1
When Mary Marguerite Cosgrove was twenty-five years old and just the last month ordained in the Church of England, she came to the opinion that she should rent a flat in Jerusalem Norfolk
Miss Cosgrove had several personal reasons for wanting to go abroad. First, going abroad, as an experience, had intrinsic merit, going to Jerusalem Norfolk
Miss Cosgrove felt a bit depressed sharing the family house with just her brother. Although she had been ordained she had been quietly taken aside and the Bishop of Norwich had told her as gently as he could that she probably would not actually have a parish for quite some time. And so this was the second reason.
Third, Miss Cosgrove had had a bad relationship. It had never become physical beyond hugging and kissing—just Miss Cosgrove’s luck, no relationship in her life ever had—but it had been emotionally intense, and Helen’s betrayals and privations still hurt quite a lot. Miss Cosgrove did not even want to get into the whole ‘ordained lesbian’ thing. She thought that was part of the reason why the Bishop of Norwich was reluctant to give her a parish. The whole situation made Miss Cosgrove a little disappointed in the people and organisation she loved. So a break was in order.
Going to Jerusalem , she had heard, was quite an intense experience, and she was thinking about this on the train to London
The train went on down towards the great city. Miss Cosgrove looked through a Jerusalem New City
The train came to Liverpool Street Station. From here it was a Tube ride to Heathrow, then out of the country.
Miss Cosgrove smiled. She looked forward to a pleasant trip and sojourn.
2
Nishizaki Shosetsuin was having trouble sleeping. Her work, which was taking her to Jerusalem
It turned out that she had not, in fact, bought this book—or rather, that this was not the book that she had bought. It was the book that a friend of hers, Maureen Marks, with whom she was generally able to communicate only through correspondence, had given her on that same trip. There it was, written on the inside cover:
I know you’re not really into mysteries but this is a really good book and I think you’ll actually enjoy it a lot, if nothing else for the setting and the writing. It was good to see you again, Nish . I’ll miss you! ♥—M.M.
The Nish (as the cool kids called her) flipped the book back to the front cover. It was a fairly new hardcover, in good condition, with the jacket just a bit frayed from the Nish ’s months of toting it around without actually reading it. The title was Death in Holy Orders. Looking at the copy page she saw that it had been printed in 2001.
Sleep came upon her eyes, fluttering closed and hard to open again. The book fell to her lap. She sat lolling in a half-drear state for some time before she went under into dreaming.
The Nish woke again as the plane was passing over the vast Eurasian Steppe.
‘Oh, merciful Buddha,’ she groaned, looking at her watch. ‘Going to have to adjust for time, adjust sleep, adjust all sorts of…oh, for…’
She picked up the book again. The last time Maureen had given her something it had been the first season of an American prime-time soap opera on DVD . The Nish had been put into a state of having to watch and pretend to enjoy it for her friend’s benefit. Maureen had great taste in literature but terrible taste in television and film.
But great taste in literature! The Nish opened the book and began to read. It was a murder mystery involving a religion of which she was not an adherent. It was interesting. She got through about a hundred pages before a combination of her rusty skills with written English and her fatigue, which the sleep had done little to dispel, forced her to stop and see what movie the aeroplane was showing.
Nothing good.
The Nish always hated these long plane rides, but they were necessary for what she did. At least this time she had figured out a way to pack her guitar so that she could put it in with her luggage and not worry about it getting damaged. She had learned to play the guitar just before her embarkation on her present line of work eight years ago and since that time had become very good at it. Being a businesswoman was stressful; she played guitar to relax, playing old songs, new songs, rocking songs and mocking songs.
She wasn’t even useful for very much, she thought. Not as much as some people, herself included, had hoped when she had taken control of a failing zaibatsu, jettisoned half of it, and made the other half moderately profitable again. Since then, not much had really been accomplished.
The Nish was to stay in Jerusalem for rather longer than she would have necessarily liked, and when she got there she would have to find a flat, preferably in the New City
‘What is that book that you have there?’
‘Oh?’ The Nish turned. Sitting across from her was a woman a few years younger than her, perhaps a university student. She was evidently not Japanese: her eyes were wide and blue and sparkling, her hair fell in golden-brown curtains to a point just above her collar, and her face was pointed with a prominent nose and chin. She was speaking English, with an accent that the Nish was not especially familiar with.
‘The book,’ said the younger woman. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s called Death in Holy Orders. The author is named P.D. James.’
‘Never heard of it!’ said the younger woman brightly. She grinned. ‘I like to read, too, you know.’
‘Is that so unique?’ asked the Nish .
‘Not many people really read for pleasure any more, I guess.’ The younger woman yawned and stretched like a cat.
‘More’s the pity,’ said the Nish . ‘I’m Nishizaki Shosetsuin, by the way. You can call me Shosetsuin or the Nish if you’d like.’
‘Wow,’ said the other woman coquettishly. ‘Yobisute[1] for a total stranger? How forward, The Nish!’ She extended a hand in salutation. ‘My name’s Hildy. You can call me Hildy.’
‘Hildy, huh?’ The Nish shook Hildy’s hand. ‘Short for something?’
‘Yes, Hildegard. Hildegard Wildermann.’
‘Hildegard Wilder—That a Dutch name?’
‘German, actually. I’m from Austria University of Jena Asia —human survey of the continent, you see.’
‘And so what are you studying?’
Hildy grinned. ‘Geography,’ she said. ‘I love my studies.’
‘Well,’ said the Nish , seeming to Hildy a little distracted for some reason, ‘it’s always good to love what you do.’
‘So what’s your business in Israel Nish had seen this before—the ‘Yay! I’m talking to a cool-seeming older woman!’ mode. It was common in women of high school and college age.
‘Business,’ said the Nish .
‘Oh?’ said Hildy. ‘What do you do?’
‘I take care of business.’ The Nish flashed a cheesy grin.
‘Mm.’ Hildy pursed her lips in annoyance. ‘No, seriously, what do you do?’
‘Mostly read status reports and pretend to have opinions on them, honestly,’ said the Nish . ‘It’s a family zaibatsu. We do a lot of holding and investing, so…’ She let herself trail off. The rest of the sentence could be mentally filled in from here.
‘What exactly do you invest in in Israel
‘Why are you so interested in this? I mean, not even I’m really interested.’
The banter continued as the plane moved on.
3
It was a hot day in the middle of August, and the man who owned a block of flats a mile or so south of the Knesset building was getting bored.
‘So,’ he said, ‘any news yet on Flat 17?’
‘Yes, actually,’ said his assistant, a young man with long hair tied back in a ponytail with a thick rubber band. ‘There are two separate people who want to let it.’
‘Individually? That could pose a problem?’
‘They say they’re fine with individually or as roommates.’
The building owner chewed on a toothpick, running it with his tongue over his large, stained teeth. ‘Who are these people?’ he asked. ‘Have they met with the building manager yet?’
‘Sir, you’re the building manager. You sacked your deputy two weeks ago and still haven’t hired a new one.’
‘Oh. Right.’ The building owner turned red. ‘So who are they?’ he asked again.
‘Two young women. One is a businesswoman from Japan England Israel
‘Wait, priest? …young women?’
‘The, uh, the Church of England has female priests, sir,’ said the assistant. ‘Would, would you like me to bring these ladies in?’
‘Yes.’ The building manager nodded brusquely. ‘Yes, please do, Idan.’
Idan went out and came back in with the two young women. One, the Japanese, was about five-foot-two, with close-cut black hair, wearing a short plaid skirt and a sleeveless top that showed about an inch of stomach. The Englishwoman was taller, with long brown hair sloppily put up in a bouncy ponytail and wearing a pastel-coloured dress from either the fifties or the very early seventies. The building owner found it a little hard to believe that either of these ladies could be a businesswoman or a priest.
‘So is this who you were talking about, Mary?’ asked the Japanese woman.
‘What?’ asked the Englishwoman, seeming oddly flustered by something. ‘—No! I’ve never met this chap before! I mean…he owns the building.’ She turned to the building owner. ‘Don’t you?’
The building manager shook her hand. ‘Shaul Borik,’ he said.
‘I’m Mary Cosgrove,’ said the Englishwoman. ‘Nice to meet you, Shaul Borik!’ She smiled.
‘You know, Mary,’ said the Japanese woman, ‘you remind me eerily of a girl I met on the plane.’ She turned to Borik. ‘I’m Nishizaki Shosetsuin,’ she said.
‘So,’ said Borik, ‘you would like to rent Flat 17?’
‘Yes,’ said the Nish .
‘Yep!’ said Cosgrove.
‘Have…have you seen Flat 17?’ asked Borik. He chewed his toothpick harder. Flat 17 was not a bad flat by any means, but it was not the sort of flat made for roommates: there were two bedrooms, but they were right next to each other, unlike some of the other flats in the building which had their bedrooms on opposite sides of the living area. It was really more of a home for a family with a young child than anything else.
‘Yes, we saw it,’ said the Nish .
‘It’s fine,’ said Cosgrove. ‘I’m only staying in Jerusalem for a few months and the Nish here might not even be here that long.’ She picked up a tote bag and twisted to show her rucksack to Borik. ‘See, this is all I have: some books, some clothes, and a laptop.’
‘I’ve just got some business stuff, clothes, laptop, and my guitar,’ said the Nish . ‘Couple of boxes outside.’ She smirked at Cosgrove. ‘You travel light, Mary.’
‘So,’ said Borik, ‘when did you two meet?’
‘Bus from Tel Aviv,’ said Cosgrove. ‘We fell to talking and I thought we might be able to get along well, so…’ She slapped her hands down against her thighs. ‘Here we stand, then, Shaul Borik!’
‘Why do you keep calling him ‘Shaul Borik’?’ whispered the Nish . ‘Are you one of those puppy-friendly people?’
‘Anyway,’ said Borik, whose face was beet-red in annoyance at the meandering conversation, ‘Flat 17. You saw it? You do not have any problems with the closeness of the bedrooms?’
‘We can lock the doors,’ said the Nish , ‘and besides, the walls in this building are thick. –Mary, do you have a problem with guitar music?’
‘What kind of guitar music?’ asked Cosgrove. ‘Spanish guitar, rock, punk, electric, acoustic, folk…?’ She continued listing kinds of guitar music for about a minute before the Nish cut her off.
‘My guitar is acoustic,’ she said. ‘I play some classic stuff, some folk stuff, Bob Dylan, things of that sort.’
‘Well!’ Cosgrove beamed. ‘Then that should be fine. As long as you don’t do it too loudly or too late at night.’
‘What’s a good time to stop?’ asked the Nish .
Idan cleared his throat loudly. ‘Would it be possible,’ he asked, ‘for us to actually conclude this deal, give you the flat, and then you can discuss this?’
‘All right!’ said Cosgrove. ‘Well, uh…the rent, the rent…’
‘It’s three thousand five hundred shekels a month,’ said Borik. ‘I really don’t care how you pay me as long as I get the money the first of every month on the dot. Now, you’ll be living next door to, on one side, Mrs David, who’s ninety-six years old, fought in the 1948, and thinks that anybody who doesn’t speak fluent Hebrew is some kind of invisible vampire ghost. She is easy enough not to anger as long as you just do not talk. On the other side you have a very interesting and pleasant man. His name is Toph and he was a colonel in the army.’ Borik grinned. ‘Sound good?’
The Nish shrugged. Cosgrove thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Fine enough! Seventeen hundred fifty shekels for each of us is pretty cheap, so…’
‘I’m willing to pay twenty-five hundred,’ said the Nish .
‘What? Really?’
‘Yes. I’m probably better-off than you, to be honest.’
Cosgrove flushed. Immediately she became very conscious of herself and her surroundings. ‘Do I look that poor to you?’
‘No. But I have a lot of money.’
‘I’m so happy for you,’ said Borik, irate. ‘Now could we move along here?’
The discussion of rent, tenancy requirements, the quirks of the building and the flat, and other such things lasted for about another half-hour. During this time the Nish began to find it simultaneously harder and easier to believe that Cosgrove was an ordained Anglican priest. She was so bright and shining and sparkling and effervescent. Why a priest shouldn’t be bright and shining and sparkling and effervescent the Nish could not specify even in her own mind; but it seemed unusual.
There was nothing dour about Mary Cosgrove. She did not give off the air of mysterium and secrets. The Nish would not normally expect a Christian priest to be as bubbly and garrulous as a teenaged miko.
Cosgrove likewise found it a little hard to believe that this punkish goth chick was a high-powered suit of some kind. She expected to find Nishizaki Shosetsuin up on a stage under flickering arc lighting singing ‘everything is bollocks!’ to a loud, relentless, droning, disconcerting bass beat. And indeed, it seemed like the Nish would probably enjoy that rather more than whatever it was that she actually did for a living, even if she contended that her taste ran more towards Fairport Convention than the Sex Pistols.
There was something deeper inside the Nish , though. Cosgrove could not yet discern what it was, exactly, but it cut through the Nish ’s being more keenly than the guitars and punk clothing.
‘Nish ?’
‘What?’
‘Do we have any furniture?’ asked Cosgrove nervously. They were up at Flat 17, looking it over, and there did not in fact seem to be anything in there except for the kitchen range and an old metal refrigerator.
‘We…’
‘Well? Do we? Do you have any furniture in your boxes outside or something? Because we kind of need furniture in order to live.’
‘Uh…well, damn it,’ said the Nish, thinking back to the distinct lack of furniture in her boxes and becoming quite angry at herself for such an asinine oversight.
‘Oh, no,’ groaned Cosgrove.
‘We, we…I’m sure we could go out and buy a table, at least,’ said the Nish . ‘And some chairs, too…’
‘Yeah, we could probably get a table and chairs for cheap if we knew where to look!’
The Nish nodded. ‘If we knew where to look…if we knew where to look…I wonder where that would be, then…?’
4
‘So tell me about yourself, Mary,’ said the Nish as they rummaged through a dumpster into which a large amount of lumber had recently been deposited. ‘If we’re going to be roommates I should know a bit more about you.’
‘Well,’ said Cosgrove, digging through a mound of corrugated cardboard, ‘I’m twenty-five years old…I was born and raised in a little town in the east of England
The Nish snickered. Cosgrove ignored it.
‘When I was eighteen I started studying theology and I was ordained in the Church of England a few months ago, but then just kind of quietly shunted off to the side rather than being integrated into the Church’s actual operations. To be honest I’m kind of bitter about it.’ Cosgrove tossed a half-rotted plank over her shoulder.
‘I can understand why you would be!’ said the Nish .
‘Also, I like girls. A lot.’
‘Really.’ The Nish was a little surprised. She raised her eyebrows.
‘Yeah. I thought it might have something to do with the reasons the Church had for sidelining me…’ Cosgrove inspected an old piano leg and tossed it out to the Nish ‘…but apparently not.’
‘Are their any churches of your denomination in Jerusalem ?’ asked the Nish .
Cosgrove thought for a minute. She actually hadn’t checked to see if there was a large Anglican presence in the Holy City West Bank and having an especially hard time of it.
‘I’m honestly not sure.’
The Nish laughed. ‘You didn’t check? What kind of a priest are you?’
Cosgrove, intuiting that the Nish was just messing with her and not actually being cruel, grinned and replied, ‘A newly-minted one.’
‘Well, isn’t that ironic.’
‘Pardon?’ How strange. What part of that was ironic?
The Nish shrugged.
‘So what about you?’ asked Cosgrove. ‘What’s life like for Shosetsuin ‘The Nish’ Nishizaki?’ She handed out about two-thirds, more or less, of a dining-room table and two barstools, one of which had just the one leg left.
‘Well,’ said the Nish, ‘I was born in Kagoshima Nish ’ was a nickname that I first used in elementary school.’
‘You said your family had some kind of big corporation?’
‘Yes, the Matsuba Group. Originally we were a distaff branch of the family but several of the uncles and cousins died in the Kobe Earthquake when I was twelve years old.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Cosgrove, tossing a muculent mass of non-specific ex-plant matter over her shoulder.
‘I didn’t know them that well,’ said the Nish . ‘Still sad, though, I guess.’ She inspected the two-thirds of dining-room table. ‘So then my father became the head of the Matsuba Group. It was terrible. Everything started to crash and burn around us.’
‘Dad wasn’t very good at it?’
‘I am sorry to say that he was generally held not to have been, ironically enough.’ There’s that word again… ‘But in 2001 they decided to give me a bigger role. The age of majority in Japan
‘What?!’ squawked Cosgrove. She nearly fell head-over-heels into the dumpster. ‘You were eighteen!’
‘Which is why I didn’t stay at the post!’ said the Nish . ‘After about eighteen months the Matsuba Group—those parts of it that still existed—were back on track, so I resigned, then went into acquisitions and overseas management.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted to travel.’
‘No, I mean, why were you Vice-President when you were eighteen? That’s totally ridiculous. Here, see if we can do anything with…’ Cosgrove handed out a piece of dense, light-coloured wood, a hoop about three feet across. ‘Almost as ridiculous as that we’re rummaging in dustbins for our furniture!’
‘That might not be as ridiculous as you think, Mary,’ said the Nish . ‘You know, back at home I got my nightstand from the dump.’
‘Really?’ Cosgrove let herself fall fully forward into the dumpster.
‘Yep.’
‘But you just said that you were rich!’ Cosgrove’s head popped back up and she endeavoured to hoist more lumber up over the side.
‘Yep,’ said the Nish again.
‘You don’t have to…’
‘It was a nice nightstand,’ said the Nish . ‘Hey, I think we’ve got enough for a table and maybe two or three chairs now. What are we going to do about bedding?’
Cosgrove climbed out of the dumpster and stood before the Nish . ‘You mean you didn’t think of that before?’ she asked, irate. ‘Where do you usually sleep?’
Eventually bedding was sorted out. After they went out to buy a few more necessary things, their life as roommates began. Cosgrove got the Nish up in the morning and the Nish practised guitar outside after a certain hour so Cosgrove could sleep.
The end of August drew nigh. Cosgrove and the Nish met Hildy Wildermann a few times. Cosgrove would often go to the sacred sites in the Old City
On occasion Cosgrove would run into interreligious touring groups, friends from home or people who had met in Jerusalem Jerusalem before or even came semi-regularly, seemed to have a very different attitude towards everyone else, and the natives of Jerusalem
5
It was late in the morning, the first of September. The Nish was out doing her work, in hard-nosed talks with investors from India, Mexico, South Africa, and Brazil, all of whom were interested in whatever it was in Israel that so concerned her. So, like many late mornings, Cosgrove on holiday was left alone while the Nish at work took care of business.
Cosgrove had come to like living with the Nish over the past sixteen days. They had settled into a routine of life very quickly. The Nish , while a bit choleric and lackadaisical in day-to-day life, was overall easy to get along with and an interesting and (Cosgrove thought) good person. But she was gone a lot, and Cosgrove had to find other ways to enjoy herself on holiday.
So she was at a café, one of the many in older and/or nicer parts of the city. One of the multinational, multireligious tour groups was there, taking up a whole corner of the building, with a man of about twenty-five or thirty talking loudly only a few feet away from Cosgrove. His voice was of a deep, American tone, and he leaned precariously back in chair as he talked.
Cosgrove ventured furtive glances at the noisy group over her shoulder. There were two young women, one in modest grey clothing and the other (who had this strange sort of frizzled twin-tailed hairstyle) in a T-shirt and cargos, two middle-aged men, and one very old man in a clerical collar. The old man was of average height, a little stooped due to age, and less-than-average, perhaps less-than-healthy weight. A cockscomb of white hair swept over his pate like a helmet, the straggling hairs held in place with some pungent pomade-like substance. His face was dark and finely lined and he had an impressive moustache that started out as a thick, bushy, silver band on his upper lip and continued into white droopy bits that ended about flush with the end of his chin.
The woman in grey was standing next to the old priest, behind the two middle-aged men and across from T-shirt and cargos girl and loud talking man. She looked like a reserved, scholarly sort. Cosgrove had learned not to base her opinion of people’s intelligence upon whether or not they were wearing horn-rimmed glasses, but the woman in grey was, as well as carrying two Naguib Mahfouz novels and a pan-Arabist political text. Cosgrove thought that at this point it was safe to conclude that the woman in grey was at least moderately intelligent. Unlike pretty much everybody else, she was not laughing at the talking man’s talking, but she was smiling and nodding and occasionally saying things back to him.
Cosgrove didn’t really register a lot of what was actually being said here. It was about some kind of brawl that had once happened in the talking man’s vicinity. From how the talking man was discussing it it seemed as if he had been an unwilling and peripheral participant. Why they found this so funny was anybody’s guess, but Cosgrove felt that it might perhaps be different if she had heard the story from the beginning.
Eventually it got annoying and Cosgrove just wanted to drink her coffee in peace.
‘Excuse me,’ said Cosgrove as politely as she could, ‘excuse me, but if it isn’t too much to ask could you please be a little less noisy?’
‘Oh?’ said the talking man. ‘Were we…?’
‘No, it’s just…my head hurts a little.’ Cosgrove smiled.
‘Okay.’ The talking man shrugged. ‘Sorry.’ He leaned in and looked over Cosgrove’s shoulder at the book that she was reading. Cosgrove tensed up a little. ‘What’s that you’re reading there?’
‘This?’ Cosgrove held the book up. ‘Oh, this is a book about the California Gold Rush. My roommate gave it to me. It’s a re-gift from a friend of hers.’
‘Did she not want or like the book,’ asked the woman in grey, ‘or had she simply finished with it?’ Her accent was unfamiliar to Cosgrove. It sounded a bit like the accents of a Kenyan couple whom her family knew but it was definitely not the same. Being in Jerusalem
Looking around, the talking man and one of the middle-aged men were obviously American. T-shirt and cargos girl was Israeli. The woman in grey was clearly from somewhere in Africa . The old priest and the other middle-aged man seemed to be Latin American but Cosgrove wasn’t sure. Part of her suddenly became very angry at another part for even thinking about this sort of thing. This was no time to be thinking about demographics. This was a social situation. In italic font with lower-case letters that were just little baby versions of the capital letters, no less.
‘I think the Nish liked the book,’ said Cosgrove, ‘but it seems heavily dog-eared, so I guess she considers herself quite finished with it!’
‘Nice.’ The woman in grey adjusted her glasses. ‘I read mostly things of Middle Eastern and East African interest, to be honest. Though I think of broadening my horizon.’ She sat down across from Cosgrove. As she sat she made a sort of awkward assay at sitting with her legs splayed across the chair, but her long skirt made this difficult so she ended up in a sort of weird crane-like posture with one leg tucked away under her butt. ‘My name is Fatima Sharif, by the way.’
Cosgrove laughed a little nervously. People were so forward, she was unused to…
Cosgrove laughed a little nervously. ‘Mary Cosgrove,’ she said. ‘And who is your talkative friend?’
‘Oh, him?’ Fatima jabbed her thumb over her shoulder to the talking man, who had started talking again, this time only to the old priest and the middle-aged American. ‘That’s Giles Terence Schuster-Slatt, folk singer, drummer, and ‘thrasher’, formerly of Dothan , Alabama
Cosgrove was at this point partially surprised by Fatima ’s proficiency with English. She didn’t imagine the woman had grown up speaking a European language, but it was a possibility. Africa—especially East Africa, which Fatima had mentioned as a subject of personal interest—had a history of colonialism.
‘And so where are you from, Fatima Sharif?’ asked Cosgrove, not wanting to dig herself any deeper with assumptions than she already had.
‘Djibouti ,’ said Fatima . ‘So I grew up speaking Somali at home, French at school, Arabic in the streets.’ She smiled. ‘So reading the Mahfouz books, classics of Arabic literature put into English, is something odd for me, you understand?’
Cosgrove was wrong. Fatima had grown up partially on French. Cosgrove was making an ass of herself in her own mind. This was not good.
Fatima was about Cosgrove and the Nish ’s age if not a few years younger, so most of her childhood had been during the Djiboutian Civil War. Djibouti Fatima was an Issa and a member of the country’s upper class, one of only about half of Djiboutian women who had been to school and was literate.
In 1991 an Afar group launched a rebellion against the Djiboutian government, which had been Issa-dominated since independence from the French about fifteen years previously. Fatima’s family was at this point in an incredibly privileged position within Djibouti Djibouti
During the decade-long civil war, which ended with a peace settlement and the Afars getting some seats in the Cabinet, the Sharif family fell from a very great height. Fatima’s father ended up strung out on khat, and Fatima , de facto on her own, looked out and saw her country for the first time, as if a pane of smoked glass hitherto always before her eyes had been shattered—:
Horrible climate. Desert with shards of volcanic rock lying around just waiting to pierce your feet. Malaria. Almost no fresh water. Oil passing through along the Red Sea and through the Bab el-Mandeb. The American and French bases, HC-130 turboprop jets, attack helicopters, squadrons of soldiers going out for some new American venture on the African continent (this revelation came to Fatima in 2002). And the khat. That damned weed…
‘Are you all right?’ asked Cosgrove.
‘Yes…yes, sorry.’ Fatima put her hand to her forehead. ‘Just thinking a bit about what my life was like before university.’
‘Where did you go to university?’
‘France
‘Where in France
‘Sorbonne. As I said I was incredibly lucky. I graduated last year. Why do you ask?’
‘Because I like to know people!’ said Cosgrove cheerily. ‘My roommate’s out on business so coming to the cafés or going sight-seeing is really the only social interaction I’ll have for the day. And I’ve already seen the Western Wall twice. And the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is really crowded to-day for some reason.’
‘Try it later,’ said the old priest. ‘Maybe toward evening. Less people there later.’
‘Really?’ Cosgrove smiled. ‘And so you’ve been there before?’
‘Yes, three times since being in Jerusalem Jerusalem
‘Salvador Manuel Hermosa Amante,’ said the old priest. ‘Parish priest, Oquitoa and San Juan de la Cruz, Sonora, Mexico.’
Cosgrove was still shocked over what comrades Jerusalem Jerusalem
‘Mary Marguerite Cosgrove,’ she said. ‘I was recently ordained in the Church of England.’
6
Shosetsuin ‘The Nish’ Nishizaki arrived back at the flat—still spartan, but liveable now—after a long day of arguing with traders, most of whom she first had to essentially trick into taking her seriously due to her young age. She found Mary Cosgrove there, looking very pleased indeed.
‘What are you so happy about?’ groaned Shosetsuin as she flopped down on to a cigarette-burn-laden couch that they had bought for cheap about a week ago.
‘I met some interesting people to-day.’
‘Oh? What sorts?’
‘Well, there was this Djiboutian woman, a recent Sorbonne graduate, named Fatima…and an old Mexican priest, Padre Hermosa…two Americans who really didn’t seem to like each other, one a musician called Schuster-Slatt and the other somebody called Benny who I don’t remember that much about…another Mexican guy who seemed to be friends with Benny…’
‘Were there any actual Israeli or Palestinian people or was it solely an international touring group of some sort?’
‘Yes, there was a woman from Jerusalem
‘What?!’ The Nish sat bolt upright.
‘I…’
‘No, I know what you said. You invited over a bunch of people I don’t know, including a Mossad agent, without asking me?’
‘Relax!’ said Cosgrove. ‘It’s tentative. It’s not for to-night, it’s for Friday. You don’t work on Thursday so you can meet them then.’
‘How do you know their schedules, then?’
‘They meet every day in a café near Tsarfat Square
‘Ugh,’ groaned the Nish . ‘The puppy treatment…’ She stood up and went over to the window. ‘Yes, I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘No reason not to, especially if you plan on showing them this place.’
‘I thought you liked this flat!’ said Cosgrove, a little hurt. ‘I like the flat.’
‘Yes, but it is most certainly not for entertaining,’ said the Nish . Once again she found herself wondering how in the world Mary Cosgrove, good and loving and caring though she was, had got herself ordained.
Fatima rolled her eyes. ‘Can we drop the matter, Revy? Please?’Fatima groaned. She was tired of explaining this to people. ‘I am a pan-Arabist,’ she said, ‘because the culture of my childhood, my memories, and my ideals is Muslim, and closer tied to Arabia and to an extent Ethiopia Fatima rebuffed her apology, though, saying that it wasn’t a problem and that she was, unfortunately, used to the question, at least from people who even knew the difference in the first place. Hildy, for some reason, began to be slightly fearful of Fatima .
Fatima ’s face was a flat brown nothing with glasses; Padre Hermosa’s was the same, but a bit lighter and with a moustache instead. She remembered these features but not the underlying structure of flesh and bones. Why had she forgotten?
7
On Thursday the third, as promised, they went back to the café near Tsarfat Square Jerusalem
Parts of Jerusalem West Jerusalem or a Jewish settlement in the East, of course, but it went beyond that. Jerusalem
And yet…
Oh well.
The Nish, meanwhile, was more or less unaware of what Jerusalem
The Nish ’s stomach hurt. She thought she might have an ulcer. An ulcer, at her age! Unbelievable, simply unbelievable. And her back…might she need a lumbar puncture? She didn’t want to think about it.
Fatima Sharif and Father Salvador Hermosa looked up as Cosgrove and her roommate entered the café. The roommate was a small woman of East Asian descent, dressed in old and ripped jeans (genuinely old and ripped, not deliberately ripped and ‘acid-washed’) and a T-shirt declaring that ‘Punk Is Not Dead’. She carried a red leather case stuffed full of briefs.
‘You don’t even like punk!’ Cosgrove was hissing at her.
‘It was the first thing I found in my closet, okay?!’ the roommate snapped back.
‘It wasn’t in your closet, it was on the floor! You wore it three days ago and five days ago! What is with your love for that shirt, Nish ?’
‘What is with your need to criticise my clothes, Mary?’ asked the Nish .
‘How do you survive in the Japanese business world with that attitude?’
‘I don’t know. Possibly the same way you survive in the Church of England with that self-opinionated smugness?’
‘Oh, shut it!’ cried Cosgrove.
The Nish burst into laughter. ‘Hey,’ she said to the gawking onlookers, ‘relax. I was just messing with her.’ But Cosgrove looked genuinely on-edge nevertheless.
‘You are Shosetsuin Nishizaki?’ asked the middle-aged American, Benny.
‘Y-yes,’ said the Nish . She was surprised that Cosgrove had told them her name. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this.
Benny proffered his hand. ‘Benny Hayward,’ he said. He gestured to the other middle-aged man. ‘This is my friend Victoriano Santana. Nice to meet you.’
Jaime Victoriano Santana Reyes had a lined face, but nowhere near as lined as the much older Padre Hermosa. He had a neat little black moustache and slicked-back black and grey hair.
‘Oh, Mary!’ said Fatima . ‘You still want to go shopping to-morrow?’
‘Of course!’ said Cosgrove. She turned from Santana, who slid effortlessly into making small talk with the Nish . ‘Do you still want to do it?’
‘Yes,’ said Fatima . ‘Oh, by the way, I got that sizing chart. What are you in imperial units—five-foot-eight, about eight stone?’
Cosgrove laughed. ‘Thank you, Fatima!’ she said. ‘No. No, I’m about five-foot-five-and-a-half and closer nine stone than eight.’ (Cosgrove was actually slightly over nine stone).
‘So what brings you to Jerusalem , Senor Santana?’ asked the Nish . She actually did say ‘senor’, not ‘señor’, ‘seh-nore’ rather than ‘say-nyore’. Santana abstained from correcting her. ‘Business? Pleasure?’
‘Religion,’ said Santana. He pointed to Benny and Padre Hermosa. ‘The padre there is an old friend from when I was in seminary. He was a visiting chaplain—even seminarians need confessors, you know. Benny is a work colleague.’
‘You went to seminary?’ The Nish smirked. ‘It’s like priest central in here between you, the padre, Mary…’
‘Oh, not on my account.’ Santana chuckled. ‘I was laicised in 1988.’
‘Did you do something wrong?’ asked a Nish innocent of Catholic practise.
‘Only if you consider falling in love wrong. I weighed the options. I felt that love was the greater calling. The bishop sympathised.’
‘So what do you do now?’
‘Oh, I live in the United States Texas
‘Oh, of course not!’ said the Nish . ‘No. No, I do in fact own suits.’
‘Thank God,’ said Santana.
‘…so then the guy’s coming up to me with a split lip and wending back and forth as he’s talking, and he’s ranting at me about the John Birch Society at the top of his lungs!’ G.T. Schuster-Slatt waved his hands excitedly as he talked.
‘Pro- or anti-Bircher?’ asked Benny.
‘Um…what is the ‘John Birch Society’?’ asked Cosgrove.
‘American far-right organisation,’ said Fatima . ‘Go on, G.T.’
‘I lay him out cold.’
‘…That’s it?’ asked Cosgrove. ‘That’s the entire story?’ She shrugged. ‘Hm. I suppose you handled the situation all right…could’ve been better, but…’
‘Hey.’ Schuster-Slatt pounded the table. ‘Best option, man. Politically and socially conscious brawling. Best to get these things out there instead of just letting ‘em boil while the shit comes down around you.’
‘What…’ Cosgrove wiped some sweat from her face. ‘I’m sorry, but what on Earth are you talking about?’ Schuster-Slatt didn’t answer and so Cosgrove turned to Fatima and asked her why wasn’t she eating.
‘Because,’ said Fatima , ‘it’s Ramadan.’ She gestured at the people around them. ‘I’m here to watch these guys eat.’
‘I see.’
When Cosgrove and the Nish went into the bathroom to wash themselves up a bit, the Nish turned to Cosgrove and said, ‘So I spent some time talking with Victor Jara out there.’
‘Victor Jara?’ Cosgrove splashed some water over her throat.
‘Yeah, Giles Schuster-Slatt. Have you talked to the man? ‘Socially conscious brawling’…’
‘Oh my God!’ squealed Cosgrove. ‘You’re right! He is like a poor man’s Victor Jara!’
‘A very, very POOR man’s,’ muttered the Nish .
Cosgrove giggled. ‘Yes, I don’t really like him, either. But Fatima likes him and I like Fatima .’ A pause. The Nish ran a wet paper towel across her forehead. ‘Hey, have you talked to that girl you met on the plane? Hilda or whatever her name was?’
‘Hildy. Yeah, I called her up. She’s staying in East Jerusalem, near the Old City Nish cupped her hands under the spigot and took a drink of water from between her wrists. ‘By the way, did you see the way that Mossad lady was looking at, what’s her name, Fatima ?’
‘Reveka? Yes, I saw.’ Cosgrove smiled. ‘I actually think it’s really cute.’
‘Reveka freaks me out a little.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘Just…observe her.’
‘Very well, if you say so.’
They went back out. Reveka Metawi of the Mossad was eating a baklava with a deeply unhappy expression on her face, washing it down with a sort of infused water that smelled vaguely like honey and roses. She wasn’t saying anything—she rarely said anything—but there was a man gazing at Fatima , and Reveka in turn was gazing at him as though she wanted to slit his throat and bash his brains out. For the first time Cosgrove noticed that there was a bulge in Reveka’s sizable trouser pocket. She guessed that this was a concealed weapon of some kind. Why Reveka was allowed to carry this—her status as an agent or just a quirk of Israeli law—Cosgrove did not know.
Why had a Mossad agent been so promiscuous with revealing the fact that she was a Mossad agent, Cosgrove wondered? Presumably she was not a secret agent, and her clearance level may in fact have been rather low. No George Smiley she.
But no pen-pushing clerk either. She had the ominous bulge in her trousers, after all, and the expression and affect of one perpetually angry, through long experience of the fog of war mode-locked into fury. It was the almost exact opposite of Benny Hayward’s somewhat stodgy down-home American affability.
‘So how did you like them?’ asked Cosgrove when they got home.
‘Some of them I really liked. Others I couldn’t stand.’ The Nish shrugged off her leather jacket, letting it fall to the floor, and sat down on the intact barstool from the dumpster. ‘Overall I’m fine with having them over to-morrow evening. None of them seem actually dangerous or anything.’
Cosgrove jumped a little.
‘What’s wrong, Mary?’
‘Does your neck hurt? Like, the cervical vertebrae?’
‘No. Why should it?’
Cosgrove twisted her head and neck to and fro. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘So, what do you want to eat to-night?’
‘We just got home from a café and you’re already talking about dinner? You really like food, don’t you, Mary?’
‘Is that so wrong?’ asked Cosgrove, making her begging-puppy face again.
The Nish groaned. ‘Fine. It’s fine, Mary. What was that restaurant that you mentioned from last week?’
Cosgrove scratched the back of her neck. ‘Which one? I went to three different restaurants last week.’
‘The supposedly American one. The one with burgers and beer and pretzels and, according to you, little else. I say this in the hope that it is at least good beer and pretzels and burgers, so we can eat on not much money.’
Cosgrove narrowed her eyes. ‘Whatever happened to you being rich?’
‘There’s no reason to spend money when we don’t have to!’
‘It’s called Mississippi Burgering,’ said Cosgrove. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’ The Nish stretched her arms up over her head. ‘Let’s work out something to do this afternoon so we’ll get hungry and we can just go to Mississippi Burgering and stuff them down.’
‘Ooh, how undignified,’ said Cosgrove with a wry smile.
‘Screw you,’ muttered the Nish .
‘Hey! What was that for?!’
‘You insulted me, that’s what, idiot!’ shouted the Nish . She sprung up from the barstool and stalked around the room.
‘Relax! You know I didn’t mean it!’
‘Actually,’ said the Nish , ‘it was kind of hard to tell. Listen, I’m a little on edge, okay?’ She made a weird sound that was neither quite giggle nor quite chuckle nor yet quite cackle. ‘Would you terribly mind if we kind of do things on our own this afternoon? Because I really need to just relax, practise a little, maybe even have some quiet…’
‘Yes.’ Cosgrove nodded. ‘Yes, that…that sounds like a good idea. I’m sorry, Nish .’
‘I’m sorry, too, Mary.’
Cosgrove went out of Flat 17 and took a walk around the area. It was mostly flats and small houses. The air was cool.
8
‘Okay,’ said Reveka Metawi. She, Fatima Sharif, and Hildegard Wildermann were walking through the streets around the Knesset building. ‘Jerusalem Old City
‘I know this already,’ said Hildy. ‘I’m a human geography university student.’
‘I’m talking!’ snapped Reveka, and Fatima hastily scrawled something down on a legal pad. ‘Jerusalem Old City , as part of Jordan
‘A state of affairs which is actually still the case according to the UN,’ said Fatima .
‘The State of Israel does not need external validation to feel good about itself,’ said Reveka in a sing-song voice.
‘You razed the Moroccan Quarter out of existence!’ cried Fatima .
‘I personally? I was born in 1977, Fatima . I do not know how what you describe is possible.’
‘YOU KNOW WHAT I MEANT.’
Hildy saw that Reveka was very clearly suffering from the inconsolable urge to tell Fatima exactly where she could shove her pan-Arabism. She elected to defuse the situation.
‘Jerusalem
‘There have been three, four, five, six, or seven caliphal dynasties ruling Jerusalem depending on how you count,’ said Fatima . ‘Can you wrap this up? If your point was to show off that you already know a fair bit about this city’s history, you’ve succeeded.’
‘Thank you, Fatima ,’ said Hildy, casting furtive looks at the thankfully mollified Reveka.
‘Fatima ,’ said Reveka.
‘What?’ said Fatima .
‘I am sorry.’
‘You’re sorry. Good.’ Fatima sighed. ‘I am as well. It became a bit out of the hand.’
‘Fatima .’
‘What?’
‘Are you mad at me?’ Reveka asked this with a very engaging and vaguely threatening intensity.
‘‘Revy’!?’ spurted Hildy. Reveka Metawi’s job and personality made it very easy to surmise that she killed for kicks. Even ‘Reveka’ scarcely seemed an appropriate name, and to call her ‘Revy’ was just weird. But Reveka/Revy herself didn’t seem to mind.
‘All right, all right,’ said Reveka. ‘I am sorry, Fatima .’
‘If you don’t mind my asking, Fatima ,’ said Hildy, ‘where do your pan-Arabist sympathies come from? From what I know of Hamito-Semitic cultures, Somali aren’t Arabs.’
This had the rank redolence of something recited by rote. People must have posed this question to Fatima many times in the past, Hildy supposed. She understood the annoyance, if Fatima thought that it was a stupid or even slightly racist question. It was stupid of her to have even brought it up.
Hildy’s personal view was that Jerusalem
She thought of the Nish , whom Fatima and Reveka apparently had met earlier in the day. So running into Fatima and Reveka meant that it really was a small world, even in a huge, sprawling, densely populated foreign city, even among tourists and business travellers, even between such travelling folk and Mossad agents who were from the area to begin with.
9
‘Fatima !’ cried Cosgrove. She looked out and saw Padre Hermosa, Santana, Benny, Schuster-Slatt, Hildy, and Reveka. ‘Hey! You brought everybody! –Wait, who’s this?’
‘My name is Hildy Wildermann,’ said Hildy. ‘I believe I meet your roommate on the plane?’
Cosgrove thought for a minute. ‘Yes, I think you did.’ She turned to call the Nish . ‘Hey, Nish ! Hildy Wildermann’s here.’
‘What?’ The Nish , clad in a towel, came out of the shower. ‘H-Hildy! Wow, didn’t expect to see you here! How do you know these people?’
‘Please put some clothes on, Nish ,’ said Hildy. ‘I met Reveka and Fatima on the street. They were kind enough to discuss the humans of Jerusalem
Raising her eyebrows a bit at the fact that Hildy seemingly referred to her own species as ‘humans’, the Nish ducked back into the bathroom, quickly dried herself off, pulled on a short dress, and came back out. Cosgrove, Hildy, Fatima, and Benny had already moved into the living room and the others were taking tentative steps into the flat. There were so many of them for such a small space…though the Nish supposed it was still considerably larger than most flats in Japan
This could not be making them look good. The Nish was very concerned and hardly even registered the various topics under discussion as the evening kicked into gear.
At this time their neighbour, Schlomo Toph, the former army colonel, came by and tapped on the door.
‘Who is it?’ called Cosgrove.
‘Is your neighbour, Colonel Toph—Schlomo. You are very loud to-night.’
‘I’m sorry, we’re, uh…we’re having company.’
‘Oh, a party?’
‘I wouldn’t describe it as a party, exactly,’ called the Nish from her bedroom. ‘I’m helping a very tired old priest lie down and ironically enough there’s a self-proclaimed ‘working-class guitar hero’ passed out on the couch.’
‘Sounds like a party to me!’ Schlomo laughed. ‘You mind I come in?’
Cosgrove raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you think, Nish ?’
The Nish frowned. Why would Schlomo, an amiable and enthusiastic but occasionally alarming man, want to come in? For that matter, how had things got to the point where a rough partial cross-section of the laity and religious of the world were carousing in her flat?
Cosgrove was having trouble with this idea too. So as not to offend their nice neighbour she let him in, but she kept a wary eye as he began to talk to Reveka and Santana. They said that Schlomo’s army nickname had been ‘Schlomo the Cleaner’. Cosgrove did not know whether or not she wanted to know why.
It was about eight in the evening. Schlomo only stayed for about fifteen minutes, but as he left he turned to Cosgrove and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Cool party,’ he said. ‘Hey, you mind I might come back sometime? You and Shosetsuin seem cool people.’
‘Yes, you…you do too, Schlomo,’ said Cosgrove, wondering why exactly he was referring to the Nish by her proper and seldom-used given name. ‘We’d love to have you again sometime[1].’
Schlomo gave her a curt something-between-a-bow-and-a-nod, smiled, and left. It was at this point that the Nish noticed that Schuster-Slatt had not in fact passed out and was merely lying down on their couch for some reason.
‘Hey,’ said the Nish .
‘What is it?’ asked Schuster-Slatt.
‘Get up,’ said the Nish .
‘Huh? Oh—! I’m sorry!’ Schuster-Slatt sat up and rubbed his head. ‘Man oh man,’ he said. ‘My head’s killing me.’
‘Would you like something to eat or drink?’ asked Cosgrove, who was crossing through to the kitchen area.
‘Do you have beer?’
‘No, but there’s some…uh, it looks like ouzo…Nish , why did you buy this?’
‘Because I wanted to drink it,’ said the Nish .
‘Oh, curse you!’ shouted Fatima . ‘Don’t raise your voice! I’ve had a very long day and I don’t need this!’
‘Well, now who’s raising her voice?’ shot back the Nish as Cosgrove, doing her best to ignore the little arguments now rippling through the flat, made the courageous decision to just get Schuster-Slatt a glass of water and some crackers. This became difficult when Padre Hermosa woke up and, unable to see what was going on, started to panic, and Fatima had to go over and explain things to him. It became impossible when Schuster-Slatt attempted to punch Santana, missed, and hit Reveka.
By this point, the point at which Cosgrove wanted to pay attention again, she no longer could. Her head was swimming in a sea of unbidden, irrational, and irrelevant worries and fears. There was a low music droning in her brain, overturning the order of the mindscape. She wanted to sleep, but not—not—not with the people here…
It was midnight . The fifth. Cosgrove felt a strange feeling like a letter had been wiped from everybody’s forehead but her own but she had felt all of these heads as if they were her own. Everybody except for Schuster-Slatt and Reveka had left, and these two were casting odd and unpleasant glances at each other.
Cosgrove was beginning to more-or-less like Schuster-Slatt in spite of herself. Bless the man; he really tried to be a badass rebel voice of the common man. It wasn’t his fault that he was worse at this than the Nish, a woman whose family had been protected by samurai and, later, private contractors for nearly three hundred years and who had purchased an Ottoman-era carpet to lay on the floor next to the table that she had jerry-rigged together from the dumpster lumber.
Benny Hayward was walking down the corridor away from Flat 17. Cosgrove looked out through the door and saw him go. He had taken up his coat, like a peacoat but longer, nearly to his feet and flapping slightly in the gusts of his footsteps. It was at this point that Cosgrove realised that she could, somehow, no longer quite remember exactly what Benny, Fatima , or Padre Hermosa looked like.
Benny seemed in her mind’s eye to be wearing an odd sort of mask. It covered everything from his hairline to the base of his throat, with little bumps or spikes along the edges and two thick metal bands curling around the back of the head and neck. Where holes for the eyes should have been there were actually thicker bits of metal, and the only gap in the golden expanse was a cruel jagged slit for the mouth.
So much was missing. For a few seconds she actually thought that her own middle name was ‘Loomis’.
‘Mary? Uh…Mary?’
‘Huh?’ She turned to see the Nish looking at her with great concern.
‘Are you all right, Mary?’
‘I, er…’ Cosgrove rubbed her head and looked around. Schuster-Slatt and Reveka were gone, and somehow she was standing in the kitchen when she had just been out in the hall. ‘My head must have spun…a bit…lost time…so.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Everybody’s gone?’ she asked with a shrill hysteria of fake cheer.
‘I can tell something is wrong, Mary,’ sighed the Nish . ‘Spit it out.’
‘I just had…the strangest feeling. The world was off.’
‘The world was ‘off’?’ The Nish folded her arms and tapped her foot. ‘How was the world ‘off’, Mary?’
‘You have to believe me!’
‘But I don’t know what you want me to believe.’
[1] This was not a lie—it was just that ‘sometime’ was predicated upon ‘after we ascertain whether you entertain us more or frighten us more’, which did not show any signs of happening especially soon.
Have'nt got to the zombies so far but interesting characters
ReplyDelete