The Mandelbaum Gate Read Online Free PDF Page B

youth, had proved as innocently obtuse about
her true identity as had the family at Bells Sands, Worcestershire, with whom
she spent the other half.
     
    Barbara, on the summit of
Mount Tabor, conscious of the Holy Land stretching to its boundaries on every
side, reflected wearily upon her reflections. She thought, my mind is impatient
to escape from its constitution and reach its point somewhere else. But that is
in eternity at the point of transfiguration. In the meantime, what is to he
borne is to be praised. In the meantime, memory circulates like the
bloodstream. May mine circulate well, may it bring dead facts to life, may it
bring health to whatever is to be borne.
    At
Bells Sands — it was the Easter vacation, just after her sixteenth birthday —
her energetic tennis-playing grandmother, with hair discreetly dyed the colour
of steel, sat on the arm of a chair in her white pleated dress, swinging one of
her long sinewy legs, brown summery legs in good condition; the party was
gathered in the dining-room after tennis; it was tea-time. Her grandmother took
a teacup from the tray offered by the young, round-shouldered parlour maid.
Barbara had been saying she must go and pack. Her cousin Arthur, then at Sandhurst,
later killed in North Africa, was to drive her to the station.
    ‘Must
you go tonight, darling?’ said her Vaughan grandmother. Barbara passed round
the cucumber sandwiches. ‘Why not go up with Arthur in the morning? Stay and be
comfy.’
    ‘No, I’m
expected. It’s the Passover. An important festival.’
    The
warmth of the spring oozed in through the french windows as if the glass were
porous. The silver teapot danced with light and shade as a breeze stirred the
curtains. The air was elusively threaded with the evidence of unseen hyacinths.
So it must have been before she was born, when the family understood that her
father was going to marry the Jewess, and there was nothing left to say.
    ‘Well,
I admire you for it,’ said her grandmother.
    The
young men were eating the cucumber sandwiches two at a time.
    ‘For
what?’
    ‘Your
loyalty to your mother’s people. But honestly, darling, it isn’t necessary. No
one could possibly blame you for skipping it. After all, you don’t look as if
you had a drop of Jewish blood. And after all you’re only half. I assure you no
one minds.’
    ‘I’m
awfully fond of them, you know. I don’t feel the least temptation to give them
up. Why on earth—?’
    ‘Yes, I
know you’re fond of them, it’s only natural that you should be. Only I want you
to know that I admire you for being so loyal, darling. I think I’m right in
saying that we all of us admire you.’
    ‘Grandmother!’
said Barbara’s other cousin, Miles. ‘Grandmother, shut up.’
    ‘There’s
nothing to admire, no effort,’ Barbara said. ‘The Aaron-sons don’t call it
loyalty when I stay here. They take it for granted.’
    ‘Well,
I should hope so, Barbara dear. This was your father’s home and it’s yours,
too.’
    Barbara
perceived that she had courage, this lithe grandmother of hers. It took courage
for her to speak steadily of her son, her favourite, her disappointment in
life, now dead from a fall while hunting. It had been an indigenous sort of
death, but the mother would have preferred him alive with his unfortunate
marriage, all the same.
    ‘Well,
there’s time for another set before you change and pack, Barbara,’ said Uncle
Eddy, gazing out at the sky as if he could tell the time by it. The lawn lay
beautiful as eternity. A servant was calling in Eddy’s two children from an
upper window; presently their high voices came quarrelling from the shrubbery
and faded round the back of the house. There was a stir in the beech leaves
like papers being gently shuffled into order. The drawing-in of an English
afternoon took place, with its fugitive sorrow.
    ‘See
here, Barbara,’ said her grandfather at Golders Green a few hours later, ‘these
are the bitter herbs which