quarters fifty years hence would by then have forgotten that it was a British invention, enforced so that the soldiers could navigate the roads more easily, and say of each man they met: you are a Christian, you are a Jew, you are Armenian, based on the nearest street name. But by April 1920, the Brits were still getting lost and asking for directions, and were so low on personnel on the morning of the Nebi Musa festival that the ensuing mayhem lasted for a full three days. For three days, feathers ripped from bedding flowed from windows like the snow that had lately thawed, and falling to the ground, mingled with the blood that shone black in the gutters, seeping at its touch into red. By the time the curfew was imposed at the end of those three days, the red was black again with muck, and the leaders who had ridden ahead of the crowds and urged them from the roof of the Arab Club to protest the Zionist program at all costs, or else to behave nobly and quietly in their protests, had fled to Egypt and were sentenced to imprisonment in absentia.
“This is no longer the twelfth century, father,” said Père Antoine. “One does not expect to find oneself in a holy war.”
Père Lavigne’s beard swept over his desk, and he reached to trap a sheet of paper sailing forward.
“It is not a holy war, Antoine. It was a riot. Please don’t be dramatic. The British haven’t been here very long—but I don’t know what’s the matter with this pen, it does not want to give ink all of a sudden.”
He pressed the nib onto the foolscap, leaving a thin scratch in the shape of an “I.”
“I am worried for the Christians.”
“The Christians, you are worried for?” said Lavigne, with a hint of a smile. “Ah, now this reminds me. The new Palestine Oriental Society is meeting next Thursday. Will you come? I am giving the keynote.”
“How so?”
“They have elected me the president.” His eyes had a watery tint. Perhaps it was the light.
“Wonderful. Congratulations.”
“We are hosting it here, in the convent. Alors—don’t go to Nablus, will you, just this once?”
“Of course, I will stay.”
Lavigne bore down once more on his pen. “God with you, father,” he said, without looking up.
Père Antoine ducked his head to don his hat and walked out into the heat of the cloisters. It was May, and Jerusalem was already baking. He clung to the slim shade of the walls towards to the dormitory.
Although the British civil administration over Palestine had just been ratified, Antoine remained disturbed by the Nebi Musa riot. He was here in Jerusalem when the rioters ran through, standing in the very courtyard outside the Holy Sepulchre when that stringy mass of men charged in through the high wooden doors. A gap had opened in the crowd and blasted him with the vision: a stretcher, borne out at a vicious angle. Blood falling on the stones. The body of a congregant, the lolling arm of an innocent, slaughtered at prayer.
In all his years here, he had never felt so ill at ease. Young Arabs on street corners set his heart racing. On the hospital veranda in Nablus he lost his nerve and struggled in his interviews. He had assumed it best to discuss this with his mentor. Now he saw he was mistaken, and the error was not a little painful. He climbed the steps to his room, considering how best to bring the whole thing up with Sister Louise.
He took a bus north that afternoon, and arrived at the sisters’ house before dusk. In the hallway Sister Sarah said Louise was on an extended visit to a sick child in a village seven hours’ walk away. No one knew when she might return. Antoine spent the next three days at the hospital noting down oddments of hearsay, feeling tender and strained. But with no sign of Louise, he returned to Jerusalem as he had promised Lavigne, deprived of his usual respite.
On Thursday afternoon, with half an hour to go before the meeting of Lavigne’s society, Antoine looked up from his desk in the library at L’École to see he was no longer alone. Three British policemen were coming down the library steps. Had they not so rapidly removed their hats with the trepidatious postures of men on holy ground, Antoine might have thought he was under arrest.
“Good afternoon, Father Anthony,” said the one in the middle.