Judith

by Lawrence Durrell

  The decision did not seem to be one she had made herself. It was simply that there seemed nothing else to do. Go she must.

  •

  Punctual to the minute, she dragged her suitcase to the little side street where, the task of loading the lorry completed, Peterson sat waiting for her, a cigarette between her lips. She gave Grete a somewhat quizzical look as she came up, for the girl had changed her clothes; gone now was the smartly dressed young lady living in a fashionable quarter of Jerusalem. The blue work-trousers of the land-worker and the head-scarf and coarse shirt marked the appearance of another Grete — more resolute and more capable, or so it seemed. As they dropped down the winding road towards the coastal plain she said:

  “Is it true the British are pulling out? The radio only speaks of regrouping.”

  Pete gave a harsh bark of laughter.

  “Regrouping in order to embark,” she said and added: “What we don’t know is exactly when. David is trying to find out. Our real problems only begin from that moment.”

  “Is David...?”

  “He is second in command to Aaron, in charge of defence. He is if anything rather over-confident about our chances of survival — I suppose he has to be, to keep morale high. He has been hoping you would come back, you know; but there! It’s none of my business. I think he would like to marry you some day.”

  “What chance would we have?” she said slowly, “with this war hanging over us.”

  Peterson flicked her cigarette away. “It will not last forever,” she said. “There will be some pretty sharp birth pangs and presto... Israel. Once we have shown our will to survive, the nations of the world will decide to honour the mandate they have given us. After that there will be... I hardly dare utter the word. I’m too superstitious. I’ll spell it. P-e-a-c-e.”

  “I’d love to believe you.”

  “You must. When that comes you’ll find a different David.”

  “Peace!” said Grete, reflecting ironically. Once on the main road, they were swept into a long string of convoys heading for the coast, throwing out a great white plume of dust as they roared along. Lorries crowded with troops of all kinds, sappers, signallers, transport corps, pioneers...

  They did not find unencumbered roads again until they climbed the looping road through Nazareth and began to taste once more the fresh hill air. The mountain fortresses — the so-called Mactaggart forts — were still manned by the British troops — and this was some sort of consolation, since they knew the road would be open to Ras Shamir. So they finally came to the last twist in the mountain road and were able to look down across the misty violet sweep of the valley which by now had come to mean so much to Grete. As they neared the encampment they saw what changes were taking place, and that a new kind of purposefulness reigned. Tractors were throwing up banks of earth which looked suspiciously like tactical outworks; the perimeter had been triple-wired, and the whole large circle had been condensed into a makeshift fortress. Every hundred yards or so there was a bunker which suggested a machine gun emplacement. Who could tell whether they were full or empty?

  “It looks quite transformed,” said Grete.

  “It’s mostly bluff, alas,” said Peterson quietly. “But it might serve. Aaron has gone off to see the British today.”

  They entered the perimeter at last, and rolled slowly across the grass among the trees; Grete found herself greeting and being greeted by people she had almost forgotten were her friends. “Shalom, shalom”... the words echoed on the sunny air.

  Peterson grinned and said, “I’ll tell the committee. Meanwhile, by a bit of luck your old shack is empty and you can settle in there; and here is someone to carry your bag.”

  David’s son stood smiling under a tree; in that short time he had grown taller. To her surprise he came shyly forward and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I have been thinking of you,” said Grete. “You’ve grown.”

  The boy flushed and said:

  “We have spoken much about you here; the children asked always when you were coming back.”

  “They did?” cried Grete in genuine surprise.

  He nodded and took up her bag; Peterson let in the clutch and moved off in the direction of the clinic. Grete followed the boy to her little hut. It was still there, primitive and shabby.

  “There is a letter for you,” said the boy.

  This was another surprise. The letter bore an Indian stamp and a sender’s superscription bearing Lawton’s name; so even he had the gift of prophecy! How had he guessed that she would return to Ras Shamir?

  David’s son stood looking at her. He said rather solemnly, “My father has asked my permission to love you and I have given it.”

  Grete looked at him musingly and then stroked his hair.

  “I know you will make us happy,” he said quietly and, patting her wrist with a small protective gesture, he turned and was gone.

  Grete sat down on the bed and opened Lawton’s letter, smiling to herself. Then she read aloud a phrase from it. “You know that whatever happens I shall always be here; and if ever you change your mind...

  24

  A Gift for Ras Shamir

  The two men gazed at each other with a kind of grim respect as they exchanged a perfunctory handshake, the tall grizzled colonel and Aaron Stein. Macdonald, the regular, was seated at his primitive desk in the operations room of Fort B — the Mactaggart fort which dominated the pass leading to Ras Shamir and enabled him to keep a tenuous control on the border. Aaron’s eye took in the grey hair, the service medals and the missing thumb which made the operation of lighting a pipe a somewhat lengthy one. He himself puffed at a cigarette.

  “I asked you to come and see me,” said Macdonald with the faintest tinge of a Scots burr in his voice, “because... well, because we are pulling out.”

  “And we are going to be attacked.”

  “Exactly. I see you’ve been fixing up a perimeter down there and I wondered what defences, if any, you had; also what your intelligence was like. Naturally you need not answer any questions, as my duty would be to disarm you. I shall presume you have no arms, eh?”

  He got up and walked once round the room before reseating himself, as a dog settles itself down in a basket; it was clear that he was uncomfortable.

  “When do you pull out?” asked Aaron cautiously.

  Macdonald hesitated. “Day after tomorrow at four ack emma; from then on the road is wide open to be cut, and as for you...

  He crossed to the wall map of the area, which depicted the long appendix of the valley with its two converging gorges through which the river had carved a way. Macdonald stabbed at Ras Shamir with his pipe-stem.

  “You are an obvious target — and if you cave in, the whole valley goes. Now I can tell you privately that Daud the Prince is lying back here ready for a push. He’s well armed and trained by us. But he will have to come through the pass with the river. No other way. Have you any chance of sealing the pass?”

  Aaron shook his head. “I can’t spare the men or the rifles.”

  “Rifles!” said Macdonald with a commiserating air. “What the devil do you propose to do in such a case?”

  Aaron took up the pencil and indicated the dotted settlements along the two scarps.

  “The kibbutzim will reinforce me at a signal but... it will be mostly men with pitchforks, thanks to your policy of forbidding us arms.”

  Macdonald made another circle of the room and came back to rest once more at his desk.

  “Look,” he said at last, after carefully clearing his throat. “You must get the women and children away. I could provide you with transport. What do you say?”

  “No,” said Aaron stubbornly. “We stay.”

  “Well, I can but make the offer; if you refuse it, that is your affair. But I trust you will let me at least send the trucks down to the kibbutz. Your committee may think differently.”

  “The decision is not mine only; everyone is agreed.”

  Macdonald scra
tched his head. “Well I see that you are perhaps a little slow to take my point. It’s a pity when you are so short of materials and faced with a possible attack.”

  He rose and took Aaron’s arm. “Come with me and have a look at the transport,” he said. “I have to do my morning inspection in any case.”

  Aaron looked extremely surprised at this unheard-of departure from military practice, but something in the Scotsman’s quizzical glance intrigued him, and he followed him out into the compound where his transport lay, drawn up in rows.

  “You see,” said Macdonald, “I’ve told HQ that I’m setting my MT at your disposal today; it’s up to you to reject the offer and send it back to me. In that way my conscience will be clear.”

  As he spoke, he whipped one of the flaps of a lorry and disclosed a load of Teller mines, signal wire, barbed wire, pistols and signal flares. Aaron stared at him aghast. He could not speak. The Scotsman winked at him laboriously and patted his arm. At the next lorry and the next he repeated the performance. Aaron gaped after him like an idiot, looking up hesitantly into his face as each new gesture revealed a load of valuable military equipment.

  “All this stuff,” said Macdonald sotto voce, “has been written off as stolen by marauders. I need say no more.”

  They walked back in silence to the perimeter, where the guard saluted with a clash and thump of heels. “Very well then,” said Macdonald. “I shall send the column down to you in one hour under a colour sergeant. He will know what to do. I hope you will too.” Again he winked.

  Aaron’s handclasp was eloquent. He started his engine and leaned back to wave to the Scotsman. “Thank you,” he cried.

  And so the defensive plans of Ras Shamir were entirely reshaped throughout that afternoon and evening, thanks to the lucky gift of arms. They could now afford to think in terms of the small shallow minefield; they could mount machine guns on their tractors; they could even afford to envisage a small corps of well-armed grenadiers using Mills bombs...

  All the rest of that day they worked, unloading the lorries and sending them back to Macdonald; regrouping their stocks of munitions; digging and plotting and wiring, while Pete sat in her room with head bent to the little radio, listening to the floods of incoherent threats and ravings pouring in on them from the countries surrounding the pathetic little state which had just been born. No one could guess whether this step-child of persecution and intolerance would survive.

  •

  David stood in the doorway. “Is it true she has arrived back?”

  Pete switched off and nodded. “Yes. By the way, I’ve told the mountain boys — Brisbane and Brooklyn and Manchester — that we now have flares to signal them for reinforcements.”

  “Good,” he said. “Where is she?”

  “On a washing fatigue, as far as I know,” said Pete.

  David turned aside and slipped down the long staircase into the compound; he set off with long strides towards the river, whence he could hear the clear voices of women singing as they washed the camp clothes by the river and hung them on the bushes to dry.

  25

  Lovers’ Meeting

  She saw him from a longish way off and rose quickly, drying her hands; she set off to meet him, feeling shy and uneasy. She did not want to greet him before the other women. They walked smiling towards each other now, their own reflections riding in the waters below them; and as he came closer she saw that it was a different David, for he had changed immensely. Was it simply that men flourish on danger and anxiety? His moustache had gone, and with it the sombre impression of weight, of inner concealed sadness, a well of moroseness. He had become thinner, too, and his features were purer and more clear-cut. He still wore the old jackboots with the ends of his trousers tucked into them. But now he wore a close-fitting jacket and a scarf at his throat. Last but not least, for the first time he openly wore a pistol at his hip. His bearing too was new — purposeful and self-confident; he had lost the old diffidence. He walked swiftly across the tracks between the meadows and muddy pools, with their giant water lilies floating in eddies, moving as if they were alive — taking long, rapid strides towards her.

  “Well, you have picked your time,” he said and, before she knew where she was, his arms were around her. He embraced her with complete certainty now, and firmly, expecting her response to be as warm. It was. All the inner barriers seemed to have subsided, freeing her. They kissed each other as if all at once they had gone mad. She tried to speak, but even a simple sentence was breathlessly swept away by the chaotic punctuation of their embraces.

  “I tried... so much wanted... but I wanted so much...

  He paused only to say “Hush” in a whisper, and again “Hush”; and slowly sinking to their knees, they lay at last in the long grass by the river, helplessly at peace though their bodies still struggled for expression. For a long time after making love they lay like effigies. Then David turned on a sleepy elbow and plucked a bit of grass to put between her teeth.

  “I knew it would be like this,” he said.

  “I hoped it would,” she replied, her eyes still closed.

  He stared at her for a long time, and then bent to kiss her once more; he rose to his feet and stared at his watch.

  “Grete,” he said, sinking down briefly on one knee. “I have a job to do now. I must leave you. But tonight I’ll come to you.”

  And, without waiting for an answer, he embraced her briefly and was gone, walking swiftly along the river towards the head springs and the narrow valley which led to Jordan. She turned her head to follow his progress for a moment; then she set off towards the kibbutz.

  26

  Love and War

  At the entrance to the first ravine from which the Jordan rushed, blue-green and ice-cold, there was an old ruined mill, built at some time during the Middle Ages and long since fallen into decay. This was to be an observation point and, thanks to the gift of arms from the retiring British, Aaron had now decided to man it with a patrol of three scouts and a light machine gun. Here they would first be in contact with any intruder into the valley; and the kibbutz would certainly hear any exchange of fire.

  David climbed the rocky side of the ravine and, with a long sliding run, came to the entrance of the mill in time to hear old Karam shout with a chuckle:

  “Halt, who goes there?”

  The whiskered Yemeni emerged from the shadows among the ruins chuckling, followed by the two blonde boys from Sweden.

  “Everything okay?” said David, and followed them into the shadowy room which echoed the sound of the current thumping against the stone walls. The machine gun stood in an embrasure covering the end of the ravine.

  “Good,” he said. “Good. Now listen, no heroism from you three; I don’t expect any action from you, simply a signal of engagement. Then make your way back. Fire a green signal. But please make sure it is an enemy and not a flock of sheep or something like that.”

  Everyone grinned, and old Karam permitted himself a raucous chuckle. It was a capital joke. A few more orders given and discussed, a few trials of the little weapon’s powers of traverse, and David set off once more for the kibbutz. None of them had noticed the three silent robed figures on the cliff edge above, who, without sound or movement, studied the position and counted the number of its defenders.

  •

  Grete had dozed off, despite her intention to stay awake and wait for him; it must have been around midnight when she awoke with a start, to see his naked body outlined against the square of light where the window was.

  “David,” she whispered softly in the silence and he moved swiftly to her side.

  “It has started in the south,” he said. “Jerusalem is besieged and they are fighting at the Jaffa Gate and in Gaza.”

  He had put his Sten gun in the corner and his revolver on the table beside the blue bowl of cyclamen. She sat up and felt his strong arms around her.

  “What about us?” she said.

  David began to kiss her softly and
thoughtfully on the throat, the cheek, the breast. Then he said:

  “Our turn will come when the British pull out of the valley; until then we are safe. After that...

  He pulled her slowly down beside him on the bed and said in a tone which was almost exultant, “Think; we have so much time before us; and now everything is coming right, just as I thought it might, thought it would; you, Israel, everything!”

  “I can’t understand what has happened to me,” she whispered.

  “You have come back to yourself.”

  “David, could the child being dead for certain make me change?”

  “That among other things, perhaps the most. Kiss me.”

  In the confused silence of the little room, the spell cast by their lovemaking seemed to spread out tentacles of lassitude around them, but she felt suddenly buoyant, self-confident, able to return stroke for stroke, kiss for kiss.

  “I want to see your face,” he said suddenly, and before she could move he lit a match to stare down at her, brushing her hair back from her forehead with his hand, tucking it back in order to free her ears, the better to kiss them. Then the match went out and the darkness closed in on them. In the silence of the camp around them their own soft quick breathing seemed to magnify itself, until they had the illusion that it was not they who breathed, but the starlit night-universe itself. Yes, the night was breathing in its sleep.

  David said: “Tonight I am going to make you a child.”

  Her mind had dissolved into smoke, she could find nothing to say in reply; she lay passive under his kisses, like a creature sentenced to death, awaiting the stroke of the headsman’s axe.

  From the dark nothingness of sleep, was it the thin calling of the cocks that woke them — or perhaps it was the simultaneous sound of bugle-calls on the violet hillsides beyond the valley? A clear-rinsed dawn was coming up. She heard his rapid breathing as he dressed; the faint bugle-calls seemed to belong to the sounds of another world altogether. The smoke would be rising from their fires, he thought. Abruptly he kissed her and was gone. The light was rising at the edges of the eastern escarpments.