make a few comparisons between himself and the big muscular buck in the
back seat.
Let's go to Barcelona, he laughed.
David drove quietly through the outskirts of the town, and Debra looked
over her shoulder at Joe.
Are you comfortable? she asked in the guttural language she had used
before.
If he's not, he can run behind, David told her in the same language, and
she gawked at him a moment in surprise before she let out a small
exclamation of pleasure. Hey! You speak Hebrew! Not very well, David
admitted. I've forgotten most of it, I and he had a vivid picture of
himself as a ten-year-old, wrestling unhappily with a strange and
mysterious language with back-to-front writing, an alphabet that was
squiggly tadpoles and in which most sounds were made in the back of the
throat, like gargling.
Are you Jewish? she asked, turning in the seat to confront him. She
was no longer smiling; the question was clearly of significance to her.
David shook his head. No, he laughed at the notion. I'm a
half-convinced non-practising monotheist, raised and reared in the
Protestant Christian tradition_a__ Then why did you learn Hebrew? My
mother wanted it, David explained, and felt again the stab of an old
guilt. She was killed when I was still a kid. I just let it drop. It
didn't seem important after she had gone. Your mother, Debra insisted,
leaning towards him, she was Jewish? Yeah. Sure, David agreed. But my
father was a Protestant. There was all sorts of hell when Dad married
her. Everyone was against it, but they went ahead and did it anyway.
Debra turned in the seat to Joe. Did you hear that he's one of us. 'Oh,
come on! David protested, still laughing.
Mazaltov, said Joe. Come and see us in Jerusalem some time. 'You're
Israeli? David asked, with new interest.
Sabras, both of us, said Debra, with a note of pride and deep
satisfaction. We are only on holiday here. 'it must be an interesting
country, David hazarded.
Like Joe just said, why don't you come and find out some time, she
suggested off handedly. You have the right of return Then she changed
the subject. Is this the fastest this machine will go? We have to be
in Barcelona by seven.
There was a relaxed feeling between them now, as though some invisible
barrier had been lowered, as though she had made some weighty judgement.
They were out of the city and ahead the open road wound down into the
valley of the Ebro towards the sea.
Kindly extinguish cigarettes and fasten your seat belts, David said, and
let the Mustang go.
She sat very still beside him with her hands folded in her lap and she
stared ahead when the bends leapt at them, and the straights streamed in
a soft blue blur beneath the body of the Mustang. There was a small
rapturous smile on her mouth and the golden lights danced in her eyes,
and David was moved to know that speed affected her the way it did him.
He forgot everything else but the girl in the seat beside him and the
need to keep the mighty roaring machine on the ribbon of tarmac.
