'I will take you to King Solomon's Mines,' he offered. 'You have the whole day to fill.'
Shoshana came out into the white sunlight. She was wearing her khaki denims, clean but rough, with her hair tied back severely behind her neck. I thought then that people like her, particularly Jews like her, have to be soldiers all the time. If there is no war they will hope for one, and see in it an opportunity to fight and die for something they believe is bigger than the whole world. The Germans were like that.
She was wearing squat boots, dusty and wrinkled like tired hunting dogs, and her baggy trousers were tucked into the boots. Her shirt was wide at the neck like a navvy's collar, and the skin over her breastbone was hard and almost black with the sun. The only tenderness in her hard little frame came in the something she was unable to deny; the full circle of her breasts under the squared pockets of the shirt.
Dov had apparently already told her he was going up the desert road. She said to me: 'We will see the diggings of King Solomon,' and jerked her head with a man-like motion telling me to get into the jeep which Dov was about to drive away.
Starting a car on that surface of grit and dust was like opening a jet engine. The red clouds gushed from behind the jeep and trailed us as we took the track into the Negev, puffed and rising immediately behind the back wheels of the vehicle and then thinning and trailing out and finally dropping back, dust to dust.
Shoshana sat in the front with Dov, leaving me alone in the rear seat. She sat straight like a shotgun guard on an old Western stage coach, looking sometimes left or right but returning to straight ahead.
'It was very fine last night,' she called over her shoulder.
She was so unemphasizing about it that I was undecided if she meant the concert or the weather.
'Splendid,' 1 grunted covering both eventualities. I wondered why she always made me, Christopher Hollings, feel that I was riding back seat. The track was bumpy and the whirls and whorls of the violent desert rock were reaching higher. Dov was driving quite fast, but he began to brake abruptly, and eventually brought the jeep to a halt slightly to one flank of the track. We sat while a tribe of Bedouin rode from the sandstone crevices, blanketed people, as disdainful as their camels; their goats and other animals were layered with rusty dust. They made no sign that they had noticed us but filed across the track, silently and without fuss like a group of mysterious but well-behaved nuns embarking on an exotic outing.
Neither Dov nor Shoshana moved or made any comment. The whole incident unfolded and passed as though it had been well rehearsed. When they had gone, slipping again into a crack in the rocks, Dov put the jeep into gear and we stuttered forward. A boy, a goat-herd, driving half a dozen skinny and wall-eyed animals before him, appeared three hundred yards farther on the road, heading in the same direction as the camels and humans. Dov stopped again and motioned him and his herd across the track in the suburban manner of a driver at a school crossing.
When we moved again I said: "There's a lot of traffic this morning.'
Dov laughed deeply. 'They always have the right of way. At least they believe that, and it is as well to go along with them. They were here before us. That boy, he could have been Moses or Benjamin.'
Shoshana said coldly: 'They are a weight on Israel. They do no good, but make many incidents. They are diseased and smelling and all trouble.'
Dov laughed: 'They're Bedouin,' he said as though that explained it all.
'They are spies,' she alleged obstinately. 'And drug smugglers, and they have killed Israelis, even down here in the desert. And yet they walk from country to country as they please.'
'Perhaps they are setting a good example,' I suggested.
She became very angry, biting, but containing her voice. I could see her shoulders shaking under the shirt. I thought she was going to
Shoshana came out into the white sunlight. She was wearing her khaki denims, clean but rough, with her hair tied back severely behind her neck. I thought then that people like her, particularly Jews like her, have to be soldiers all the time. If there is no war they will hope for one, and see in it an opportunity to fight and die for something they believe is bigger than the whole world. The Germans were like that.
She was wearing squat boots, dusty and wrinkled like tired hunting dogs, and her baggy trousers were tucked into the boots. Her shirt was wide at the neck like a navvy's collar, and the skin over her breastbone was hard and almost black with the sun. The only tenderness in her hard little frame came in the something she was unable to deny; the full circle of her breasts under the squared pockets of the shirt.
Dov had apparently already told her he was going up the desert road. She said to me: 'We will see the diggings of King Solomon,' and jerked her head with a man-like motion telling me to get into the jeep which Dov was about to drive away.
Starting a car on that surface of grit and dust was like opening a jet engine. The red clouds gushed from behind the jeep and trailed us as we took the track into the Negev, puffed and rising immediately behind the back wheels of the vehicle and then thinning and trailing out and finally dropping back, dust to dust.
Shoshana sat in the front with Dov, leaving me alone in the rear seat. She sat straight like a shotgun guard on an old Western stage coach, looking sometimes left or right but returning to straight ahead.
'It was very fine last night,' she called over her shoulder.
She was so unemphasizing about it that I was undecided if she meant the concert or the weather.
'Splendid,' 1 grunted covering both eventualities. I wondered why she always made me, Christopher Hollings, feel that I was riding back seat. The track was bumpy and the whirls and whorls of the violent desert rock were reaching higher. Dov was driving quite fast, but he began to brake abruptly, and eventually brought the jeep to a halt slightly to one flank of the track. We sat while a tribe of Bedouin rode from the sandstone crevices, blanketed people, as disdainful as their camels; their goats and other animals were layered with rusty dust. They made no sign that they had noticed us but filed across the track, silently and without fuss like a group of mysterious but well-behaved nuns embarking on an exotic outing.
Neither Dov nor Shoshana moved or made any comment. The whole incident unfolded and passed as though it had been well rehearsed. When they had gone, slipping again into a crack in the rocks, Dov put the jeep into gear and we stuttered forward. A boy, a goat-herd, driving half a dozen skinny and wall-eyed animals before him, appeared three hundred yards farther on the road, heading in the same direction as the camels and humans. Dov stopped again and motioned him and his herd across the track in the suburban manner of a driver at a school crossing.
When we moved again I said: "There's a lot of traffic this morning.'
Dov laughed deeply. 'They always have the right of way. At least they believe that, and it is as well to go along with them. They were here before us. That boy, he could have been Moses or Benjamin.'
Shoshana said coldly: 'They are a weight on Israel. They do no good, but make many incidents. They are diseased and smelling and all trouble.'
Dov laughed: 'They're Bedouin,' he said as though that explained it all.
'They are spies,' she alleged obstinately. 'And drug smugglers, and they have killed Israelis, even down here in the desert. And yet they walk from country to country as they please.'
'Perhaps they are setting a good example,' I suggested.
She became very angry, biting, but containing her voice. I could see her shoulders shaking under the shirt. I thought she was going to
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