The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance Page 5

  I read the address: Father Silwani, Dura.

  "Tell me everything," I demanded, "from the beginning."

  "Okay," he relented. "When we got there he wanted to post a letter. He talked to the military police for all the world as if he were some lousy tourist come to stay at a hotel, not like an Arab. So they laughed at him, and he slipped the envelope to me..."

  A path of cherry juice trickled from the bag across the desk. I pushed the bag into the drawer. Scheckler buttoned up his shirt pocket. An expression I had known well crossed his face.

  "How much?" I asked.

  "How much what?"

  "How much did you get?" I came round the desk and stood close to him. "After all, it wasn't for nothing that you volunteered to go with him."

  One could see the alternatives being weighed up in his mind one by one. Finally he unbuttoned his pocket again. All disappointment, he threw some crumpled money onto the desk. I spread it out and examined it from either side. Then I gave it back.

  "Is there anything else?"

  "Like what?"

  "Things you took, or received."

  He did not reply, merely turned around and left the room angrily.

  I pulled out the drawer. The letters on the envelope indicated that they had been written with care, at leisure, in advance. Had he intended to ask me to convey the letter to its destination when he had addressed me through the window, or had he hoped to leave it at the shop he had asked to go to? My perturbation was pierced by a sense of gloom: the folded piece of paper which was in my hands to do with as I pleased was the peak of a very direct contact with the life of another man, with his soul, his happiness. I passed my nail along the flap. It was stuck down well. An examination against the light of the lamp revealed a single sheet folded into four, a secret enclosed in a paper womb.

  I got up and glanced into the corridor. There was nobody there. The path to the kitchen was clear too. The insipid smell of the evening coffee hung in the air, inviting me to go down and open the flap in its steam. Before that, another peep, this time by the strong light of the desk lamp, which enabled me to read the opening sentence:

  "MON AMI BIEN AIME,"

  The heat of the lamp split the glue at the lower edge of the envelope, the part which was not supposed to open. I pulled it gently. The letter emerged without any difficulty:

  BY THE TIME YOU GET THIS LETTER YOU WILL PROBABLY HAVE HEARD THE RUMOUR OF MY ARREST.

  MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, I REGRET YOUR PAIN BECAUSE I CAN ALWAYS CONSOLE MYSELF WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IS EXPECTED, THAT NONE OF YOU ARE GUILTY AND THAT MY DISTRESS AT BEING CUT OFF FROM YOU ALL MAY PERHAPS BE ALLEVIATED BY THE FACT THAT I WILL NO LONGER BE SUBJECT TO THE CONSTANT FEAR OF THE MOMENT WHEN THE BLIND OPEN THEIR EYES.

  MANY THINGS REMAIN UNEXPLAINED. WHETHER THEY ARE CLARIFIED OR NOT, PLEASE GRANT YOUR CHRISTIAN FORGIVENESS TO YVONNE, PROTECT MICHEL FROM IGNORANCE AS WELL AS FROM KNOWLEDGE AND KEEP CALM WHEN THE RAINY DAYS COME.

  ADIEU,

  ANTON K.

  I read the letter twice. All kinds of thoughts came into my mind, fragmentary doubts which did not even manage to formulate themselves as questions. Out of confusion rather than intention, I began to copy what was written on the piece of paper. The enigmatic phrases took me back to our two meetings, to the spark I had perceived in his eyes when he had looked me in the yard of the Athenaeum, and the closed look on his face when he found me waiting for him in the garage at his home.

  When I came to the end of the letter I stuck the edge of the envelope back with strong office glue. Tomorrow I would decide what to do.

  Later I went down to the kitchen and asked for a sandwich. The cook, who was also in charge of the stores, sold me a packet of cigarettes. The courtyard gate was open. A soldier was listening to a transistor and reading an old newspaper. I stood beside him, watching the passing cars. I thought about my man, still unknown. Had he passed by me in one of those cars? At about nine I saw the Rolls Royce heading west. The top was up. The boy was driving. I recognized him by his shock of fair hair. Half an hour later he came by in the other direction. Someone was sitting beside him. Was it a woman?

  It was not the first time I had found myself in a remote place, alone, somewhat tense and deeply involved in the lives of others. But this time I had no identity with which to cover myself. I was myself, Danny Simon..

  CHAPTER THREE

  I was not yet impatient. The following days, which marked some festival or commemoration, provided an excuse for waiting. Work stopped in the village. Processions left from the church and wended their way to sacred trees and graves which were scattered over the mountain. My man, it could be assumed, was in one of them, too experienced and wise to reveal himself before life returned to normal.

  Tel Aviv had not made contact either. Perhaps they assumed that the connection had not yet been established, or they were working slowly, calculatedly, preparing my mission down to the last detail.

  Scheckler was the only one who ventured guesses. With rapid, hopeful sentences, he enveloped my presence with endless speculations: "...It's unusual for someone like you to suddenly appear in a place like this. There's got to be a reason. Everything that's happening along the coast is just a diversion, isn't it? The real action's going to be here. Whoever controls the mountains controls all of Lebanon... That's what the paratroops said before they left. Where are they now, the paratroops? Hiding somewhere? Waiting for the order? You can tell me..."

  The attention he lavished on me constituted royal favor, as it were. He was the bureaucratic governor of the place, the brain and to a certain extent the leader too. He was the only one who knew his way around the maze of forms, rules and regulations. On the basis of the paragraphs he cited, leave time, activity time and the pace of life were determined. His orders, which included a plethora of military abbreviations and initials, protected the officer in charge of the repair shop from having to contend with over thirty homesick drivers and mechanics. Scheckler provided them with a faithful copy of the culture which they were used to, turning the repair shop into something very Israeli in character: an island of activity in what was regarded as a sea of rural indolence.

  Sheckler also saw to it that our evenings were filled. With great ceremony he moved silhouettes of tanks and tiny infantrymen across the map on the office wall, according to information that came from day-old censored versions of the newspapers. I could not help but be swept along as unwilling adviser. My silences were interpreted as secretiveness, my embarrassed ignorance as modesty. My aura was enhanced by the resourcefulness of an unknown clerk, who sent an envelope to Dura addressed to me with an official stamp on it. Predictably, it was Scheckler who brought it to me.

  "I think your instructions have come."

  He was wrong. It was my pay slip.

  Something, perhaps the way I pushed the envelope into the desk drawer, brought us back to the events of a few days ago.

  "The priest," Scheckler said, "every time he passes our gate with a procession, he peers in… maybe he's waiting for his letter..."

  I took the letter out of the drawer. Scheckler leaned on the table, drawing lines in the dust with a thin finger. I glanced at him from below. He shrugged his shoulders.

  "How much are you going to ask him for?"

  "Isn't what you got enough?"

  "Now it's your chance."

  I put the envelope in the middle of the desk and he looked at it with covetous eyes.

  "There's an advantage to doing business with the priest. The people in the village trust him, he isn't searched at the roadblocks - too much..." He leaned over and watched me closely. "From the moment I got here I've had my eye on him; him and the doctor. Apart from those two there isn't anyone here who's really worth anything..."

  Deep in the recesses of my mind a bell rang. A pair, two, a duo... 'One of the two most important people' the Head had called our agent here.

  "What about the others?" I asked Scheckler.

 
; He screwed his face up in an expression of contempt. "Peasants, petty merchants, a bunch of no-goods."

  The doctor and the priest, I thought in amazement. One of them had been arrested, which meant that the other one was our veteran and experienced man who had been here for many years. The sudden enlightenment caused me to feel a certain relief. Also the idea that the priest was the man suddenly seemed more than logical, even natural. Who in the heart of the chaos would cooperate with us if not a man who represented a religion oriented to Western European culture? After that I remembered his figure in the processions: thickset with an imposing mustache, leading his congregation, looking ahead on his path with a piercing gaze. How could one expect someone so prominent, with a presence so apparent and distinctive, to contact his operator hastily, before making sure that there was not even the faintest chance of being discovered?

  So he was waiting for an opportunity, for the right moment.

  My eyes turned again to the letter. My instructions had been clear: don't take the initiative, simply wait until contact was made. But here was an opportunity, available and safe, ready in my hand.

  "Scheckler!" someone shouted from the courtyard. A moment after he left I pushed the envelope into my pocket, locked the drawer and went out too.

  ***

  In the square in front of the church, among black-robed women crouching amidst baskets of vegetables, the refugee children were quarrelling over the right to paddle in the puddle formed around the public tap. Well-dressed choirboys peeped at them enviously from the churchyard. The priest detached them from the fence one by one. I greeted him. He did not reply, simply gestured with his hand to a boy with an oversized, shaven head, who ran to the gate, pulled the bolt and opened it for me.

  "I'm from there," I pointed toward the Athenaeum.

  "I've already seen you." The boys were clustered behind him, grinning and digging their elbows into one another's ribs. He pushed them towards the back door of the church and followed them inside. For a moment I stood in the empty churchyard, contemplating all the hiding places, cellars and secret corners that building could offer. After that I pushed the heavy wooden door and walked in.

  The cracked face of a Madonna shone in the dimness which smelled of incense and old clothes. The priest fell to one knee and genuflected. The children imitated him as they moved unto two rows of benches. The priest stood up and faced them, his arms crossed on his breast. I took a step into his field of vision. He bent to a switch. Light was thrown onto a stone altar, shining into the eyes of a plump plastic baby. The notes of an organ came from a scratched record: "Stabat..."

  "Stabat," the children responded.

  "Mater..."

  The priest sank into the darkness behind the altar. With my feet I felt my way across wobbly flagstones, my shoulders brushing against damp walls. I heard a door move on its hinge and a switch click. A strip of light appeared beneath a velvet screen.

  "Through here," I heard his voice.

  It was the confessional. On the opposite wall a curtain concealed a wooden lattice. There was a faded silk cushion on the confessor's chair. The priest stood behind it, gripping the back. "Well?"

  There was a combination of impatience and apprehension in his voice. His broad, dark face glistened with sweat and exuded a tremendous, almost erotic, vitality.

  "Well," I assayed, "we're neighbors..."

  "Correct," he confirmed unenthusiastically.

  He was not going to ask me to sit down; nor was he about to help with the burden of the conversation.

  "The doctor," I said, "Dr. Khamis..."

  "Yes?" There was a note of cautious interest in his voice.

  "Is he...your friend?"

  "Yes," still cautiously.

  "For a long time?"

  The look on his face revealed the contempt in which he held my question. "All of us here, in Dura, have known one another for a long time." He took an impatient step back. In his expression there was no sympathy or involvement. For a moment it crossed my mind that I might have missed something, or that I had failed to take in something I been told at the briefing. That first day I thought that I had seen the spark in the eyes of the wrong man. Now I was not finding it in the place where it should have been.

  "Maybe," I said, "we'll have to continue probing the subject..."

  "Maybe," he replied implacably.

  There was nothing left but to approach directly. "Do you have something to tell me?"

  He smiled. Even hostility would have been preferable to the arrogance he radiated. I took the envelope out of my pocket and placed it at his feet, on the silken seat of the confessor's chair. He looked at it suspiciously, picked it up and inspected its contents against the light.

  "Have you read it?" A moment later he added drily, "Of course. You had every reason as well as all the time in the world..."

  He read quickly, instantly, as if photographing the text. When he folded the page up again there was an expression of pained confusion on his face.

  "What did you say your name was?"

  "Simon."

  Something in my name, possibly in the way I said it, brought the shadow of a smile to his lips. With the beginnings of hope, I added, "If you want something you can send someone to the Athenaeum and..."

  His face became gloomy again: "I'll find you."

  There was no point in my staying any longer. I moved backwards, feeling the velvet curtain at my back. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps things were not all that uncomplicated. He was testing me, carefully checking the patience and discretion of the man to whom he was about to entrust his secret.

  "I'll be seeing you," I said in as friendly a voice as I could muster.

  He did not answer, merely nodded his head.

  I burst through the screen into the dark corridor.

  "Amen, amen, amen," the children chanted at the empty altar. I passed through and went out, just as a military truck crossed the square. I waited beneath the colonnade until it had disappeared. Then I went down the steps and plunged into the market.

  I do not usually make a study of the people in places where I am about to act. Something in my mind insists on connecting only to objects that have an enduring, challenging quality: buildings, barriers, armor. But something undefined occurred in the market among the vendors of household goods, cheap clothing and food as I passed them. Eyes were fixed into my back. Voices fell silent as I came within hearing. It was impossible to ignore. I found myself peering at a mass of impassive faces, clutching glances which had not managed to escape, a movement of an eye, a friendly curl of a mouth, an imperceptible smile. I lingered in the doorway of a grocery shop. A fat man wearing a robe was untying a sack of beans. I could see that he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. In the neighboring shop a chicken was cackling above the slaughtering block. The butcher, knife in hand, stood and watched me too. In fact, the whole market was watching me. Checking every step. It was a new kind of loneliness: in the past I had been hidden and the world open. Today I was walking about exposed while the world around me was an enigma.

  I needed an advantage of some kind - height, distance, perhaps both of them - which would conceal the uncertainty in me, the beginnings of apprehension. The movement of the sun in the sky cast the shadow of the mountain over the village. Only the peak remained golden. Slowly, so as not to arouse the hunting instinct, I turned in its direction.

  As I walked out of the village I noticed things I had missed in years of city life: hoof-prints of animals in the dust, the snake skin on the ground, tendrils of wild vines hugging an old pine tree to death. By the time I reached the clinic my tongue was dry and my face stiff with dust. The sandy square was empty. The dogs lay in a dark huddle in the shade of the sycamore. A tap was dripping onto a bed of mint. Parched with thirst, I stepped carefully into the sandy square. From the foot of the sycamore several tails sent me a lazy warning. I retreated to the road. A little further along, up the hill, toward the peak, a row of barbed wire had been
unrolled between two barrels, upon one of which was written "Border Ahead," and on the other, "Caution: No Man's Land." I knelt down and peered beyond the barrier. There were no tracks but neither were there any hollows or hillocks to indicate mines. I went round the barrels and walked carefully up the road, beside a sea of briars.

  When I reached the top I looked back. The village lay stretched out on the edge of the abyss, looking terribly vulnerable. The surrounding hills extended a green carpet on which the conflagrations of war had left dark stains, boils on the coat of a dog. What explosion could I make that would impress anyone in this scorched land?

  A marten flew out of the bushes and disappeared behind the walls of a ruined, roofless building. A path of crushed grass led to the remains of the entrance. I peeped in through the window. The walls were charred, bonfires had blackened the last few floor tiles and the broad trunk of an oak was growing in the middle. I jumped in. Beyond the trunk of the oak, beside a wall which had been cleaned of soot, lay a straw mattress and a tattered blanket. Cigarette stubs were scattered around it.

  From the window I could look down at the back garden of the clinic. The woman was there, hoeing the vegetable garden. She was wearing a short, startlingly yellow dress. Her shoulders were bare. She straightened herself and pushed her hair into her headband. I shaded my eyes with my hand, to see her better. A pair of fighter planes thundered overhead to the west, to Beirut. We both watched them.

  When I looked down again I saw the fire.

  As fast as an illusion, brighter than the midday light, it spread along the main street of Dura like a big yellow tiger. There were no voices or noises, no movement of an excited or panic-stricken crowd. Everything was swallowed up in the gray-green expanse, everything apart from an enormous pile of flames which towered above the tops of the trees in the Athenaeum garden.

  Seized by a sense of disaster, I jumped out through the window. Going down the way I had come up meant losing about twenty minutes, and eye contact with the scene as well. What was left, then, was the slope, which stretched out before me, strewn with rocks and the prickly bushes. I broke a branch off the oak and plunged into the undergrowth. A goat track wound down to the valley. I ran along it, jumping up from time to time to look, until I landed on all fours in a coil of barbed wire.