Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 15

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was fraught with significance.

Her restraint was impressive, and it was only after they had eaten the

main course of savoury meats wrapped in vine leaves and swimming in

creamy lemon sauce that she suggested that David might like to finance

her next movie.

Let's find some place where we can talk about it she murmured, and what

better place than her suite?

John Dinopoulos waved them away with a grin and a knowing wink, a

gesture that annoyed David for it made him see the whole episode for the

emptiness that it was.

The star's suite was pretentious, with thick white carpets and bulky

black leather furniture.  David poured himself a drink while she went to

change into clothing more suitable for a discussion of high finance.

David tasted the drink, realized that he did not want it and left it on

the bar counter.

The star came out of the bedroom in a bedrobe of white satin which was

cut back from arm and bosom, and was so sheer that her flesh gleamed

with a pearly pink sheen through the material.  Her hair was loose, a

great wild mane of swirling curls, and suddenly David was sick of the

whole business.

I'm sorry, he said.  John was joking, I'm not a millionaire, and I

really prefer boys.

He heard his untouched glass shatter against the door of the suite as he

closed it behind him.

Back at his own hotel he ordered coffee from room service, and then on

an impulse he picked up the telephone again and placed a Cape Town call.

It came through with surprising speed, and the girl's voice on the other

end was thickened with sleep.  Mitzi, he laughed.  How's the girl?

'Where are you, warrior?  Are you home?  'I'm in Athens, doll. 'Athens,

God!  How's the action?  'It's a drag.  Yeah!  I bet, she scoffed.  The

Greek girls are never going to be the same again.  'How are you, Mitzi?

I'm in love, Davey.

I mean really in love, it's far out.

We are going to be married.  Isn't that just something else?  David felt

a spur of anger, jealous of the happiness in her voice.  That's great,

doll.  Do I know him?  Cecil Lawley, you know him.  He's one of Daddy's

accountants.  David recalled a large, pale-faced, bespectacled man with

a serious manner.

Congratulations, said David.  He felt very much alone again.  Far from

home, and aware that life there flowed on without his presence.

You want to talk to him?  Mitzi asked.  I'll wake him up There was a

murmur and mutter on the other end, then Cecil came on.

Nice work, David told him, and it really was.  Mitzi's share of Morgan

Group would be considerably larger than David's.  Cecil had drilled

himself an oil well in a most unconventional manner.

Thanks, Davey.  Cecil's embarrassment at being caught tending his oil

well carried clearly over five thousand miles of telephone cable.

Listen, lover.  You do anything to hurt that girl, I'll personally tear

out your liver and stuff it down your throat, okay?

Okay, said Cecil, and his alarm was brittle in his tone.  I'll put you

back to Mitzi.

She prattled on for another fifty dollars worth before hanging up. David

lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and thought about his

dumpy soft-hearted cousin and her new happiness.  Then quite suddenly he

made the decision which had been lurking at the edge of his

consciousness all these weeks since leaving Spain.

He picked up the phone again and asked for the porter's desk.

I'm sorry to trouble you at this time in the morning, he said, but I

should like to get on a flight to Israel as soon as possible, will you

please arrange that.

The sky was filled with a soft golden haze that came off the desert. The

gigantic T.  W.  A.  747 came down through it, and David had a glimpse

of dark green citrus orchards before the solid jolt of the touch-down.

Lad was like any other airport in the world but beyond its doors was a

land like no other he had ever known.  The crowd who fought him for a

seat in one of the big black sheruts, communal taxis plastered with

stickers and hung with gewgaws, made even the Italians seem shining

towers of restrained good manners.

Once aboard, however, it was as though they were on a family outing, and

he a member of that family.  on one side of him a paratrooper in beret

and blouse with his winged insignia on the breast and an Uzzi

submachine-gun slung about his neck offered him a cigarette, on the

other a big strapping lass also in khaki uniform and with the dark

gazelle eyes of an Israeli, which became even darker and more soulful

when she looked at David, which was often, shared a sandwich of unleaven

bread and balls of fried chick-peas, the ubiquitous pita and falafel,

with him and practised her English upon him.

All the occupants of the front seat turned around to join the

conversation, and this included the driver who nevertheless did not

allow his speed to diminish in the slightest and who punctuated his

remarks with fierce blasts of his horn and cries of outrage at

pedestrians and other drivers.

The perfume of orange blossom lay as heavily as sea mist upon the

coastal lowlands, and always afterwards it would be for David the smell

of Israel.

Then they climbed into the Judaean hills, and David felt a sense of

nostalgia as they followed the winding highway through pine forests and

across the pale shining slopes where the white stone gleamed like bone

in the sunlight and the silver olive trees twisted their trunks in

graceful agony upon the terraces which were the monuments to six

thousand years of man's patient labour.

It was so familiar and yet subtly different from those fair and

well-beloved hills of the southern cape he called home.  There were

flowers he did not recognize, crimson blooms like spilled blood, and

bursts of sunshine-yellow blossoms upon the slopes, then suddenly a pang

that was like a physical pain as he glimpsed the bright flight of

chocolate and white wings amongst the trees, and he recognized the

crested head of an African hoopoe, a bird which was a symbol of home.

He felt a sense of excitement building within him, unformed and

undirected as yet but growing, as he drew closer to the woman he had

come to see, and to something else of which he was as yet uncertain.

There was, at last, a sense of belonging.  He felt in sympathy with the

young persons who crowded close to him in the cab.

See, cried the girl, touching his arm and pointing to the wreckage of

war still strewn along the roadside, the burned-out carapaces of trucks

and armoured vehicles, preserved as a memorial to the men who died on

the road to Jerusalem.  There was fighting here.  David turned in the

seat to study her face, and he saw again the strength and certainty that

he had so admired in Debra.  These were a people who lived each day to

its limit, and only at its close did they consider the next.

Will there be more fighting?  he asked.

Yes, she answered him without hesitation.

Why?

Because, if it is good, you must fight for it, and she made a wide

gesture that seemed to embrace the land and all its people, and this is

ours, and it is good, she said.

Right on, doll, David agreed with her, and they grinned at each other.

So they came to Jerusalem with its tall, severe apartment blocks of

custard-yellow stone, standing like monuments upon the hills, grouped

about the massive walled citadel that was its heart.

T.  W.  A.  had reserved a room at the Intercontinental Hotel for David

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