Edward Whittemore - Jericho Mosaic

But Yossi had no intention of making the meeting dramatic. On the contrary, he wanted it to be as ordinary as possible. Of course his self-discipline in the face of hardship had always been phenomenal.

They met in a safehouse on the coast near Beirut. Yossi was in a reflective mood, relaxed and calm. Tajar was reassured. He felt Yossi was managing very well under the circumstances.

After talking about Ziad they went onto other subjects, which pleased Tajar. With the death of his friend, it seemed natural that Yossi should be looking back over his life and recalling other times. Tajar thought it a good sign. It also encouraged him that Yossi asked about Anna, as if he were reaching into the past to find a place for his strongest memories. Tajar was relieved and chatted away.

There had been great changes in Anna's life, Tajar said. All at once she had become very prominent as a painter. Now she exhibited abroad, and every dealer in Jerusalem had to have her works on hand in order to be taken seriously. Success had come in a short time, brought on by the changes in the Jerusalem landscape.

For years Anna had been painting the hills around the city as she had first seen them: a scattering of almond and olive trees, the stray ruins of a stone house clinging to a slope, a crumbling gate without walls opening onto empty fields, the sparse geometry of an Arab village, a donkey path winding away through the centuries.

Now these scenes of a simpler Jerusalem were treasured as tiers of concrete apartment buildings crept out from the city and covered the hills, penetrating even the once lonely wastes of the Judean wilderness, for so long a primeval moonscape of wind and sun and nomads.

It all happened so quickly in the heady optimism after the Six-Day War, said Tajar. First the hills were transformed to look like modern Western suburbs, then highways were strewn around to connect them. But gradually people realized what was being lost and longed to recall the real Jerusalem, the old Jerusalem, and there were Anna's paintings as she had been doing them for years, so simple and powerful in their economy, a beautiful dream of a city unchanged for millennia, worn old with hope. Well in no time at all the house on Ethiopia Street has become something of a shrine, especially for rich Americans dropping over in the summer. They arrive at Anna's door dressed for a Florida outing but ready to assume a reverent manner —

the Holy Land, after all — and parade along Anna's walls to buy views of the real Jerusalem of their imagination, to take back to their modern suburbs at home. Anna finds it embarrassing to be making money out of nostalgia. She's always shy around her paintings and not accustomed to the attention being shown her. Once or twice I've been sitting in a corner when a group of tourists arrives and the stares I get are most curious. Some crippled old smiling Arab? A faithful retainer kept on the dole even though he's not much use anymore? But artists are known to be eccentric so the visitors are respectful, just in case I'm some questionable friend of the great lady. A fine sunny day, the men say heartily, and I nod with pleasure. Of course. Even mute old Arabs enjoy a fine sunny day. I've thought of stopping a couple of them on their way out, blocking them into a corner with my crutches like some mad ancient mariner of the desert, then fixing them with wild eyes and whispering: Listen, I was the first chief of the Mossad, let me tell you my tale. . . .

Tajar laughed merrily, impish to the end.

But poor Anna, he added with feeling. Success is truly a burden to her. She welcomes the recognition but she'll always be uncomfortable with strangers. They think she's withdrawn and aloof when she's just being shy. . . .

Tajar also had good things to say about Assaf and his Abigail. After a difficult time they seemed closer than ever, even though Assaf still longed to have a child with her and Abigail was still opposed to marriage.

She and Anna have become great friends and surely that's good, said Tajar. She also likes to talk to me for some reason. We have long intimate discussions on Anna's balcony when Anna's working. I guess I'm something of a key to Assaf's past for her. She asks about you and Anna's brother David, and I'm supposed to unlock all the secrets about how Assaf became what he is. I tell her there are no secrets about that and Assaf is still her best source, but she thinks I'm just being inscrutable and finds some other way to question me. I like her more and more. Of course she has fears to overcome, unlike the rest of us at that age, or this age. . . .

Bell also came into the conversation along with the shesh-besh partners who haunted his front porch, Abu Musa and Moses the Ethiopian, and Assaf's unfortunate schoolteacher friend from after the Six-Day War, Yousef, who was still a fugitive somewhere in the caves of the Judean wilderness. They spoke of many things from the past but not of the future. Yossi gently hinted it wasn't a time for that. He would have the rest granted him by Colonel Jundi, then they would see.

Tajar felt this was just as well. Certainly he had no desire to discuss what the next months would bring in Lebanon. The Runner's reports had all gone to the director of the Mossad, but what did it matter? The course was set and Israel's grand plan for Lebanon was under way. There was to be an end to the Palestinian nationalist cause and Naji was to be Lebanon's new national savior.

So Tajar and the Runner talked of where they had been, not where they were going. Yossi preferred it that way and Tajar, for his part, was encouraged by the Runner's quiet strength. Characteristically, Yossi left him that night near the coast with a smile and a wave which warmed Tajar's heart.

At least he has survived the dreadful years in Lebanon with his spirit whole, thought Tajar. At least there's that.

TWELVE

Halim spent most of his time that spring sitting under the fig tree at the end of his garden, watching the tangled vines and bushes and trees come to life. Of all the trees, the fig grew its leaves in the most peculiar way. One tiny leaf appeared at the very tip of each of the larger branches, perhaps a few dozen in all. After several days a small green bud thrust out at the base of each single leaf, a messenger for the future fruit.

Then rapidly in the next days the vivid greenery burst out from the ends of the branches and marched in triumph back toward its source, the grayish-black tree trunk of winter.

***

He had an extremely erotic affair with a young Italian woman which lasted a few weekends. She was younger than Assaf, still in her twenties. She worked for an airline and would arrive at his door in her uniform, demanding no more than a bath and some hashish to smoke, then they would make love all weekend. They also made love under the fig tree when its leaves became full. Once she had lounged there laughing and naked in the golden light of late afternoon, redolent with love's smells, and raised a languid hand to the tree's hard little fruits.

Do you know what fig is slang for in Italian? she asked. No? A wise man's breakfast. . . .

Even while it lasted he thought of her as the Italian woman, which was how Ziad would have referred to this magnificent creature. It was a Ziad kind of fantasy, a daydream of a ravishing young woman from Europe who flew into his life as if by magic, who was convulsed by sex and wanted nothing but sexual excess for the short time she was with him. An affair without prologue or consequence, without explanation, an abandoned celebration of lust that would have reaffirmed all of Ziad's glorious fantasies on the erotic possibilities of life, on the irresistible nature of lovemaking, on the final triumph of joyous bold sex over loneliness, an erotic feast that was always just here while it lasted and always just for now.