The Song Before It Is Sung Read online

  Mendel and von Gottberg stop at the Lutheran Erloserkirche. Although von Gottberg has given up active Christianity, he is a believer in Christian values. Mendel, although a non-believer, is a Zionist and believes in the preservation of Jewish cultural values. It's strange, Conrad thinks sitting here, near the church, now accepting some pistachios and some more tea, that belief in the existence or non-existence of God is no impediment to friendship and understanding.

  The young Palestinians wear cheap trainers; their hair is geometrically cut. He wonders if they ever have distinctly secular thoughts. And he wonders if on this trip the two friends talked about Jews in Europe, because already in Germany Jews are under notice. On a personal level, as he knows, human beings - for example, he and Francine - can have irreconcilable differences. He thinks about having Francine back, if she asks, but he knows it would be impossible because he cannot imagine forgiving her, not so much for kicking him out, but for allowing her body to be a receptacle for someone else's semen. How can he explain that in rational terms? He can't. And he can't even explain to himself, as an atheist, why this idea of the transfer of human substance, this sacrament, should be so painful to him.

  He feels cold now as the sun goes down. The Old City seems to be closing down too: as the shopkeepers pack up, the bare electric light bulbs strung out along walls are beginning to shine bright. The sky above the courtyard is the colour of dark crustaceans, a pigment with a mineral content, elemental specks of colour not fully ground in. Tomorrow he will follow von Gottberg and Mendel along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha to see where Christ died and the madness began.

  The Arab owner of the Café tells him that his brother lives in London. These days everyone in the whole world has a brother living in London. And Conrad has had this kind of conversation many times. It always leads to misapprehensions and pointless exchanges of information, which become increasingly stilted.

  'You know Hackney?'

  'Yes.'

  'My brother say is very bad.'

  'It is a poor part.'

  'Many Jews.'

  The protocols of Zion will be next, or the theory that Mossad bombed the Twin Towers.

  'Thank you for the tea.'

  'Wilcome to Jerusalem. I born here.'

  'Thank you. I was born in Cape Town.'

  'Israelis take my home.'

  'I am very sorry.'

  'You wilcome. No pay.'

  In his hurry, he turns the wrong way and is lost. Where, a few alleys away, all was movement and bustle, he is now in almost empty lanes stalked by cats. An Arab child stares at him. From a dim doorway a woman calls the child; he hopes this is not a response to seeing him. He wonders how he appears in his khakis and T-shirt. Perhaps he looks sinister. These jumbled alleys and turnings and stairways have no obvious plan. He passes a small Café, half of it below street-level, where a group of young men is watching a football game on television. The field is so green he thinks the football must be taking place in Germany or Scandinavia. The verdure in this chalky, bone-coloured place looks lurid and unreal. A goose-girl would happily lead her gaggle of geese across it. He comes out of an alley into a square, and there ahead of him is an Armenian church. From the church he hears someone chanting, perhaps a priest. He puts his head inside the heavily brocaded doorway, into the scented and lamplit vestibule. A man, perhaps a verger, directs him towards the Jaffa Gate. God bless you, he says, as Conrad walks out past the church under an arch, the stone strung with electric wires which also drape doorways and blind balconies.

  Can we know anybody else? Other minds? Can I know von Gottberg and Mendel, or even Francine? Does John already know her better than I do? Or maybe we find what we want in other people, and so we never know them.

  Who asked you? she said. He could have quoted Eliot:

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  Although he has a talent for quotation, he didn't quote Eliot in reply because he doesn't believe its implied meaning, which Eliot probably picked up from Buddhism, that life has patterns according to which we must try to harmonise ourselves. Life has no purpose: that is its stark beauty. That's one lesson he learned from Mendel. Here, as he walks, he hears all sorts of prayers and imprecations rising, those who are dispatching them evidently unaware that nobody is listening.

  Sitting high in the Ottoman crenellations above the Jaffa Gate he sees the casual outline of two Israeli soldiers against the crustacean sky. If life has no meaning then this city, with its tumultuous longing and bitterness, is a monument to the power of delusion. And this delusion also has a kind of beauty; and he remembers what George Grosz wrote, that the commanders in the field paint in blood.

  The imams are calling as he walks back, and from a mezzanine room, somehow awkwardly stranded by ancient architectural upheavals - these old buildings and stones are jumbled and reordered after thousands of years of recycling - he hears wild, muscular-Jewish music, and then he sees the shadows on the wall of men dancing. The shadows at least are hurling themselves about in a madcap way, as though the harvest had been good or they were moonstruck or - more likely - expecting the Messiah at any minute.

  His room is small and sparsely furnished, with a view of a courtyard. Actually it's less of a view than a meniscus, a little sliver of wall and some stone paving down below, glazed by the passage of feet. He likes strange, unknown rooms. They give him a low charge of excitement.

  Mendel wrote to a friend that von Gottberg was a great dancer. He had known the inside of every nightclub on Kurfürstendamm: I am, as you know, a very poor dancer. Axel was dancing with the wives of the British officials. What a flutter in the dovecotes. And it was this flutter in the dovecotes that was to change both of their lives for ever. Unlike Conrad, Mendel and von Gottberg had come with introductions; they had met with everyone from Zionists to Orthodox prelates and British officers. Mendel writes that he would have been glad to meet the Grand Mufti, if he were prepared to speak to Jews.

  Conrad cannot sleep. He lies pleasurably in the mean bed and thinks, tries to think, more measured thoughts about Francine. He understands her contempt for him. His grandmother's house in Cape Town had flypaper in the kitchen; many of the little shops in the Old City have it, hanging down over the strange cuts of meat or the sticky pastries. He remembers as a child waiting to see a fly landing on the paper: and this is how Francine sees him, waiting idly for some minor sensation, while she goes out on the world's business. And it is true that helping women deliver their babies as she does, sometimes having to slice them open just above the pubis, is activity of an entirely different order. Once upon a time they had discussed films and books and ideas; she had been charmed by his inchoate eagerness. What charmed her then now seems infantile to her. The scientific life has got to her, as though all those chemicals and miserable people and - let's face it - death, have somehow driven her into the arms of the superior class who deal with the real world, who have the power of life and death and who know folly and self-indulgence when they see it. Francine cannot bear to see people chomping their way to the grave, slurping sweet drinks or puffing on cigarettes or dipping into buckets of popcorn: in her estimation he is really just a high-minded version of these slobs who exculpate themselves from the consequences of their own folly in torrents of banality. And this is one of the reasons he loved Mendel, because Mendel never ceased from exploration. And Conrad sees now, in this cell just outside the resonant walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, that what happened to von Gottberg and Mendel must be explored even though he cannot justify it to Francine — God knows he has tried - and it may be that the only reason is that he owes a debt of love to Mendel, who recognised his human qualities, and gave him a surprising legacy.

  He sees more clearly now. In the morning I will begin to put this story in order, as Mendel wanted. He sees Mendel's creased smile, and he sees von Gottb
erg standing before Freisler, his hands crossed in front of him, ready to be sacrificed.

  And von Gottberg was almost exactly the age I am now.

  2

  MENDEL AND VON Gottberg are standing outside the boundary of the Dome of the Rock, which they know as the Mosque of Omar. The dome is gleaming. It is too bright for this climate, a great gold cupola high above Jerusalem winking and conducting heat and radiating it out over the Old City, like the RKO Radio Pictures trademark.

  The faithful are gathering for prayer and the muezzin are calling. It's a sound that stitches together the Muslim world, a defiant, plaintive, poetic call. They stand under the shade of a cypress as the worshippers arrive and wash themselves at the tiled basins into which water gushes from giant bronze spigots. Water and paradise are closely associated. The faithful drift into the mosque, its magnificence and space and colour the simulacrum of paradise. Down below, in an alleyway, Jews are praying in front of the Western Wall; their heads nod and dip and nod again. They are not worshipping the giant blocks of stone in front of them as it appears, but they are inspired to piety by the remains of Herod's temple. It is their direct line to their real and imagined past.

  'Down below,' says Mendel, 'they are plotting how to get up here into the pound seats. You believe in destiny, Axel, don't you? That is their destiny.'

  They often discuss the purposes of history. To Mendel's amusement, von Gottberg sees patterns in history.

  As they leave the haram, von Gottberg stops and holds Mendel's arm.

  'Elya, I am going back to Germany.'

  'Don't leave us.'

  'I have to go.'

  'Why?'

  'My country is sick.'

  'Can I ask why you, especially, have to go?'

  'It's my country. Somebody has to take care of it.'

  Mendel thinks that his friend sets too much store by his own destiny.

  They walk out of the Old City down towards the Kidron Valley. Mendel walks surprisingly quickly, efficiently but not gracefully. He and von Gottberg have often talked on Addison's Walk in the spring, deep in fritillaries, scilla and windflowers, and in the autumn brushing through leaves and the spiralling, helicoptering seed pods from the limes. Perhaps it reminds von Gottberg of Unter den Linden.

  Von Gottberg has cherished his talks with Mendel, more than anything at Oxford. They have argued about the nature of ideas; Mendel has begun to tire of philosophy, but loves the history of ideas. He doesn't see - he is wilfully blind - the forces behind history and philosophy. Sometimes in Oxford von Gottberg has detected a certain loneliness in his friend. He loves the company of women, but he is a virgin. Von Gottberg knows that Mendel observes his easy successes with women and so he plays them down and sometimes he withholds information from him.

  As they walk down the dusty track into the Kidron Valley, they are, in their Oxford fashion, discussing philosophy. Under their feet are flints and stones the colour of bones; some of them may be bones. There are tombs here cut into the rock. The biggest, Absalom's tomb, has a hole high up on its face, as though a mortar shell has gone right through the rock.

  Mendel says that Jerusalem is a place of irrationality. Von Gottberg thinks that Jerusalem is just a stage in man's journey to self-consciousness.

  'Ah, the Geist. Hegel always pops up when you are at a loss to explain.'

  'You should remember what Hegel said: "The actual is rational."

  'Meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. Sonorous nonsense.'

  They love high-minded walking.

  At Absalom's tomb, in fact the tomb of a member of one of the Hasmonean priestly families at the time of Christ, they buy some bread from a Bedouin, who heats it on a brazier (it is very cold, although there is some sun on the high ground) and the Bedouin gives them a twist of paper with coarse salt in it. The bread is sprinkled with a dried herb, perhaps oregano. Mendel says that this bread has been baked since the time of David, and the herbs come from the mountainsides. He takes pleasure in this continuity.

  'Count von Gottberg and Mr Mendel.'

  Two young women are coming down a track towards them. One is Elizabeth Partridge, the wife of a second secretary at the High Commission. It seems to Mendel that she is not here by chance. She introduces the second woman who is wearing a silk scarf wound around her neck and over her head.

  'This is my cousin, Rosamund Bower, Mr Mendel.'

  'Elya, please. This is the land of the muscular Jew. In fact a wholly new breed of informal Jew, who likes outdoor activity. Absolutely delighted to see you in daylight.'

  'You were deep in discussion,' says Elizabeth. 'Interesting, I hope?'

  'Yes, Axel was trying to tell me that I misunderstand the nature of human ends.'

  'And do you?'

  'Not always.'

  'Does he, Axel?'

  'It's hard to say, because nobody can agree on human ends.'

  'Too clever for me, I'm afraid. I'm rather simple,' she says, laughing girlishly in the direction of von Gottberg.

  Mendel notices her small, childish teeth, which are strangely lascivious. He has never before thought of teeth as part of the sexual weaponry. The second woman who he has at first decided is the less attractive, the alibi type, he sees now has a dark, rather serious look, which suggests a rich inner life. Her lips appear to be naturally outlined in some mineral substance. She leads Mendel towards some caves.

  'I think it is amazing that these tombs are carved out of solid rock.'

  'Yes,' she says, 'the tomb with the hole in the top, Absalom's tomb, has that hole because it was completely buried over the centuries and grave robbers got in from the top.'

  'I wonder how long it took to carve out. But of course time, and any idea of its short supply, probably hadn't occurred to the Hasmoneans.'

  'Do you always talk so profoundly?'

  'Believe me, I'm far more superficial than I appear. It's just a habit you cultivate in my line of work. What's yours?'

  'I was at Oxford for a year, in fact I used to see you always surrounded by acolytes. Now I am trying to write a novel.'

  'What sort of novel are you writing?'

  'I'm a great admirer of Virginia Woolf.'

  'Marvellous writer. I've met her.'

  'Did you like her?'

  'She frightened me. She sent me a postcard afterwards, saying any time I was in London I should knock on her little grey front door and she would let me enter.'

  'Rather risque.'

  'Yes, I thought so.'

  'And did you knock on her front door?'

  'No, I was too nervous. Far too nervous. We met last night briefly, but I didn't catch your name a few minutes ago, I'm afraid. Rosalind?'

  'Rosamund.'

  'Why were you following us?'

  'Well, we're not actually following you. It's just that your friend Axel arranged last night to meet Elizabeth here and she thought I should come to protect her. Is he very voracious?'

  'I think he is. Surrounded by servants all his life and milkmaids, of course.'

  'Is he a Nazi?'

  'Good God, I hope not. No, he's far too intelligent for that.'

  'Oh look, they're wandering off.'

  They follow the other two at a distance in the direction of the small village that stands above the valley. All around are graves, slabs of stone, some neglected, one or two with small piles of rocks on them.

  'What are you doing here?' he asks.

  'Oh, Elizabeth and I are cousins, as she said. She is a little bored here, I think, so she invited me to stay. She and Roddy have an old Turkish house, very solid. I was in Italy trying to write my novel, so I came by steamer to Haifa. Do you know I heard about you all the time in Oxford, but we never met.'

  'More's the pity.'

  'You're supposed to be brilliant. Dazzle me.'

  'Am I supposed to be brilliant? To tell you the truth I talk far too much, but only the credulous are taken in. Will you tell me about your novel?'

  'Are you interested or being p
olite?'

  'I'm deeply interested.'

  And she sees that he is. He smiles but it is not patronising or cynical. His eyes, behind his glasses, are very dark, the irises abnormally large. As they walk up through the olive trees where goats are foraging in their irrepressible, intelligent way, she tells him that it is the story of one young woman watching as her lover is taken from her by a friend.

  'Has this happened to you, or is that too direct a question?'

  'They always say write what you know.'

  She is no older than him, but he has seen that life can quickly produce wariness; the blitheness of extreme youth has gone, but still she has a kind of directness he finds attractive. At Oxford he soon discovered that he was drawn to these intelligent, upper-class girls. She stares down the dry wadi, in the direction of the Dead Sea.