Joseph looked better. The swelling in his face had gone down, although one eye was completely closed. The bruises were beginning to turn from purple to that sickly yellow color. The bandages round his skull were still there. They would have shaved his head: he would hate that. In the last few years his hair had begun to thin rather alarmingly and she guessed that it required a certain amount of work to get it as he wanted.
It was quiet inside his room, only the low hum of some machine. She was trying not to think about Sally’s hospital room. Joseph was still hooked up to all those tubes. Sally had had no tubes at the end: she just lay there. She looked like a tiny, thin child, her bones jutting out, her body covered in the soft down that came when the body had lost all its defenses.
In the last hospital they had force-fed her, although they called it “nutritional intervention.” “Why don’t we be grown-up?” she said. “It’s feeding and you’re forcing her.” Of the many bad times Shirley had had with Sally, she thought the day the force-feeding began was almost worse than the day she had died. How could they need such burly men to hold her down? You wouldn’t have thought she could fight that hard. The tube down her throat, her look of terror, Alan in the corner of the room silently crying.
Like airports, hospital rooms were all the same: she sat down beside Joseph’s bed as she had sat next to Sally’s. She did not quite know what to do with Joseph. She put out her hand and rested it gently on his arm. He was awake more often now, but he could not really speak because of the damage to his face.
The doctor had said that all his functions would come back. Now he was awake, she needed to get through to him. She needed him back in the world. Shirley had glimpsed Sally twice since she had died, and both times Joseph had been part of it. First at the shiva when Joseph had understood that Sally wanted the food to go, and then in Manchester.
Sally had sent her to Joseph that night. How would Shirley have known that something had happened to him otherwise? If she had not found him in the room, he might be dead and they would be in Golders Green Crem reading passages from The Prophet. Maybe Sally would show herself through Joseph again.
After she left him, a sudden realization flashed into her mind. Maybe Sally had put it there. Maybe she was pushing her in some unknown direction. Shirley had told everybody that she was Joseph’s sister. She certainly felt that she was his only family, but now she suddenly realized that it was not true: he had a father. She knew she had to find Iz Herzl.
Maurice
IT WAS MORE THAN ten days before Iz and Maurice met again. Maurice had considered going to his farm to look for him, but he knew Iz would not like that. He would want to keep him away from his friends.
Saturday was his day off. Maurice had got up late and he was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea. His uncle was sharpening his knives when there was a loud knock on the door. His uncle spun round as if it had been a gunshot. In the weeks Maurice had been there, no visitors had ever come to the farm. His uncle hobbled surprisingly quickly to the door and pulled it open aggressively.
Iz was standing there. “I must see Maurice please. It is most important.”
Maurice saw that his uncle was holding up the knife he had been sharpening. Obviously you would need to protect yourself if there was a Jew-boy who might also be a Nazi spy standing menacingly on your doorstep.
“You stay there,” his uncle said. “I don’t want you coming in.”
He turned to Maurice angrily, as if it was his fault. “Do you know who he is? What does he want?”
Maurice stood up. “Of course I know who he is,” he said contemptuously. “He’s my friend.”
He pushed past his uncle. Iz had moved off and was almost running up the track. Maurice shut the door in his uncle’s face and ran after him.
“Isaac!” he shouted. “What is it?”
Iz spun round so fast that his satchel swung round his body. “I am going,” he said. “They have informed me.”
Maurice had reached him. “When? Not for a while, surely?”
“Tomorrow.”
“But…that’s so soon.”
“They move quickly,” Iz said.
“Come into the barn,” Maurice said, and grabbed his arm. It was hot in there and smelled fetid. They sat down on a bale of hay.
Maurice felt a rising sense of panic. He wanted to shout: “Do not go. You are my brother. If you go, I will wither away. I will become the boy I used to be before I met you. I will be forever rolling a stone up the hill alone like…” He could not remember whether it was Sisyphus or Hercules.
Iz was trembling. “It’s what I have wanted for so long, and now I am…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“What?” Maurice said desperately.
“I don’t know.”
“Frightened? Doubtful?”
“Apprehensive, I think.”
Maurice thought, Yes, you have every reason to be apprehensive. It is messy and dangerous there. You might be killed. You do not need to go. Stay — there is so much we can do here. But Maurice knew that this was a test for him. What he said now would define his commitment and his purpose forever. He could not just think about himself.
He put his hand on Iz’s arm. He closed his eyes. “It’s what you have trained for, Isaac. Don’t let it go to waste.” There was a painful knot in his stomach. “Everyone has doubts. Everyone! Martin Luther had doubts. Trotsky had doubts.”
Iz looked confused. He was obviously not as familiar with them as Maurice was, not that Maurice was very familiar with them either. He fumbled for a name that Iz would relate to. “Jesus!” he said. “He didn’t know whether he was really the Messiah or not.” Then he almost bit his tongue. He remembered that Jews didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah anyway. He hurried on: “Just think how much you want it, how much you can do over there. Then the doubts will go.”
Iz put his head in his hands. “You’re right. Thank you. I must calm myself.”
“What will happen now?”
“I am doing something called Aliya Bet. It is illegal immigration to Israel. The Jewish Agency arranges it.”
“How will you get there?”
“I am not absolutely sure.” Iz gave a little laugh: “They don’t issue you with an itinerary. Everything is secretive. Everything is done indirectly. People give messages to other people who pass them on, so the chain will not be discovered. They want us to be safe. I’ve never even met anyone at the Jewish Agency. It was Aviva, our dance teacher, who told me last night. I did not know she was even part of the organization. Someone must have given her a message or telephoned her because she never goes to London. I must keep it secret. They don’t even want me to tell the others on the farm. Sometimes people have just vanished overnight. I presume they were summoned, and they just left. Nobody asks any questions.”
“But you’re telling me,” Maurice said.
“I had to tell somebody. No one will know. You are on the edge. You are an outsider. But I would trust you with my life, I think.”
Maurice felt his heart stop. “But what happens now,” he said, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “You go to the Jewish Agency in London and then what?”
“I will be given forged papers. Somehow they’ll take me through France to the south, Marseilles I think, then onto a boat with others on Aliya Bet. Then we head for Haifa. I left Germany on a boat and now I’m going to Israel on one. There’s a certain symmetry in that, don’t you think?”
“But what about the blockade…?”
“It’s dangerous, but some ships have got through. I will have to take that chance.”
“You’ll be so alone.”
“I’ll be alone but I will be looked after. I expect I will be given a secret address to go to in Haifa or Tel Aviv. Then I will meet others and we will be trained together. I’m sure I’ll make friends. After all, we’re all fighting for the same thing.”
Everybody would want to be Iz’s friend, Maurice thought gloomily. He was going to be r
eplaced. He would just become a dim memory.
They sat in silence for a moment. It was swelteringly hot in the barn. Maurice could feel sweat running down his back.
“I feel better,” Iz said. “You have helped me very much. Thank you.”
I’m so pleased, Maurice thought rather sourly. He said, “You know, I will…” But he was too embarrassed to go on.
“Yes, I will miss you, too,” Iz said.
“I hope I will hear from you sometimes.”
“Yes, of course. I shall write and tell you of my progress. I want you to know everything that happens out there.”
Maurice was not convinced that in a country at war there would be friendly postmen who said “Good morning” to you and collected the mail four times a day.
Iz stood up. “Oh, it’s so hot! I tell you what I would like to do. I’d like to go swimming in the quarry one last time. Will you come? It is very refreshing.”
“That would be nice,” Maurice said, although he did not like swimming very much. “I don’t know where the quarry is.”
“I will show you. Through the woods and then up. It’s been disused for years. It is a long walk, but we can talk.”
In fact, they walked quite a long way in silence. As they left the track and headed into the woods, Iz said, “I am more cheerful now. It’s going to be exciting, I think.”
“Yes,” Maurice said.
The path through the woods was overgrown, and they had to push their way through brambles and climb over fallen tree trunks.
“My friends at the farm — I have to drag them here. They think it is too difficult. They can be rather feeble,” Iz said.
Maurice was feeling rather feeble himself as he tried to keep up with Iz. There was shade where the sun could not get through the trees, but it was still hot. Iz began to hum softly.
“What’s that tune?” Maurice asked. It was lovely.
“It’s called ‘Hatikvah.’ You might translate it as ‘The Yearning’ or ‘The Hope.’ It’s like our national anthem.” He laughed: “A national anthem for a country that is not yet created.”
Then he began to sing the words.
When Iz had finished, Maurice asked, “Is that Hebrew?” He had never heard it before.
“Yes, I sometimes sing in Hebrew. There are lovely folk songs. It helps me practice. My Hebrew is not as good as it should be.”
“What does the song say?”
“Oh, just what you’d think. Going back to our land, Jerusalem, Zion — that sort of thing.”
“You’ve got a wonderful voice,” Maurice said.
“I love music. I love singing. My parents were very musical. My brother Gabriel was learning the violin.”
Iz leaned in as if to tell Maurice a secret. “Actually, I prefer the American songs. I love the blues. Such passion! My favorite singer is Huddie Ledbetter. All his songs: ‘Midnight Special,’ ‘Goodnight Irene.’ He was put in jail like so many of those American martyrs — the Scottsboro Boys, Joe Hill and the others. Like us Jews, they fought against oppression!” He laughed and put his fist in the air. “We should name our children after them! We should celebrate them in music forever!”
“I love music, too. I sing,” Maurice said. “I got a choral scholarship to my school.”
“That is very impressive. Well then: you must sing something for me now. But not your national anthem, please — I’ve had my fill of that in this country.”
For a moment Maurice could not think what he should sing, then he started. He was tentative at first, but after a few lines his voice became stronger.
Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly
Blow the wind south o’er the bonny blue sea
Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly
Blow bonny breeze, my lover to me
They told me last night there were ships in the offing
And I hurried down to the deep rolling sea
But my eye could not see it wherever it might be
The barque that was bearing my lover to me
He stopped and there was a silence. Maurice could see tears in Iz’s eyes. “There are some things that are beautiful in this country,” he said. “I will miss it, I think.” Then Iz put his arm round Maurice’s shoulder and they walked on.
There was a last barrier of thick bracken and when they had pushed through it, they came into a large clearing where the quarry was. There was a lake in front of them that extended about three hundred yards to the small cliff from which the stone had been excavated. The lake could not just be rainwater: there must have been some kind of spring. In the middle, there was a little island constructed from great slabs of stone piled on top of one another.
“The edge is rather muddy, but it is clear when you get further out,” Iz said. “The water’s cold, but that’s good on a hot day.”
Iz began taking his clothes off. Maurice hoped he was not going to strip completely, but he slipped his underpants off. Maybe being on a commune made you less self-conscious about your body, he thought. Iz stood with his hands on his hips looking out over the water as Maurice undressed behind him.
Iz turned to him. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Actually, Maurice thought it was rather eerie. “Yes, lovely.”
Iz suddenly gave a little snort: “You haven’t got your helmet,” he said.
“What?” Maurice looked confused. Iz pointed down at his crotch.
“Oh,” Maurice said, going red.
“All Jews are snipped”— Iz made a scissor motion with his fingers — “I thought English people stayed uncut. I expect they all work the same way, though.”
“Probably,” Maurice said. “Actually, lots of people are…have that done to them. We had communal showers at school.” He was keen to move off this particular subject. “Shall we go in now?” he said quickly.
Iz gave a great laugh and ran into the water, splashing and jumping up and down. “Oh, so cold!”
Yes, it was. Maurice tried not to scrunch up his face in pain. He was the kind of swimmer who normally entered the water cautiously, but this time he felt he had to move more quickly to keep up with Iz.
“Let’s go to the island,” Iz shouted. Of course he swam beautifully, great strokes of his arms pulling him sleekly through the water. Maurice followed behind him like a paddling dog. He didn’t like putting his face underwater, and he had never worked out how to coordinate his arms with his legs.
Iz reached the island and scrambled up onto it. He stood silhouetted against the sun and waved at Maurice, struggling towards him. When Maurice reached the island he began to haul himself laboriously out of the water but Iz came to the edge and pulled him up with his hand.
The stones were warm, and they lay down beside each other on their backs.
“It will be hot in Israel,” Iz said thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
“But I think it can be quite cold in the winter. Of course, I imagine the Negev desert would be hot most of the year round. That goes down to the Red Sea.”
“Yes, I know.”
“The food is healthy, too. A lot of tomatoes and those little cucumbers. And eggs. There are many chickens on kibbutzim. They grow fruit there, too, peaches and things. Much better food than here.”
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” Maurice laughed, thinking about what he had eaten with his uncle.
“I wonder how long it will take me to get there.”
Maurice thought that he had never felt sadder in his life. Of course, Iz was excited about his new life starting tomorrow, but what about him? His new life was starting tomorrow, too, but it was going to be just his old life in disguise, returning to squash him like a slab of concrete.
“The Mediterranean can be rough, I hear. It wouldn’t make a good impression if I was sea-sick on the boat.”
Maurice laughed. Revolutionaries were human, too. Iz should not have to impress people, he thought. They would have to impress him.
“What will I do, I
saac?” Maurice asked. His question came out more desperately than he wanted.
“It’s a pleasant life here, but you will not want to stay after you’ve learnt everything you can. Perhaps you will go to university and study something important.”
“Boys at my school were going to do ancient Greek at university,” he laughed. “Imagine that!”
“Well, most people are not suitable for revolutionary purpose, are they?”
Maybe Iz did not think he was suitable for revolutionary purpose either, but then he added, “People aren’t all like us,” and Maurice wanted to embrace him.
Maurice got up and moved to the other side of the little island. He stared at the cliff on the other side of the lake. Iz came over to him and put his arm round Maurice’s shoulders.
“You are upset, I think.”
“You’ll have comrades out there. You have a common cause. I have nobody. I can’t do it on my own.”
“People will follow you because you have passion. Don’t be downcast. Come and swim. It will refresh you. We can race.”
Maurice smiled. It was like being back at one of Arthur’s birthday parties.
“I’ll come in a bit,” he said.
Iz walked over to the other edge and stretched his arms up to a perfect point. Of course he knew he would dive beautifully as well, Maurice thought. Iz slowly leaned forward, bent his knees and launched himself into the air. He gave a great shriek of laughter and went into the water like a knife. Because he had dived in so cleanly, there was almost no splash. The little indentation in the water closed and it was calm and glassy again.
Maurice moved over to the edge of the island and waited for Iz. He would help him out of the water and try to be more cheerful. He could ask some more questions about Israel: perhaps something about how their parliament, the Knesset, worked and what he thought of David Ben-Gurion.
He waited for a few moments. What was odd was that Iz did not seem to be coming to the surface. He was such a good swimmer that maybe he was swimming under the water and would come up somewhere else to surprise him.
The Songs Page 18
