The Mandelbaum Gate
‘Not in every country.’
‘No. This is an Arab virtue. The Arabs don’t intend to interfere with a person’s soul except when women are jealous, or a father is furious, and then they’re crazy of course.’
‘The western people do it all the time. They do it more and more.’
There’s an Englishwoman staying in this house. She’ll be here for ten days or so; very kind. So when I must go tomorrow to Jerusalem, she’ll take care of you. I have to come back here, Wednesday, and I can come again at the week-end.’
‘You’re taking a lot of trouble….’
‘I do this anyway. I come here very frequent. Alexandros has asked me to take care of you. So I do a couple of extra journeys maybe back and forth, for Alexandros and for you, until you’re well.’
“Who’s the Englishwoman?’
‘Very nice girl; very kind. She can be trusted; she won’t ask questions if you do not ask questions of her.’
‘What’s she doing here?’
‘You should not ask this question; then she won’t say of you, “What does she do here?”‘
‘Where’s Freddy?’ said Barbara.
‘In my sitting-room. Perhaps I keep him here for tonight and take him back tomorrow morning. Do you think he’ll propose to sleep with me?’
‘Six to one against,’ Barbara said.
Freddy opened his eyes, and saw Suzi lolling on the divan, watching him. He said, ‘Oh, halo, what’s going on?’
‘Barbara is much better. Like Dr Russeifa prescribed, it is a mild attack.’
‘You mean, as he diagnosed.’
‘Yes.’
‘What he prescribed was the treatment.’
‘She’ll be through with the treatment tomorrow. Afterwards, it’s only stay in bed.’
‘Was I asleep?’ said Freddy.
‘Yes, I was watching you.’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘I was thinking that life is love.’
‘Very profound. And love is life.’
‘Very true and very apt,’ she said.
Their dinner was conducted in intimate style, a candlelight affair. Freddy found himself envying Alexandros, the usual guest of honour who, Suzi told him, stopped here frequently on his way to Madaba where he purchased coins and other antiquities from a coin-dealer there. The coin-dealer, she explained, employed a team of small boys over a large area round Jericho, where excavators were busy; and these boys were permitted by the diggers to pick up a few small oddments, such as coins, and even when they were not permitted to do so, the boys got a lot of findings. These were turned over to the central dealer at Madaba, an Orthodox priest, who often came by quite rare things that way. Alexandros was one of his best customers, Suzi said, and this made for many trips, many occasions to stop the night at Jericho, where she herself was obliged to come also to the house on business.
Freddy envied rich-voiced Alexandros in this room. He reflected that life was love, and that he had been living all his life in a half-dream, as if he had been a somnambulist or an amnesiac. One had rehearsed the motions, not minding what they were all about. Clough, dead and famously lamented a hundred years ago, had located the virus:
One has bowed and talked, till
little by little,
All the natural heat has escaped of the
chivalrous spirit.
Only one small skip of flame, Freddy thought, and I see by its light all the other ashes cooling off in the fireplace.
‘Don’t be sad,’ Suzi said. ‘I wish Abdul was here. What are you miserable for, Freddy? You sit and look down through the meat on your plate, right through the plate, and through the tablecloth….’
It was lamb on a skewer. The tablecloth had a lace edge. ‘I’m not miserable, my dear,’ Freddy said, with a smile.
‘Nor happy neither.’
Neither hot nor cold. ‘Make me happy, then,’ he said. ‘You’re the hostess.’
She plunged into the job. ‘You have a lovely smile. Abdul should be here. I’m sad for Abdul that he’s nothing and I have all the position with my father. He could be here, we could have got papers for him, but he won’t be the son of his father and be in his influence. When we were children Abdul used to discover finds in the ruins when the archaeologists came to dig at Jericho and Jerash and Madaba. My father was not rich, only a teacher, at that time when we were little. But Abdul didn’t give his little things of the ruins to his father to sell to the dealer and help for his education. Some, Abdul gave to me, and others he gave away to the most wealthy of the foreign tourists who came to the place. They said, “What a sweet little boy!” and Abdul would laugh so much at that. Because he would take no money for his presents. Sometimes I see them try to give it back and I hear them say to him, “Sorry — no baksheesh” and he would run away leaving them with the ancient coins, ornaments, whatever, in their hands. He plays tricks today, the same. My older sister, who is helping now in our travel bureau, says Abdul has a mad devil inside him. But my father’s first wife, Latifa, who lives in this house, always took Abdul’s part. She said he was a good child to give presents to the rich visitors as that’s what our Arab tent-men did in the old days. She said a speech to Abdul’s defence: Everyone gives to the poor; they try to save their souls by it. But if a poor man gives to the rich, his soul is already with God, and the souls of the rich are mysteriously moved and relieved of a burden.’
Freddy gave himself up to the pleasure of talking about Abdul, as far as he could. He felt it was just bad luck that he could not derive the total experience of Suzi that was available to him, so like she was to Abdul and so vivid. He thought it was just bad luck that this one excitement should be surrounded and vitiated by another: the question of Gardnor’s wife. And although he told himself, there at Suzi’s table, that his duty in life came first, pleasure second, and that he would not wish it any other way, and that he would keep his wits about him, in reality there was not much to choose between the excitement of possibly exposing Gardnor and the excitement of Suzi’s potentialities; and as the evening proceeded these combined possibilities were highly erotic in their effect. Gardnor, he thought, is our wanted man. Gardnor, in his glittering confidence, a dispenser of sympathy and understanding to absolutely everyone; Gardnor, living it high with an attitude to debt that belongs to the eighteenth century; Gardnor in that very smart and expensive workman’s cottage in Chelsea, with a Bonnard lit up over the mantelpiece and a Picasso in the lavatory; Gardnor and his wife and other superior women; Gardnor, Freddy thought, is our man. Gardnor. Freddy reflected, has too frequently made a point of his atheism; if a man can’t hold religious convictions, well he can’t, but it’s a private and secret thing, and if a man can’t keep his own top secrets how can he be expected to keep his country’s? The unmarried fellows, Gardnor had said, half-jokingly in Freddy’s presence, are our big security risk. And he had given Freddy an emancipated smile, then glanced at his wife before glancing at the clock; the Gardnors, in London, always had to go on somewhere else. Gardnor, Freddy thought, is the man we’ve been looking for; and this is Nasser’s Post Office. The pieces fitted together as he watched Suzi’s blue eyes and brown hands; and the disquietude that came over him at Gardnor’s subsequent trial, the pity for Gardnor which he expressed when sentence had been passed and it was all over, were perfectly sincere since he could not help recalling with shame the sensual joy that had gone into the discovery. He told Suzi she was the most extraordinary woman he had ever met, and told himself it was just his hard luck that he could not be wholeheartedly her man, but needs must probe for Ruth Gardnor. He said, ‘Who else is in this house at the moment besides Latifa and ourselves?’
‘Perhaps a tourist or a paying guest. Nobody permanent but Latifa and the servants. A few girls perhaps; my father brings them to train for the night-club, they come from Aden, Tangiers, sometimes Europe. This is a big secret I’m telling you, about these girls. Can you keep a secret?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you keep secrets if it would help your country to know them?’
‘Those sort of secrets never come my way,’ Freddy said. It was just hard luck finding himself on duty like this. He added, ‘But I would always keep a beautiful woman’s secrets.’
She said, ‘I wouldn’t trust you if I had any secrets.’
He said, ‘Abdul trusts me. I know about his trips across the border. You see, Abdul trusts me more than you do.’
She said, ‘What a stupid boy he is to trust you, and you’ve done nothing for him, not even have you given him your life insurance. You know, Freddy, I like your lovely smile. When Abdul was in hospital in the Lebanon, I visited that place to see him and I met with a French officer….’
Suzi’s clock struck midnight. So ended Sunday the 13th of August. She showed him to a small room largely filled with a broad divan bed and hung with fine rugs; Freddy sensed the hand and style of Alexandros. Suzi, in her speech-making way, made the following announcement: ‘I have to go and attend to duties and many other dutiful affairs, including Barbara and her great safety in this house. Then, one hour’s time or more, I wait a message from Alexandros as we don’t talk this business by telephone which is unsafe from the government eavesdroppers and press officers. So we do all business by night messengers, and all this business takes maybe two hours. Now you sleep. Maybe I wake you up later on to say good night.’
She left abruptly with a business-like something on her mind. Freddy was suddenly and blindly enraged. Wild-bloodedly he was convinced he had been deliberately tricked by her; and that she had known far more about him than he had himself; and that she had realized, where he had not, the lack of hope and fun in his life up to this evening, and had held out hope and snatched it away. Freddy cursed her in his mind for the miserable unspeakable Arab girl that she was. Then he sat on his bed for about ten minutes, and started to reflect that she probably couldn’t help going about her business, and that she probably could not guess how fugitive his sexual feelings were and how hopeless, to him, was a lingering lapse of two hours between the idea and the execution. He thought, I’ll be damned if I’ll sleep with her now. And this way of putting it consoled him. He decided to find out, if he could, what Suzi was up to, and out of his mind faded the cloudy drama that must have begun to form earlier in the evening: the notion that he would gain her confidence, through making love to her, on the question of Ruth Gardnor’s presence in the house.
He opened his door into stillness. Very soon he heard some movements from a far wing of the building; whether these sounds were voices he could not tell. He decided to go out for a walk in the night air, and well-mannered emotions returned to his heart.
He went out for a normal walk in the night air. Three weeks later, when his lost memory crushed back upon him, the most elusive part of all was that night and the two days that followed.
‘Take it easy, Freddy.’
‘Gardnor’s wife was in that house.’
‘Yes, we’ve got all that, Freddy. We’ve got Gardnor, too.’
‘You’ve got Gardnor?’ Freddy said to his questioner; but he had already been told this several times.
‘Yes, thanks to you, Freddy, we’ve picked up the lot.’
‘It was Nasser’s Post Office,’ Freddy said. ‘I knew it the moment I saw … You’re sure of the place? I could draw a sketch.’
‘Yes, we got it this morning, half an hour after you told me. Take it easy, Freddy. You ought to be in bed, you know.’
‘I knew there was going to be bloodshed,’ Freddy said. ‘I’ve had a feeling of bloodshed ever since I lost my memory. But I thought it would be here, out here in Palestine. I didn’t think it was going to happen in Harrogate.’
‘Freddy, you must rest.’
‘If I’d posted the letters I wrote,’ Freddy said, quite lucidly, ‘this wouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t post the letters. I put them down the lavatory.’
There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it, Freddy. Believe me, absolutely nothing you could have done.’
‘I’ll have to get back to England and see about Benny. If she’s tried for murder —’
‘She going to be found unfit to plead. They’ll put her away somewhere safe. Now, Freddy, the point is that you’ve got to take it easy. Don’t try to think about everything, and when anything occurs to you, jot it down. The whole business will come back to you eventually. No hurry. We want you to get a rest.’
‘You’ve got Gardnor?’
‘Yes, we’ve got Gardnor. They’re getting a statement.’
‘One thing you can do,’ Freddy said. ‘You can get me a booking on a plane tomorrow —’Not tomorrow, Freddy. Honestly, doctors’ orders. In a few days … Joanna and Matt can take care of you, and anything you want, we’re here, you know.’
‘Poor Gardnor,’ Freddy said. ‘I’m sorry for Gardnor, you know. ‘Well we all feel that, Freddy. But he hadn’t any pity for you, remember.’
‘He tried to pin it on me,’ Freddy said.
‘Oh yes, but we had our own ideas about that. You know what we knew.’
‘I wish I could remember exactly what happened after I went out for a walk after dinner that night.’
‘It’ll come back, Freddy. You’ve done enough talking for today. Very useful talking, believe me.’
Freddy looked at the two telegrams on the table and at the three memorandum papers which placed the long-distance calls on record. Had they been lying there since early morning? ‘I knew there would be bloodshed,’ he said, ‘but I thought it would be here in this dangerous place, not Harrogate.’ The telegrams, and the records of long-distance calls between Jerusalem and Harrogate had, he was sure, been on the table since early morning. Joanna had not moved them. The doctor had left. Freddy had refused to go to bed. He sat with the others to eat lunch on the veranda, while the chap from Whitehall kept jumping up to answer the telephone.
The doctor had said he would return later. ‘I don’t need him,’ Freddy said.
‘Eat something, Freddy,’ Joanna was crying very desperately, unable to stop. She wasn’t wearing her red dress today.
‘Freddy, eat something. Oh, there’s the telephone….’ The chap from the office went to answer it.
‘Didn’t I say there would be bloodshed?’ Freddy said.
‘Yes, Freddy, you have been saying so. Don’t talk of it any more.’ Freddy said, ‘I once heard a story of a man who went on a holiday and forgot that he’d left his dog chained up. When he’d been away a fortnight he remembered the dog and was afraid to go back in case of what he’d find. If I hadn’t destroyed those letters —’
‘Here’s Matt,’ said Joanna. ‘Matt, come and sit by Freddy and don’t let him talk too much.’
‘What did that damned doctor give me?’
‘A sedative — nothing — something like aspirin.’
‘Did my mother linger? She must have lain a long time before —’
‘No, it was instantaneous, Freddy.’
‘How do you know? That’s what they always say.’
‘It’s absolutely plain,’ Matt said in a firm voice, ‘that death was instantaneous.’
Freddy’s colleague returned.
‘I didn’t think it would be Harrogate.’
‘Everyone from the office sends no end of good wishes and we all want you to rest, Freddy.’
‘You’ve got Gardnor?’
‘Yes, we’ve got Gardnor.’
Miss Rickward, when it thankfully dawned on her that the travel agency in Jerusalem to which she had been recommended would be open on Sunday like other Arab places of business, had walked into the Ramdez place and found the proprietor, Joe Ramdez, alone and in charge.
Joe Ramdez was at that moment totalling up last quarter’s sum of insults and injuries received from his enemies, and it so happened that the balance outweighed the injuries and other deeds of justice inflicted. This sometimes occurred within one quarter’s accounting, but never before to so large an ext
ent that the balance could not foreseeably right itself in Joe’s favour within a short time. But at this moment of a Sunday in the summer of 1961, Joe sat with his elbows resting on his desk and his head on his hands, attempting to assemble into a process of thought the cracking explosions of anger that were going off in his brain-particles; this was difficult, because the only thought that could possibly emerge from his calculations was that he was losing ground on all sides; business, government, home, he was losing. It was then that a tourist, whom he did not immediately consider to be a woman of moral force, great courage, beautiful strength, substantial means and stout sympathy, entered the door; he was to perceive Miss Rickward in this light within a short time. Meanwhile he looked up and saw only a tourist, and did not know what to do with his exasperation since the tourist trade was a mere apparatus for his affairs, and being a genius within the limits of his environment, Joe Ramdez held the superficial in contempt. He inwardly placed on his wife and Suzi the respective curses of husband and father for not being on duty, and the curses of a brother-Arab on his three worst enemies, Sadok Abboud, Abdullah el Sabah and Ismah-Azhari for putting him into a mood of anger and grief; then he turned his attention to boring Miss Rickward.
She made herself interesting before long. A Miss Vaughan, she said. She had come to look for a Miss Vaughan. The convent was closed to visitors on account of an epidemic, and the address she had been directed to was not really suitable; it did not look clean. ‘I must find somewhere to stay,’ Miss Rickward informed Joe Ramdez, ‘and I must find Barbara Vaughan.’
That morning when Joe had received from his government contact that information was required concerning a British Jewess, under the name of Barbara Vaughan, who had arrived in Jordan from Israel last Friday, he had questioned his family as to whether they knew of her. His wife had no recollection of the name. Suzi, in a hurry to leave on some profitable trip with a British Embassy man, a friend of Alexandros, treated the question with impatience. ‘How should she come to our agency if she’s an Israeli spy?’ Joe Ramdez was intimidated by his daughter’s vigorous reactions to most of his suggestions, and had inquired only in a casual manner if she had come across a Miss Vaughan. He had found no record of her name when he looked for it on his arrival at the office; this, of course, meant very little, since the putting down of anything in black and white, except when absolutely necessary, was discouraged by Joe.