The Mandelbaum Gate – Muriel Spark (1965)

During my yearlong #ReadingMuriel2108 event last year – I read a lot of Muriel Spark novels, though not all of them, so I have several I still want to read soon. I was delighted therefore that The Mandelbaum Gate fitted into the #1965 club. The Mandelbaum Gate is something like twice the size of the majority of Spark’s fiction, yet while it can get a little confusing from time to time, it is very compelling and really quite brilliant.

The opening is quite typically Sparkian, with British diplomat Freddy Hamilton ruminating on various kinds of poetry, and which of them he should try to compose in thanks to his weekend hostess.

The setting is Israel and Jordan in 1961, the start of the Adolf Eichmann trial. Relations between these two nations – who barely recognise one another is precarious at best. The Mandelbaum Gate was at this time (and until 1967) a guarded checkpoint between the Israeli and Jordanian sections of Jerusalem. It was very much a symbol of the divided nature of the relations between the two states. Due to his diplomatic privileges Freddy is able to pass back and forth through the gate with no problems – though generally anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport is unable to pass through the gate to Jordan. Each weekend Freddy passes through the Mandelbaum gate to spend the weekend with his friends Joanna and Matt Cartwright.

In Israel at this time, on a tour of the Holy Land is Barbara Vaughan, a thirty-something, spinster schoolmistress and catholic convert, whose mother was Jewish. Her part Jewish ancestry making her anticipated travel through the Mandelbaum Gate rather problematic. Barbara has been told of the dangers she could face if she tries to get into Jordan through the Mandelbaum Gate – but Barbara; single minded, knowing just what she wants, is not easily dissuaded. Barbara’s heritage of course, a mirror image of Spark’s own.

“At Joppa, then, when Barbara came to be leaning over the sea-wall, she said to Saul Ephraim, who reminded her much of the Aaronson cousins of her youth, ‘My Gentile relations tried too hard to forget I was a half-Jew. My Jewish relations couldn’t forget I was a half-Gentile, Actually, I didn’t let them forget, either way.’

‘Quite right. Why should you forget what you are? Said Saul ‘You were right.’

‘I know that. But one doesn’t altogether know what one is. There is always more to it than Jew, Gentile, half-Jew, half-Gentile. There’s the human soul, the individual. Not ‘Jew, Gentile’ as one might say ‘autumn, winter.’ Something unique and unrepeatable”

Freddy is a rather unexciting fifty-something year old, with a demanding mother back at home in England. He is a rather passive figure in the main, his life in Jerusalem one of some routine, as he haltingly learns Arabic and resists Abdul Ramdez’s father’s rather suspect insurance scheme. He is a generally quite a charming man, but he and Barbara get off to a shaky start.

Barbara is hoping to meet up with her archaeologist fiancé Harry Clegg, who is in Jordan working on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Barbara has kept her engagement to Harry secret from her family, and her friend and headmistress Miss Rickward – aka Ricky. Their marriage is dependent upon Harry’s first marriage being annulled by the Catholic church. Barbara enlists Freddy’s help in getting into Jordan – after which things get fabulously complicated.

Freddy wakes up having completely lost two days of his life – with no memory of what happened during them.

“On Saturday the 12th of August 1961 when Barbara Vaughan had last been seen, Freddy had accompanied her from the Cartwrights’ front door to Matt’s car outside in the roadway… This was the last thing he remembered until he was walking along his usual route from the Mandelbaum Gate to his hotel on the following Tuesday, which was the 15th of August.”

Barbara disappears, Harry’s in Rome seeking his annulment. Michael, Barbara’s cousin, covering the Eichmann trial arrives and Miss Rickward, rather surprisingly also turns up. There are a host of wonderful characters, including Suzi and Abdul Ramdez and their wily, slightly sinister father and the adorable gift shop owner Mr Alexandros who has befriended Freddy.

Muriel Spark shows her brilliance at short stories too I think – as alongside the main narrative are some glorious smaller stories. We glimpse the odd relationship between Freddy’s mother and her ageing companion, through the letters he receives and writes to them.  Miss Rickward – the headmistress of the school Barbara works at is also strangely fascinating, clearly, she has developed some kind of fixation on her friend and employee. Her story is particularly surprising.

Spark’s writing is brilliant in this novel, she slowly winds up the tension and with this being Spark territory we never quite know where she is taking us. Alongside the tension and the political thriller aspects of this novel though there is also Spark’s humour with her wonderful sense of the absurd.

In some ways this appears to be the most conventional of Muriel Spark’s novels. However, throughout we glimpse those darker, odder elements that is such a recognisable part of her storytelling.