The structure of this book is surprisingly uneven: six chapters in Part 1, the first four introducing new characters. Freddy, Barbara, the Cartwrights who are English expats, Abdul, a Palestinian Muslim. Part 2 is titled Passionate pilgrims, all one piece, albeit longer.
Janet (from my book group) said how wonderful it was; she laughed as she spoke. I thought she must really have enjoyed it. I looked for my own copy at home, but it must have belonged to my parents. I will have read it as a teenager, not understanding much.
The Mandelbaum Gate is full of humour and insight. It is 1961, and the main character, Barbara Vaughan, a recently converted Roman Catholic with an Anglican/Jewish background, is visiting Israel. The city of Jerusalem is divided between Israel and Jordan, the only connection between the two halves the narrow passage through the Mandelbaum Gate. The division in the city reflects other divisions: between Barbara’s loyalties, the Jewish versus the Anglican, between her family and the Catholic Church. There's also a division in time, a before and an after, in the life of Freddy Hamilton, a 50 year-old bland British Foreign Office employee who survived his childhood by smiling in the face of a tyrannical mother. He continues to smile charmingly rather than act, living in fear of other people's passions. His meeting with Barbara changes him in a radical way and he enjoys a brief interlude of pure happiness before his life becomes complicated by what is another theme of the book, a failure to pay attention to what is happening to people one is close to.
That theme has to do with noticing. Barbara’s cousin Miles and his wife fail to notice that she is conducting a torrid love affair under their roof with an archaeologist she met at a local dig. The people at the dig, the people in the pub, they all knew, they could see what was happening. Miles and his wife were prevented from noticing by their preconceived ideas about Barbara, for whom she was a spinster, a virginal school-teacher. Besides, they considered the man she loved a social inferior, though he was a widely respected expert in his field. Barbara feels ignored, unloved. In general, Barbara's Anglican family likes to turn difficulties into anecdotes for the amusement of their friends and family.
Freddy dismisses issues as ‘quite absurd’ whenever they might require reflection, as when Barbara mentions that her Church may forbid her to marry a divorcee. His comments are frequently offensive: he lazily expresses an antisemitic trope before realizing Barbara is part-Jewish. His life is unexamined.
Barbara recognizes his tendency: "You blow neither hot nor cold." For Freddy, this is a pivotal moment, a transformation from one state to another, his own personal Mandelbaum Gate.
Nevertheless, he tragically ignores cries for help in letters he receives from home, which document the increasing hatred between his mother and her companion.
* * *
Several delightful vignettes in the book bear the ring of truth: Barbara visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and in an hilarious aside, we're privy to the thoughts of the three Franciscans who jealously guard the section of the church allocated to Roman Catholics as they observe an English priest exceeding his allotted time with an unplanned sermon, a sermon replete with opinions the Franciscans deeply object to. The sermon itself is actually relevant to us readers who may not be RC.
We benefit from Muriel Spark's background in intelligence (from WWII): a story about the Israeli national water-carrier is inserted into the narrative. It is a fact that this water-carrier required giant pipes which worried the Jordanians a great deal, with some reason. Israeli intelligence knew a spy had been planted by the Jordanians and wanted to identify him. Someone asks Freddy what the Israelis would do if they caught this person. He answers: "Mislead him.”
* * *
Muriel Spark has an enviable ability to reproduce the fluent, understandable and imperfect English spoken by foreigners.
An old aunt from Eastern Europe describes her pickled cucumbers “I have made yesterday cucumbers in pickle, twenty. Thirty-six last week in the jars I have with vinegar made, cucumbers.”
The speech of Israeli guides, one of whom is originally Czech, the other Polish, is typically Israeli - confrontational, almost aggressive. Barbara explains to the guide how her father died: “The horse threw him. He landed in a ditch and died instantly.” The guide: “My father died also in a ditch. Shot by the SS.” Holocaust one-upmanship. He immediately moves on: “Why have you made yourself a Catholic to deny your Jewish blood?” His English does not stretch to the word 'converted'. The paranoia, the abhorrence of Christianity both ring true.
Freddy's hotel manager prefers to speak in the present tense: “Now I phone your office and tell them you are safe. Do you like some tea, coffee?” An abundance of pronouns renders his speech quite unclear: “”As I say to him, we can put you through to his room. He says, I been put through to his room…”
Abdul, an educated Arab, to Freddy: “Say a poem for me."
Finally a quote from Benny, who is Freddy's mother's companion and suffers from religious mania: "I have tried to bring home the Word of Jesus to her heart but the Devil and his Minions have got her in their bloody claws…”
Some reviewers decried the multitude of complications in the story. Having lived in the Middle East myself and knowing Arabs, Jews and Christians, I think it's a pretty good portrayal of how things were then. I read the book three times in a row, discovering something new every time. Admittedly I was suffering from Covid and was isolated with nothing else to do.
It's a great book.
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