She ran to the stairwell where she'd left the bedspread, tugged the muck from her hair, changed her clothes for some in the bedspread, too large in the bust and shoulders, rinsed her hair in a puddle and tried to wash the gasoline from her hands and arms. She pulled on the habit again and went quickly back through the Christian side and down past the Hotel Alexandre and the Hotel Dieu Hospital. A Phalange truck was bringing in wounded, men wrapped in sheets. “Oh dear,” she called to a soldier. “What happened?”
He glanced at her habit. “An ammo dump. On the Green Line.”
“Oh, how I hate them!”
“Not the Muslims, sister. Accident, apparently.”
She dropped her head. “How many?”
“Thirty. So far.”
“May the dear Lord be with them.”
“All very well for you to say that, sister. These were all men with families. Wives and kids. You don't love anyone, just God, as you imagine Him to be. You're like those fedayeen over there – they think they're going to Heaven.”
“Don't criticize what you don't understand,” she snapped.
Before she reached the Christian side of the Museum she ditched the habit. Someone came out of the shadows by the big barricade and she saw it was the captain.
She handed him the flashlight. “I didn't even use it.”
“So my batteries?” He glanced up as a shell went over like a great bird, hit out in Dora somewhere. “They shoot at bloody anything,” he said.
“They think Allah's going to guide it.”
He nudged her toward the darkness, where a tank crouched.
“You'll let me through the line again?” she said, reaching her hands up round his neck. It was smooth and young and his hair was short in her fingers all the way up under his beret. Her breasts were itching to be against him and her nails wanted to rip down his back and she could feel him inside already, like he'd be, hot and hard and pumping faster and faster. She dragged him down beside the silent tank, shoving up his shirt as he tore his trousers open and she lay back and let him come in slowly then hard, deeper and deeper till she was sure he was there but he kept coming deeper and she exploded, saw the dragon's tongue of flame, heard the thunder and the screams, felt peace.
“FRÜHSTÜCK!” Knuckles hammered the compartment door; the light flickered, flashed on. The door snapped open, a steward put a breakfast tray on the foot of Neill’s bed.
He sat up rubbing the back of his neck. Dark cold shapes flitted past the window. He found his watch, put it on, forgot the time and looked again: five after six. Shivering, he drew the blankets round his shoulders, started to pour his coffee but it had not all run down through the filter, so he waited watching through the rain-beaded glass the cold, flat landscape, the few distant lights, imagined people getting up, farmers and their burly kerchiefed wives, the smell of coffee and coal fires.
It's the girl, he realized, that's why I feel so bad. He'd been with her in the dream. Ardent and slender and brown-eyed, long dark hair. Naked in the glow of the street lamp. Layla.
Was it losing her that had broken his heart? Made him such a cynical bastard who couldn't even love his wife and kids and had no friends? No, that's not entirely true. He set the filter aside and sipped the coffee.
The train's wheels wailed into a curve. And miles to go, he thought, wondering why. Something shone on the pillow and he brushed at it – a silver hair. Can't be mine, he decided, mine's not that gray. These aren't clean sheets.
But the sheets were newly washed and starched. He hadn't seen Layla for many years but in the dream they hadn't grown older, both of them beyond ecstasy to be naked together after so long missing each other, her skin, her lips, her hair, her sighs, the softness inside her, her passionate young lips seeking his. In his dream three men had broken into the room, tall and drunk, tripping over the bed and grabbing Layla. He fought them off, fought them into the hall and beat them one by one. But when he'd gone back, Layla was gone.
Blankets round his shoulders he sat drinking his coffee as Bratislava's ramparts took form against the day.
15
ROSA WAS breathing hard, a wildness in her eyes that made Mohammed want to protect and reassure her. Seeing her pretty, roundish face with its red high cheeks and olive eyes, her smooth young brow, her white teeth and red lips, her dark hair coiling down round her neck into the blush of her chest, it was hard to imagine what she'd just done.
Her breathing calmed. “Thought I'd die, that tunnel.” She closed her eyes, leaned back, air filling her lungs. “You never know what a joy it is to breathe till you can't.”
“I almost drowned once, when I was a child. Since then breathing seems almost holy.”
“What happened to the Christian snipers, on the top?”
“It was so hot up there their ammo was blowing.”
She shivered or shrugged, looked away.
“They were using the Life Building as a pivot and you took it from them, and now they've backed off their attack for fear we'll go round them. It was very brave, what you did.”
“Bravery's nothing. Only winning matters.”
He punched the side of his palm against the back of his neck, loosening the muscles, rubbed them. “You still haven't told me what you think that means.”
“Palestine.”
“And Lebanon?”
“You can tell Christians and Jews apart? After they've warred against us for how many thousand years?”
“We can't drive them all from Lebanon. From Palestine. Not yet.”
“Until they go there'll be no peace.”
“It was the French who put them over us. It'll never happen again.”
“For two thousand years – more, if you count the Romans – they've plagued us.”
“When we weren't plaguing each other.”
“And you hoped blowing up their embassy and barracks would scare them away? They have no memories, keep stepping in the same hole. Stepping on us. Even if they do leave they'll be right back, under the next politician, the next pope.”
A 155 was coming over and Mohammed waited for it to hit. “We didn't blow the American barracks. Nor the French ones, as people say.”
Her eyes seemed the pale green now of a snow river, the one coming out of the mountain at Yammouné, chunks of green ice crashing inside it. “Anyway, you wouldn't say...”
“Some day maybe I can.”
She moved closer, her smile's warmth making him shiver. “Tell me now.”
“It takes time.” He let his head drop forward, rubbing the back of his neck. “We've all spent another sleepless night.”
She bit her lip. “I can do that for you.”
“Sleep for me?”
“Don't be silly! Rub your neck. If you like. I always did it for my father. He'd follow the mule all