Lawrence Durrell - Judith

“Well, as I said, I saw her signature.”

But she was dry now and able to consult the fragment of mirror tacked to the wall of the barn with a grimace of disgust. She dismissed the name from her consciousness — sent it to join the hundred other mysteries of this long journey into the unknown. All she knew now was that she was hideously ugly with her hair cropped in this fashion; she borrowed a comb from the doctor and swept it back furiously. “Can you lend me a scarf?” was all she said, and the doctor smilingly handed her one, reflecting that when a woman can still think about her looks she is definitely off the danger list.

“You are going to hate the clothes I brought,” said the doctor, “but they were all I could find. Mostly they all wear blue shorts and white tops, the land-workers. But it is at least a dress.”

“What is more important,” said Judith Roth soberly, “is that it is clean.”

The women had been clearing up the trestles and stacking them. The doctor took Judith to a small whitewashed cubicle with a truckle-bed in it. “Now, my dear,” she said, “you are going to sleep. I can’t do anything about you until tomorrow evening when I am driving back to Ras Shamir. We need some papers prepared for you. Manya has orders to feed you, but you must lie low. This place is near the road, and if the British suspected we were using it they would certainly make a police raid. If that should happen while I’m away, hide in the orange grove until they leave. As for the old man, he’s going to another place and arrangements have been made to fetch him, so don’t bother your head about him, understand?”

“I understand.”

The doctor yawned suddenly, exposing small white teeth. “I am going to sleep for a couple of hours before I leave. I shall come for you at five tomorrow… no this evening. Good-night, Judith.”

“Good-night.”

She lay for a long time with open eyes, watching the white light of dawn increase in strength as it shone through the skylight. Then she dozed, and the whole kaleidoscope of her memory began to throw up its bewildering and fragmented patterns. The children were dancing about, pelting her with snowballs, crying “Jew, Jew, Judith, Jew… Somewhere very far away, and belonging to a world so distant that it seemed to glow with the memory of a paradise now lost, she heard her father’s voice talking to her, rapidly and confidently, about the glories of being German.

Her sleep was a shallow and troubled one, hampered, curiously enough, by her new sense of cleanliness. The hot water had alleviated her fatigue quite sensibly. She muttered her way in and out of remembered laboratories and classrooms, in and out of the calculus and the bewildering tangle of magnetic fields where once she had been quite at home.

At midday she woke, sighing, and heard voices. Rising, she peeped through the door and saw that the door of the little room opposite was open. Three Orthodox Jews, in their long black coats and spade-shaped hats, were talking to the prophet earnestly and with elation. Their voices rose and fell. Moreover, the prophet himself, Melchior, was already up and dressed in new clothes of a rabbinical cut. He appeared to have regained his sanity at a single bound. His eyes shone, he embraced his visitors, answering them fluently in Hebrew, and making eloquent gestures with his hands. They had tears in their eyes and were obviously under the stress of emotions based in reverence and relief. He must, she thought, be some great Talmudic scholar or rabbi. Presently the little party made ready to leave; Melchior’s smashed suitcase was picked up reverently by one of them as they crossed the main room to the outer door. Once outside, they latched it carefully behind them and their voices faded softly, exultantly, into silence. She was alone now, and she examined her quarters with a desultory curiosity, walking about the gaunt room to look out of the barred windows which gave onto the dense shade of a lemon grove. Some fat crows lobbed about in the rank grass.

After a while one of the old women appeared with a stew-pot and a tin plate and spoon and set them down before her with smiles. Judith ate ravenously while the woman watched happily. She spoke a little imperfect Yiddish and, struck by her gypsy-like appearance, Judith questioned her, only to find that she was a Jewess from Bessarabia who had been in the country a number of years. “Then you speak Hebrew?” said Judith in Hebrew, which she spoke slowly but with tolerable correctness. The old woman chuckled and made an indefinite sign with her hand: “I am still learning. It is hard.”

She gathered up the eating utensils and took herself off again, closing the door softly behind her and leaving Judith once more alone. Time hung heavy that afternoon, and the girl was thoroughly bored with her own company by the time the doctor reappeared in the doorway; she was dusty but exultant as she threw her satchel on the table. “I’ve had a stroke of luck. I got the papers we need. Usually they take time to obtain. I was afraid you might be stuck here for a week. How are you feeling?”

“I’m quite fit.”

“Good. Then we can start right away. But first of all here is your identity card.” She rummaged in her satchel and produced a suitably creased and thumbed document. Judith saw with surprise that it actually had a photograph of herself stapled to it. “How did they get that?” The doctor smiled. “The Agency boys think up everything. You should have no trouble anyway. Especially once you are up at Ras Shamir with us.” She consulted her wrist-watch briefly and reflected. “I think we should move off,” she said, “as I still have three more people to pick up.”

A dilapidated lorry was parked off the road under the trees with a fat morose-looking girl at the wheel. Its interior was loaded with light wooden crates such as are used for fruit-packing. As they climbed in, the doctor introduced Judith to the girl, whose name was Anna, and in response to her greeting Judith received an ill-tempered nod. They set off along the dusty road with a roar, travelling northward, Anna driving with sullen concentration. The road ran for the most part along the sea-line and Judith looked curiously about her at the new landscape with its exotic vegetation. The jogging of the ancient vehicle was pleasant and conducive to drowsiness — indeed already the doctor nodded beside her. Twice they turned off the main road and ran into an olive-grove to halt somewhere near a cluster of tattered and abandoned-looking sheds, out of which emerged other passengers; two weary-looking girls of Judith’s own age, approximately, and a stout rosy woman in her late forties. They were each given an identity card before being shoved aboard over the tail of the lorry, to make themselves as comfortable as possible among the crates. Anna greeted them all with the same brusque contempt. “Come on,” she said sharply. “We’re late as it is.”

They ran northwards now, into the eye of the westering sun along the peaceful olive-groves powdered silver with dust. There was a good deal of military traffic on the road but it all seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. “Must be something up in Jerusalem,” commented the doctor, “I expect we’ll hear about it this evening.” Anna shook her head and muttered. The rest of them did not speak. The girls looked dazed and tired, while the ruddy-faced woman had wrapped her head in a scarf and fallen into a doze. They were all perhaps as recent arrivals as herself, thought Judith, dazed by haphazard travel and the dangers they had traversed. The lorry jogged on steadily with the sea to their left and the rough red outcrops of sandstone and granite on their right, cradling little valleys of green vegetation. A smudge of smoke appeared on the further edge of the coastline and the doctor pointed to it and said, “Haifa.”