Mr. Mani (22 page)

—On the Somme, sir. Between Dompierre and Maricourt.

—On the northern flank.

—Quite so, sir. The night of May seventeenth is a horror to remember. It was the ghastliest of them all.

—I'm speaking for myself, of course. We lost three hundred men in two hours, including two platoon commanders.

—So he was, sir. How astounding that you knew him!

—I was fortunate, sir. Just a bit of shrapnel.

—Thank you, sir, I'd be glad to. It's very kind of you. If you don't mind, Colonel, I'd prefer to sit by your side, so that I can show you a few documents.

—Thank you, sir. We can manage without the desk. I won't be long and you needn't trouble yourself. Now that the main features of the case are clear to you, there is something ... something else that I wish to take up with you ... I mean now, before the trial begins ... since once it does, I shan't be free to raise the matter with the court, as you will have seen for yourself from the brief...

—I beg your pardon, sir.

—Indeed, sir, I was afraid you might not have time to read it all.

—Oh.

—Oh, dear...

—Oh, dear me, Colonel, we had no idea. I'm flabbergasted.

—Oh, dear, sir. I'm so dreadfully sorry. I'm quite devastated. We knew, of course, that you were wounded at Verdun. Your name, sir, has been a byword in our division ever since the Battle of the Marne.

—I'm so sorry, sir. No one breathed a word to us. Had anyone told me, I would have come to read the brief to you myself.

—Now? Well, why not! I'd be delighted to, Colonel. I'm entirely at your disposal, and I'm quite prepared to read you the brief and all its documents.

—I'd be delighted to, sir. A résumé, as the French say. It will be both jollier and quicker...

—Thank you, sir. With pleasure.

—Just a bit, sir ... that will do for this hour of the morning ... cheers, sir...

—So this is the whiskey, then, is it? It's superb ... no wonder you insist on it, Colonel!

—Indeed, it is ... that, sir ... I mean ... that's the very subject ... you've hit the nail on the head, sir! The prosecution will ask for the death penalty in accord with wartime regulations, whereas ... you see, that's just what I wished to talk to you about...

—Sir?

—Quite so. It's best to begin from the beginning. But just where is the beginning, sir, if you'll allow me to reflect for a moment? Suppose we say on the twenty-eighth of February, on a cold, foggy, rainy night, indeed, on a sleety night turning to real snow in the morning, the kind that falls here no more than once a year to the great consternation of the natives. That, sir, was the night the accused was apprehended. It happened some ten miles north of Jerusalem, just outside a small town called Ramallah, which means the hill of God, in a hamlet called el-Bireh, which is the biblical Bethel, I believe. It's a small village of olive groves and little vegetable gardens that marks the farthest point of Allenby's advance after taking Jerusalem in December. It's not at all clear why he stopped there—perhaps he wished to rest his forces after the excitement of Jerusalem. But since he didn't strike while the iron was hot, it grew cold and gray until its jagged lines hardened like fate. That's where the front runs now, with the Turks sitting on the other side of it, out of sight behind a ridge of hills. It cuts right through the village, several of the houses on the lower slope of which are in no-man's land. The Arabs living in them are poor shepherds who are allowed to come and go, and one of our more enterprising officers even issued them certificates of good conduct granting them freedom of movement among the hills and between the two armies. There's a platoon of Ulstermen there with a brave bucko of a commander who's actually just a first sergeant. They've dug trenches and deployed their machine guns, and they sit there breathing the winter fog that rolls in from the sea to the desert and thinking of Ulster. Now and then they cluck to the goats, or call to some shepherd grazing his flock down the hill to come show them his certificate. Since they speak no Arabic and have no interpreters, they have no dealings with the natives, who pay them as much attention as you would to a lot of flitting shadows. Which is what makes it so extraordinary that he was even noticed that foggy dawn, let alone apprehended. And it's even more remarkable that, once he was apprehended, it was decided to detain him ... so that, looking back on it now, I can't swear that he didn't do it deliberately ... that he didn't do everything, in fact, for the sole purpose of being caught, so that he could have his day in court...

—Thirty-one, sir. A scraggly, dark-haired chap. On the short side. But though he's at most ten years older than me, he looks old enough to be my great-grandfather, with so many wrinkles you might think every one of his crooked thoughts had spilled out of his brain and over his face. Thirty-one, sir, but tough enough to be fifty, awfully earnest and not at all youthful. The morning he was caught he was wearing a peasant's cloak and had three black goats in tow, which were a rather symbolic representation of the flock he was supposed to have. He headed straight up the hill to Sergeant McClane's funk hole and woke him up from his sleep...

—Quite so, sir. And there, in those foggy wee hours, he was asked for his certificate; and when he didn't have it, he was taken aside until there was enough light to see what matter of man he was. But before a few minutes went by, sir, he tried escaping under cover of the last darkness; so that now he was taken, goats and all, and put in a little room; where he sat all day long as the rain turned to snow, refusing to eat and cursing darkly in Arabic while waiting for the Ulstermen to get so bloody sick of him that they would tell him to clear out. Which was not, I daresay, an unreasonable hope, especially since, huddled in his corner, he understood every word that they said, although he never opened his mouth to let on. And in fact, they would have packed him off soon enough, since the snowstorm kept them from bringing him to headquarters in Ramallah, if Sergeant McClane hadn't laid down the law and insisted on waiting for the military police to look him over.

—I should think you would be, sir; so was I. A fortnight ago, when we ran through with him what had happened prior to recommending him for promotion and a medal, I asked him what had aroused his suspicion. Shall I tell you what he said, sir? “Sure now, the goats didn't like him. I know a thing or two about goats, and his didn't like him one bit.” Tipped off that the man was a spy by three sulky goats, ha ha ... that's what I call a keen eye! The next day a deputation came slogging through the snow from Jerusalem: two military policemen and an interpreter, Roger Evans, a Queen's man from Oxford—one of our university Orientalists who know the Koran inside out but lose their tongues when they have to ask for the time of day in Arabic, because their dons, who have never been east of the Thames in their lives, forgot to tell them there were Arabs in the world and thought they were teaching a dead language like Latin or Sanskrit. Well, there they were, the two of them, old Evans ruddy cross at having been dragged out in the cold for some daft shepherd, and the shepherd sitting in his corner, all huddled up in his cloak with his head bowed...

—Directly, sir. Picture him, if you can, huddled in a corner with that little Ulsterman sheepishly biting his nails; and old Evans jabbering away in his unspeakable Oxford Arabic; and the shepherd answering glumly; and the military policemen jotting it all down: a perfectly mad tale about some runaway goats whose tracks were washed out by the rain, and some village across the lines; and everyone ticked off at that obstinate Ulsterman who had raised the very devil for naught ... and in fact, old Evans was already getting up to go when something about that shepherd rang a bell—by now he's told us about it a thousand times, because I had to put him up for a promotion and a medal too; so you see, sir, this episode has helped to advance more than one military career. Well, Evans asked for more light and told the Arab to stand; and then he removed his head cloth and looked him straight in the eye and told him to take off his cloak; and when the chap refused and began to protest, the soldiers stripped it from him; and dashed if he wasn't wearing a dark suit underneath with a little striped necktie; and there was a book in the pocket of the jacket with all sorts of papers falling out of it; so that old Evans burst out laughing and said, this time in proper Oxford English, “Why, Mr. Mani, is it you?”

—Mani, sir. That's his name.

—Joseph Mani. Sounds rather like money, but it doesn't mean that at all. Or like manic, but it doesn't mean that either.

—As far as I know, it doesn't mean anything, sir. It's just one of your oriental Jewish names. Because you see, sir, the shepherd wasn't a shepherd, and the Arab wasn't an Arab but a Jew, who suddenly changed his tune and began to speak the king's English in a Scots brogue so thick it could have been fished from a loch; and then, as if he had been simply playing a prank, threw his arms around Evans and began to walk out with him, because he too, sir, was an interpreter in His Majesty's service.

—Yes, sir, a genuine Scots brogue. You'll hear it yourself tomorrow when he enters his plea. He picked it up as a boy at St. Joseph's in Jerusalem, back at the end of the last century, from a Scottish priest who hammered it into him until there's no getting it out again. His father and mother were both British subjects, sir, which makes him one too, even though he's never been to England. That's why the prosecution will have to ask for the death penalty, since he's a national who has betrayed his country ... which is why I've come to you, Colonel, to ask your advice before the trial begins.

—Of course, sir. Pardon me.

—Quite, sir, quite, it was my mistake to jump ahead. I simply didn't want to bore you with all kinds of details that I myself find endlessly fascinating.

—Utterly fascinating, sir. And I'll be delighted to. Well, there he was in that room, minus his cloak and in his frayed suit, with all sorts of papers sticking out of his pockets. Straightways he began telling some cock-and-bull story about a woman behind Turkish lines, a totally garbled, outrageous yarn; but our stubborn Ulsterman, now triumphantly vindicated, snatched the papers away from him and discovered a bundle of maps of Palestine, as well as some proclamations in Arabic, which he didn't need to read in order to know that they were not precisely what one brought one's ladylove; and so off he went to fetch a rope, tied up his prisoner, and—not trusting the policemen or the interpreter—set out with him for headquarters in Ramallah, from where Mr. Mani was taken to Jerusalem. I remember the night of his arrival. It was still quite parky, although the snow had begun melting in the narrow streets, and a few of us officers were sitting in the club and warming ourselves by the hearth when the police duty officer entered and informed us that a spy had been caught near Ramallah and was now under interrogation. Quite naturally there was a great to-do, and you know, sir, it strikes me that we British make rather a fuss over espionage, no doubt because we are taught from childhood on to be so trusting...

—Yes, sir, I do think so, sir. Who of us does not have his own private spy fantasy in which he singlehandedly brings some hidden bounder to justice? And so there was this police officer in the middle of the room with rain still trickling down his greatcoat, guardedly telling us what he could while we stood around him in a circle, until I stepped up to him—I remember it quite clearly—and asked, “But who is it? An Arab, I'll wager.” It was obvious
to
me that no one else would spy on the British Empire. “Not at all,” says he, his blue eyes twinkling, “it's one of our side.” Well, there was general consternation at that—but he, sir, he just looked me straight in the eye and said, it was too much for him to resist: “I mean, not exactly one of
our
side; he's one of those Jews who've leeched onto us...” He knew very well who I was—he even threw me a cheeky, half-jesting smile—and I recall feeling, sir, if I may say so, thoroughly in a funk, not because of the anti-Semitic remark, which means nothing to me and is something I can shrug off quite coolly, but because of the quite maddening coincidence. Here was Major Clark about to leave the next day and finally give me a shot at trying a major case—and who should it involve but a Jewish spy in Jerusalem, a fact that an uncalled-for delicacy might regard as reason...

—Quite right, sir.

—Quite right, sir.

—To spare me the discomfort...

—Indeed, sir. You know what we military advocates generally have to deal with: desertions, brawls, petty thefts, drunkenness, insubordination—in a word, thirty- and sixty-day sentences and one-guinea fines. And here was a real investigation, something to get to the bottom of, where possibly lurked a man's death. I was so beside myself that I left the club directly and went straight to the divisional guardhouse by Jaffa Gate, under the assumption that that's where this Mani was being held. Of course, I had no idea at the time what his name was, but I was determined not to be elbowed aside, and soon I found myself standing out in the cold night across from the place called David's Tower, which is a sort of miniature version of the Tower of London, with my mind racing ahead. Just then I noticed a Jew dressed in black, hanging back by a little lane that ran into the empty square—and I knew directly that he was connected to the spy and had come to see what was being done with him; which meant that word had already reached the concerned parties in Jerusalem, who had sent a first scout to reconnoiter; and a most clandestine-looking, eternal-looking, metaphysical-looking scout he was ... only later did I discover that he was not the least bit different from his scoutmasters...

—I'm sorry, sir, there I go again getting ahead of myself.

—The twenty-eighth of February, sir. The next day was a tense but quiet one at the advocate-general's office. Everyone knew about the investigation in the Tower of David, and the brigadier was beating the bushes for Major Clark, who had been absent from work for several days because he was busy packing and buying gifts—oriental baubles, silk scarves, and little rugs for the British gentry waiting for him impatiently, I daresay irately, in England. And now this spy had fallen on us out of the blue, and the major was terrified of having his leave canceled and being made to take up the investigation while his little bun was growing daily in its oven, which was something the whole British army couldn't have done anything about. He kept running from the tailor's and the jeweler's to the interrogation cell and the brigadier, and from there back to the advocates' office for a look at the lawbooks—and never a word to me, sir, not a hint that I might take the case upon myself, although he knew I would have given my right arm to do it. Wherever he went his hip flask went with him, and he had the squinty look of a beaten dog...