But there again the genius of Kurtz was never static. When Yanuka really started talking, Kurtz immediately grew a heart to match the poor boy's passion; suddenly the old jailer needed to hear everything that the great fighter had ever said to his apprentice. By the time Kurtz returned downstairs, therefore, the team had really obtained pretty well everything from Yanuka that was obtainable--which amounted to nothing at all, as Kurtz was quick to point out, when it came to establishing his big brother's whereabouts. In the margin, it was further noted that the old interrogator's adage was borne out once again: namely, that physical violence is contrary to the ethics and spirit of the profession. Kurtz stressed this vehemently to Oded in particular. He made really heavy weather of it. If you have to use violence, and sometimes you couldn't do much else, always be sure to use it against the mind, not the body, he said. Kurtz believed there were lessons everywhere if the young would only have the eyes to see them.
He made the same point to Gavron also, but to less effect.
Yet even then Kurtz would not, perhaps could not, rest. By early next morning, with the matter of Yanuka now dispatched in all but its final resolution, Kurtz was back in the city centre, consoling the surveillance team, whose spirits had recently plummeted with Yanuka's disappearance. What had become of him? cried old Lenny--such a future the boy had, such promise in so many fields! From there again, his mission of mercy accomplished, Kurtz set off northward for yet another tryst with Alexis, quite undaunted by the fact that the good Doctor's allegedly erratic nature had caused Misha Gavron to place him out of bounds.
"I'll tell him I'm American," he promised Litvak, with a broad smile, recalling Gavron's fatuous telegram to the Athens house.
His mood nevertheless was one of guarded optimism. We are moving, he told Litvak; and Misha only hits me when I'm sitting still.
ten
The taverna was rougher than those on Mykonos, with a black-and-white television fluttering like a flag nobody saluted, and old hillsmen too proud to take an interest in tourists, even pretty red-headed English girls in blue kaftans, and gold bracelets. But in the story Joseph now related, it was Charlie and Michel who were dining alone in the grill-room of a roadhouse outside Nottingham that Michel had bribed to stay open. Charlie's own pathetic car, as usual, was off the road at her latest pet garage in Camden. But Michel had a Mercedes saloon, he liked no other make so well; he had it waiting at the back entrance of the theatre and whisked her off in it immediately, ten minutes through the eternal Nottingham rain. And no passing tantrum of Charlie's, whether here or there, no momentary doubts, could arrest the pull of Joseph's narrative.
"He wears driving gloves," Joseph said. "They are a fad with him. You notice it but do not remark on it."
With holes in the back, she thought. "How does he drive?"
"He is not a natural driver but you do not hold this against him. You ask him where he lives and he replies that he has driven up from London in order to see you. You ask him what his occupation is and he says ‘Student.' You ask him where he studies, he replies ‘Europe,' implying somehow that Europe is a bad word. When you press him, not too hard, he says he takes semesters in different cities, depending on his mood and who is lecturing. The English, he says, do not understand the system. When he speaks the word ‘English,' it sounds hostile to you, you don't know why, but hostile. Your next question?"
"Where's he living now?"
"He is evasive. Like me. Sometimes Rome, he says vaguely, sometimes Munich, Paris a little, wherever he decides. Vienna. He does not say he lives in a box, but he makes it clear that he is unmarried, which does not totally dismay you." He smiled and took back his hand. "You ask which city he likes best, he dismisses the question as irrelevant; you ask what subject he is studying, he replies ‘Freedom'; you ask him where home is, and he replies that his home is presently under enemy occupation. Your response to this?"
"Confusion."
"However, with your customary persistence you again press him and he speaks the name Palestine With passion. You hear it at once in his voice--Palestine,like a challenge. Like a war-cry--Palestine."His eyes were so fixedly upon her that she had to give a nervous smile and look away. "I may remind you, Charlie, that though you are heavily involved with Alastair at this period, he is presently safely in Argyll making a commercial for some totally valueless consumer product, and you happen to know he is keeping company with his leading lady. Correct?"
"Correct," she said, and to her astonishment found that she was blushing.
"So now you must tell me, please, what Palestine, spoken in this way by this eager boy, means to you in a roadhouse in Nottingham on a rainy night. Let us say he asks you this himself. Yes. He asks you. Why not?"
Oh glory, she thought, how many sides to a threepenny bit? "I admire them," she said.
"Call me Michel, please."
"I admire them, Michel."
"What for?"
"Their suffering." She felt a bit of a fool. "For hanging on."
"Nonsense. We Palestinians are a bunch of uneducated terrorists, who should have reconciled ourselves long ago to the loss of our homeland. We are nothing but former shoe-shine boys and street vendors, delinquent children with machine guns in our hands, and old men who refuse to forget. So who are we then, please? Tell me your opinion, I shall value it. I am still calling you Joan, remember."
She took a deep breath. Not for nothing, after all, my weekend sessions at the forum. "All right. Here it is. The Palestinians--you--are gentle, decent farming people of great tradition, unfairly driven from your land, from 1948 onwards, in order to appease Zionism--and make way for a Western foothold in Arabia."
"Your words do not displease me. Kindly continue."
It was wonderful to discover how much came back to her under his perverse prompting. Snatches of forgotten pamphlets, lovers' lectures, the harangues of freedom fighters, bits of half-read books--all rallied to her like faithful allies in her need. "You're the invention of a European guilt complex about the Jews... you've been forced to pay the penalty for a Holocaust you had no part in... you're the victims of a racist, anti-Arab imperialist policy of dispossession and banishment--
"And murder," Joseph suggested quietly.
"And murder." Faltering again, she caught the stranger's gaze fixed steadily upon her and, as at Mykonos, she had suddenly no idea what she read there. "Anyway, that's who Palestinians are," she said lightly. "Since you enquire. Since you do," she added when he still said nothing.
She went on looking at him, waiting for the lead that would tell her what to be. Under the compulsion of his presence, she had consigned her convictions to the dross of an earlier existence. She wanted none of them, unless he did.
"Notice he has no small talk," Joseph ordered, as if they had never smiled at each other in their lives. "How quickly he has appealed to the serious side of you. He is also in certain ways meticulous. For example, tonight he has prepared everything--the food, the wine, the candles, even his conversation. We may say that with Israeli-style efficiency, he has mounted a complete campaign to capture his Joan single-handed."
"Disgraceful," she said gravely, studying her bracelet.
"Meanwhile he tells you that you are the most brilliant actress on earth, which once again, I take it, does not incurably dismay you. He persists in confusing you with Saint Joan, but by now you are no longer quite so upset that life and theatre are inseparable for him. Saint Joan, he tells you, has been his heroine ever since he first read about her. She was a woman, yet she successfully aroused the class awareness of the French peasantry and led them in battle against the British imperialist oppressors. She was a true revolutionary, who lit the flame of freedom for the exploited peoples of the world. She turned slaves into heroes. That is the sum of his critical analysis. The voice of God addressing her is no more than her own revolutionary conscience urging her to resist the colonialist. It cannot be the actual voice of God, because Michel has decided God is dead. Perhaps you were not aware of all these implications when you played the part?"