Transgression

by R. S. Ingermanson

  “His name is called Ari,” Rivka said.

  “He is truly from your country,” Hana said. “He wears the same strange clothes.” She reached down and touched the blue denim of Ari’s pants.

  “Rivka,” Ari said.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I treated you badly the other night, and I am sorry. Please forgive me.”

  “What’s got into you?” Rivka asked. “You’re talking in biblical Hebrew!”

  “It is a long story,” Ari said. He began coughing again. When the fit subsided, he said, “Could I beg you for some water?”

  Rivka went to the water jar and dipped a stone cup into it. Then she took the cup and knelt down in front of Ari. He still lay on his stomach. She gripped his shoulder, rolled him onto his side, and held the cup to his mouth. He drank greedily.

  “Thank you,” he said. “It is better than the last cup of water you gave me.”

  “You’re acting more the gentleman this time.” Rivka felt a little tremor run through her.

  “I am sorry,” Ari said. “For the last two days, I’ve been looking for you, thinking what a fool I’ve been, wishing I could change what I said.”

  “You’ve been looking for me for two days?” Rivka said. “How did you escape from the police?”

  “There were no police,” Ari said. “Although I will certainly call them when we return. Damien violated our agreement. Why did you come here?”

  “I don’t know exactly how I got here,” Rivka said. “I was playing the Avatar game, and then somehow I wound up in a cave, and…” She closed her eyes, wincing. “Long story. Dr. West says you turned on the wormhole and sent me through it and then tried to shut it down.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ari said. “It would have taken hours for the wormhole condensate to form. Overnight, at least. Damien must have created it Saturday night—when I was being rude to you at the café. I’m sorry, Rivka.”

  Rivka had no idea what had come over Ari, but he seemed very different from the man she had talked to last Saturday night. “Have you really been looking for me for two days? Were you out on the streets the whole time?”

  “I met a friend—Brother Baruch,” Ari said. “He rescued me from a bandit and took me into his home. I stayed with him over Shabbat.”

  It all sounded terribly plausible, even the part about being rescued from a bandit. Ari didn’t seem ashamed that he had needed rescuing. That had the ring of truth.

  But was it the whole truth?

  If Ari was telling the truth, then Dr. West had to be lying. And vice versa.

  Hana brought a drink from the same cup Ari had drunk from. Rivka gulped it down.

  “I do not trust him,” Hana said. “He has the face of a man who takes his pleasure and does not pay.”

  Now Rivka felt very confused. She had never been all that good at spotting liars, whereas Hana owed her life to the fact that she could spot one. But Hana was telling her exactly the opposite of what her own instincts said. Somehow, she preferred to trust Ari over Dr. West, but she couldn’t explain why.

  She needed more facts. “All right, Ari,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s going on between you and Dr. West, but I’ve heard his side. Now you tell me yours. Start with our friendly parting on Saturday night.”

  Ari did. It took a quarter of an hour, with Rivka asking numerous questions. Each he answered patiently.

  “…so then I ended up here in Jerusalem two days ago, trying to find someone I could talk to,” Ari said. “I was attacked by a bandit, and a man named Baruch scared him off.”

  “So where is this Baruch?” Rivka asked. “Why didn’t you bring him?”

  “He brought me here and then went back home,” Ari said. “I would like you to meet him because he’s an interesting person.”

  “What did he say just now?” Hana asked. “He is lying.”

  Rivka pondered this briefly. “Something tells me you’re not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Ari.”

  “And why are you cross-examining me?” he asked. “I want you to meet Brother Baruch. Neither he nor I will harm you—ever.”

  “Hana, he wants me to go with him to meet a man,” Rivka said. “Should I trust him?”

  “No,” Hana said. “He has some hidden reason for wanting you to go.”

  Rivka hesitated. What did Hana know? She had to be making this stuff up. Rivka took a knife from the table and walked around behind Ari.

  “What are you doing?” Hana asked.

  Rivka said nothing. She carefully slit the rope, one strand at a time, until Ari’s arms came free. She put the knife on the table and began massaging his forearms.

  “Thank you,” Ari said.

  “Rivka, you are making a big mistake,” Hana said.

  “Stop it!” Rivka shouted.

  Hana shrank away from her.

  “Hana, I’m sorry.”

  “You will be more sorry if you go anywhere with this man,” Hana said darkly.

  Rivka kept working on Ari’s arms. Finally, he put his right hand on the floor and pushed himself to a sitting position. He turned his head slowly from side to side, rubbing his neck. Dirt matted the left side of his beard. “I keep thinking this is an evil dream,” he said. A trickle of blood ran down his left arm from elbow to wrist.

  Rivka fetched another cup of water and poured it over the blood. “Does it hurt?”

  “I’ll live,” he said. “Let’s go.” He slowly stood up, bowed awkwardly to Hana, and then went to the door.

  Rivka followed him. “I’ll be back this evening,” she said to Hana.

  “No, you will come back crying before it is noon,” Hana said. “The truth-tellers tell me so.”

  “If I do, then I’ll concede that your truth-tellers are wiser than I,” Rivka said lightly. She and Ari stepped out into the street.

  * * *

  Damien

  Damien could have gone back to his rented house for his gun, but he dared not risk letting Ari out of his sight. He waited in the shadows of an ugly stone building fifty yards up the street from Hana’s house. Rivka was going to let Ari go—Damien would bet money on it. But would she believe Ari’s story?

  If she did, then she would be no more use to Damien, and he might as well kill her. But he wanted to be certain of that before taking such drastic action, because she had useful information. With any luck, she would vacillate for a day or two, trying to figure out who was lying.

  And all he needed was a few more days. Today was Sunday. He would have a possible shot on Tuesday, but the better chance would come Wednesday. At the Chamber of Hewn Stone, wherever that was. Rivka could tell him, if she would.

  How much did Ari know? Could he win over Rivka during the next few days?

  The door of Hana’s house opened. Damien stiffened, freezing in the shadows.

  Neither Ari or Rivka looked in Damien’s direction. Ari’s arms were unbound. Bad news. That meant Rivka trusted him.

  Ari pointed across the city in a generally westerly direction. Then he and Rivka began walking. Hana didn’t come out. Damien waited a few seconds then hurried after them. If they were heading west, they weren’t going back to the wormhole.

  Which meant they had some other destination. Why?

  Far ahead, he saw Rivka sneeze twice. That reminded him of something.

  It took another ten minutes to remember. The other day in the lab, he had sneezed in the face of that Chinese postdoc, the one who had come to ask about—the printer! The laser printer had been out of paper. The same printer Damien had tried to print to a few minutes later.

  Damien ran through a possible scenario. When a laser printer ran out of paper, it queued up the documents until somebody put paper in. Then it printed out everything. Which meant that somebody in the department had come across his chronology of the last days of Paul in Jerusalem. They would know it was Damien’s, because of the header page, which would have his name all over it.

  He c
ursed under his breath. What if Ari Kazan had found that paper and brought it with him? He wouldn’t be able to understand it. The document was intentionally cryptic. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone who didn’t know the story of Paul’s last journey to Jerusalem exceedingly well.

  But Rivka was an expert in all that. If anyone could make sense of that chronology, Rivka could.

  Damien tried to calm himself by breathing deeply, slowly. A lot of ifs had to come off for that to happen. If Ari found the page in the printer. If he brought it with him. If he showed it to Rivka. Then Rivka might figure things out.

  It was a long shot. Then again, Ari coming through the wormhole was a long shot.

  If lightning could strike once, it could strike twice. But stay calm. First get as much information as possible. It made no sense to go leaping to conclusions until you had data.

  Especially in light of the gold mine of information between the ears of Rivka Meyers.

  Chapter 18

  Rivka

  RIVKA HADN’T VISITED THE UPPER City yet—at least not in this century. In her own century, she had seen many of the sights, some of them clearly bogus. One of them came quickly to mind: David’s tomb and the Upper Room, both housed in the same building.

  This, however, was not bogus. It took her breath away. When she got home, she would have a few dozen papers to write, breaking new ground in first-century architecture, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and Judaic studies. This experience would make her career as an—

  Rivka sneezed. Twice.

  “Are you well?” Ari asked.

  “It’s just my allergies,” Rivka said. “Whatever’s in the air is pretty much the same as it will be two thousand years from now.”

  Ari sniffed. “With one addition. Do you smell the Jerusalem pines? We have a real forest outside of this city.”

  Rivka breathed in deeply. Delicious. She sneezed again. “And what about you? Have you seen any of those hornets you’re allergic to?”

  Ari shrugged. “Of course, but not to worry.” He patted his backpack. “I have two doses in here.”

  “How far is it to your friend’s house?” Rivka asked.

  “Not far. Less than a kilometer.”

  “Tell me everything you know about Dr. West,” Rivka said.

  Ari spent the rest of the walk telling her. Rivka listened intently, not so much to learn about Dr. West, but to learn about Ari. You could tell a lot about someone by listening to him talk about his enemies. By the time they arrived at the small two-story house in the Upper City, Rivka felt certain of one thing. Ari respected Dr. West. That is, he had respected him until two days ago, when one of them had powered up the wormhole without the other’s permission.

  But which one? According to Hana, who claimed to be a human lie detector, Damien was truthful and Ari wasn’t.

  So why did Rivka trust Ari so much more than Dr. West?

  Ari knocked on the wooden door of the house. “Brother Baruch!” he shouted. “I have found her!”

  The door swung inward. A lean young man with a thick black beard stepped to the doorway. His eyes skimmed over Rivka without making contact and settled on Ari. His mouth fell open. “Brother Ari, what happened to you?”

  “I had a fight with a dirt floor,” Ari said.

  “And lost very badly,” Rivka said, using the same biblical Hebrew that the two men spoke. “Brother Baruch, it’s very pleasant to meet you.”

  Baruch’s eyes widened, but still he did not look at Rivka. “Your friend speaks our language very well, Brother Ari.”

  “Which implies I do not,” Ari said, sounding very pleased to have caught his friend in a minor gaffe. “She is a scholar, Brother Baruch. She can even speak to you in Aramaic.”

  “A scholar?” Baruch looked puzzled. “Do you mean she is a scribe? She can read?”

  Rivka stopped herself from laughing out loud “Yes, and I can write and do arithmetic, too. My calculus is a bit rusty, but that is acceptable, since it has not yet been invented.”

  “Your friend speaks in riddles, Brother Ari.”

  Rivka was beginning to get a bit annoyed at Baruch’s habit of speaking only to Ari. She knew it was just a cultural thing. Baruch wasn’t intentionally being a male chauvinist oink-oink. Still, it bothered her more than she had expected. She felt just mischievous enough to try to shake up his worldview a little bit.

  Rivka grabbed Baruch’s hand and shook it. “My name is called Rivka.”

  Baruch stared at her. When she let go of his hand, he stepped back a pace. “Brother Ari, is it the custom in your country for women to be so familiar with men?”

  Rivka answered in Aramaic before Ari could speak. “In our country, men treat women with respect. They do not speak over women’s heads as if they were children.”

  Baruch shook his head in disbelief and answered in Aramaic. “You have very strange customs in your country. It is not done in Jerusalem. Please forgive me for appearing to be rude.” Then he actually looked Rivka in the eye. His ears glowed bright red.

  Rivka lowered her eyes, sorry she had embarrassed him. “Ari,” she said in Hebrew, “please tell Brother Baruch that I, too, ask forgiveness for seeming rude. I will try to learn the ways of Jerusalem.”

  Ari shrugged. “My friends, you have much to learn about each other. Brother Baruch, would you mind if I wash myself in your mikveh?”

  Baruch looked surprised. “Brother Ari, the mikveh is for purifying from ritual impurity, not for bathing.”

  A sly grin spread across Ari’s face. “Very well. I had a dream last night, and I awoke ritually unclean.”

  Baruch shot a nervous eye toward Rivka, obviously shocked that Ari would say such a thing in the presence of a woman. “Very well, then. You must use the mikveh, but please remember next time to purify yourself when you arise from bed. Rivka and I will wait outside.”

  “Couldn’t we go upstairs?” Rivka asked. She wanted to see the rest of the house. It was more elaborate than Hana’s one-story structure, and she wanted to see as much of the architecture as she could.

  “It would not be proper for a man and a woman to be alone,” Baruch said. “Surely, even in your country such things are not allowed.”

  Rivka mentally whacked the side of her head. She ought to have guessed that it wouldn’t be proper. The modern ultraorthodox had similar restrictions. “I understand. I guess we can stand out here in the street where everyone can see us. I do have some questions I would like to ask you.”

  “And, please, you will not speak to me in public,” Baruch said. He spread his hands in apology. “It is the custom here in Jerusalem.”

  “I am sorry.” Rivka stepped into the street. Baruch came out and shut the door behind them.

  Rivka sat on a stone bench in front of the house. Baruch went a little way down the street and simply stood there.

  The warmth of the late-morning sun made Rivka feel sleepy. Old Jerusalem. So familiar, so strange. In many ways, it was exactly what she had expected. The architecture, the street layout, the Temple, the material culture—all of these were simple extrapolations of what she had seen in her books. But the people, the customs, even the pronunciation of Hebrew and Aramaic—all were different from what she might have guessed.

  It wasn’t any one thing exactly, but the sum total that shocked her. A large number of little surprises that all added up to something radically different from her expectations. The stale-tasting water. The lack of soap. Human waste running in the gutters. The male supremacy thing. Thank goodness Baruch was genuinely trying to accommodate her forwardness. It must be hard on him, too. She had assumed that merely knowing about the culture would enable her to get along here. It wasn’t working out that way. Head knowledge was one thing; experience another. But she could put up with anything for a few days, especially in view of the payoff.

  She was going to write one dazzling report on all this when she got home. What would the tabloids say? She could imagine the headlines: Archaeologist Walks with J
esus. Alien Abduction Through Wormhole. Time Travelers Return with New Dead Sea Scrolls.

  “Brother Baruch!”

  Rivka turned her head at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. A man limped up the street toward Baruch. He wore an untrimmed gray beard, and his right leg looked to be a couple inches shorter than his left, but his eyes shone with determination.

  Baruch greeted him warmly and kissed him on the neck. “Shalom, Brother Mattityahu. It has been too long! How is life in Samaria?”

  That struck Rivka as odd. Why would an old man move to Samaria? It was only thirty or forty miles, but you couldn’t exactly take a bus to get there.

  “HaShem is good,” said the man named Mattityahu. “But I am not well.” He parted his beard. “See what the Evil One has done to me.”

  Curious, Rivka stood up and edged closer. From this distance, it looked like some kind of an ulceration on the man’s face. Or possibly…skin cancer. A cold shadow touched her heart.

  “Let us pray,” Baruch said. He laid hands on Mattityahu’s face.

  Rivka moved closer.

  Baruch began praying. “Baruch Attah, Adonai, Eloheinu, Melech Ha-Olam, Adonai, Rafayenu.” Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, Lord our Healer.

  Rivka felt a rush of excitement. Baruch might be some kind of holy man—a thaumaturgic healer like Honi the Circle-Maker or Hanina ben Dosa. Or possibly some other category of charismatic figure not known from the literature.

  Baruch switched to Aramaic. “Oh Lord, our God, let the power of your servant fall upon Brother Mattityahu. Heal, oh Lord! Undo the work of the Evil One. Restore this face to reflect your glory.”

  Rivka heard a sound behind her. She turned. Ari came out of the house, his hair dripping wet, his clothes clinging to him. Apparently, Hotel Baruch didn’t come with towels.

  “What’s going on?” Ari asked.

  Rivka shushed him with a finger to her lips. “Baruch’s performing some sort of healing ritual on the gentleman there,” she whispered. “He just got started, and I’m trying to watch without intruding.”