In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist

by Ruchama King Feuerman

  He nodded. “See what happened? You got fired from one job, and now you’re in another. And you’re making a great success of it. You have a calling,” he said, pointing a finger skyward. “Though this may not be the shidduch you’re waiting for, you are helping people. Money is needed to keep these institutions alive. ‘There can be no Torah without bread,’ ” he quoted the sages. “There’s something sacred about raising money.”

  The cat toppled from Tamar’s arms. It took off with a yowl.

  Mazal shook her can: “Tzedakkah, tzedakkah.” The wheelchairs circled the olive tree. The psalm chanting shot up an octave.

  A man, armless, strode into the courtyard and demanded, “Where’s my paycheck?”

  The bald Frecha was loudly addressing the courtyard, “Maybe I’ll go to America. But they take big money out of your paycheck just like here.”

  Tamar clamped and squeezed her elbows, her eyes blinking.

  He went on: “Maybe God intended, yes, you’ll get married; yes, you’ll have children and do the things fine Jewish women have been doing for centuries, but there are lots of other things in life that matter. You have a calling. Could I suggest—this work of yours is a form of basherte, too,” he ended quietly, struck, despite himself, by his own eloquence.

  He blew his nose with feeling, then he glanced over at Tamar, who wasn’t saying a word. Why wouldn’t she speak?

  “Maybe, you’re talking about you!” she blazed. “Not me.”

  He took a step back, stunned. “Excuse me?”

  “You never married, right?” she demanded to know.

  He nodded tensely.

  “This work you do in the courtyard, it’s all your life amounts to. You stick to your four cubits of space, you live your life”—she swung her arm toward the cottage—“here and nowhere else. You have no wife, no children. You’re all alone. This basherte business—you’re talking about yourself, Isaac.” She spoke harshly and with a tinge of pity. “You.”

  Her you sliced into his solar plexus. What had he said to make her attack him like this? Did he deserve this? He was offended, even angry. Then it hit him. Did she consider himself the answer to her prayers? A woozy sensation came over him. He wanted to flee.

  “You’re talking about yourself,” Tamar repeated, and he gazed at her, standing there so stiff and angry and forlorn.

  “Maybe both of us,” he whispered.

  She reached for her helmet. He could only see her back.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Please don’t go,” he entreated. Her back was still toward him, the helmet in her hands. “I have something terrible to tell you.”

  She stood absolutely still.

  “Be prepared. Absolutely terrible. The rebbe fell into a coma last week and died.”

  “Oh!” Her hands flew up. She whirled to face him, her eyes round with shock. “Awful, awful!” He heard her say softly, “Blessed is the true judge.” Then she asked, “Did the funeral already happen?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry we couldn’t reach everyone. It was just before the holiday. That’s why there’s no shiva,” he explained.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her head fell forward and her hair hung loosely over her face. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

  “I will.”

  She bent and snapped on her helmet.

  Frecha, the bald daughter, had taken up a new chant. “Maybe I’ll go to Haiti instead. They let you keep your money over there.” The men in wheelchairs had started circling the tree in a kind of race. The psalm criers’ pleas had risen. “Heal him, You who heal the broken souls.” The cans shook: “Tzedakkah, tzedakkah.” A saying came to Isaac, his mother’s words, “It’s not good to be alone, even in Paradise.” Alone, alone. That’s what he was, what he always would be. His breath chilled in his chest.

  Mazal rushed up to Isaac. “You see how crazy my daughter is? And now there’s no one left I can squeeze a blessing from,” she lamented.

  Isaac raised his arms and addressed the courtyard. “Please. Everyone should go now. We’re starting to bother the neighbors. It’s time to go home.” The wheelchairs stopped. The prayers ceased. The courtyard began to empty.

  “Will you come back to the courtyard?” he called after Tamar as she strode toward the gate

  “Come back to what?” she said, and then she was gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The church bells at the Maryam Magdalia clanged: Nine o’clock in the morning. It was a perfect Al-Quds sky, blue for this world and the next. He had shined and scrubbed and swept and gathered garbage since dawn. Maybe today Sheikh Tawil would notice. The sheikh would take his hand and say, “Well, Mustafa, it is time to give you that promotion.” Maybe today it would happen. He had stopped looking for old things in the ground. No more treasures in the dirt. It would only anger his boss.

  His eyes scanned the Noble Sanctuary for any little thing that might offend the eye and could barely find a leaf or stray twig. The Noble Sanctuary was ready for all the worshippers. The air smelled fresh, no one slipped on garbage, everything looked clean and beautiful. A person could use the bathroom and not catch any infection. All thanks to him. He wiped his eye with the tip of his kaffiyeh and breathed in deeply, letting the Koranic mountain air fill each lung. Ah.

  Later, when he took his break near the cypress trees, he heard a moaning tune down below, where the Jews prayed at their wall. He stopped crunching his pumpkin seeds a moment and listened hard. Ah, yes. The koheins were singing their prayer again. He checked to see if his boss was around and sidled closer to the Magrabeh Gate to better see and listen. He cracked a few pumpkin seeds while gazing at the koheins in their white prayer shawls thrown over their heads. They looked like ghosts. Their hands reached outward toward the worshippers, the fingers spread apart, a space like a triangle in the middle. Then the koheins began to sway, gentle mountains moving here and there, and Mustafa swayed a little, too. Then—just like that—the koheins removed the shawls, put their shoes on, and became like all the other praying Jews, the ones who would never be koheins.

  He hurried back toward the Gray Lady mosque (the floors underneath the rugs needed washing), his head dizzy with all the Jew prayers. How he wanted to enter the mosque and pray like a proper Muslim, surrounded by his brothers, the strength of many waters coming together. But he didn’t go inside. Somebody would yell at him. One time he entered, took off his shoes, and knelt down, and the man beside him said, “Brother, why are you looking at me? Turn away.” But Mustafa’s head refused to face the ground. It would always point at his neighbor’s when he prayed. The man got so angry he would have beaten Mustafa if he hadn’t grabbed his shoes and scooted out. He had never gone into a mosque to pray after that. But maybe one day soon, he would try again.

  The sun shone bright enough to turn the whole world into yellow butter. He mopped his neck. In the distance, a tall man circled the fountain. Mustafa watched him as he opened a spout, shut it, wrote something down, and moved to the next spout.

  “Who is that?” Mustafa asked a thickly bearded worker passing by.

  The worker paused. “Ah, that’s Waleed,” he said and blew his nose fiercely. “The new supervisor, didn’t you hear? He’s been on the Noble Sanctuary the past two days.”

  “The new supervisor?” Mustafa blinked rapidly as if to dispel dust.

  A look of disgust contorted the worker’s face. “They brought him in from the outside. Not one of us,” he said in a plaintive voice.

  A lash against his back. A supervisor? It couldn’t be! But he was the one who had been promised.… He would ask Sheikh Tawil himself.

  While the workers took a break, Mustafa found the sheikh at the Dome of the Chain, paring his nails. The sheikh tried to hide his nail clipper inside the folds of his robe. His face relaxed when he saw it was only Mustafa, and he went on snipping. “Yes, Mustafa?”

  “Excuse me for any disturbance.” He stood before his boss, his hands t
rembling slightly. “I wanted to know—is Waleed the new supervisor?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?” Sheikh Tawil asked slowly. He lifted his patient, sleepy eyes to stare at the custodian.

  The words wouldn’t come to Mustafa. They got stuck in his throat like cotton.

  Sheikh Tawil said, “Did you think I was going to give you this job?”

  Mustafa was too shamefaced to admit, yes, he had hoped. He stared down at his left shoe, the one with the hole at the tip.

  “Don’t think greater than yourself, Mustafa. It will only lead to sadness and frustration,” he said in a well-meaning, gentle tone. He gazed down at his right hand and clipped off a straggler from his thumb. Then he added, “Do you think it’s so easy to watch over men, make sure they work hard, don’t steal or hit each other and do their work well? Did you really want this burden?”

  Mustafa smiled miserably and shook his head. A thought darted through his mind. “Maybe I could be in charge of ordering supplies. I could look at the figures.”

  “It’s more complicated than you think.” He assessed his right hand and began to work on his left, starting with the index finger. “You’re a good worker, but you never went to school, did you? How could I make you a supervisor?”

  Another lash. Mustafa was melting, dissolving into the stones. He raised his shaggy head. “But didn’t you promise me?”

  “My dear fellow.” The sheikh folded his hands, ceased clipping altogether. “I don’t remember ever making such a promise. You see, I like to encourage my workers. That’s all. If there was a misunderstanding”—he opened his soft hand—“such things occur and it is regrettable.” He coughed, and his thin neck agitated. “The main thing is, continue to work hard and all will be well.” He frowned at an errant pinky nail.

  Mustafa struggled to remember what the sheikh had told him that day. Something about taking on more responsibility. Those were his very words. That had to mean a promotion, didn’t it? Ach, what did it matter? A half promise, a promise. Broken words, like all the others. “Do I get a raise, for all my hard good work?”

  “A raise?” The sheikh lifted a wispy brow, and his almond eyes took on a sharper aspect. “You are lucky to have this job. It is expected that you work hard.” He gathered up his nail parings and handed them to Mustafa. “Bury these, please.” Mustafa stared, puzzled, at the yellowed bits of nails, and Sheikh Tawil said, “Your teachers never taught you? Or your parents? We come from the soil and return to the soil,” he explained. “It is the Islamic way. Then please hurry over to Solomon’s Stables. You’re needed there.” He patted Mustafa’s shoulder, the good one. “You’re needed.”

  As Mustafa knelt among the rocks at Solomon’s Stables, he repeated the sheikh’s words: Work and all will be well. He went on bending, dumping, and filling the wheelbarrow. His fingers became stiff like wood sticks, his wrists black with dust. His back had no more patience. Soon it would snap in two. Ya’allah. And now, he thought with a pang, he would have no money to buy his mother jewels. She would never want to see him.

  Oh, soon he would be like the rocks themselves, ground into bits and bits, and whatever was left, the sun would finish the job until nothing remained of Mustafa. His dirt-gritted hands sifted through stones and debris in the wheelbarrow. He brushed against a new thing and fingered it. A coin. And he remembered Rabbi Isaac’s words. So much on the mountain was precious. Everyone’s history all smashed together inside this dirt. Would he give it to Sheikh Tawil to crush it with his foot? His eyes swung here and there, at the workers, at the ground, the sky. No. Would he give it to the rabbi to make more trouble? No, and no again! He wiped dust from his eye with the heel of his wrist.

  During his lunch break, he went searching for a hiding place on this hot, hard mountain, a desert of sunshine. He shielded his eyes against the sun bouncing off rock. He walked to a grassy, private area among the cypress trees where he liked to eat his snacks. Slim olive trees flung up their branches like dancers’ arms. A huge pillar lay on its side. With his dustpan and pronger he carved out a hole in the ground, placed the coin inside, and separated his fingers—or tried to—as he had seen the kohein do. Then he covered the hole with a gourd-like stone. Good. From now on he would save everything. His own private collection. If anyone should ask him why he was doing this or for who, he would say (what would he say?), oh—he would shout, Go away. Nothing here but garbage.

  There. He stood up. Smiled. Thrust his hands into the deeps of his pockets. Just as quickly, he yanked them out. Shuddering, he shook out his pockets and Sheikh Tawil’s dirty nail parings fell to the ground. He stepped on them, hard. Good as buried.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Atta rotzeh?” asked a young woman in a short orange skirt (more like a hyphen across her midsection). She set down a small pot of Turkish coffee for the district police commander of Jerusalem. Isaac thanked her, no, he’d pass on the coffee. He checked his watch. Itai Shani, the commander, was on the phone. Isaac had been waiting forty minutes at the precinct in the Russian Compound. The young woman (a teenager?) leaned over to pour the coffee, and he averted his eyes. With a slight groan, he pressed his thumb and forefinger against his closed lids.

  An image of another young woman pushed its way into his mind. Tamar. What a mess there. He feared she had feelings for him. And he, he had simply never seen her in that light before. He had certainly noticed her, though. How could he not? A man is a human being, not an angel. Tamar. Always thrusting her red hair off to the side as though it were an encumbrance. So tall, so forthright in the jaunty way she walked into the courtyard, and yet he sensed one wrong word or look could make her collapse. After talking with her, everyone else looked a bit faded. But why was he thinking of her at all? She was twelve, thirteen years younger, for goodness sake. She rode a motorcycle. She was a ba’al teshuva, religious only five years. The two of them together, it was like milchigs and fleishigs, meat and dairy; they just didn’t mix. Another entanglement, more trouble, like the pomegranate.

  Finally, the young secretary ushered Isaac in. The commander, with a head of thick, black hair and handsome florid cheeks, spoke into the phone wedged between his head and stocky shoulder: “Atta meshugah?” He burst out laughing and hung up. With a residue of a smile on his face, he turned to Isaac. “So tell me what’s the problem. Something about the Temple Mount?” He opened three packets of sugar with one sharp twist and poured them into his mug. “Don’t tell me you’re one of these crazy mountain faithfuls.” He stirred and took a big gulp.

  “What’s a crazy mountain faithful?” Isaac inquired, removing his black Borsalino, newly purchased at a reduced, post-holiday price.

  The commander’s dark eyes squinted at him, as if trying to decide exactly which religious crazy he might be—right-wing-settler crazy or the black-hat-haredi-Ultra-Orthodox kind. “You know, a crazy right-wing messianist,” he said. “Wants to bring back sacrifices to the temple,” his large hand made flips to elaborate, “bring back the priests, the blood, the works. The Third Templeniks.” His hand halted midair. “They sneak up on the mountain. Make trouble with the Arabs. They want to get the keys back from the Waqf so that ownership reverts back to them.” The orange-skirted teenager entered, bearing a plate of cinnamon rolls. The look that passed between her and the commander was so charged, Isaac blushed to his collarbone. “A district commander’s nightmare,” Shani finished, his eyes lingering on the teenager’s shapely legs as she held out the platter of rolls.

  Isaac’s hand tightened on the blue container in his lap. Grown men and teenage girls. Oy—and what about himself? He shook his head sharply. No one would ever say he had preyed on a young, vulnerable woman. Tamar had simply misunderstood his intentions. His cheeks burned at the memory of their last meeting.

  “Every religious Jew wants the Messiah to come and have our holy temple in working order,” Isaac said after the girl left. “But I’ve no interest in claiming our mountain before the proper time. I’m here for something else.” He snappe
d the container open and carefully placed the pomegranate on the table. “This was originally found on the Temple Mount in the debris pile. About to be dumped.”

  The commander brushed a thick shaft of black hair off his eyes and read the words. “Make for Me a Temple.” He whistled through surprisingly soft-looking cupid lips. “Well, what have we here, Rabbi?”

  “I’m not a rabbi,” he said in a low voice. “Mr. Markowitz will do. Here’s a letter from the top archeologist at Tel Aviv University attesting that this artifact in all likelihood is from the Second Temple period, at the latest, if not earlier. It was going to be dumped, as I said.”

  “Amazing, amazing,” the commander murmured. He read the letter Isaac had slid across the desk. The phone rang, and he grabbed it. He listened for ten seconds then barked, “Not now!” He slammed the phone down, gave a small, self-indulgent smile—what’s a little outburst among friends?—and said, “Do you know, Mr. Markowitz, I had a case last week—a bunch of Christians who insisted they’d found a bonafide red heifer? You know, the holy cow the Jews need to put the Temple Mount back on the map, with sacrifices and all the works? The Waqf went absolutely bonkers when they heard this. They threatened to riot like a bunch of crazies. That cow is history, Mr. Markowitz.”

  “Excuse me,” said Isaac. “What do red heifers have to do with pomegranates?”

  “Did you ever serve in the army?” the commander asked abruptly, his sarcastic tone implying such a thing was inconceivable.

  “No. I came to Israel when I was forty. Too old to interest the army,” he said ruefully. “Though I do civil guard duty.”

  “So I suppose you know the other meaning of a pomegranate.” The police commander leaned forward, his thick arms resting on either side of the fruit.

  The other meaning? Isaac looked at him. Could he be referring to the adage, “Even the most empty, vain Jew is as full of good deeds as a pomegranate is filled with seeds”?