Past Lives (4 page)

'I told her I was working an extra shift at the factory,' said Benny, moving uncomfortably in his seat.

'You cunning bastard! You're going to keep the money for yourself!’ chuckled Eli.

‘
And you’re not?’

The two men lapsed into silence as the bus ground its way slowly up through the Judean hills in the darkness. The Arab women stared into space as if in a trance; the European man had put headphones on and the blonde girl rested her head on his shoulder. Occasionally, when the driver took a long time to change gear and the engine revs dropped, vague musical sounds escaped from the headphones, a thin, tinny sound.

It was just after eleven thirty and the moon was high above the Mount of Olives when the bus ground its way into the bus station and disgorged its passengers. Benny smirked as the blonde girl reacted to the temperature by hugging herself and complaining to her friend. Benny and Eli started making their way towards the walls of the old city.

'He said to enter at the Jaffa Gate,' said Eli as the walls of the old city stretched out before them, 'and then make our way to . . . ' He paused while he fished out a grubby piece of paper from inside his leather jerkin, 'the convent of St Saviour.'

'True Israelis, eh?' said Benny, puffing out his chest. He had been considering what Eli had said earlier. 'He’s right. We belong here. This is our land and the Christians know it.' He turned to beam at Eli who smiled at his friend’s ever changing moods.

'Halt!'

Both men stopped dead in their tracks as they crossed the threshold of the Jaffa gate and heard the command barked from the shadows. It was accompanied by the sound of an automatic rifle being cocked. An Israeli soldier materialised from the darkness, his right hand curled round the trigger of an automatic weapon. He signalled with his left hand that the two men should move towards him. Both complied. Neither was nervous; it was a common enough occurrence.

'Where are you going?' asked the soldier.

Benny replied rapidly in Hebrew and the soldier relaxed as if soothed by the sound. He motioned with the barrel of the gun that they should proceed.

'Shalom,' said Benny.

'Shalom,' replied the soldier merging back into the darkness.

St Saviour's was located down a small cobbled lane leading off the Via Dolorosa. The only outward sign was a wooden plaque on the wall, which the men had to struggle to read in the dim light emanating from the one street light fixed high on a wall some twenty metres away. There was an iron bell pull below the plaque. Eli yanked it and the sonorous sound echoed out to them from somewhere deep inside. A few moments later a hatch in the door slid back and a square of yellow light appeared. 'Yes?' said a woman's voice.

'The priest said we should come,' said Eli.

The hatch closed and Benny and Eli were left standing in the lane for more than a minute before they heard a series of bolts rattle back and saw the door swing slowly open.

'Come,' said the nun who had unlocked it; she was dressed in white with a long veil. Benny found it hard to tell how old she was; her face was scrubbed, pink and white, a complexion he was not at ease with, and her hair was hidden by a white cowl fixed beneath her veil. He noticed that her lace-up shoes seemed too big for her: they slid off her heel and scuffed the floor when she walked. She led the way along a narrow, uneven, stone-floored corridor where they were shown into a small chapel that smelled strongly of incense where they were left alone in brooding silence.

'I don't like this,' whispered Benny, hunching up his shoulders and scowling as he looked around.

'Christian places are all like this,' replied Eli. 'They like the darkness.'

Benny frowned as he examined a painting of a man in a loincloth, his side pierced by an arrow and blood spilling out from the wound while above him two angels played trumpets. Eli ran his fingers lightly along the altar cloth and started to fondle the gold cross that stood in the middle.

'Don't touch that,' said an even voice behind him. It didn’t sound angry, just authoritative.

Eli span round to find the tall figure of a man dressed in priest's robes standing in the doorway.

'Here we are then, just as I promised,' said Eli, showing his teeth like a chimpanzee. 'And this is my friend, Benny Zur.'

Benny switched on a grin too as the priest looked at him.

‘
I’m Dom Ignatius. You were born here too?'

'Hebron,' replied Benny.

'Your parents?'

'Both Jerusalem.'

'What about your grandparents?'

'My mother's people came from Jaffa. My grandfather had a fishing boat. He used to take me out fishing when I was . . .'

'And your father's?' interrupted the priest.

'I'm not sure,' replied Benny nervously, suddenly feeling a threat to the prospect of three hundred shekels. 'I never met them. They died before I was born. A village in the north I think.'

'But still in Palestine?'

'Israel,’ replied Benny.

‘
Quite,’ said Ignatius as if vaguely amused then he took a breath and said, ‘Good, my colleague Dr Stroud and I would both be grateful for your help with our research into life here in the Holy Land. We will need to ask you questions about your family background but, for this, you must be properly relaxed.'

Benny found that there was something unsettling about the phrase 'properly relaxed'. He’d felt the same about 'controlled conditions' when Eli had used it earlier. He looked first to Eli and then back at the priest. 'Properly relaxed?' he said.

'No need to be alarmed. No harm will come to you. But we would like to put you to sleep before we ask you things. It will improve your powers of recall.'

Benny’s eyes opened wide. 'You mean you want to hypnotise us?' he said, clearly appalled at the prospect.

'Something like that,' said the priest.

Benny shook his head. Eli too was unsure. Benny drew him to one side and whispered urgently, 'Anything could happen to us while we were under the influence. We could be murdered!’

'But they’re holy people!' protested Eli. 'Why would they want to murder us? We’ve got nothing worth stealing! They’ve no reason to kill us.'

'They’ve got no reason to pay us three hundred shekels either,' countered Benny, his eyes moving between Ignatius and Eli.

The priest saw that Benny was the more anxious of the two. 'There's really nothing to be afraid of,' he said to him in a calm even voice. 'Why don't you and your friend talk it over while I ask Sister Benedict to bring you something to eat and drink? If after that you don't want to go on with it we'll say no more about it. Under these circumstances of course, we would not be able to pay you the money . . .'

Ignatius left the room and Eli got to work on Benny. 'We can't afford to let an opportunity like this go,' he insisted. 'How often do we get the chance to get our hands on easy money?’

'I still don't like it,' said Benny. 'I'd like to know what's going on. They could do anything to us while we were asleep.'

'Like what?'

‘
Steal our kidneys. You hear stories of . . . ’

Eli’s look of derision stopped Benny in his tracks. ‘Stop talking rubbish about kidneys, will you?’

Benny shrugged and tried an alternative. 'So what's to stop them asking us all they want to know and then murdering us so they don't have to pay the money?'

Eli held up his hands in a gesture of exasperation. 'The man is a priest. We’re not dealing with robbers and thieves here,' he said. 'Besides, what are we going to do if we don't go through with it? It's too late to go back to Tel Aviv and we've no money to stay.'

A nun entered the room carrying a metal tray with sandwiches and a jug of wine on it. She put it down and left without saying anything. Eli filled a glass and handed it to Benny. ‘At least have a drink,' he said. 'Maybe it will help you to see sense.'

Benny took a mouthful then drained the glass in one go.

'That's more like it,' said Eli. He took a bite out of a sandwich and murmured approvingly. 'You said it yourself out there,' he said. 'We are important people, real Israelis. Our help is worth three hundred shekels of anybody's money.'

Eli topped up Benny’s glass and watched him continue to mellow as the wine allayed his fears. He could see he was becoming much more relaxed about the whole affair. Eventually he broke into a smile and said, 'Maybe you're right about these people,' he said. 'They probably don't mean us any harm.'

'That's the spirit,' said Eli. 'We'll finish our supper and tell Ignatius that we're going to help.'

Benny began to notice what a pleasant room this was - warm, friendly, reassuring. He was glad he had come.

When Ignatius returned, he was accompanied by a second man, even taller than he himself but not nearly so well proportioned. Ignatius was slim but the other man was painfully thin and gangly; his right shoulder drooped lower than the left and he held his head at the opposite angle, as if to compensate. He was wearing a lightweight linen suit that showed off wrinkles to advantage and the collar of his shirt had been made for a much larger man.

'Well gentlemen, what have you decided?' asked Ignatius without bothering to introduce the second man.

'We will be happy to help you sir,' answered Eli with an exaggerated smile. ‘We feel it’s our duty as Israelis.’

'Good,' replied the priest. 'This is Dr Stroud. He will make sure that no harm comes to you. Come with us please.'

The fact that Stroud carried a small leather bag registered with Eli more than it did with Benny. It seemed that, whereas Benny’s reservations had been dealt with by the wine, his own had just started to arise. They passed another small chapel where a group of five or six nuns were singing. The Latin words meant nothing to him but it was a sound he had known all his life.

Ignatius led the way down a narrow flight of stone steps near the back of the building and Eli felt the walls close in on him. They entered a basement where they all had to duck to avoid contact with the vaulted stone roof.

'In here,' said Ignatius, leaning back so Benny and Eli could enter a room at the end of the corridor ahead of him. He clicked on the light with his outstretched right hand and Benny drew in his breath and looked at Eli. This room didn't seem to belong in a church at all; it was much more like a doctor’s office.

'Don't be alarmed,' said Ignatius, sensing the pair’s unease. 'You'll be more comfortable here and the doctor will be able to look after you properly.’

Eli looked at Stroud and wasn't at all sure that he wanted the doctor looking after him. He looked as if he could do with some looking after himself. Stroud opened his bag and took out several glass vials and a box of plastic syringes which he laid out on a tray. Eli tried to catch Benny’s eye but Benny was obviously still enjoying the euphoria the wine had bestowed on him. Eli saw Stroud remove two syringes from their wrappers and fit needles to them. Ignatius noticed him staring and said something to Stroud who responded by stopping what he was doing to open a small cabinet and take out a bottle of pills. He handed it to Ignatius who opened it and gave two pills to Eli. ‘Here, these will help you relax.’

Eli was shown into an adjoining room by Ignatius while Stroud indicated to Benny that he lie down on a leather-topped couch.

Benny stared up at the ceiling, wondering why it was moving. He’d only had two glasses of wine . . . He felt the doctor bare his arm and rub it with a swab. It felt cold, icy cold. Ignatius had come back into the room and was looking down at him. 'Just relax,' he was saying. 'Relax and listen to what I say.'

Benny felt a slight sharp sensation in his arm. The light feeling in his head became more intense. It was as if his brain had suddenly become free of his body. His body had been a prison for his real self.

'What is your name?'

'Benny Zur,' he replied slowly. The words seemed heavy; he had difficulty getting them out.

'Where do you live?'

'I told you . . . Tel Aviv.'

'How old are you?'

'Thirty fi . . .'

'Relax ...' soothed the voice from somewhere far away beyond the horizons of light. 'Just relax.'

The sun was coming up ... no, it was night. He was in a desert . . . no, he was in a forest and he was afraid. He couldn't cope with the flood of images that were streaming through his consciousness, all demanding his attention. His pulse rate rose sharply. He became disorientated. The pictures kept coming and he couldn't view them dispassionately because they all featured him. Each one triggered a different emotional reaction and he couldn't keep up. He needed more air. He felt his legs go into painful spasm and tried to sit up. But he couldn't; he was now trapped in a body that weighed too much. He broke out in a sweat: he could feel it running down his face but he couldn't wipe it away. He was filled with foreboding. Something awful was about to happen, something awful . . . had happened.

'Your name?' asked the voice.

'Ishmael Hamadi.'

'Where do you live, Ishmael?'

'Beer Sheva.'

'Tell me about yourself. What do you do? Do you have family?'

'I'm a camel driver. I live with my wife Ruth. We have two sons, Saul and Eli. Ruth's mother stays with us too – she’s blind. Her father used to live with us but he died two months ago. He was eighty years old.'