Winter in Jerusalem

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  ‘The Israeli shekel will be worth gold.’ Deuteronomy 33, verse 24, which one was directed to read, did not actually say that. It read in full: ‘Let Asher be blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil.’ The pamphlet had printed only the final phrase about oily feet – but the Lord’s intention was clear from those few words. Yes, indeedy.

  Danielle put the Bible down and tried to think about what one meant when one said that someone was mad. A few days ago, in a bank, an Israeli had told her he was not worried about the country’s economic situation. ‘There’ll be a miracle,’ he said and shrugged. ‘Israel has had economic problems in the past.’ What form did he think the miracle would take? she asked. He found this obtuse; ‘America will pay.’ But what if it won’t? He was getting sick of her. ‘You don’t understand love,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand what Israel means, not just to American Jews, but to American gentiles. If Israel fails . . .’ Maybe I am crazy, she thought. I’m in a temper – and distracted. But why can’t I think about him?

  She was so agitated she left the reading room without noticing where she was going and in her socks walked out on to the balcony. The afternoon was cold and fine. After so much rain it was luminously blue overhead, only the eastern horizon showing a grainy haze of mauve that would gradually deepen to the violet that on clear winter evenings was the glory of a Jerusalem sky. The mauve haze was already Jordanian territory. In the center of town outside the YMCA building she’d seen a signpost saying ‘Beirut, 150 Km.’ If you left out the Negev, the country was only the size of Sydney, she mused, and it had the population of Sydney plus one of the big country towns. It was claustrophobically small, a kernel, a spark.

  What, in their heads, does the globe look like? she wondered. A huge ink stain of forbidden territory, here and there a dim glow of welcome, but the only real beacon America? Thoughts rushed in disorder. She tried to make sense of how things were here, in Israel, by thinking of some parallel in ordinary life . . . The friend who telephones at three in the morning to say her husband has beaten her up again: she holds you to ransom because she is helpless to control her life. But secretly, secretly, her weakness makes you feel good.

  - So perhaps the Americans will save Israel.

  - Perhaps they will make it a condition that people like my father are put in the loony bin.

  It was almost five o’clock and sunset was changing the city stone to rose. She remembered the phone call she’d booked. In Los Angeles Bennie’s Filipino servant would have cleaned the ashtray in the Corniche and would be making breakfast. For one? Had there been a starlet for the night? Would their limbs be tangled when the international operator began to dial and would his gasped ‘Hello, yes?’ come from the shock of broken sleep, or from a different disconnection?

  ‘Daaaanielle! Wake me, of course not. I’ve been awake for hours. At least three minutes. Dog, get off. You know I’ve been given a wolf? Yesterday. No – last week sometime. Hey, dog!’

  There was a crashing sound, a yelp.

  Bennie said, ‘I didn’t like that lamp anyway.’

  Everything in his life was expendable.

  ‘Daaaanielle! How are you? Enjoying? Written the movie yet?’ She’d forgotten that talking to him was like the passenger ride in a sportscar driven too fast. ‘Last night I got this great idea, did I tell you? Well – oh, yes, coffee. Thank you, Ferdy. Isn’t that something? He has the same name as the president of the Philippines. Best cook in the world. Danielle, can you hold a minute? I’ve got to drink coffee. I’m dying. Last night – oh, I haven’t been to bed for two days. I think my nose is falling off. It just did! It’s on the floor. Oh, Danielle – last night I had so much coke. You having a great time? I’ve had a brilliant idea. At the party last night I talked to a man who told me there are hermits living in caves just a few miles from Masada. Near the Monastery of Somethingorother.’

  ‘Temptation,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah? Great name for a monastery. What do they all do in there? Think about dames?’

  ‘No. It’s where Jesus was tempted to avoid crucifixion.’

  ‘Terrific. Well, about these hermits. I want real hermits in Eleazar. Imagine the blurb stories: “Blah-blah-blah-blah, AND REAL HERMITS.” You like it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Danielle? Why yer being nasty to me? I’m a noseless wreck. I’ll have to book in for plastic surgery.’

  ‘Hermits refuse to play in movies, Bennie.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I checked with Hermits Equity.’

  ‘Listen – I’m so disappointed I’ll have to drink some coffee. You’ve ruined my day.’ She waited while he made slurping noises; from other grating sounds it seemed as if Ferdy were sweeping up the shattered lamp. ‘Hey!’ He startled her. ‘Did I tell you I got the money? Stitched it all up last night, in New York.’

  - The hell you did.

  ‘That’s why I’ve been delayed – been running around town, stitching up the money-money-money. And you know that bitch Marguerita Schultz, the widow of poor Raphael? She put a rock through my window. Why? She’s berserk. You know she’s trying to blackmail me? She’s trying to steal the company from me and she’s hired a shyster lawyer who says I owe her five big ones. Five million smacks! Just hand it over, Bennie. I told her lawyer, “You want to see my books? You wanna see my tax returns? The company’s not worth a quarter of that. You can go to hell.” So she puts a rock through my window. And she’s harassing my secretary. She made a big scene in the office, said she’d slam an injunction on the distribution of Eleazar and a couple of little movies I’ve got coming out. But I’ve fixed her. Called the police right away – Danielle: Can you imagine me, calling the police?’

  Danielle had begun to sketch Marguerita Schultz throwing a rock. She pictured a big-boned, dark woman, maybe partly Mexican, certainly from the south – a southern belle gone to fat. She drew a whiskey bottle in Marguerita’s rock-throwing hand.

  ‘She looked so funny when the police carried her away,’ Bennie was saying. ‘You know she’s a cripple? I shouldn’t say that. She’s not much of a cripple . . .’

  That ruined the drawing.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Aw -’ Bennie did not want to talk about it. ‘She was in the same accident as Raphael. She’s all fixed up, really. You know she tried to kill me with that rock? If I’d been in the car when she threw it . . . hold on. Orange juice has arrived. Thank you, Ferdy. He makes the best orange juice. Not as good as in Israel, though. You been drinking lots of the orange juice?’

  He stopped talking and made noises as if eating toast.

  Danielle said, ‘When are you coming? I’ve organized a whole series of interviews with university people here who’ve studied the Zealots and Masada. But when they’re finished I’ll be stuck until you arrive.’

  ‘Never get stuck,’ Bennie said. ‘I tell you what: I’ll finish breakfast, get dressed, and jump on a plane. We’ll go and find hermits.’

  ‘Bennie. I have got to know when you’re arriving. I can’t plan otherwise.’

  ‘Plan, plan, plan. You remind me of the army. Here, I’ve got a flight schedule. Wrong one. Ferdy! He can’t hear me. Danielle, can you hold? I’ve got so many flight schedules and airline tickets here – I promise you, my secretary has had me booked on every plane to Israel for the past month. They’re getting mad at me. Look, I’ve got tickets. Danielle, what’s it say? I can’t read it. I’m going blind.’

  ‘Hold it closer to the phone.’

  ‘Yeah. Can you read it now?’

  She was sketching what she imagined was the scene in Bennie’s bedroom. He would have hired an interior decorator and everything would be in matching pairs: pairs of sidetables, pairs of bedside lamps (until recently), pairs of chairs, on which he would throw his clothes, a king-sized bed with a mechanism that elevated the head section so he could sit comfortably while talking on the telephone. She covered the bed with unused airline ticke
ts and added, at its foot, a small airplane.

  ‘It says you’re leaving next Thursday,’ she said.

  ‘How did you know? That’s amazing! You got it right. I’m going to Rome first, to talk to a set dresser. He’s a genius – he’s done sets for Coppola. I’m going to offer him anything he asks.’

  ‘Have you called him yet?’

  ‘Yes. Not yet. Today. Right now I’m calling him. What time is it in Rome?’

  You’ll arrive in Rome, she was thinking, and you’ll meet the movie crowd. They’ll invite you to a party in a nobleman’s villa at which, it will be rumored, Sophia Loren will be in attendance. Ten days later you’ll remember you were en route to Israel.

  ‘I think you should fly direct and talk to the set dresser on the way home.’

  ‘Danielle – why are you so anxious? You worry about everything. Never worry. I learned that in the army. Listen: I’ll be there on Thursday. No – hold on. If I leave Los Angeles on a Thursday – what’s the date today?’

  ‘Just tell me the flight number. I’ll find out this end.’

  ‘You got a pen?’

  ‘Yairs.’ She added a final touch to the figure of Bennie she had drawn, flicking his satyr’s curls down the back of his neck.

  The operator rang back to say the call had cost seventy-eight dollars. And seventeen cents.

  She asked to be connected to international telegrams and sent one saying CONFIRM I WILL MEET ALITALIA 43 AT LOD AIRPORT. He responded to that kind of gesture. Sometimes, sentimentality was the only thing that kept Bennie fit for human company. She felt filled to bursting with the distress of responsibility he stimulated, her anxious foibles blown up, out of proportion. I turn into the wretched, toiling little Ant, while he’s the Grasshopper, she thought. All very well for him to be lying in the meadow, chewing tobacco and playing the fiddle. I’ve got a daughter to get through engineering, a house to pay off, a dog who frets for me, I owe the bank $80,000 -

  She had a vision of Bennie, in their hired airplane, insisting on taking the controls, sweet-talking the pilot. The ground came flying up to meet them.

  ‘Settle down,’ she told herself.

  Seventeen

  Bennie read the newspaper, drank more coffee and orange juice, then spent three hours on the telephones he had beside his bed. He made calls on both at the same time, saying, ‘Sam – can you hold a minute?’ and, ‘Louis, I’ll be with you in a sec.’ Bennie got a lot of work done this way, although on Saturday mornings there could be frustrations because people were sometimes doing things with their families. He got hold of his stockbroker and discussed the tactics for Monday morning, and located his lawyer, whose wife said at first that he couldn’t be disturbed, he was in his studio, painting. ‘Sam’s painting? Why? Debbie – don’t I pay him enough to buy all the junk in the Guggenheim?’

  Sam thought the Schultz situation was looking difficult: the fact that she had smashed the windshield of his Corniche would not affect any decision about the authenticity of Raphael’s will. Bennie said, ‘Sam – it’s a fake. It’s got to be a fake. Raphael and I – listen, we loved each other. We drew up wills at the same time, each partner leaving everything to the other. It’s impossible he would have written a later one, leaving his share to that witch. She’s forged it.’

  Sam said, ‘Bennie, I have kept Marguerita off your back for three years. You’ve had full control of the company in that time, you’ve made twelve million bucks. If the handwriting experts -’

  Bennie said, ‘Sam: I’m not going to do it. I’d prefer to go bankrupt. Hey! Can I go bankrupt?’

  Sam sighed. ‘If you want to, it’s possible, Bennie.’

  Bennie thought they should look into it – after the Eleazar money was tied up. Monday morning they would sign for certain? Sam was a genius. He should get a Nobel Prize. On the subject of painting: Bennie had bought a crayon drawing a few weeks ago. Sam had to have it. Ferdy would bring it around. Yeah, a Gauguin. Sam definitely would love it and he, Bennie, didn’t want it anymore.

  ‘Do me a favor, will you? Take it.’

  ‘He needs parents,’ Sam said to Debbie when he had put down the telephone. ‘Bachelors are always looking for parents.’

  ‘Did you invite him to lunch?’ she asked.

  Sam looked at his vase of brushes arranged as a fistful of stiff flowers. The painting with which he had awoken that morning had vanished, sucked like water through a plug into the telephone. Yet he could not tell Bennie to hire someone else to do his legal work; the kid’s nature was seductive. Years ago Sam had stopped sending him bills, since he never paid them anyway. Now they had a cellar full of crates of Dom Perignon; Debbie had a chinchilla jacket. And the Gauguin drawing would be coming this afternoon.

  ‘Darling,’ Sam said, ‘Bennie never comes to lunch on Saturdays. Do you know why? Come here and I’ll show you.’

  Bennie did not take women to his house, where he and Ferdy had a perfect routine. He took them to the Beverly Wilshire. If he were to take a woman home she would create the full tragedy. Like that Danielle. What a nag!

  While he was shaving he allowed himself to imagine the location work in Israel. Danielle is going to drive me crazy, with her worrying over every little detail. But he realized, at least she’s interesting to talk to. Not like – Jesus, what’s her name? The one I’m taking to lunch. Was she dumb! But what a body: Brigitte Bardot in 1963. Maybe they’re plastic. Every second tit these days is plastic. If she’s plastic I won’t have dinner with her. Kiss-kiss-you’re wonderful. Good-bye, motek – that’s Hebrew; wonderful language, I’ll teach you – gotta rush now, having dinner with my folks. My mother has a nervous breakdown if I’m late.

  Bennie’s mother lived in Tel Aviv. Twice a year he sent her the airfare to America. Day one was bad, devoted to telling Bennie about the fight she had had with his father over her visit to their eldest son; day two was better – he took her shopping on Rodeo Drive. Day three she raised the subject of matrimony and by lunchtime had produced the photographs of all the suitable wives she had collected for him in the past six months; day four she sacked Ferdy; day five she moved into a hotel, in tears. He remembered childhood, feeling overwhelmed by her needs, never being sure if what he gave was enough. Gradually he had learned to promise, then disappoint, and he’d felt strong.

  Bennie rinsed off the last of the lather and trailed two fingers along his jawbone. It felt like satin. ‘Kiss me,’ he said. The face in the mirror leaned forward to press against his lips a long, cool kiss.

  Gideon’s and Tikva’s leave was for three days. On Saturday evening, when the city came to life again, they went in to Ben Yehuda Street and ate pizzas and ice cream, walking around holding hands and looking in shop windows. On Sunday Gideon took her to the Old City. All of Christian Europe, South America, Japan, and Korea was taking photographs and buying junk. African men in striped robes and their women in cotton headdresses worn with the dignity of crowns went surging around them, the native born, the only two of that kind wandering hand in hand, not caring where they were going. On Sunday evening when they had to go to separate bus lines each felt a chill down the side where they had been joined.

  ‘Driving past Masada I had a dream about you.’

  People called Tikva’s eyes black, but they were the color of coffee grounds, with whites so clear they reminded Gideon of the white porcelain her mother brought out of a cabinet in her bedroom when she served him food. The mother talked a lot; Tikva, like him, was silent but more so than he. In their long, wordless spaces Gideon sensed sometimes the meaning of what the American said about brains being like television sets that tune to other lives. Her eyes were like tuning mechanisms. ‘What? What?’ they asked.

  ‘I dreamed you took me underground and at the end you showed me a fire.’

  A fire!

  ‘It’s all right. We had lots of children. I woke up with a hard-on. You’ll miss your bus.’

  He waited until she had boarded, then loped off toward his own li
ne. Amos was standing in it, his chest heaving as if he had been walking fast. Gideon had pleaded with his father to stop smoking: on his last medical check Amos’s military profile, the measure of fitness, had been so low he had refused to tell Gideon what it was. Seeing him, people never guessed, because Amos had a big chest, there was no gray in his hair and he carried his head tipped back slightly so his chin jutted at the world. And he had not caught a cold or suffered a day’s illness in the ten years Gideon could remember.

  ‘I thought I’d missed you,’ Amos said. ‘I skipped a faculty meeting and I’m parked illegally. Giddy, I must talk to you. We’ve got twenty minutes. I can say it in three. Oh, all these fucking people. I’ll buy you coffee. Okay? Fuck it. We’ll talk here then, if you want to.’

  Gideon said, ‘Daddy, keep your voice down. We’ll have coffee.’

  There was an unoccupied table next to the window of the cafe through which they could keep an eye on the bus lines – not that there was any need to, for from the chaos of the terminal Egged buses streamed out, on time, like intelligent action arising from primal confusion.

  Amos said, ‘I’m not going over the military and political arguments again. I only want to say this: you are about to take the first step toward abandoning Israel. This is how it starts, in the army. You get disillusioned – one thing and another – then you think, “a trip abroad, to America.” You speak English, your mother will send you the money – I’m not giving it to you! – your brother will get you a job, cars cost nothing, gas costs nothing, every second man is a fairy, so the women will be knocking you down in the rush . . . Listen: this is the only country in the world where everybody can leave and go live with family somewhere else. Somewhere out there, there’s always an alternative, some cousin in Rio or Manchester or Minneapolis. The Diaspora is a magnet. And you start to feel it now, when everything is going to pieces in Israel. You know you’ll be welcomed as a hero: fine boy, went to jail for his beliefs, the great Jewish tradition of dissent. The young, the beautiful, and the brave – oh, it’ll be marvellous for you. You’ll be invited to give speeches: The Purity of the Weapon – Israel’s weapons are no longer pure. Every liberal in Manhattan will be pleased for you to date his daughter. You’ll make them feel good – “Here’s an ethical sabra.” Out there the ones who think they think are ashamed of Israel now. All through the fifties and sixties and even some of the seventies this country was Glamorville. You’re Israeli? Wow! We’ve read about your miracles in agriculture and science and – well, you certainly showed those Ay-rabs . . . They basked in the reflected glory. Every fund-raising dinner to buy trees for Israel made them feel as if they were building the Galilee with their own hands, sweating away in their minks and tuxedos. A tuxedo? It’s a suit men wear to fund-raising dinners. I don’t own one. Nobody I know owns one. Your brother probably does. Listen, Gideon, I’ve never spilled my heart to you before. I’m asking you: Don’t do it. It’s the first step. You refuse duty, you get thrown out of the army: you will want to join the many. We are the few. Are you listening to me?’ Do you hear what I have left unsaid, he wondered. Israel is the Jews’ last chance. The temptation to become gentiles is irresistible in the Diaspora; it became irresistible with the Paris Sanhedrin of 1807. Century after century we’d survived thanks to legal oppression – theirs and our own, the way the Christian sect survived thanks to the Roman policy of public torture. But we’re not going to take over an empire. We’ll fade into impalpability. We’ve been fading since the beginning of the nineteenth century, by losing our boundary lines. I want the Jews to survive. I don’t need to give a reason, any more than a giraffe needs to give a reason for the length of its neck. It is. It is a limb of God. You know why I don’t bleed about the poor, bloody benighted Palestinians? – because theirs is an argument over property, not being. They can grow grapes on the other side of the Jordan River. But if Israel disintegrates, in another two hundred years the Jews will have vanished.