Judith

by Lawrence Durrell

  Aaron grinned. “I’ve missed you terribly,” he said, trying to make the remark sound light-hearted and conversational, in order to hide his emotions.

  “Do you think you could kiss through the foliage?” he asked. “I suppose one could get used to it?”

  She had brought a small parcel of sweets and cigarettes, and there was also a little bunch of somewhat faded flowers. “They are from your country house,” she said. “I picked them yesterday.” For a moment tears came into his dark eyes, but he quickly embraced her to hide them. “I’m coming back to the valley at the end of the month,” he said. “Will you still be there, Judith?”

  She was surprised almost to the point of anger. “Why not?” she exclaimed. He shook his head, still smiling and said, “I don’t know. I had a dream in which you went off in great pomp to America. More than one actually. It seemed quite logical.”

  “And since when have you started having prophetic dreams?” she cried. “Oh, Aaron — please!” But he only held her closer, still smiling, and somewhere inside him unconvinced. “Of course I’ll be there when you get back,” she said, and then suddenly felt a shadow cross her mind, a shadow of doubt. Aaron said: “We must see what the new Israel... ha, how does that sound to you?... the new Israel has in store for us both. You the unbeliever, and me the sabra.”

  “Ras Shamir will always be there,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You must,” he said. “You really must.”

  And yet the obstinate doubt persisted in their minds. Could the new Israel somehow separate them? She kissed him tenderly as she said goodbye, and promised to take any opportunity to visit him in the interval before his return. At the door she turned and stared at him for a long moment. He stared gravely back at her from under his dark brows, tenderly, yet unsmilingly. Then she turned and he heard her light step echoing on the staircase.

  30

  The Decision

  But the day before Aaron’s return she received a call from Professor Liebling in Jerusalem — so perhaps there was something to be said for prophetic dreams after all? She must hurry south to see him on matters of great urgency, said the message. So, with obedient reluctance, she entered the car which he had sent for her and set off through the green hazes of Galilee towards the capital city. She supposed that it had something to do with her father’s invention and she was not wrong. The Professor was waiting for her with an impatient enthusiasm which made him more than ever expansive. He embraced her warmly and fluttered around his desk like a sparrow from twig to twig. “America,” he said, “Judith — America!”

  “What about America?”

  With an incoherent gesture he indicated the papers on his desk. “Now where shall I begin?” he said. “Let us be logical. First of all the patents are out on your father’s ‘toy’. We can consider going into prototype now — offers are coming in from every side for production. Just what it’s going to mean to Israel’s oil future one can’t say yet — but it is going to be important — very important!”

  “So much the better.” She smiled, sitting down.

  “Aber — but that is not all. Here are invitations from almost every learned society, every foundation, every university... You will have to go and address them, travel about, perhaps stay a couple of years and work.”

  “Go to America?” The idea came as something of a surprise; she had not formulated a future plan for herself, though of course some such vague thoughts might have floated around in her mind. Princeton, for example, had always wanted her back.

  “America... she repeated like someone half asleep. The Professor grew impatient. “Of course, wretched girl!” he cried. “You owe it to your father, to yourself, and lastly, but perhaps most important, you owe it to Israel. You must see this invention through prototype and trial stages and into production; meanwhile you will also travel and lecture and work. How pleased your father would have been! Really, you owe it to his memory.”

  “Yes,” she said doubtfully, hesitantly. And then fell silent. She looked at her hands in her lap. “I hadn’t thought of any such thing, at least — for a while yet. Ras Shamir...

  “Ach! that damn kibbutz!” said Liebling with high scorn. “Have they bewitched you? That damned old Peter! Are you going to spend the rest of your life letting a committee decide what you have for lunch? Come — wake up, Judith. Everyone is calling you, everything is calling you — Gott in Himmel! Israel not least. After all — you are a Jew and here is something you can do for us all. It was we who dragged you out of Germany — remember?”

  “I know,” she said quietly, “I know.” She lit a cigarette and smoked thoughtfully. Liebling looked at her with hardly concealed impatience; he stood on one leg and then on the other. He held the side of his face and swayed from side to side as if with toothache. “Ach, Judith,” he said, bursting out at last. “You are half asleep, girl. Doesn’t this make you happy?”

  “Yes,” she said sadly. “But I must have time to think — time to decide. It’s a decision that needs thought.”

  “You what?”

  “I need a little time — that is all...

  “I don’t understand,” said Liebling. “After all, you have nobody here, nothing to keep you here. And your work — your career — it isn’t even as if you were a sabra!”

  The word struck her like a smack in the face. She stood up and said: “Very well. I will think about it and let you know soon, quite soon.”

  She embraced the old man and left him staring after her in reproachful amazement.

  That afternoon she set off for Ras Shamir again in a state of doubt and confusion. How familiar the landscape seemed now, how intimate! It was as if her trials and tribulations in it had, as well as seasoning her, made her part of it. Who was it, she wondered, who once wrote that places where we are unhappy are always dearer to us than those where we were happiest? She had been both at Ras Shamir. Finally, too, she must see Aaron again before any decision could be taken. That was perhaps the crux of the matter. The Professor himself was driving her; he planned to drop her at the settlement and go on to Safad, where he had some business to attend to. “On my return journey tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll come back and see if you have decided anything. Perhaps you will see everything clearly and be ready for me. I feel sure you will.”

  It was strange to walk the paths of the settlement again; to pass the schoolroom where the children were buzzing with laughter and reciting tables. In the main office Peterson sat in a characteristic mannish attitude, dictating a letter about apples. Judith climbed the staircase and poked her head in. “Ah!” said Pete. “Come in — come in! Why are you looking so sad?”

  “Because they want me to go away,” said Judith, and explained all that had taken place at the Professor’s office in Jerusalem. Peterson struck her knee and cried: “Marvellous! Judith — of course you must go. Anyway, it was foreseen long ago, wasn’t it? A girl with your gifts can’t stay on and moulder away in Ras Shamir. Good Lord — what has got into you?”

  “Something,” she said. “Where is Aaron?”

  “He came back. Probably in the mountains again.” She paused expectantly.

  “I wish to goodness I knew why I feel so confused,” Judith burst out. “Anyway, why should I trouble you with all these personal problems? It seems to be the eternal fate of us Jews in this generation to be chased from pillar to post. I envy you your life here!”

  “Well,” said Pete with a laugh, “in my case — and by the way, it is a secret — you know that I am not a Jew at all, at least by race. I’m a Jew by choice, which perhaps makes me more Jewish than the Jews. I really think that you should go for your father’s sake, as well as Israel’s. Old Liebling is right.”

  “Very well,” said Judith with a sigh, “but first I must see Aaron and ask him what he thinks.”

  “Beware!” said Pete with a grin. Strangely enough that day Aaron was not to be found anywhere in the kibbutz. Nobody had seen him. That night Judith slept restlessly, tu
rning and tossing. She had actually packed her exiguous belongings in a little suitcase — just in case (she told herself) the morning brought her a decision. In which case she could simply climb aboard the Professor’s car when it appeared and leave for Jerusalem. If there was to be a break with Ras Shamir, it must be a sudden and definitive one; Judith loathed protracted farewells, long-drawn-out partings. Yet somehow she could not decide definitively without seeing Aaron. The next morning she met the Professor; she had had an idea. “Will you drive me along the high road to the ninth milestone?” she said. “There may be someone there I need to see.” Liebling looked quizzical but said nothing. They drove in silence to the final curve of the high road into the hills and here she descended and took a footpath among the olives. She was going to see if Aaron was by any chance at his so-called “country house”. He was — he was in fact working in the garden, digging away. He gave a shout when he saw her and ran towards her, towards the breathless embrace which she had been imagining for so long. Somehow everything came back with it — her confidence, her self-possession. “I’ve been tidying up the garden.” He grinned at last. “I had a sudden sort of wave of energy; it’s as if for the first time the blasted place did seem to belong to me. Look... Already some semblance of order was beginning to re-emerge from the tangle. “Oh Aaron,” she cried, “I so much needed to see you. I hunted for you yesterday, everywhere.”

  “I was here.”

  “They want me to go to the States.” She suddenly blurted out the whole story, wringing her hands as she spoke, or softly banging her fists together in fearful indecision. He gazed at her keenly with sparkling eyes. “Of course you shall go,” he said. “Of course you must.”

  She looked at him uncomprehendingly; suddenly she realized why she had been feeling such indecision, such a momentous upset. It had nothing to do with either Israel or her father or the invention or the USA. It was quite plainly and unequivocally a decision which depended, as she herself did now, very much on Aaron. He did not understand the expression on her face and tried now, despite his own feelings, to seem excited, warm-hearted, congratulatory about the whole matter. Inside he felt quite hollow and sick, but he was determined that nothing should stand in the way of Judith’s future.

  “Of course,” he repeated excitedly. “You simply must. But surely it was all to be expected? Why should a girl with your gifts waste them here? No. But there, over there, Judith, you can play a part which will not only fulfill your own capacities but be a direct help to us here, to Israel. We are still desperately short of trained brains.” She was staring at him now with a slowly growing resentment in her eyes. “Besides,” he went on, hastily, lying now in order to help her as he thought, “they want me to join the regular army now and I shall probably be leaving the valley myself for a command in the Negev. It’s not certain but it’s on the cards.”

  “So you don’t want me to stay,” she said in a harsh, small voice, as if talking to herself. “It’s all this sabra business again; you don’t feel I have any sort of stake in your blasted Israel. Very well — thank you for making up my mind for me.”

  “Judith,” he protested, “I meant nothing of the kind. I certainly don’t want you to go in this state of mind. Listen...

  But she was already walking back through the olive glade to the high road where the car waited for her. Thank God, she thought to herself, I am already packed up. I have my suitcase and can leave today. Aaron walked beside her saying: “Judith, please don’t be unreasonable. We must not separate on these false terms. I know you will come back sometime; and I’ll wait for you — I promise you...

  But she climbed into the car and slammed the door shut. “Goodbye, Aaron,” she said, and motioned to the driver with her hand. Aaron stood in exasperated silence, biting his lip and watching the car slide slowly away down the long avenue of trees whose green foliage waved in the wind like sentient creatures waving farewell. He sighed and folded his strong arms across his chest as he watched it dwindle to a dot. Then he started and felt the blood suddenly beating in his temples. The car had stopped. The small figure, infinitely diminished by the long green perspective, got down into the road. It waved the car on and, as the vehicle slowly disappeared around the bend, the familiar figure began to plod slowly and determinedly back. “Judith!” he said under his breath — but he did not move, did not breathe, for fear that it was his imagination playing tricks with him. But no. Gradually the figure was growing larger as it approached him.

  Aaron now knew that a final and irrevocable decision had been taken, and that he was glad. Yet he still stood and waited patiently, separated from the distant figure by an eternity of time and space. Or so it seemed.

  A Biography of Lawrence Durrell

  Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) was a novelist, poet, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet, his acclaimed series of four novels set before and during World War II in Alexandria, Egypt. Durrell’s work was widely praised, with his Quartet winning the greatest accolades for its rich style and bold use of multiple perspectives. Upon the Quartet’s completion, Life called it “the most discussed and widely admired serious fiction of our time.”

  Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Durrell was an avid and dedicated writer from an early age. He studied in Darjeeling before his parents sent him to England at the age of eleven for his formal education. When he failed to pass his entrance examinations at Cambridge University, Durrell committed himself to becoming an established writer. He published his first book of poetry in 1931 when he was just nineteen years old, and later worked as a jazz pianist to help fund his passion for writing.

  Determined to escape England, which he found dreary, Durrell convinced his widowed mother, siblings, and first wife, Nancy Isobel Myers, to move to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. The island lifestyle reminded him of the India of his childhood. That same year, Durrell published his first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers. He also read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and, impressed by the notorious novel, he wrote an admiring letter to Miller. Miller responded in kind, and their correspondence and friendship would continue for forty-five years. Miller’s advice and work heavily influenced Durrell’s provocative third novel, The Black Book (1938), which was published in Paris. Though it was Durrell’s first book of note, The Black Book was considered mildly pornographic and thus didn’t appear in print in Britain until 1973.

  In 1940, Durrell and his wife had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. The following year, as World War II escalated and Greece fell to the Nazis, Durrell and his family left Corfu for work in Athens, Kalamata (also in Greece), then Alexandria, Egypt. His relationship with Nancy was strained by the time they reached Egypt, and they separated in 1942. During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassy. He also wrote Prospero’s Cell, a guide to Corfu, while living in Egypt in 1945.

  Durrell met Yvette Cohen in Alexandria, and the couple married in 1947. They had a daughter, Sappho Jane, in 1951, and separated in 1955. Durrell published White Eagles Over Serbia in 1957, alongside the celebrated memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and Justine (1957), the first novel of the Alexandria Quartet. Capitalizing on the overwhelming success of Justine, Durrell went on to publish the next three novels in the series—Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960)—in quick succession. Upon the series’ completion, poet Kenneth Rexroth hailed it as “a tour de force of multiple-aspect narrative.”

  Durrell married again in 1961 to Claude-Marie Vincendon, who died of cancer in 1967. His fourth and final marriage was in 1973 to Ghislaine de Boysson, which ended in divorce in 1979.

  After a life spent in varied locales, Durrell settled in Sommières, France, where he wrote the Revolt of Aphrodite series as well as the Avignon Quintet. The first book in the Quintet, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize while Constance (1982), the third novel, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

  Durrell di
ed in 1990 at his home in Sommières.

  This photograph of Lawrence Durrell aboard his boat, the Van Norden, is taken from a negative discovered among his papers. The vessel is named after a character in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. (Photograph held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  One of Nancy Durrell’s photographs from the 1930s. Pictured here is the Caique, which they used to travel around the waters of Corfu. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin, property of the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  This photograph of Nancy and Lawrence Durrell was likely taken in Delphi, Greece, in late 1939. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin and the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  A 1942 photograph of Lawrence Durrell with his wife, Nancy, and their daughter, Penelope, taken in Cairo. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

  This manuscript notebook contains one of two drafts of Justine acquired by the British Library as part of Lawrence Durrell’s large archive in 1995. (Notebook held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  A page from Durrell’s notebooks, or, as he called them, the “quarry.” This page introduced his notes on the “colour and narrative” of scenes in Justine. (Photo courtesy of the Lawrence Durrell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.)

  “As well as serving delicious food in an idyllic setting, the Taverna Nikolas at Agni has strong links with the Durrell story in Corfu,” says Joanna Hodgkin of this 2012 photo. Durrell lived in the neighboring town of Kalami, where his famous White House sits right above the shoreline. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)