there. It would be too lonely without you in that huge bed. 'Where
then? At your parents home? That would be a dead give-away. Every
time you arrive back in town, I leave home! No, they think I am staying
at the hostel here at the University. I told them I wanted to be closer
to the department You've got a room here? He stared at her.
Of course, Davey. I have to be a little discreet. I couldn't tell my
relatives, friends and employers to contact me care of Major David
Morgan. This may be the twentieth century, and modern Israel, but I am
still a Jewess, with a tradition of chastity and modesty behind me. For
the first time David began to appreciate the magnitude of Debra's
decision to come to him. He had taken it lightly compared to her. I'm
going to miss you, he said. And I you, she replied. Let's go home.
Yes, she agreed, laying aside her knife and fork. . I can eat any old
time. However, as they left Belgium House she exclaimed with
exasperation: Damn, I have to have these books back by today. Can we go
by the library? I'm sorry, Davey it won't take a minute. So they
climbed again to the main terrace and passed the brightly-lit
plate-glass windows of the Students Union Restaurant, and went on
towards the solid square tower of the library whose windows were lighted
already against the swiftly falling darkness. They had climbed the
library steps and reached the glass doors when a party of students came
pouring out, and they were forced to stand aside.
They were -facing back the way they had come, across the plaza with its
terraces and red-bud trees, towards the restaurant.
Suddenly the dusk of evening was lit by the searing white furnace glare
of an explosion, and the glass windows of the restaurant were blown out
in a glittering cloud of flying glass. It was as though a storm surf
had burst upon a rock cliff, flinging out its shining droplets of spray,
but this was a lethal spray that scythed down two girl students who were
passing the windows at that moment.
Immediately after the flash of the explosion the blast swept across the
terrace, a draught of violence that shook the red-bud trees and sent
David and Debra reeling against the pillars of the library veranda. The
air was driven in upon them so that their eardrums ached with the blow,
and the breath was sucked from their lungs.
David caught her to him and held her for the moments of dreadful silence
that followed the blast. As they stared so, a soft white fog of
phosphorus smoke billowed from the gutted windows of the restaurant and
began to roll and drift across the terrace.
Then the sounds reached them through their ringing eardrums, the small
tinkle and crunch of glass, the patter and crack of falling plaster and
shattered furniture. A woman began to scream, and it broke the spell of
horror.
There were shouts and running feet. One of the students near them began
in a high hysterical voice, A bomb. They've bombed the cafe. One of
the girls who had fallen under the storm of glass fragments staggered up
and began running in small aimless circles, screaming in a thin
passionless tone.
She was white with plaster dust through which the blood poured in dark
