"They are all disasters," he replied unemotionally, looking out. "Ask me what the inhabitants of Kiryat Shimonah feel when the Palestinian shells come down. Ask them in the kibbutzim to tell you about the whining of the Katyusha rockets, forty at a time, while they hide their children in the shelters pretending it is all a game." He paused and gave a kind of bored sigh, as if he had listened too often to his own arguments. "However," he added, in a more practical tone, "on the next occasion you use that argument, I suggest you please remember that Kissinger is a Jew. That also has a place in Michel's somewhat elementary political vocabulary."
She put her knuckles in her mouth and discovered she was weeping. He came and sat beside her on the bed, and she waited for him to put his arm round her or offer more wise arguments or simply take her, which was what she would have liked best, but he did nothing of the kind. He was content to let her mourn, until gradually she had the illusion that he had somehow caught her up, and they were mourning together. More than any words could have done, his silence seemed to mitigate what they had to do. For an age, they stayed that way, side by side, till she allowed her choking to give way to a deep, exhausted sigh. But he still did not move--not towards her, not away from her.
"Jose," she whispered hopelessly, taking his hand once more. "Who the hell are you? What do you feel inside all those barbed-wire entanglements?"
Raising her head, she began to listen to the sounds of other lives in adjoining rooms. The querulous burbling of a sleepless child. A strident marital argument. She heard a footfall from the balcony and glanced round in time to see Rachel in a towelling tracksuit, armed with a sponge-bag and a Thermos flask, stepping over the threshold into the room.
She lay awake, too exhausted to sleep. Nottingham was never like this. From next door came the muffled sound of telephoning and she thought she recognised his voice. She lay in Michel's arms. She lay in Joseph's. She longed for Al. She was in Nottingham with the love of her life, she was safe in her own bed back in Camden, she was in the room her bloody mother still called the nursery. She lay as she had lain as a child after her horse had thrown her, watching the picture-show of her life and exploring her mind as she had tentatively explored her body, feeling out each bit in turn, testing it for damage. A mile away on the other side of the bed, Rachel lay reading Thomas Hardy in paperback by the light of a tiny lamp.
"Who's he got, Rache?"she said. "Who darns his socks and cleans out his pipes for him?"
"Better ask him, hadn't you, dear?"
"Is it you?"
"Wouldn't work, would it? Not in the long run."
Charlie dozed, still trying to figure him out. "He was a fighter," she said.
"The best," said Rachel, contentedly. "Still is."
"How did he pick his quarrels then?"
"They were picked for him, weren't they?" Rachel said, still deep in her book.
Charlie tried a dare: "He had a wife once. What happened to her?"
"Sorry, dear," said Rachel.
" ‘Did she jump or was she pushed?' one asks oneself," Charlie mused, ignoring the rebuff. "I'll say one bloody does. Poor bitch, she'd have to be about six chameleons just to ride on a bus with him."
She lay still a while.
"How did you get into this lot, Rache?"she asked, and, to her surprise, Rachel laid her book on its stomach and told her. Her parents were Orthodox Jews from Pomerania, she said. They had settled in Macclesfield after the war and become wealthy in the weaving industry. "Branches in Europe and a penthouse in Jerusalem," she said, unimpressed. They had wanted Rachel to go to Oxford and into the family firm, but she had preferred to study Bible and Jewish history at the Hebrew University.
"It just happened," she replied when Charlie pressed her about the next step.
But how? Charlie persisted. Why? "Who picked you, Rache, what do they say?"
Rachel was not telling how or who, but she was telling why. She knew Europe and she knew anti-Semitism, she said. And she had wanted to show those stuck-up little sabra war heroes at the university that she could fight for Israel as well as any boy.
"So what's Rose then?" said Charlie, forcing her luck.
Rose was complicated, Rachel replied, as if she herself were not. Rose had done Zionist Youth in South Africa, and come to Israel not knowing whether she should have stayed put and fought apartheid.
"She sort of tries harder because she doesn't know which she should be doing," Rachel explained, and, with a firmness that ended further discussion, went back to her Mayor of Casterbridge.
A surfeit of ideals, thought Charlie. Two days ago I had none. She wondered whether she had any now. Ask me in the morning. For a while she indulged drowsily in headlines."famous female fantasist meets reality." "Joan of Arc burns palestinian activist." Well, Charlie, yes, good night.
Becker's room lay a few yards down the corridor and it had twin beds, which was the nearest the hotel came to acknowledging that anyone was single. He lay on one and stared at the other, with the telephone on the table between them. In ten minutes it would be one-thirty, and one-thirty was the time. The night porter had his tip, and had promised to put through the call. He was very wakeful, as often at this hour. To think too brightly and come down too slowly. To get everything to the front of your head and forget what is behind. Or what is-not. The phone rang on time and Kurtz's voice greeted him immediately. Where is he, Becker wondered. He heard canned music in the background and rightly guessed a hotel. Germany, he remembered. A hotel in Germany talks to a hotel in Delphi. Kurtz spoke English because it was less conspicuous, and he spoke with an overlay of casualness that should not alarm the unlikely eavesdropper. Yes, everything was fine, Becker assured him; the deal was going through nicely, and he foresaw no immediate snags. What about the latest product? he asked.
"We are getting a lot of first-rate cooperation," Kurtz assured him, in the fulsome tone he used for rallying his far-flung troops. "You go right down to the warehouse as soon as you like, you will surely not be disappointed in the product. And another thing."