Patrick White - Riders in the Chariot

When Himmelfarb was able once more to raise his head, he realized that, for the second time in his life, he had fainted, or God had removed him, mercifully, from his body. Now it was evening, and a strange one. Those objects which had appeared most solid before: the recently built bath-houses, for instance, and the iron towers, were partially dissolved in mist. The well-planned establishment which he had known as Friedensdorf was enclosed in a blood-red blur, or aura, at the centre of which he lay, like a chrysalis swathed in some mysterious supernatural cocoon. Other forms, presumably, though not distinguishably human, moved on transcendental errands within the same shape, no longer that intense crimson, but expanding to a loose orange. Of blue edges. He was reminded suddenly and vividly of the long, blue-grey, tranquil ash of an expensive cigar he had smoked somewhere. Of stubbing out a cigar by the orange light from a little lantern of oriental design. Then, of course, he remembered his friend Konrad Stauffer. When his tardier senses returned. His surroundings exploded into the consciousness of the man who was lying on the ground. What had seemed soothingly immaterial became most searingly concrete. A wound opened in his left hand. The blue-black gusts of smoke rushed in at his eyes and up his nostrils. Men were shouting. He could feel the breath of orange fire. Explosives convulsed the earth beneath his body. Bullets pitted the air, but rarely. It was the fire that predominated. Friedensdorf was burning. It was then that Himmelfarb realized he had lost his spectacles. The discovery was more terrible than fire. Engulfed in his affliction, he began to grope about him, touching stones, a strip of hot metal, a little lake of some liquid stickiness, a twig, a stone, a stone, in that fruitless journey across what must remain an empty desert. As he crawled and searched. Or looked up at the orange blur, which seemed by now to be invading the whole of existence. Somewhere on the left a machine-gun hawked fire. Even his own breath issued from his mouth in a tongue of fire. As he blubbered, and panted. Searching. To focus again the blessed shapes of things. He had covered so much ground, it was unlikely now. Though his hands continued, for employment, to grope, and touch, long after he had strayed beyond reach of possibility. He touched wire. He tore his hands on the barbs of wire. He touched a cotton rag suspended from the same barbs. He was touching air. To the side of the rag, or flag of cotton, his hands suddenly encountered nothing but the soft air. There was, in fact, a small, jagged gap, if not a vast triumphal arch in the peripheral fence. Someone had simply cut the wire. Then the Jew bowed his head, and went out, still upon his knees. He shuffled upon his knees, anywhere, or where it seemed indicated that he should. Over the stones he hobbled, like some deformity. Upon his torn knees. He must get up, he knew, but apart from the stiffness of his limbs, which made of this unnatural position a temporarily natural one, he had not yet crossed, he suspected, the line dividing hell from life. When the barbs entered his forehead, and he was not surprised to put out his hands and grasp a fresh agony of wire. It was, of course, the outer fence. He might have hung there, content just to be ignored by the tormentor's mind, if a moment of lethargy had not forced him to reach out for a fresh hold, to prevent himself from toppling. And for the second time, he found himself touching the mild, unobstructed air. And was goaded into wildest action by that very gentleness. All of him was tearing-flesh, breath, the stuff of his clothes-as he wrenched himself out of the grip of the wire. But got himself free, and manoeuvred through the narrow, the so very narrow rent, made by those who had cut their way out through the second barrier of wire. The air was staggeringly cold that flung against his sweaty, bleeding forehead. Shapes welcomed, whether of men or trees, he had not the strength to wonder, but did at last touch bark. And dragged himself up, onto his feet. He wandered through a forest, from trunk to kindly trunk. The wet needles mingled with his skin, their scent spreading through that second _maze__, his skull, until he was almost drugged with freedom. He walked on, and could have continued gratefully, if he had not come to what was by comparison a clearing, in which stood a band of virgin forms-young birches, they might have been-their skin so smooth and pure, he fell down against them, and lay crying, his mouth upon the wet earth. Some time later, men arrived. Whatever their complexion or beliefs, he could not have moved. They stood around him. Talking. Poles, he reasoned with what was left of his mind. And listened to their silence and their breathing as they carried him through an infinity of trees. On arrival at a stench of pigs and straw, they laid him on the stove of a house to which they had brought him. He had no desire to leave the warmth and darkness. He lay with his head on a kind of hard block, when not actually at rest in the bosom of his Lord. Women came to dress his wounds. They would appear with soup. Thin and watery. A steam of cabbage. Sometimes there were dumplings in the soup, which made it rather more difficult. On the third day, or so he calculated, they brought him somebody, a man of youthful voice, who spoke to him in German, and told him as much as the peasants knew of recent events at Friedensdorf. Those of the prisoners kept alive by the Germans, to empty the gas chambers of corpses, and provide labour for the camp, had decided to mutiny, the Pole related. Weeks had been spent collecting and hiding arms and ammunition, and it was only after the arrival of the last trainload of Jews that the conspirators felt themselves strong enough to act. Then the slaves rose, killed the commandant and a number of the guards, exploded a fuel dump, set fire to part of the establishment, cut the wire, and were at that moment on their way to join the Resistance. "And all those other Jews?" Himmelfarb ventured to ask. The Pole believed most of them had died, some already of the gas fumes, the remainder by the fire which destroyed Friedensdorf. He laughed. "You are the lucky one!" he said. And Himmelfarb, who had re-examined so often the sequence of his escape, could not bring himself to explain how it had been a miracle. When he was rested and recovered, they dressed him and took him by the hand. That half-blind peasant could not have counted the number of hands he touched as he stumbled on his journey eastward. Moving always in the same obliterating, perhaps merciful mist, he learned the smell of wet grass, of warm hay, of bruised turnips, of cows' breath. He grew accustomed to hearing voices he could not understand, except when accompanied by touch, or expressing the emotions of songs. There were many common sounds he felt he had never heard before, and he found himself penetrating to unsuspected layers of silence. Above all, he learned to recognize that state of complete suspension in which men, like animals, wait for danger to pass. It was not until Istanbul that Professor Himmelfarb recovered his sight, and something of his own identity. How the water shimmered, and the leaves of the trees were lifted. As he looked out from behind his brand-new spectacles, he had to lower his eyes, ashamed to accept the extravagant gifts that were offered him.

It was decided, then, that Himmelfarb, unlike many others, should be allowed to reach the Land, although, in the absence of some sure sign, or sanction, his own conscience continued to doubt his worthiness. In the circumstances, he was reluctant to lift up his voice with those of his fellow passengers on the somewhat rusty freighter which carried them down the Turkish coast. The young Jews lounged on the fo'c'sle hatches, with their arms round one another, and sang. All those young people, the thickish, hairy youths and green-skinned girls, germinated in the night-soil of Europe, had come that much closer to fulfilling their destiny. For the Jews were at last returning home. They would recognize the stones they had never seen, and the least stone would be theirs. But the rather remote figure of the elderly man, a professor, it was said, seemed to have no part in it. As he continued to walk the deck, he would hesitate, and turn, carefully, perhaps not yet altogether reconciled to the rather too fashionable, recently gotten second-hand shoes. Certainly there was an immense gap between the age of the preoccupied figure and those of the jubilant younger Jews. Some of the latter called to him, inviting him to participate in their relief and joy, and even made a few harmless, friendly-sounding jokes. They soon gave up, however, averted their eyes, and rummaged for peanuts in the little bags which had been handed to them, together with other comforts, by a charitable local Jewess, on the quay at Istanbul. Voluptuously, they lulled themselves. They began again, mumbling at first, then stirringly, to sing. A number of the older Jews attempted to claim their share of good things, and join in the singing, but found they had not the mind for it. The sea air had given their cheeks a new, a positively healthy tinge, and their eyes were glazed with formal contentment from watching the pattern of crisp little waves repeat itself over and over on the classic waters. But in some of the older faces, the smiles were seen to stick halfway, as if caught up on an obstructing tooth, one of those gold landmarks. And there were individuals who were forced to stop their mouths with handkerchiefs, for fear their joy might get out of hand and not be recognized as such. After all, nobody was used to it yet. They had acquired that new and rather unmanageable emotion along with their new clothes, in many cases ill-fitting, from the organization in Istanbul. The chosen people stood or sat about the decks, or leaned over the rails and watched the quite incredible sea. But Professor Himmelfarb walked, or stalked, between those who finally took him for granted. The relief committee had given a surprising amount of thought to what they had interpreted as the feelings and tastes of the elderly, cultivated refugee, who would no doubt be absorbed into the academic life of the university at Jerusalem. They had fitted him out with clothes which approximated to the kind he must always have worn. The topcoat, for instance, of European cloth and cut, had belonged originally to a doctor of philosophy at Yale. Now, as the present owner walked in the sea breezes on the crowded deck, the dark, capacious, yet somehow oppressive overcoat held plastered awkwardly against his sides, nobody would have questioned the distinguished man's right to it. Unless himself. At the reception centre he had stood too long with the coat in his hands, with the result that the Jewess who was supervising the distribution of clothing had been provoked to ask, "Are you not pleased with your nice new overcoat, Professor Himmelfarb?" The lady, who wore a moustache, and a wrist-watch on a practical strap, had had some experience of kindergarten work. "Yes," he replied. "_Pleased__." But stood. "Then, why don't you take your coat," she suggested kindly, "and go and sit with the others at the tables. Madame Saltiel is going to distribute a few comforts for the voyage. After that, there will be a cup of coffee." She touched him firmly on the elbow. "But it is hardly right," he said, "that I should accept what is not yet my due." "Of course it is your due!" insisted the lady, who was very busy, and who, in spite of her training, could become exasperated. "And it is _our__ duty to make amends to those of our people who have suffered," she tried to explain with gentleness. "It is I who must make amends," insisted her recalcitrant pupil. "I am afraid it may soon be forgotten that our being a people does not relieve us of individual obligations." But the lady propelled him towards the tables where other Jews were awaiting further largesse. "I should take my coat, if I were you," the lady advised, "and worry no more about it." She was too exhausted to respect delicate scruples. The little points of perspiration were clearly visible on the hairs of her moustache. So Himmelfarb took the excellent coat, carrying it unhappily by one of its arms, and had to be reminded that his overcoat was trailing in the dust. It was in the same reluctant frame of mind that he entered, or returned to, Jerusalem-as if he alone must refuse the freedom of that golden city, of which each stone racked him, not to mention the faces in the streets. One evening on a bare hillside, which the wind had treated with silver, he lay down, and it seemed at first as though the earth might open, gently, gently, to receive his body, but his soul would not allow, and dragged him to his feet, and he ran, or stumbled down the hill, his coat-tail flying, so that a couple of Arabs laughed, and a British sergeant grew suspicious. Yet, at the foot of the hill, he was again clothed in dignity, and chose a lane that led through the trapped and tarnished light of evening, back into the city which, it seemed, would never be his. There were many familiar figures on the streets, with greetings which ranged from the expansive to the elaborately judicious. On King George Avenue he ran into Appenzeller, the physicist, of Jena, whom he had known from student days, rather a coarse-skinned, bristly individual, who battered the backs of those he met to gain the advantage over them. Appenzeller did not believe in ghosts. He opened with, "Well, Himmelfarb, I shall not say I am surprised. You were always so substantial. Do you remember how they used to say you would go far? Well, you have arrived, my dear!" How he laughed at his own joke, and the pores round his nostrils oozed. "You have been up to Canopus, of course. Not yet? Well, we shall be expecting you. You will be useful to us," he said. "Everyone has his part to play." Himmelfarb remembered the infallible stupidity of Appenzeller outside the laboratory and lecture theatre. "Later on," was all he could reply, with a reticence which gave his colleague opportunity for contempt. Appenzeller recalled how an almost girlish diffidence would overtake his massive friend at times. The physicist was one of those who automatically interpret reserve as an encouraging sign of moral weakness. "It is fatal to brood, you know," he advised, looking as far as he could into the other's eyes, though not far enough for his own satisfaction; he would have enjoyed dealing some kind of jovial blow. "Besides, it is no longer a luxury when so many others have suffered too." Advice would swim from Appenzeller's skin, of which the pores had always been conspicuously large. "I am about to go down to Haifa," Himmelfarb replied. The physicist was surprised, not to say disappointed, to see that his tentative remark appeared to have left no trace of a wound. Appenzeller's simplicity could perhaps have been explained by the fact that he himself had barely suffered. "Family connections," that dry number Himmelfarb continued. "I am told that I shall find my wife's eldest brother in some _kibbutz__ out near Ramat David." "Ah, family!" Appenzeller smiled. "I am happy to hear it." He coughed, and giggled. "We shall expect you, then, on your return. Refreshed. You will like it here," he added, "if you don't find there are too many Jews." After making his joke, Appenzeller took a friendly leave, and Himmelfarb was glad. The latter did go down to Haifa, by a series of wartime buses and military lorries. He was carried some of the way along the road to Ramat David, but preferred to walk the final stretch before the settlement at which he hoped to find Ari Liebmann, his brother-in-law. He walked along the road which ran between tough little hills, built as battlements, so it appeared, to protect the spreading plain of the _kibbutz__. Once or twice he kicked at the surface of the road. All this was consecrated, he could not quite realize. Once, at the side of the road, he got upon his knees, amongst the stones, in the smell of dust, unable to restrain his longing to touch the earth. At the _kibbutz__ they were all occupied with the business of living. A woman in the office rose from her papers and pointed at a field. Ari Liebmann and his wife, she said, were down there, amongst the tomatoes. Ari, whom he remembered as a youth of mobile face and somewhat mercurial mind, had set in one of the opaque moulds of manhood. He was rather hard, dusty, grizzled. When the two men had embraced, and cried, they went to sit down beneath an olive tree, as the farmer had to admit it was an occasion. "Rahel!" he called out across the sprawling entanglement of tomato bushes. "This is my wife," he explained incidentally. Reluctantly there came a woman, who, Mordecai realized, was something to do with him now. Ari's wife was built in the shape of a cone, and wearing a pair of very tight blue shorts. Her thighs and hips were immense, but her face was not displeasing; it had history in its bones. When all three were seated, Ari decided: "You must come to work with us. You can teach the young ones. You will be far better off out here. A Jew only begins to be a Jew in relation to his own soil." Both Ari and his wife had hard hands. They were stained with the juice from the young tomato shoots they had been engaged in pinching out. "Rahel was born here. She will tell you. She's a _sabra__," Ari explained, and he and his wife laughed. These people are completely fulfilled, Mordecai sensed. They belonged to their surroundings, like the stones, or the olive tree beneath which they were sitting. "There will be Jews enough to exercise their intellects on inessentials. This is what matters," Ari boasted, indicating with his hand all that his community owned. He was dangerously arrogant, Mordecai saw. "Yes, come to us here," Rahel invited. "There will always be plenty for Jerusalem." Then Himmelfarb replied, "If I could feel that God intended me to remain, either in Jerusalem, or in your valley, then you could be sure of my remaining. But He does not." "Ah!" exclaimed Ari. "God!" He began to score the ground with a stick. "How we used to pray!" He sighed, and marvelled. "In Bienenstadt. Under the gables. Good for the soul!" He hunched, and laughed; he could have been trying to rid himself of phlegm. "You, I seem to remember, Reha had decided, were to play the part of a Messiah." If each of the two men had not experienced all that he had, this accusatory remark might have sounded more brutal. As it was, Mordecai made it refer to one of those other, pasteboard selves silhouetted on the past. And at that moment, besides, an olive dropped, green, hard, actual, on the stony soil of Palestine. "What do you believe, Ari?" Mordecai was compelled to ask. "I believe in the Jewish people," his brother-in-law replied. "In establishing the National Home. In defending the Jewish State. In work, as the panacea." "And the soul of the Jewish people?" "Ah, souls!" He was very suspicious, jabbing the earth. "History, if you like." Rahel looked out over the landscape of hills. She could have been bored, or embarrassed. "History," Himmelfarb said, "is the reflection of spirit." Ari was most uneasy in his state of unemployment. He fidgeted about on his broad behind. "Should we continue to sit, then," he asked, showing his short, strong teeth, "and allow history to reflect us? That is what you seem to suggest." "By no means," Mordecai replied. "I would only point out that spiritual faith is also an active force. Which will populate the world after each attempt by the men of action to destroy it." "I did not tell you," Ari interrupted, "but Rahel and I have already made two splendid children." "Yes, Ari." Mordecai sighed. "I can tell that you are both fulfilled. But momentarily. Nothing, alas, is permanent. Not even this valley. Not even our land. The earth is in revolt. It will throw up fresh stones-tonight-tomorrow-always. And you, the chosen, will continue to need your scapegoat, just as some of us do not wait to be dragged out, but continue to offer ourselves." "And where will you pursue this-idealism?" Ari Liebmann asked. Now, it appeared, Himmelfarb was caught. "Well," he began. "For example." He hesitated. "It could be," he said, "in Australia." No thought of that country had ever entered his head before, but now it presented itself, possibly because it was farthest, perhaps also bitterest. "Australia!" his relatives exclaimed-nothing more, as if it were best to ignore the obsessions of the crazed Diaspora. Rahel changed the subject. "You will spend the night with us?" she asked, but at the same time it was obvious she hoped he would decide against it. "No," Himmelfarb said. He had no wish to delay where there was no point in his doing so. They began to walk towards the settlement. "You must eat, at least," they insisted. It was only practical. Although it was not yet mealtime, Rahel foraged in the kitchen, and produced bread, a cup of milk, and a little bowl of shredded carrot, which she put before the traveller, in the long, empty hall. Soon the cold milk was burning in his mouth, while the others sat on the opposite side of the table, tracing their own secret patterns on the surface of American cloth, when they were not watching him, it could have been hoping he would swallow down their guilt, quickly and easily, with the milk. Then Rahel swept the crumbs from the cloth with the flat of her hand. She began to glance at her wrist-watch. The hour was approaching when she would go down to her children at the crèche. Her mouth was growing hungrier. There was, besides, a bus which passed along the road at evening, and to catch that bus the relatives hurried Himmel-farb. His sister-in-law kept looking at her watch. It was natural, of course; she was obviously a practical woman. Then, at last, as they stood in the meagre scrub of what would one day be a copse of pines, dust foreshadowed the approaching bus. "_Mazel tov__!" cried Ari Liebmann, squeezing his brother-in-law's hand too hard. This time the two men shed no tears, for the waters of grief ran deeper, more mysteriously than before. The dust of the land lay around the two Jews. The light was winding them in saffron. Before the bus took Mordecai, and, after the initial travail, flung him upon the next stage of his journey. From then on, how his dreams jolted him as he followed the rivers towards their source. In this journeying, it could not be said that he was ever alone, for his outer man was accompanied by his dedicated spirit, until, on a morning of antipodean summer, it was suggested the official destination had been reached. "This is Sydney," the passengers were told. The party of immigrant Jews looked anxiously for those who must be waiting to receive them. Only the rather peculiar, not exactly difficult, but _different__ passenger, Mr Himmelfarb, in his dark, sweaty, unsuitable clothes, stood, and continued standing, apart. He had, in fact, already been received. As the heat smote the tarmac, there appeared to rise up before him a very definite pillar of fire.