Mr. Mani

The Conversation Partners

LIEUTENANT IVOR STEPHEN HOROWITZ Born in Manchester, England, in 1897. His father, Joseph Horowitz, immigrated with his family from Russia at the age of fourteen and went into the textile business. His mother Diana, née Elias, was born in Manchester to a Jewish family that came to England from Algeria in the early nineteenth century. At first Ivor attended a local grammar school, but he did so well in his studies that his parents transferred him to a prestigious public school in Derbyshire, not far from Manchester. Upon graduating in 1913, he was admitted to King’s College, Cambridge, where he began to read law and English literature. After a year of debating between the two he decided, in consultation with his parents, to study law.

Ivor Horowitz was not immediately mobilized when war broke out in August 1914. During his second year in Cambridge, however, he was asked to report for his physical, and at the start of his third year, in October 1915, he was called up. After basic training in southern England, he shipped out with his regiment to France.

Ivor, a medium-height, chubby, bespectacled young man, tried unsuccessfully to obtain a position as a regimental clerk and in April 1916 was sent to the front — where, between the French villages of Dompierre and Méricur, he saw action in nine weeks of hard fighting and was nearly killed twice. In late June his request was granted to be sent to a hastily improvised officers’ training camp in Normandy that turned out replacements for the depleted ranks. Meanwhile, having suffered heavy casualties, his regiment was pulled out of line for rest and regrouping.

In early September 1916 Ivor rejoined his regiment, which was then stationed at Compiegne, north of Paris. No position of command could be found for him, however, and so he was posted to the adjutant’s office, where he served as a liaison officer with the French forces, especially in matters concerning order and discipline. Seeing that a knowledge of French would be most valuable for carrying out his duties, he set about learning the language with characteristic diligence, doing everything to make himself administratively indispensable so as to avoid being sent back to the trenches, the very thought of which made him quail. Nevertheless, despite all his efforts, a last-minute reshuffling of the regiment before its return to the front at Verdun compelled him to leave his new post and become a platoon commander.

However, on the twenty-fourth of November, 1916, Ivor Horowitz chanced to meet a former law don from Cambridge, Major Harwell Shapiro, now chief advocate of the 37th Division. Due to growing infringements of military discipline after two years of inconclusive fighting, the advocate-general’s corps was rapidly expanding, and Ivor succeeded in convincing his ex-teacher that he could be of use. Major Shapiro managed to have the young officer transferred to the 37th’s military police shortly before the division moved into line in December 1916. Divisional headquarters were near Lille, within range of the German artillery.

In the early spring of 1917 sweeping changes were made in the British high command, especially in the Middle East theater. After General Murray’s abortive attack on Gaza in March, Sir Edmund Allenby, who was nicknamed “the Bull,” was given command of the 52nd Division. Allenby sailed from Europe with a large complement of senior officers to restaff the division before renewing the campaign against the Turks in Palestine.

In May 1917 Ivor Horowitz, to his great delight, set out with Allenby for Egypt, a country he found most congenial and enjoyable. Henceforward he traveled with Allenby’s general staff, on which he served as a military advocate. In late October 1917 he crossed the border into Palestine with Allenby’s forces, and in January 1918, a month after the fall of Jerusalem, he was promoted from second to first lieutenant.

COLONEL MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Born in Wales in 1877. His father, Sir Ashley Woodhouse, was a Tory M.P. and Attorney General under Disraeli. As a boy Michael was sent to a boarding school in Sussex, after which he joined the army in 1896. He served in the Far East, India, Malaya, and Ceylon, and gradually rose through the ranks. In 1912 he returned to Great Britain to take command of the 3rd Welsh Regiment. In 1914, now a major, he arrived with the first wave of the British Expeditionary Force in France, where his unit was among the first to see combat against the Germans. Major Woodhouse fought in holding actions on the Marne and the Somme in 1915 and was promoted to lieutenant colonel, in which capacity he served as chief operations officer of the 6th Battalion. He was taken prisoner, escaped, and rejoined his regiment, but in late June 1916 he was seriously wounded in the trenches of Verdun, losing his right arm and part of his vision. For three months he was hospitalized in Chenonceaux Castle in the Loire Valley, which had been converted into a military hospital. In early 1917 he was released, promoted to colonel, and awarded the Distinguished Service Order, but he refused to return to England and insisted on remaining in active service. At first he served in a staff position, but after growing friction with his superiors, accompanied by excessive drinking and fits of depression, he asked one of Allenby’s generals to arrange an overseas transfer In September 1917 he arrived in Allenby’s Cairo headquarters and was assigned to the military police. Soon he began to serve as a presiding judge at military trials, a role he relished despite his lack of legal education.

His half of the conversation is missing.

— Colonel, sir. Lieutenant Ivor Stephen Horowitz of the advocate-general’s corps, attached to the adjutant’s office of the 52nd Division. I’m most grateful to you for finding time to discuss with me this matter of —

— Horowitz, Colonel, with two “o’s.”

— British, of course. Born in Manchester, sir.

— 1897, sir.

— Yes, sir.

— My father, sir, did not have the good fortune to be born in the United Kingdom, although he arrived in it as a young lad. My mother, on the other hand —

— From Russia, sir. But as a very small child. What deucedly foul weather!

— It surprised us too, Colonel. We never thought we’d encounter such a stormy winter in Jerusalem, which our British imaginations had pictured, or at least mine had, as a sun-scorched sort of place. And yet it’s done nothing but rain in the months since we’ve been here and the city elders swear that it’s the wettest winter in memory. Still, sir, no matter how glumly a day like this begins, there are bound to be a few hours of clear skies. It’s not your eternal Leeds or Glasgow drizzle…

— There’s hope even on a day like this, Colonel.

— No, sir. We still haven’t any dependable or even regular weather forecasts, sir, because the balloons sent up by the Royal Meteorological Service in Cairo do not cover Palestine. However, the barometer outside the house of the French consul does give reliable notice for up to a few hours. I took a look at it on my way over here, sir, and I’m happy to inform you that there’s hope for better weather this afternoon.

— Horowitz, sir.

— That’s correct, sir, with two “o’s.” I hope you had a good night’s sleep, Colonel.

— Oh.

— Oh…

— Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry to hear that It’s considered, sir, the best establishment in Jerusalem. General Allenby himself stayed there after entering the city, and to the best of my knowledge, there were no particular complaints from his staff. I’m most distressed to hear you say that, sir.

— Quite so, sir. I daresay that their cook hasn’t learned to make proper British food yet. It’s no secret that you can’t find a decent side of bacon in all of Jerusalem. Our governor’s wife, Lady Humphrey, was just saying as much to the brigadier. Although I’ve heard say that the same cook has acquired the knack of a quite traditional British porridge. You might want to try it, sir.

— I see, Colonel.

— The city itself, sir, is a small and shabby place, and after a few months here I’m quite prepared to say that it’s a frightfully dull one as well. The population is extremely mixed, a hodgepodge of small, unsociable communities that are as indigent and ignorant as they are endowed with a messianic sense of superiority. As usual, there seems to be no relation between the reputation of the place, which it owes to the great books written in and about it, and the sordid reality, sir.

— What does it have to offer? Jolly little, Colonel. One renowned and quite impressive mosque, the Dome of the Rock, which you no doubt know about, sir. A few important churches, chiefly, the Holy Sepulchre — which if you don’t mind my saying so, sir, is rather a disappointment. A few of the little churches outside the walled city are far more charming and harmoniously proportioned. Any time you would like a tour, sir, the advocate-general’s office will be pleased to put a first-rate guide at your disposal.

— As usual, sir, the Jews have little to offer except themselves. To our great surprise it turns out that they are a majority here, even though many of them were banished or fled during the war. Architecturally, they have only a few poor synagogues. And of course, there’s that big white wall they stand in front of, which is supposedly a remnant of their Temple.

— Yes, sir. They simply stand there and pray, as if they were rooted to the spot.

— Half a day, sir, is more than enough to do the holy places at your leisure. Everything is at frightfully close quarters, and the distances are so absurdly small as to be, I would say, almost tragic.

— Outside the walls, sir, are some new neighborhoods scattered over the hills. A few of them, so I’ve discovered in the course of this dismal winter, actually begin to grow on you. But it takes a while, sir, I should think, before you can see their charm…

— The environs, sir, are poor indeed. If you’re familiar at all with Greece, you’ll be reminded of the southern Peloponnese.

— I’m sorry to say, sir, that I’ve never been to Greece, but those who have speak of a resemblance, and I’m merely passing on their judgment. The olive groves and vineyards, for example, or the bare, round hills, primitive villages, and black-robed shepherds. And of course, one musn’t forget Bethlehem, which is only a few miles away. It’s a pleasant, gentle sort of place that nestles in the hills quite gracefully; there’s the famous Church of the Nativity, and a most jovial Anglican priest who can tell you all about it in biblical English — he’s really quite entertaining. I would also recommend, sir, an excursion to Jericho, and to the Dead Sea and the mouth of the Jordan, where the Australians are encamped. If Baedeker is right about its being the lowest spot in the world, then having come this far, sir, you wouldn’t want to miss it. It’s certainly a sight closer than the world’s highest spot, what?

— I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t quite catch the name.

— I’ll make a note of it at once, sir. Is it a new label?

— There’s an Irish officer in our section who’s quite a grog fancier, sir. He has excellent connections with the Armenian church, which has a most presentable cellar. I’ll ask him to see to a bottle.

— Very well, sir, five…

— I’ve made a note of it, sir. Will any other label do as well?

— In that case, sir, we’ll spare no effort. In any event, I’ll report back to you during the day. Will there be anything else, sir? Cigarettes? Tobacco?

— Very well, sir. The trial begins tomorrow morning. There will be a car waiting for you in front of your hotel at eight o’clock sharp. It’s about a five-minute drive. A small courtroom has been prepared in the Russian Compound, which is outside the walls, not far from the Eastern Orthodox Church. I believe it’s fairly comfortable, sir, as local standards go.

— Sir?

— Ah, yes. I haven’t looked into the matter, sir, but I’m quite sure we’ll have no acoustical problems. The fact is, Colonel, that there won’t be many of us, and the prosecution will ask the court to conduct part of the proceedings in camera so as to protect our sources of information behind enemy lines, which have done excellent work. Indeed, sir, barring the unexpected, the trial is unlikely to last more than a few days…

— No doubt you know their names already, Colonel. They’re listed in the brief that the sergeant gave you yesterday, and I believe you’ll meet them tonight at the governor’s reception in your honor. On your right will be Lieutenant Colonel Keypore of the Australian Battalion, who drove up from the Jordan yesterday, and on your left Major Jahawala, an Indian from Intelligence. As for counsel, sir, the defendant has none, nor could he be persuaded to take any, neither Jew, Arab, nor Englishman. He’s quite determined to defend himself, having studied law for a year or two in Beirut when he was young, and he seems confident he can do it. However, I’ve asked First Lieutenant Brian Oswald to be prepared to assist him, if necessary. I believe that’s all, sir. Saving the witnesses, of course.

— Oh, dear, sir, of course. I beg your pardon. I myself will prosecute, with the help of First Lieutenant Harold Gray.

— Yes, sir.

— Quite so, sir.

— Yes, sir. Major Clark is our chief advocate.

— Oh. I thought, Colonel, that you already knew of Major Clark’s absence. His personal correspondence to you should be in this brief.

— I see. Well, sir, in short, Major Clark sailed for England three weeks ago for his wedding in Oxfordshire. With the brigadier’s permission, of course.

— There’s not much I can tell you, sir. I only know that the young lady is the daughter of Lord Barton, and that the wedding was best held without delay to prevent any possible embarrassment. I believe that’s enough said, sir.

— He made her acquaintance in Paris, sir. Did you never meet Major Clark? A most delightful chap.

— I’m afraid that’s all I know, sir. But I can find out if you wish whether the young lady is Lord Barton’s elder or younger daughter.

— As you wish, sir. In any event, that is the reason Major Clark could not prosecute the case and I shall be taking his place.

— Quite so, Colonel. I am not the ranking officer in his absence. But Major Clark preferred to entrust the task to me.

— I read law at Cambridge, sir, from 1913 until my call-up in October 1915.

— King’s, sir.

— I was unable to take my degree, sir, because of the war.

— No, sir. I was first in France.

— No, sir. With the 38th Infantry Regiment, 42nd Division.

— From March through August of 1916, Colonel.

— No, sir. I was at the front. In eastern France.

— No, sir. I was a private at the time.

— Naturally, sir, in the trenches, sir, in combat and in frontal assaults, sir. What else could I have been doing at the front?

— In April and May of 1916.

— On the Somme, sir. Between Dompierre and Maricourt.

— On the northern flank.

— Quite so, sir. The night of May seventeenth is a horror to remember. It was the ghastliest of them all.

— I’m speaking for myself, of course. We lost three hundred men in two hours, including two platoon commanders.

— So he was, sir. How astounding that you knew him!

— I was fortunate, sir. Just a bit of shrapnel.

— Thank you, sir, I’d be glad to. It’s very kind of you. If you don’t mind, Colonel, I’d prefer to sit by your side, so that I can show you a few documents.

— Thank you, sir. We can manage without the desk. I won’t be long and you needn’t trouble yourself. Now that the main features of the case are clear to you, there is something… something else that I wish to take up with you… I mean now, before the trial begins… since once it does, I shan’t be free to raise the matter with the court, as you will have seen for yourself from the brief…

— I beg your pardon, sir.

— Indeed, sir, I was afraid you might not have time to read it all.

— Oh.

— Oh, dear…

— Oh, dear me, Colonel, we had no idea. I’m flabbergasted.

— Oh, dear, sir. I’m so dreadfully sorry. I’m quite devastated. We knew, of course, that you were wounded at Verdun. Your name, sir, has been a byword in our division ever since the Battle of the Marne.

— I’m so sorry, sir. No one breathed a word to us. Had anyone told me, I would have come to read the brief to you myself.

— Now? Well, why not! I’d be delighted to, Colonel. I’m entirely at your disposal, and I’m quite prepared to read you the brief and all its documents.

— I’d be delighted to, sir. A résumé, as the French say. It will be both jollier and quicker…

— Thank you, sir. With pleasure.

— Just a bit, sir… that will do for this hour of the morning… cheers, sir…

— So this is the whiskey, then, is it? It’s superb… no wonder you insist on it, Colonel!

— Indeed, it is… that, sir… I mean… that’s the very subject… you’ve hit the nail on the head, sir! The prosecution will ask for the death penalty in accord with wartime regulations, whereas… you see, that’s just what I wished to talk to you about…

— Sir?

— Quite so. It’s best to begin from the beginning. But just where is the beginning, sir, if you’ll allow me to reflect for a moment? Suppose we say on the twenty-eighth of February, on a cold, foggy, rainy night, indeed, on a sleety night turning to real snow in the morning, the kind that falls here no more than once a year to the great consternation of the natives. That, sir, was the night the accused was apprehended. It happened some ten miles north of Jerusalem, just outside a small town called Ramallah, which means the hill of God, in a hamlet called el-Bireh, which is the biblical Bethel, I believe. It’s a small village of olive groves and little vegetable gardens that marks the farthest point of Allenby’s advance after taking Jerusalem in December. It’s not at all clear why he stopped there — perhaps he wished to rest his forces after the excitement of Jerusalem. But since he didn’t strike while the iron was hot, it grew cold and gray until its jagged lines hardened like fate. That’s where the front runs now, with the Turks sitting on the other side of it, out of sight behind a ridge of hills. It cuts right through the village, several of the houses on the lower slope of which are in no-man’s land. The Arabs living in them are poor shepherds who are allowed to come and go, and one of our more enterprising officers even issued them certificates of good conduct granting them freedom of movement among the hills and between the two armies. There’s a platoon of Ulstermen there with a brave bucko of a commander who’s actually just a first sergeant. They’ve dug trenches and deployed their machine guns, and they sit there breathing the winter fog that rolls in from the sea to the desert and thinking of Ulster. Now and then they cluck to the goats, or call to some shepherd grazing his flock down the hill to come show them his certificate. Since they speak no Arabic and have no interpreters, they have no dealings with the natives, who pay them as much attention as you would to a lot of flitting shadows. Which is what makes it so extraordinary that he was even noticed that foggy dawn, let alone apprehended. And it’s even more remarkable that, once he was apprehended, it was decided to detain him… so that, looking back on it now, I can’t swear that he didn’t do it deliberately… that he didn’t do everything, in fact, for the sole purpose of being caught, so that he could have his day in court…

— Thirty-one, sir. A scraggly, dark-haired chap. On the short side. But though he’s at most ten years older than me, he looks old enough to be my great-grandfather, with so many wrinkles you might think every one of his crooked thoughts had spilled out of his brain and over his face. Thirty-one, sir, but tough enough to be fifty, awfully earnest and not at all youthful. The morning he was caught he was wearing a peasant’s cloak and had three black goats in tow, which were a rather symbolic representation of the flock he was supposed to have. He headed straight up the hill to Sergeant McClane’s funk hole and woke him up from his sleep…

— Quite so, sir. And there, in those foggy wee hours, he was asked for his certificate; and when he didn’t have it, he was taken aside until there was enough light to see what matter of man he was. But before a few minutes went by, sir, he tried escaping under cover of the last darkness; so that now he was taken, goats and all, and put in a little room; where he sat all day long as the rain turned to snow, refusing to eat and cursing darkly in Arabic while waiting for the Ulstermen to get so bloody sick of him that they would tell him to clear out. Which was not, I daresay, an unreasonable hope, especially since, huddled in his corner, he understood every word that they said, although he never opened his mouth to let on. And in fact, they would have packed him off soon enough, since the snowstorm kept them from bringing him to headquarters in Ramallah, if Sergeant McClane hadn’t laid down the law and insisted on waiting for the military police to look him over.

— I should think you would be, sir; so was I. A fortnight ago, when we ran through with him what had happened prior to recommending him for promotion and a medal, I asked him what had aroused his suspicion. Shall I tell you what he said, sir? “Sure now, the goats didn’t like him. I know a thing or two about goats, and his didn’t like him one bit.” Tipped off that the man was a spy by three sulky goats, ha ha… that’s what I call a keen eye! The next day a deputation came slogging through the snow from Jerusalem: two military policemen and an interpreter, Roger Evans, a Queen’s man from Oxford — one of our university Orientalists who know the Koran inside out but lose their tongues when they have to ask for the time of day in Arabic, because their dons, who have never been east of the Thames in their lives, forgot to tell them there were Arabs in the world and thought they were teaching a dead language like Latin or Sanskrit. Well, there they were, the two of them, old Evans ruddy cross at having been dragged out in the cold for some daft shepherd, and the shepherd sitting in his corner, all huddled up in his cloak with his head bowed…

— Directly, sir. Picture him, if you can, huddled in a corner with that little Ulsterman sheepishly biting his nails; and old Evans jabbering away in his unspeakable Oxford Arabic; and the shepherd answering glumly; and the military policemen jotting it all down: a perfectly mad tale about some runaway goats whose tracks were washed out by the rain, and some village across the lines; and everyone ticked off at that obstinate Ulsterman who had raised the very devil for naught… and in fact, old Evans was already getting up to go when something about that shepherd rang a bell — by now he’s told us about it a thousand times, because I had to put him up for a promotion and a medal too; so you see, sir, this episode has helped to advance more than one military career. Well, Evans asked for more light and told the Arab to stand; and then he removed his head cloth and looked him straight in the eye and told him to take off his cloak; and when the chap refused and began to protest, the soldiers stripped it from him; and dashed if he wasn’t wearing a dark suit underneath with a little striped necktie; and there was a book in the pocket of the jacket with all sorts of papers falling out of it; so that old Evans burst out laughing and said, this time in proper Oxford English, “Why, Mr. Mani, is it you?”

— Mani, sir. That’s his name.

— Joseph Mani. Sounds rather like money, but it doesn’t mean that at all. Or like manic, but it doesn’t mean that either.

— As far as I know, it doesn’t mean anything, sir. It’s just one of your oriental Jewish names. Because you see, sir, the shepherd wasn’t a shepherd, and the Arab wasn’t an Arab but a Jew, who suddenly changed his tune and began to speak the king’s English in a Scots brogue so thick it could have been fished from a loch; and then, as if he had been simply playing a prank, threw his arms around Evans and began to walk out with him, because he too, sir, was an interpreter in His Majesty’s service.

— Yes, sir, a genuine Scots brogue. You’ll hear it yourself tomorrow when he enters his plea. He picked it up as a boy at St. Joseph’s in Jerusalem, back at the end of the last century, from a Scottish priest who hammered it into him until there’s no getting it out again. His father and mother were both British subjects, sir, which makes him one too, even though he’s never been to England. That’s why the prosecution will have to ask for the death penalty, since he’s a national who has betrayed his country… which is why I’ve come to you, Colonel, to ask your advice before the trial begins.

— Of course, sir. Pardon me.

— Quite, sir, quite, it was my mistake to jump ahead. I simply didn’t want to bore you with all kinds of details that I myself find endlessly fascinating.

— Utterly fascinating, sir. And I’ll be delighted to. Well, there he was in that room, minus his cloak and in his frayed suit, with all sorts of papers sticking out of his pockets. Straightways he began telling some cock-and-bull story about a woman behind Turkish lines, a totally garbled, outrageous yarn; but our stubborn Ulsterman, now triumphantly vindicated, snatched the papers away from him and discovered a bundle of maps of Palestine, as well as some proclamations in Arabic, which he didn’t need to read in order to know that they were not precisely what one brought one’s ladylove; and so off he went to fetch a rope, tied up his prisoner, and — not trusting the policemen or the interpreter — set out with him for headquarters in Ramallah, from where Mr. Mani was taken to Jerusalem. I remember the night of his arrival. It was still quite parky, although the snow had begun melting in the narrow streets, and a few of us officers were sitting in the club and warming ourselves by the hearth when the police duty officer entered and informed us that a spy had been caught near Ramallah and was now under interrogation. Quite naturally there was a great to-do, and you know, sir, it strikes me that we British make rather a fuss over espionage, no doubt because we are taught from childhood on to be so trusting…

— Yes, sir, I do think so, sir. Who of us does not have his own private spy fantasy in which he singlehandedly brings some hidden bounder to justice? And so there was this police officer in the middle of the room with rain still trickling down his greatcoat, guardedly telling us what he could while we stood around him in a circle, until I stepped up to him — I remember it quite clearly — and asked, “But who is it? An Arab, I’ll wager.” It was obvious to me that no one else would spy on the British Empire. “Not at all,” says he, his blue eyes twinkling, “it’s one of our side.” Well, there was general consternation at that — but he, sir, he just looked me straight in the eye and said, it was too much for him to resist: “I mean, not exactly one of our side; he’s one of those Jews who’ve leeched onto us…” He knew very well who I was — he even threw me a cheeky, half-jesting smile — and I recall feeling, sir, if I may say so, thoroughly in a funk, not because of the anti-Semitic remark, which means nothing to me and is something I can shrug off quite coolly, but because of the quite maddening coincidence. Here was Major Clark about to leave the next day and finally give me a shot at trying a major case — and who should it involve but a Jewish spy in Jerusalem, a fact that an uncalled-for delicacy might regard as reason…

— Quite right, sir.

— Quite right, sir.

— To spare me the discomfort…

— Indeed, sir. You know what we military advocates generally have to deal with: desertions, brawls, petty thefts, drunkenness, insubordination — in a word, thirty- and sixty-day sentences and one-guinea fines. And here was a real investigation, something to get to the bottom of, where possibly lurked a man’s death. I was so beside myself that I left the club directly and went straight to the divisional guardhouse by Jaffa Gate, under the assumption that that’s where this Mani was being held. Of course, I had no idea at the time what his name was, but I was determined not to be elbowed aside, and soon I found myself standing out in the cold night across from the place called David’s Tower, which is a sort of miniature version of the Tower of London, with my mind racing ahead. Just then I noticed a Jew dressed in black, hanging back by a little lane that ran into the empty square — and I knew directly that he was connected to the spy and had come to see what was being done with him; which meant that word had already reached the concerned parties in Jerusalem, who had sent a first scout to reconnoiter; and a most clandestine-looking, eternal-looking, metaphysical-looking scout he was… only later did I discover that he was not the least bit different from his scoutmasters…

— I’m sorry, sir, there I go again getting ahead of myself.

— The twenty-eighth of February, sir. The next day was a tense but quiet one at the advocate-general’s office. Everyone knew about the investigation in the Tower of David, and the brigadier was beating the bushes for Major Clark, who had been absent from work for several days because he was busy packing and buying gifts — oriental baubles, silk scarves, and little rugs for the British gentry waiting for him impatiently, I daresay irately, in England. And now this spy had fallen on us out of the blue, and the major was terrified of having his leave canceled and being made to take up the investigation while his little bun was growing daily in its oven, which was something the whole British army couldn’t have done anything about. He kept running from the tailor’s and the jeweler’s to the interrogation cell and the brigadier, and from there back to the advocates’ office for a look at the lawbooks — and never a word to me, sir, not a hint that I might take the case upon myself, although he knew I would have given my right arm to do it. Wherever he went his hip flask went with him, and he had the squinty look of a beaten dog…

— I don’t believe, sir, that he’s partial to anything in particular, whatever’s available will do… Well, that evening the first sergeant relayed an order for us four advocates to remain after work, and after a while Major Clark appeared, all bleary-eyed from drink and the day’s intrigues; his little squint was gone, and he was wearing his dress uniform with the brass all polished and the decorations agleam. I could see at once that he had vanquished the brigadier and received leave to attend his own wedding, and I knew he would never be back in the Orient, since his future father-in-law had landed him a plum on the general staff to make sure he didn’t fly the nest again now that it was properly feathered. And so he sat the four of us down with the Handbook of Wartime Jurisprudence and the secret file in front of him, speaking to all of us but looking only at me, because he knew his man and realized that for the past twenty-four hours I had been preparing myself for the case. First he told us about his adventures that day and about his tilt with the brigadier, and then he said to me: “And you, my dear Ikey, shall make this Jew your business, just don’t forget whose side you’re on; I want a proper investigation, and a proper indictment, and death, because that’s what the law calls for and what divisional headquarters expects, seeing that this blighter is responsible for the loss of lives and artillery across the Jordan. You’re the very man to do the job quickly and smoothly, since who could deny satisfaction to a Jew asking for another Jew’s head? By Jove, it should be a special treat…”

— Yes, sir. Those were his words A special treat.

— That’s just his manner, sir. I’ve never taken it to heart, sir. I’ve served with Major Clark for over a year now, first in France and then here, and there isn’t a more likable, decent chap anywhere, even if he has a sharp tongue. And his anti-Semitism is the most natural thing in the world; I mean, it’s all a parcel with his views on women and horses, which are very solid indeed and have survived their encounter with the facts with hardly a scratch. But he wouldn’t harm a fly and in fact there’s no greater gentleman… Well, sir, we all drank to his health and went our ways, and I went mine firmly gripping the file as though it were a most wonderful book that I was about both to read and to write. I couldn’t wait to talk to the prisoner, who was mine now, all mine’… I knew he was still putting up a brave front and admitting nothing, and no sooner had Major Clark left the room than I was out in the wet, lonely night, heading for the guardhouse. It was nearly midnight; the melting snow was trickling underfoot; a huge moon buzzed down above the city walls as if it were being hauled in on a kite string; and suddenly, as I was crossing the walled city in utter silence from the Damascus to the Jaffa Gate, I heard a snuffling and a tinkling of bells; and a shepherdless flock of black goats came charging out of a lane in such a dark frenzy that they might have been a pack of devils looking for the Archfiend himself, and vanished down another lane and were swallowed up by the cobblestones. The church bells were ringing away, and there was a smell of freshly baked bread, and I was actually trembling with desire to begin, already haunted by the momentous feeling that has gripped me, waking and sleeping, for the past five weeks… and which, Colonel, is the reason I’m here now, tiring you without getting to the point, because the story keeps coming between us, and I’m afraid I may already have tried your patience too far…

— That’s very kind of you, sir. And so I climbed the stairs of the tower that the Jews call the Tower of David and the Arabs el-Kal’a; and I woke the sergeants and the duty officer and showed them the file and my authorization to conduct the investigation, which from now on I was to be in sole charge of; and I instructed them to let no one near the prisoner except by my express permission. Then I was taken to the cell block, past four hundred years of Turkish rule to a dungeon, a sort of round pit encircled by a walkway, in which our prisoner, the defendant, had been put like some sort of dangerous snake or panther, although in fact, in his black suit he looked more like a buzzard. He was seated on an army cot and reading a book by candlelight, a hard look on his gaunt, lined face; reading as though reluctantly, with the book half-pushed away from him. It was a Bible with both Testaments that an evangelical old officer of the guards, thinking him as good as hung already, had given him for his soul. He was so absorbed in his defiant, his recalcitrant reading that he didn’t notice me looking down on him from above — not even when, like an actor on stage, he let the book drop, blew out the candle, cast himself down on the cot, curled up like a baby buzzard, and shut his eyes. My first thought was to let him be until morning while I studied the file and planned my attack; but the more I looked at him, the more something told me that unless I pressed ahead that very night, I would never get a confession out of him; no, the more time I let pass, the more tightly he would weave the tissue of lies he had cocooned himself in. And so I asked for a room and a pot of coffee and sat down to read the file and put my thoughts in order, and at 2 A.M. I returned to him. It was very cold down there. I removed his blanket and touched him; and he opened his eyes, which were so big and pure and young-looking that you could see they hadn’t been made by whoever had made the rest of him; and I started speaking quickly and gently right into his dreams, casting a fine net to trap the fish of truth in its muddy swamp; while he, confused and tired though he was, in fact, thoroughly dejected, did his best in that clear Scots brogue you’ll hear tomorrow to get a grip on himself and swim clear, carrying on once more about some woman of his behind Turkish lines, as if we were talking, not about villages of fanatically ignorant Mohammedans whose females go veiled and barefoot, but about some town along the Loire in a story by de Maupassant, with pretty young mademoiselles in embroidered aprons waiting for their lovers. And he too, he insisted, had “a ladylove,” although you could tell at a glance that he wasn’t a ladies’ man but a man of words who couldn’t picture the figment of his own imagination; so that had I asked him what the color of his lady’s eyes was, he would have marveled that they had any color at all, let alone that he was expected to know it. It was a lie I wasn’t having any part of. And yet the less I would hear of it, the more he clung to it, telling me about this woman he had been trysting with for a month, adding embellishments to his own ridiculous yarn that he clearly didn’t believe a word of, as if it had taken hold of him and made him its master instead of the other way around; until at last he fell silent, shivering from the cold, and let his ladylove recede back into the mind that had concocted her. At that point, I took him up to the office; I let him warm himself there, made him a cup of hot tea, and introduced myself. “What will it take to make you trust me?” I asked him. He answered that he had a little son whom he hadn’t seen for three days and missed terribly; and so I woke three soldiers of the guard, and at 3 A.M. we set out for one of those new quarters outside the walled city, Abraham’s Vineyard was its name, and knocked on a door there. A middle-aged woman in a clean frock, with a rather nice, pleasant face, opened directly, as if she had been waiting for us. When she saw the soldiers she cried a bit; and the man touched her gently and murmured something in Hebrew and hurried up some stairs to a second story; and soon he came back down with a four-year-old child in his arms, a handsome blond boy who looked out of sorts, or perhaps a bit soft in the head. You’ll see him in court, sir, tomorrow; I’ve granted him permission to attend the opening session, because I know that if the defendant had counsel, he would use the child as grounds for clemency…

— Directly, sir.

— Yes, sir.

— No, sir.

— Quite so, sir.

— The point is, sir, that while he was kissing his son I ordered the soldiers to search the house and make sure to go through every drawer and collect every scrap of paper that they found. We sat without a word in the kitchen, the two of us with the boy on his lap, until they finished and came back with a large basket full of papers, after which I told them to sit in the drawing room and had them served tea. Meanwhile, there was already a first purple glow outside, and a few lights came on in the neighborhood, because news had spread of the police. And yet that was the only sign of life there was in that utter, predawn silence. The woman put the boy back to sleep and went to bed herself; and we sat there, the two of us; and I said, “Look, why don’t you tell me about it from the beginning, or if you like, from even before that: just who are you?” By then we were both so horribly fagged that only the truth could keep us awake, and that’s what he began to tell me while I sat there listening, that was the opening through which I fished his confession. Afterward it was merely a question of dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s.”

— Thank you, sir. Gladly.

— He is indeed. Born in Jerusalem, as was his father. His grandfather came here as a young man from Greece. Mind you, you don’t easily find such Jews, because Jews aren’t naturally born in Palestine as Englishmen are in England and Welshmen are in Wales. Most of the Jews you see here are newcomers, and those who are born here usually leave. Dashed few stay on, and those who do are rather highly regarded, more by others, I daresay, than by themselves, which is rather a boost to their self-esteem, although perhaps not as much as all that…

— Right you are, sir. You would think, wouldn’t you, that Jerusalem would be for a Jew what London is for an Englishman; but the East End of London has more Jews in it than this entire country. I suppose that’s because London is too substantial a place to carry about with you, whereas the Jews take Jerusalem wherever they go, and the more of them take it with them, the lighter it becomes…

— Up to a point, sir, up to a point. It’s even true — why deny it? — of my own self. But my home is Manchester and the city of my dreams is London, and even if I have a warm place for this town in my heart, it’s for the idea of it, not the reality. It’s really quite extraordinary, sir, how, although I’ve been here for several months, the idea and the reality remain entirely separate.

— I appreciate that, sir… Well, then: why don’t I sketch his biography on a thumbnail. His grandparents came here in the middle of the last century from Salonika, in the days when it was still part of Turkey, a childless couple who hoped that settling in Jerusalem might grant them their prayers for a child. And so it did, and our defendant’s father, Moses Hayyim Mani, was conceived to his mother Tamara and his father Joseph Mani, who died before his son was born. Moses Hayyim was raised with no end of love by his mother, and grew up to be such a handsome, captivating lad that the British consul in Jerusalem, who was a neighbor of theirs, took him under his wing. He was a great Bible-reader, this consul, and perhaps it was because he saw in little Moses a metempsychosis of his biblical namesake that he decided to make him a British subject; in any case, for his thirteenth birthday he gave the boy a British passport as a present, which you’ll find in this file here, Colonel. It’s a rather unusual document, written in an ornate hand such as you never see anymore, with a lovely photograph of a child with the most candid, trusting eyes. It even has a number, and we’ve cabled London to run it down and see what series it belongs to, because it was not the common practice of British consuls to grant British nationality to children for being adorable… Be that as it may, however, the boy was pleased as punch to be a British subject and took his gift-wrapped passport with him everywhere, reciting Byron and Shelley and retelling The Canterbury Tales amid the pestilent poverty of this city, since his mother made a point of his studying English at a mission school. Then he was sent to Beirut, to study medicine at the American University. He was back within a year, homesick for both mother and Jerusalem; was persuaded to return; somehow — although just barely, it would seem — persisted in his studies while revisiting Jerusalem every few months; and finally took his mother back to Beirut, where he pressed on doggedly out of loyalty to his patron the consul until, at the age of twenty-seven, he received his medical degree. By now it was time to marry him off before he became a confirmed bachelor — at which point the consul had the idea of finding him a British wife to make him more English than ever. It took a while to locate one; but in the end he hit upon another orphan, a woman slightly older than Mani, who was descended from an Anglo-Jewish family that had made a living as camp followers of Napoleon’s army until the Egyptian Campaign, when it was taken prisoner by the Turks, from whom the French forgot to ransom it. Eventually, it ransomed itself and stayed on in the Orient; and so, in 1880, the two of them were wed. They had a baby girl who died directly after childbirth, and then a second girl who died, and then a boy, all because of incompatible blood; and indeed, when our defendant came along in 1887, he seemed of a mind to die too; but this time the Manis put their foot down; they fought day and night to save him until he had no choice but to live; and two years later a sister was born who survived too. By now the doctor had been through so many postnatal crises that it occurred to him to open a small lying-in hospital of his own — and so in the early 1890s, when Jews began building outside the walled city, he bought the house in Abraham’s Vineyard; found a tough old Swedish woman, an old maid from Malmo who had come to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage, failed to find God, and taken up free thought and midwivery; installed some beds; and ordered the latest equipment from France, including a large mirror in which the mothers could watch themselves giving birth. Then he sat back and waited for the fair sex of Jerusalem to knock at his gate. At first he got only the fallen ones: women of ill repute, compromised young ladies, nuns in the family way, pilgrimesses of dubious virtue. The Swedish midwife, who was quite cunning and resourceful, delivered each of them with hardly a labor pain, as if she took it all upon herself, and after a while Dr. Mani’s surgery developed such a reputation that mothers-to-be began flocking to it from all over. Our defendant’s father became rather the man-about-town: a debonair charmer, popular with the ladies and well liked by everyone; an excellent host, much-sought-after guest, and honorable member of sundry deputations. At about this time he became an ardent Zionist and admirer of Dr. Herzl, appointed himself a delegate to all the Zionist congresses, and left the trusty Swede to mind the shop, arriving only at the last minute even if he was in Jerusalem, just in time to give the bawling baby a cheery slap on the back, joke with its mother, snip the umbilical cord, remove the afterbirth, and help decide on a name. His own mother, to whom he was unfailingly gallant, was always at his side, putting his wife in her shadow, while the little boy and his sister ran about among the beds. In the summer of 1899 the doctor went off to one of his congresses in Europe and came back with two Jewish youngsters from a small Polish town near Cracow, a sister and brother. Our defendant remembers them well, although he didn’t understand their language. The brother was a doctor, the sister an attractive young woman; Dr. Mani sought to interest the former in his clinic and the latter in himself, since he had fallen madly in love with her as only an older man can with a young girl whom he has not time to court and seeks only to devour. The less devoured she wished to be, the more he dogged her footsteps, and before long all Jerusalem knew of his great passion, since Mani the Elder, unlike Mani the Younger, was not at all diffident about his feelings. It was indeed quite an infamous scandal… and when the two young Polish Jews made up their minds to return home despite the doctor’s pleas that they remain in Jerusalem, he followed them to Jaffa, sailed from there to Beirut with them, and vanished. It took several weeks to discover that he had been killed in a ghastly accident in the railway station. He was fifty years old, and by the time the corpse was identified and brought to Jerusalem for burial, it was autumn.

— Yes, sir. I gathered all this information from the defendant himself, although I was able to corroborate it from other sources. I’m dreadfully sorry to be taking so much of your time, but I have my reasons… I assure you that I do…

— Thank you, sir. All this was nearly twenty years ago. But can there be any statute of limitations when we seek to trace, through the maze of their origins, the roots of treachery and espionage so as to keep them from spreading their rank weeds? The family was stunned by the disaster; their benefactor, the consul, was long dead; the lying-in hospital was dealt a mortal blow. For a while the Swedish midwife tried keeping it up, at first openly and then clandestinely, since the authorities revoked its license after Dr. Mani’s death; there were debts to be paid too, so that part of the equipment had to be sold and some of the rooms rented out to pilgrims; and gradually, the women of Jerusalem stopped coming to give birth there. That Christmas the city was flooded by Christian pilgrims who had come to mark the new century, and the faithful midwife suddenly regained her faith and returned with them to her native land. In December 1899 our defendant was twelve years old; he had always been an independent lad, even when his father was alive, and now he became even more so. If you try to picture him for a moment, sir, as I can, you’ll see a thin, black-haired boy with glasses and a dark complexion like his mother’s, a moody youngster who daydreamed and even talked to himself. In late December of that year the winter finally arrived; everywhere there were church bells and parades of Russian pilgrims through the streets; the two centuries, one coming and one going, were a source of universal excitement. And then one afternoon, so he told me, young Mani went down to the former hospital on the ground floor and was startled to find a young woman in travail lying on a bed, one of those Jewish adventuresses who had come to Palestine from Europe to live in the new Jewish farming villages, partly out of ideological conviction and partly to run away from home. She had reached Jerusalem on her last legs, with the address of the lying-in hospital, not knowing that it was defunct; had found no one there; and had lain down on a bed. It was afternoon; the boy’s mother, sister, and grandmother had gone to see the processions and had not come home yet; no one was there but him and the woman; and now she began screaming and sobbing, throwing off her blanket and howling for help while he stood there and stared at her, both straight-on and in the mirror. At first he was too paralyzed to move; and when at last he tried helping her undress, he couldn’t get her clothes off, no matter how she begged him, until he ran to fetch a knife and slashed them. Then he stood watching the birth canal heave open and listening to her moans; saw the baby’s head appear slowly in a pool of blood; witnessed it all: the dreadful suffering, the screams; and was made to swear while standing helplessly in that cold room that he wouldn’t leave her or lay down his knife before cutting the umbilical cord. And throughout all this he never shut his eyes. He looked now at the woman and now at the mirror, watching the birth on both sides of him… which is how, so he says, his intense political consciousness was born, gripping the knife in that cold room…

— Yes, sir, political, sir, those were his words and that’s how he views it. Unbelievably intense; it’s the only thing in his world that matters; it is his world. And thus, in a single cold, gloomy, fin-de-siecle hour, a skinny twelve-year-old with glasses became, as he puts it, a homo politicus. And here, perhaps, lies the first, subtle kernel of the bizarre, the hideous act of treachery that came eighteen years later, on account of which, sir, you were brought from Egypt to join your colleagues on the bench tomorrow while I hammer home his guilt… I say, though, look at how the sky has cleared! Didn’t I remark two hours ago, sir, that Jerusalem wasn’t Glasgow? Even the most torrential rains have their limit here… and so I ask myself, sir, and you too, Colonel, whether you haven’t heard enough by now. To think of all the times my mother warned me not to forget myself, that is, not to forget my listeners, because my tongue has a way of getting carried away, especially when it has such excellent whiskey to carry it…

— Of course, sir. I have a most definite purpose in mind.

— I daresay, Colonel, that everything will fit together in the end.

— With all my heart and soul, sir.

— Thank you, sir, that’s terribly kind of you. Well, then, where were we? Ah, yes, at the start of the century, which erupted right under our defendant’s nose…

— Sir?

— What baby is that, sir?

— Oh yes, that one… but just what was the question, sir?

— Why, yes, sir.

— Yes, sir.

— Why, yes, sir. Quite thick of me, sir. Yes, of course. I reckon it was born in the end, but I’m afraid I didn’t pursue the matter, because it seemed to me more of a metaphor… I do believe he cut the cord with his knife and gave the baby its freedom, but as to whether it lived or not… we must hope for the best…

— By all means, sir… Well, then, the new century dawned on us all, each of us at his proper station, and on the Manis too, who were still quite stunned by their tragedy. The old grandmother, though pushing eighty by now, was as youthful as ever and still adored by the young lad; the mother had put on weight and was aging rapidly; the sister was only ten but already resigned to a fate of being married off young; and the four of them barely eked out a living from letting out rooms in the defunct hospital. Young Mani was left pretty much to his own devices, and being a homo politicus, as he puts it, he set himself goals and made himself friends accordingly. His first decision was to study languages; it still rankled him to have had to sit listening to his father converse with his young guests from Europe without understanding a word. And having made up his mind, he went about it as single-mindedly as an army crossing a river — which meant secretly leaving the Jewish school in which his father had placed him without bothering to inform his mother or grandmother and roaming the streets of Jerusalem until he found the Scottish Mission on Mount Zion and its School of Bible, a very Christian institution, I needn’t tell you. What interested young Mani, of course, was not the Bible but English, which he quickly mastered with an Inverness accent. But that was just the beginning. Afternoons found him in the nearby village of Silwan, where a chum of his father’s, an old Arab sheikh, agreed to chat with him in Arabic and put him through his conjugations. And that still left evenings, when he sometimes frequented an Algerian family he knew to help mind the children and pick up a bit of French. He was already, you see, quite adept at moving among different elements before he had even celebrated his bar-mitzvah, which is like a Catholic confirmation or a Mohammedan toohoor and takes place in synagogue at the age of thirteen, when you must chant parts of the Bible in a special melody that is the very devil to master — believe me, Colonel, I can vouch for that personally, and so can the Great Synagogue in Manchester… And so, as his bar-mitzvah approached, he betook himself to one of your little Jerusalem sects, one of those black-coated, fur-hatted, curly-eared lots whom you may have come across in London, Colonel, if you have ventured to the East End…

— Most assuredly, sir… that’s where you see them, dressed the same way. He presented himself to them as an orphan, which is what he did everywhere, sir, as if he were motherless too; and they arranged for his bar-mitzvah, and taught him the proper chant notes, and even saw to the refreshments. That was the start of his odd ties with them, which have continued to this day. I’ve questioned them about it most thoroughly, trying to get to the bottom of it, because you see, sir, it’s not as if he belonged to them or could have even if he wished to: first, because he’s a Sephardi; second, because he’s a freethinker; and third, because he’s a Zionist, which is utterly foreign to them. And yet such ties existed; initially as a matter of mutual interest and eventually as one of subtle affection; because even the most hermetically sealed system needs a secret outlet, a man who is free to come and go on special assignments and is preferably an outsider, so that no control need be relinquished over one’s own; and best of all, a queer bird like Mani, a none too reputable orphan who could easily be disowned. And so he rendered them various services, such as corresponding in English with wealthy Jews in America, negotiating the rental of flats from the Mohammedans, and preparing digests of the newspapers, which their religion forbids them to read, in return for financial remuneration or its equivalent. They made no religious demands of him, not even that he wear a hat — indeed, already as a boy he was in the habit of calling on their elder bareheaded and speaking to him respectfully but as an equal. Not that he considered himself antireligious. He sometimes even attended services, although never theirs but only those of his fellow Sephardim, whose hymns were familiar and didn’t take all day — and then, of course, he clapped a red Turkish fez on his head before going off to pray. But he quite definitely did not wish to be considered religious either, because the one thing he could not have enough of was his freedom…

— In the Deity, sir? I believe he does, although he declines to profess it. In any case, he refused to answer the question, which I put to him with the greatest delicacy, on the grounds that it was too personal.

— No, sir, a Jew is not required to believe in Him. As a rule, however, he does, since he has little else to believe in.

— Are you quite certain, Colonel, that you wish me to expound on such questions of identity? It’s a dreadful bog, you know; the Jews themselves start out across it with the greatest confidence and end up floundering madly. I can’t tell you how sorry I am to be boring you like this.

— I would be most keen to, sir.

— With great pleasure, sir. I even have my own hypothesis. But for the moment, I suggest that we stick to our story. I daresay I should say a word about this sect, because from the day of his arrest they’ve gone tiptoeing after him and us, his handlers, like a flock of birds — crows, sir, if you will — all perched around the ringside; quite indistinguishable from each other, yet each of them with his clearly defined role and place. Already on that snowy night when I rushed off to the guardhouse and saw the first of them standing blackly by the edge of the square, I could tell by the way he stood there that he had been sent; not even his umbrella was his own, because since then I’ve seen it pass from hand to hand like a rifle at the changing of the guards. A night hasn’t gone by without one of them trailing behind me — along the narrow streets, into the shops, up steps and down steps… but the moment I approach them, they vanish. What they’re after, don’t you see, is to try to read in my face whether the accused has said anything to incriminate them…

— Yes, sir. They were questioned quite stiffly with the help of an interpreter who speaks their language.

— Yiddish, sir. It would appear that they had no idea what he was up to and could not have been less involved in his schemes. England, Turkey — they don’t give a fig for any of that. Their one concern is not to have his guilt rub off on them, although I do believe they feel a sort of solidarity with him, perhaps it even goes back to that bar-mitzvah chant… Anyway, we had better get back to our story. Well, sir, he grew up, the lad did, dark-haired, bespectacled, and homely, an independent and rather solitary homo politicus drifting among the identities of Jerusalem while working out his politics and acquiring languages as though they were a batch of keys to a house with many doors. He was still a bachelor, still stirred to the depths of his soul by that woman’s womb and screams. In 1905, when he was eighteen, his grandmother died of old age, the one person in the world he really loved. Meanwhile, his younger sister was married off as she had known she would be, to the son of a wealthy Jew from North Africa who had come to purchase a grave in Jerusalem and was buried in it sooner than he had planned; once the week of mourning was over, the young man departed with his new bride and her mother, for Marseilles, to which he also invited her brother, who was employed as a court clerk at the time. Young Mani, however, resolutely declined; he was awaiting political developments, which were not long in coming, since in 1908 the Young Turks seized power and proclaimed a multinational, multiracial empire — a proclamation that so affected him that he resolved to study law and serve in the Turkish parliament. And so, letting out his two rooms in the defunct hospital that was now a pilgrims’ hostel, he put the family possessions into storage, gave his father’s old clothes to charity except for a large, warm overcoat, ordered a calling card from a print shop that said “Journalist” even though he had no journal to correspond for, and in the late summer of 1908 took the train to Jaffa, departing Jerusalem for the first time in his life. He did not once lift his head to look at the mountains sliding by outside the window, but kept his eyes on the suitcase between his legs and on his father’s coat by his side, wanting only to put Palestine behind him without a glimpse of the route whereby his father had deserted him. From the railway station in Jaffa he took a black hansom straight to the port, where he boarded a northbound ship for Constantinople. Three days later, toward evening, she cast anchor in Beirut — which is, as you know, sir, a handsome and rapidly growing city famed for its houses of amusement. All the passengers hurried ashore, he told me, save himself; for he had decided not to budge from the empty ship and there he remained, pacing the deck and listening to the sounds of song and laughter from the shore while regarding the brilliant lights of the city in which his father had perished. Toward midnight the first passengers returned to their cabins; yet still he strode the deck, watching the lights dim as the song and laughter faded away. A late moon rose in the sky. And then… then, sir, so he says, he heard a cry; as if a huge, powerful infant were crying in the city, or so he says, sir; and with shaking hands he packed his suitcase and went ashore, passing the watchmen and entering the little streets, through which the last revelers were heading home and the last passengers returning to their ships. And all along, sir, he kept hearing the cry. And so he struck out through the winding lanes of the old city and came to the railway station, where he quickly crossed the tracks and started up a steadily climbing street until he came to a boardinghouse, a small establishment for travelers in need of a night’s lodgings. There were voices inside and a light swayed in the vestibule; and he asked if there was a room available and was told that there was; and he climbed the stairs and flung his suitcase on the bed and stepped out on the terrace and gazed down at the station below, which was flooded with moonlight, the tracks running north and south; and then, sir, he opened the squeaking clothes closet and hung up his father’s old coat… and there it stayed for six years…

— I do, sir. He remained in that city for six full years, until the outbreak of the war, And in the same boardinghouse and the same room, where he would still no doubt be if not for the war, as if being near the train station where his father had died held him in a vise. And I ask myself, sir, whether his act of treachery, or espionage, even if it surfaced many years later, was not conceived there in Beirut, although all my efforts to determine whether he was already planted then by the Turks have yielded nothing…

— Yes, Colonel. A most thorough investigation, carried out around the clock, from every angle. There wasn’t a stone left unturned. Were any Turks lurking in the background, I’m sure I would have found them. But there isn’t a Turk in sight, sir, or even a German. The whole thing seems purely self-generated by his own muddled, neurasthenic mind. That’s the point I’m driving at, and if anyone thinks there’s a lesson to be learned here, anything applicable to the apprehension of spies and traitors in the future, the only lesson I can see is that every case is unique, Joseph Mani too, who claims he spent his seven years in Beirut studying, sir. And he really did attend the American University, which was easily done with his British passport that opened all sorts of doors. His income from the rent in Jerusalem paid for his bed and breakfast, and the rest of his needs were financed by odd jobs that he found as a guide, an interpreter, and a hotel agent, because Beirut was full of visitors in those years, tourists who came from all over. The town was booming; it was the gateway to the Orient for Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen; for Austrians, Russians, and even Americans; processions of pilgrims passed through it; so did archaeological expeditions, Christian missions, journalists discovering the East. And Jews too, of course, in every possible shape and form. A bureau of the Zionist Organization was opened too, to help stranded pioneers on their way to Palestine, penniless Jewish youngsters without a visa for the Ottoman Empire, let alone Palestine, without money for a ship berth, so that they planned to continue their journey on foot and slip across the border. Mani picked them out at the train station, where he hung about every evening, as they stepped out of the coaches: pale young men and women from Russia, on the run from the law since the abortive 1905 uprising, unkempt and unwashed with their bundles roped together… and here was this dark, bespectacled Palestinian Jew come to meet them, wearing a little necktie and attempting to hit it off with them in Hebrew, then switching to French, then going over to his smattering of Russian. He directed them to the cheap doss houses on the hills above the city, which gave him a modest commission; explained where they might find an inexpensive café told them about the Holy Land and pointed out the way to the Zionist bureau; but he never befriended them past that. From women, he kept away entirely; it was as if he had still not gotten over his twelve-year-old’s memory of that winter day in the empty house with its womb that seemed less about to bear life than engorge it, and with a most ravenous appetite. And he had his studies to keep up too.

— Yes, sir, quite faithfully. Every morning he went to the university, where he continued to consider himself a student for six years, albeit a rather slow óne and of a special status because of the king’s English that he spoke. His examinations and term papers were postponed from year to year; his requirements were met at a snail’s pace; most of his time was spent reading the daily and weekly papers in the library; since the age of twelve, after all, he had been his own headmaster; and now he had the run of the university, whose student body was a hodgepodge of different levels and backgrounds. And yet he had a sure notion of his curriculum; it was politicojurisprudential; he studied the laws of the Turkish majlis, the American constitution, the philosophy of the Koran; but also English poetry, Sumerian archaeology, Byzantine iconography, choosing his lectures systematically and at his leisure; and if there were any he had failed to comprehend in their entirety, he waited a year or two for them to be repeated and sat through them again. Afternoons were devoted to field work, that is, to attending political meetings of Druze, of Shiites, of Communists, of Christians, of Maronites, of Catholic priests, shuttling from identity to identity, although by now the identities were all jumbled up; a simple promenade down the main street of Beirut was an excursion to them all. And of course, he did not neglect the Sephardic synagogue, which he made a point of attending every Sabbath eve, although he was far from punctilious in his observance of the Law; he refused, for example, to kindle a fire on the Sabbath, but did not abstain from forbidden foods. Politics remained his goal; he regarded it reverentially, as a complete philosophy of life with an inner logic of its own and a reason and purpose for everything. Events in Europe and in the Balkans left their powerful mark on him, and his imagination was fired by the approaching world war. Each time his mother and sister urged him to join them in Marseilles, he refused. The Turkish authorities were growing harsher; the Germans were everywhere; foreigners were being asked to leave; he feared leaving Ottoman jurisdiction and not being allowed back. His British passport burned in his pocket like a hot coal… and to make matters worse, Colonel, in the early winter of 1914 he had a baby — and a motherless one to boot…

— A quite genuine baby, sir. Its mother died shortly after its birth, which took place in the room its father’s gray overcoat had been hanging in for six years. And our Mr. Mani had to register it at the police ministry, where the German officers nosing about in the thick and hostile atmosphere of those prewar days could not help but wonder about this thin Palestinian student with the glasses, this journalist without a journal, who brought his infant to a Druze wet nurse every morning, a peddler in the souk of Beirut, and sat by her reading an old paper picked up out of the gutter while waiting for his child to drink its fill. Mind you, though, the paper was not too old for him to learn from it that Turkey would soon be in the thick of it too — and so, in late summer of 1914, as suddenly as he had arrived six years earlier, he took his father’s coat down from its peg, wrapped up the baby, and made his way southward to his native city, which after Beirut seemed a poor and gloomy place, bathed in a hard, dry light. He arrived at the house in Kerem Avraham to find it full of boarders, since by now every boarder had a boarder of his own and there was no place for him, the owner, to lay his head; and so off he went to his sectaries — Hasidim, sir, is the name for them; and he knocked on their door in his father’s old overcoat with the baby in his arms and said to them, “Find me a wife.” I rather doubt that surprised them one bit, sir; it’s their habit, you see, to be surprised by nothing, so that they can concentrate on divine matters; and so all they asked him was, “Do you want a wife to mind your child or a wife to bear you more children?” “I’ll think about that,” says he, and so he does, and when he has thought he tells them, “I want a wife to mind my child and me.” Well, sir, they have all sorts of women for a man like him: young widows and divorcées who will marry whomever they’re told to; but that isn’t whom they bring him; for although they never say so, they don’t wish to have him too close to them; and in any case, they aren’t at all keen on cross-marriages. In the end they find him a wife some thirteen years older than he is, a childless but attractive woman of nearly forty who came to Jerusalem from Mesopotamia at the end of the century and has already been through two husbands: one dead and one walked out on her; and has a bit of property and a souvenir shop for tourists in the walled city, between the Jewish and the Armenian quarters. Straightways she takes to the infant as if it were her own, with all the love and devotion you could ask for, and our Mr. Mani moves in with her, sinking into the piles of pillows and quilts left behind by her two husbands and hiding his British passport under the mattress. And thus, while great armies meet in battle along the blood-filled rivers of Europe, he sleeps his way through the winter of 1915. His new wife cooks her Babylonian dishes and serves them to him in bed as if he were convalescing from an illness, and the baby joins him there, crammed with goodies and smothered with gobs of love. And yet even there, sir, ensconced in his featherbed, he still considers himself a homo politicus and sends his wife out on urgent errands to bring him all the newspapers she can, which he peruses among the quilts and pillows, even those that arrive months late — boning up on the living and the dead and studying the maps and keeping track of the progress of the war and the lines of battle, some of which have long been erased; until finally, his Turkish fez on his head, he sallies forth from his lair into a Jerusalem made poorer than ever by the fighting overseas and resumes his identity shuttle. Mornings are spent in an Arab coffeehouse in the walled city, arbitrating petty tiffs and composing writs for the courts, because even though he has brought back no diploma from Beirut, he passes himself off as a solicitor; afternoons he comes back home for a sound snooze; then up and about once more without even a change of clothes, just a white hat in place of the fez, to call on a German-Jewish professor in the new city and teach him Arabic grammar; and from there to his Sephardic synagogue for the afternoon prayer; and then to his sectaries, to translate some English correspondence; and then back home for dinner with his wife and child; and then off again, this time with no hat at all, to the Zionist Club, where he sits in the back row with a drowsing Turkish secret policeman and listens to lectures and debates, sometimes rising to ask the Zionists a question of his own; and home at last late at night to hush the day’s speakers in his head and tell them all what he thinks, which is still not at all anti-English, because it has not dawned on him yet that the English will soon arrive; so that if any thought of treachery crosses his mind, it is no more than a dim kernel, as lifeless as a pebble, as a pip that falls on dry earth and seems more the dross of the fruit than the source of a new tree. And so more long years go by, and 1917 arrives, and the expeditionary force lands in Egypt and crosses the desert until Great Britain is next door to Palestine, and on the ninth of January, as you know, sir, we took the border town of Rafah.

— Major General Philip Chatwood, sir, with his Australian and New Zealand cavalry. It was a short, easy battle, and by February news of it had reached Jerusalem and caused great excitement. Our Mani was jolly well shaken, so he told me, in a state of utter turmoil — and I asked myself, sir, what exactly was the meaning of it? Was this the jolt that turned under the dry pip that was playing dead, down into the warm, dark, blanketing earth?

— Yes, sir. What I mean, sir, if you’ll forgive me for being rather literary, is, was this the beginning of the treachery that was soon to burst forth into the open? What could all that turmoil have meant in a man who called himself a homo politicus but sat through the war in Jerusalem with his face turned north toward Turkey, blind to what was happening in his backyard? What had he thought would happen? Was he still the boy waiting for his father to come home? Because all at once, here is Great Britain in the south, and he’s as shaken as if his father had made a secret circuit of Palestine and come back at him from the opposite direction…

— His allegorical father, sir. I only meant it as a parable.

— I beg your pardon, sir. It was just an attempt at interpretation…

— As you wish, Colonel… why, of course…

— Yes, indeed, sir, that’s what I’m aiming at. It will all fit together in the end. I’m dreadfully sorry, sir.

— I’ll most assuredly be quick about it, sir; the events now become quicker themselves. The armies prepare to lock horns, and in March we suffer a stinging setback in Gaza, although it’s clear to all that we haven’t said our last word yet. All summer long there is a constant trickle of nebulous rumors; it’s not that the Turks are deliberately spreading them, it’s just that they themselves don’t know where the English bull, our esteemed Sir Edmund, who in late summer moves his cavalry into the Holy Land, will strike from. By now it’s autumn, sir, the season of the Jewish holidays, although quite frankly, autumn here is just more of summer with a bit of an evening breeze; but it’s the time of the Jews’ New Year, when they rise in the middle of the night to blow a ram’s horn; and he felt the winds shift to southerly and rose one day himself and set out, taking his British passport from under the quilt and sowing it into the lining of his old coat. His first stop was Bethlehem, where nothing seemed to have changed: the Turks shuffled about as always and the Arabs were their usual sleepy selves; only in the eyes of the Jews did he notice a soft gleam that made him stretch his neck a bit, as if straining to hear foreign voices. A party of Jews was on its way to Hebron to pray in the Cave of the Patriarchs, and he traveled with them for a while until their way was blocked by a Turkish detachment bound for Gaza, at which point he left the main road and caught a ride on a cart heading down into the desert of Judea. It was late afternoon; the sun was setting; a mixed company of Turkish cavalry and infantry marched by, singing a jolly Turkish tune, as if homebound at last, their officer brusquely ordered the cart aside and told its occupants to stay put; and our Mr. Mani had no way of knowing that as the last Turkish soldier marched by him, four hundred years of Turkish rule, the only rule he had known in his life, were peeled away as though they were a puff of wind… And so they remained there in that no-man’s land, south of Hebron on the way to Beersheba, not far from the tents of some Bedouin, who extended them their hospitality. It was the thirty-first of October, and our Mani had no idea either that Sir Edmund had taken Beersheba that same night. They lit a fire to warm themselves and sat around it…

— I wouldn’t say pleased, sir. Burning with anticipation was more like it. He was deucedly impatient to come in contact with us, even though he had no idea what that meant; but he did know that if he stayed where he was, there would no longer be any way back. And indeed, the next morning he found himself encircled by Chatwood’s cavalry under the command of Captain William Daggett of the quartermaster’s corps of the 67th Regiment. Captain Daggett’s affidavit, sir, is here in this brief, and he’ll be the first to take the witness stand tomorrow. An indomitable warrior, sir, a most esteemed member of Chatwood’s staff; a vain old bloody-tempered Scotsman who refused to be questioned at first and had to be locked up for two days before we could get the story out of him.

— Quite so, sir. You see, sir, the captain, who is seventy years old, is an absolute fiend for horses, you’d almost think he were part horse himself. In Midlothian, sir, where he lives, a horse isn’t raced without his say-so, and all he lives and breathes for is to breed a better, faster animal that will compete with his colors; his whole life, you might say, has been one long search for the ideal thoroughbred. When war broke out he joined up at once despite his age and was commissioned chief livery officer of the 67th Cavalry; his service in France was spent mostly poking about in stables, and I daresay he thinks the whole war is one colossal derby and can’t understand why the jockeys keep shooting at each other. And when all the jockeys had their mounts shot out from under them in Europe and the tanks came to take their place, he was jolly well cheesed-off and ‘eard the East a-callin’, and so he signed on with Allenby and sailed across the sea to go on searching for his equus idealis among the fabled stallions of Arabia, hoping to find it and ship it back to Midlothian to the astonishment of all his racing mates. He’s determined to track it down if it’s the last thing he does, and this whole ruddy war, as far as he’s concerned, from that duke shot at Sarajevo to the millions who died at Verdun, has been fought solely to transport him to the deserts of Arabia for that purpose. Wherever he goes, commandeering horses and camels for his regiment, he keeps an eye out; and so the minute Beersheba was taken, while the smoke was still rising from the burning houses and the dead and wounded were being gathered, he put on his kilt and went galloping off into the wilderness with his cronies and two interpreters to look for the steed of his dreams…

— Thank you, sir, gladly. A small drop By George, it’s raining again! I’m sorry to have to bore you like this, but I had a don at Cambridge who said that God was in the details, and that’s so not only when God is an aesthete but when He’s a jurist as well. And the details matter here especially, because now is when our defendant links up with His Majesty’s forces, and had it not been for Captain Daggett’s enthusiasm, he would never have penetrated so quickly to the privy chambers of regimental headquarters…

— Quite so, sir, and without the most cursory check on him. Captain Daggett, you see, had no time for anything but horses; he was charging about from one Bedouin camp to another, rousting out every quadruped with a mane and having them lined up in front of him so that he could look in their mouths and at their fetlocks, and whistle to them with his special Scottish whistle that works on every horse in the world, which answers with a special wiggle of its ears that only Daggett understands, after which he waits for old Dobbin to defecate and sniffs its droppings to know what’s inside it.

— By George, sir, I’ve seen it myself. It’s the sort of connoisseurship that borders on madness. And after that he summons the horse’s owner to recite its family tree; and his two interpreters — who never recovered from the heatstroke they came down with in Cairo, to which they were whisked straight from Queens College in Oxford, where they studied with dons who had never been east of Magdalen Bridge — are so terrified of him that they forget what little Arabic they know; so that each question he wants to ask the Bedouin calls for a lengthy confab on their part and much leafing through the dictionary, in which they don’t even always understand the English; whereupon they stand there working out a final draft in whispers while the Bedouin wait patiently and the gray-haired captain grows flushed with rage; and when at last the magic words are carefully uttered in their atrocious accents, any resemblance between which and the speech of real Arabs is purely accidental, the Bedouin turn crimson and then white with anger; and spitting on the ground, they stalk off, fold their tents, take their horse, take everything, and vanish over the horizon, leaving nothing behind but a whirlpool of dust and two mortified interpreters with no idea what their mistake was…

— Perhaps, Colonel, I have availed myself of poetic license. But it’s quite justified to explain our captain’s enthusiasm when, on that morning of the first of November, he was approached by Mr. Mani, unshaven and wearing his black suit that was wrinkled from a sleepless night. Mani surveyed our captain, who had just finished circumambulating a horse and was now whistling to it in Scots while waiting for it to drop its turds; looked at the quaking interpreters making gargling noises with their tongues; observed the disheartened Bedouin, who were already resigned to the loss of their mounts; quietly took a few steps forward as his eyes bore into the uniforms, weapons, and bridles of the soldiers, who were the first Englishmen he had ever seen out of mufti; and then opened his mouth and in his best School-of-Bible Scots brogue translated for the captain with utter proficiency an entire discourse on equinology. Little wonder, then, that by late that afternoon Mr. Mani was already well tied to a commandeered horse with which he seemed to form a single creature, surrounded by British cavalry and in a place of honor beside the captain, who regarded him as his personal and heaven-sent savior. That evening in Beersheba he was brought to the house of the Turkish governor, above which the Union Jack was already flying; and there, sir, if I may be permitted a personal note, as I was going about my duty with the adjutants of the brigade, which included packing Turkish documents in boxes, identifying the dead, and covering the wounded so that they might finish dying quietly in the light of the desert sunset; there, among the shying-back horses, I caught my first glimpse of him, freshly untied from his mount: pale, exhausted, old-looking, treading on slivers of glass and empty Turkish cartridges that glowed in the waning sun as he climbed the steps to the governor’s house; unlike any Englishman, unlike any Jew, unlike any Arab or Turk, unlike anyone at all, even though he was more of a native than any of them. Was he already thinking of treachery?

— It was the first of November, sir — 1917, sir.

— Yes, Colonel.

— No, Colonel.

— Most certainly, Colonel.

— Not yet, sir. From that moment on he became the chief divisional interpreter, and since he could palaver a bit in Turkish too, he soon made himself indispensable. And yet, so he says, the thought of treachery had yet to sprout in him, for the cold, bare kernel that had worked its way into the dark, dry earth still lacked the stimulation of moisture.

— Yes, sir. That’s how he put it during one of his interrogation sessions. And that was why he didn’t reach for the British passport sewn into the lining of his coat, but rather sardonically told himself, “Aye, the foreigners have come to replace the foreigners.” His mind, sir, was not yet made up. He was still watching silently from the sidelines, trying to puzzle out our intentions. Gaza was ours; the breakthrough was a success; our butting bull, Sir Edmund, spurred the army on northward along the coast, through the fields of Philistia, over sand dunes and swamps, urging it on to Jerusalem in time to make a Christmas gift of the city to Lloyd George and John Bull, because London was famished for a victory that might help it get over the endless slaughter at Verdun, the war being now in its fourth outcomeless winter. Was this the moisture that made the kernel sprout?

— No, sir. At first he was the personal prisoner of the old Scotsman, who hid him in his trailer and ranged back and forth with him between Beersheba and Gaza, looking for his dream horse. By now, though, all of army intelligence had heard of him; and so they commandeered him from old Daggett and put him to work as a translator while the interpreters tagged after him to learn and to marvel; for he was indeed most wonderfully adept at it: the words seemed to translate themselves without even passing through his brain, changing languages in midair, changing grammar, changing intonation, so that the speaker felt that quite miraculously, the unknown language was coming out of his own throat… Meanwhile, the army flowed like a mighty river up the coast, crumbling the Turkish positions, which were as weak as the sand surrounding them, one after another; one after another, the villages surrendered too; and wherever they went, the military governors took Mani with them to translate their proclamations. Picture him if you can, sir, in our midst, a thin, quiet civilian with glasses and burning eyes; wrapped in his father’s already threadbare overcoat and still in shock from the sudden change; cut off from his son and household with no way of informing them of his whereabouts — and yet at the same time, getting to know his native land, even if he was tied to his horse, because he was still in the habit of falling off. There wasn’t a village too small or out-of-the-way for him to be brought to, sometimes no more than a few mud huts and tents; and there he would stand, a ruddy little civilian surrounded by officers with their riding crops under their arms, translating their proclamations of occupation and their instructions for curfews to a band of ignorant Arab darkies in peasant cloaks and head cloths — and mind you, doing it so fast that the translation was done before the words were out of the officer’s mouth, so that they seemed less a translation than a little speech cooked up on his own whose meaning no one could be sure of. In fact, sir, he might have been taken not so much for an interpreter as for a glum little commissar popping up out of the earth with a military escort to explain the war to the villagers. He would look out at all those Arab faces positively glowing with attention, straining to catch a whiff of the young Jew in his old overcoat surrounded by his train of Englishmen; if the village headsman had a question, he would answer quite firmly at once, adding “It doesn’t matter” to any officer wishing to know what had been asked; and if the officer insisted, “But be sure to tell them such-and-such,” he would reply, “I’ve told them all that’s necessary” and give the sign to move on; and off they went to the next village…

— Oh, but he was, sir, he was every bit the martinet. You would have thought the officers were actually afraid of him… at which point, on the twentieth of November, as Allenby was pushing east toward Jerusalem, he stepped into staff headquarters one night and discovered on the table a telegram from London with news of Lord Balfour’s declaration, which quite bowled him over…

— So I should think, sir. It was in the form of a short personal correspondence written by Lord Balfour himself. I’ve attached it to the brief, just for the record.

— Thrown for a loop by it, sir. He had never expected such a development, you see, and here he was, having been away from home for three weeks, and especially, from his son, whom he was terribly attached to, rolling helplessly along with the British juggernaut thundering across the Holy Land — and all of a sudden, here was this most wonderfully generous proclamation of intent that he had not at all foreseen, although in all fairness, no one else had either. He couldn’t sleep at night; the thought of returning to Jerusalem made his blood race; he rose from his bed and roamed about among the horses and the cannon; the rains had set in and cold winds blew; Allenby’s army crept slowly up into the mountains of Judea; his father’s old overcoat came apart and he was given an army greatcoat and high boots; and before he knew it, he was in the front lines, wearing a strange mishmash of mufti and field uniform, peering through binoculars at forward positions and utterly amazed by the thought that less than a month ago he had surreptitiously set out southward from his native city — and now here he was, about to reenter it from the west with the forces of the world’s greatest empire! On the sixth of December, Colonel, he found himself with the infantry in Nebi Samwil, where a fierce skirmish took place, gazing down upon Jerusalem, which struck him as frightfully small, frightfully stubborn and hostile. On the ninth, as you know, the city was taken, and two days later Sir Edmund entered it on foot with his columns behind him. The church bells clanged away; the city elders came out to greet him with bread and salt; our defendant marched into the city with the conquerors, one of a kind among the bagpipes and Aussie hats, peering feverishly at the onlookers; and then, near the Jaffa Gate, he right-faced all on his own and slipped away home, where he arrived as though after a hard day’s work and took straight to the quilts and the pillows with his son. For a week he didn’t leave the house; he had no friends to tell his adventures to, nor did he say much to his wife; mostly he stared at the windowpane, down which the rain ran in rivers, listening to the boom of the field artillery as Colonel Chatwood beat back a Turkish counterattack and pushed his front line to Ramallah.

— Yes, sir, a bloody fierce counterattack it was too. But I’m sure the brigadier is looking forward to showing you the battleground and explaining his military exploits, and I wouldn’t want to steal his thunder, especially since I’m a rank amateur at military strategy and had better get back to our defendant and his story… And indeed, toward Christmas, sir, the skies cleared, and he went out into the streets for a look at the brave new bedlam of a world. Several buildings had already been appropriated for the military government; barbed wire had been laid all around them; policemen and officials and statesmen and politicians were scurrying everywhere; the Jews were exultant; the Arabs in shock; the rain and fog set in again more strongly than ever, as if our army had brought its own English weather from London; and our Mr. Mani said once more to himself, “Aye, the foreigners have come to replace the foreigners…”

— Quite so, sir. I asked him that over and over. What did he think, a homo politicus like himself: that we would conquer Jerusalem, hand the keys of the city over to the natives, and retire with a modest bow?

— Jolly well put, Colonel! Here was the decisive, the fateful moment when the kernel of treachery, which had been slowly working its way down into the darkness, soaked up the sweet liquid trickling toward it through the earth and decomposed all at once, as if dowsed with corrosive acid, into thousands of thin little tendrils, frail, helpless gossamers that would seem to have no future in that heavy soil to all but the most discerning observer, who now notices two cotyledons, one the root’s and one the stem’s, each pushing greedily, unrestrainedly, off from the other… Well, sir, he walked into headquarters and was quite merrily hailed by everyone, because in the excitement of battle the trusty interpreter had been forgotten; and then he went straight, sir, to Major Stanford, the chief adjutant of the division, and showed him his British passport. The major inducted him on the spot. He issued him a uniform, a cap, and even an old pistol; added a mess kit and a dogtag; put him down for five pence ha’penny a week; and had our own Major Clark affix his signature on behalf of the advocate-general’s corps. And that, sir, was the start of Interpreter Mani’s career as a corporal in His Majesty’s army…

— Indeed they are, sir. Every last document has been stamped and put in this file, which makes it a weighty one in more ways than one.

— I quite agree, sir. It was done a bit cavalierly and without a proper security check, because he had become known to everyone throughout the autumn months of the advance on Jerusalem. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise you, Colonel, that not a few men would like to see both him and the documents thoroughly terminated. And indeed, from now on he was free to come and go in headquarters as he pleased. He even had his own desk in one of the rooms there, at which he translated the military governor’s orders. But in his large bed at night, sir, where he lay with his quiet wife and his son, he shut his eyes and pictured himself orating to the Arab villagers in the fields of Philistia, and all at once, sir, his heart bled for the Arabs…

— Yes, for the Arabs, although not really for them, sir, that’s little more than a pretext. In the darkness of the earth the root will suck any nourishment to aid the stem’s growth.

— But I’m almost there now, sir, I’ve practically gotten to it. Because how does one explain his disappointment? Time passes, you see; he goes about in his British uniform and everyone shows him respect; but every day after work he exchanges it for his black suit and takes his son and crosses the walled city, passing the Wailing Wall and the great mosques and exiting via the Dung Gate, from where he ascends the Mount of Olives on which his father and grandfather are buried and reaches the Augusta Victoria Hospital and the monastery of Tur-Malka, which are all places, sir, that are marked on the map; and near there he enters a little Mohammedan coffeehouse and listens to the talk by the copper trays; and then he descends the mount and attends a Jewish meeting, where there are speeches and delegations of Jewish dignitaries who have come huffing and puffing from abroad to witness the redemption of Zion before taking the next mail packet back; and way up north he sometimes hears the thump of a cannon shot, a single round being lazily traded by the two armies; and still the spreading root of treachery knows not what fruit it will bear… until one day, sir, he walks into a room of the general staff to throw an old draft of something into the wastebasket; and the room is empty, sir, the only sounds are the distant laughter of some officers playing football with a tennis ball outside; and he spies a map rolled up in the basket; and takes it and sticks it under his jacket; and at home that night he sees that it is a plan for an assault by the 22nd Regiment east of the Jordan; and he folds it back up, and puts it in a little bag with his prayer shawl, and goes as he does every Saturday to the Sephardic synagogue on Rabbi Isaac of Prague Lane; and when the service is over he brings his son home and does not follow him into the house, but rather keeps walking to the walled city, where he buys and dons an Arab cloak; and then, heading north through the Damascus Gate, he walks for three hours — here, sir, his route is marked on this map, if you care to follow the trail of treachery yourself, with me as your faithful guide. He reaches this little town here, Ramallah; passes straight through it like a sleepwalker and continues on into the fields; sees the British guard in its tents and shallow foxholes, which are not at all like those at Verdun, sir, because here they’re used only to rest your feet in while having tea; walks up a hill, and down a hill, and pretty soon runs into rain; smells tea himself and the smoke of a Turkish campfire; and there they are, sir, in their tattered uniforms with their faded ribbons, the same as ever, the same as they always have been; aye, he’s known them since first he saw the light of day in the narrow streets of Jerusalem; the vanquished, warming themselves by the campfire, laughing in low voices, hungry as always, chewing on their mustaches. And so he steps up to them and asks for their sergeant and hands him the map with the plans and asks to see an officer; and one comes and takes a look and doesn’t understand; and so he asks to see a German, because there’s always a German with such troops; and while they go to fetch the German he stands and waits, absorbed in the fire, the Turkish soldiers staring at him wide-eyed, in the distance the houses of an unfamiliar Arab village that according to the map must be el-Bireh; and he swallows his spittle and waits some more, all but oblivious to the rain beating down on his cloak, which might as well be someone else’s for all he notices it. After a while three men ride up on horseback, and the German dismounts in a great hurry, one Werner von Karajan, a cunning old fox, so we’ve heard. It doesn’t take him but a minute to see that the plans are real and inestimably important, and he can’t wait to rake in his prize; but our interpreter needs an interpreter, who is found in the person of a dark-skinned, bespectacled Turk with a fez, Mani’s double from over the lines. There is a glitter of gold coins; the defendant spurns them at once; in fact, sir, he never took a farthing; all he asks is to have the two villages rousted out so that he can deliver a speech to them. What sort of speech? the Turks want to know. He doesn’t answer them; doesn’t even favor them with a glance; simply says again that he wishes to deliver a speech. Well, sir, his audience is quite literally whipped together in a jiffy: farmers, shepherds, women, children, and old men; some still gripping their hoes and pitchforks; some with their sheep and donkeys. Here and there there’s even someone with a little education, some village teacher in a dirty old red fez. It’s late in the day by now, but the sky has cleared a bit and the rain has stopped; the burning red rays of the winter sun glint in the village square, glint on the mud and the dung. He asks for a table, but there is none in the entire village. A bed is fetched instead; a plank is laid over it; he strips off his cloak; now he is in a suit and tie, shriveled to a little black flame; and then, sir, he mounts the plank, and there is silence; and he sways a bit back and forth as if he were still saying his Sabbath prayers; and he begins to speak in Arabic; and what he says is: “Who are ye? Awake, before it is too late and the world is changed beyond recognition! Get ye an identity, and be quick!” And he takes Balfour’s declaration from his pocket, translated into Arabic, and reads it without any explanation, and says: “This country is yours and it is ours; half for you and half for us.” And he points toward Jerusalem, which they see shrouded in fog on the mountain, and he says, “The Englishman is there, the Turk is here; but all will depart and leave us; awake, sleep not!”

— Yes, sir…

— Just so, sir. “Awake, sleep not”: that was the gist of it; the speech lasted but a few minutes. Whereupon he held out his arms to the Turkish officers standing about him with their shiny boots in the mud; and they lifted him and carried him on their shoulders to keep him from muddying himself. There wasn’t a peep from his large audience. It hadn’t understood a word; hadn’t understood what this new thing was that was wanted of it; hadn’t understood what was a country; barely knew where the borders of its village lay. He donned his cloak in the gathering dusk, much fussed over by the German; was escorted back to no-man’s land; and promised to come again next Saturday with more documents…

— Yes, sir, that was his sole remuneration; we’ve verified it from sources behind the lines. But he returned every Saturday in January and February, eight times all in all; they even gave him a little flock of goats each time, so that he would look like a shepherd; not that he didn’t manage to lose most of them on his way down the first hill and end up with only two or three. They had him vary his route each time, and the German organized a special task force to track him and pick him up. Straightways he would hand them the documents with a show of scorn, saying, “You don’t deserve them,” after which he would be taken deferentially to that week’s village, where his audience had been waiting on its feet since dawn. By now every Arab between Ramallah and Nablus knew of him and was convinced he was a punishment inflicted by the Turks for their defeat — a most odd and ridiculous punishment, a sign of disarray and weakness. By now too he had his table, and a chair, and a blackboard, and even a glass of water; he stood with the Turkish officers about him and read Lord Balfour’s declaration; and then he unfurled a colored map of Palestine that he had drawn himself, with the sea a bright blue, while the Arabs stared at it and failed to comprehend why, if this was their country, it was so small. He pointed to the blue sea, to the Jordan, to Jerusalem, and said, “Awake!” and they looked to see who had dared to doze off; “Get ye an identity,” he went on, “before it is too late! All over the world people now have identities, and we Jews are on our way, and you had better have an identity or else!” And then he took a scissors from his pocket and said, “Half for you and half for us,” and cut the map lengthwise, and gave them the half with the mountains and the Jordan, and kept the sea and the coast for himself. It rather distressed them to see it snipped up like that, and they pressed forward and some even tried to touch it, but the hungry, rickety-legged, rheumy-eyed Turkish soldiers pointed their bayonets and cocked their rifles, because the German had laid down the law that not a hair of the Jew’s head should be harmed. Not that anyone would have harmed him, because the angrier he became and the more he swore at the villagers and provoked them, the sorrier for him they felt, even if they did blurt out to him like children, “But we want the sea too!” At first that stunned him, made him lose his temper; then, irately, he took another map from his bag and cut it horizontally…

— Some eight Saturdays, sir.

— In many villages, sir. He even got as far as Nablus and Jenin and visited prominent notables. He was much too stubborn and proud for them; he wouldn’t even taste their coffee; hardly anyone knew what he was talking about, and there were some who snickered pityingly; but there were a handful of others who turned pale and wiped the smiles from their faces, men with a smattering of learning who had studied in Beirut or Haifa or Jerusalem and strode about their villages with suits, ties, and white shoes as if they were Virgil or Plato; they listened with trepidation when he talked about the Jews who were coming; “Like locusts,” he said; “one day they’re in the desert and the next they’re upon you…” It’s a mystery, Colonel, how he was never spotted by one of our patrols. He crossed the lines in broad daylight as though slicing butter, and returned by night, walking quietly and quickly, a six-mile round-trip all in all; arrived from the north, tired, wet, and dirty, slipped into the old city through the Nablus Gate, and vanished down the empty, rain-washed alleyways; and then, together with the moon that rose from Jericho, pressed on to the stone steps of his house, where his large wife opened the door even before he touched the doorknob; never knowing where he had been or come back from but helping him out of his clothes, and bathing him, and drying and feeding him, and pulling back the quilt for him; and only then, sinking into it, did he begin to tremble all over, while the moon sank into bed beside him…

— I beg your pardon, sir, I truly do.

— Yes, sir, I beg your pardon, sir. I’m afraid I was a bit carried away.

— Horowitz, sir. Oh, dear.

— Ivor Stephen, sir. Horowitz, sir. I’m afraid I was carried away.

— Yes, Colonel.

— Yes, sir.

— Quite, sir. I am rather fagged. I’ve been working on this case day and night for the past five weeks, and my passion for the truth has overwhelmed me. I’ve investigated every last detail; been in and out of his home a hundred times; even walked the route of treachery on foot — and if some fact could not be ascertained, I imagined it back into existence, because I’ve been dreadfully anxious to get to the bottom of it all.

— No, Colonel, absolutely not. A thousand times no. Had he been an Arab, or an Indian, or a Ghurka, I would have done the same thing. Wherever the Union Jack flies, it will be my passion to know and understand. I rather fear, though, that the trial will flow by us too quickly; because Mr. Mani will plead guilty; and the prosecution — you musn’t misjudge me, sir — will be razor-sharp; and Lieutenant Colonel Keypore and Major Jahawala have already made up their minds. And the fact is, Colonel, that when you see the quantity and nature of the documents he passed to the enemy, you’ll be in high dudgeon yourself.

— Yes, of course we do, sir. It’s all listed right here. He himself kept exact records and received a receipt for each document. It’s all been verified, sir, because — and this is a little secret between us — we have an Englishman behind the lines who’s passed for a German since the end of the last century, and from time to time he renders a small service.

— Right here, sir, although I’m not certain it’s in chronological order. The 22nd Regiment’s assault plan across the Jordan, the third of January, 1918. A roster of our brigade’s sick and wounded from the thirtieth of December, 1917, to the sixth of January, 1918. A report on discipline in the 3rd Battalion from the third week of January, bearing the signature of Captain Smogg…

— There had been many complaints, sir. A divisional list of all officers on leave as of the thirteenth of January, 1918. A draft of a battle plan for the conquest of Damascus, signed by Major Sluce, from the twenty-sixth of January, 1918. The guest list for the gala evening given by the military governor of Jerusalem on the thirtieth of January, 1918. Two signed photographs of General Allenby, no date. A list of provisions sent to the 5th Australian Battalion. The deployment of our artillery in the Jericho theater as of the first of February, 1918. Some drafts of Lieutenant Colonel Keypore’s personal correspondence with his wife.

— I’m afraid there’s more, Colonel.

— A description of the firing mechanism of our F Howitzer, unsigned and dateless. A filled-out resupply form for artillery shells. A photograph of an unidentified young woman, apparently a tart, on the Via Dolorosa. A map of Jericho with the position of all artillery pieces from the third of February, 1918. Those, Colonel, were the cannon lost earlier this month in that unfortunate battle across the Jordan. The Germans counted each round that we fired, and when they knew we had run out of ammunition, they ordered an assault. We lost one hundred and fifty men. Although I daresay the Australians were more upset about their cannon, because men are more easily replaceable.

— Just so, sir. He found it all in the wastebaskets or on his way to them.

— There already has been a jolly big scandal, sir. Officers were arrested and charges have been filed. New procedures have been instituted, and a special man was brought in from Cairo and has been on the job for a week. When you call on the general at headquarters tomorrow, you’ll notice all the wastebaskets are empty. There’s now a special sergeant with a detail of two soldiers whose assignment it is to burn the waste around the clock, which he does so industriously that I believe that some of it is already on fire before it’s been thrown away There’s a permanent pillar of smoke outside military headquarters — if you look out the window you can see it right now. I say, sir, it’s clearing again! And there’s one of those black crows I’ve been telling you about. They already know that you, the presiding judge, have arrived and that I’m in here with you, although I’ll be hanged if I know how they do.

— Yes, sir.

— Yes, sir.

— Over there, Colonel, if it’s not too hard for you to make him out.

— A black spot it is, Colonel. And such black spots, Colonel, have been following me around for the past three weeks, because they know that the noose is tightening and that it won’t be long now. Two emissaries of theirs have already been to see me, an old solicitor and a court clerk who can stammer a bit in English. They asked to look at the Handbook of Wartime Jurisprudence, and I gladly let them have it and gave them a place to sit in my room, where they spent the whole day reading and engaging in Talmudic disputations. I even had them served tea, which they wouldn’t touch; at closing time, pale and exhausted, they handed the handbook back to me with the tips of their fingers, as if Mani’s death were already inside it, and nodded sadly and looked at each other and asked if I knew the London Horowitzes. And when I confessed that I didn’t, they began to ransack the rest of the world for some Horowitz whom I was prepared to be a distant relation of and could be given regards from, only to give up with a sigh in the end. “But this Mani is mad,” said the court clerk to me in a whisper. “Is it not beneath the dignity of Great Britain to concern itself with a madman? Why, even his father took his own life; can you not show him mercy?” But I, Colonel, looked them straight in the eye and answered curtly, “You know as well as I do he’s not mad.”

— No, sir. Not even with that madness that masquerades as sanity until you sniff its sour smell in a warm room. No, there is absolutely nothing mad about him. He doesn’t have even one iota of that first, slight, hardly visible wobble that eventually throws a man out of orbit. He has all his senses, Colonel; the man’s soul may be a jungle, but neither his reason nor will are impaired, and he’s in total command of himself; he says what he wishes to say, and holds back what he doesn’t; and I happen to know that he is preparing a long political plea, not for the court’s benefit, but for the public and the press. He’s the sort of chap who likes his audience big and captive. He plans to let me say what I’m entitled to, and then to deliver a speech that will electrify Jerusalem, because it will be given by a man with a hangman’s noose around his neck. I feel it; I know it; that’s why he walked straight into that Ulsterman’s funk hole when he could have easily gone around it. He was tired of playing to crowds of Mohammedans assembled by the whips of Turks; nothing would do for him but to perform for all Jerusalem.

— That’s just it, sir. It’s only a guess, but I reckon he’s sharpening a poisoned dart for us. As much as I’ve tried drawing him out, I’ve gotten precious little out of him. He composed all the drafts of his speech in Hebrew, and when I sought to lay hands on them, he quite simply ate them. They’re safely inside him now.

— You’ll see him tomorrow, Colonel, in the dock. Don’t be fooled into thinking he’s following the proceedings, because the only thing on his mind will be his speech: about this eternal battle-field of a country that is spawning another catastrophe and about all the locusts waiting to arrive… although if you take a good look around you, Colonel, what you see here is one big wasteland with jolly few people anywhere. I told him as much, too. “Forget all that,” I told him; “Find yourself a good barrister who will tell the court about your childhood, and your poor dead father; you’re going to get yourself hung, and the more of your political balderdash, the more rope you’ll wrap around your neck.” But he just smiles at that, cool as a cucumber. A most political animal; and most politically calm! Quite certain that there’s politics in everything he does… and yet I know, sir — and the knowledge turns in me like a knife — that there’s another story here. There’s someone else lurking in the background whom he’s out to get back at, and all his politics are mere autosuggestion.

— A quite sensible thought, sir. In fact, I had it myself. I had a hook installed in the ceiling without his knowledge and a length of rope left in his cell one night, and I instructed the guards to look the other way in the hope that he would put an end to it. Well, sir, that night he pulled out the hook and coiled up the rope, and the next morning he handed them to me in a neat bundle without a word, which was his way of telling me that he meant to have his speech. And so he’s been whittling away at it — and though I haven’t a notion what’s in it, I would be most delighted to be spared it, because it can only stir up feeling against us.

— No, sir. It’s nothing that could affect the sentence. He’s as good as dead already, sir, unless one of those crows can fly to Buckingham Palace and come back with a royal pardon. The case against him is open-and-shut, sir, and you musn’t be misled by my qualms. Tomorrow morning I’ll be there like an immovable body, and your two colleagues won’t need to be convinced; Lieutenant Colonel Keypore would like nothing better than to see the man swing for those lost cannon across the Jordan, and I don’t believe he’ll relent… oh no, not him but nonetheless, sir… and now, sir, I am… I am speaking not only as a soldier, but as a British subject too… if it were possible… you see, once the trial starts, it will proceed most speedily, with a rapidity we have no… control over… and so I thought that perhaps we should consider… since there is…

— Sir?

— Yes, sir, the interested parties have already made inquiries. It turns out there’s a Turkish scaffold in the tower, with enough rope and tackle to hang us all. If the Turks had seen to their stock of artillery shells as they saw to their rope, we might not have taken this city so easily. And there’s an Arab who served as the hangman’s helper and claims he can manage things quite splendidly… so you see, sir, that’s why I say… because… and I know I’ve been talking nonstop… but we have seen… we have seen…

— Sir?

— What boy is that, sir?

— Ah, yes, of course, the boy… but I have told you, haven’t I, sir… I rather think… I mean… but in what way?

— Oh.

— Oh…

— Why, yes… directly, sir… why, of course, the boy…

— His name is Ephraim. Our Mani claims he’s his, and there’s no reason to doubt him, even though they don’t look at all alike. The lad, you see, is blond and blue-eyed, and his dead mother, or so the story goes, was a tubercular young Jewess from Russia or thereabouts whom Mani picked out from all the bundles and luggage unloaded at the Beirut railway station, where he waited for his clientele. I can’t say if she was a proper revolutionary — you’ll find youngsters whose only terror has been directed against their parents, yet who are so certain they’ve committed crimes against the state that they feel compelled to flee. In any event, she attached herself to him; and accustomed though he was to the whims of such gypsies, whom he always managed to shake off, he could not get away from her. Perhaps she was as political as he was. Whatever the reason, something about her touched his stubborn, gloomy old bachelor heart. Perhaps she wanted a child from him, being afraid to push on to Palestine, or not believing she could get across the border, yet desiring something Palestinian of her own. Your guess is as good as mine. He didn’t talk much about her, sir. In any case, they had no money, and they lived together for a year or two by the railway station in that boardinghouse I spoke of, which was in West Beirut, sir, in the Moslem quarter, an extremely poor part of town, so he says, by the old Sephardic synagogue, where he dropped in every Friday; with a bit of luck, sir, we’ll be there soon and see it all for ourselves… When her time came they were afraid to go to hospital, lest they be asked for their papers and risk expulsion by the Turks as foreigners. And anyway, he believed that he could deliver the child by himself, because he had been through a birth once before and had even cut the umbilical cord. Still, he fetched a Moslem midwife for good measure; but the woman had a frail constitution; and she lost too much blood and died the day after giving birth. That left him with the infant, who grew up to be a bit slow and a stammerer, but an agreeable child who grew handsomer with each passing day and had his mother’s good looks, which had already been ravaged by illness when Mani met her; only now, via her son who was unfolding like a flower, did he realize how beautiful she must have been. You’ll see him tomorrow, Colonel, a four-year-old seated in the front row. I’ve allowed him to be present for the first session, so that he can enjoy the fine room and the officers in their uniforms and remember that his father was given a fair trial and not simply thrown to the dogs…

— Yes, sir. That’s it in a nutshell. I do believe the weather’s cleared for good now. The desert air will dry us out and bring us a sweetly golden Jerusalem afternoon. I feel in a dreadful dither, sir, for having bored you like —

— In a word, sir, my guidelines are clear and entirely in accordance with the Handbook of Wartime Jurisprudence, section 10, paragraph 3. In time of war, in occupied territory, when the defendant is a British subject who has engaged in espionage resulting in loss of life, the prosecution must demand the death penalty, which the court is authorized to inflict without right of appeal… However…

— Yes, sir, I understand that…

— Yes, sir.

— Those were my very words, sir!

— Quite.

— I see, sir… which would imply…

— I am surprised, sir.

— Colonel…

— Of course, sir… that would make it an entirely different matter…

— Exactly my feeling, sir… it’s the only way…

— Excellent, sir… it will just take a bit of thought…

— Thank you.

— It did all come together, didn’t it? Then I have succeeded.

— I’m most grateful…

— I’m greatly moved, sir, and most grateful for your patience in giving me a hearing. The fact is that when I was informed at headquarters that you were coming from Egypt to preside at the trial, I had a most sinking feeling. And when I walked into this room two hours ago, sir, I was shaking, because I knew in whose presence I was. Your name, sir, has been on the lips of every officer for several days now: the hero of the Marne! And when I saw you sitting in this dim room with those dark sunglasses, with your empty sleeve on the arm of the chair and all your scars, I was alarmed and almost in tears. I had never imagined you were so badly wounded, and I thought, hang it all, the panther and the cobra have been joined on the bench tomorrow by the wounded lion! I could not know what lust for vengeance you might be harboring inside you; and here was a heinous case of wartime espionage resulting in loss of life; and the culprit was a ruddy Jew who refused all counsel and was quite prepared to be hung as long as he could give his ruddy speech that would cause the very devil of a row among the populace of this city; and once the trial began there would be no stopping it until it reached its bitter end, which it was my duty as prosecutor to pursue without quarter… Was this, sir, the way British history in the Holy Land was to begin, with the hanging of a Jew in Jerusalem? And yet I had to ask myself if I would be understood; and whether, if I talked candidly enough to make myself understood, I would be suspected of divided loyalties. You see, sir, I’ve never sought to hide my Jewishness as have certain other officers in this division, nor could I hope to do so given my name, my appearance, my eyeglasses, my low and protuberant rear end, and my presumptuous literary garrulousness that even an aristocratic Cambridge mumble has been unable to dispel. It’s all quite distasteful, to say nothing of prejudicial, especially since I had to assume, sir, that you were anti-Semitically disposed, if only in a sociological sense, as a member of your class and the circles in which you move. And so I was quite resigned to failure, perhaps even to a severe reprimand; but I remembered what my mother always told me; “Never give up, son,” she said, “never be afraid as long as you know your intentions are pure”; which is how I put my case before you, sir; not merely as a soldier obeying orders, but as a subject of Great Britain, of the empire that rests assured of its approaching victory, of the war’s end, and of the glorious era that awaits us and the entire Commonwealth…

— Sir.

— Sir.

— Sir.

— Sir.

— I’m quite ecstatic to have earned your trust.

— Do you really think so, sir?

— Why, of course, sir. Were he not a British subject, the prosecution need not ask for death, and he would then be a national of the territory under occupation.

— Most irregular, sir. I fail to see how such naturalization could be valid, the British passport notwithstanding.

— If we make a point of it, sir.

— His grandfather, sir, came from Salonika, which was in Turkey at the time and is presently in Greece.

— Why, of course, sir. We can definitely say Greece. But can we be sure they’ll take him if we banish him?

— Then you think, do you, Colonel, that the islands would be best?

— Of course, sir. Every westward-bound ship from Jaffa calls on them… Crete, perhaps… he can have his pick…

Biographical

Supplements

LIEUTENANT IVOR STEPHEN HOROWITZ served out the war with Allenby’s forces, with which he entered Beirut, Aleppo, and Damascus, and was even present at the final assault on Mosul, before the armistice with Turkey in October 1918. After the surrender of Germany on the eleventh of November, he was re-leased from the army to attend the spring term at Cambridge. He took a first class degree in Law in 1920 and chose, after being called to the bar in 1921, to work in the Crown Prosecutor’s office in Manchester. He did not remain in public service long, however, but soon joined a well-known chambers and eventually married a Jewish partner’s daughter. While continuing his practice he went on to get his doctorate, writing his dissertation on the judicial aspects of wartime espionage. This study was extremely well received and opened the way for an academic career. Dr. Horowitz joined the law faculty of Manchester University, and several years later, in 1930, moved with his wife and two small children to London, where he was appointed senior lecturer in Law at the University. In London he was active in the Zionist Federation, serving as its volunteer legal adviser. His academic career was highly successful and he was considered a spellbinding lecturer. In 1957, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, he visited Israel; subsequently, he returned several times and met with various Israeli leaders, among them David Ben-Gurion. A grandson of his even settled in the country, on the kibbutz of Revivim. He died at the age of seventy-six in London, in October 1973, after a brief illness following a stroke.

COLONEL MICHAEL WOODHOUSE served through the remainder of the war and then continued to sit on military courts throughout the British Empire. Since his vision grew steadily worse until he became completely blind, the army assigned him a personal aide who accompanied him on his judicial missions to Malaya, Burma, India, and Ceylon. In the mid-1930s he was knighted by King George V. Sir Michael’s reputation as a judge spread far and wide and was only heightened by his blindness. He presided at the trials of many British officers in the colonial service and was known for the originality and depth of his approach. Although when World War II broke out he was serving in Kenya, he insisted on returning to England at once to take part in the war effort. He was killed during an air raid on London in June 1941, at the age of sixty-four, and had a military funeral in his home village.