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    'Home ? England ? God, I couldn't stand it. Not Haywards Heath in June. I'd rather stay. If the Arabs have me then they have me.'
    'You concentrate on your golf,' I advised. 'There's nothing like holing a few long putts to help the war effort.'
    'How long will you be in Tel Aviv ?' she asked.
    'Always excepting Acts of War, Acts of God, and that sort of thing, I shall be here for three more days. When the tour was arranged I had some idea of making it part-holiday. Then, of course, I didn't know everybody would be sharpening swords. After that I go down to Eilat with the orchestra and then to Jerusalem and to Haifa. And then home to England in June.'
    From the edge of her eye she saw the worried Tobin coming towards us. 'Please come to my house for lunch tomorrow,' she said. 'At twelve. I will send a car to the hotel for you. Which is it?'
    'The Dan,' I said. 'Let's hope they don't start shooting before then.'
    'It's the Sabbath,' she assured me. 'It won't be on the Sabbath.'
    Tobin had heard. He, as host, had ostensibly abandoned his depression in the company and now said to Mrs Haydn, 'War! Which war is this?' He laughed, his smile splitting unconvincingly under the ugly mop. Igor, who was sharing the car back to the city, stood by. Tobin laughed again, even less reassuringly. 'It is all just noise and propaganda,' he said. 'Symbols and cymbals.'
    Igor raised his Russian eyebrows at me. I shrugged.
    Three
    It was one in the morning when we reached the Dan Hotel but the city was still brimming with light and people. Igor went to his room, but I changed my clothes and went out again walking in the cool air up through some streets of trees until I came once more to the Dezingov.
    The clamour and the activity were not slowed. Now I was no longer in the car I knew there was music everywhere along the broad channel of the street, threaded between the people's voices and the coughing and blowing of the cars jammed under the blatant white street lights.
    Newspapers flapping like birds around the café£ tables went from hand to eager hand, were pointed at and discussed. The man bowed over the terrible old fiddle was still there, scraping at it tenderly, as though trying to nurse some sweetness, some life, into it. The boyish soldiers in their uniforms of green and brown, or splashed with camouflage like an animal skin, still lounged at the tables laughing with dark girls. One table was littered with sub-machine-guns. The soldiers wore ungainly long boots, laced high, and shapeless little hats. They did not look smart or alert. They looked tired, untidy, and not very tough.
    I sat with a cognac for twenty minutes, watching it all. No one recognized me and I was, for once, grateful. They were too occupied with their arguments and discussions, their plans, their newspapers. They seemed like massed swimmers jumping in and out of a pool. Two young, brown women with cherubic faces leaned back in their chairs, their strong, long legs bridging to the table before them, singing quietly in fine unison. The soldiers were examining marked out battle maps on the stained cloth with the interest and enthusiasm of hikers. On the other side of me six deaf and dumb people talked excitedly with whirling fingers.
    There was a flashing sign in red Hebrew and blue English across the road, a hundred yards up the vibrant thoroughfare. I realized that I had come out of the streets with the trees to within a short distance of the newspaper office where Shoshana worked.
    I finished the cognac and walked among the promenaders to the corner building. From open windows on the first floor the office fights flew into the street. People were standing thickly about the ground-floor windows reading news bulletins. I went by them and up the stairs to the first floor. The rooms there were full of yellow hazy lights, and men in white shirts, sweating in the night heat, were hung over desks and typewriters, or moving about carrying wet printers' proofs delicately