Mr. Mani (28 page)

—Just so, sir. He found it all in the wastebaskets or on his way to them.

—There already has been a jolly big scandal, sir. Officers were arrested and charges have been filed. New procedures have been instituted, and a special man was brought in from Cairo and has been on the job for a week. When you call on the general at headquarters tomorrow, you'll notice all the wastebaskets are empty. There's now a special sergeant with a detail of two soldiers whose assignment it is to burn the waste around the clock, which he does so industriously that I believe that some of it is already on fire before it's been thrown away There's a permanent pillar of smoke outside military headquarters—if you look out the window you can see it right now. I say, sir, it's clearing again! And there's one of those black crows I've been telling you about. They already know that you, the presiding judge, have arrived and that I'm in here with you, although I'll be hanged if I know how they do.

—Yes, sir.

—Yes, sir.

—Over there, Colonel, if it's not too hard for you to make him out.

—A black spot it is, Colonel. And such black spots, Colonel, have been following me around for the past three weeks, because they know that the noose is tightening and that it won't be long now. Two emissaries of theirs have already been to see me, an old solicitor and a court clerk who can stammer a bit in English. They asked to look at the Handbook of Wartime Jurisprudence, and I gladly let them have it and gave them a place to sit in my room, where they spent the whole day reading and engaging in Talmudic disputations. I even had them served tea, which they wouldn't touch; at closing time, pale and exhausted, they handed the handbook back to me with the tips of their fingers, as if Mani's death were already inside it, and nodded sadly and looked at each other and asked if I knew the London Horowitzes. And when I confessed that I didn't, they began to ransack the rest of the world for some Horowitz whom I was prepared to be a distant relation of and could be given regards from, only to give up with a sigh in the end. “But this Mani is mad,” said the court clerk to me in a whisper. “Is it not beneath the dignity of Great Britain to concern itself with a madman? Why, even his father took his own life; can you not show him mercy?” But I, Colonel, looked them straight in the eye and answered curtly, “You know as well as I do he's not mad.”

—No, sir. Not even with that madness that masquerades as sanity until you sniff its sour smell in a warm room. No, there is absolutely nothing mad about him. He doesn't have even one iota of that first, slight, hardly visible wobble that eventually throws a man out of orbit. He has all his senses, Colonel; the man's soul may be a jungle, but neither his reason nor will are impaired, and he's in total command of himself; he says what he wishes to say, and holds back what he doesn't; and I happen to know that he is preparing a long political plea, not for the court's benefit, but for the public and the press. He's the sort of chap who likes his audience big and captive. He plans to let me say what I'm entitled to, and then to deliver a speech that will electrify Jerusalem, because it will be given by a man with a hangman's noose around his neck. I feel it; I
know
it; that's why he walked straight into that Ulsterman's funk hole when he could have easily gone around it. He was tired of playing to crowds of Mohammedans assembled by the whips of Turks; nothing would do for him but to perform for all Jerusalem.

—That's just it, sir. It's only a guess, but I reckon he's sharpening a poisoned dart for us. As much as I've tried drawing him out, I've gotten precious little out of him. He composed all the drafts of his speech in Hebrew, and when I sought to lay hands on them, he quite simply ate them. They're safely inside him now.

—You'll see him tomorrow, Colonel, in the dock. Don't be fooled into thinking he's following the proceedings, because the only thing on his mind will be his speech: about this eternal battle-field of a country that is spawning another catastrophe and about all the locusts waiting to arrive ... although if you take a good look around you, Colonel, what you see here is one big wasteland with jolly few people anywhere. I told him as much, too. “Forget all that,” I told him; “Find yourself a good barrister who will tell the court about your childhood, and your poor dead father; you're going to get yourself hung, and the more of your political balderdash, the more rope you'll wrap around your neck.” But he just smiles at that, cool as a cucumber. A most political animal; and most politically calm! Quite certain that there's politics in everything he does ... and yet I know, sir—and the knowledge turns in me like a knife—that there's another story here. There's someone else lurking in the background whom he's out to get back at, and all his politics are mere autosuggestion.

—A quite sensible thought, sir. In fact, I had it myself. I had a hook installed in the ceiling without his knowledge and a length of rope left in his cell one night, and I instructed the guards to look the other way in the hope that he would put an end to it. Well, sir, that night he pulled out the hook and coiled up the rope, and the next morning he handed them to me in a neat bundle without a word, which was his way of telling me that he meant to have his speech. And so he's been whittling away at it—and though I haven't a notion what's in it, I would be most delighted to be spared it, because it can only stir up feeling against us.

—No, sir. It's nothing that could affect the sentence. He's as good as dead already, sir, unless one of those crows can fly to Buckingham Palace and come back with a royal pardon. The case against him is open-and-shut, sir, and you musn't be misled by my qualms. Tomorrow morning I'll be there like an immovable body, and your two colleagues won't need to be convinced; Lieutenant Colonel Keypore would like nothing better than to see the man swing for those lost cannon across the Jordan, and I don't believe he'll relent ... oh no, not
him
but nonetheless, sir ... and now, sir, I am ... I am speaking not only as a soldier, but as a British subject too ... if it were possible ... you see, once the trial starts, it will proceed most speedily, with a rapidity we have no ... control over ... and so I thought that perhaps we should consider ... since there is...

—Sir?

—Yes, sir, the interested parties have already made inquiries. It turns out there's a Turkish scaffold in the tower, with enough rope and tackle to hang us all. If the Turks had seen to their stock of artillery shells as they saw to their rope, we might not have taken this city so easily. And there's an Arab who served as the hangman's helper and claims he can manage things quite splendidly ... so you see, sir, that's why I say ... because ... and I know I've been talking nonstop ... but we have seen ... we have seen...

—Sir?

—What boy is that, sir?

—Ah, yes, of course, the boy ... but I have told you, haven't I, sir ... I rather think ... I mean ... but in what way?

—Oh.

—Oh...

—Why, yes ... directly, sir ... why, of course, the boy...

—His name is Ephraim. Our Mani claims he's his, and there's no reason to doubt him, even though they don't look at all alike. The lad, you see, is blond and blue-eyed, and his dead mother, or so the story goes, was a tubercular young Jewess from Russia or thereabouts whom Mani picked out from all the bundles and luggage unloaded at the Beirut railway station, where he waited for his clientele. I can't say if she was a proper revolutionary—you'll find youngsters whose only terror has been directed against their parents, yet who are so certain they've committed crimes against the state that they feel compelled to flee. In any event, she attached herself to him; and accustomed though he was to the whims of such gypsies, whom he always managed to shake off, he could not get away from her. Perhaps she was as political as he was. Whatever the reason, something about her touched his stubborn, gloomy old bachelor heart. Perhaps she wanted a child from him, being afraid to push on to Palestine, or not believing she could get across the border, yet desiring something Palestinian of her own. Your guess is as good as mine. He didn't talk much about her, sir. In any case, they had no money, and they lived together for a year or two by the railway station in that boardinghouse I spoke of, which was in West Beirut, sir, in the Moslem quarter, an extremely poor part of town, so he says, by the old Sephardic synagogue, where he dropped in every Friday; with a bit of luck, sir, we'll be there soon and see it all for ourselves ... When her time came they were afraid to go to hospital, lest they be asked for their papers and risk expulsion by the Turks as foreigners. And anyway, he believed that he could deliver the child by himself, because he had been through a birth once before and had even cut the umbilical cord. Still, he fetched a Moslem midwife for good measure; but the woman had a frail constitution; and she lost too much blood and died the day after giving birth. That left him with the infant, who grew up to be a bit slow and a stammerer, but an agreeable child who grew handsomer with each passing day and had his mother's good looks, which had already been ravaged by illness when Mani met her; only now, via her son who was unfolding like a flower, did he realize how beautiful she must have been. You'll see him tomorrow, Colonel, a four-year-old seated in the front row. I've allowed him to be present for the first session, so that he can enjoy the fine room and the officers in their uniforms and remember that his father was given a fair trial and not simply thrown to the dogs...

—Yes, sir. That's it in a nutshell. I do believe the weather's cleared for good now. The desert air will dry us out and bring us a sweetly golden Jerusalem afternoon. I feel in a dreadful dither, sir, for having bored you like—

—In a word, sir, my guidelines are clear and entirely in accordance with the Handbook of Wartime Jurisprudence, section 10, paragraph 3. In time of war, in occupied territory, when the defendant is a British subject who has engaged in espionage resulting in loss of life, the prosecution must demand the death penalty, which the court is authorized to inflict without right of appeal ... However...

—Yes, sir, I understand that...

—Yes, sir.

—Those were my very words, sir!

—Quite.

—I see, sir ... which would imply...

—I am surprised, sir.

—Colonel...

—Of course, sir ... that would make it an entirely different matter...

—Exactly my feeling, sir ... it's the only way...

—Excellent, sir ... it will just take a bit of thought...

—Thank you.

—It did all come together, didn't it? Then I have succeeded.

—I'm most grateful...

—I'm greatly moved, sir, and most grateful for your patience in giving me a hearing. The fact is that when I was informed at headquarters that you were coming from Egypt to preside at the trial, I had a most sinking feeling. And when I walked into this room two hours ago, sir, I was shaking, because I knew in whose presence I was. Your name, sir, has been on the lips of every officer for several days now: the hero of the Marne! And when I saw you sitting in this dim room with those dark sunglasses, with your empty sleeve on the arm of the chair and all your scars, I was alarmed and almost in tears. I had never imagined you were so badly wounded, and I thought, hang it all, the panther and the cobra have been joined on the bench tomorrow by the wounded lion! I could not know what lust for vengeance you might be harboring inside you; and here was a heinous case of wartime espionage resulting in loss of life; and the culprit was a ruddy Jew who refused all counsel and was quite prepared to be hung as long as he could give his ruddy speech that would cause the very devil of a row among the populace of this city; and once the trial began there would be no stopping it until it reached its bitter end, which it was my duty as prosecutor to pursue without quarter ... Was this, sir, the way British history in the Holy Land was to begin, with the hanging of a Jew in Jerusalem? And yet I had to ask myself if I would be understood; and whether, if I talked candidly enough to make myself understood, I would be suspected of divided loyalties. You see, sir, I've never sought to hide my Jewishness as have certain other officers in this division, nor could I hope to do so given my name, my appearance, my eyeglasses, my low and protuberant rear end, and my presumptuous literary garrulousness that even an aristocratic Cambridge mumble has been unable to dispel. It's all quite distasteful, to say nothing of prejudicial, especially since I had to assume, sir, that you were anti-Semitically disposed, if only in a sociological sense, as a member of your class and the circles in which you move. And so I was quite resigned to failure, perhaps even to a severe reprimand; but I remembered what my mother always told me; “Never give up, son,” she said, “never be afraid as long as you know your intentions are pure”; which is how I put my case before you, sir; not merely as a soldier obeying orders, but as a subject of Great Britain, of the empire that rests assured of its approaching victory, of the war's end, and of the glorious era that awaits us and the entire Commonwealth...

—Sir.

—Sir.

—Sir.

—Sir.

—I'm quite ecstatic to have earned your trust.

—Do you really think so, sir?

—Why, of course, sir. Were he not a British subject, the prosecution need not ask for death, and he would then be a national of the territory under occupation.

—Most irregular, sir. I fail to see how such naturalization could be valid, the British passport notwithstanding.

—If we make a point of it, sir.

—His grandfather, sir, came from Salonika, which was in Turkey at the time and is presently in Greece.

—Why, of course, sir. We can definitely say Greece. But can we be sure they'll take him if we banish him?

—Then you think, do you, Colonel, that the islands would be best?