by Nomi Eve
Zohar sneezed and Moshe shushed him. But the shush was louder than the sneeze and when combined with the creaking of the old stairs, their exit was so loud anyway that Zohar’s small sneeze was really of no consequence. In truth, the twins were not worried about the leaving part of this expedition. They thought that their parents, who were vigorous sleepers, and their grandfather, an old man, were not likely to wake up, despite the sneeze and the shush and the creak of the old stairs.
It was after midnight. Moshe smiled at the half-moon. Zohar also smiled and then quickly they both ran down Rav Pinchas Street, under the split half arch and into an alley that led out of the Jewish Quarter.
They ran silently. Past the fringes of the closed bazaar. Across the sleeping camel camp. Around the corner of the Sacred Well. Silently. Zohar led. Moshe followed but only in spirit. He had planned this expedition. He had bribed the monk. He had convinced Zohar that they “absolutely must go in there.” He was the twin with the sense of crime, his mother’s son truly. But Zohar was faster and had a better sense of direction. They ran on, down the Street of the Beatitudes across the Street of the Cross. When they reached the church that they referred to in code as “the big bed” the twins were panting but neither let out a peep. They looked at each other and proceeded to walk into the Dormition Abbey.
Though never having set foot inside a church before, the twins were single-minded in their mission and not distracted by the moonlit glint of the gold mosaics on the dome above their heads. They had no business in the dome. And they moved quickly to the stairway to the right of the door. This led to the catacombs. The crooked monk had supplied this information, and for good measure he had left the oil lamps burning.
The stairway was narrow and circular. The twins were down it quickly. Zohar was still ahead. He saw her first. But he did not go toward her immediately. He stood by the base of the stairs for several seconds feeling sweat drip down his forehead. He reached up to wipe it off. As he did so, a little pulse began to beat in the right of his neck. He was so excited and so scared, he could not tell which emotion was more the marrow and which more the bone of him. One filled him, but the other was holding him up. He looked back at his twin. Moshe, too, was sweating. And Moshe, too, looked scared and excited. But there was no mistaking that fear made up the bones of his soul at this particular moment. Moshe shoved his hands into his pockets and shifted his feet. He hung back while Zohar, feeling for the first time inexplicably bolder than his brother, moved closer to the sleeping creature in the center of the room. Sure enough, it was Chasia/Mary, her hands clasped over her substantial bosom, her beautiful features reflecting permanent repose. The twins recognized her immediately. Zohar was so close, he wanted to touch her. Reaching out one hand, he patted the woman’s robes while his other hand climbed up onto her perfectly smooth, perfectly draped belly. Soon he let both hands climb farther up until they were on top of her own hands, on top of her breasts. Zohar thought he could feel a heart beating beneath his fingers.
Moshe approached the other side of the effigy. But still, he did not touch Chasia/Mary. He was surprised. And as the two boys stood breathing deep enough to fill not only their own lungs but that of the statue, they noted with twin frustration that since her eyes were closed, they could not tell their color. Zohar and Moshe stayed there for several minutes, but then Chasia/Mary’s beating heart stilled itself beneath Zohar’s fingers and instead the church seemed to come alive with creaks and whispers. They ascended the stairway and ran out of the abbey. Neither said a word. Soon they were climbing up onto the wall. And they began running. The city was loud with their running, but also soft with it. They ran through the sighs of ten thousand sufferers on ten thousand deathbeds. And they ran through the sighs of ten thousand tears falling from the eyes of ten thousand lovers. The city was cold in the moonlight. The effigy was cold in the catacomb. There were murderous children everywhere. And so many women sleeping, sleeping never to wake. Zohar and Moshe ran on, racing the rim of the night. It was almost morning when they climbed back into bed.
THURSDAY MORNING
MY FATHER WRITES:
Zohar and Moshe would often think alike. Their thoughts would overlap and one would finish the other’s sentence. But much stranger than this was what happened when they slept. They were “opposite dreamers.” If Moshe would have a particularly vivid dream, then Zohar wouldn’t dream at all that same night. And vice versa—if Zohar dreamt well, then Moshe’s sleeping mind would be blank.
I WRITE:
Moshe woke up long before he stopped being tired. He yawned and looked at his brother still asleep in the bed next to him. Zohar was sprawled on his belly, his arms flung out, his left leg straight, his right leg bent in a triangle against the other. Moshe pushed his brother’s arm away from his own elbow and groaned. He was so tired, so groggy. It was eleven o’clock. Much earlier, at around eight o’clock, their mother had been to their room, their father had been to their room, their grandfather had been to their room, and all three had drawn the same conclusion, that the boys, for some inexplicable reason, had not gotten their proper sleep, and so they left them alone. After all, it was vacation. Moshe willed himself back to a half-sleep, eyes closed, mind half open. In this state, he dreamed about the orchard. No, this is not quite true. The orchard was second. First, it was Chasia. He saw her lying in the catacomb and he reached a hand out in his mind to touch her smooth belly, her rising bosom. Her body was soft and her eyes opened the second he lay his hands on her face. Her eyes were turquoise, bright bright turquoise, and Moshe sucked in his breath, unable to believe that such brilliant color could produce anything but brilliant sight, and he was greatly disappointed when Chasia/Mary did not recognize him. She looked scared. He did not want to frighten her. So he took his hand away and slowly backed out of the catacomb. Still dreaming, he ran up the windy stairs, and then out of the abbey door. The abbey was surrounded by a small grove of olive trees. Moshe took shelter in their squat shade where he told himself that it wasn’t that Chasia hadn’t recognized him, it was just that she had her mind on other things. And from a warm corner of his memory, Madeline Feldman, the petite blonde with big gorgeous breasts, told Moshe a thing or two herself that Moshe had neither imagined nor expected.
That is when Moshe started dreaming about the orchard. Actually, had he had his choice, he would not have dreamed about the orchard at all. He would have continued to concentrate on Chasia/Mary, or on Madeline Feldman, or on another one of his female friends. But an orchard is the kind of thought you have when your soul is overflowing. Moshe’s soul was overflowing. He leaned his forehead into the olive tree in his mind and felt its rough trunk against his skin. Rolling over onto his back, he pulled the covers over his head. In the muffled pinkish morning light he wandered back to Petach Tikvah. There he walked through his father’s groves of orange trees. They were all grafted, some with head grafts, some with temech (support).
Shimon had taught his sons, “When we graft we create something unnatural.” He spoke to them as he worked, asking the boys to hand him his tools, telling them, “But the unnatural thing becomes in its mature expression something that seems to have been given nature’s approval. People are supposed to graft,” Shimon told them. “As if it were asked of us. Part of our partnership in creation.” When the twins had completed eight years of school, Shimon gave each boy a grafting knife, a tiny curved, almost sickle-like tool, and sent them to work in the orchards. He took them out of school, but he continued their education. He had shown them how to find the embryonic cells just below the branch nodes. He had taught them how to peel away the bark without killing the green-white flesh underneath, and how to cut the notch in the sapling and how to bind the wound of the union. But his best lesson, the one they would never forget and which would keep teaching them almost forever, was the lesson that the olive tree teaches the grafter.
Olives are the best example of natural grafting. They drop their own supports, their own temech, and in this way keep growing for countless h
uman generations. When they were fourteen years old, Shimon sat the boys down, one twin on the right of an olive tree, another twin on the left of it. Then he left them there. They grew squirmy in ten minutes, annoyed in fifteen, but at twenty the tree started talking and the identical brothers sat for at least two hours listening to the mistress of all grafters discourse in woody whispers on her art. A branch entwining there, another one curling here, and the center trunk dissolves slowly in perfect sync with the pace of the furthermost branches dropping new roots into old soil. When Shimon came back, Zohar and Moshe were standing up. They were running their hands over the tree. Pressing their fingers and palms into its branches.
Soon after, the twins convinced their father to plant a row of olives on the eastern periphery of his main orchard. The boys secretly hoped that the olives would tell their secrets to the oranges. Then their groves would be the first in the land to graft themselves, becoming bountiful for centuries—like the olives, only sweeter.
Moshe woke up at noon. As he got out of bed he had one last image in his head: Chasia / Mary had risen from the catacomb. She had risen, and had come back with them to Petach Tikvah. She was running in and out of the rows of the eastern olive trees, which had doubled in size since Moshe had last seen them. Moshe was there too. He wasn’t exactly sure what they were doing there together, he and Chasia / Mary, but it looked to him as if they were playing some game, maybe hide-and-seek. The branches of the trees were obscuring them, one from the other.
Zohar slept a bit longer than his brother. When he woke up, he remembered the night only. Stealing out of the house, sneaking into the catacombs, standing by the effigy, and afterward the running. All of these things were clear to him. But unlike his brother, Zohar had had no dreams.
THURSDAY NIGHT (FRIDAY MORNING), VERY LATE
Eliezer Schine peeked around the corner of the outer wall of what he had grown up calling the Mary Church, but was now properly referred to as the Dormition Abbey. He peeked and he stared into the darkness, squinting so that he could see better. But he saw nothing: the church was quiet, and the door the twins had disappeared into remained closed. Soon he hid again, pressing his back against the wall, his fingertips into the cold chinks between the stones. It was the middle of the night, at least three o’clock, and Eliezer’s teeth were chattering. Was this their first time? Questions pounded him. Or had they come before? Was it a dare? A joke? An obsession? Eliezer could not stop the questions. What would he do if they were caught? Were they actually praying to the statue? God forbid! Woe and shame! Were they touching her? Were they doing something lewd? A sin! A shanda! Swallowing hard, he turned toward the wall and rested his cheek against it until the questions had completely passed. When they had, he peeked around the corner again. But still he saw nothing. And he also heard nothing; the night was quiet, and there was, thank the Lord, thought Eliezer, no watchman, no guard, no British soldier in the vicinity making rounds. He let out a deep breath. And then he peeked again, this time with his eyes wide open. He was horrified, yes, but there was a curious center to his horror that winked out of him in a way that was only half horrible.
OLIVE TREE
He had woken up and heard footsteps in the hall. Then, as he got out of bed, there were footsteps coming down the staircase. He put on his trousers as the front door opened, and he ran down the stairs just in time to peek out of the door and see in which direction his grandsons were heading. He began to run. If anyone had been watching Eliezer Schine at that moment they would have seen an old man in a white nightshirt and puffy-pocketed trousers running with his fists clenched, arms pumping, his lower lip thrust out in a pout. His pace was not quite jaunty but it was definitely strong. He followed the twins through alleys and around corners. Eliezer followed them to a gate in the wall and then he followed them through it. And as he watched from behind a lower wall they entered into the church. When they disappeared from his view he asked with a pious shrug of his shoulders for God to give his grandsons their object. “But, please, my Lord,” he whispered, “please let their object be pure.”
Soon he saw them come back out of the church. They paused and looked at each other and then started back through the gate in the wall that enclosed the Old City. Eliezer watched from not far away as Zohar and Moshe climbed up onto the wall and then took off running. Moshe was in the lead, Zohar close behind him. He tried to call their names, but no words came out. So he just stood there watching the emptiness where they had been. Then he began walking back toward Rav Pinchas Street. Eliezer was terrified that his boys would not return, that they would get lost or be caught or land in trouble.
Standing on the steps of his house, he held out his hands, palms up, and he watched as his old fingers with their yellowed nails and thick red knuckles curled slightly inward. For several seconds he thought that he could feel the boys running on the lines of his own palms. Their feet were as tiny as the heads of pins, and they pattered back and forth across his palms in a serpentine tickle. Quickly opening the door, Eliezer walked into the house, and up the stairs. He lay in bed for almost an hour, all the while holding his hands up on top of the covers, his fingers curled slightly inward. At four-thirty he heard the boys sneak into the house and climb into their own beds. Only then did Eliezer curl his fingers into fists and let himself fall into a deep sleep that was at once confused and warm.
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
Avra noticed right away that things were out of sorts with her family. Crossing her arms over her chest she pressed her fingers into the ribs under her breasts, a nervous habit. Then she let her arms flop down again as she walked straight into the parlor and looked around. Her father was standing by the window with his chin thrust out, frowning. Her sons, sitting in the far corner of the room quietly reading old books with tattered covers, seemed to have misplaced their habitual selves; they were quiet and in full control of their mouths and gangly limbs, not at all like the growing, going-this-way-and-that fifteen-year-old boys she knew her adolescent sons to be. She remembered for a second what it had been like to carry these boys. A little “humph” escaped from her mouth and unconsciously she put her hands on her stomach. They hadn’t given her a second’s rest. Avra liked to joke that her boys had played soccer in her womb. “The whole nine months kicking so many goals—by the time they came out I was a championship game!” But now they were quiet. Not anything like they had been as babies, and not like they usually were as boys. They looked very tired. At three o’clock, when they wanted to go out running, Avra barred the way, and sent them to their room for a nap.
Shimon was also strange. He was sitting in a corner with his fingers pressed together and he was looking intently all around the room. Avra was worried about her husband. Ever since their walk the other day he was different, and she wasn’t so sure that for Shimon, different was good.
He was different. He had woken up that morning fascinated by all the little things in the house. The old brushes, shoes, sewing baskets, broken decorative tchotchkes, writing sets, mirrors. All of these things called to him. But he didn’t know if they wanted him to take them and put them elsewhere, or to leave them be while adding to their numbers an array of interesting immigrants. Sitting in the parlor now, he surveyed the old objects in the room: a Turkish ashtray in the shape of a camel; a small decorative rug with frayed edges and faded colors; a blunt-edged knife; a children’s book called The Frequent Frog lying on the bottom of a bookshelf no one ever browsed anymore. Shimon, who was not naturally a city dweller and actually was somewhat afraid of walking alone on the city streets, would have been just as happy to do this work without ever leaving the room in which he was sitting. But something told him that this wouldn’t quite do. So he excused himself without giving a good reason, and quickly walked out of the house. Avra, who had no real sense of what her husband was up to but sensed rightly that he needed some time by himself, watched him walk down Rav Pinchas Street and disappear under the split half arch. Sighing, she closed the door.
Shimon returned within the hour. Among other things, he dropped a fancy bronze nutcracker in the middle of Old Herschell’s dusty desk. A lambswool bootie he deposited to the left of the front door, and a lovely blue-and-gold needlepoint sampler with a bland psalm spoken into its mesh he let float down to the bottom shelf of the old bookcase, where it decorated The Frequent Frog, who, for so many years, hadn’t known what a fine and pious dress it was missing.
Shimon tried to leave his offerings demurely. He wanted them to blend in. He wanted no one to notice. But Shimon was not naturally demure. Actually, he was somewhat clunky and, though muscular, possessed little of the sort of silent strength needed to keep secrets. Avra, who noticed everything instantly, was appalled. She spent all of Friday afternoon finding these out-of-place objects, and then quickly secreting them in the folds of her skirts. Then she ran around the shouk really trying very hard to find the stalls they had come from, putting them back, one by one—if not in the exact right place, then at least in a place that was less wrong than her father’s parlor. When she was done, she returned to the house no less horrified. Not because her own sticky fingers had grown any less sticky, but because her husband was such a naturally honest man and she felt regret for the first time in her life for something she had taken.
The house was, that day, in remarkable disarray. Zohar and Moshe slept the afternoon away. Avra was distressed. Shimon was possessed of an unnatural euphoria. Eliezer was exhausted. And though he had a feeling that the Chasia-image wasn’t lodged in his soul anymore, he puttered around the house refusing to sleep. That evening the family gathered around the Sabbath table quietly.