Ken McClure: Past Lives

‘The priest said we should come,’ said Eli.

The hatch closed and Benny and Eli were left standing in the lane for more than a minute before they heard a series of bolts rattle back and saw the door swing slowly open.

‘Come,’ said the nun who had unlocked it; she was dressed in white with a long veil. Benny found it hard to tell how old she was; her face was scrubbed, pink and white, a complexion he was not at ease with, and her hair was hidden by a white cowl fixed beneath her veil. He noticed that her lace-up shoes seemed too big for her: they slid off her heel and scuffed the floor when she walked. She led the way along a narrow, uneven, stone-floored corridor where they were shown into a small chapel that smelled strongly of incense where they were left alone in brooding silence.

‘I don’t like this,’ whispered Benny, hunching up his shoulders and scowling as he looked around.

‘Christian places are all like this,’ replied Eli. ‘They like the darkness.’

Benny frowned as he examined a painting of a man in a loincloth, his side pierced by an arrow and blood spilling out from the wound while above him two angels played trumpets. Eli ran his fingers lightly along the altar cloth and started to fondle the gold cross that stood in the middle.

‘Don’t touch that,’ said an even voice behind him. It didn’t sound angry, just authoritative.

Eli span round to find the tall figure of a man dressed in priest’s robes standing in the doorway.

‘Here we are then, just as I promised,’ said Eli, showing his teeth like a chimpanzee. ‘And this is my friend, Benny Zur.’

Benny switched on a grin too as the priest looked at him.

‘I’m Dom Ignatius. You were born here too?’

‘Hebron,’ replied Benny.

‘Your parents?’

‘Both Jerusalem.’

‘What about your grandparents?’

‘My mother’s people came from Jaffa. My grandfather had a fishing boat. He used to take me out fishing when I was...’

‘And your father’s?’ interrupted the priest.

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Benny nervously, suddenly feeling a threat to the prospect of three hundred shekels. ‘I never met them. They died before I was born. A village in the north I think.’

‘But still in Palestine?’

‘Israel,’ replied Benny.

‘Quite,’ said Ignatius as if vaguely amused then he took a breath and said, ‘Good, my colleague Dr Stroud and I would both be grateful for your help with our research into life here in the Holy Land. We will need to ask you questions about your family background but, for this, you must be properly relaxed.’

Benny found that there was something unsettling about the phrase ‘properly relaxed’. He’d felt the same about ‘controlled conditions’ when Eli had used it earlier. He looked first to Eli and then back at the priest. ‘Properly relaxed?’ he said.

‘No need to be alarmed. No harm will come to you. But we would like to put you to sleep before we ask you things. It will improve your powers of recall.’

Benny’s eyes opened wide. ‘You mean you want to hypnotise us?’ he said, clearly appalled at the prospect.

‘Something like that,’ said the priest.

Benny shook his head. Eli too was unsure. Benny drew him to one side and whispered urgently, ‘Anything could happen to us while we were under the influence. We could be murdered!’

‘But they’re holy people!’ protested Eli. ‘Why would they want to murder us? We’ve got nothing worth stealing! They’ve no reason to kill us.’

‘They’ve got no reason to pay us three hundred shekels either,’ countered Benny, his eyes moving between Ignatius and Eli.

The priest saw that Benny was the more anxious of the two. ‘There’s really nothing to be afraid of,’ he said to him in a calm even voice. ‘Why don’t you and your friend talk it over while I ask Sister Benedict to bring you something to eat and drink? If after that you don’t want to go on with it we’ll say no more about it. Under these circumstances of course, we would not be able to pay you the money...’

Ignatius left the room and Eli got to work on Benny. ‘We can’t afford to let an opportunity like this go,’ he insisted. ‘How often do we get the chance to get our hands on easy money?’

‘I still don’t like it,’ said Benny. ‘I’d like to know what’s going on. They could do anything to us while we were asleep.’

‘Like what?’

‘Steal our kidneys. You hear stories of...’

Eli’s look of derision stopped Benny in his tracks. ‘Stop talking rubbish about kidneys, will you?’

Benny shrugged and tried an alternative. ‘So what’s to stop them asking us all they want to know and then murdering us so they don’t have to pay the money?’

Eli held up his hands in a gesture of exasperation. ‘The man is a priest. We’re not dealing with robbers and thieves here,’ he said. ‘Besides, what are we going to do if we don’t go through with it? It’s too late to go back to Tel Aviv and we’ve no money to stay.’

A nun entered the room carrying a metal tray with sandwiches and a jug of wine on it. She put it down and left without saying anything. Eli filled a glass and handed it to Benny. ‘At least have a drink,’ he said. ‘Maybe it will help you to see sense.’

Benny took a mouthful then drained the glass in one go.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Eli. He took a bite out of a sandwich and murmured approvingly. ‘You said it yourself out there,’ he said. ‘We are important people, real Israelis. Our help is worth three hundred shekels of anybody’s money.’

Eli topped up Benny’s glass and watched him continue to mellow as the wine allayed his fears. He could see he was becoming much more relaxed about the whole affair. Eventually he broke into a smile and said, ‘Maybe you’re right about these people,’ he said. ‘They probably don’t mean us any harm.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ said Eli. ‘We’ll finish our supper and tell Ignatius that we’re going to help.’

Benny began to notice what a pleasant room this was — warm, friendly, reassuring. He was glad he had come.

When Ignatius returned, he was accompanied by a second man, even taller than he himself but not nearly so well proportioned. Ignatius was slim but the other man was painfully thin and gangly; his right shoulder drooped lower than the left and he held his head at the opposite angle, as if to compensate. He was wearing a lightweight linen suit that showed off wrinkles to advantage and the collar of his shirt had been made for a much larger man.

‘Well gentlemen, what have you decided?’ asked Ignatius without bothering to introduce the second man.

‘We will be happy to help you sir,’ answered Eli with an exaggerated smile. ‘We feel it’s our duty as Israelis.’

‘Good,’ replied the priest. ‘This is Dr Stroud. He will make sure that no harm comes to you. Come with us please.’

The fact that Stroud carried a small leather bag registered with Eli more than it did with Benny. It seemed that, whereas Benny’s reservations had been dealt with by the wine, his own had just started to arise. They passed another small chapel where a group of five or six nuns were singing. The Latin words meant nothing to him but it was a sound he had known all his life.

Ignatius led the way down a narrow flight of stone steps near the back of the building and Eli felt the walls close in on him. They entered a basement where they all had to duck to avoid contact with the vaulted stone roof.

‘In here,’ said Ignatius, leaning back so Benny and Eli could enter a room at the end of the corridor ahead of him. He clicked on the light with his outstretched right hand and Benny drew in his breath and looked at Eli. This room didn’t seem to belong in a church at all; it was much more like a doctor’s office.