He took two steps nearer.
"If he's alive, as I believe, it's a collection of hints..."
"And if not?" he asked tensely.
I looked straight at him. "Maybe a will..."
He examined the piece of paper in my hand again. What value would Jonathan have attached to a tattered copy of a note I had left?
"Tomorrow at two," he said suddenly. "At my garage." His face took on the look of a naughty boy. "...And go directly there."
He turned and hurried out. I remained alone before the altar, exchanging glances with the photos of the doctor which were now wrinkled by the candle heat. I put out my hand to move them away from the heat and then withdrew it. I had no further share in that place. I drove away the remnants of previous feelings, those I had had before Michel had arrived. The angry truculence which now arose in me was the remains of Vincent's heritage: an internal sense the eve of the battle, a war dance of the mind, which eschewed any move which would not contribute to my chances of winning.
Outside, it was almost completely dark. The command car was in its place, near the hedge of the priest's garden. I climbed into it, and somewhere in the distance a rumbling was born, moving the air like a huge mechanical heart, slowly and continuously becoming a very concrete, crude sound which rolled down from the road.
A large circle of light appeared. A lorry, then another, and another passed, a long, dusty row of them, piled with troops. Behind them, the little car belonging to the man in civilian clothes, and behind that a caravan of enormous road-monsters bearing wooden houses with dark windows.
The earth trembled and shook. The night was filled with the stench of exhaust fumes. At the sight of the moving town bats retreated from the treetops. I lay my head on the steering wheel and waited until the noise had died away and the air was cool again. I saw a lamp light up over the stairs to the priest's house. In the soft, yellow light a figure was walking, almost floating. I could not fail to recognize it: the heavy, flowing hair, the narrow shoulders and the uneven, limping gait.
Deep inside me something unexpected arose. It was stronger than all the apprehensions, schemes, rivalries and shame: a desire to draw near, to touch, to be a part of. Maybe it was the loneliness again or perhaps something deeper, not even unique. After all, love strikes people all the time.
But for me this was the first time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next day broke like one that would not end well. A hazy, restless dawn shone on Dura. The paratroopers and other soldiers at the Athenaeum welcomed it with eyes bleary from lack of sleep. Many more soldiers had arrived during the night and entrenched themselves on the mountain tops, along the course of the wadi and in the orchards. An unending network of telephone wires was being extended along the streets. Military policemen appeared at the intersections, their white sleeves rolled up in preparation for the large volume of traffic which was probably forming somewhere in the south.
Smoke rose from the mountain top. Someone was burning the ruin, the mattress, the dry tree and the undergrowth. The big trucks were parked in rows on the outskirts of the village. Next to them, on a square which had been hewn out of the slope, the houses they had brought were arranged in a semi-circle. The little car belonging to the man in civilian clothes was parked in the middle and in it he was asleep, his mouth open. He woke up as I passed him, and smiled with satisfaction, as though he had slept well only because he knew that he would find me when he awoke.
In his baggage compartment, next to the jack and the warning triangle, were the four tins of napalm and, between them, wrapped in rags, four bottles. He held a bottle up to the light. "They were blue yesterday, I'm sure."
I took it carefully from him. "That's a bit of a delusion, isn't it?"
The rotund pleasant expression did not alter. Only a hardness in his eyes revealed that he had recognized the phrase and remembered the circumstances in which he had said it. He gestured towards the cans and the bottles lying on the ground.
"Let's start."
It was seven a.m. The liquid in the bottles was a yellow-green hue which meant six or seven hours of life. With a little luck I could meet Michel before the world turned upside down.
"Where?" I asked.
He pointed at the row of new houses. I looked at him in amazement.
He glanced at his watch and added, "Time everything for two o'clock precisely..."
"Three hundred and fifty families," I quoted his speech in the captain's office. "All over the world they'll see it..."
He sighed. "Don't make things difficult for me, Simon."
"In Tel Aviv they said that no one would be hurt."
"No one will be hurt. That's the plan."
All the same, a wave of anger rose within me. I kicked the can in front of me.
"Do it yourself."
He bent down and calmly placed the can further away. "You are disgracing your past."
"To hell with my past."
There was genuine surprise on his face. "I've seen your file. Lots of people would be proud of it."
"By all means, take it, study it - you'll be able to recount bits of it whenever you need some color, to cover up what...what you've really done."
This time I got to him. "What do you think I am?" he asked, coming closer to me. "Say it, don't be afraid. A little man with expertise in dirty jobs?" His head bobbed at the level of my chest and his mouth smelled of sleep. "You think you've undergone some kind of change," he said venomously, "that you're better than you were and than we all still are... But if you want to know, you're an adolescent who has gone over from the side of the doers to the side of the softies, the Arab-lovers, who only talk..."
"Do you believe," I looked down at him, "that you can call the little services you provide 'doing'?"
He grinned. "You read books... Who, in your opinion, has been behind every major event in history if not people like me? Who threw the tea in Boston, who marched behind Joan of Arc? Who drove the British out of Palestine and built it up? Polite academics, clean little angels, or people who acted when it was necessary, who didn't start with sophistry and casuistry..."
I took a step back. "Okay," I gestured grandly at the can, "here is your chance to act..."
"You think you scare me?" He bent down to grip the handle. "Your role is planned for two o'clock, and at two o'clock it will happen, even if I have to lie there and detonate it with my fingers..."
He shook the can with the movement of an enthusiastic amateur, a guaranteed disaster.
"Leave it," I said.
He let go of the tin angrily, though with some evident relief.
"The first four," he pointed at the houses. "And make it look good."
The moment he closed himself in his car again some of my old professional pleasure returned. The houses were empty, smelled of fresh wood and paint and were set on low metal supports which created small spaces beneath the floors. I placed the four cans in hollows beneath four houses in the outermost row. I then tore holes in the tar paper under the floor and stuffed the bottles of Butyllithium into beds of fiberglass and electricity wires. Four soft swellings now hung a few inches above the cans which lay open, awaiting them.
I crawled out and stood in the square, an eye out for the metal glint of an exposed can or the effervescent glow of a bottle that had slipped out of its place, earth that was too loose or plants which had been crushed. I was now sure that no soldier, guest, journalist or even a village resident would notice anything. All the same, I sensed another, alien presence. Above the ridge of the mountains, from deep inside the woodland which had not yet been burned by the soldiers, the refugees who had once camped around the Athenaeum, in the church square and along the road were watching me. I was the only person who noticed them, knew them with a kind of understanding. How many of them hoped to live in those houses? How many were wiser and just looked up at the gray sky each morning, assessing the distance left between them and the winter? In Anton's absence there was no one in Dura, local o
r foreign, who was interested in their fate.
The mobile canteen arrived in the middle of the square formed by the houses. Soldiers and workmen went over to it for a meager breakfast: a hard-boiled egg, some stale bread and lukewarm tea. The captain was there too, chewing energetically and looking at me with his usual hostility. Scheckler stood beside him. His vitality had vanished, his shoulders drooped and his expression was one of dazed tiredness. The man in civilian clothes also left his car to join the queue. I went over to him.
"Everything's ready, now we need tins and tubes..."
"I'll arrange that," he replied drily. "You just make sure that everything goes off at the right time." From the canteen they handed him an egg and two slices of bread in a plastic bag. He took the food, turned his back on me and went over to eat in the company of Scheckler and the captain.
I was hungry, but the thought of food nauseated me. An oppressive silence hung over the houses of Dura. Soldiers were hanging strings of Israeli and Lebanese flags between the electricity poles. Workmen were erecting a wooden platform and a dais. The greater the efforts to make the site festive, the more pitiful and provincial it looked. I thought about the various places I had been in and felt grateful to Dura. A stormy, genuine and uncomforted part of my soul had been revealed here and I had even known rare moments of wholeness which places of culture and sophistication had never provided.
My last days in Paris fluttered at the fringe of my mind. For a moment I hoped for a miracle that would store something of this wholeness and I could return with it to the place where I had been torn away from my former life, to continue it under my real name, my original identity, and with greater understanding.
***
At ten the wind direction changed. Clouds gathered far out above the sea, sliding east. Dark gusts beat at the flags, the cloth posters and the arrow-shaped road signs which had been put up in the main street. In the church square two soldiers guarded a notice that said: "Long live the Friendship Between the Israeli Nation and Free Lebanon." The market stalls had disappeared and the shutters of the shops were down.
The first cars began to arrive. Border Police, as welcoming as prison warders on Open Day, stood beside a twist of barbed-wire examining documents. A handful of fair haired men, photographers for a foreign television network, measured the distance between their cameras and the dais. A radio reporter settled down on the steps of the church, from where, in a series of clichés, he described the components of the great event, in effect a gaggle of soldiers, a few honored guests, local inhabitants, secret servicemen and a lot of cars, which came and parked just about everywhere but in the area marked by a plywood notice saying: "Car Park."
The changing light made the new houses bright and dark in turns. They were cordoned off by strips of blue and white silk and the guests inspected them from afar. The sky shone with the brilliance which presages a storm, the treetops giving off a glassy layer of luminosity. The clouds of dust raised by the moving crowd turned pink. It was satisfying to know that none of that crowd would ever come back, would not know the nights of desolation and fear, the days of burning heat, the frustration, the suspicion and the helplessness, but would think back to Dura at its best.
The man in civilian clothes was everywhere. One moment on the steps of the church, telling the radio reporter's crew to move to a spot nearer the dais, and the next at the other end of the square, welcoming a new television team, or a V.I.P. in an official car or a senior officer. Curiosity and perhaps enforced idleness brought out the inhabitants of Dura too. Once again, as on the evening when I had slipped out of the Athenaeum to the church, my world was divided into stains of brown and ones of a lighter color. The brown stains placed themselves along the barbed-wire barriers and, from a well-calculated distance, watched the light-colored ones moving around, waving to one another, patting one another's backs, talking loudly. Even the odor of napalm on my hands could not convince me that the scene had any significance beyond that of a ridiculous village festivity to placate the mother-country, certainly not the beginning of a development to occupy headlines throughout the world the following day.
The crowd at once fell silent. Three helicopters emerged from the clouds and hovered above the mountain-top. The man in civilian clothes stood at the edge of the wadi next to the captain, who now sent up a green flare. The helicopters made for the spot and landed in a flurry of dust. The passengers emerging seemed small and damaged. The difference between these figures and photographs we had all seen was insulting and annoying. The Prime Minister walked with the aid of a stick, listening with pained frailty to the Minister of Defense, who was next to him, talking incessantly. The Chief of Staff, with his impassive soldierly expression, paused to exchange a few words with the captain.
The event took on a new, acceptable logic. Newsmen detached themselves from the crowd and took their places at the sides of the dais. Guests filled several rows of wooden benches. The villagers remained behind the barbed-wire fences. The arrangement was satisfying to all, offering the guests a feeling of a place where it was not clear that they were wanted, and the local residents a viewpoint without having to demonstrate involvement.
The words of an announcer were lost in the wind. Then with some effort the Prime Minister spoke. His voice sounded broken and it was impossible to tell whether he was aware of the true nature of the event in which he was participating. From the clinic Yvonne's dogs burst out barking, then stopped, as unexpectedly as they had begun.
Nearly there was a minor disturbance. A platoon of soldiers had stationed itself across the main road. Some villagers who were heading home were ordered back to the site of the ceremony. The man in civilian clothes was there, waving his short arms to direct the policemen and explaining something to a figure wearing a gown, possibly the priest. It was six minutes past twelve. I walked slowly along the barbed-wire barriers and among the new houses. Everything was ready, as promised. On the ground lay tins of a Syrian-made cream of some kind and typed leaflets. I bent down to place them at a distance from the range of the fire.
"Down with the Occupation," the headline read, "The Anton Khamis Revolutionary Commandos."
As I crawled under the first building the Prime Minister was concluding his speech. The applause was weak and polite. I exposed the neck of a bottle of Butyllithium and turned the top a little. A large, oily drop fell from it and was absorbed in the bed of fiberglass. I timed the interval till the next drop. Ten seconds. I touched the dark stain, which was spreading slowly. It was hot. The material, like everything undertaken by the man in civilian clothes, was first-rate.
I crawled out, on my way to the next charge. In the gap between the houses I saw the Chief of Staff bend down and take the Prime Minister's hand. The man in civilian clothes also appeared and hurried over to help. Together they led the old man to the side, where they put the end of a cord in his hand and told him to pull.
The second and third houses were directly behind the stage and were consequently particularly exposed. I crawled hastily between them, hidden behind a fold in the ground which the bulldozers had neglected to level. When I emerged the Prime Minister was still struggling with the cord. Something had gone wrong. A blue and white cloth was stuck half-way up a marble slab. A few officers ran across the square and began to push, pull and give advice. Scheckler also appeared. I dived beneath the fourth house. From the darkness I saw the marble slab emerging. In the light of the flashbulbs I noticed that the dusty path between the two rows of houses was called Peace Boulevard, and the square in the middle Friendship Square. It was already twenty-three minutes past twelve. The boulevard and the square had a little more than an hour and a half of life left.
Once again there was too thin applause, coming, as expected, from only the Israelis seated on the benches. The Prime Minister nodded as if accepting the verdict. The Minister of Defense smiled with unfounded confidence. The man in civilian clothes took a step back and signaled to someone with his finger.
Profuse a
pplause suddenly flowed from some rich, unknown source. The loudspeakers amplified it inexplicably, bringing it to a mass enthusiasm which swept up the people on the benches, the soldiers at the barriers and even some of the villagers. The television cameras clattered. The eyes of the Prime Minister shone. Only the smile of the Minister of Defense betrayed the boredom of someone who knows the end of the joke at the beginning. The finger of the man in civilian clothes moved again and the applause died down slowly, until it stopped.
It was then that I saw Yvonne.
She had climbed the steep, less guarded side of the wadi and was standing a little way away from the crowd. Michel was not beside her and I assumed that he was returning from having placed the suitcase. For a moment she looked ridiculous. She was wearing a black dress cut in an old-fashioned way and her shoes were high and clumsy. The man in civilian clothes appeared from behind the stage and called out to her. She moved obediently over to the audience.
I continued to watch her. Her narrow, fragile, black back appeared and disappeared among the others. I moved to get a better look. A soldier reprimanded me and a bodyguard pushed me away to allow for the Prime Minister, who was on his way to cut the ribbon in front of one of the houses which had not been rigged to explode. I crossed the barbed-wire fence into the mass of bodies smelling of spicy food, tobacco and village sweat. For a moment I was gripped by anxiety, of the kind I had felt that morning in the blind girl's cellar, but it was groundless. All the eyes were turned toward a family group which appeared from somewhere carrying bundles and ceremoniously entered the first house. The father was carrying a little girl. His wife, accompanied by two well-dressed teenage boys, was dragging some cardboard boxes effortlessly over the ground. They repeated the routine again and again, and then once more, until the last cameraman had finished.
When I was preparing myself to return to the other side of the barbed-wire fence I saw her again, passing carefully behind a soldier. I felt again that tremendous, unexplained need to get near to her, the urgency of hurrying home to release a shut-in pet or to turn off the gas left alight under a saucepan. It was then, in the false reality around me, that awareness of the cleansing, purging power of the truth, together with readiness to tell all to her, ripened fully within me. Why had I not told her until now? What could be simpler than to relate the story of the change that had taken place in me, the role she had played in that development?
The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance Page 23
