Lawrence Durrell - Judith

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

He rose stiffly to his feet and, with his erect military posture, he walked to the further wall, taking, as he did so, a handkerchief from his sleeve. High on the wall there was an object protruding into the room which might have been the metal end of an air ventilator — or some sort of microlink. He slowly and methodically blocked this aperture with his handkerchief. Then he turned and leaned back against the wall and uttered, with an insolent and indifferent tone, a single word.

“How?”

“I have a way.”

A single muscle began to twitch with fatigue under his right eye; but he still stared at her carefully. Words began to tumble from her lips more freely now, for she scented her advantage.

“I tell you I have a way, Günther. It is on me that the question of your identity turns. If I refuse to identify you, or swear a deposition to say you are not Günther Schiller but someone else… there will be no case against you, do you see?”

“The Jews know already,” he said softly.

“Of course; but I am not talking about the Jews.”

“Who then?”

“The British. I could get you into British hands quite easily; then I could convince them that you were the wrong man. Do you see?”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, simply and without heat.

“But I can prove it,” she said in her thrilling tones. “Günther, I can prove it to you.”

“You will have me killed afterwards.”

“Why should I? Once you tell me what I want to know, the British army would send you to Germany, and there you would be freed for lack of evidence. Can’t you see?”

“How will you get me into British hands? One slip and the Jews will kill me, you know that.”

“I know that; but leave it to me. All I want is your promise that if I get you into British hands you will tell me. Have I your word?”

He hesitated for a long moment; she waited, trembling with excitement, staring into those cold little pig’s eyes. At last he said:

“Very well. I will tell you then.”

She heaved a great sigh of relief. “Thank God,” she said; and then all her doubts assailed her anew. She turned her face to him once more, scrutinizing his features with an obsessional attention, as if to read the truth on them.

“Swear,” she said at last. “Swear on your mother, Günther.”

“Ach.” He cleared his throat swiftly and made an impatient little gesture with his right hand.

“I swear,” he said, “on my mother.”

“Swear on Germany.”

“I swear on Germany.”

“Swear by Adolf Hitler.”

“I swear by Adolf Hitler.”

He stood looking after her as she turned and went to the door of the cell. His glance was one of thoughtful absent-mindedness, as if his preoccupations had suddenly shifted to a new topic.

“Send me the gaoler please,” he said drily and, putting his hands behind his back, began to walk slowly up and down the cell, deep in thought. He stubbed out his cigarette and stood gazing at the smoke for a moment before resuming his walk. He heard the bolts shoot into the wall after she left, then voices, and finally silence. It was some ten minutes later when the same bolts creaked back and he saw the figure of David advance across the cell towards him. David was astonished by the change in Schiller. His face was pale and drawn and deeply lined.

“I want to see a priest,” he said. “I am a Catholic. I want to be confessed.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

“Very well.”

Lawton’s thoughtful grey eyes rested on the young woman who walked up and down on the carpet before his desk, talking with a strange new nervous intensity. He had never seen Grete so pale and tense; yet she spoke with incisiveness and clarity — almost as if she were talking to herself, defending herself against an imaginary tribunal. Her eyes were circled with black, which suggested how little she had slept.

“Of course I have no means of judging the truth of the story, yet I believe it, for it comes from someone I knew well at Ras Shamir, and who is in the underground; why should he want to lie? On the other hand is this man Schiller — is he my husband? I can’t tell you that until I actually set eyes on him. That is what I am asking you, Hugh; let me prove it to myself. And then… if he is — you know what I want from him, don’t you? I have hidden nothing from you. But do you see?”

Lawton puffed his pipe with maddening composure and stared at her with his sympathetic eyes.

“I am waiting for Cairo to call,” he said. “We’ll soon know if the abduction story is true.”

She bit her lip with impatience and restrained herself on the edge of an outburst.

“If it’s true you will?”

Lawton nodded. But he still sat in a pose of maddening inattention, considering; it was as if some aspect of the affair still troubled him. Grete leaned forward and continued urgently:

“You see there is a grave danger that the Haganah will take the law into its own hands and murder him; that is what worries me. They are not concerned with abstractions like international justice. If they are satisfied that he is the man, do you think they would bother to hand him over to the Commission and risk him getting free again? Don’t you see the urgency of it?”

Lawton nodded again, obstinately.

“I want to cover myself against a mistake,” he said, and once again she was on the edge of giving vent to her feelings by an outburst when mercifully the phone rang. She heard the links snap home from exchange to exchange, and then the hoarse bronchial voice of Bruce Davis crackle in the receiver. Lawton said quietly:

“Cairo, I have you; did you get my Immediate?”

The voice at the other end replied:

“Yes, it’s apparently true; they are keeping it dark for fear the press gets hold of it and turns it into a political triumph for the Palestine Jews. Hiding Nazis will reflect ill on them; and then another reason is that no one is really quite sure he was abducted. He might have done a bunk on his own, nicht wahr? But he’s gone, my boy, and all posts have been warned to keep a lantern in the window for our wandering boy tonight, to coin a quotation.”

Lawton sighed shortly and said, “Thank you, Bruce.”

“You see?” she said, her face breaking into a smile of triumph. He nodded. His face had gone very thoughtful all at once. He lowered the desk lamp until its greenish arc swung low over the map which he was unfolding with his other hand.

“Show me where,” he said, and she stepped to his side, to trace with a nervous finger a maze of streets leading to the short and squalid cul-de-sac, along one wall of which ran the verminous and deserted cells of the now abandoned Turkish prison. He marked this point with a pencil and added the street number. His pipe had gone out.

“I’ll get a warrant out this morning and take in a search party at dusk,” he said.

“Not before?” she said with dismay.

But he did not answer her. He was already dialling the number of the prison department to ask for a squad of police and a search warrant. She was consumed with a burning impatience. The slow methodical British way of going about things drove her mad.

“Hugh,” she said, “suppose they move him.”

He re-lit his pipe and shrugged his shoulders negligently.

“That would be our bad luck,” he said, and, once more ignoring her, picked up his telephone.

She heard his quiet voice saying:

“A squad under a lance corporal should be enough for this operation. I want both ends of the street cordoned from six to six thirty this afternoon.” Then he put down the receiver and stood up. He crossed from behind his desk and took her hands to squeeze them briefly.