Judith

by Lawrence Durrell

  “Are you sure you’re not too tired?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then the Officers’ Club, in half an hour.”

  He crossed the town on foot, noticing the tremendous animation mixed with uncertainty which pervaded everything. The fireworks still went on, and at the Officers’ Club they reflected themselves in the lily pond beside which the diners and dancers sat at tables glittering with white napery and shaded lamps. The grass was soft and green.

  She was sitting in a corner at a table on the lawn, waiting for him. The rosy cone of light shed by the table lamp with its red shade set off her shining eyes and hair. What surprised him most was the expression of calm on her face — a strange new relaxed expression of maturity which he had not seen before, and which he diagnosed as being relief after strain. It was in his mind to ask her what news, if any, she had received from her visitor earlier in the evening, but a native shyness made him hesitate and smile instead at her in a tongue-tied fashion.

  “Hello,” he said simply, awkwardly.

  “Hello,” she replied.

  A momentary awkwardness sprang up between them. It was as if all the contingencies of the world which were about to separate them had, in some way, made them strangers to each other. Perhaps it was to shake off his depression that she reached forward and put her hand on his. She felt how deeply the warmth of her touch affected him.

  “I must tell you my news,” she said, “since you’re too tactful to ask about it.”

  “It was not tact,” he said. “I was afraid for you. Did the priest have anything useful to say?”

  “He told me everything I wanted to know,” she said. “Coming all in a lump like that, it roared through me like a north wind, knocked me sideways a bit. Otto is dead, for example. I keep repeating the phrase aloud to myself, astonished to find it means nothing. Or if it does mean something, I haven’t grasped what it can be. And yet, I’m not dazed... I’m perfectly calm. It puzzles me terribly. I don’t know whether to accuse myself of callousness, or what.”

  In the long silence that followed, he looked at her keenly, intently.

  “I am dreadfully anxious for you,” he said at last. “This country is going to blow up. I wish you had let me take you away before the balloon goes up, as it must. My poor Grete,” he added under his breath.

  She was silent and he knew why. The shadow of David rose between them. Then he said:

  “Why don’t you go back to Ras Shamir?”

  “I’ve asked myself that question,” she said, “more than once. I wanted to and yet something held me back. Perhaps that something was the mystery of my husband and... you know. Now my way seems much clearer. Yet suddenly I feel as if I’d lost the impulse to long very deeply for anything anymore. I wonder if you see.”

  He pressed her hand sympathetically and nodded.

  “Come,” he said, “let’s not spoil our last evening with gloomy questions. Everything will resolve itself sooner or later. Shall we dance?”

  They moved softly and lightly into the throng of fox-trotting officers and their womenfolk. Donaldson of the Hussars showed some disposition to cut in, but Lawton pleaded with him successfully, saying that he was leaving in the morning and the young man acceded to his request with a lordly and slightly tipsy air.

  “Have you heard the news?” he said. “We’re packing up. Marching orders came in this evening. Now it’ll be dog-eat-dog, or rather, Arab-eat-Jew.”

  “It might be Jew-eat-Arab,” said Lawton under his breath as they circled the dance floor and then left it to continue their slow revolutions on the green grass by the swimming pool. He had never seen her looking so radiant, nor found her so tender, so accommodating. Dancing cheek to cheek, as they were, one might pardonably have mistaken her for a lover or his wife. The subaltern at the bar looked openly envious and Donaldson expressed his own view of the matter by ordering another Scotch whisky and toasting the distant Lawton, muttering, “Here’s to a lucky dog,” as he raised his glass.

  It was long after midnight when they walked arm in arm across Jerusalem through the deserted streets. The fireworks had stopped now, but great clouds of red smoke still hung in the night sky, while a late thin moon cast its frail light across the domes and minarets of the city. The only noises from the Arab quarter were the withering snarls and yelps of the Arab radio, calling for death to the Jews and vowing vengeance on all who helped them.

  At the end of the long line of cypresses, Lawton stopped suddenly.

  “I’m going no further,” he said. “Goodbye, Grete.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, then impetuously, youthfully she embraced him... so quickly indeed that he had hardly time to respond.

  “We shall meet again,” she said.

  And in some strange way both of them believed that this was the truth — that this parting was not a final one. She turned and walked on down the long street towards her house, while he stood and watched her until she reached the safety of her front door. Then he sighed and turned about, lighting a cigarette as he walked slowly and thoughtfully homeward. There would not be much sleep for him tonight. Already the eastern sky was beginning to pale.

  Later, sitting in the awkward bucket seats of the Dakota as it circled Lydda before heading eastward into the rising sun, Lawton looked out upon the city as if upon a relief map, tracing every feature of it from memory. He was surprised to find that he had fallen in love not only with Grete but with Jerusalem itself.

  23

  New Dispositions

  Lawton’s departure weighed heavily upon Grete, though she did not feel its impact until the day when she found a successor occupying his desk. It was something more than a blow to her social life. It was as if it had set in motion a train of other events which were now going to alter the whole circumstances of her life in the city. The office, for example, was closing. Its technical personnel were being transferred to England, while all the local staff, including Grete, were faced with a month’s notice and the gratuity of six months’ pay.

  The political tension was mounting daily, too, and public disorders had now come to mark their everyday lives — the Jews fighting the Arabs, the Arabs fighting the Jews, while the unfortunate police attempted, without any success, to hold the ring. It became dangerous to walk in the streets. Shootings, burnings and lootings became the order of the day. The occupiers of Palestine, relieved at last of the burden they found so onerous, owing to their inability to tell the truth to either of the chief factions, or to honour the pledges given to both, now became almost deliberately slack in the execution of their duties.

  The general attitude was well voiced by Duff when he exclaimed to a visiting rabbi, who had come to complain about lack of protection of property and person in the Jewish sectors of the town:

  “You wanted us out, old chap. And you’re going to have us out.”

  Peace had become a precarious matter, public safety in the life of the open street a question of sheer hazard; all day long the columns of motorized troops poured down the dust-choked roads towards the harbours. All night now one heard the crash of grenades in the narrow streets around the Jaffa Gate, or the rapid breathless stammer of pistols. By the time the police patrols had reached the spot, even the sound of running feet had died away, and only the victim of the attack lay there on the pavement, crumpled and silent. More often than not he or she proved to be an innocent victim of terrorism, someone belonging to neither side. Night-curfews came down like a lid upon their lives; all the innocent pleasures, such as dining out, dancing, going for midnight swims, became part of the pattern of their loss.

  Such restraints sowed resentment in everyone. It was obvious that the British were packing up and pulling out, yet no official announcement to this effect was made, and this increased the fear and uncertainty. One day they would awake to find Palestine evacuated, left defenceless, and with no armed soldier on hand to prevent the entry of the Arab armies which surrounded this pathetic strip of coastal land. It se
emed as if all the gloomy predictions of the Haganah Jews were to be fulfilled.

  As for Grete, it was a period of indecision and depression. Her life in Jerusalem was coming to an end, and as yet she could form no coherent plan for the future. Once or twice she thought of returning to Ras Shamir, but a sense of shyness, of inhibition, seemed to paralyze her.

  It was in one of these moods of dejection that she set out one day for the monastery by the Mount of Olives where Father Gaudier lived and worked. She had some difficulty in running him to earth, but at last succeeded in penetrating to the walled garden where he was busy pruning an apricot tree. He looked down from the ladder with his uncertain smile, wiping his hands in his soutane, and mopping a sweaty forehead with his sleeve.

  “I expected you,” he said, somewhat surprisingly. “I don’t know why, but I did.”

  Grete held the ladder while the little man climbed down.

  “I suddenly felt the need to talk to you,” she said.

  The priest nodded and said, “Come.” She followed him down the pathway with an expression of puzzlement on her face.

  “It seemed to me,” she said, “that you alone knew all about me — you knew almost more about me indeed than I myself know. Therefore, I might consult you with profit. I’m at a loss about myself. I don’t know what to do, where to go, or whom to love.”

  Father Gaudier did not appear to be listening. He hummed under his breath as he led the way to a small study which he unlocked with a key.

  “Well now,” he said, “sit down and I’ll make you some sage tea.”

  Grete sat with her hands in her lap and gazed into the blue eyes of the little man.

  “I am glad you are not surprised to see me here, though it was only yesterday I suddenly remembered you. But I have been feeling recently that I needed to talk to someone — to talk about the whole of my life to someone, in order somehow to get back my will to live. I wanted, needed, to re-articulate my past life, so that perhaps I could see in it some sort of pattern which would allow me to make a decision, to plan for the future — for clearly I must soon decide, from a practical point of view, what I should do. I have considered every choice without any result — even the more drastic choices...

  Father Gaudier turned off the kettle and poured out the boiling water into the little tisane cups. “The most extreme would be suicide I suppose, or entering a convent. I somehow don’t see either of them as being suitable for you.”

  She laughed with relief. “You seem to know everything about me.”

  “No,” he said. “It is just that you are like everyone else. It is pardonable to feel one is original, but you know that in moments of stress or loneliness most human beings react in the same way. I know much, of course — all that your husband had to tell me; but there are also gaps. Some I have filled in with the help of a mutual friend. Miss Peterson of Ras Shamir.”

  “You know her?” she said with surprise.

  “I consulted her about you — before,” he said.

  “What did she have to tell you?”

  “About your experiences in the camps and elsewhere. To me, it seemed most comprehensible that you should still feel the grave shock of all those horrors. That alone would be enough to make you unstable, afraid of yourself. If one is bound in this way by a feeling of guilt, it is practically impossible to make deliberate choices; one tries to force reality, and one pays for it with the wrong decision. That is why I always tell people to wait until reality refines itself down and leaves only a single way out.”

  “It is easy to say.”

  “I know it is.”

  “But you are right. I do feel guilty after what I have been through — guilty because there was always a way out. I could have committed suicide, could I not? Yes, but I was too much of a coward. I prayed for the courage, but I never found it. But since I endured and did not kill myself, I am indeed guilty, am I not?”

  “Of course. But you must stop regarding it as a very exceptional or original matter. The extent of human guilt is boundless, endless, without horizons. I live and pray my wretched life away here, imagining that I am free from it. But I know I am as guilty as anyone, as guilty as you. In fact, from my point of view, your case is a perfectly ordinary one, and it is sheer stupidity for you to allow it to ruin your ordinary life. You are a victim of false pride, Grete, that is all. Your life is not ruined, as you think... He broke off.

  She stared at him, or rather stared through him, through the wall, the streets, through Jerusalem to Germany, to her childhood. She drew a deep breath.

  “False pride?”

  “Yes. This is what has ruined your power of choice, and made you believe that you are worthless, no good to anyone. You said a moment ago that you did not know whom to love — this is why. As a matter of fact it is not life around you which has changed — it is your own angle of vision. You are seeing things through a mist of false self-esteem! Nothing in fact has changed; life is still before you. You have much to offer, much to give in both life and love. But you must make some little effort to understand why you are paralyzed... I apologize for the paradox. But there it is.”

  “Yes,” she said, and suddenly her tone had changed; she half rose from her chair and smiled at him. In some curious way everything felt changed and renewed by this conversation — as if these few words had knocked down a wall which had been preventing her entry into a part of herself, her own heart and mind.

  “What insight you have,” she said at last, almost under her breath. “It was for this that I came. I am so grateful to you.”

  The priest made a grimace. He rose and said negligently, “I must be going I am afraid. Will you come back if and when you feel the need to talk to me? I am always available except on Tuesdays.”

  “I will,” she said on a note of calm resolution, but something inside her told her that she would not — that he had given her what she had needed. He grinned as he showed her to the great oaken door and let the dazzling sunlight into the cool entrance hall of the monastery.

  “A word in good time is as strong as a blow,” he said. “Or so the Arab proverb has it.”

  He stood watching as she walked down the street. Grete looked about her with new eyes. All of a sudden a strange new elation had seized her; everything seemed pristine, newly created. Jerusalem with its tones of apricot stone, soft green olives and blue sky had never seemed so beautiful. It was as if all the potentialities of life had suddenly been rescued, become viable again. She felt she was on the edge of some new adventure which would decide everything once and for all. And so she was...

  It was through the long window of Wagner’s Pharmacy that she caught sight of the long sinewy form of Peterson... as if she had been suddenly conjured up by the conversation Grete had just had with the priest. The kibbutz secretary held a long slip of paper, a shopping list, in her hand. She was busy ticking off the items on it. Grete turned aside swiftly and entered the shop.

  “Pete,” she cried. “What are you doing here?”

  Pete grabbed her in her wiry arms and planted a kiss on her nose.

  “Aha,” she said. “Fancy seeing you. I’m doing a bit of shopping for the camp. Look.”

  She handed Grete the list — it was composed entirely of medical stores: bandages, surgical spirit, scalpels, morphia...

  “For the clinic?” Grete said and Peterson nodded, grinning.

  “Yes, but we are getting into position to deal with much more than our normal intake. Have you time for a coffee? I must leave for Ras Shamir in an hour or so.”

  She turned, and in her brusque harsh voice gave instructions for her battered little lorry to be loaded up with the materials she had ordered and for which she now paid in cash from her old tattered crocodile-skin wallet. Grete was astonished by the sum.

  “But this is for an army, not a clinic,” she said.

  Pete chuckled and pressed her arm as they walked down the street to a nearby coffee shop.

  “It is, more or less,” she sa
id. Her eyes twinkled; she seemed full of a buoyant self-confidence, an elation which seemed inexplicable to Grete.

  “Are you expecting trouble?” she asked.

  Peterson nodded. “Of course, you fool; the minute the British go the Arabs will come in in force.”

  “But you seem so pleased about it.”

  “The relief, my dear; it’s the relief of it all.”

  Peterson stirred her coffee and wrinkled up her nose in a smile.

  “For so long we have been living in insecurity, dependent on the good will of strangers, on the charity of others... Now, all of a sudden, we exist on paper as a place called Israel. This is a momentous step forward, for we have now become a sort of world commitment. But you know as well as I do that if Israel were to be swallowed up by the Arab states, nobody would lift a finger to save her. At last, my dear, at last we are all alone with our own destiny. It depends on us whether the state can get itself born and fix itself among the other small nations. Can’t you see how relieved we all are that now things are going to come to a head — after so many years of waiting cap in hand outside the doors of the great nations?”

  “Are Aaron and David happy?”

  “Radiant. For years they have foreseen this moment. The battle may be a stiff one, but it will decide everything; either we die or get thrown into the sea, or else... Israel, a place of our own.”

  Pete drank her coffee at a single gulp and got up; she stayed for a moment, looking down into Grete’s face.

  “I must go,” she said softly. “The balloon might go up at any minute — though the British are still in the valley. Aaron has gone up to find out what he can. But I must be back this afternoon.”

  She paused and smiled into the troubled face of the girl. Then she said softly, “Why don’t you come back?”

  Grete stared at her silently.

  “Right now!” said Peterson softly. “With me?”

  Grete rose without a word, and together they walked towards the door. As Peterson opened it Grete said, “I need half an hour to pack and to give the office the key to my flat. Where shall I find you?”