Requiem Read Online Free

at a bus station teeming with alien life and was awed by the number
of young women wearing the olive drab of army combat gear. Good-looking Israeli
girls toting Uzi automatics.
    He
was still gazing after one of them when a boy wearing dark glasses and a
Walkman thrust a leaflet into his hand. It offered the incentive of one free
beer to stay at a backpackers' hostel. He was still reading the handbill when
an elderly Hasidic Jew with grey locks and a farouche beard smiled at him from
under the broad brim of a black hat, sliding another note into his hand. This
second leaflet was printed in Hebrew; on the reverse in English it said:
'AMERIKANS = AMALEKITES. The daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with
stretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a
tinkling of their feet. NO TO NEW AIRPORT.'
    Tom thought he'd recognized the quotation.
'Isaiah?'
    The old
Hasid shrugged, gesturing that he had no English. Then he scurried away to
press his leaflets into the hands of two baffled Australian backpackers.
    Tom
hailed a Mercedes taxi, giving the driver Sharon's address, and the cab whisked
him under the medieval walls of Old Jerusalem. Banners waved in the wind. Flags
and streamers fluttered in the breeze high above the battlements of the Old
City wall. The Golden Dome of the Rock breasted blue skies. Glimpsed from the
speeding taxi, honey-coloured light flaked the clouds, licked ancient brick,
discharged long shadows from the antique portals. It was like the picture on a
gilt-edged stamp he'd collected at Sunday school as a child, the stamp
completing the set.
    It was his
first sight of Jerusalem. Thou art beautiful, 0 my love, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.
    It
was a Jerusalem which didn't exist. A Jerusalem he would never see again. He wanted
to order the driver to stop so that he could get out of the cab, climb across
the perforated, gilded frame of his vision and walk into history. Instead he
watched the vision recede through the rear window of the Mercedes. He heard
voices from behind the city walls. Thou art beautiful. And gradually the
old citadel sank behind the hill as the taxi coursed along the Shekhem , north-east of the city. Terrible as an army
with banners. This was childhood and mythology crystallized in the view
from the back of a cab. It was a day of innocent arrival.
    When
he saw his own reflection in the smoked-glass doors outside Sharon's apartment,
he thought he looked like a golem. A man in an unfinished state. An Adam
in creation, awaiting the final breath of God. There was something incomplete
about him, some vital spark gone astray.
    He
rang the bell again. Perspiration gathered around the hand-grip of his suitcase
as he waited. Still no answer. He pressed a neighbouring bell, and a sleepy
voice crackled over the communication system.
    Tom ducked
towards the buzzing speaker. 'You speak English?'
    'Yes. Ummm .'
    'I'm looking for Sharon. In the next
apartment.'
    'Gone away. Ummm .'
    'What? What did you say?'
    'Gone away. Gone away on holiday. Ummm . Back in a few days.'
    The low buzz
of the intercom clicked off. He imagined a sleepy Israeli upstairs going back
to bed. It was noon.
    He
stared stupidly at the hot, dusty street. All he could do was shift his weight
from one foot to the other, squeezing the moist handle of his suitcase. The
word golem fired in his brain like gunshot across a desert. Fresh sweat
bloomed on his brow as he made his way down the marble stairway of the
apartment block. He left the cool shadows of the building and walked out into
the brilliant sunlight of the street.
    Where was
Sharon? The spontaneous act of flying out here, which at one moment had seemed
cavalier and daring, now seemed bloody silly. He knew no one else. He was a
long way from home, and he felt lonely and not a little afraid. The taxi driver
who'd brought him here had ripped him off, he was certain. He regretted his
pale appearance. He felt like a target.
    Another