Holy War. Mike Bond
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took a deep, silent breath. Two grenades clicked together in her sack; she held her breath; the Israelis didn’t hear.
A shell came down sighing and smacked into the next street, the earth shook, staggered, a building began to fall. In the roar Rosa crawled quickly through the window, over a tile roof that had fallen in one tilting piece, then down the next alley, listening, moving ten feet and listening again. A Mirage came in low and dropped napalm, the sky bright as a hearth, wind roaring through the streets toward the seething flames, the screams, the wail of metal, stone and flesh bending, breaking, melting. So this is Hell, she thought, running up the narrow street under the boiling red clouds, her sack of grenades clasped tight to her belly.
3
NEILL WOKE WITH HIS STOMACH AFIRE. There was a distant, nearing rumble. A 747, the first United from New York. In that plane the passengers would be waking, stretching, gathering their things after a night over the Atlantic. Not the same as the first time he had crossed fourth class in the SS Statendam, a kid of seventeen deserting Cleveland for the London School of Economics and a world of excitement and anticipation.
The plane passed over rattling the glass. What if he'd stayed in the States – how could it have been worse than this? What would he have become, an editor on some local paper, chasing down dog-bite stories, living in some split-level suburban slum? He'd have never gone to Beirut, Czechoslovakia, all those other places, have never met Bev.
He got up and closed the window. “I was going somewhere with Jonathan Tremaine,” Beverly mumbled. “In his Austin Healey. The wind was blowing our hair.”
“Good old Jonathan.” Neill got back into bed, wondering if in the dream she'd slept with him. A 707, a charter maybe, crisped over, closer to the Thames, landing lights blinking as it crossed the window.
Without Bev he wouldn't have had the kids. He thought of them sleeping in their rooms above the ceiling. If he never came back would they miss him? They'd grow up fine without him. Or is even a lousy father better than none? Edgar already had too much of the world on his broad young shoulders. And the boys like sharks round Katerina – a fatherless girl is always easier to screw. Even if they don't think so they need you. More than you give.
But you always feel like this before you go. A total coward, always have been. Admit it. You may be a world-jaded journalist but you've hated or feared or been bored by nearly every moment of it.
And aren't kids better with a father who does what he wants, instead of one who's always afraid? He noted the triumphant smile of peace on Beverly's sleeping face. Would that I could. He raised his knees but the knot in his stomach wouldn't go away. Beverly a believer in twenty-year cycles. Ready to slip from him to the next. He sat up, feet cold on the carpet, rubbing his stubble. Can I shower without waking her?
A SHELL SCREAMED over like a siren, Syrian from the hills, aimed here, coming down louder, louder, shaking the night, shuddering the earth, shrapnel shrieking through the streets.
Beneath her raincoat Rosa cradled the sack of grenades closer. “You're crazy,” the Christian guard said.
He had a scar down one cheek, under the stubble. It cut into his lip and in the early morning light made him seem petulant. She adjusted her weight. “He's still in there, my father. Rue Lebbos –”
“We've cornered some Shiites there. You can't go in.”
“He's blind. I have to get him out.”
He tipped up her chin with his rifle, watching her eyes. “There is no more Rue Lebbos.”
“He's in a cellar.”
“They've all caved in. There's no one there any more, sister.” He glanced at the round belly beneath her raincoat. “Bring us new life. Forget the old.”
He seemed kind, despite his scar, maybe not one of the Christians that murdered the two thousand Palestinian women and children and old people here in Shatila last year. She pushed round him, over the broken concrete. “You'd treat your father so?”
He pointed the rifle at her belly, nudged the muzzle up to her face, tapped the trigger as he swung the muzzle up and the bullets spattered over her head off the wall and up into the sky. Chunks of clay fell down on her head and shoulders. “It's for your child, sister, that I didn't shoot you. Perhaps I still will.”
“Shoot me, then.” She turned and walked between the broken houses, tensed for the bullets to bore like rods of fire through her belly, spine, and brain, the grenades blowing up and spreading her in tiny chunks of flesh and bone.
A shell roared down and slapped the next street, shrapnel singing off the buildings. She ducked, straightened slowly, walking still, cradling her belly of grenades beneath the raincoat, the rush of her breath and hustling footsteps and the clicking of the grenades loud in her ears.
The guard would wait till the last moment before he fired. Till she crossed the ruined orchard at the top, full silhouette. Giving her time to think about it, turn back.
Steadily up the steps cut in the clay hill, no houses now, splintered lemon stumps, her footsteps whispering, the sun's red crescent up out of the towering Shouf, spilling like dusty lava down through wracked pine forests and smoky ruined villages. Not looking back she passed the crest, beyond the guard's field of fire, round a blasted tractor, a ruined almond orchard with demolished stone walls and the carious upjutting jaws of a burnt house. Someone had dragged olive boughs to the path to cut up for firewood. There was the stench of death, human or animal, she couldn't tell. She went in dawn's light down the far side of the hill into the outskirts of Beirut.
“THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME,” Beverly said. She took a sip of her coffee and it left a creamy mark on her upper lip. Neill forced down the annoyed urge to wipe it away. Let her look how she looks.
“I've tried, too, Bev,” he said softly. His leaving made everything here seem easy, made him feel affection for it all. With the back of a finger he wiped the milk from her lip. All was packed, the kids already gone, no reason to linger but for some moment of clarity that never came.
He put his dishes in the dishwasher, went upstairs, brushed his teeth, took a leak, as if marking territory for the last time, he thought, and came down with his bag over one shoulder.
“I said I'd take you to the airport,” she said.
“You've got clients this morning.”
She fingered half a caress down his temple and cheek. “Thank God you're going...” She gave him her reluctant half-shy smile, the one to make him feel guilty for her having to smile. For her having to overcome the sorrow of living with him.
He kissed her, thinking of when their kisses might have meant something. The house felt dusty, full of ashes and chill; he couldn't breathe he was so anxious to leave, the knot in his stomach something he could nearly reach inside and tear out.
“Remember how you always said, Neill, we have to choose between being kind and winning? See, you've proved yourself wrong: you've done neither.”
He went down the front steps into the early morning street and turned toward Earls Court station, across Cromwell and right at the corner into Hogarth Road, glancing back at the traffic.
A taxi slowed but he waved it on. Another, a red one, came idling up and stopped beside him. He glanced into the back, opened the door and got in beside a short stocky balding man in a gray suit and mac. The man held a black hat, The Times, and a briefcase on his lap. The driver turned into Earls Court and continued past the station. The small man opened his briefcase, raising its lid so the driver could not see inside it. “Came in last night. Bloody perfect.”
Inside the briefcase was a photo of a dark-bearded man, high forehead, clear expression, narrow deepset eyes, thick long nose, sharp lips in a wide mouth. A straight-ahead, fear-nothing face. Staring toward the camera but not seeing it, not squinting despite the sun in his face. Behind him, out of focus, a clay brick wall.
“What if this guy didn't blow the Marines' barracks, the French paratroopers?”
“That's