Come To The War Read Online Free Page A

street. It was like all avenues of the world, all the warm streets I had ever known; Paris, Rome, Budapest, Rio, brimming with sounds and moving people.
    Eventually, as we drove, the lights dimmed and decreased, almost as they do in an auditorium, and then it was quieter and the tepid air that came into us turned dark; we left the resounding street behind and drove away from the city. We made a turn into a subdued road and then approached a wooden bridge across a creek. There were soldiers guarding both ends of the bridge. They stopped each vehicle and examined it. Our driver told them who we were, but immediately a young dark, damp face was at the window staring at us in our tailed suits and white bows. The soldier had brown eyes, wide and cautious like an animal at night. But his boy's voice was firm and calm and he looked us over carefully before moving our driver away with the snub of his rifle.
    The car bumped woodenly across the bridge which must have been a strategic strongpoint because on the farther flank of the river a pair of armoured cars crouched like moles in the night, beside the skeletal shape of a settled helicopter. The guards looked in at us again, this time a small-faced soldier and a fat girl with chocolate eyes and a rifle. They let us go on. We could hear the sea ruffling the night beyond the road and the camel-backed sand dunes. It was very dark and the car rattled irritably. Then we were on a good road again, well lit and moving behind two medium tanks which coughed, roared and squealed along the tarmac surface until ponderously swinging into a gap in the dunes and sniffing away towards the sea.
    'It is nothing,' repeated Igor defensively from his darkness. 'They make loud noises, and the Arabs also. It is just as the Russians and the Americans. Noise, noise, bang, bang, squeak, and then silence. Some day I maybe would write a Cold War Symphony, only I think that the theme would become too monotonous. Always the same sounds.'
    'There will be more than noises between this bunch and the Arabs,' I said. 'This time.'
    'Just noise,' he grunted. 'Symbols and cymbals.'
    He obviously thought that was good because he went to some trouble to separate the two words for me. I muttered an acknowledgement. We were travelling very fast now along the black coast, away from the lights, with a small wind stirring in the sand dunes. The road bent and we emerged on to a clear horizon with Tel Aviv lying luminously on the sea to our left. There were some isolated houses at this place, bulky houses with terrace windows open to the Mediterranean and the lights at their windows and porches making rich ovals on the beach. The driver turned up a drive cut through the hilly sand and we arrived under a stone arch and turned into a courtyard.
    All the people at the party were full of congratulations over the concert. Tobin, the host, a slight man with a surprising cushion of tight-curled black hair supported by a stick of a face, talked to me by a door opening out to the beach. The sea was breathing without fuss and the city lay like a pile of diamonds on the distant cape. Behind us the room was crowded, but subdued so that some music which should have been in the background became much louder and played above the people. I did not recognize it.
    'Yarom Nathan,' Tobin said. 'A young Israeli. This is his Ruth and Boaz in the Fields. I think he has much promise.'
    Tobin held his glass at a slope and moved bis head at about the same angle. His hair was extraordinary. Slim grey hair would have suited him for he was spare and neat. The black bush was a worry because he continually pressed it back and a sigh clouded his face as inevitably each time it sprang forward again. He was listening to the music. There was a vivacious little bridge piece which folded over on itself a few times towards the middle of the work, and unrolled sweetly to the conclusion.
    'He says that he felt unhappy about the conclusion, you know,' said Tobin moving