At half past three a car, driven by an Arab, arrived at the house. Barbara, drugged into a euphoristic near-trance by a very effective tablet that Abdul had given her, was dressed in a black nun’s habit with a starchy white coif, the skirt slightly too short; she carried a black shopping-bag. She entered the car. Abdul followed, an Arab Franciscan friar in a brown habit, very handsome. They sat boldly in the back. Barbara examined once more the contents of the shopping-bag. A bottle of eau-de-cologne. A passport bearing a nun’s photograph with an anonymous nun-like face slightly fatter and older than Barbara’s — the name Sister Marie-Joseph Minton of the Holy Ghost Sisters, Paxton, Monmouthshire, England, the date of birth, 1920, and a pilgrim’s visa. She had the passport by heart, and hoped she wouldn’t need to put it to the test. Also in the bag were a rosary, four white linen handkerchiefs, a purse containing some English and some Jordanian coins, a missal, a book of religious offices, a small roll of cotton wool, a black cotton reel with a needle stuck through it, a yellow plastic thimble, a small tin box of blackcurrant throat pastilles, a pair of black woollen stockings, a small paper bag containing pictures of the Christian shrines in Jordan, an empty spectacles-case, a ball-point pen, and, for some reason, an empty soda-water bottle. In the cheerfulness of Abdul’s drug Barbara examined these objects with great joy, marvelling at the genius of the collection. ‘The only things that are wrong,’ she said, ‘are the absence of glasses to put in the case, and the absence of a sponge-bag and tooth-brush. Otherwise it’s a perfect nun’s outfit, and whoever did it is absolutely brilliant.’
‘We had no time to look inside,’ Abdul said. ‘My friend that helped me, took this bag exactly as it stood.’
Barbara decided to leave the spectacles-case behind in the car. She felt very happy. Alexandros, at his shop door, did not recognize them. Abdul stared directly at the shop and she did too, but Alexandros observed nothing. Meantime, Barbara had noticed Abdul’s head as he turned towards the car window. She said, ‘What have you done to your head, Abdul?’
‘It is shaved for tonsure of Franciscan friar,’ he said heroically.
‘I think you’re a hero,’ she said.
He said, ‘It looks quite good, matter of fact. A few weeks, if I wear this tonsure around the place, many youths wear it also.’
They came to the Mandelbaum Gate, where a large crowd was gathered.
There she was very much afraid. Abdul was quiet, she was not sure whether from circumspection or anxiety. She remembered she was a nun, and must not show excitement. She rather regretted taking the drug, although she quite saw, later, that it had helped her through. The large crowd was not so large as it had seemed at first. As she pulled herself together she saw it was a pilgrim-group of about forty, attended by two priests. A separate group of five women seemed to be in a sensational buzz. Barbara looked hard at every head in the vicinity in case it should be Ricky’s, and, nodding courteously to Abdul, moved aside to hear what the five women were discussing in such exclamatory tones. She perceived that they came from the north of England.
‘Perhaps I should wait for her.’ … ‘Poor soul, the poor soul! ‘… ‘No, she said, no, definitely to go on without her; it’s die Lord’s will, she said, it’s the Lord’s good will.’ … ‘Margaret, would you and I wait with her till she gets her things back?’ … ‘Poor woman, she was only two minutes having a shower-bath, and then she comes out of the cubicle and all her things gone.’ … ‘Not a mortal stitch to put on.’ … ‘The passport too.’ … ‘The police surely will get them back. Who’d want a nun’s clothing, for the Lord’s sake?’
Barbara moved back to Abdul, who stood politely behind the hubbub of the large group. ‘What time is it now?’
‘Five minutes to four.’
‘And the pilgrimage doesn’t go through till four.’
‘Don’t get excited.’
‘But the police will be checking the passports. I’ve heard some women talking over there, about the nun whose clothing was stolen. Where did you get the stuff?’
‘From a room in a convent where some Englishwomen were staying. My friend is the porter, which is a very fine post to hold. These clothes cost a great price.’
The crowd began to move forward. Barbara was in a hurry. Abdul touched her arm and shook his head. She held back humbly. ‘It’s two minutes to four,’ Abdul said, ‘so we are well ahead of time.’
‘What time?’ She thought he meant the time when the police could be expected to arrive.
‘We are well ahead of four o’clock.’ He was an admirable Franciscan. This gave her courage.
She saw one of the priests who attended the large group of pilgrims walk back from the front of the moving crowd, to help it to get in order. ‘Have the bags gone through, Father Colin?’ said a woman’s voice.
‘Yes, they’ve all gone ahead, don’t worry.’
He looked for a moment at Abdul and Barbara, newcomers to him. Barbara now recognized him as the priest who had said Mass at the Holy Sepulchre while she endured the agonizing onslaught of her sickness. Barbara smiled cheerily at him and he gave her an unquestioning smile in return, including Abdul in it. Abdul nodded once or twice, severely, as befitted a Franciscan of the Holy Land. Then the priest was busy with his people again. As they came near to the Gate, Barbara, waiting her turn, was aware that some of the faithful were making way for her and for Abdul, and she remembered that they were objects of reverence and accepted the courtesies.
The Jordanian official said he hoped she had enjoyed her visit to Jordan ‘where is many Christian faith’. Barbara said softly that it had been a great experience, and in the meantime the official looked at her visa, closed the passport and handed it back. She walked on with the crowd, not looking round for Abdul until she had to halt with the rest at the Israeli immigration hut. She saw him talking to the Jordanian official, explaining something. She looked away.
The Israeli official looked at her passport photograph and said, as he stamped her visa. ‘The photographer might have done you better justice than that, Sister.’
‘It’s a matter of luck,’ she said. She opened her shopping-bag for the customs clerk and he peered into it, jokingly. Through the door she saw Abdul joining the crowd, and as she left the hut he said, ‘Wait for me.’
She waited, and again it seemed he was explaining something. At last he got through.
They followed the crowd, most of whom were now climbing into a waiting motor-coach. Abdul said, ‘My visa wasn’t quite right for the date, but I explained in Arabic to the Jordanian and in Hebrew to the Jew, that I am here for one day only and have now no time to get the correct visa. They are always impressed when a monk speaks their language.’
‘Where are we now?’ said Barbara.
‘In Jerusalem. In Israel.’
‘Already?’ The drug carried her off. She started to run for it, all along the narrow streets of the Orthodox Jews. Abdul ran after her, and caught her. ‘Wait, we’ll get a taxi. Wait, please, we’ll be arrested.’ She wanted to run along the pavements of the sweet, rational streets. All the people in the shops had come to the doorways and the passers-by had stopped to stare at the astonishing thing, a running nun with a monk in pursuit. A small shrivelled man shouted up the street to a taxi which was passing diagonally. It turned towards them and they entered in with all their skirts bundling with them. ‘I get you clothes to put on very soon,’ said Abdul, cool and proud.
Three days after her return, when she had come back to the hotel after a long afternoon’s shopping for some clothes in which to travel back to London, she found an envelope had been slipped under the door of her room. She had not been expecting any letter by this means, for Harry was already here with her, in the hotel.
It was a letter from Ricky, enclosing a photographed copy of Harry’s birth certificate. The letter was headed ‘Ramdez Travel Agency, Jerusalem, Jordan’. It read:
DEAR BARBARA,
I have tried to locate you, but evidently you purposely eluded
me. I mow find you are returned to Occupied Palestine and the people of your origin.
Your defection from your school commitments has forced me to sell the establishment as a going concern. I cannot carry on without reliable assistance.
I wished to see you for a reason. This was to hand to you the enclosed photographic copy of a document which I located in Coventry after much search in parish registers. etc. It is a copy of the baptismal certificate of Mr Clegg, whom you say you had decided to marry. You will see from this that not only is he illegitimate (bearing the ‘mother’s name’ without entry under ‘father’s name’ is the significant point here), but he is also R.C. by birth, as you will see from an examination of the enclosed. Therefore, as the Romans do not allow divorce, I am sure you would wish to know in time that a marriage with Clegg would not be consonant with your Church, which, I am bound to say, compares unfavourably with other religions (e.g. Moslem) in this respect.
As you would not wish to act out of consonance with your principles, as you have frequently indicated, I am convinced you would wish to have this document, for Clegg’s information as well as your own.
I trust I have done my duty and that you will find a man, as you appear to wish this after all these years. I trust a fuller and more grateful life awaits me after I have wound up the school.
Yours in anticipation of acknowledgement,
E. RICKWARD
Barbara saw immediately what Harry’s birth certificate signified. She went along to Harry’s room with it. He, educated in these matters by his recent experience in Rome, saw it too. ‘But I never knew my mother was a Catholic,’ he said. ‘My aunts didn’t tell me that. Of course, they weren’t actually aunts at all. Perhaps they didn’t know.’ Manuscript-man that he was, he held the paper up to the light to see the water-mark. There was none. It was just a photographed copy.
She said, ‘It’s marvellous.’
He smiled. But he smiled more at Ricky’s letter.
That evening they cornered a priest who was staying at the hotel, to confirm their assumption that Harry’s previous marriage was now invalid. This was easy enough.
‘Do they accept photographed copies in Rome?’ said Barbara, ‘or do we send for the original?’ The priest had to corner another priest for the answer. The other priest was that Father Colin Ballantyne who had preached at the Holy Sepulchre and brought his pilgrimage through the Gate with Barbara. ‘Yes, a copy is all right, of course,’ he said. ‘One can never get parishes to part with the originals.’ He looked at Barbara again. ‘Haven’t we met somewhere before?’
She said. ‘I came through the Mandelbaum Gate with your party on Monday.’
‘Oh, is that where it was …’ He still seemed puzzled, and they left him with the mystery.
Abdul Ramdez and Mendel Ephraim left Israel by way of Syria a few months later and managed to reach Tangier, where they opened a café.
Suzi married a lawyer in Athens.
Freddy remembered Suzi gradually, and especially on that day in Kensington Gardens when the red sun touched the skaters under the winter sky. He wondered, then, whether she was alive.
‘You’ve got Gardnor’s statement?’
‘Yes. His wife’s got away to Cairo, we hear. The Ramdez girl was arrested, probably shot. The police were keen to show willing.’
‘Oh, well. At least you’ve got Gardnor.’
‘Old Ramdez seems to have wriggled out of it. He’s still going about.’
‘Detestable fellow,’ Freddy said.
And when it came at last to his wondering whether Suzi was alive, he didn’t take steps to inquire, and was reminded again of that story of the man who went away for a holiday and left his dog chained up, and feared to return in case of what he should find.
Barbara and Harry were married and got along fairly well together ever after. They had one child, a girl, whom they fussed over continually. They saw Suzi many times in Athens and London. Her husband was not unlike Alexandros, but leaner and less large in manner.
Before he left Jordan Freddy bought the icon from Alexandros, who condoled with him formally, in Lebanese French, over the death of his mother, and, in Arab English, assured Freddy that there was no obligation for him to buy the icon.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Freddy, ‘that I’m a little better off now.’
‘Yes, the mother leaves to the son. The old must die. But she has had a life.’
Joanna said, ‘Freddy, you simply aren’t fit to travel, let alone face all those tragic details. There’s nothing you can do now. Let your sisters cope.’
‘I must see about Benny,’ Freddy said. ‘I must go home and see to poor Benny. My sisters will do nothing for Benny.’
‘There’s the Welfare State, you know.’
‘I must see about her. I can’t have her locked up in some lunatic asylum without seeing the actual place, at least.’
Before he left for Israel to collect his belongings and return home, Freddy walked round Old Jerusalem, up the Via Dolorosa, past the Temple site and the Dome of the Rock, locating the places of history that had become familiar to him, as well as those he had neglected to look into. He followed the ancient walls of the city and Temple, past the gates of historic meaning, sealed and barred against Israel — the Zion Gate, Dung Gate, Jaffa Gate, New Gate. Then St Stephen’s Gate opened within the Old City to another medieval maze of streets — Damascus Gate, that gate of the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and Herod’s Gate. He walked round the city until at last, fumbling in his pocket for his diplomatic pass, he came to the Mandelbaum Gate, hardly a gate at all, but a piece of street between Jerusalem and Jerusalem, flanked by two huts, and called by that name because a house at the other end once belonged to a Mr Mandelbaum.
Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate
(Series: # )
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