Requiem Excerpt
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Chapter Three The plane landed out of the astonishing blue heavens at Tel Aviv airport, seeding passengers on to the hot tarmac. Still unable to contact Sharon, he took a bus to Jerusalem. He disembarked at a bus station teeming with alien life and was awed by the number of young women wearing the olive drab of army combat gear. Good-looking Israeli girls toting Uzi automatics. He was still gazing after one of them when a boy wearing dark glasses and a Walkman thrust a leaflet into his hand. It offered the incentive of one free beer to stay at a backpackers' hostel. He was still reading the handbill when an elderly Hasidic Jew with gray locks and a farouche beard smiled at him from under the broad brim of a black hat, sliding another note into his hand. This second leaflet was printed in Hebrew; on the reverse in English it said "AMERIKANS = AMALEKITES. The daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling of their feet. NO TO NEW AIRPORT." Tom thought he'd recognized the quotation. "Isaiah?" The old Hasid shrugged, gesturing that he had no English. Then he scurried away to press his leaflets into the hands of two baffled Australian backpackers. Tom hailed a Mercedes taxi, giving the driver Sharon's address, and the cab whisked him under the medieval walls of Old Jerusalem. Banners waved in the wind. Flags and streamers fluttered in the breeze high above the battlements of the Old City wall. The Golden Dome of the Rock breasted blue skies. Glimpsed from the speeding taxi, honey-colored light flaked the clouds, licked ancient brick, discharged long shadows from the antique portals. It was like the picture on a gilt-edged stamp he'd collected at Sunday School as a child, the stamp completing the set. It was his first sight of Jerusalem. Thou art beautiful, O my love, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. It was a Jerusalem which didn't exist. A Jerusalem he would never see again. He wanted to order the driver to stop so that he could get out of the cab, climb across the perforated, gilded frame of his vision and walk into history. Instead he watched the vision recede through the rear window of the Mercedes. He heard voices from behind the city walls. Thou art beautiful. And gradually the old citadel sank behind the hill as the taxi coursed along the Shekhem, north-east of the city. Terrible as an army with banners. This was childhood and mythology crystallized in the view from the back of a cab. It was a day of innocent arrival. When he saw his own reflection in the smoked-glass doors outside Sharon's apartment, he thought he looked like a golem. A man in an unfinished state. An Adam in creation, awaiting the final breath of God. There was something incomplete about himself, some vital spark gone astray. He rang the bell again. Perspiration gathered around the leather hand-grip of his suitcase as he waited. Still no answer. He pressed a neighboring bell, and a sleepy voice crackled over the communication system. Tom ducked toward the buzzing speaker. "You speak English?" "Yes. Ummm." "I'm looking for Sharon. In the next apartment." "Gone away. Ummm." "What? What did you say?" "Gone away. Gone away on holiday. Ummm. Back in a few days." The low buzz of the intercom clicked off. He imagined a sleepy Israeli upstairs going back to bed. It was noon. He stared stupidly at the hot, dusty street. All he could do was shift his weight from one foot to the other, squeezing the moist handle of his suitcase. The word golem fired in his brain like gunshot across a desert. Fresh sweat bloomed on his brow as he made his way down the marble stairway of the apartment block. He left the cool shadows of the building and walked out into the brilliant sunlight of the street. Where was Sharon? The spontaneous act of flying out here, which at one moment had seemed cavalier and daring, now seemed bloody silly. He knew no one else. He was a long way from home, and he felt lonely and not a little afraid. The taxi driver who'd brought him here had ripped him off, he was certain. He regretted his pale appearance. He felt like a target. Another cab cruised by, looking for a fare. He hailed it and told the driver to head back into the center of modern Jerusalem. "The block where you picked me up," he asked the driver on the way, "would they be mainly Jewish or Arab people living there?" The driver looked over his shoulder and showed a mouthful of gold teeth. He evidently found the questio too ridiculous to answer. Tom produced the hostel leaflet he'd been handed at the bus station. "Would this be a decent place for me to stay?" The driver glanced at it. "Might not be too clean." "Is there a hotel you could recommend?" "Hotel's gonna cost you a lotta money. A lotta money." "I don't have a lot of money." Gamely blaring his horn at some pedestrians, the driver said, "I got an idea. Basic. But it'll keep you out of some Arab hovel." The hotel was situated just north of the Me'a She'arim ultra-Orthodox district of Jerusalem, not far from the Old City. A large sign had been erected at the corner of the street. DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM: DRESS MODESTLY AT ALL TIMES. The taxi pulled up at a gray-brick building. It was basic, barely clean and run on the lines of a youth hostel. A young man with curling black locks, kipah skull cap and eyes permanently aghast behind thick spectacle glass showed him to a room. It smelled of warm dust. Tom flicked back the yellowing sheets doubtfully. The boy assured him they'd been laundered, despite their appearance. He accepted the room and got a discount by paying in sterling. After the boy had gone Tom flung open the window shutters. Long rays of afternoon sunlight pierced the room, illuminating mote-clouds stirred by his movements. He didn't mind the dust. This was ancient dust, mystical dust. The dust of Abraham and Jesus and Mohammed. These were the sweepings of religion. A clump of jasmine grew outside the window, its cooling scent mingling with the humid smell of the dust. He was exhausted rom lack of sleep the previous night, from travel. He wanted to lie down on the bed and drift, but he was afraid if he did, the knocking on the door might start all over again. He prayed he'd left that behind him in England. In any event, he was massively stimulated by the thought of Jerusalem. His excitement was almost erotic. He decided to go out again. Right now he wanted to take a walk in the world's most holy city. >>> |
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