Lawrence Durrell - Judith

“For at least a year,” he said. “I have to go south on an Army course. Sometime I’ll be posted back, I suppose, since I belong to this valley, but… I can’t say when at all. I wanted to go and say goodbye to my country house today. That is why I was so pleased you let me show it to you.”

“Oh, Aaron,” she said, still struggling with this new unfamiliar sense of disappointment, “I wish I had known!”

“It was perfect,” he said. “Goodbye.”

He climbed into the saddle and grabbed the reins of the second horse. She stood irresolutely before him as he smiled down upon her. Then, as he turned his horse, she cried, “Good luck!”

But he was trotting away from her and without a single backward glance.

That evening she worked late on the papers which the Professor had left her; light was slowly beginning to dawn on her as the tangle of formulae gradually began to take coherent shape under her swift pencil. The kibbutz was silent and everybody was long in bed. She worked now in the deserted school-room. It was pleasant and cool with its deep hedges and green outside. As she worked, she heard the soft sound of footsteps on the gravel path outside. Something flew through the open window like a moth and fell with a soft plop upon her papers. It was a white rose.

But by the time she reached the door and opened it there was nobody to be seen on the dark path outside.

There were other things too, to keep her constantly interested and active, not least the observation of the camp’s inhabitants, their reactions to the life which, for so many of them, was utterly new and not always entirely pleasant. Despite the comparative bliss of freedom from torture and suffering, few were able to adapt themselves at once to the curious atmosphere of discipline without unkindness, ample food without luxury and, above all, the integration into group-life which only boarding-school children normally know, and soon forget when they leave. Some felt uneasy and slightly on the defensive, as if there was some catch in the whole thing. The blonde girl, Grete, who had so startled them by her scornful declaration of illegal entry, was one of these. Though they never became close friends, her life and Judith’s in the kibbutz ran along fairly parallel lines, and, perhaps because they were so different from each other, a certain liking sprang up between them, and they often talked for a while during their free periods. There was something in the dark, serious eyes of Judith which attracted confidences, and Grete found herself telling her of her experiences only a few days after her arrival on the dark beach.

“When we reached the kibbutz,” she said, “I was handed over to a very ugly girl with spots who seemed to be one of the duty nurses. But I don’t know now: everyone seems to take turns at doing everything. She was brusque and it made me feel rather weepy. She told me to wait for the doctor, and took down my particulars. Horrid performance. Name, age, profession. I nearly fainted, but she gave me some water, and that awfully nice woman doctor came in. She was much more helpful. She had my dossier, from the Agency, and she was sympathetic. The wretched nurse-girl took me to the showers and gave me a hot drink and a sedative. Funny — while she read my dossier she said — the doctor, I mean — ‘You’ve had quite a time haven’t you?’ It seemed such an understatement! When they were unpacking my small bag, they found my child’s photograph. I don’t know what got into me. When the doctor handed it to me, saying she thought he had my eyes, I went berserk and tore it up. She didn’t say a thing for a moment, and then just ‘Tell me.’ I did, I filled up the gaps in the dossier, without a murmur. At least she already knew where I had spent the last eighteen months — I didn’t have to go into that.”

“Where?” asked Judith simply. Her large eyes were kind and not curious, and Grete told her the rest. About the officers’ brothel and, before that, about her marriage to the Nazi Colonel of impeccable Aryan descent. “When Hitler came to power the party learned that I was a Jew, and faced him with the choice of surrendering his position or his wife. That was how I found myself in Auschwitz. For ages I believed that my son had suffered the same fate. My husband, whom I have never seen since, was posted to the Russian front. For all I knew, he was dead. But a year ago I met a man who knew him, and he repeated a conversation with my husband which suggested that the child might still be alive, with foster parents in some neutral country. But I don’t know where — I don’t know where.”

Judith nodded in silence.

“I told the doctor of my confusion of mind. Perhaps you can understand. I should love nothing better than to find him again, and yet, with half my mind, I do not want to find him because… well, you know why!”

She stretched out her arm, bared it and lifted it up to Judith’s face. On the smooth flesh, a neat seven-digit figure in blue was printed grotesquely along the arm, next to another shorter row of figures with a perfectly straight line through them.

“She said she understood,” went on Grete, “but that time would change it. That what I needed now, and what they could give me, was hard work here in Ras Shamir, manual labour. I nearly laughed.”

The two young women looked across the river to where a group of girls was busy washing clothes in the clear water and hanging them up on the bushes. As they thumped the clothes on the flat rocks, they sang Ushavtem mayim besason , their voices sounding gay and innocent over the murmur of the stream.

“Can you follow the words?” asked Judith.

“More or less. ‘You will draw water with exultation’?”

“And then?” asked Judith.

“Well, then I met Pete. She knows all about everyone and everything, I think. All about me, certainly. We walked through the kibbutz in the shade of the willow trees. There were roses and sprinklers and it felt rather unreal. We came to the place where they park the tractors, and there were a few new machines. There was a young man — David — the second in command — you know him? Yes, well he was servicing them. He showed them to Pete with enormous pride. And then he said he was glad to see me looking alive. He said I looked quite dead when we arrived — strange that he should notice, don’t you think?”

“Very,” said Judith with a straight face.

“Well, then he turned to Miss Peterson and reminded her of the small arms drill. And he told me to report at the armoury in the morning. Just like that.”

“I know,” said Judith sympathetically. “Ugh!”

Grete told her how Anna had suddenly bandaged her eyes and walked her blindfold to a staircase which led deep underground. She had said, “We have one of the largest and most skillfully concealed armouries of all the Palestine kibbutzim — even a small arms range. The fewer people who know where it is and how to get there, the better.” Then, after a sound of closing doors and some heavy pushing and shoving, her bandage was whipped off and she found herself face to face with David. The armoury was a strange subterranean building with enormous vaulted bays, which showed a tremendous wall thickness like the crypt of a medieval cathedral. The walls were damp and covered in a soft cocoon of verdigris, such as one might see in a choice wine-cellar in France. Long racks of weapons stood against the side walls and a dozen girls were busy oiling and proving them. The extent of this building was immense, and at the far end there was a miniature range perfectly adequate for small arms and tommy-gun practice.

“Come along,” said David, “and try your hand. There are no prizes, I’m afraid.”