Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  "To Jews?"

  "Yes."

  "To believers?"

  "He reveres all faiths. He adds nothing of his own. He encourages Muslim belief."

  "But he is a Jew," said the man with the face like young Sinatra. "We are told this. And you," he said to Sonia. "You as well."

  "Abdullah Walter was born a Jew. A great sheikh. The friend of al-Husseini. This was his house. I am his follower. My friends believe as I do."

  "As the house of al-Husseini, it should be the property of the Waqf," said the dark man. "But it is owned by a Christian, an Armenian who follows the Pope of the Franks. And inhabited by Jews."

  "To me it's Berger's house," Sonia told them. "Everything here honors him."

  "The old man speaks before the Christian church that was the mosque of Salah ad-Din. We see him there."

  "We think there is irreligion," said Frank Sinatra. "Irreligion in the house of al-Husseini. We also think the house will be taken by the Jews."

  His voice was measured, but Sonia saw his faint tremble of rage and knew that the cause was lost. The Waqf was nominally a force for moderation, answerable to the Jordanians. But plainly there would soon be trouble.

  When it grew dark, she turned on the electric light and began sorting through the things that she felt an absolute need not to abandon in the move. Much would have to be left behind, although she had done her best to disperse Berger's property among his relatives and taken what she could herself.

  After nine, when it was completely dark, the telephone rang. She had been going through Berger's uncompleted writing projects, half listening to the singing and dancing from a bar mitzvah celebration that reverberated distantly across the massive network of stone steps and walls that divided her chamber in the old mufti's palace from the Kotel plaza.

  "Hello?"

  It was Chris Lucas, wanting to see her.

  "Do you mind coming here, Chris? If you think it's not safe, I'll meet you somewhere else."

  "Forty minutes," Lucas said. "I'll walk it."

  He hung up before she could caution him not to come from the Kotel side. In fact, that was how he came, on the theory that if Lestrade could use the old Cardo road, so could he.

  The African boys were gathered around a lamp in the courtyard as he went up the stairs. One of them had a Game Boy in his hand.

  "Were you followed?" she asked him.

  "No more than usual," he said. He had never thought of himself as being followed in the city.

  "This may be our last evening here, Chris."

  She told him about the visit from the Waqf and that she thought it would no longer be possible to stay.

  "I should have brought some champagne," Lucas said. "To cultivate beautiful memories."

  "I'll have memories, all right." Then, from the way she looked at him, he thought she had grown angry with him. "I had a fantasy. I thought of us living here."

  "You mean you and your growing band of pilgrims? Dangerous work, Sonia. And a little overcrowded."

  "I meant you and me, Chris. The two of us. When things come to pass."

  "Oh," he said, "you mean in the Age of Miracles. The New Order of Ages. Like it says on the money."

  "Don't laugh at my fantasies," she said. "Not if you want to be in them."

  He reached out and drew her to him and kissed her. "I'm not in a position to laugh," he said. He ran his hands over her and held her close, unwilling to let her go. He felt hopeless and desperate, as though there were no way to keep her. "I would if I could."

  "Holy shit," she said. "Must be love."

  "That's how I see it," Lucas said.

  She stood facing him and rested her hands on the front of his shoulders, his collarbone, and patted a rhythm. "Chris," she said, "the Rev doesn't even want me to see you."

  "The hell with him, then."

  "At least that's what Raziel said. He says the Rev feels that if you won't wait with us, you don't deserve our company."

  "If I won't sing alleluia, I don't get a pomegranate. And naturally you let these people control your life."

  "It's how religious communities sometimes work. If I were part of a Sufi community in New York, it would be the same."

  "Hey," Lucas said, "if you'll actually come with me, I'll join up. I'll play the tambourine, dress as Santa Claus, eat with my hat on, you name it. But I have conditions too."

  "Such as?"

  "Such as you've got to sing for me sometimes. And I get to keep working on the book. When it's done we go back to New York."

  "I don't want you to pretend to believe, Chris. I want you to open yourself. Then we can be together. Really."

  "Ah, Sonia," Lucas said. He laughed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. "What are we going to do? Because I really do love you. Maybe," he said, "we better take it by the day."

  She slid away when he tried to embrace her.

  "I think we both have empty places in our lives, Chris. Don't you agree with that?"

  "I thought we could help each other with that."

  "I do too. I do. But there's more to things than you and me."

  "I'm not used to believing too many things before breakfast, Sonia. That's the difference between you and me."

  "But you were religious. You told me."

  "I was a child. I also believed in the tooth fairy."

  "I wish I could hold you down and whup you," Sonia said. "And when I let you up, you'd see."

  Lucas sat down on Berger's stained, carpeted bed and poured himself a glass of the late master's plum brandy.

  "Let's hear it from you, then, Sister Sonia. How does it look to you? What's happening? What must I do to be saved?"

  "It's simple," Sonia said. "Well, OK, it's not simple. But we've just had the twentieth century, right? We tried everything. Philosophy. Making life into art. Everything got further and further from how it was supposed to be."

  "You mean there was a plan the whole time? Everything was supposed to be a lot better? Someone obviously fucked up on a major scale."

  "Yes. We did. Sure there was a plan. Why else is there something rather than nothing?"

  "Because it happened that way."

  "Some things are better than others," Sonia said. "Some things make you feel good, some don't. Don't tell me you've got a problem with that."

  "Not me."

  "What makes you feel good is being closer to the way things were first created. They were created as God's word. He stepped aside and made a place for them and for us. The secret of that is in Torah, in the words themselves, not just in what they mean."

  "A lot of people believe that," Lucas said. "It doesn't have to come between us."

  "Over the years a man comes to speak the words of Torah and change our lives to the way they were meant to be. Moses came. Jesus. Sabbatai Zevi. Others too. Now it's De Kuff."

  "Oh, come on," Lucas said. "De Kuff is just a manic depressive. He's manipulated by Raziel."

  "No, baby. Raziel only found him. The ones like De Kuff are always men of great suffering. Always despised. Always struggling."

  "So what now?"

  "Now, the Rev has to struggle like Jesus on the cross. The prophets say that his struggle takes the form of a war, but it's a war without weapons. When it's over, it's like we'll be home. The whole world will be home. My parents knew that. They just didn't know how it was done."

  "I'm not telling you you can't believe that, Sonia. I just want to be with you."

  "But first they need me here, baby. To bear witness."

  Eventually, he coaxed her to him.

  "We'll take it by the day," he said. "If you need me, I'll be here."

  "You still think I'm crazy," she said.

  "I don't know what's crazy and what's not. I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll listen to the Rev if you go talk to Obermann. Try looking at things his way."

  "Obermann?" She laughed at him. "Obermann is just a cheap seducer. The biggest cocksman in town. What am I going to learn from him, other than the obvious
?"

  "Well, he's a Jungian," Lucas suggested meekly. "Anyway, this is the city of seduction. Everyone's pitching."

  "And meanwhile the two of you write your book?"

  "It won't spoil the process, will it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Anyway, the book might turn out very differently from the way I expected," Lucas said. "I might end up seeing things your way."

  "You're bribing me with hope."

  "I'm bribing myself. I'm trying to keep my own hopes up."

  And that was it, he thought. It was all a series of rooms one never found one's way out of. You had to be content with that, or die, or go completely crazy.

  They had just gotten into bed when the door opened to a key and a dark young woman dressed like an American entered the apartment. Someone they could not see followed behind her.

  "What a pleasant place," she said. "How very nice."

  When she came upon them in the bedroom she betrayed no embarrassment whatsoever. She had a bright, unfriendly smile.

  "How about this?" she said to someone in the next room. "The grand mufti's very own digs. La-di-dah."

  "Just a little portion of them," Lucas said. "Would you mind telling me who you are and what you're doing here?"

  The person with the woman was a young man who wore chinos and a kippa and carried an automatic rifle.

  "We're prospective tenants," he explained. "We're interested in the apartment." He had the same smile as the woman. "We have a use for the premises and we wanted to get a jump on the competition. Just look around before you give it back to your Arab friends. Or your Christian-Hebrew, Hebrew-Christian friends. Or whatever they are."

  "Next time," Lucas said, "make an appointment."

  "Next time," the young man said, "you won't be here, smart guy."

  They really did look a lot alike, Lucas thought. They might have been brother and sister.

  The woman wandered around, writing in a notebook as if she were taking inventory.

  "Great place," she said again, leaning into the bedroom again with her unpleasant smile. "Thank you so much for letting us see it."

  "Yeah," said the young man as they went out, "thanks a million, kids. Have fun."

  From the sounds on the stairs outside, there were other people with them. It had been a reconnaissance in force.

  "Obviously," Sonia said, "we're sitting on some prime real estate."

  "I have the feeling," Lucas said, "that it's just been priced out of our range."

  "I guess we don't want to be here," Sonia said, turning on her stomach, "when the Waqf and those people start fighting it out over the place. Poor Mardikian. I wonder if he'll get his price."

  "He'll probably be leaving town," Lucas said. He reached up and turned off the old-fashioned beaded lamp. "Anyhow, 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'"

  But it was not as simple as that. Somehow, in spite of the force of his passion, he could not make love to Sonia. It was what he had wanted more than anything, and now he found it beyond him. To be sure, there were a thousand exculpatory reasons. The confusions between them, the peculiar midnight raid. A man could be forgiven. But for some reason, Sonia took it badly. She wept and punched him and hid herself beneath the pillow. He got out of bed and started getting dressed to leave.

  "No, no, please," she said. "Please don't do that. I don't know what's got into me."

  "I'm sorry. This happens to me sometimes."

  "It's because of things..."

  "I guess it is. Those two characters. The whole mess."

  "No, no," she said. "It's exactly like everything else. What the Rev said about us is true. It's impossible."

  An icy liquor of despair froze Lucas's heart. He felt at once panic-stricken and childishly disappointed. His childhood disappointments had been painful.

  "Ah, baby," he said, "it's just the fuckupedness of things. It doesn't mean anything."

  "Yes it does," she said. "It's standing in the way of the Rev's struggle."

  "Oh, Christ," Lucas said.

  But she would not answer. Finally she said, "It can't happen yet. Maybe it can never happen. I don't know. I shouldn't see you."

  "I want to see you," Lucas said. "Any way you want it."

  "I don't know," she said. "I just don't."

  Lucas went and got the bottle of plum brandy and put it beside him on the floor and drank until the first call to prayer sounded.

  33

  LUCAS WENT HOME through the early morning markets, by way of Jaffa Gate. In the middle of the morning he called Sonia.

  "I don't think we should see each other," she told him. "I think it will turn out the same way every time."

  Lucas held the phone against his chest to reject her message. Eight stories below him, an occasional vehicle sped headlong through the half-deserted streets. He felt like crying out in shame and pain. She was out of her mind, in the clutches of lunatics, and he was not man enough to save her.

  "I need to know how you are," he said. "And where you are."

  "For your book, you mean?"

  "Yes," he said bitterly. "For my book."

  "Well," she said, "I'll try to keep in touch."

  "You should be seeing Obermann," Lucas said.

  "No thanks. But maybe you should."

  When he did see Obermann, with a selective report of what was happening, Obermann told him she was being manipulated.

  "By Melker," the doctor opined. "He's a sly one. He wants her for his acolyte. Don't give up."

  "I've got to take a break from them," Lucas said. "I've never felt so wretched in my life."

  Obermann gave him a prescription for Prozac. "Keep working," the doctor advised him. It was sound, if self-serving, advice.

  So Lucas kept working on the book, read Scholem's history of Sabbatai, read in the Zohar and about Jacob Frank's orgiastic rituals. Every few days he left a message on Sonia's answering machine. Then, during the last week of summer, he got a call from an American magazine asking him to report on a conference in Cyprus. The theme of the conference was "Religious Minorities in the Middle East."

  He desperately needed a break from Jerusalem and its syndromes, in spite of the fact that the De Kuff story continued to unfold most interestingly. The old man was becoming a well-known figure in the city, and his statements were more and more provocative. The number of his followers was growing.

  The police prevented him from holding forth in the Old City now, and he had been banned from the space in front of St. Anne's. He held some meetings in New City parks, billing them as concerts. At each gathering De Kuff and Raziel played Sephardic music.

  Walking through Yemin Moshe the night before his departure for Cyprus, Lucas had an English-language flyer for that evening's session pressed into his hand by a young man he had never seen before. The advertisement was accompanied by something like program notes, which Lucas guessed had been written by Raziel Melker.

  "If all art aspires to the condition of music," the flyer said, "so all true music aspires to tikkun and reverently reflects the process of tsimtsum and of shevirah."

  The English text rendered the Hebrew words in the original, but Lucas had learned enough to recognize them. Tsimtsum: the expansion and contraction of the divine entity, like an anemone in the cosmic tidal pool, or the pool itself. Shevirah: the process underlying creation, the breaking of the vessels designed to contain the divine essence, the result of man's failure. And tikkun: the righting of things, the end of exile for God and man.

  The strange announcement filled him with sadness and longing. It was definitely, he thought, time to leave town for a while.

  Instead of flying from Lod to Larnaca, he took the bus to Haifa and then a slow, stinking ferry to Limassol. Amid unwashed backpacking Teutons, he read the conference's handout. It was written in a Gallicized translator's English.

  "The opportunity is foreseen," it said, "for interventions and discourses illuminating the actual situations confronting the minorities of the region.
"

  Droll, thought Lucas, and filed the thing away for use in his piece. The night was moonlit, and waves lapped against the rusting bow. The Teutons smoked hash and drank arak, sang, got sick, hallucinated, smoked more.

  "Groovy shit," they shouted through their tears.

  So it went until morning, when they were off Limassol. Aphrodite's maiden landfall was an ugly line of pastel hotels under a whited-out sky. The goddess was still big there; her scallop shell and cestus—not to mention her naked Olympian behind—were featured in many hotel and restaurant motifs. Goons in shades watched the ferry landing, but it was nice to have a break from strict monotheism.

  Along the marine parade he saw beet-red, short-haired English youths—airmen from the base outside town. They reminded him of the seconded British junior officers who had commanded Caribbean troops during the Grenada invasion—off the record, of course, and on the sly. The British had not even bothered to deny the reports in his Grenada book, probably because they had never heard of them. By late afternoon, a minibus had conducted him to the hotel near Larnaca where the press was being put up and he was on his tiny, brittle balcony, sniffing iodine and sewage, regarding the wine-dark sea.

  The conference had been bruited about for years, its proposed venue forever shifting to accommodate the high-beam scrutiny of eager assassins and nervous secret policemen. Originally planned for Cairo, it had been rescheduled for Malta, then Antalya in Turkey, then Izmir, then finally—to the fury of the Turks—to Greek Cyprus. Its sessions took place in a drab retreat above the Stavrovouni Monastery, overlooking the Larnaca-Limassol road. Still, the pine-and olive-covered slopes were pretty, and it was possible to see the blue ocean far below.

  Minorities in the Middle East—the whole notion, Lucas considered, was so fraught with ironies as to render the topic laughable in a ghastly way. The ironies were unsubtle: poison gas, vultures puking on rooftops, car bombs.

  Nevertheless, some right-minded hustler had put the unlikely thing together. Everyone loved a junket, and there were airline and hotel kickbacks to be had, and Cyprus afforded a few licks—girls, booze, a break for the God-fearing, though they would have preferred Geneva.

  So an assemblage of various savants was scheduled to convene the next day at the Stavrovouni Palace, apparently the only building on the island not dedicated to Aphrodite and convenient to a fragment of the True Cross.