by Tim Hawken
Jolting awake on the deck of the boat, reality rushed into my earthly body. It was night again and the waves lightly swished against the gunwales of the boat. I grabbed the hand that was in mine harder, looking frantically to see what was happening. It was Germaine, his fingers had been searching inside the pocket of my pants. His frightened eyes looked back at my glare. He was a hapless child, caught trying to take a treat from the candy jar without permission. He seemed to brace himself for me to lash out, but I just let his hand drop.
“Soon,” I whispered to him. “Be patient and the blood will come.”
He started to say something, but I shook my head to silence him. I should have been furious, but when you expect someone to do something, you can’t be mad, only disappointed you were right. Despite all his knowledge and power he was still a slave to desire. I couldn’t blame him for being human. I was only glad I’d given the jewels to Mary for safekeeping, or it could have been a disaster.
“If you try that again, I will end your existence.” I said softly, but sternly.
He looked down at his hand, as though it had betrayed him. He rubbed it on his clothing, as if it was unclean. I looked up to see Charlotte and Marlowe in conversation on the deck, both looking out in constant watch. Clytemnestra was standing alone at the stern. It must have been Germaine’s turn to sit by my side in case anything happened.
“I think we’re only a few hours away,” he said tentatively. “You’ve slept all day and most of the night. As have the others.”
Sure enough, to the side of us Mary was still gently sleeping in Smithy’s arms. He let out light snores, his chin resting gently on the crown of her head. I stood up quietly, doing my best not to rouse them. Shuffling onto the deck, I left the awkward moment with Germaine back in the land of dreams.
“All quiet on the eastern front?” I asked Charlotte and Marlowe as I approached.
The pair turned to meet me with tentative smiles.
“We have been lucky,” Marlowe said. “The only movement has been the steady progress this Ark has been making.”
Charlotte came to my side and gave me a quick kiss hello. She squeezed my arm with reassurance, letting me know silently that everything was going well.
“If you look hard enough, you can just make out some lights on the horizon,” she said. “I think it must be Israel.”
Casting my sight to the horizon, I squinted to see that Lotte was right. The faintest of shimmering light was starting to come into view. We would arrive soon enough. I checked to make sure the sail was holding firm and the wind was blowing true. All was as it should be. Asmodeus really was distracted from our small party. If he was going to attack us, it surely would have been on the open ocean where there were fewer witnesses and we were more vulnerable. The fact that we were still all in one piece lifted my spirits. I allowed myself to be truly hopeful. Behind us I heard Mary and Smithy stirring.
“Time to wake up,” I called back to them. “We need to get ready. It’s going to be a challenging day.”
The dark night lifted into a grey dawn, as we edged closer to the coast. I kept our steady pace, but created a cloak of elements around our boat to reflect any vision away from us. We would be invisible to any prying eyes looking out to sea. Dawn broke and the pink sands came into view. We all stood on the deck, watching closely. Charlotte’s blonde hair whipped lightly in the wind. She was so calm on the surface; I wondered if on the inside she was feeling as restless as I was. As if by instinct she put her hand over mine to settle me. We looked to shore together. Southward was a jutting rock wall, which fed out to sea and then bent like a protective arm, harboring ships within. On the beach itself, ramshackle tents were scattered on the sand, some just battered tarpaulins strung over driftwood frames. Thatch-roof shacks sat behind them. Arching over it all was a set of powerlines that followed the coast. In the distance stood wide apartment blocks. Domes of mosques broke up the rest of the urban sprawl.
“I think we are a little off course,” Mary said. “This seems to be Muslim land. Perhaps Gaza. We need to continue north or we’ll find it difficult to cross the border.”
At Mary’s direction, I steered The Ark to sail along the coastline. A few people were dotted along the beach, heading down to the water. Small waves broke, rolling into the shore. Our boat rocked sideways from the movement beneath us. As we travelled, the landscape stayed the same. Short saltbushes and green trees with streaks of brown on their prickly branches jutted from behind soft dunes. The buildings, however, changed in appearance along the way. No longer did onion-shaped mosque roofs dot the cityscape. As we drifted along the Israeli coast, the buildings became more modern; the marinas were stacked with new white boats; kite surfers littered the beaches, zipping through the waters on small boards attached by thick wires to their sails overhead. They looked like little puppets being controlled by their kites. We sailed further, putting some distance between us and the Gaza border. I watched closely for a good stretch to take The Ark aground.
“What’s that?” Charlotte pointed out to me, as we drifted along steadily. Rising above the vegetation ahead stood an ancient structure, as if it had grown from the sand. Worn stucco bricks formed three archways; two short towers sat at the front, like old watch keepers looking out to sea. On closer inspection, I could also see a low steel fence surrounding the structure.
“It must be Ashdod-Yam,” Mary said. “It is a sea fort built by the Assyrian kings almost a thousand years before Christ. This place was used as a harbor and trading yard in my time. We should land here. It’s quite close to Jerusalem.”
Adjusting our course, I turned the bow of our boat to face directly towards the fort. I could see a few people moving slowly through the ruins, their hands clasped thoughtfully behind their backs as they studied the rocks. Tourists. Perfect: we’d be able to blend in here and make a move into the city. The nose of The Ark gently sank into the wet sands of Israel. I maintained our cloak of elements, while my six companions jumped from the decks, down to solid land. They bent low out of instinct, grouped close together, carrying nothing but the plain clothes on their backs. We had to be light and ready to move quickly. Instead of leaping down myself, I let the structure of the vessel slowly dissolve underneath me, turning wood into sand at will. What was once our Ark was now simply a part of the beach.
We didn’t stop to admire the ancient ruins of Ashdod-Yam. I was intent on our mission. Rather, we carefully made our way up the beach, skirting the fence surrounding the site and making our way up a wide sandy path between the trees. With no one to see, I lifted our veil, leaving us exposed again to the outside world. I half expected a soldier to leap out from behind a tree and question what we were doing, but no encounter arose. Instead, we came out onto a bitumen road. A large roundabout sat before us, with a twisted sculpture in the middle. It was some kind of circle, sitting atop of a zigzagging rod. The word “shalom” was wrapped around the top. Two short palms stood to either side. On the other side of the road were white buildings with satellite dishes scattered on their rooftops. Occasionally, a red roof broke up the banal color scheme. Cars filtered lazily along the foreshore highway. Compared with the chaos of Hell, it all seemed so ordered and safe.
“Come,” Mary said, assuming her role as guide.
I wondered what people must have thought, looking at our group. None of us looked like we belonged with each other, apart from perhaps Charlotte and I. We had an African warrior, a Greek Goddess, an elderly soldier, a half-crazed man with purple eyes and a redheaded Jewess in our midst. If we had walked into a bar, someone could have rightly asked if it were some kind of joke. We filed across the street, easily negotiating the traffic. Mary waved down a white taxi, which had black lettering on the side and a traditional yellow sign on top. The man inside wound down his window and Mary greeted him in a string of fluent Hebrew. He smiled at hearing a native tongue come from a group which was clearly out of place in this land. She seemed to explain what we were doing and where we neede
d to go. He yelled out to the rest of us in accented English.
“I cannot fit seven. Wait. I call another car. We’ll have you to the Mount of Olives in two hours.”
TEN
IT WAS A STRANGE FEELING, driving through the coastal streets of Israel. This was a part of the world I had heard so much about, but never visited. I had expected a soldier on every corner and ancient buildings everywhere. Instead, our surroundings were more like an arid version of Miami. Tall palm trees sprung up in uniform rows on the dividing strip in the middle of the road. Art deco apartment blocks were a feature of the architecture. As we continued inland, the surrounds gradually changed, as though we were slowly driving back in time. The four of us in the first car were all in a contemplative mood, silently witnessing history fly by our windows. The driver, a smiling Jew named Elijah, chatted about the significance of the sites while we made progress. Mary sat next to him in the front, occasionally making comment to him. Quite often he would exclaim in surprise.
He turned back to me in astonishment at one point, saying, “You have a wonderful guide. It’s almost like Miss Mary was here during the holy times!”
Mary smirked back to me at the comment, but we said nothing. Charlotte sat by my side on the left and Smithy was on my right. The other three were trailing closely in the car behind us. Elijah kept a lively pace, but made sure he hung back enough so that we didn’t lose our companions.
“Are you sure you do not want to visit the Dome of the Rock?” he asked us. “It’s the first place most tourists want to see when coming to our city.”
“We have a special tour tomorrow,” Mary explained. “I will take them to the Mount of Olives today and explore on foot. We’ll then stay close by and get in early, before the queues get too long and sun too hot.”
The lie rolled off her tongue like an offhand comment. For someone who normally practised absolute truth, I knew it must have hurt her inside. I only hoped Germaine would keep his tongue in place in the other taxi, or Marlowe might cut it out to silence him.
The road we were on wound around, past the Dome of the Rock, whose golden roof was shining like a beacon in the midday sun. At this distance, the tile work on the façade was a deep azure blue. It almost looked like God’s thumb pointing in the air, amidst a fist of sand-worn stone. The old city swung by on the left, the ancient walls of its outskirts cutting us off from the bustle within. I could see Mary staring at the structure with a look of nostalgia in her eyes. She was continuously shaking her head slowly, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Along the streets on the outside, old women in their formal headdresses mixed with the new generation of girls who let their flowing, black hair whip free. The younger women seemed to be making a subtle statement in their dress that said, ‘We are moving forward in our own way.’
Still our car drove on. Elijah pointed excitedly to the right.
“This is my favorite sight in all of Jerusalem,” he exclaimed, winding down the windows as if there shouldn’t be anything separating us from what we saw.
Scattered along a rising mountainside was a clutter of white tombs. There were no fancy headstones as you might see in a traditional Christian cemetery. Each grave was just a rectangular stone block, some with black symbols scripted on their lids. From this distance I couldn’t make out what any of them said, but the view from the car suggested that there were some quarter of a million graves resting along the rise.
“This is the old Jerusalem cemetery,” Elijah said to us. “My great, great grandfather is buried there, and his father. More than a hundred and fifty thousand souls laid to rest at the base of Mount Olivet. There used to be more, except the Muslim dogs demolished many before we claimed it back.” He spat viciously out the window. I was startled at how quickly his friendly demeanor turned to one of hatred. He caught his action and smoothed it over with a nervous laugh, as though he shouldn’t have said such a thing in front of outsiders. “Of course you must understand,” he continued, “there should always be respect for the dead, on both sides. I do not like to see old bodies disturbed so.”
“Why?” Smithy asked him. “They are dead. They cannot be harmed now.”
Elijah shook his head furiously at the comment, but kept a light tone in his voice, as if explaining something to a child.
“Maybe in other places that would be more true, but this ground has special significance. In the Torah it says that when the messiah comes, this is where the resurrection of the dead will begin.”
If you believe the Christians, he has already come,” Mary said next to him.
“Yes,” he nodded. “And yet the graves lie still. It is one of the reasons we know the Christians are mistaken.”
“Either way, it’s a very beautiful place,” Charlotte said quickly from the back seat, diverting any debate that might arise from the comments.
“It is,” Mary agreed, wisely keeping her knowledge to herself.
Elijah beamed once more at the compliment. He was obviously proud of his heritage.
“Oh, I think you’ll enjoy these next sites too,” Elijah said, as we drove uphill, ascending the Mount of Olives. “First is the Church of Assumption, which is the place of the Virgin Mary’s tomb. Perhaps you were named after her?” Elijah offered to our guide.
“Oh no,” Mary smiled softly. “Not after the Virgin Mary.”
“Then perhaps the other one. Mary Magdalene?”
Smithy started to cough in the back seat, his face going red with the lack of air. I patted him on the back, helping him recover. Elijah looked back briefly, but once we had settled the pilot down, he continued.
“Oh, yes, you have the red hair of Mary Magdalene,” he said. “She is said to have been a great person, very important to the Christian movement, no? She was so great, this building ahead was built in her honor. But you would know this, of course.”
Ahead, a towering church arose from behind a row of green trees. The gold-plated tops of seven, Russian style minarets gleamed; crowning each dome was a golden crucifix. The building below was a tiered white and blue construction: one of the most beautiful buildings I had ever seen. It was now Mary’s turn to lose her breath. Her mouth hung open as our car drove past. She muttered something under her breath, which sounded like, “Impossible”.
“Yes, it is an amazement, no matter how many times you’ve seen it,” Elijah said.
“When was it built?” I asked, knowing from Mary’s reaction that it must have been erected long after her time.
“It was built in 1886, by Tsar Alexander III,” he said, happy to showcase his knowledge. “It was a tribute to not only Mary Magdalene, but to the Tsar’s mother, also called Mary. This is well before the communist revolution, of course.”
“Of course,” I nodded. “You’re very knowledgeable for a taxi driver,” I added.
“I love my city,” he said. “This is the place of God after all. You see this building is still a fully used Russian Orthodox church. While there might be some tensions, Christians, Muslims and Jews all still have a place here in God’s land.”
I let the conversation fall quiet again at the mention of religion. Elijah was slowing the car anyway, as we drove into a more built up area. Old stone buildings, battered by time, lined the street. Here and there, scribbled graffiti marred some of the walls. It felt like this was a semi-derelict part of town. Elijah continued through a few twists and turns before coming to a stop.
“This is your destination,” he said, pointing ahead.
There wasn’t very much to see, other than a high wall, similar to many of the other limestone and dolomite walls we had seen driving through the city proper. We piled out of the car. After a couple of hours sitting cramped in the back, it felt good to stretch my borrowed body. The other taxi pulled up behind us, and Marlowe, Clytemnestra and Germaine rejoined our group. Their driver waited in his car. We were about to walk across the street to enter the building when Elijah tugged my sleeve. My body went rigid at the unexpected movement. I turne
d almost too quickly, ready to attack. Elijah backed up a step, frightened.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Michael,” he said, holding up his hands in apology. “I only meant to remind you that you hadn’t yet paid us for our services.”
The others turned back to see what was happening and I waved them forward to wait. Money. It was not something we had brought with us and I had no idea what kind of currency I should give him. Searching the ground, I saw a stray rock in the gutter. It gave me an idea. I bent down and picked it up, while checking to make sure no one was watching. Elijah frowned as I held it out to him, but then his eyes turned to wonder as the stone transformed to solid gold in my fingers. He let out a gasp and I silenced him with my serious words.