of the producer, a Jew who was prominently reported to have been conceded permission to work on Jordanian location only on the strength of the film’s economic benefit to the country, but was obliged, so people said, to sleep on a yacht each night, three miles away from Arab soil. Barbara rightly deduced that what Mr Fonteyn was trying to convey was that Harry now considered it risky for her to travel into Jordan on account of her Jewish blood.
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 befor
e 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,