THE TUNNELS

When I was in Standard 5 (Grade 7) I had a friend by the name of Emanuel Mazels (not certain of the spelling).  He had grown up in the Oranjia Jewish Orphanage, and unlike many of the other orphanage kids, who came from parents in “broken marriages” (in those days if your parents weren’t living together it was a “broken marriage”, unlike today where virtually 50% of children grow up with a single parent or a parent with a new partner) – but unlike any of those, Emanuel really had no parents and no relatives.  No-one ever came to visit him, and all he had in the world were things he had been given as an orphanage kid.  Kids from “broken marriages” were often spoiled with gifts borne of guilt by their parents – even kids who had been deposited there by parents because the parents were simply too poor to look after them – even they eventually got something from their parents, who sometimes came to take them out and then they would come back with some new article of clothing or a toy or something.  But no-one ever visited Emanuel, and no-one ever brought him anything.

He didn ‘t talk about it.  One day I just asked  him outright, “Where are your parents?”

“They drowned” he said, “in a ship that sank.” And that was that.  Whether that was true or not I will never know. 

Emanuel was the naughtiest kid I ever knew. He would think the unthinkable and then do it.

One day he mentioned that the large building which made up the main part of the Herzlia School campus had a few obscurely positioned metal doors at playground level, made of closely-woven iron mesh.  The doors had been painted and re-painted in the royal blue colour that was part of the school colour scheme, to such an extent that the holes between the wires were almost completely closed by the layers of paint which had built up over the years, so you couldn’t see through the mesh.

Present a boy with a locked door to a place he has never been, and you present him with a challenge.

There were several doors like that on the campus, so we went from the one to the other to see if we could find an unlocked one.

Of course we found one:  leading off from the playground just below the old tuck-shop building building.  Because there was a short wall which obscured the door, once you were behind the wall no-one either inside or outside the school could see you open the door and slip inside. 

We pulled the door closed behind us.

We were in an enormous, pitch-black darkness – an echoing space which was so dark that it was impossible to guage its size.  Who wold have imagined that such a space could have existed unnoticed in between the walls of a building which I had come to know intimately – or so I thought - over the last six years?

The sounds of the playground grew dim, but what sound there was bounced around in this space.  It seemed to be a very high chamber and widened out from the door, and we couldn’t judge the distance in front of us.  The ground beneath our feet wasn’t the playground surface - it was either broken cement, or pebbles in sand, or the like.  We moved ahead like blind men, but when our eyes adjusted to the dark we could make out that the chamber narrowed to a low, dark doorway at the far end.

The school building was in fact a stepped construction built on the slopes of Devils’ Peak, and we were aware that we were somewhere in the foundations of the building, with a steep embankment on the left side of the chamber and the wall of what must have been a classroom on a lower level on the other side.

We were quite aware that we were not supposed to be there and I think we were both as afraid of being caught as we were of the darkness but we pressed on and passed through the dark doorway.

We were now in a low, narrow tunnel which, even with our adjusted eyesight, was almost impenetrably dark.  Emanuel walked in front.

It wasn’t long before we got to a branch in the tunnel:  the left arm was flooded with light, and the sounds of the playground were so loud in there that for a moment I thought there were kids right in the tunnel.  The right arm disappeared off into the darkness, and was completely silent.  We decided to tackle the right arm later, and turned left.

There was a line of metal gratings set into the roof of the tunnel at even distances, and suddenly it dawned on us where we were:  we had passed right under the width of the one arm of the two parallel buildings which made up the structure of the main school, and we were now standing under the brick-paved surface of the quadrangle between the two arms.  The metal gratings were for rain water run-off,  which  meant that we were now in a stormwater – cum – ventilation shaft.  And then came the best discovery of all:  there were girls sitting or standing on the gratings – and from where we were, we could see right up their dresses.  We moved from one grating to the next in silent awe.  It was too good to be true – from the youngest to the oldest, the ugliest to the snobbiest and the prettiest – there they were, ours to look at for as long as we pleased!

And then the bell rang for the end of break, and we scrambled to get out of there and not be late for class.  When we got out into the daylight we realised that our clothes were filthy, our hands and faces streaked with dust and grime.  We looked like we’d been in a fight.  We had to excuse ourselves – one at a time of course – during the first lesson after break, to go to the bathroom to get our hands and faces washed, dust ourselves off as best we could, and get our composure back.

After that, of course, we spent every spare minute in the tunnels.  There was much to explore.  We passed those gratings eventually without so much as an upward glance.

The left arm of the tunnel took a sharp right turn and a steep, dark decline and eventually ended up near the bottom exit of the school into Deer Park Drive, but as I’ve said that door was locked so although we could see out, we wouldn’t be able to exit there.  By now we had also equipped ourselves with torches and pocket knives and the whole thing had become an adventure that made the whole business of going to school worthwhile.

Having explored the full length of the left arm of the tunnel it was time to tackle the right – and it immediately became clear that there were light fittings at even distances down the right branch of the tunnel but since we couldn’t find the switch, we continued to use our torches.  At first this tunnel seemed quite boring, but then we heard footsteps right above us and we realised that we were right under the wooden gym floor of the school hall, and we could clearly hear all the goings on in the hall from the tunnel.  Once we got a huge fright – we came into the tunnel and found the lights on and we thought we were going to find someone there – but we couldn’t find a light switch and no-one appeared, so we assumed that someone must simply have been in there and left the lights on after they left.  Near the far end was a wooden door, and from the sounds on the other side we concluded that it led into a corridor inside the building.  The electrical conduit piping that connected the lights ended at the door, indicating that the light switch was probably in the corridor next to the door.

The tunnel ran down the length of one side of the hall, and now we knew that it was parallel to a corridor on the one side:  the other side was made up mostly of a concrete beam which didn’t reach all  the way to the floor or all the way to the wooden ceiling.  At one point we noticed quite a large open space – about the size of a small room – on the other side of the beam.  If we dug the sand away under the beam a bit, we could slither through into that space.

This was a very private place indeed:  you wouldn’t even see it from the tunnel if you closed up the gaps – even if the lights were on in the tunnel.

The idea sort of evolved as it went along, but we decided that this was going to be our special room – the place we would come to, a hiding place, if we ever needed such a place (why on earth would we need such a place? – no idea. Just boy thoughts).

But then  the enterprise began in earnest.  We waited for the school holidays, and broke into the school.  We climbed the fence, found an open classroom window, went up to the admin section, searched for keys:  we wanted a key that led from the wooden door directly into the right tunnel.  We had already established that the switch on the corridor side of that door actually did operate the lights in the tunnel.  Amongst the keys in the admin office we found one key which opened practically all the doors in the building – a master key.  We took it to my house, where we kept a box of old keys which no longer fitted anything.  I found a key quite similar to the master key – same make and size – and using a file and a hacksaw, we modified that key to the point that it worked almost as well as the master key.  We made sure that it worked on that wooden door and then we returned the master key to its place.

Then I got a length of electric flex and a light fitting (all from old junk at home) and ran a cable from the electricity supply in the tunnel to “our room”.

Then we stole a carpet, a bookshelf, two chairs and a table from various classrooms and moved them into our room.

All this during the school holidays.

Then we stocked the room with water bottles, comics, and other paraphernalia.

By now we were becoming quite paranoid about being caught so we set up a series of booby traps in the tunnel;  the one nearest the playground access door released a torrent of bricks down the slope into the walkway if you stumbled over a trip-wire at shin height – and further rather nasty traps down the length of the tunnels.

In between our work on the tunnel, we got up to other mischief in the playground and the classroom:  there is, to this day, a steep embankment from the access road to the school campus all the way up to the level ground which today contains the “Middle School”, but in those days it was the school’s sport field.  We found a full-size, rusty old oil barrel – one of those large, metal barrels – and we took turns rolling this barrel up the slope, then getting out of its way and letting go, so that it would go crashing down the slope, gathering speed as it went, finally smashing into the small wall at the bottom of the slope.

We recruited others to help us because it took two boys to roll the barrel up the slope:  it was a huge thing, and if you were pushing from below, the weight and the fact that you were almost under the barrel, were considerable factors.

Then one day the inevitable finally happened:  as Emanuel and I were about half-way up the slope, the loose earth of the embankment started to give way under our feet, and we had to scramble just to keep our position.    We started to fall forwards, until instead of holding the barrel against the slope, we were holding underneath it:  then we were on our faces in the dirt, and we lost our grip, and the barrel came down on us.  It smashed own onto our heads, rolled right down over the length of our bodies, and went thundering on down the slope.  Instead of the usual rolling motion which we had seen, it started to bounce down the slope.  It bounced right over the little retaining walls, hurtled across the driveway, and crashed into the wall of the admin block.  The barrel hadn’t taken a direct line down the slope – somewhere along its path it had turned so that instead of all this happening in some obscure corner of the grounds, the barrel had emerged in full view of the principal’s office window, where, had he been looking, he would have seen it in full flight as it hurled across the driveway and hit the building’s wall.  I prefer not to think about what would have happened to anyone in it’s path:  it would have struck them with the force of a speeding vehicle.

Our faces had been forced into the ground, and I think we may have been a little concussed by the barrel landing on the backs of our heads.    When I eventually sat up and looked around I saw that a crowd had gathered round the barrel and an area the size of the barrel itself where the plaster had been stripped off the school wall, now lying in rubble in the driveway.  There was a lot of shouting but eventually one voice rose above all the others:   it was the principal, leaning out of his office window  He was leaning so far that virtually his entire upper half was out of the window.  He was beside himself, his face was purple, his mouth was wide open, and he was screaming at us to get up to his office immediately.

Emanuel and I stared at each other in dazed incomprehension.  He had sand in his eyes and mouth, his forehead and cheeks were cut and bleeding, and bruises were starting to come up.  I spat sand out of my mouth, my eyes felt like they had sandpaper in them and I realised that I must have looked much the same.  I realised that the cuts were all over any exposed skin – the stones and pebbles probably did that.

We picked our way down the slope with a gathering crowd watching from below and made our way through the crowd up to the principal’s office.  He had calmed down somewhat by the time we got there – and our battered appearance acted in our favour because we were greeted with a mixture of wrath and alarm which forestalled any immediate talk of punishment.  Some kind junior school teacher whisked us off to the staff bathroom where we were stripped to the waist, washed down, cuts washed with Dettol, shirts dusted off as far as possible, plasters applied, re-dressed, and marched back to the principal’s office.  A lot of time must have passed because the school day was over, kids and teachers were going home ….. and the principal, commonly known as Korky Katz, was waiting for us.  He looked as if he hadn’t had a good day.

He saw us separately, taking a long time with each of us.  His talk with me was part anger, part sorrow, part warning:  Emanuel was a bad boy, he told me outright, and he expected better of me, and he hoped that I realised that he was going to have to tell my parents about this.  It was a strange mixture of dressing-down and psychological pep-talk, but my greatest concern was that I might very well get cuts (which was still legal in those days) – but the cuts never eventuated and I left his office quite unsure of exactly what had happened.  Someone had brought our suitcases up to the principal’s office and they were waiting outside his door when we got out.  Since we lived next door to each other we walked home together (most Herzlian kids were spoiled brats whose parents ferried them back and forth by car, but despite the distance and heavy suitcase, my mother never had a car and I walked to and from school most days of my life.  My mother discouraged me from asking for – or accepting – lifts from other kids’ mothers. She was a fiercely proud woman and would have seen that as accepting charity, regardless of how well-intentioned it may have been).

I have a lot of memories of Standard 5, but it was actually a terrible year for me.  I got my lowest school marks ever, I had a class teacher who I hated, (old Mrs Gertie Markham) but the boys in the class were as naughty as hell, and indeed, it must have been hell to teach us.

Mrs Markham was  really too old.  She made it clear that she thought girls were from heaven and boys were from hell.  She treated us, and marked us, accordingly.  I stole one of my father’s syringes and an old hypodermic needle, making the finest water-pistol in the world.  I could spray a fine jet of water with terriffic accuracy right across the classroom during a lesson, hitting some sucker who was then totally unable to retaliate.  The jet was so fine, and the action so quick, that Mrs Markham never detected it.  One day one of the boys stole my syringe and chased another kid around the classroom with it, eventually catching up with him.  They both fell and one of them got stabbed with the needle – I decided not to bring the thing to school again.

Mrs Markham wore a wig.  One day Emanuel found an excuse to leave the class during a lesson.  On his return, Mrs Markham was standing up, facing the class as she spoke.  Emanuel made as if to walk back to his seat by walking around behind her.  There were some flowers in a vase on her table. With a devilish glint in his eyes he removed a flower from the vase and slipped it into her hair, and continued onto his seat.

The last time I saw Emanuel was on the last day of standard five.  I never said goodbye, As pointed out when I began this chapter, there were stories about  what happened and where he went but I have no certainty on any of that.

I never went back to the tunnels after Emanuel left, I guess that when we set up those booby traps, what we were actually doing was sealing the tunnels off in our minds, knowing that we would never go back.  Many years after I matriculated, they did a big reconstruction project on the school which include rebuilding the school hall.  I wonder if they lifted the floor, and if they did, what they thought of the little room down there, complete with furniture. I hope the McGyver-style electricity supply never shorted out and hurt anyone, or burned anything down.

 

24 September 2011

PS: I have just received an unconfirmed story that Emanuel has died in Israel. I have no way of verifying this.

14 August 2025