Lawrence Durrell - Judith

“Why do you say that?”

“I know it. We Jews are going to make a supreme attempt to bounce the British out of Palestine and into the United Nations — if we have to drag them there by the scruff of their thick necks. I think there is a very slim chance that we might emerge from such an affair with a mandate to create and run our own state — a new state — Israel! But of course you can judge what the Arab reaction would be. Egged on by the British, of course, as always. Yes, we are planning extensive operations shortly. Stay here. Yes, give me your list and stay here a while.”

He chattered on amiably for some time, and they were again joined at the long table by Miss Peterson and the doctor, both, it seemed, old friends, if one could judge by the fact that they teased him unmercifully about his shabby clothes and the amount of cigar-ash which covered them. Professor Liebling took all this in good part. “Well,” he said, “I came to kidnap Miss Roth, but she has decided to stay on awhile here, though she will be working on something… Pete, you know about it. Make the girl a little leisure time for study, will you?”

Judith said, “I want to do my full share — no special favours.”

Miss Peterson shook her head and said: “There’s no time for that here; but we’ll see. Between teaching the children and digging potatoes…

Liebling made a protesting sound and spread his hands wide. “Now listen, Pete, be reasonable.”

“Leave it to me,” said the decisive Miss Peterson, and the doctor wrinkled her nose and smiled.

“Don’t fear, Herr Professor!”

The old man pretended to register a resigned exasperation. “Well, give me my book list, and I’ll go.”

He lent Judith his fountain-pen and she made a thoughtful list of books, tables and instruments. Then they all walked out to see him to his car across the meadows. Judith still held the briefcase as she took his arm.

“I shall send you the materials as soon as may be, and if and when you see the light please let me know. Either come up to Jerusalem or signal me and I’ll come down. But don’t lose the stuff, will you?”

“You can keep it in the safe in the office,” said Pete, and Judith nodded.

They paused for a moment by the car, and the Professor peered around him at the brilliant sunlit landscape.

“Hm,” he said, “it’s a good place to be living; when Israel is free one day I’ll come here and retire for good. Eh, Pete?”

“You’d have to work.”

“Ach, work!” He made a vague gesture at the sky and stepped into the car after a final handshake. “Well, good luck and good industry,” he added as the clutch was let in and the car slid off down the dusty road.

Judith walked thoughtfully back to her room and took a preliminary look at the documents before going over to the office and surrendering them to Miss Peterson, who put them in the safe with the other archives of the kibbutz. Then she walked for a while by the river, watching the children swimming. How purposeful everything seemed, how industrious! There was a contagious happiness in the air. Happiness! The word had an old-fashioned ring. She sat down on the bank and was deep in thought, when a thin woman with grey eyes came along and called her by her name. “I’m Rose Fox. I’ve come to ask if you need Hebrew lessons? No? Good. Then can you shoot?”

“No.”

“I’ll put you down for the course then tomorrow.”

Judith looked wryly at her hands — she could not visualize them holding anything as unacademic as a rifle. And yet, why not?

“Lastly,” said the girl, “will you do a turn tomorrow night on duty at the children’s house — ten o’clock to six?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m on with you, so I’ll call and get you after dinner. You know where it is — right in the centre of the grove by the schoolroom. Never mind, I’ll fetch you anyway.”

“Thank you.”

She carried her reflections upon the Liebling visit as far as Peterson’s office, feeling a little guilty that she should so much want to stay on in this valley, rather than risk the distractions of town life. But Pete was delighted.

“It’s exactly what you need,” she said, “a few months here before you decide what you want to do. Besides, you could quite well do your share of the kibbutz work and still have the mornings free for your own. Look — why don’t you take your papers and go out with the shepherds? There are lovely quiet spots where you could sit and work with nothing to disturb you except the gossip of old Karam and an occasional tune on his flute; and those two imps of his could easily carry you a cushion.” It was an idea worth thinking about.

“From tomorrow,” she agreed, “I’ll try it, Pete.”

In the evening Rose Fox came for her after dinner and the two women sauntered in the darkness across to the childrens’ rooms where they were to take over from those who had put the children to bed. They traversed the little gardens where the future farmers of the settlement were making their first humble experiments with flowers and vegetables. They entered the great dormitory, with its soft buds of night-lights and heard the gentle susurrus of the sleepers, each building and rebuilding in fantasy their private worlds of happiness or terror. Rose said in a whisper: “A lot of them belong to us — their parents are here — but very many we have inherited as orphans: you can guess why. A lot are fearfully disturbed. We try to mix the healthy ones in amongst them, to help them get their balance again.” Slowly they made a tour of the beds and the girl gave a brief sketch of each child; and in the silences the sleeping whisper welled up around the words. Here was Anita who woke imploring “Don’t! Don’t!” in the voice of a seagull; there Dov whose tears all but strangled him; Martin who shivered at the sound of boots marching about in his dreams; Abe whose fingers picked at each other or wove elaborate and invisible tapestries all night; and Solomon who wet his bed, and poured with sweat and never said a word. Judith listened, deeply moved. She remembered the three visits of the old scientist to her father. The first time, her father saw him to the door and came back into the room saying: “The man’s a crackpot”; the second time he was silent and thoughtful; the third time he said, “I did him an injustice. This man Freud has something of genius in him.” She scraped about in her mind to remember as much as she could of the lore of psychology, in order to give her sympathy and emotion a tool, a weapon that might help her to aid the sleepers.

They sat for a while, listening to the soft echo of the children’s breathing in the cavernous room. Then Judith took paper and pencil and seated herself in a corner. “Going to write a love-letter?” whispered Rose with a smile. Judith smiled back and nodded. “In a sort of way,” she said and, as the long equation formed under the point of her pencil, she reflected that it was perhaps the only sort of love-letter her father might understand. Had Pete written love-letters to him? She bent her head over the long chains of symbols and figures and found they brought her calm; the great abstractions of weight, velocity, field, magnitude were full of poetic echoes. She worked on them slowly, touch by touch, like a painter working at a picture…

Within a few days’ time she had begun to have an entirely new feeling and meaning: absorbed in her kibbutz duties, she felt for the first time her self-confidence and self-assurance coming back, together with her physical health. Her skin infection disappeared, her hair had begun to grow again and bring back not only the fine shape of her head but also meaning and expression to her dark, thoughtful face. Not all the work was easy and, if she had had to confess to a partiality, it would certainly have been to her teaching duties with the younger children. Her subjects, by common consent, were arithmetic, geometry and algebra, and she enjoyed exploring these mysteries with them in the cool evening hours. The little school-room with its bright maps and amateur frescoes was a pleasant place to sit and work, and the blackboard was big enough not only for diagrams but for an occasional cartoon with which she helped rouse interest in the subject — an interest growing out of the delightful care-free laughter of her charges.