Her interrogation began next morning and lasted, she reckoned afterwards, one day and two half nights. It was a wild, unreasoning process, depending on whose turn it was to scream at her and whether they were challenging her revolutionary commitment or accusing her of being a British or Zionist or American informer. For as long as it lasted, she was excused all tuition, and between sessions, ordered to remain in her hut under house arrest, though no one seemed to bother when she took to wandering around the camp. The shifts were divided between four Arab boys of great fervour working in pairs and barking their prepared questions from pages of handwritten notes, and they got angriest when she failed to understand their English. She was not beaten, though it might have been easier if she had been, for at least she would have known when she was pleasing them and when not. But their rages were quite frightening enough and sometimes they would take turns shouting at her, keeping their faces close to hers, covering her with spit, and leaving her with a sickening migraine. Another trick was to offer her a glass of water, then throw it in her face as she was about to take it. But the next time they met, the boy who had instigated this scene read out a written apology in front of his three colleagues, then left the room in deep humiliation. Another time they threatened to shoot her for her known attachment to Zionism and the British Queen. But when she still refused to confess to these sins, they seemed to lose interest, and told her instead proud stories about their home villages, which they had never seen, and how they had the most beautiful women, and the best olive oil and the best wine in the world. And that was when she knew she had come home to sanity again; and to Michel.
An electric punkah turned on the ceiling; on the walls hung grey curtains partly concealing maps. Through the open window, Charlie could hear the intermittent thud of bombing practice from Bubi's range. Tayeh had taken the sofa, and laid one leg along it. His wounded face looked white and ill. Charlie stood in front of him like a naughty girl, her eyes lowered and her jaw clamped with rage. She had tried to speak once, but Tayeh had upstaged her by fishing his whisky bottle from his pocket and taking a swig from it. With the back of his hand he wiped his mouth each way as if he had a moustache, which he had not. He was more contained than she had known him, and somehow less at ease with her.
"Abdul the American," she said.
"So?"
She had prepared it. In her mind, she had practised it repeatedly: Comrade Leila's high sense of revolutionary duty overcomes her natural reluctance to rat on a fellow soldier. She knew the lines by heart. She knew the bitches at the forum who had spoken them. To deliver them, she kept her face turned away from his and spoke with a harsh, mannish fury.
"His real name is Halloran. Arthur J. Halloran. He's a traitor. He asked me, when I leave, to tell the Americans that he wants to go home and face trial. He frankly admits to harbouring counter-revolutionary beliefs. He could betray us all."
Tayeh's dark gaze had not left her face. He held his ash walking stick in both hands, and was tapping the end of it lightly on the toe of his bad leg, as if to keep it awake.
"Is this why you asked to see me?"
"Yes."
"Halloran came to you three nights ago," he remarked, looking away from her. "Why did you not tell me earlier? Why wait three days?"
"You weren't here."
"Others were. Why did you not ask for me?"
"I was afraid you would punish him."
But Tayeh did not seem to think that Halloran was on trial. "Afraid," he repeated, as if that were a grave admission."Afraid! Why should you be afraid for Halloran? For three whole days? Do you secretly sympathise with his position?"
"You know I don't."
"Is this why he spoke to you so frankly? Because you gave him reason to trust you? I think so."
"No."
"Did you sleep with him?"
‘No."
"So why should you wish to protect Halloran? Why should you fear for the life of a traitor when you are learning to kill for the revolution? Why are you not true to us? You disappoint me."
"I am not experienced. I was sorry for him and I did not wish him harmed. Then I remembered my duty."
Tayeh seemed increasingly confused by the whole conversation. He took another pull of whisky.
"Sit down."
"I don't need to."
"Sit down."
She did as he ordered. She was looking fiercely to one side of him, at some hated spot on her own private horizon. In her mind she had passed the point where he had any right to know her. I have learnt what you sent me here to learn. Blame yourself if you do not understand me.
"In a letter you wrote to Michel, you speak of a child. You have a child? His?"
"I was talking about the gun. We slept with it."
"What type of gun?"
"A Walther. Khalil gave it to him."
Tayeh sighed. "If you were me," he said at last, turning his head away from her, "and you had to deal with Halloran--who asks to go home, but who knows too much--what would you do with him?"
"Neutralise him."
"Shoot him?"
"That's your business."
"Yes. It is." He was considering his bad leg once more, holding his walking stick above it and parallel to it. "But why execute a man who is already dead? Why not let him work for us?"
"Because he's a traitor."
Once again, Tayeh seemed wilfully to misunderstand the logic of her position.
"Halloran approaches many people in this camp. Always with a reason. He is our vulture, showing us where there is weakness and disease. Pointing the way to potential traitors. Don't you think we would be silly to get rid of such a useful creature? Did you go to bed with Fidel?"
"No."
"Because he is a dago?"
"Because I didn't want to go to bed with him."
"With the Arab boys?"
"No."
"You are too fastidious, I think."
"I wasn't fastidious with Michel."
With a sigh of perplexity, Tayeh took a third pull of whisky. "Who is Joseph!" he asked, in a mildly querulous tone. "Joseph. Who, please?"
Was the actress in her dead at last? Or was she so reconciled with the theatre of the real that the difference between life and art had disappeared? None of her repertoire occurred to her; she had no sense of selecting her performance. She did not consider falling over her feet and lying still on the stone floor. She was not tempted to embark on a wallowing confession, trading her own life for everything she knew, which she had been told was her final, permissible option. She was angry. She was sick to death of having her integrity dragged out and dusted down and subjected to fresh scrutiny every time she reached another milestone in her march towards Michel's revolution. So she flung straight back at him without thinking--a card flipped off the top of the pack--take it or leave it, and to hell with you.
"I don't know a Joseph."
?"Come. Think. On Mykonos. Before you went to Athens. One of your friends, in casual conversation with an acquaintance of ours, was heard to make a reference to Joseph, who joined your group. He said Charlie was quite captivated by him."
There were no barriers left, no twists. She had cleared them all, and was running free.
"Joseph? Ah,that Joseph!" She let her face register the belated recollection: and as it did so, to cloud in disgust.
"I remember him. He was a greasy little Jew who tagged on to our group."
"Don't talk about Jews like that. We are not anti-Semitic, we are merely anti-Zionist."
"Tell me another," she snapped.
Tayeh was interested. "You are describing me as a liar, Charlie?"
"Whether he was a Zionist or not, he was a creep. He reminded me of my father."
"Was your father a Jew?"
"No. But he was a thief."
Tayeh thought about this for a long time, using first her face, then her whole body as a term of reference for whatever doubts still lingered in his mind. He offered her a cigarette but she didn't take it: her instinct told her to make no step towards him. Once more he tapped his dead foot with his stick. "That night you spent with Michel in Thessalonika--in the old hotel--you remember?"
"What of it?"
"The staff heard raised voices from your room late at night."
"So what's your question?"
"Don't hurry me, please. Who was shouting that night?"
"No one. They were snooping at the wrong bloody door."
"Who was shouting?"
"We weren't shouting. Michel didn't want me to go. That's all. He was afraid for me."
"And you?"
It was a story she had worked up with Joseph: her moment of being stronger than Michel.
"I offered him his bracelet back," she said.
Tayeh nodded. "Which accounts for the postscript in your letter: ‘I am so glad I kept the bracelet.' And of course--there was no shouting. You are right. Forgive my simple Arab trick." He took a last searching look at her, trying once more, in vain, to resolve the enigma; then pursed his lips, soldier-like, as Joseph sometimes did, as a prelude to issuing an order.
"We have a mission for you. Get your possessions and return here immediately. Your training is complete."