Free The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark Page B

cabinet and
brought out the icon picture that Freddy admired. Alexandros smiled fondly at
the flat, impassive Madonna and Child done in blue and faded gold. Neither man
was quite sure of its date. They hoped it was twelfth-century. Freddy was
consulting experts and generally looking into the subject in the meantime. ‘It
isn’t normally the sort of thing I go in for,’ he said, as he always did.
Alexandros replied. ‘It is early, not late, this icon.
    ‘Yes,
it’s early, but the tradition varies so little, it’s difficult even for the
experts to judge how early.’
    ‘I see
an expert soon,’ said Alexandros. ‘He is coming from Italy. Next month.’
    ‘It
appeals to me in any event,’ said Freddy.
    ‘It is
yours. I keep it for you.’ The dealer put it back in the glass case and locked
the door.
    ‘I can’t
afford it,’ Freddy said.
    ‘It’s
not a question of what you can afford. It is a question that you take home
something from the Holy Land that is worth taking home.’ Alexandros started
packing the crib-figures into a small box padded with cotton wool. ‘I am taking
these to the lady at her hotel. I see her this evening.’
    ‘Why
bother to go after her, Alexandros, for goodness’ sake?’ Freddy said. ‘It’s
only a flyer.’ Alexandros was a substantial dealer.
    ‘I make
a sale,’ Alexandros said.
    Freddy
lifted his zipper-bag. ‘I’ll look in some time tomorrow, perhaps.’
    ‘I make
a sale to the lady,’ Alexandros said, and anxious to explain himself more
clearly, he added, ‘Why do you walk all the way from the Mandelbaum Gate to the
Bungalow Cartwright? — Mr Hamilton, a Chevrolet with driver is ten shillings
only for this journey.’
    ‘I never
take taxis and I never hire cars,’ Freddy stated, ‘not if I can help it. My
father never did.’
    ‘So I
never let slip a tourist customer. So I go to the hotel after dinner and
bargain with the lady and she gets the fine crib-set for four-fifteen, four-ten.
It is my upbringing.’
    ‘How do
you know her hotel?’ Freddy said.
    Alexandros
thought this question too amusing to need an answer. He said good-bye to Freddy
in the French of the Lebanon, and Freddy responded, in his French of the Home
Counties, to the effect that he, also, had been very greatly enchanted.
     
    The hot walk from the Gate
was well worth it, Freddy thought, if only because of the relief one felt when
one turned in the familiar doorway of the bungalow. On the last lap of his
walk, uphill, he was tempted to start composing a set of verses to send on his
return to Israel, thanking Joanna for the week-end which had not yet come to
pass. A villanelle perhaps … It is so very different here / In modern Israel
from your! Delightful English atmosphere … Freddy realized he was cheating.
The bread-and-butter verses could not in honesty be started until he had
actually set foot on the other side of the Mandelbaum Gate on Sunday afternoon.
He put temptation behind him and plodded up the hill to the week-end before
him.
    The
bungalow was set in a clump of trees not far from a steeper hill that led to a
tumbledown Orthodox church and the Potter’s Field, where, some way off, lived a
marvellously feeble old monk, much liked by Freddy, and whose eyes alone seemed
to keep his brittle limbs alive in one body, so spiritually did they burn in
his skull. Freddy caught sight of the monk’s blue robe moving up there among
the shrubbery as the old man came out to feed his chickens; whereupon Freddy
had felt at home already, and had plodded the few steps onward to the silent
bungalow, the garden bench awaiting him beside Joanna’s wild-flower
arrangement, and the letter-pad on his knee. ‘Dearest Ma …’
     
    You see, dearest Ma, the
trouble is …
    The
trouble, in fact, was … Freddy’s thoughts dropped to a whisper in his brain.
JERICHO, MOUNT OF OLIVES, GETHSEMANE. Hair Tare, Tufted Vetch, Hawk-bit, Corn
Bluebottle. The trouble, in fact, was … Freddy’s thoughts whispered