by Jeff Spence
She walked quietly over the carpet in her bare feet, contemplating the long, decadent shower to come, and peeked over his shoulder at the crooked rows and columns of words.
"Why do you write it like that?"
"The multiple lines?"
She nodded.
"Thought you might mean the terrible handwriting." A smile. "Well, Hebrew's a bit different than most languages, in that it doesn't really have vowels, as such."
"It doesn't?"
"No. There are a few letters that often indicate certain vowels, but in most cases the language was a string of consonants."
"And this is one of those cases?"
"Everything before the sixth century, really, and this was over five hundred years old by then."
"So how do we read it if there aren't any vowels?"
"It's similar to what it would be in English. Let’s see… Take the letters P, T, and S. In English, as an example. The word might be 'pats,' 'pets,' 'puts,' 'peats,' even Patsy."
"So how do you know?"
"Well some words are much more common that others. When in doubt, I start there. Besides that, once a sentence starts, there are clues as to where it's going. If I say 'This apartment doesn't allow…' then we look at the P, T, and S, then 'pets' is the obvious choice. There might be an extremely remote chance that it's 'pitas,' or 'pots,' but not likely."
"But when the choice isn't obvious, you write down both words?"
"Yes, or sometimes more. Even when it does seem obvious, I like to do it. The trick is to keep all of the choices in mind, even if they are unexpected or seem unlikely. Sometimes a word later in the sentence makes me question a choice earlier on, and I go back and change it, altering the meaning of the sentence as a whole. If a scholar doesn't do that, but hammers on with their original choice, not only do we get mistakes, but we get theologically-motivated readings that are awkward and misleading."
"Does that happen a lot?"
"Not too often, not in a major way, but it's well known that translation requires a fair amount of that kind of choice-making — judgment calls, really — and that personal theology often nudges judgment one way or another."
"Speaking of personal theology…"
"Yes?"
"Dr. Gela?"
"You want more about the Jewish thing?" She raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Don’t you need a break? You’ve been at that table since we stepped through the door.”
"What about you, Marina Saalik, you want to share your religious views with me?"
She smiled. "I don't mind it. Not much to say really. Atheist leanings, other than the occasional fox-hole prayer."
"But the name?"
"Means 'cute and caring' I think. And yes, before you ask, or tell me something we both already know, my background — way back — is Muslim." Not way back, she thought, my parents were believers… but that was an age ago, a world away.
"Where did your family come from, originally I mean?"
"Originally? Who's to say. My parents came from Bosnia though, then moved to Sarajevo before I was born." Actually, they are buried there, in an unmarked mass grave. “I think most of the Bosnian families came from Turkey, back in the day.”
"Sarajevo? During the war?"
"No, before it." There was nothing before the war. There was nothing during the war. There is only now.
Ben paused. He had a feeling she wasn't telling him the whole story, but then he had refused to tell her anything yet, so he wasn't one to point fingers.
Marina herself listened to her words as if there were a third voice in the room, a second Marina, telling a story devoid of pain, fear, shame and loss. The first Marina, the real one, was content to step back, to stand behind this other, to remain silent and to save her story for a time when she could bear to accept it herself. Maybe then she could share it with someone special.
"So, professor… your turn."
"Maybe in the morning. No, really, I will tell you, but I am exhausted in every way… it’s been far to long a day for me to bare my heart before a good sleep. Besides, the faster I get this thing translated, the better."
She could accept that. For now. "Is it interesting so far? The scroll?"
"Amazing, but let's let that wait for morning as well."
"Hmm, you're no fun at all this evening. All work and responsibility."
"Call it an occupational hazard."
"You don't want to play at all?" She raised a single eyebrow.
He tried to quip back, but no words came. After the moment of awkwardness, embarrassment set in and he could feel the blood rush to his cheeks.
"Relax, Ben, I don't bite. Let's take a break, we can each take a shower, then watch a movie or something."
He laughed, almost naturally. "I can take half an hour I guess, you can have the shower first. I’ll find a sitcom."
As they reclined on the beds and he watched her reflection in the television screen, superimposed over Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine, bouncing witty banter back and forth, he mused that he might not even mind… if Marina bit a little.
At six o'clock sharp, Leonard Kantor's phone rang and he picked it up off of his bedside table. He had been awake for almost an hour, reading over the Copper Scroll in English translation and then started giving the Silver Scroll a try in the unique Second Temple Hebrew — with little success. He could fight his way through the first century dialect only with difficulty and frequent ambiguity. The text was unclear. It was very slow going.
The phone went to his ear.
"Hello."
"Hello sir." It was his field man, as expected. "You're patched up are you?"
"Yes sir, well enough."
"What have you found."
"I've had word from a contact sir, and he's used his credit card."
"Go on."
"He's checked into the King David Hotel, for three nights, he and a guest."
"Why would he be so foolish as to use his credit card? Could it be a trick?"
"I don't think so sir. It's been put through for one agora only, at the front desk. He probably means to use cash, but they take a credit card in case of damage or theft. He probably didn't know that their verification would show up, or he might think we can't get at that kind of information."
Kantor considered this. It made sense enough, and Ben hadn't exactly come across as a crafty tactician, despite the runner to Israel and away from an intimidating figure like Greg Bass.
"Do you want me to move in sir?"
"Not yet. Have a look though. Make sure both of them are there and that they're healthy. Get an adjoining room even, if you can. Wait there and don't let them leave without you on them."
"And if we can set it up to listen in?"
"Yes, do so. He's working on something very sensitive. Very important to me and to the State as well. He is not to be disturbed if we can help it. But we do need to keep an eye on him. We don't want another firefight, and we don't know how he had react to our presence, even if it is there for his own good."
"Understood."
Kantor disconnected the call. No, he didn't want another firefight. In the back of his mind, a tune began and Mick Jagger chanted away at the edge of his consciousness, he wondered if it might be a foreboding of what was to come… You can't, always get, what-cha want…
NINETEEN
Marina woke up in Ben’s arms. She had taken a hot bath about the time he had wrapped up his work for the night, and joined him in the bed sometime after he had fallen asleep. In the night he had wound up spooning her, her head on his right arm and his left draped over her, up between her breasts, his fingers interlaced with hers. She liked the feeling, his chest pressed against her back, her breasts resting on his arms, nothing between his skin and hers except the thin layer of her cotton tee. It had the thrill of the new, and yet the sensation was familiar. Comforting. She liked the smell of him too, the rich scent of sleep and fading perfume from the soaps and shampoo of his shower.
She liked it too much.
She gently pulled her fingers through his, slowly moved her body way from his warmth, then slid from the bed into a crouch on the floor. When he did not stir, she rose to his feet, and crept out onto the little balcony to greet the day. It was bright, but not yet hot, and the heavy concrete barrier surrounding the tiled flooring felt like protective measure against everything they’d been experiencing in the last forty-eight hours. She could see out into the world, but it could not reach her there. Not through the barrier. She had the urge for a coffee then, but lacked the energy to get up and make one.
Ben awoke in the other room and sensed the decrease in warmth beside him. A brief look around revealed her outline, a shadow cast upon the gently swaying fabric of the sheer curtains. She was on the balcony. Safe. Enjoying the respite, no doubt.
He had been aware if sliding over, next to Marina, and putting his arms around her. At the time his skin was chilled and his nerves reliving the intensity of the firefight earlier in the day. He had needed comfort; not merely wanted it. He had needed connection, and reassurance that he was not alone all of this. Her presence had been a profound comfort.
Despite that, the stream of thought with which he had been engaged had followed him into slumber. His dreams had been filled with Aramaic root words, prefixes, suffixes and archaic forms jumbling together, someone firing a weapon in the distant background. The ache of the shock from the collision also seeped through into his attempt at rest.
In his dreams he couldn't make sense of the sentences, couldn't quite get the meaning from the text, always a little bit further to go, not quite where he needed to be. That was nothing new. He often felt that way when he was away from the actual texts. He didn't 'speak' Aramaic, after all, nor did he understand it spoken aloud. Not fluently anyway. His was a knowledge of the written word, the symbol on the page. He could read it and write it very well. But it still didn't feel the same as a spoken tongue. Not really. He didn't own it in his bones in the same way as he did English, French, and German… and that always made him nervous. The phantom report of firearms in the distance didn't help with concentration or confidence either. Now that he was awake, he needed to convince himself that it had all been in the dream, that they were safe now. Secure. At least for the moment. He had to calm down and ready himself for another busy day.
That would start with a shower.
Under the hot stream of water, he filled his hand with shampoo and smothered his hair with it, lathering the pleasant scent over his face, chest, groin and legs, washing away the previous day's fatigue and preparing his brain for another day of rigorous workout. He worked his fingers around and through his toes, massaged the arches in his feet, and felt the tensions drain, at least in part, from his whole frame. The shower was a place of refreshment and cleansing, true, but it was also a place where he often had his most honest and creative sessions of thought. This shower was no different. It occurred to him, unbidden, another reason why his dreams had been especially troubled. It was the ghost of the Copper Scroll.
He had spent many years learning his craft, studying languages and ancient culture, religion and cultic praxis — all so he could tap into the mind of ancient scribes and scholars, to time travel in a sense, as his twenty-first century mind soaked in the thoughts of the first-century writer, direct from his hand. Nonetheless, he had specialised in one of the most enigmatic and controversial of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was not just that it was physically unique, and it's mystique was more than just the fact that it purported to lead the reader to sixty-four caches of treasure beyond the modern imagination. It was the fact that the author of it had not been trying to be obscure. To the first century writer, this work no-doubt read like a Google map would to the Millennial mind. 'Turn right on 4th street, continue half a mile, turn left on Lincoln Avenue — the piles of gold are on your right.'
But his was not a first century mind. Twenty centuries or more had passed since these words had been written down. The Jerusalem into which he and Marina come, was not a first century Jerusalem anymore, despite the glimpses of the ancient version here and there among the bones of the old city. The Romans had burned it, knocked it down, buried it in its own ashes. After them the people had rebuilt, filling in holes with rubble, building up the tel on which it stood by another layer, added to the dozens before. Later wars, small-scale disasters and the regular demolition and reconstruction of a growing, modernising society had done even more. Little was left of the streets those ancient writers walked. Unless some new and fantastic technology broke the code of subterranean rubble, and gave them a true map to use, they were stalled. The clues in the scroll, probably so clear two millennia ago, were just beyond the reach of Ben Gela and his colleagues. Grazed by fingertips, perhaps, but never grasped. The few sites found by John Alegro had been empty, the treasure looted or — what might be worse — retrieved by those who hid it. Such was Ben’s sadistically chosen lot in academia.
But now, with the text of the Silver Scroll in his possession, that might change. Today, he thought to himself as he towelled off and stared at his steam-veiled face in the mirror, All of that might change.
Marina smiled when Ben stepped out onto the terrace, a tray in his hands with coffee, pastries, and two plates of eggs with toast and conspicuously missing bacon. He had finished his shower and decided on a few more minutes of preparation before diving in to what would no-doubt be a marathon session of scholarly exploration.
“Sorry,” he said, “They had bacon on the menu, but I didn’t really realise until after it all arrived that the default version comes without. I can call down again and get some if you like. I don’t even know if you would want bacon.”
“Of course I would’ve,” she grinned, “Who doesn’t love bacon?! But this is fine. I’m starving. And this…” she cradled the coffee cup in both hands and brought it up for a full inhalation, the aroma alone stirred her from any remaining drowsiness. She left the sentence unfinished.
Ben sat down and the two of them ate breakfast as if they were any normal couple, spending an unscripted day in an exotic locale, eating a familiar breakfast before exploring the town. An image of modern tourists.
But they weren’t tourists, their day was very much scripted, and they were very aware of the ticking of the clock in the race for some kind of conclusion. Ben’s thoughts hovered near the safety of David and Mimi. Marina’s were more difficult to untangle, but she felt a strange safety in the midst of the danger. It was a familiarity, and she punished herself for letting it sooth her. What kind of being was more at ease with gunmen chasing after them, Ben and his family in danger, and no thought for long-term safety or security? She didn’t allow herself to voice a conclusion, even internally, but she could see the undefined shape of it in the depths of her mind, and it was not a figure of beauty.
Her shift back into gloom seemed to flick a switch, and they both sank back into the reality of where they were, and why. ben took in a deep breath, pushed the last mouthful of a pain au chocolate into his mouth, and returned to the interior of the suite, coffee cup in hand. Marina remained outside for a while, jousting with her thoughts.
The text was difficult. The most arduous part of the task was determining the letters themselves. The metal of such artefacts was old, encased in particles built up over centuries, and usually had to be painstakingly cleaned by chemicals and fine tools in the hands of conservation specialists. Despite the cleaning, distortions abounded and the writing itself was unclear. It seemed apparent that the engravers of the Copper Scroll didn’t understand the letters they engraved. They were just shapes to the inscribers, and so subtle differences could occur that would seem inconsequential to the maker, and yet confuse a literate viewer. Many believed that added to the credibility of the document, to its reality as a secret text of great importance. For the modern scholar, it was just another hurdle to jump to reach the meaning. Like the Copper Scroll, the Silver Scroll seemed to have been copied onto the metal by an illiterate engraver. Add to that th
e lack of the usual conservation and cleaning of the surface, and each letter was a puzzle of its own.
Marina returned to the room, refilled his cup, and reclined on the sofa, enjoying the cool of the room after the warm sunshine of the lengthening day. Ben thanked her, but did not pause from his work.
Beyond the task of determining the letters, one had to determine the breaks between words. There were no gaps, as a rule, especially on so expensive a medium as copper or silver. Some were obvious, either due to placement or to the form of the letters, but others were not. The meaning, in some cases, could be profoundly affected by drawing the line a fraction of an inch to one side or the other. It was like building a puzzle on which the pieces changed shape over time, there was no picture to work from, and someone had added unneeded pieces to the box and covered over others with felt pen. Ben was working his way through the coffee faster than he was making it through the manuscript.
But it was coming together. Slowly.
The two documents were similar, but this newfound text was unlike that of the Copper Scroll in two respects. The first was that it contained references to other writings of the Yahad, the group of men who had probably collected and wrote the scrolls. The second was that it did not list clues in the same way, the step-by-step directions to places to dig for buried treasure. In fact, so far it barely mentioned physical treasure at all. He had just finished writing out a string of letters he believed to be accurate, but hadn't worked his way through the breaks to determine each word. A few were obvious, but others could go a number of ways. He sat back in his chair, poured the dregs of his latest cup of coffee into his mouth, and read over what he had so far.
Be silent before the LORD, and prostrate yourself in the dust at his feet. His mystery has brought the kittim to the doorstep of our enemies, to the wicked and unclean. His favour has brought to us the foreknowledge of calamity, the wisdom of preparedness. War is coming, and the righteous must gird themselves for battle.