A Long Way to Shiloh

by Lionel Davidson

  This was an enormous joke, and everybody laughed enormously. I laughed as enormously as anybody. I heard myself whickering away, the note of quiet hysteria mercifully undetected by the others. It was doing good work, the Stock, but a long pull still lay ahead. I promised myself a really long one as soon as supper was over.

  2

  ‘What I used to like,’ Shapiro said, ‘was going down Swiss Cottage on a Saturday night, or up west, to these clubs – you know, the ones that used to advertise in the J.C. “For the Older Crowd. Teenagers Definitely Not Admitted. A Really Sophisticated Evening to the Music of Fabulous Bands.” Jesus, did we take the Michael! We used to chat ’em up, these old bats out looking for prospects. Boy, they were maneaters! Ah, well, happy days,’ Shapiro said, and had a drink out of his water bottle. I had a drink out of mine.

  ‘What you got in there?’ Shapiro said. ‘Fruit juice?’

  ‘Very fruity juice. Have some.’

  Shapiro had some and liked it, and later on had some more. He was my cover, Shapiro. We’d been sitting there since midnight. The jeep had dropped us at the other side of the hill and we’d climbed up, in our dull plastic capes and hoods, our faces blackened to prevent reflection. There didn’t seem much possibility of reflection. In the fine teeming rain the night was pitch black, no light showing even from the village below. With the Uzzi slung on one shoulder, the walkie-talkie on the other, night glasses round my neck, and a few further Stocks under my belt, I was feeling not unlike Barlasch of the Guard. It didn’t seem at all now an unreasonable way to spend an evening.

  Shapiro, who had been whiling away the time with this easy flow of reminiscence, was twenty-four, a kibbutznik now doing his national service and seconded to me for his supposed familiarity with both English and Hebrew. The only thing I could see against him was a certain keenness for action, but under the influence of the fruit juice he slowed down. I plied him with more, and as the night wore on added to his linguistic abilities with a few pleasantries in Arabic. We were engaged on that at half past two when the walkie-talkie suddenly came alive and Shapiro, hiccuping slightly, crawled erratically back fifty yards up the hill to cover me. The infiltrators had arrived.

  *

  With a certain weird disbelief I suddenly saw them on the road below, a number of little bobbing figures, evidently trotting, bunched together. Just before the village, and exactly as Agrot had calculated, they left the road, mounted the hillside and disappeared for some minutes into the scrub, before appearing again on the little track directly below me. They disappeared briskly off in the direction of Agrot. I lowered the night glasses and looked round for Shapiro, now due to rejoin me for the shadowing operation. Nothing happened. I wondered hopefully if he’d gone to sleep, and after some moments half rose to see. There was a rustling in the dark and he said throatily, ‘Keep down.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  He was beside me, looking furtively about. ‘How many come through here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t count.’

  ‘I counted five,’ Shapiro said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There was supposed to be six.’

  ‘Maybe only five came.’

  ‘No they didn’t. They passed six thorough to us on the blower. Didn’t you hear?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, they did. Where’s the other bastard?’

  We were silent for a while, peering about in the rain for the other bastard.

  ‘Are you sure you counted five?’ I said.

  ‘No question.’

  I looked at Shapiro. The only question was whether he was in condition to count up to three. The men had been much too tightly bunched for any adequate count. It seemed a God-given delaying factor, however. I said, ‘That puts a different complexion on things, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘They could have left him as a cover.’

  ‘Ready to jump anybody who made a move.’

  ‘Check. Be best for us to stay here, then.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Shapiro said.

  ‘If we don’t want to cock the whole thing up,’ I said.

  Shapiro mused, the Stock fragrant on his breath.

  ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ll go for a shooftie and sort him out.’

  ‘Do that,’ I said keenly. ‘I’ll wait here and keep watch.’

  ‘No, you go on. And don’t bother about night-stalking and that. Get right down on the path and show yourself. When he moves, I’ll sort him.’

  ‘Oh, now,’ I said. ‘I think we’d better work this out a little.’

  ‘Come on, mate. For Christ’s sake,’ Shapiro said passionately, ‘Give me five minutes and get moving. I’m off now.’

  And off he was, surprisingly fast, leaving only a cloud of Stock to mark the space he’d occupied. I took another myself, and pondered. Shapiro would come to no harm, of course. I, on the other hand, could come to plenty. I was being asked to take to the track recently traversed by the infiltrators, and due to be retraced by them – perhaps sooner than expected if anything should alarm them ahead. This was plainly ridiculous. It was ridiculous anyway, but with Shapiro as my protector it was nothing short of madness. It wasn’t the only danger, either. There was no infiltrator on the hill, and if there were Shapiro was in no condition to sort him out. He was much more likely to lose his way, come round in a circle and sort me out. That was the real danger. I sagely put the stopper in the bottle, turned over and began crawling, away from Shapiro.

  It occurred to me after some moments’ crawling that Shapiro, although undoubtedly far gone, might all the same be keeping an eye on me. In this case it would be better to make in the direction of the track; and then get a sprained ankle. To simulate it convincingly, of course, I’d have to get on my feet. Was it a risk worth taking? I paused and had another drink and considered. I’d sunk a lot of Stock, a bottle and a half at least. I was showing a tendency to keel even while crawling. Could I even get on my feet?

  I carefully took off the Uzzi, the walkie-talkie and the night glasses and laboriously stood up. The hillside lurched. The sky flickered before my eyes. I closed them. When I opened them again, the sky was still flickering. It kept on flickering, in the direction of Yardena, and shortly afterwards a thin rattle of automatic weapons became audible. Almost at once the same thing started in the direction of Sha’ar HaGolen. A brilliant pinpoint of light suddenly broke in the sky, and then another. Flares. Very pretty. I found myself stumbling enthralled towards them through the lancing rain, until I fell over and continued at the crawl.

  I began to wonder after a while where I was crawling. I seemed to be crawling down. Surely I should be crawling up? I shambled round and began crawling up. This was tiring, of course. Very tiring indeed. What was needed here was a good St. Bernard. The thought no sooner occurred than it came to me that I was that good St. Bernard, succouring cask around neck. Except the succouring cask had gone. What sucker had succoured off with my succouring cask? I looked bemusedly around, and found it in my hand. This was rich; so rich my limbs gave way completely. I was laughing richly as I began tumbling slowly down the hill; still at it as my head thumped solidly on a rock and I passed out.

  *

  A thunderclap and bright lights disturbed the peace. The thunderclap was roaring my name. It metamorphosed into a loudhailer. A loudhailer with spotlights. A loudhailer with spotlights mounted on a half-track, ambling across the hill. I got blearily to my feet and immediately fell down again. But I’d been seen. Through waves of nausea and vertigo I saw the half-track change direction and amble towards me. It was still night, and still raining.

  *

  ‘Wonderful, marvellous, what a night!’ Agrot said. ‘Have a drink. Oh, they’ve given you one already,’ he said, upwind of me. I was back at Beit Shean. ‘So how did you get yourself in this pickle?’

  ‘I’m not too sure,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘You’ve got a bump on your forehead like an egg. You must have been
knocked out by the infiltrators. They must have disarmed you, too. We found your equipment on the hill.’

  ‘How’s Shapiro?’

  ‘A flesh wound, it’s nothing.’

  ‘From an infiltrator?’

  ‘Not at all. A stupid accident. He mistook one of our boys in the dark and swore at him in Arabic. No one realized he knew any Arabic. Anyway, the man shot him in the leg. Never mind. It’s our only casualty – a small price to pay for the Menorah. Hey, sit down. You’re really groggy.’

  I sat down because I really was.

  I said, ‘You mean, you’ve found it?’

  ‘There’s a guard over it now. We’ll take it out when it’s light. Which leaves you just time for an hour’s sleep.’

  But time too for gloomy retrospect. I’d been wrong, then, and they’d been right. North, the scroll had said, and they’d gone north, and struck rich in the north. Why had I thought south? A hunch, nothing more. A Vayishlach-type hunch. But Agrot knew his Vayishlach, knew it better than I; as evidently he knew his syntax better than I. So did they all, these Semites. Why not? It was part of their consciousness, of their way of thinking. If Agrot had said the priest had been expressing not astonishment at the presence of northern troops in his area but only a legal precision, why hadn’t I accepted it? If he hadn’t felt in his bones that the Menorah would have been taken to the south and not to the north, why should I have done?

  Why indeed? There’d been nothing to support the hunch. Nothing at all had come up during the three weeks I’d been in Israel. No contradictions in the priest’s scroll, apart from the one disputed phrase … I’d been away from it too long, this kind of field work, had sought subtlety where none existed; I’d been flogging a dead horse. The thing had been here all the time, under my nose, and no boutons had flashed.

  I felt sick suddenly; of romantic notions of the south, of hunches that deceived, of subtlety in every form, of myself.

  I slept a bit‚ all the same.

  3

  Agrot was still in a state of garrulous euphoria as we bounced past Menahemya at twenty past six. ‘The stuff is quartzite, of course, bluish quartzite, but exactly the kind that might have deceived the ancients, very hard and with a fine grain, not at all unlike marble. Quite obviously they had a tip-off from local Arabs that a vein of it was here – hence the mine detectors. We got a simply fantastic reading last night – I told you we took a reading last night?’

  I indicated a nod without actually nodding. I couldn’t remember feeling worse in my life. A scalding mug of black coffee had done something to revive feelings of life and humanity, but not enough. My head hurt hopelessly. This was due not only to the rock but to the bottle and a half of brandy. In a vague and unlocalized way I felt incurably ill.

  Beyond Menahemya the road degenerated into a track, and a mile farther we turned off it on to the open hillside. A square canvas tent had been rigged in an outcrop of rocks, and a number of soldiers and vehicles were gathered round it. We drove up to them and alighted. Rain slanted sharply in the chill grey morning and woodsmoke drifted dismally from a nearby Arab village.

  ‘Okay, we’re here, let’s go,’ Agrot said, and walked into the tent. I walked in with him. ‘We’re going to need more light. Let’s have the roof off for a start.’ Willing hands took it off. On the ground an area some nine feet in diameter had been ringed with white paint, and around it stood buckets, tarpaulins and picks. The tumbled rock, still wet from days of constant rain, showed a dull bluish-green.

  I sat on an upturned bucket and watched while Agrot and a couple of assistants began clearing the top rocks. Underneath was rubble and a number of large cracked slabs. All these were carefully manhandled to one side, and then they began excavating more rubble below. There were four or five feet of it, at first coarse stuff, and then fine. They’d been loosening it with the picks, but Agrot halted the work then.

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘From now on, by hand.’

  There were six hands in the hole, but it was Agrot’s, appropriately, that found the first item: a crumpled blackened twist of material. He produced a little eyeglass and examined it carefully, and then smelt it.

  ‘Leather?’ somebody whispered.

  ‘Fabric,’ Agrot said softly. ‘Oiled, but very brittle. We’ll go very carefully now, please.’

  They resumed work again. Everybody had stopped talking, in the tent and outside it. The only sound was the soft scrape of chippings being brushed away by hand. I got off the bucket and knelt over the hole.

  The twist of fabric was sticking an inch or two out of the chippings. Agrot didn’t tug at it. He worked below, and presently stopped again, running his hand up and down something. He said, ‘Wood. Rotted.’

  A handful at a time, they cleared the chippings and came down to the wood level. The wood had been smoothly planed, in thin planks, to form a case. The whole lid of it was presently visible, dark and long-rotted, and slightly out of position on top of the case so that the corner of oiled fabric was sticking out of a gap between it and the sides.

  Agrot examined the lid minutely. The problem was to lift it off without its disintegrating. He got a couple of fingers under and tried. A corner crumbled and broke off. He rested for a moment, and wiped the sweat out of his eyes, and tried again. He didn’t lift this time. He got his fingers in, and then his hand, and then his whole forearm. The other two people swiftly had their arms in the gap. With infinite pains, they raised the end of the lid, and then spread out to distribute the weight, and lifted the whole lot off. The waiting soldiers above accepted the burden, and, hardly breathing, laid it with veneration on tarpaulins.

  I was hardly breathing myself. I could feel the blood thumping sluggishly in my temples.

  Agrot slowly ran his hands down the oiled material. It was the loose end of a wrapping that totally bound the contents of the case. He began to unwind it, working with a beautiful and economic precision of movement.

  He only had to unwind a few turns, and then his back went stiff and he turned, with this same economic precision of movement, and actually smiled. He couldn’t quite manage to speak, though. There were nine rifles in the case, Austrian Mannlicher rifles, as used by, and doubtless stolen from, the Turkish army round about 1915. The rifles were in nice condition.

  Half an hour later, back at Beit Shean, and also back in bed, I drifted off to sleep with a tiny smile on my face. Hard cheese on Agrot, of course, but scholarship, as he’d said, depended on the ability to make these little adjustments. And the benefits, if any, had certainly come to him in one generous helping. I was already feeling a little better myself.

  4

  I woke at three, much refreshed, and ate a small meal assembled by Shoshana, and then went in search of Agrot. He was lying under a blanket with his boots on, hands locked behind his head and eyes screwed up watching a column of smoke rising from the cigarette in his mouth. I sat in a chair and lit one of his cigarettes and waited for him to speak.

  He didn’t say anything till he finished his cigarette, then he leaned over and stubbed it out and said conversationally, ‘So what do you propose doing now?’

  ‘Going back to Hatseva.’

  ‘Not by air. The pilot couldn’t get back before Shabat, and there’s no urgency.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll take a jeep.’

  ‘Yes. There’s nothing at Hatseva, you know.’

  It seemed unnecessary to remind him that there wasn’t anything here, either. I said, ‘It’s a hunch, to be pursued.’

  ‘You still want to do it, despite my views?’

  He’d told me his views yesterday. They were: (a) that in all recorded history Hatseva had never been anything other than a military fort and a staging post and that nobody in his right mind would consider growing flowers there or starting a perfumery; (b) that it was in the centre of a plain and there could be no question of the priest having to make a descent to get at it; and (c) that at the period in question it had been in Edomite (i.e. th
ieving neighbour) hands and therefore unthinkable as a hiding place for the Menorah. He’d told me all this in a quite jovial way as though correcting some well-intentioned child. He’d had his own (as yet unexploded) hopes then, of course.

  He didn’t have them now, and he was nowhere near so jovial, so I told him my views. These were: (a) that although Hatseva might not itself be the ‘watering place’ referred to, it seemed to me to be in the right area; (b) that blue marble was present in the area in quantities that made a thorough examination feasible; and (c) the ‘watering place’ might prove to be one of the ancient springs of the Negev that had become lost and were only now being rediscovered, together with their related industries.

  He closed his eyes while I talked, and didn’t open them when I’d finished. I said, ‘Have you any other line we might pursue?’

  ‘No,’ he said, sighing. ‘I haven’t. I couldn’t argue with you if you said you wanted to go home now.’

  ‘I haven’t said that.’

  ‘At least we know the Arabs are no wiser than we are.’

  ‘I never supposed they were.’

  ‘I did. That’s why I brought you in. It seemed urgent at the time. Now, of course, it isn’t.’

  ‘Are you saying you want me to go?’

  ‘It’s a matter of priorities. For me, Barot is now the main priority. You will have others yourself in England.’

  ‘You hired me for a specific period. The period doesn’t come to an end for two weeks.’

  ‘There would be no quarrel about the fee,’ he said.

  I was suddenly bloody angry.

  I said, ‘Stick the fee. And try and open your eyes while you do it. If you want me to stop work here, say so.’

  He opened his eyes and gazed at me mildly. ‘Don’t get so excited,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe that bothered you. What do you suppose is going to happen in two weeks? What should happen? You told me you’re not a wizard or a water-diviner. It needs work – months, perhaps years, of study and exploration. A single setback doesn’t mean we have to fly like madmen looking here, there. It’s in the north – I’m sorry, that’s my conviction at the moment. I believe the scroll means what it says. Perhaps I’m wrong. We’ll see. But the single reason you’ve adduced – the one phrase of text that I believe you’ve imperfectly understood – this doesn’t convince me otherwise. Maybe there are some contradictions we’ve overlooked. Maybe we’ll find other things in the text. Maybe the Jordanians with their better text will find them first. But this is a matter of time. For the moment, there’s no urgency. This is all I’m saying. I myself, when I’ve interrogated the prisoners, will go to Barot. But if you want to go to Hatseva – go.’