The Sun Chemist

by Lionel Davidson

  We walked amiably back to the avenue together, and he cited a further example or two to illustrate the impatience of his temperament. He walked me right up to the academic courtyard before wishing me a good night, and I hobbled briskly into it, giving the guard on Katzir’s house a loud shalom to insure that he was awake and watching me as I made my way to Ham’s and pressed the doorbell.

  He answered it himself. He had a towel round his waist and a glass of Scotch in his hand. His mouth opened as he took in my disheveled condition, and then a bit more as I took his Scotch from him and drank it.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ he said.

  I let the Scotch go down.

  ‘Ham, did you call me at the House?’

  ‘Yes. I tried the San Martin, and they said –’

  ‘About half past six?’

  ‘No, two minutes ago. I thought maybe you’d fallen asleep, so –’

  Not Ham, then. Patel had phoned, and received no answer … He hadn’t known I was there. It had been surprise, shock, he’d shown when he’d hunched forward and seen me from the window.

  ‘What is it?’ Ham said.

  I told him.

  He didn’t seem able to take it. He stood blinking at me. He said, ‘But that’s absolutely – Are you sure?’

  ‘No doubt of it.’

  ‘It’s unbelievable … Oh, my God!’ His face suddenly changed. ‘We are expecting him. He’s coming here. Marie-Louise thought it would be better if Marta and you didn’t – if Marta went with the Sassoons. Now what the –’

  The phone rang, and Marie-Louise answered it, apparently from upstairs. She shouted down presently that it was Patel to say we needn’t wait. He was at the Sassoons’, and not feeling well. If he went to the concert, he would go with them.

  ‘Did Igor arrive yet?’ she called.

  ‘He’s here now.’

  ‘Oh. He asked. I didn’t know. Hi, Igor! I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Ham poured another drink.

  I was rapidly phoning Meyer; but he’d gone.

  ‘Ham, what am I to do?’

  ‘Well, goddam it – look, don’t alarm Marie-Louise.’ There were hurried sounds of her collecting herself.’ Are you sure it was him?’

  ‘It was him, damn it. It was.’

  ‘Well, I suppose, the police, security … What do you tell them?’

  ‘Well, I say … What do I say?’

  ‘That a guy broke in, who looked like – who was of the physical type of –’

  ‘He didn’t break in. He had a key.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t have that now.’

  ‘No.’ We looked at each other. I can’t just go to a concert,’ I said.

  ‘What is he going to do?’

  ‘Run.’

  ‘After you?’

  ‘No, I meant – Well, maybe,’ I said, worried.

  ‘At the concert?’

  ‘Well, he won’t go to the concert.’

  ‘Would he expect you to go?’

  ‘No. Yes. Damn it, I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘I guessed he’d think, after everything that’s happened, that you certainly wouldn’t – I mean …’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘So maybe it would be better if – I mean, not to stay where … God knows.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello, Igor.’ Marie-Louise was coming downstairs. ‘Ham, aren’t you dressed yet?’ … Igor?’ She’d suddenly caught sight of my battle stains. ‘What on earth have you done to yourself?’

  ‘He fell over,’ Ham said truthfully. ‘Out there.’

  ‘Oh, Igor! Those building sites. Are you hurt?’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘And your trousers!’ They, were liberally bespattered with dirt, an orange stain on each knee. ‘Well, thank goodness I got the others back. Come upstairs and wash up. I’ll give you …’

  In a couple of minutes I was washing up, and changing into the other trousers. I seemed to be changing trousers a good deal in this house. Just a few minutes later, still unclear about most issues, I was on the way to Caesarea.

  *

  I recovered a little on the way, and thought out the position: Patel’s gumshoeing around and watching me, the careful sowing of suspicion about Marta. He had evidently wanted Marta out of the way. I stayed in the House longer when Marta was there. Remembrance Day must have seemed a good bet: nobody about if I didn’t work late. He had telephoned first, had quietly and systematically tried all the doors. He must have got the shock of his life when he’d seen me watching him from below …

  I recalled the desperate squeak of his shoes on the marble plaza. Like a fool, I’d dived into the groves at the very place where he’d · earlier spotted me with Marta. Well, he’d lost me, anyway. Perhaps I’d been knocked out longer than I thought. I hadn’t appeared where he’d calculated I would appear. He had evidently figured that I must have found a way of getting to Ham’s. He hadn’t turned up there, anyway. But he had telephoned to see if I had. And Marie-Louise had told him no. He must now be working out what I was up to.

  I tried to work out what he was up to. At the Sassoons’. Deciding whether to go to the concert or not; trying to read my mind, as I was his. Either I’d recognized him or I hadn’t. If I hadn’t he must act quite naturally. He hadn’t been acting naturally; he’d changed plans abruptly. But of course he’d been rattled. I looked at my watch. Unbelievably, it was still not quite half past seven. Less than an hour since I’d heard the quiet snick of the door from Chaimchik’s room. But he would have pulled himself together by now.

  How would pulled-together Patel read the situation? Somewhere in the rubbish heaps by the atom-smasher, he’d lost a very frightened I. Druyanov. I. Druyanov, whether he’d recognized him or not, would shortly after, from some haven, be raising hell and security men. Security men would by now be at the House. If Druyanov had recognized him, they would also be beaming in on Patel. He would by now be regretting that he’d gone to the Sassoons‘; would be rapidly thinking up some reason why he was there instead of at the Wykes’, where he was supposed to be. But from then on he’d do everything that he was supposed to do. What was he supposed to do? Go to the concert.

  Yes. He’d go; certain to. I was suddenly sure of it. I’d be seeing Patel soon. He wouldn’t expect to see me. Well, jolly good. In a way …

  2

  The amphitheatre at Caesarea was a splendid sight in the black night, but as I hobbled up the steep stone steps I was on the look-out for an even more splendid one. I saw it presently: white mane of hair, Red Indian face very grave as he peered down into the arena below. He was in the V.I.P. tier, some tiers below ours, and an aisle away. I couldn’t stop or turn back in the file of late arrivals, but I marked the spot, and when we were seated marked it again.

  He wasn’t so far from the aisle. I was seated at the edge of mine, which was all to the good. I needed him. The first car park had been full of buses and we’d been signaled on to the secondary one beside the Crusader town. I’d thought out the position as we hurried back the few hundred yards to the amphitheatre.

  We were scarcely seated on the stone benches (on cushions Marie-Louise had wisely brought) before the drums rolled. Everyone stood as Katzir arrived below. The national anthem was played, and then he took his seat and the whole place settled. In the general hubbub, even later arrivals were still scuttling up the stone steps.

  I hadn’t seen Connie, or Marta. I hadn’t seen any of them. All around, the great rock bowl seethed, the tiers aglow with faces, like banks of flowers; there was the glint of jewelry, women’s bare arms, petallike. But now, as I sank back, I saw Connie waving, some distance along the row. She’d come with a party, and a block of vacant seats stretched between. It suddenly struck me why they were vacant as Felicia Sassoon came loping, pink-faced, up the steps. She was followed by Marta, and by Michael, and by none other than Dr Ram Patel.

  There was a very satisfactory double take out of him as he spotted me. I w
as standing to let them shuffle past, everything now ashuffle: choirs below shuffling onto long benches at the back of the brilliantly lit arena; musicians fiddling with their music stands; Zubin Mehta gently flexing inside his tail coat on the podium.

  ‘So sorry … so sorry,’ as they passed.

  ‘I must speak to you!’ Patel was gripping my arm, hissing in my ear.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Most urgent. Do nothing until then.’

  He had passed, and passed Marie-Louise and Ham and Felicia, was sinking furtively into place as the conductor’s arms came up, and down, and the Eroica began.

  I was in some turmoil as I listened to the sonorous opening chords. ‘I must speak to you! … Do nothing until then.’ He’d thought up something fast, then. I was in turmoil, anyway. There was something peculiarly apt and sonorous about all ceremonial events in Israel: a resonance of ages. Just now, in this place, there was an aptness so extraordinary that two thousand hearts seemed to catch, all around.

  Beethoven had dedicated his symphony to Napoleon, and then had second thoughts on observing that the idol had feet of clay, a notion familiar in the area. But as the massive work proceeded with its hammer blows of fate, its lament for heroes and its funeral march, there was a spasm even more intimate and poignant from the audience. Between the last Independence eve and this, heroes had fallen here, some for good and all, others into political darkness. A whole sanguine society had been felled, was on hands and knees, still stunned; and not for the first time, or even for the first time in this place.

  Twenty-five hundred participants of an earlier debacle had found themselves on hands and knees here; the Roman conqueror Titus had brought them, prisoners of war from Jerusalem, after destroying it, and matched them against lions in a lively season of sporting events.

  The place had been built by Herod three generations earlier and dedicated to his patron, the Caesar Augustus, in 13 B.C. It had been the most magnificent town on the East Mediterranean, with a huge and splendid port and a colonnaded jetty for V.I.P. arrivals from Rome. There’d been no economy out of Herod in the matter of local materials; his marble, prime stuff, had come from Italy, and I could see bits of it still strewn about the cliff top beyond the amphitheatre: broken columns, busts, sarcophagi.

  This area was only a small part of Herod’s town; to the north a kibbutz now sat on another section, and to the south, where we’d left the car, the Crusaders had built their town on another bit. It had even extended beyond that. Twinkling lights in the distance marked the country villas of Foka Hirsch and his affluent neighbors, and somewhere behind me Lord Rothschild had laid out a golf course on another of Herod’s suburbs. In the years after the Arab conquest, Bedouin had come to squat in the tumbled magnificence. I could see the rough fishing jetty that had been cobbled out of one arm of the Crusader harbor. The tiny figures of tourists were ambling up and down it now, between the floodlit mosque and the fish restaurants and art galleries that were the most recent contributions to the scene.

  As Beethoven thundered on below, I thought hard. Patel had evidently realized that I’d recognized him; must have, to have approached me so directly, this man who’d been staying away. ‘Most urgent. Do nothing until then.’ Why? Because he wanted to do something first. Explanation, entreaty, bribery – or something of a more active antipersonnel type?

  I leaned forward slightly and looked along the row. His eyes reflected glassily in the lighting from below; there was greenish pallor about the face, which was glistening, mouth a bit slack. Something would be going on in the upper story. Whatever it was, it boded no good. Definitely, Meyer first.

  As the long work came to an end, to tumultuous and emotive applause, Marie-Louise said she had to spend a penny. The same emotional response seemed to be wrung from other ladies, some hundreds of whom sprang up on all sides. This was fortunate. Almost trampled underfoot by urgent matrons, going both down and up, I was immediately engulfed, but managed to shuffle sideways down. I didn’t see what happened to Patel. When I looked back, only Ham and Michael Sassoon seemed to be left in the row.

  Coffee bars were operating in the intermission in various parts, and Meyer was stretching his legs on his way to one. He was chatting to the American Ambassador, Keating. I kept my eyes on both white thatches and struggled through to them. He saw the look on my face and excused himself to Keating.

  ‘Meyer, I’ve got to talk to you. Patel –’

  ‘Okay, we’ll talk about it later.’

  ‘What do you mean, later? I –’

  ‘How did you find out?’ he said.

  It took a moment to sort out this tangle. He’d had a phone call when on the point of leaving. The security guard on the Wix had come upon Patel rather peculiarly circling the building. He’d asked him what he wanted. Patel said he was looking for somebody. The man had told him the place was closed and that nobody was about. He’d phoned Meyer about it.

  ‘Damn it, that isn’t anything,’ I said. I told him what was.

  ‘He’s here?’ he said.

  ‘Of course he is.’ I looked frantically around in the mob. ‘He’s trying to find me.’

  ‘So stay away from him. Is he going on to this party?’

  ‘Well, he came here,’ I said.

  ‘So he’ll find us both. I’ll look in there.’

  ‘But what shall I –’

  ‘Nothing. Do nothing until then. What can he do now? We can’t talk here. I’m sorry,’ he said to Keating, who was drumming his heels, and turned away.

  ‘Do nothing until then’ from both of them. Definitely a fluid situation here. What was the matter with everybody? Couldn’t they understand the terrible, the absolutely grotesque things that had happened to me this evening? Ham’s principal concern had been that I shouldn’t alarm Marie-Louise; Meyer’s not to offend Keating. I had a look at my watch. Still not nine o’clock: barely a couple of hours since the nightmare had begun. It showed no signs of abating. It had become that bit worse, in fact; was insidiously transforming itself into that more hideous type in which the awful things happened in a jolly carnival atmosphere with nobody apparently noticing, or caring if they did. What could Patel do now? He could do a lot. There were such things as knives, or needles. There were such things as huddled figures discovered after the throng had passed.

  My mouth was dry and I needed a cup of coffee myself, but by the time I struggled to the bar, bells had begun to ring and the crowd to disperse. It seemed safest to disperse with them. I kept my eyes open on returning to the auditorium. I felt like a lost soul, an exceedingly panicky one, in this sea of drifting faces. The aisles were crowded, people shuffling back into place along the clifflike stone tiers. I saw him, miles up. He was coming down, with Marta and Connie; had evidently been to a coffee bar on top. He was looking about him. His eyes seemed to fix on Meyer, who was settling convivially back in place.

  I shuttled swiftly back into the entry arch again and thought this out. Obvious enough that Meyer had been to a bar below; better if I hadn’t been. I pattered rapidly back through the bar, found the steps to the upper level and re-emerged into the amphitheatre with the last of the crowd from above. He was still looking all about, screwing round in his seat – except that he had changed his seat. He’d swapped with Felicia, was now sitting next to Ham, one nearer to me. He saw me coming down and his eyes hung rather sickly on mine. I dropped into my seat just as the choir all stood up and, after a trill-up or two from the orchestra, broke into the most tremendous hosanna.

  The already good acoustics of Herod’s amphitheatre had been rendered near perfect by a massive honeycomb-design baffle that deadened the slight hiss of the sea beyond. The sound level was quite extraordinary. My mind flooded instantly with climactic scenes from old movies in which mayhem had taken place under cover of similar blasts of cutural uproar. As Mehta wound up the orchestra to add to it, I felt myself shaking like a leaf.

  But what could he do here, after all – blow a dart tipped with fatal curar
e? Yes, easily. He could do any damned thing he wanted, probably. He wasn’t only fast in the upper section, but everywhere else – exceptionally nippy and dexterous in all directions. I recalled the unnerving speed with which he’d practically caught up with me after my flying start – only seconds in it, really. I’d won those seconds by leaving through one door as he entered another. The trick was to make every second count.

  As the bellowing continued, I tried to do this. It was a question of identifying a critical situation ahead, of bringing some large magnification to bear on it; if only the pandemonium would let up below.

  It did, mercifully. A brief cantata or two followed, and then the masters of keyboard and string took over, and Vivaldi began delicately to unravel. Much easier on the ears, and I leaned over and whispered, ‘Marie-Louise, change places with Ham after this.’

  Her eyes were moist and she seemed to come back from some distance, but she nodded, and I nodded, and gave more of an ear to Vivaldi. They were delicately unpicking him below. I began to unpick the next hour, looking for the vital seconds where the action was. In the busy brain along the row, the options would be under review. He’d missed me in the interval. Something funny could have happened in the interval. He wouldn’t like anything funny to happen again. He’d stick like a leech; wouldn’t want to delay whatever he’d got in mind till we got to the party. The difficult moments would come between here and the party; in practice between here and the car. These were the moments that called for the magnification.

  Vivaldi ran out, and in the delighted applause Marie-Louise shuffled about with Ham, who presently shuffled down beside me.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘Stick tight when we leave here. Meyer wants me to keep away from Patel till we get to Hirsch’s.’

  ‘Well, that is going to be embarrassingly bloody difficult,’ Ham said. Patel had already spoken to him; he’d changed seats to ask if he could come in the car. He had met friends of the Sassoons’ in the coffee bar, who had come by bus, and who were also going to the party. His offer to give up his seat in the Sassoons’ car had been gladly accepted.