with Yousef had intervened and Assaf had met Abu Musa and Bell, which complicated everything.
The Runner was now on the other side of the border from Jericho and could no longer go there, but professional judgment told Tajar the only safe course was caution. Reluctantly, he put aside for a time his desire to appear at Bell's front gate.
Then came the astonishing revelation that Anna also knew Bell.
Tajar had never suspected that Anna might connect the one-eyed hermit of Jericho with the former British intelligence officer who had helped her in Cairo after David was killed, who had also provided her with papers to come to Palestine. Bell had gone by a different name in Egypt and had lived in Jerusalem for only a short time after the world war, obscurely and quietly, before moving down to Jericho. For nineteen years Jericho had been part of Jordan and there was no reason why Anna should know who Bell was. Before 1967 the one-eyed hermit's reputation had existed on the other side of the border, on the other side of no-man's-land, and it wasn't something Anna could have heard about in west Jerusalem. Tajar knew about Bell because of intelligence files, because he had always been interested in Bell and had made a point of keeping track of the former head of the notorious Monastery in Egypt. But no ordinary Israeli could know anything about Bell.
Bell, after all, had buried his past life, his clandestine life in espionage, with great care. Not even Abu Musa knew anything about it.
***
The story came out when Anna told Tajar of Assaf's first visit to the house in the orange grove in Jericho.
Anna had paused then to smile at Tajar.
The hermit Assaf speaks of, she said, is the man who did everything for me in Cairo. But since it's your business to know things, you've probably known that all along. Have you?
Tajar was astounded. Well . . . yes, he replied. As a matter of fact, I did know it. But it amazes me that you do, because his past is a very well-kept secret. Once he left Egypt, Bell, as he has called himself since then, went out of his way to put his old life behind him. And I'd say he has had great success in doing just that.
You knew him in Cairo, didn't you? asked Anna. Through your work then?
That's right.
And he was important, wasn't he?
Oh yes. Very.
I've always thought he must have been, said Anna. And I've always imagined you must have known him, even though I've never said anything about it. I asked him once, later, why he had done so much for me in Cairo. I knew it was connected to David but not how, exactly. He wouldn't talk much about it, or he couldn't, but he said there had been a terrible mistake with David and that was why he did what he did for me. It touched me so deeply, looking back, his caring that way and taking the time to do something about it. Cairo was such absolute chaos then, and for a man as important as he seemed to be to come on his own to find me . . . well, he could have sent someone but he didn't. He came himself. He was the first person to come, you know. I was alone in the house with all the doors and shutters locked when he turned up to help me. I was lying in the corridor downstairs near the back door, the door to the courtyard. The floor was stone. It was hard and cold and dark and I was terrified, half out of my mind. There was nothing left, just nothing. Somehow he got into the house and lit a candle and all at once there was his face above me in the darkness . . .
Even now, all these years later, Anna shuddered at the memory of that darkness and terror when she had thought she was slipping into madness. Her hands came up in front of her in a pathetic involuntary motion.
Protection against the darkness? A plea to the angel of death to be merciful? She gripped her arms and tightened her fists, forcing down the fear and memory from long ago. After a moment the shudder passed.
Quietly, she resumed her account.
So with his help I came to Palestine, she said. Then one winter after the world war ended I was walking down a street in Jerusalem, not far from here. The street was narrow and it was raining hard and blowing and I was struggling along with my head down against the wind, all wrapped up so I couldn't see much of anything. A car came along and I had to get out of the street because it was so narrow, so I pushed into a doorway and there was a man doing the same thing beside me. He was coming from the other direction and if it hadn't been for the car right at that moment we wouldn't have seen each other's face, just each other's feet slogging by in the rain. But we both looked up to find a place to push into and there he was. It was him, with most of his face hidden by a scarf and a hat and his coat collar. You can imagine my shock. I hadn't seen him since Cairo and I had no idea who he really was. I didn't even know his name and of course I didn't know what had become of him. We just stood there staring at each other.
Anna fell silent. Suddenly she smiled.
Anna went on smiling, a gentle smile.
It's like a mask, she said. Some inhuman kind of mask that's so extreme and unlikely you can't believe it at first. That great bulging staring single eye, and the bulging black eye patch, and the scars and all the rest of it. It's a face you have to be warned about, to prepare yourself for, otherwise you just stare and stare because it's like nothing you've ever seen. Now I can smile about it because I came to know what was beneath that mask, but I couldn't then. His face paralyzed me then. And meeting him like that, both of us drenched with the water streaming off us, huddling in a doorway . . . it was absurd and ludicrous and wonderful, and fearful and joyous and ridiculously awkward all at the same moment, just everything. I was paralyzed and my heart leapt, both at once. But I'm afraid I'm making no sense at all, trying to describe it all these years later. . . .
They stood in the doorway until finally one of them suggested they get out of the rain. Bell, for that was his name now, lived nearby and offered coffee and a fire. They went to his small apartment where the rooms were half underground with walls of stone several feet thick, the broad windowsills on a level with the garden outside, a snug and cozy retreat on such a blustery winter afternoon. Bell poured brandy and built a fire in the stove and soon they were warm in front of it.
The rooms were heaped with books. Bell was studying Arabic, he said. He read and did little else. He had some disability pay from the war and intended to live on it, to begin a new life in some remote corner.
Anna told him of her own years since Cairo, of her wanderings in Palestine. Bell was reticent, polite, sometimes shy. He wanted to be cordial but it was apparent he hadn't put his old life behind him and didn't know how to behave with Anna, who in a way was from that old life. Yet she wasn't really a part of it and Bell had nothing to fear from her. To reassure him, she promised at once never to say anything about having known him in Cairo.
But no, then she realized it was his own face that was making him reticent and fearful. He didn't seem to know how to behave with a young woman. From what he said she gathered he had no friends in Jerusalem and saw almost no one other than the Arab scholar who came to tutor him. In Cairo she had thought he was important, but now she realized he had probably been much more important than she had imagined. Without an official position and the status that went with it, and the automatic relationships that went with it, he didn't know how to act, especially with a young woman. He was unsure of himself, even lost. Alone now with his face, with his freedom, he hadn't yet learned how to make his way.
The rain splashed on the windows and they drank more brandy and became lovers that afternoon. Far more than him, it was Anna's doing. She had much to thank him for, more than she ever could, but there was also something beyond even that. So seldom could one make a profound difference in the life of another, and Anna sensed she had that gift then, for in his way he was as alone and fearful as she had once been in Cairo. As they lay in front of the little stove and the rain beat down in the half-light turning to darkness, Bell told her as much. Since the shattering of his face, he said, it was the first time he had been with a woman in a regular way, as if he were just a man who could meet someone and. . . .
They saw each other for several weeks. Anna came to him every afternoon and stayed through the night and it never seemed to stop raining the whole time they were together. Love was the delicious smell of olive wood smoke and rain softly beating down outside on the garden above them, and brandy and an early darkness and a warm cheery stove hidden away from the world for long tender evenings. Then she was busy for a few days, and when she came again Bell said he had decided to move to Jericho. He had found his remote corner of the world, he
