The Mandelbaum Gate Read Free

silently with his fingers on the wicker arm of his chair
and gazed up through the lofty trellis at the cooling light.
     
    Trochee trips from long to short;
     
    The waiter brought his
drink and Freddy dwelt for a gay and not indelicate moment on the young
Israeli, and he felt like Horace in the Ode, demanding simple service under his
lattice vine. Persicos odi, puer….
     
    From where he sat he saw
Miss Vaughan come into the hotel entrance, alone. She moved towards the
staircase but glanced towards the terrace. Freddy rose and raised an arm in a
welcoming way, and she turned and joined him.
    ‘Dr
Ephraim couldn’t manage as it was rather late and his family were expecting
him. I ought to go and change.’
    What
will you drink?’ said Freddy. His first meeting with Miss Vaughan now came back
to him, fused with subsequent meetings here in the green courtyard. He saw them
all with that total perceptivity of his which might have made a poet of him,
given the missing element. His first impression had been of a pleasant English
spinster; she was a teacher of English at a girls’ school; she was on a tour of
the Holy Land; Freddy had discussed with her the dear subject of formal English
lyrical verse; he had, on another occasion, confided in her that he was
compiling an anthology in his spare time, and had before the war published a
volume of his own occasional verses. She had responded in a detached sort of
way, which was what one liked. She was edgy; she wore on her engagement finger
a ring of antique design embedded with a dark-blue stone; but for some reason
Freddy had not felt that the ring referred to an engagement to marry anyone;
such things were not unaccountable in an English spinster; it was probably
somebody killed in the war.
    Now,
sitting with her near the same spot as when they had first spoken three weeks
ago, he was filled with a sense of her dangerousness; he was obscurely afraid.
He wished the young archaeologist had come with her.
    But he
was obliged to be particularly civil to Miss Vaughan. He fingered the wicker
chair.
     
    With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng …
     
    Last week he had joined
her out here after dinner. The State of Israel had that day sent up its first
guided rocket. He remarked that there seemed to be a lot of rejoicing going on
in the streets, and one of them suggested going out later on to watch the
children dancing. The children danced in the public gardens until late every
night in any case. They fell to talking about politicians and the Bomb.
    She had
said, in a lazy casual way — for by this time they were fairly at ease with
each other — ‘Sometimes I think we ought to chuck out the politicians from
world government and put in the Pope, the Chief Rabbi, the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Dalai Lama instead. They couldn’t do worse and they might do
better.’
    Freddy
had reflected on this without undue seriousness. ‘There would have to be a
Greek Patriarch as well,’ he said, ‘and then the Buddhists and the Hindus would
want their say. There would be no end to it. But it’s a good idea. I imagine
there would be objections from the Jews to the Chief Rabbi. Most of these Jews
here are unbelievers, so far as I can gather.’
    ‘Not
quite,’ said Miss Vaughan. ‘I think they believe in a different way from what
you mean. They believe with their blood. Being a Jew isn’t something they
consider in their minds, weigh up, and give assent to as one does in the
Western Christian tradition. Being a Jew is inherent.’
    ‘Yes, I’m
afraid so.’ Freddy gave a little laugh.
    As if
he had not spoken at all, she continued. ‘As a half-Jew myself, I think I
understand how—’
    ‘Oh, I
didn’t mean to say … I mean … One says things without thinking, you know.’
    She
said, ‘You might have said worse.’
    Freddy
felt terrible. He groped for the idea that, being a half-Jew, she might be only
half-offended. After all, one might speak in that manner of the