A Long Way to Shiloh

by Lionel Davidson

  She was right there, but I didn’t pursue the point, staring like a maddened bull at the buttons I’d undone and which she was now rapidly doing up again.

  ‘I’m not like this. You only make me like this,’ she said. ‘You don’t truly know me, and you don’t know Shimshon. He’s like a great rock to me.’

  ‘He’s like a great rock to everybody,’ I snarled, enraged at the way the absent behemoth was dominating the conversation. ‘And anyway, one thing has nothing to do with another.’

  ‘Oh, yes it has,’ she said, and then I fell on her again, aware that all was lost when the action stopped; and that the action moreover had been neither totally unexpected nor totally unknown to her.

  In five minutes we were back at the pre-Shimshon position. She said shakily, ‘You only make it more difficult for yourself.’

  ‘So long as it is for you, too.’

  ‘Yes, it is. I tell you that. But I still won’t.’

  ‘Wanting to is the same as doing it, intellectually.’

  ‘So be satisfied, intellectually.’

  ‘It’s bad to deny yourself. It can have the most appalling effects.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s very good. It’s good for the character. It can only have a good effect to resist temptation.’

  ‘So why don’t we get in your bag and really give the devil a run?’

  She moved urgently underneath me. ‘No. Go to your own bag. You need to sleep now.’

  ‘It’s cold in my bag. You’ll be cold in your bag. Where’s the sense in that? We could both be warm in one bag – and improve our characters.’

  She could see it wasn’t really on now, and she smiled, efficiently buttoning up again. She sat up and gave me an affectionate kiss on the nose. ‘The sleeping bags are of kapok and will soon warm up. Go on now, Caspar. You’ll soon sleep.’

  I did go presently. But sleep took longer.

  3

  We were up betimes next morning and off on a tour of Akrabim. It hadn’t rained in the night and the skies were still heavy. It was warmer than the previous day, and every now and then there was a spot of moisture and a sudden slight shift of air from the north, not quite a gust, more like a little shock wave, as if a giant door had been slammed in the mountains. This was not promising. Torrential rains and howling winds could spring up in a jiffy, as they already evidently had somewhere in the north.

  We laboured slowly up the hairpin bends, stopping for binocular work, and continued on to the Frog’s Head. There was an incredible view from the precipice – Mount Hor, the ’Arava, the Mountains of Edom, all black under a black sky. We stayed about an hour, and then, the slight shock waves coming more frequently, decided to press on. We’d have to go on foot into the crater. It wouldn’t be pleasant to be caught there in a deluge.

  There was a track down to it at the other side of the pass, and we went slowly through. A check with the map and a few physical hints showed where the track had been. It wasn’t there any more, buried under boulders and scree washed down by the floods. We picked a way through them and came to the crater.

  The Makhtesh Hakatan is seven kilometres long and four wide; three hundred metres deep. At the bottom is a narrow ravine that drains much of the area, passing the water through the plain of the ’Arava into the Dead Sea in the north east.

  Numerous small waterfalls were trickling down the sides as we began climbing down. The flow seemed to increase about half way and I stopped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ the girl said, behind me.

  ‘It doesn’t look very healthy.’

  The footing below was increasingly slippery. If more water started washing down there’d be a problem getting back up again. I had a look down through my binoculars. A general mess of reddish-brown below. There was blue stone there, of course; I’d seen it. It looked as if we’d have to make do with tracing the vein, if any, outside the crater. We turned and went back up. At the top we stopped and had a cigarette. It was still only ten o’clock. I felt as if I’d been up half the day.

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’ I said to the girl.

  ‘No. I slept well. Didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was driving all the day.’

  ‘And driving me mad half the night.’

  ‘I left you with a clear conscience. That ought to have helped.’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘So tire yourself out and you’ll sleep tonight.’

  ‘All right. Let’s get on with it.’

  I tired myself out prowling about the head of Katan for a couple of hours, then we went back to the jeep and ate. Afterwards we did another hour, then pressed on for a closer look at yesterday’s points of interest. We were doing that at four when the sky fell in.

  It came down as if a giant tank had overturned above, a sheet of water that seemed to fall solidly out of the air, slapping down on the crags of Golehan, where we happened to be standing, bouncing up underfoot, drenching every exposed part. We splashed in our oilskins back to the jeep, clutching on to each other in the cyclonic turbulence of wind; made it, and ploughed slowly through the lashing deluge, buffeted by the wind, to the ravine.

  We drove with the headlights on, peering out of the open sides, the wipers unable to cope with the river of water pouring down the windscreen. The plain was so fantastically awash with water, we were in the middle of a wadi before we realized. The four-wheel drive dragged us out of it, and then another, before we found the ravine entrance, and with a homing sigh sailed into it.

  Incredibly, all was a haven of peace within the rock walls, the wind rushing past outside, and even most of the rain, apparently, being blown across the gap. The wadi, however, was ominously higher and we drove with the nearside wheels in the water, feeling the tug and often slewing round into it as the tyres lost their grip.

  Thunder had been roaring and booming outside, but here it had a different sound, crackling and grating.

  The girl was muttering to herself as she looked out of her side for the inlet.

  ‘Have we passed it? It surely wasn’t this far.’

  ‘All right. Take it easy.’ She’d nearly had us in the wadi. ‘Watch your driving. I’ll look.’

  ‘If I jump out, you follow me – all right? Don’t try to save anything – just jump.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It’s only thunder. No panic.’

  ‘It’s water.’

  ‘It’s what?’

  She didn’t answer, wrestling the jeep out of the wadi, and just then I heard it myself, heard it properly. It wasn’t thunder. It was a flash flood, battering its way along the S-bends of the ravine. I’d seen these things before. It happened like lightning – literally in a flash; a sudden explosion from some high catchment area; a dirty speckled head of water and boulders that elongated as you watched, to race like lava erasing everything in its path, roads, buildings, farms. It could transform a countryside in a matter of minutes. It could transform us of course, in much less time than that.

  We were too far into the ravine to back out. The only thing to do if it appeared was to get the hell out of the jeep and try to scramble up higher – as she’d already worked out

  The shock wave was already thrumming in the water. We could feel it in the jeep.

  She said, ‘Thank God – there!’

  The inlet. It was a toss-up who’d make it first, we or the unseen water. The spray was already standing in the air above it.

  She was mumbling. I caught the words, ‘Ve-im ha-mavet …’ Yet if my death be fully determined by thee, I will in love … The prayer at the approach of death.

  I said, ‘Jesus Christ!’ somewhat altering the addressee. ‘Get your foot down! Move!’

  She got her foot down. The jeep seemed to jump in the air sideways like a cat. It slewed round, back end in the wadi, shimmied, lurched – mowed. It moved like a rocket, wheels suddenly gripping. We made it a fraction before the water. It caught the rear of the car a solid thump, slewed us round broadside, but did
n’t tip us. The girl over-corrected on the wheel, and went almost vertically right up the steep rock wall, till the jeep stalled. She yanked on the handbrake, left it in gear, yelled ‘Out! Out!’ and scrambled out herself. I seemed to flow out of my side, not quite sure whether I was on my knee or my elbow.

  The jeep was already skidding backwards. It slid about a couple of yards and stopped, bits of equipment tumbling out of the back. I saw the mine detector go and a pickaxe and the barbecue. The girl practically threw herself on the barbecue, spreadeagling herself over it on the slope. All below was an inferno, a boiling froth with giant boulders lazily tossing like corks. Above the Wagnerian uproar I could hear her piping, ‘The tents! Watch the tents!’

  I watched them, with some fascination. The two bulky bundles, erratically weighted by the sleeping bags, were lolloping slowly down the slope in fits and starts like a couple of Mexican jumping beans.

  I went slowly after them, managed to grab one without effort, and with just as little effort let the other go.

  *

  The paraffin had gone, too, but there was plenty of petrol in the jeep’s tank. It made a nice blaze for the barbecue. We kept it going for quite a long time after we ate.

  Later, I had news for Shimshon.

  *

  The water went down in the night. We sat and watched it, smoking a cigarette. We sang, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’

  Later, she said, ‘How did she die?’

  ‘It was a road accident.’

  ‘Are there any children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose that’s a blessing.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘Yes. How old was she?’

  ‘Twenty-seven.’

  ‘Were you in love?’

  ‘Yes. We were.’

  She gave me a little hug.

  Then we sang a bit more and went back to the bag.

  *

  We heard the distant booming soon after dawn and sleepily listened to it. A new storm rumbling in the hills. Then she sat up suddenly and got out of the bag at a hell of a lick.

  ‘What is it?’ ‘Come on. They’re calling us.’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘It’s a Tannoy. Coming up the ravine. Get up quickly. They mustn’t find us like this.’

  She kicked the tent down and got it in the jeep. We were both barely dressed before the staff car rumbled along, six wheels awash in the water. The commander was there himself with a couple of soldiers. He called up, ‘Hello! Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. We managed to get out of it.’

  ‘That’s good. I was worried about you.’

  ‘Was the storm so bad?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The worst.’

  ‘Nice of you to come to the rescue.’

  But he hadn’t come to the rescue. Agrot had been on the blower at four. The signal had come. His bloody Arabs were set to buzz tonight.

  11 A Sore Botch

  An astonishment, a proverb. [Deuteronomy 28.35,37]

  1

  Of this night’s doings, so little remains in the memory, and that of a hallucinatory sort, that it might easily have happened to somebody else who’d merely told me about it. I was drunk, of course; had been from about midday onwards, having hit the bottle (of fruity Stock brandy, thoughtfully placed in the helicopter by the Commander at Hatseva) shortly after Agrot arranged for me to have lessons in the use of the Uzzi, the walkie-talkie, and night-stalking procedure. About four in the afternoon, when I was supposedly having a snooze, I managed to nip out into the village and buy another bottle of Stock. Half of this one was still left, in my water bottle, at half past two in the morning. I was sitting on a bare hillside then, in pouring rain, overlooking the village of Menahemya, singing a little and exchanging reminiscences of Golder’s Green with a jokester called Shapiro. Even now that I know what happened there’s no coherent picture; only foolish flashes …

  *

  ‘The position is,’ Agrot said, pink-eyed from lack of sleep but otherwise very cheerful, ‘that three parties are coming in and we’re not sure which one is going for the Menorah; hence the need for elaboration.’

  There was a fair degree of elaboration. The usual procedure with military infiltrators is to let them in, shut the gate and clobber them. In this case, because it was necessary to let whichever turned out to be the Menorah party get as near to their goal as possible, the clobbering operation couldn’t commence at once. Instead, a careful assessment had had to be made of all possible saboteur targets, and adequate protection arranged for them. This called for a lot of soldiers: for the targets, for covering Agrot’s experts, and for shadowing the infiltrators. A special communications system had had to be devised, and also a special drill to insure against the soldiers shooting each other in the dark.

  I lost track of it at an early stage and concentrated earnestly instead on what Agrot had in mind for me.

  The infiltrators were coming in across a fifteen-mile stretch of border, from a spot near Sha’ar HaGolen in the north to Yardena in the south.

  A certain paucity of targets before the group in the centre inclined Agrot to believe that this was the likeliest to go for the Menorah.

  They would be coming in along the track from Naharyim on the Jordanian side, to cross the lock-gates of the disused hydro-electric canal, and would most likely be making in the direction of Menahemya.

  ‘Just here,’ he said, pinpointing it on the map. ‘Now then, bearing in mind that they’ll have chosen this route because it’s the shortest to their objective, where do you think they’ll be making for?’

  I studied the map. The nearest high ground to the lock gates was the southerly slope of Mount Yavne’el, barely three miles away. It couldn’t be that, of course. It was quite ten miles from Tabor, much too far from Sidqui’s workings.

  I said so.

  ‘Well, now,’ Agrot said. ‘You covered this area pretty thoroughly. Just refresh me on the kind of ground there is on this slope of Yavne’el.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘We never covered it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Agrot said, his nose almost doubling back on itself in pleasure. ‘We never covered it. No blame to you, of course, or anyone else. It was that noodle Sidqui. He was wrong about Tabor. It’s quite obviously Mount Yavne’el – just as well known to the sages. The trouble is, we didn’t devote nearly enough time to finding other points of reference. You were too busy looking for extraneous things like The Curtains and the perfumery. Not that I’m blaming you,’ he said with the greatest good humour. ‘Almost certainly you’d have hit on this in the end. I know I would.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said anxiously, feeling everything slipping away again. ‘You think that the Arabs think that the Menorah is somewhere on Yavne’el?’

  ‘Well, it certainly won’t be any farther. They’re coming in at two, and they’ll want to be back by first light. Allow an hour on the site and what have you got left? – just a couple of hours for them to get there and back. Anyway, I’m putting you here, overlooking Menahemya. When they pass, you follow them. I’ll be here.’

  He’d put himself on Yavne’el, and other of his experts strung out at four other spots.

  ‘Cheer up,’ he said. ‘Remember, scholarship depends on the ability to make these little adjustments. I know what hopes you had of Hatseva. To the scholar there can be real benefit in a dead end.’

  *

  ‘All right, one more run through. Here’s your palm grip and here’s your trigger, and remember to press them both or it won’t fire. That’s your safety element. A beautifully safe little gun. Now your clip, twenty-five shells. Slide and lock. And observe something – no obstruction below. You can fire from the ground, you can fire while you’re crawling. Finish the clip – throw it away, slide in another, and no need to raise your head for a moment. The finest light sub-machine gun in the world. All right, we’ll do it by numbers now. At the order one, on your belly. Are you ready?’

  ‘You
know, I’m not sure I absolutely need –’

  ‘One!’ the sergeant said.

  *

  ‘Caspar, are you awake?’

  ‘Yes, love. Come and have a drink.’

  ‘Caspar, you’re supposed to be sleeping. I only looked in to see that you were.’

  I hadn’t seen her since we’d got in. Her eyes were somewhat shadowed, as well they might be. I said, ‘Why don’t you have a nap?’

  ‘I’m going to.’

  ‘Have it here. Nobody will disturb us.’

  ‘How much have you been drinking?’

  ‘Not as much as I’m going to.’

  She was looking at me a bit anxiously.

  ‘Do you think the Menorah really is here?’

  ‘I don’t know, love.’

  ‘Does Agrot think so?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he thinks so.’

  ‘Caspar, don’t drink any more. Nobody could have done more than you. If it does turn out to be here…’

  It suddenly occurred to me she thought I was drowning professional sorrows in drink. I reached up to her but she retreated to the door.

  ‘Just you go to sleep now. You’ve got to be wide awake tonight.’

  I let her go and looked out of the window. I was in a camp bed, in an office, in Beit Shean. A lot of other people were at Beit Shean today. They were hurling themselves about the compound with their Uzzis. Too many men and too many Uzzis which were much too easy to fire. An incautious move out there tonight and a man could easily get himself shot. I watched the scene with foreboding and took another swig at the Stock.

  *

  Dusk brought on the walkie-talkies and the night-stalking, and at nine there was a briefing conference over supper in the C.O.’s office. There was much talk of reception committees and silent combat and everybody was very keen and very jolly.

  ‘What’s the matter – you’re not eating?’ Agrot said.

  ‘I’m not hungry. I’m tired.’

  ‘Don’t decide to take a nap when the infiltrators come through. It might be a long one.’