Come To The War (33 page)

^{When we reached the climbing road to Mount Scopus, Shoshana said: 'General Dayan was on the top of Mount Scopus today. I think it is very good that the War Minister goes to see how the battle is happening.'}

^{'1 thought he was the Defence Minister,' I said.}

^{She nodded vigorously. 'War Minister is better, I think. It is more fighting talk, you understand.'}

^{'More aggressive,' I suggested.}

^{'That is correct.'}

^{'You're right, I suppose,' I shrugged. 'There hasn't been much defence from the Israelis in this little affair.'}

^{'We have to fight outside our frontiers,' she said.}

^{'You have said that before,' I pointed out.}

^{'It is still true.'}

^{The jeep snorted as it surmounted the hot, rough road. The afternoon sun was lying at its fullest, unrelentingly across the stony mountains. Behind our backs, on the minor hills about the Old City the battle still moved, but tiredly, spasmodically. The whole country seemed to tremble under the fierce heat of the day and the occasional growl of the guns.}

^{Zoo Baby said: 'Ramallah is ours again. The radio said it. Then they played Israeli songs to show that they told the truth.'}

^{'And Latrun,' said Dov. 'No resistance at Latrun.'}

^{'It is good we have Latrun,' said Shoshana. 'God knows it was too bad there last time. My father has told me of the hundreds of dead lying in the fields and the vineyards below the monastery. This time it was easy. The Arabs ran away.'}

^{'When did you start playing the piano, then ?' O'Sullivan asked me.}

^{'At three years,' I said. 'We had a pianola, you know one of those old-fashioned roller things.'}

^{'I know them,' said O'Sullivan.}

^{'And one day my mother deduced that I wasn't playing it by working the pedals because my feet wouldn't reach the pedals. It took months before she noticed. And she went screaming "Eureka" down the village street, and all the neighbours used to crowd into the parlour, and in the passage outside, and in the street, with the front window open, to hear me play.'}

^{'Like some sort of Holy Miracle,' he said. 'The sort we have in Ireland with visions and blood pouring out of some urchin's hands. And everybody turns up from miles around to have a look.'}

^{'Just the same. I was the local miracle. They gave me scholarships and all sorts of things, and in the end I got a manager and a publicity agent and an image and the rest of it. I'm supposed to be playing at Eastbourne next week. Or is it Bradford?'}

^{'It's Bradford,' interrupted Shoshana.}

^{From the university and hospital buildings on the summit of Mount Scopus the clean blue star flew from every pinnacle.}

^{'Sure,' said O'Sullivan. 'It looks like the summer camp of the Jewish Lads' Brigade.'}

^{From the top we looked over the fine golden city and the ancient country. It was spread out on every side. The long view from the flank of Mount Scopus over the sun-browned earth to the great flat, shining pan of the Dead Sea; then, to the south the strongly rising Wilderness of the Bible and the old and new roads to Jericho and Bethlehem, the Mount of Contempt, the Church of the Ascension, the Tomb of the Prophets, the Tomb of Absalom, the Tomb of Zachariah, seven destroyed tanks, and the Panorama Hotel.}

^{It was clear that apart from the height of Augusta Victoria most of the surrounding country was in Jewish hands. Curling smoke had replaced now the flash of explosions. Little fires were burning in a hundred places as though everyone was industriously clearing up. Only the stronghold of the Old City, pugnacious behind its thick walls and dominating towers, remained in Arab hands.}

^{'Tomorrow,' Shoshana said. 'Tomorrow it will be ours. I promise you that.'}

^{'Don't promise me,' I assured her.}

^{"The only thing that will stop us taking the city will be a Ceasefire,' said Dov. 'If that happens Jerusalem could become an Arab island, just as this place, Mount Scopus, has been an Israeli island. That would be disaster.'}

^{Zoo Baby wiped his wide, sweating forehead. He said: 'A Ceasefire? A finish?'}

^{Dov shrugged. 'The Egyptians are beaten. Already they run like crying children to the United Nations. Maybe we win too quickly, but not win enough.'}

^{We remained on Mount Scopus until it was dark, watching the extravagant sunset burn the roofs of Jerusalem with its hot colours, seeing the redness eventually drain from the Judean Hills and leave them to the pale touch of the stars.}

^{Zoo Baby drove us back to the house at the Mandelbaum Gate where we found Major de Groucy in a deep sleep on the table where, a few hours before, we had laid the cold body of the elderly officer. Some of the correspondents and the Press centre clerks were lying against the walls or on the bare tables, sleeping away their exhaustion. Crouched across a typewriter in one corner was one of the middle-aged American journalists. He had been weeping and he told us about the two Americans who had been killed in the fighting that day and whom he had known and worked with and liked. He was very tired and he tapped out his story with two reluctant fingers.}

^{Shoshana spent half an hour on the telephone to Tel Aviv. We waited for her in the jeep and were squatting, talking, when Cumberland drove up with almost a teenage flourish, tooting the horn of his jeep to us.}

^{'Had a good day?' he asked brightly as though we had been fishing.}

^{'So, so,' I said. 'How about you?'}

^{'Jesus,' he said. 'This is some war! Everything happens so fast, and so near. In Vietnam you sometimes have to poke along for two days before you get to any shooting. It's just a great big place. But this is so dinky. Everything happens right around the block from the cable office.' He waited a moment and we smiled at him politely. 'Where's the young lady?' he asked. 'Shoshana. She's okay isn't she?'}

^{'Unless she's tripped over the telephone wire, or pulled Major de Groucy down on top of her, she's in good health,' I said. 'We're just waiting for her.'}

^{'Are you going to the Babylon Hotel?' he asked.}

^{'Why should we go there? asked Dov.}

^{'It's a great hotel and it's just been taken over from the former management - you get me? All the Press boys are going there for rest and recreation. There's chow there too. And the rates are reasonable.'}

^{So we went to the Babylon Hotel. Someone in the Tel Aviv newspaper office had told Shoshana to go there to link up with her colleagues. She greeted Cumberland quietly as she came out of the door, and he was on the way in. Then she said to Zoo Baby: 'Let us go to the Babylon Hotel. It is good there.'}

^{'So the word gets around,' said Dov.}

^{It was to the south of the city, just off the Bethlehem road, in an island of fig and tamarisk trees. There was an ornamental pool in the front with three fountains continuing to jump. In the middle of the pool, burned to a skeleton, was a military motorcycle and sidecar. That day, in Jerusalem, it appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary.}

^{Apart from a few untidy holes near the front porch the hotel had remained unscarred by the battle. It seemed to be full of wounded and tired men, but a cheerful thin Israeli officer sitting professionally behind the reception desk said that there were rooms available for us. The attack on the Old City, he predicted confidently, would not now take place until the morning and everyone would have time to be in their places.}

^{'Before the war,' said Dov quietly to me, 'this man was the manager of the worst hotel in Haifa. High rates, low standards.' He smiled: 'One thing about the Jews, we always have the man for the job. This hotel was one of the showpieces of the Jordan Tourist Board. Our friend here will soon make a difference.'}

^{'You,' I said, 'are a realistic man.'}

^{'I have no fight about my head, if that is what you mean,' he laughed. 'Too many people, especially those who have written stories and novels about Israel, try to show us as a race of courageous saints. We are not. We are people like all the others on earth. Just people. If God chose us then he must have long ago regretted it.'}

^{They gave me a room to myself, Shoshana having told the officer at the reception desk that I was an important person. I ran the bath and lay in it for half an hour. My hands were sore and torn, my face throbbed in the warm water from all its scratches and bruises, and the pathetic injury behind my knee inflicted by Abdullah's bicycle hurt more than all those brought about by the rough days of the war. I called the officer at the reception desk and he brightly assured me that he could send a razor and a toothbrush to me immediately and he could arrange for some clean underclothes and green denims. 'Nothing is beyond Israel, Mr Hollings,' he laughed. 'Nothing.'}

^{In the mirror I saw that the sun had scorched my face. My forearms were almost black. The razor arrived with a packet of blades and some shaving cream. There was also a toothbrush and toothpaste and the change of clothes. The green fatigues were only slightly big. With the consignment was a typewritten slip which said: 'With the Compliments of the Management of the Golda Meir Plaza Hotel, formerly the Babylon Hotel'.}

^{I changed and went to Shoshana's room. She opened the door to my tap and I went in and sat on the bed while she finished dressing. She was wearing a white nylon slip that fitted her well. Her face and arms and legs were deep brown. I kissed her when I first went in holding her soft body hard against me.}

^{She went back to doing her hair in front of the mirror. She moved it up, handfuls of fair hair, with graceful womanly movements.}

^{'This Mrs Haydn,' she said conversationally. 'She is a strange woman, yes?'}

^{I hesitated. 'Well, different,' I said.}

^{'You have made love on a bed with her?'}

^{'What sort of thing to say is that?'}

^{She turned unhurriedly. I could see there was a bruise on her cheekbone where Selma had struck her. 'It is a question,' she said. 'Have you made love on the bed with her?'}

^{'And if I had?'}

^{'Not today was it ?' she asked softly. 'Not after me ?'}

^{I walked to her and she turned back to the mirror. I ran my arms about her soft middle, feeling the carefully domed flesh of her stomach beneath the skin of nylon. I put my head against her head. 'Not after you,' I said.}

^{'That is good.' She turned against me, closely, so that her fine breasts pressed into my chest. 'There is nothing more to tell me.' We kissed and then she laughed. 'Oh, Christopher, was it not hilarious!'}

^{'The fight?' I said.}

^{'Yes, of course, the fight.' She giggled like a child. 'When you fell into the bicycle! It was so hilarious.'}

^{'Look,' I said. 'Take a look at this.' I turned and undid my trousers, pulling them down so that she could see the injury behind my knee. I did a passable imitation of the bumptious Major de Groucy. 'Shall we say it was caused by an Arab bicycle pedal.' We fell on the bed together and embraced and slept quietly for a while in each other's arms. Then the telephone rang and I picked it up. 'The Golda Meir Plaza Hotel announces that dinner is served,' said the voice.}

^{Dinner was by candlelight because the mains electricity was cut. All five of us arrived at the table like strangers, clean faces that shone, tidied hair, and clean clothes. O'SuIlivan had been to the dressing station and had his flesh wound bandaged.}

^{'It's not every Catholic can say he got shot outside the Garden of Gethsemane,' he said. 'Or that he saw a woman throw a grenade like some women would throw a flower vase.'}

^{Shoshana said slowly: 'It is something we must not talk about. Now I am very afraid of what I did. Let us eat.'}

^{They gave her a decoration for it a few weeks later. But she put it away in a drawer under her Israeli embroidery and I never saw it again.}

^{We ate with fifty or sixty others, some soldiers, some civilians, some war correspondents. It was self-service from a long table served by Army cooks. There was a bottle of Jordanian red wine between every two people. Soon the men at the table began to sing.}