He got up and looked out of the window at the darkening mountains.
"This was a wonderful place," the frustration in his voice bordered on suffering, "until you came..."
"For seven years," I lectured at his back, giving him the briefing I had received in Tel Aviv, "there were Syrians, Palestinians, Druse, Shi'ites and Phalangists here. They abducted, even executed anyone they didn't like. You couldn't have sat down with them and complained about the arrest of a doctor..."
He cut me short. "Have you ever thought why people form an underground?"
"You're being evasive..."
"Answer me! If you don't mind…" I couldn't control myself. "I know all those big words: patriotism, the desire for freedom..."
He laughed with a derision unfitting for someone who lived on people's faith.
"No, that is not what I mean. I mean the little, really important things: smells, foreign lettering on street signs, the sounds of a strange language, different music... a kind of annoying foreignness which occupiers, however enlightened, disseminate in the air..." He pointed his finger at me accusingly. "Those who passed through here did not always treat us with kid gloves, that is true. But that is how things have always been: sometimes they ruled us, sometimes we ruled them. You, on the other hand, are real occupiers: foreigners, people who do not belong, and the damage you inflict continues for generations, like a hereditary disease. Every other family in Dura has fled from you in the past: from Galilee, Haifa, Acre... Now you've reached this place too and of all people it is on Anton, who harmed nobody, that you have laid your hands..."
"It seems reasonable to assume that he did something which caused it..."
He shrugged his shoulders. "He did not do anything. He was a Palestinian patriot and sometimes talked in the café. Is there a law against talking? He treated anyone who needed him and saved dozens of refugees from death through infection and disease. Is there a law against that too?" Out of a pocket hidden in his habit he drew a white handkerchief and wiped his face angrily. "But there is a law against breaking into an old man's house and trying to rape his daughter..."
He did not believe it any more than I did. I could even guess that he knew that I knew. Again I thought about the other reality, which lay hidden beneath events. Was I to assume that by stubbornly adhering to that lie he was signaling about other lies to which he was committed?
"All the same," I said circumspectly, "you saved us..."
"Because of you."
Because of me?"
"You arrested Anton, but you also came and gave me the letter. From that I conclude that there is a humane side to you..." He hesitated and then his voice became angry and exhortative again. "When you return there, to the Villa Athenaeum, tell the others that no one in Dura will talk to you or leave you alone until you bring the doctor back..."
The chance of advancing and cooperating returning to its usual position was far out of reach.
"No one? An entire village, three thousand people?"
"No one," he repeated resolutely, without hesitation, "no one of any value."
“You feel that now, but in another week or two, maybe three, the doctor will come back and his arrest will be just a faint memory..."
His expression became one of soft forgivingness.
"You would not understand. Even when he comes back the insult, the fear and the helplessness will remain. One does not forget an injury done to a man like that, a true Christian..." He took another apple and polished it carefully on the edge of his habit. His voice, which had become low and appeasing, indicated a change of tactics. Was it another signal? One way or another, as with Yvonne, only my goodwill toward the doctor would help me.
"All right," I said, "maybe he really is the wonderful man you describe, maybe there was a mistake and he was arrested without a reason. In order to help I need more information..." I suddenly remembered a sentence from that letter: 'Everything that happens is expected.' "From the beginning," I added, "from the moment you met him."
He thought deeply. I could almost weigh his pros and cons with him, and even predict the moment he decided to speak.
"It was in ‘49. We met in the south," he began, "near the border. I had come from Haifa, together with my mother and three brothers. Anton was coming from the other direction. He had studied medicine in Beirut and wanted to infiltrate into Galilee, to join his family in some village which no longer existed... We told him that there was nothing there anymore and we all went to his flat in Beirut. For four years we lived there, like a family. Anton became a partner in a clinic in Bellevue, but two days a week he worked in a public hospital, for a pittance. He was like an older brother to me, wise and experienced. He was angry at the church for not having supported the Palestinians when their country was taken away from them. All the same, he encouraged me when I chose to study at a priests' seminary. When I was ordained I was sent here, to Dura..."
"And Anton?"
"He remained in Beirut. We corresponded. I told him about the tranquility of the place, the air, the light. Those were good years. Your villa was a hotel and rich people used to come for summer holidays and winter skiing. The only doctor lived in the valley, an old Frenchman who was afraid of cars and ski fractures. Anton came for a visit, thought about it and eventually signed a contract with the hotel management. He did not argue about the fee or the hours he would be on duty. He only asked to live outside the hotel, so that he might treat anyone who needed a doctor. The hotel management bought an orchard at the top of the mountain and built a house there. After the woman came, they added the other buildings..."
"Didn't she come together with him?"
As suddenly as he had become willing, he now withdrew.
"No. She just appeared here one morning with the child. A refugee."
"...The child," I persisted. "Isn't he his son?"
"And she's not his wife," he replied with distaste. "She just lives there, helps in the clinic a little, grows vegetables..."
"You might grant your Christian forgiveness to Yvonne. You should care especially about refugees..."
"Not of her type."
"Why?"
"She did not flee from war..."
"Then from what?"
In the next room a weary clock produced a series of groans. A rosary slid out from the hidden pocket in his habit in his hand. His fingers began separating the beads tensely one by one, as if they were counting sins. His eyes wandered swiftly to the door. I wasn't about to forego his answer. The temptation to solve one of the mysteries in the letter was stronger than any other consideration at that moment.
"What was she running away from?" I asked again.
His hand crushed the rosary. I was prepared to stay there for years until he answered. "Disgrace," the reply came eventually, accompanied by an abrupt rising from the chair.
He accompanied me to the door and watched after me until I left the garden. The sudden waves of early evening coolness, the noise of cars on the main road, the sound of cones falling onto the bed of needles, even the smashed headlamp on the command car, were all lost on me. Nothing was as significant as the word "disgrace". I mechanically gathered up the fragments of the headlamp then I drew the copy of the doctor's letter out of my pocket and reread it. When I got to the sentence about Yvonne I was consumed by curiosity and attraction.
***
In the evening, the wind that came from the valleys grew stronger. The palm trees in the garden of the Athenaeum bowed to it gracefully. In the houses of Dura shutters banged and window panes clattered. The path to the peak seemed shorter now that the village had grown The great empty space had been covered by a sea of tents, whose occupants, to escape the heat, sat along the road, parcels waiting to be collected.
I waited beneath the window. The idea of her disgrace changed everything. My sense of misery over how little I had achieved in Dura was diminished. I even felt at one with her, against Anton's moral superiority. As I remembered the promises I had made her I felt an oppres
sive sense of abjectness. To accept the parcel for Anton, I decided, would be the limit of deception, the end of the lie.
I heard her steps approaching up the path from the vegetable garden. She was carrying a torch, the same heavy one that had glared in my face the night I had been bitten. This time she took care to direct it at the ground. A gesture of confidence, perhaps of even a certain friendship? Like some nocturnal Red Riding Hood, she set down a napkin-covered wicker basket in the circle of light.
With a certain boldness that came of a sense of partnership, I took the torch from her and shone it at her. Not directly, but via the wall, which gave her face a cool, stony light. From the little joint experience we had accumulated I knew that direct light did not flatter her. Even so, her face looked bad, almost ugly, that night.
"I've brought you something too," she smiled, rousing herself from the inflexibility of strangeness. "An almond and honey cake. I didn't know what you people eat..." Expression flowed from her face again, animating her features with grace and vitality. Suddenly, before my very eyes, she became almost beautiful. I directed the shaft of light downwards.
"I've packed the things for Anton in transparent boxes. Sealed containers aren't allowed in prison, are they?"
How did she know? Maybe the story of her disgrace was connected with that? I watched her as she crouched down. Her hair, I knew, would hang about her face, shimmering with its shining fibers. The cake, laid on the napkin, sank into a bed of dry grass.
"Shall I slice you a piece?" The tone of her voice was polite. No more than that. All the same, my heart leapt. I leaned the torch against the wall. She concentrated as she pulled at the napkin and I was overcome with a desire to touch, to let my finger wander over her sallow face, to redeem the sharp angles of her cheeks. Anton's basket was between us. I moved it away into the darkness. Her eyes followed my hands, absorbing every movement.
We ate in silence. The cake tasted good, though a trifle dry. A bottle of wine would have helped. It would have given the occasion a different character.
"Is there news?"
A crumb stuck in my throat.
She waited until I had stopped coughing. "When will they let him go?"
"I'm waiting for a reply." That, at least, was true.
If she was disappointed, it was concealed by the rhythmic, precise movements she made as she continued cutting the cake.
"The bite," I said, "is completely healed."
"Good," she said indifferently.
I lit a cigarette. Time was running out. If we did not start talking I would have to leave in another few minutes. The need that bubbled in my veins became a stimulus for which the only antidote was contact.
She began to pack. In a sitting position the crookedness of her back disappeared, and she was now wonderfully straight. Her hands were stretched out in front of her, long and beautiful. I remembered her shoulders, in the vegetable garden. I could imagine her whole body beneath her clothes.
She tried to stand up with an awkward, imprecise movement of her weak leg. I jumped up and held out my hand to her. She did not hesitate and gripped my arm, high above my extended hand. Her fingers were strong and dry. For a moment I was ashamed of the damp film of sweat which covered my skin.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes." She let go of my arm and leaned against the wall. "Everything will be all right in a moment."
"I've got a car here..."
"There's no need." She was standing more steadily now. "I shouldn't have sat down like that..."
"Your legs..." I guessed gingerly.
"Only one, the left one."
"Was it a fracture...?"
"Shrapnel." She went out into the darkness to look for the basket. Now her limp was pronounced. She was unable to hide it, or perhaps there was no longer any point.
"How? When?" I asked toward the direction in which she had disappeared.
"In the summer, ten years ago, in Beirut." She picked up the basket. "Palestinians, maybe terrorists, lived in the next building. Your planes attacked it," she replaced the remaining cake in the basket. "There is no one to blame. That's war. Two days before they had placed a bomb in a Jerusalem cinema. A week later they attacked a bus in Tel Aviv..."
In the torchlight, her wounded leg in its white plastic sandal, looked ridiculous, sunk as it was crookedly into the carpet of dried grass. I felt suddenly grateful that she hadn't been hurt by one of my devices. A sour wave welled up and stuck in my throat, which was still dry from the cake. I coughed and choked, investing all my energies in overcoming my desire to get away from there, to disappear before I was sick.
"There's water here." She began walking with her customary controlled, hopping step, dragging the basket with her. The torch lit the way in the thick foliage beyond the structure, higher and higher. I noticed the rushing of a stream only after we were already standing in its waters. Yvonne took off her sandals and held them in her free hand. How could I rid myself of the socks and shoes on my feet? Her legs in the stream were suddenly illuminated: long toes, slender ankles, brown knees. On one ankle was a gold chain, delicate as a thread of silk. The irritation in my throat was replaced by a hardening at my groin.
Water was flowing from a small hollow in the rock - the gentle mother of the stream, of the irrigation canal in the vegetable garden, of the ribbon of the river in the wadi. With that wave-like arching of her body, she moved aside. I gestured to her that she should drink first. She shook her head.
Still choking, I lurched forward into the screen of water. The cold beat at my head, inside my mouth, my body, my heart. I was on the verge of tears. Her laughter, completely unexpected, astonishing, rang in my ears together with the sound of the stream on my head.
I did not have anything with which to wipe my mouth. There was only the napkin in the basket, but she did not offer it and merely laughed again. This time I felt that her laugh was sympathetic. A little happiness and maybe just animal gratitude enveloped me.
We went back through the stream the same way we had climbed up. On our left the structure reared up, as bulky as a mountain monster. The tree which grew through the roof scraped the sky. She stopped and bent to do up her sandals. By the light of the rising moon I saw her vertebrae again as they protruded through the material of her blouse. I held out a hand which was too short and heavy, and touched her.
She straightened up. There was no mistaking the tone of her voice, unsteady, anxious.
"Do you know how to get back from here?" She moved the basket to the bank of the stream, placing it carefully, seriously, like a promissory note which had to be honored. She drew a round box from inside it.
"This shouldn't get mixed up with the food." I peered at it through water dripping from my hair, and she added hesitantly. "I found it next to his bed. He used it in the last few days. Maybe he needs it..."
Before I could think of what to say to summon up the magic once again, she disappeared. The stream became a muddy ditch again, the foliage alongside it thorns. The basket rested among them, supremely superfluous. Slowly, treading heavily, I emerged from the water carrying the basket. The twigs creaked briefly, like the snap of handcuffs. With relief I made out the outline of the command car, waiting faithfully beneath a tree. I climbed into the driver's seat, turned the ignition and switched on the lights. There was no need to get out and check: both had been smashed.
Angrily, I raced down the mountain, driving blindly alongside the refugee camp. I crossed the church square and rolled down the winding road to the Athenaeum. The guard at the gate looked at the smashed head lights with interest. From inside the building I could hear the sound of men's chanting. "Lord of the universe, who ruled..." The Sabbath service. The voice of the garage supervisor, cracked and breathless, spoiled the unity of the choir. How could I go in there, dripping wet, carrying a picnic basket?
I turned the command car around in the courtyard. A little bit forward, then backward. I honked at the guard, drove back through the gate and turned left onto
the road down to the valley. After a mile or two I pulled over at the edge of the abyss.
The basket, on the seat beside me, was still covered with the silly napkin. The detention camp was in front of me, one of the clusters of lights in the valley. In another few days, a week, two weeks at the most, Anton Khamis would return home, angry and humiliated. The woman whose husband he was not would limp toward him on her long feet, shake her hair and talk to him in her soft, lilting voice. Maybe she would let him caress her face. Why should he have the basket? Which of them would remember the basket and the journey it had made to the detention camp in the hands of someone called Danny Simon?
I hate useless investments.
I pulled it onto my wet knees. Beneath the box was the serviette which covered the rest of my cake and half a dozen plastic containers filled with various kinds of food. I opened one of them. The prison warders did this too. Rice - the warmth of foreign houses and the pungent smell of a spice. I tasted a bit, then some more. In a frenzy of sudden hunger I opened the other containers. I dipped my finger in sauce, slurped some sour milk, tore strips off a piece of roast mutton with my teeth. I did not taste the food, I felt only its weight and volume in the space it filled in my body.
I could scarcely stand. My stomach was distended, my muscles as taut as the clothes which had dried on my body. I threw the basket with its contents into the chasm. After that I turned to the box. The lid burst and a trickle of something viscous and scented oozed slowly down my arm. The letters on the label shimmered in the light from the dashboard: "OINTMENT FOR DISINFECTION AND WOUND HEALING, MANUFACTURED BY CIGMA FRANCE. INGREDIENTS: NEOMYCIN CREAM 0.5%, BUTYL PARABEN 0.3%, ODOUR AND COLOUR ADDITIVES."