Arms for Adonis

by Charlotte Jay

  ‘Of course! Poor Sarah!’ cried Nadea, all remorse and tenderness. ‘We’ve just finished, and I didn’t think to offer you anything. You poor thing, and someone threw a bomb at you! Some coffee?’

  ‘There you go again. I didn’t say that anyone threw a bomb at me. Have you absolutely no respect for the truth? Must you distort the very simplest statement? And no coffee. I’m pickled in coffee. Food.’

  Nadea hurried off.

  A brief silence ensued. Then Margaret Thorne said in a low, anxious voice, ‘Nigel, I really do think we should seriously consider whether it’s wise to go on.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Sarah angrily, for she was still annoyed with Nadea, ‘it’s always like this. These people live in a state of permanent hysteria. They can’t bear not to be fuming over their grievances. Don’t think they want them settled, they couldn’t live without them. They’ve got more now than they’ve had for ages and they’re having the time of their lives.’

  Nigel looked at her with cold indignation.

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Margaret, pursuing her own thoughts. ‘I thought that Beirut would be different, but everyone looks so wild and murderous. The taxi drivers, even Nadea, she’s so different here, so much more excitable. There’s such a feeling of tension. And all in one day, a man shot in the street, and you say there was a bomb, and we nearly get put in jail, and Jerusalem—’ She shuddered. Jerusalem had terrified her. The beautiful lion–coloured city set on its barren hills had seemed so grim and implacably cruel. The prison–like walls, the stark, naked hills. All the trees had been cut down, Nigel had told her, to make crosses for the Jews when Titus and his armies were besieging the city. She could well believe it. She could imagine that forest of crucifixes. All the tragic history of Jerusalem spoke from its golden stones. Intolerance and hatred. They had walked through the suks, and the city had seemed to close around her, even the sky; an appalling fear had come over her that she had been gulped down into the belly of a revengeful beast, and that she would never get out again. And then, to crown it all, a man—and she did not know whether it was by mistake or on purpose—had spat on her leg. When they got back to the hotel she had scrubbed and scrubbed with soap and a nail brush, but somehow the place never seemed to get clean. Whenever she thought of it she felt sick.

  ‘When were you nearly put in jail?’ asked Sarah. At that moment Nadea came back in to the room, followed by a servant bringing leban, homus, black olives and Arab bread. ‘That’s what I was telling you,’ she cried. ‘They were arrested for subversive activities. Go on, tell us, Margaret, only you’ll have to start again.’

  The Thornes had met David Green in Jerusalem. They were on their honeymoon, a fact which they had not confessed to him and which they were so careful to conceal that most people took them for brother and sister. The fact of the matter was they both felt rather let down by marriage and were glad to have someone else with them. They had met when Nigel was at Oxford, and both looked back nostalgically to the days when they had been good companions, interested in each other’s ideas, and had not had to bother with fumbling around in bed.

  And the trip itself, quite apart from their personal difficulties, had not come up to expectations. Margaret had not liked Jordan; the landscape which had entranced Sarah, had little appeal for her, and of the people she was frankly terrified. Nigel fared better. He belonged to a class of English intellectual who, though they have no political allegiance and subscribe to no faith, cling to one idea with burning fervour—the notion of Great Britain’s monstrous culpability in the field of international affairs.

  This feeling of guilt was for him a voluptuous, ecstatic experience, and nowhere could it be indulged in more happily than in the Middle East, where so much that was distressing to the humanitarian mind—the refugee camps in the Jordan valley, the devastated areas of Jerusalem where Jew had murdered Arab and Arab had murdered Jew, even purdah, beggars and the suspicions of the Syrian customs officials—could, if one felt so inclined, be laid at the door of British imperialism.

  He won popularity by expressing, wherever possible, his feeling of responsibility for these various evils and one of the reasons he liked David Green was that the young American was so eager to agree with him. On the whole, if it hadn’t been for Margaret, he would have enjoyed himself. But her uneasiness was a reproach to him; he didn’t know how to deal with her. It was bad enough that she had been sexually unresponsive—and Nigel was not so much in love with humiliation as to accept any blame for this—but, more seriously, a mental barrier had arisen between them.

  Every now and again she would burst out with some remark—some sharp intolerant judgement on the people around her—which coming from anyone else would have enraged him. He was able to be indulgent with her only because he knew perfectly well she did not believe what she was saying; but in that case, he asked himself, why say it? The Margaret he had known before marriage had been an honest forthright young woman with a personality that had seemed as clear as crystal. And all of a sudden she had become opaque, inconsistent, obtuse.

  From Jordan they went to Syria, but Damascus, a touchy, brooding city, had troubled Margaret no less than Jerusalem. Nigel had been relieved when the day arrived for their departure for Lebanon. David Green, who was on holiday from a technical job in Turkey, had been to Beirut before and said that it was quite different from either Jordan and Syria—more like the south of France. And even Sir Richard Burton, whose Guide Book to Mecca, along with Arabia Deserta, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and A Short History of the Middle East, he carried around with him, had written around 1865, ‘Good men will not change civilised Bayrut for dangerous Damascus.’

  They had left Damascus early, expecting to arrive in Beirut about ten. They were travelling in a large hired car; the Thornes and David Green sat in the back. In front of them were two Germans who spoke to no one but each other, for they understood no English or French, and a handsome and excitable Iranian journalist who kept looking for and pointing out evidence of the oppressive policies of the French. In the front seat sat the driver, of whom nobody to begin with took much notice, and beside him a representative of the tourist company that had arranged their transport, a plumpish young man with a pleasant, friendly personality who had spent some years in London and spoke fluent English in the way he thought it had been spoken there.

  They had been pleased to leave Damascus, and everything, to begin with, went well. They had anticipated a long disagreeable delay at the frontier, the Syrian authorities having already raised strong objections to David Green on the grounds of his Christian name, which rang in their ears with ominous Jewish overtones. But their guide told them there would be no trouble—he and his company were well known to the frontier police—and as he predicted they sailed through the frontier with a minimum of fuss, which put everyone in a good humour.

  When they passed through the barren, waterless valleys of the anti-Lebanon and had descended into the Beka’a, their spirits rose higher. The broad green valley stretched away to north and south and, in front of them, surprisingly near, the long range of the Lebanon rose up like a barrier. These are extraordinary mountains, appearing from over the Beka’a both massive and delicate, their lower slopes intricately folded and pierced by innumerable valleys, their crests glittering with snow—not the abundant whiteness of winter, this had melted away—but summer snow like veins of silver struck down between the naked grey ridges.

  Those who had not seen this splendid range before, gasped and exclaimed. They crossed the Beka’a, at everyone’s request, slowly, for the better enjoyment of all the beauty around them. Fields of green wheat stretched away on either side, red tulips grew among the wheat, and asphodel, blooming in thick clumps at the side of the road, shone in the sunlight like tall spikes of silver.

  Everyone talked excitedly about the things they were passing, and the Iranian, who had been jotting down his impressions in a black pocket–book, put this volume away and began to sing wild little songs
in his native tongue. The guide pointed out Bedouins with herds of camels and donkeys grazing near their black goat–hair tents; they saw a man in billowing tan robes riding a white mare with red tassels on her bridle and a foal trotting at her heels. They crossed the Litani River under a shimmer of poplar leaves. The air they breathed was heady and scented with the sweet smell of hot grass and flowers and the cold smell of snow. Then they reached Chatuara and began the long climb up the mountains.

  At first the Thornes were delighted by the abrupt and dramatic change. The white-washed mud houses of the Beka’a gave way to stone farms built on the steep terraced hillsides, and instead of camels and sheep there were black and white goats poised on crags or standing on their hind legs pulling at thorn bushes. The lower slopes were warm with sunshine; rocks and stones shone blinding white in the thin, clear air and almond and peach trees putting out new leaf trembled and shimmered as though green water was netted in their branches. But as they mounted higher the mood of the landscape became sad and threatening; huge ash-grey clouds moved swiftly down the mountain slopes blotting out the road ahead.

  There were no houses and few cars on the road. A dirty bus crawled up the steep slope, clouds of black smoke pouring from its exhaust. As they went higher, the mist thickened. The posts at the side of the road, grey boulders, thorn bushes, and almond trees black and twisted like corroded iron, appeared like spectres. A shepherd in a white keffiyeh and baggy trousers stood watching over them, a ghostly figure with the mist whirling around him.

  Suddenly the mist cleared, at least enough for them to see a few hundred yards ahead. They turned a corner, the road flattened out in front of them; fifty yards ahead by a large grey boulder stood a car and half a dozen policemen. One of these stepped out into the middle of the road and hailed them.

  Apparently their guide had not expected this; he was obviously annoyed and, as they drew up began talking to the driver in excited Arabic.

  ‘Why do we stop here?’ asked Margaret, instantly apprehensive. ‘What do they want?’

  ‘Madam, I don’t know.’ He fluttered his hands distractedly. ‘These fellows never stop us. This is some new ridiculous formality, and I’m jolly well going to kick up hell about it when I get to Beirut.’

  The car stopped. He got out and flung himself belligerently into argument with the policeman who had hailed them. The driver got out too and the discussion warmed up. Two more policemen joined the first so that the guide and the driver were now outnumbered three to two. The talk got louder, gestures freer. The passengers in the car watched anxiously.

  At length the guide hunched his shoulders, lifted both hands out from his body and let them fall with a flap to his sides, a gesture eloquently descriptive of exasperated acquiescence. The three policemen walked round to the back of the car and began to pull the luggage off the top. A moment later their guide stuck his head through the window and said in a voice that trembled with anger, ‘Would you like to hop out for a minute and stretch your legs? These idiots are insisting on searching your baggage. There’s been some smuggling—hashish, this and that. Please don’t imagine that this will ever happen again. I’m going to tear such strips off these chaps when I get to Beirut.’ He broke off, stuttering, and hurried away.

  They all decided to get out. The Germans stood by the car, smoking and watching the police. The Thornes, David and the Iranian walked a few yards down the road and stood looking into the valley. The Iranian, who carried a shooting stick, jabbed the point of this into the turf and sat on it.

  ‘Look at this road that the French built,’ he said, addressing himself to Nigel and pointing to the Damascus road winding away down the mountain, till the mist hid it from view. ‘But look down there!’ He flung out an arm to a little group of farms huddled on the stony hillside below them. ‘Did they build roads for those poor people down there? No! They expect them to climb all over the mountain like goats, but they build roads for their own big cars to go back and forth. You see that stone?’ Nigel looked obediently. ‘That is a Frenchman!’ cried the Iranian and, clearing his throat, spat at it with an accuracy that spoke of long practice.

  Nigel laughed politely, though with a certain reserve. Margaret walked a little further on and stood looking down into the valley. The hillside, a barren rocky incline dotted with thorn bushes and wild lavender, swept down precipitously towards the little settlement that the Iranian had pointed out. A few acres of land around each farm house had been terraced for orchards, the land refashioned and built up patiently, stone by stone. From where she stood, the terracing, a series of undulating lines carved on the hillside and following the contour of the land, looked like the ridges that the sea makes when it washes against a shelf of sand; and the orchard trees, small and fragile green twigs, stuck out in rows as a child might make a garden.

  Nigel came up and stood beside her. ‘Quite a drop down there,’ he said cheerfully. He had noticed the queer, worried look on her face.

  ‘I hate him,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I hate him! I bet nobody built roads in his country!’

  She was trembling; a most extraordinary impulse had gripped her to pick up a stone, and there were plenty about, and hit the Iranian on the head with it. ‘Why does he hate the French, anyway? Iranians are supposed to hate the British! Why don’t they work a bit like we’ve had to do instead of sitting around on shooting sticks blaming other people? I’m sick of hearing all this! I’m sick of it!’

  Nigel felt himself becoming angry, but he could see that she was in no mood to be reasonable and answered gently, flattering her with a reference to those liberal views she had once entertained and that seemed to have withered somewhat in the heady Middle Eastern air: ‘Surely, you don’t need to be told to be patient and have a little understanding.’

  She turned on him, almost savagely. ‘Why should I? I’m not patient with you or my father or my sister. Why should I be patient with him? It’s all hypocrisy, this understanding, it’s something you do at home before you’ve been anywhere or seen what things are really like. If he wants to sneer at the French for not building roads up a precipice, well, I can’t stop him, but don’t ask me to like him or take him seriously. I think he’s an ignorant bore!’

  Nigel and Margaret had not yet learned to quarrel casually, and it was possible at this point that their relationship would have suffered a significant setback, had not a shout from the direction of the car made them turn to see what was happening.

  A man—they did not for the moment realise who it was—was running as though for his very life down the road towards them. They watched him in astonishment. He made straight for them, though why he should come at such speed and with such wild, contorted features, neither could imagine. Behind him the policemen waved and shouted. But it was not until the man, whom they now recognised as the driver of the car, had nearly reached them and, swerving, rushed down the hillside, that they realised he was running away. Two policemen had set off in pursuit; one drew his pistol and fired after the fugitive. But he was well ahead of them, leaping over boulders and through thorn bushes until the mist, sweeping along the hillside, swallowed him away. The police evidently thought it was useless to go after him, or perhaps they did not like the idea of walking back up the steep hillside, for they pulled up at the brink of the slope. The one with the pistol fired once, futilely, into the indifferent valley and then, turning, began to shout at Nigel.

  ‘You let him go. Why didn’t you stop him? You are his accomplice!’ he yelled in bad French. He grabbed hold of Nigel’s arm and hauled him back to the car.

  Here, the unfortunate guide, almost weeping with terror, was already held fast by two other police.

  ‘What’s happened?’ cried Margaret, running after her captive husband. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Madam, it is a ghastly mistake! A ghastly mistake! That fellow, how was I to know he was no good? Oh, my God! What can I do? My job, my reputation—’

  He was clearly in a state of near collapse, which did l
ittle to fortify the spirits of his passengers. The back seat of the car had been thrown out on the road and the explanation for his arrest was there for all to see—rifles and bren guns.

  They were all bundled into the police car and transported swiftly down to Beirut.

  The beauty of the scenery on that mountain road made little impression upon them, and when Beirut appeared, shining below them between the folds of two green hills, and the coast of Lebanon, misty and sunlit, stretched out in all its blue bays and gleaming peninsulas, their thoughts were too occupied with what might be done to them for them to take much notice. They remembered reports in the papers of arms smuggling into Lebanon; anyone mixed up in such activities stood the risk of being charged with subversion, for which the penalty might be anything. Of course they were not mixed up in it, but could they expect justice from a Middle East government which, if they were to believe the Iranian (furiously indignant and shouting all the way to Beirut), had such ample cause for hating the French? Not that they were French but, possibly, in the absence of any French, the English might be thought to do just as well.

  They were extremely relieved when after no more than an hour in the police station, during which time they were given coffee and treated with courtesy, they were released with apologies for the inconvenience that had been caused to them. All, that is, except the guide; they heard no more of him.

  ‘Poor chap,’ said Nigel. ‘You could see he had nothing to do with it. It was obviously the driver; he went for his life as soon as he saw that the game was up. But I suppose they felt they had to arrest somebody. He was rather a dear, wasn’t he, Margaret?’

  ‘Awfully nice,’ she said, and smiled.