City of Secrets by Stewart O’Nan Page B

said. “I have to fight to stay here. Why would I give up now?”
    They had no say anyway. The money went to Tel Aviv in a load of potash. Brand knew she was right, but sometimes, sitting in the queue outside the King David, he daydreamed of a place in the woods like his grandfather’s dacha, with a stone hearth and a thatch-roofed shed in the garden where he could cobble together birdhouses. Sentimental Brand, heir to the Romantics, lover of fireflies and white nights. Why did he suddenly want to blow everything up?
    Others were. The radar station near Caesarea, where the
Eastern Star
had docked. The oil depot outside of Tulkarm. Eighteen RAF planes at three separate airfields. Alone in thePeugeot, Brand listened to the damage reports from these operations with undisguised envy, as if he’d thought of them first.
    Eva celebrated the bombings but hated the curfews that inevitably followed. Like Mrs. Ohanesian, she complained about hoarders, meanwhile squirreling away enough food, cigarettes and cognac to hole up for a month. Brand didn’t keep much in his flat, and once was stranded with nothing to eat but sardines and old soda crackers. The bombings also meant he was stopped more often, the car searched more thoroughly, but then for several weeks things were quiet, and the Tommies jotted down his badge number and waved him through.
    Jerusalem in the spring. The walls of the Old City weren’t golden but the color of ripe wheat. Beards of hyssop grew from the seams, dotted with tiny white flowers. The sky reminded Brand of the Baltic in summer, its blue endlessness, making sandcastles on the beach with Giggi, gathering driftwood for that night’s fire as if it were a game. With the weather, it was hard to remember they were at war. In Rehavia the almond trees were blooming. The cafés moved their tables outside, and in the evenings Zion Square was full of students. Brand took Eva to see
Caesar and Cleopatra,
which made her weep, and
Confidential Agent,
which made her laugh. She loved Vivien Leigh. Bacall wasn’t an actress, anyone could see she was a model from the way she held her head. Back at Eva’s flat they had a nightcap under the stars in her little roof garden, Benny Goodman tootling from the other room, and slept with the windows open. In the middle of a dream, walking the streets of Riga, he woke to a mournful baying—a lonely dog, hethought, and then it was joined by another, and another, an entire pack. Outside the Dung Gate, in the Valley of Hinnom, the jackals were hunting.
    One night they were coming back after seeing
And Then There Were None
when the curfew siren wound up, blaring its soaring warning. Along Agrippas Street, people scurried as if it were an air raid. Brand tried the radio, but there was nothing. By the time they reached the Zion Gate, the checkpoint would be in effect, and rather than run the risk, he proposed they stay at his place.
    â€œIf you don’t mind.”
    â€œWon’t your landlady be scandalized?”
    â€œNo,” Brand said, though Mrs. Ohanesian was scandalized by jazz and strange voices on the phone.
    â€œI’ve been wondering why you never let me see it. It can’t be that bad.”
    â€œIt’s a room. There’s not much to it.”
    â€œI bet it’s spotless.”
    â€œHardly.” While it was clean, he was afraid she would see it as bare, the lair of a sad bachelor.
    When they pulled in, Mrs. Ohanesian’s bay window was lit. They would just have to brazen it out—another operation they hadn’t planned for. On the porch Brand gently opened the door and let Eva go up first, shielding her from behind, but there was no disguising their footsteps, and once they were in his room she was directly below them. He was sure he would hear about it soon enough.
    Eva stopped just inside the door, as if waiting for him. Ratherthan turn on the naked ceiling bulb and expose his empty walls, he shuffled