Jerusalem Interlude

by Bodie Thoene

  Still a hundred yards from the Old City gate, the crowd no longer moved to one side for the armored car. Like the fog, they surged around him, bringing him to a dead stop. He inched forward, reluctant to park and climb out to make his way on foot.

  “Victoria,” he muttered as he tried to search the sea of intense faces which swept by. “I am here, Victoria. Come on. Please! Please, pass by me!”

  But she did not pass. He waited and watched for ten minutes as the mourners walked around him and then closed off the road. Would she be wearing a veil? He narrowed his search to a study of eyes. She was not there. She could have walked from the convent to the gate in half the time that had passed since he left the British headquarters.

  He blasted the horn. Faces turned angrily to stare at the steel-plated vehicle. He inched ahead and blasted the horn again until the growing resentment on Arab faces caused him to simply pull to the side of the road and wait for a few more precious minutes.

  He whispered the words of the Shema as he switched off the motor and set the brake. Pocketing the keys, he opened the door and stepped out into the human current. He looked back at the hundreds of faces moving toward him up the slope. He could not see them all, but he knew she had already entered the Old City. She was inside the gate of St. Stephen. Perhaps even in the courtyard of the Dome of the Rock.

  His mouth was dry with fear. He stepped into the mass of surly Arabs who surrounded him with hostile glares and unspoken curses. He tried to push ahead, tried to break through the slow deliberate pace. The ring of resentment tightened around him, holding him back.

  Moving with tiny, shuffling steps, he reached the high arched portal of St. Stephen’s Gate where the closeness shoved him against those he walked with. The Arab stares became more obvious. The questions were asked among themselves. “What does this son of an English pig have to do with us?”

  “Must they come here to threaten us even as we weep?”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Why is he here?”

  “A spy!”

  “Then a poor spy. Why is he dressed like that?”

  Eli pretended not to understand them. He lowered his head and pulled the brim of his cap down over his eyes. Only at this moment did he realize that he was now among the mourners of the man he had killed. He had concentrated so intensely on finding Victoria that only at this instant did he remember why the thousands packed the narrow entrance.

  Just as many thousands surged forward from the opposite direction of Via Dolorosa. Eli tried to think where Victoria would go. To her home? Had she meant that? Was she returning to her home?

  That could not be. She was an outcast. Ibrahim would not kill her, but the others would not hesitate. The thought made him shudder. A sense of hopelessness descended on him. To find her in this. To hope to take her safely away! But what other hope was there for them? Better to die here searching for her than to live with the knowledge that she had simply vanished into the maw of the schemes of Haj Amin Husseini.

  He turned to enter the Haram with the rest. A gruff Arab voice challenged him. “Hey, English! What do you think you are doing?”

  “I have come—to pay respects.”

  “No son of the prophet needs your respect. You intrude! You are not welcome here!” growled another emotion-laden voice.

  Eli replied carefully. “I knew him well. Did you know him?”

  “No,” he answered. “But the family is known.”

  Eli’s voice now cracked with emotion. He did not stop or look as if he might turn back. “I knew him well. Like a brother. I have more right to weep than any.”

  Yet another voice demanded, “And did you know the sister also? Victoria? The wife of Ram Kadar?”

  Eli frowned. Fear stirred in the pit of his belly. “Not so well.”

  “They are bringing her coffin now,” the voice called back from the portals of the Dome of the Rock. “I can see it. Ya Allah! There they bring two coffins into the gates!”

  Eli gasped for air at those words, even though he knew it could not be. She had left the convent only two hours ago. She could not be dead. Another trick! It was another trick!

  All around him wails rose up—cries to Allah, cries for mercy, cries for vengeance! Through the gates, Eli caught a glimpse of two coffins bobbing over a sea of heads already packed into the courtyard. The screams and wails increased in volume as the wooden coffins glided inward toward the sanctuary. “Brother and sister! Brother and sister!” cried a toothless old man who clutched Eli’s sleeve and sobbed hysterically. “Ya Allah! Two of them murdered! Two in the same family!”

  Eli felt sick. Waves of nausea swept over him. He tore himself free of the old man’s grip and leaned against the stones of the portals as one continuous wail rose up. It could not be! She had left the convent only two hours before! Oh, God! Could it be? Could it?

  The caskets were closed. It was another deception, an added fuel to the fire of passion. Two from the same family, they said, and yet the second casket could not contain Victoria! Or could it?

  Eli raised his eyes. Three rough-looking Arabs strode confidently along the ramparts of the wall that encompassed the courtyard. They openly carried their rifles. There could not be a Muslim burial without the firing of rifles. Eli looked across the vast field of shrieking mourners. There were men with rifles at every station along the stone enclosure. These men displayed no emotion in the midst of the hysteria. They had not come to watch the mourners. They had come or other reasons—for what was to follow the funeral.

  “Two coffins!” shrieked a woman. “Ya Allah! Oh, God!”

  Eli pulled himself straight. He began to move forward with the rest. Victoria was not dead! His heart gave him courage. He would get close enough to see. Somehow. She was alive! Somewhere in this mob of teeming thousands, she too was making her way forward to declare the deception, to stop what was to come upon Jerusalem! How many would die today? How many would fall if it happened as the Mufti planned it?

  ***

  Eli had never before set foot on the grounds where Solomon’s Temple once stood. Where Jesus preached and prayed. Where the Romans had made the glory of the Holy of Holies desolate.

  It was still a place of desolation. Darkness had come to hover where the Shekinah glory had descended. Death was near in the chanting hysteria of the waiting masses who crammed together until moving became almost impossible and breathing itself, difficult.

  “ALLAH! YA ALLAH!” shrieked a hysterical woman who tore her clothes and beat her face at the sight of the coffins.

  Madness!

  Eli pushed forward as yet another woman convulsed and frothed at the mouth as she stood wedged upright among the others.

  The entire courtyard was a powder keg, and Eli was a lighted match slipping cautiously by. The wind of insanity was already rising into a confused roar.

  He tried not to think of his own death. If Victoria were here, if she were alive, he must find her and take her to safety. And if she was indeed within the plain wooden coffin that sailed above him like a ship, then he would die with her! He would die gladly and count his own death among the millions of Jews who were slain upon these same stones.

  He shouted against the gale, yet no one heard his voice. No one but God. Eli wept as well, sensing not only the tragedy of what was happening to him and Victoria, but a greater, heart-rending tragedy that had begun with the corruption of this once-holy place.

  He felt desperately alone. Mourning for Victoria. Mourning for Jerusalem. Mourning for his people who longed for the Return. Mourning for the Messiah who had wept for what He knew would come upon the Holy City.

  “For the Temple that lies desolate,” he cried, “we sit in solitude and mourn!”

  He wedged his body between two men and inched forward toward the platforms where the coffins were being lowered.

  Eli shouted at the top of his lungs this ancient lament for the fallen Temple:

  “For the walls that are overthrown,

  I
walk in solitude and mourn!

  For our glory that is departed,

  For our wise men who have perished!

  For the priests who have stumbled!

  For our kings who have despised Him,

  We sit in solitude and mourn!”

  Yet no one could comprehend what he said. They seemed not to notice his uniform. Certainly, no one guessed that a Jew walked among them. Or that it was the very Jew accused and already judged by the Arab Council. “Look down on me, O Lord!” he cried. “May I see her face before I see your face! O Lord, save her! Help me find her!”

  ***

  As Eli slowly pushed forward from the north toward the coffins and the raised platform, Victoria moved with difficulty toward the same goal from the south. It did not matter, she realized, what she was wearing. Each individual within the shrieking and wailing crowd had some private vision of death that preoccupied them. Men and women seemed to see only the coffins—and only themselves.

  They scratched their own faces with fingernails or bits of stone until frenzied eyes peered out from bloody cheeks.

  Victoria did not mourn, not even for her brother whom she knew lay in one of the wooden boxes. Her only thoughts were of Eli—of stopping the madness around her.

  She found strength in this. Her father would surely sit on the dais beside the coffins. Did he know she still lived, Victoria wondered? Or did he believe the lie?

  He would know soon enough. He would stand beside her and proclaim an end to this deception!

  This thought, this goal, strengthened her to push forward. Foot by foot she gained ground. She turned sideways to squeeze between bodies. She stopped and stood on tiptoe to peer over the bobbing heads to where four men removed the lids of the caskets and propped them up for all to see the dead bodies within.

  A new howl arose, loud enough to be heard throughout the British Mandate. Victoria paused in her struggle to look at the ashen-faced body of her half brother. Only now did the reality of his death settle on her. The finality of his end. Such a wasted, evil life. There was no more hope for him and that indeed caused her to grieve.

  The face of the dead woman beside him was covered by a thin veil—thin enough so that those around the platform could see the mutilated features. Victoria cried out at the sight. This was meant to be her! The body was the same size and build. But even her dear father would not know by the face that it was not Victoria. Poor woman! Who was she? What animals they are to do this to her!

  Some among the masses fainted, only to be held upright by the sheer press of those surrounding them. The howling was deafening, the hellish misery of those who were dead inside even while they still breathed.

  Victoria pressed on with renewed determination as she looked up to see her father emerge from the doors of the Dome of the Rock and slowly climb the steps of the platform to take his place behind what he thought were two of his children. Such grief on his face! Had there ever been such sadness in the eyes of any man?

  Ibrahim followed. Their stepmother came after that, veiled in mourning robes. She leaned heavily against a woman who walked beside her.

  Impossible as it seemed, the noise of the tumult increased in volume. Death had given the Muslims of Palestine one voice.

  Surrounded by his bodyguards, that voice emerged in the form of the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Husseini. Victoria pushed harder to move forward.

  The Mufti did not try to discourage the madness raging before him. His blue eyes measured the success of weeks of planning. If every man of Britain’s twenty thousand troops in Palestine were to come against this crowd, the British would fall. A hundred thousand packed the courtyard of the Haram. Thousands more pressed upon the gates to be let in. Soon, the voice of Haj Amin would release them.

  ***

  The woman! Eli had to see! Had to get closer! Someone flailed out wildly and struck him in the face as he groaned and pressed closer to the platform.

  Haj Amin stood still and silent above his faithful followers and those who had been suddenly recruited into his fold by the call of death.

  None of that mattered to Eli any longer. If they had sacrificed his beloved to their strange and terrible God, then Eli wished to die as well.

  It took all his strength to crowd forward. A few inches at a time, he gained his way to a mere twenty yards from the platform where Ibrahim sat between his parents. Eli had not stopped looking for Victoria—a living Victoria among the multitude.

  He stared at the figure of the dead woman. There was little that was visible, except for her hands. They were not the hands of Victoria! No. The sacrifice was not her!

  He turned around once again, hoping to glimpse her face. She is here; he knew it now! But where!

  He turned toward the platform again to stare at the face of Ibrahim. Once friend. Had he allowed this terrible deception, knowing that Eli would come, that Victoria would also fall into the trap?

  ***

  Haj Amin raised his hands, and a massive shudder convulsed the crowd. Silence slid like molten lava from the front of the platform to the far reaches of the courtyard.

  Ibrahim stood. He stooped and plucked a flower from a basket and walked forward to place it in the hands of the dead woman. Then he turned as the ripples of howling began to subside in anticipation of the Mufti’s words.

  In that instant, Ibrahim’s eyes caught Eli’s. He looked away and then back again. His eyes locked with Eli’s, and he knew!

  With a shout of recognition he pointed and shouted Eli’s name. He ran to a row of bodyguards who all sparked to life. Eli managed to turn. He tried to work his way back. Back where? Without knowing it, the crowd of people around him pressed tighter, pinning him where he stood.

  More urgent words to the Mufti, who then stepped forward to the microphone. The silence was not complete yet. He could wait. The rabbit was caught in the snare. Kicking and struggling to get loose, it was, nonetheless, trapped.

  Eli cried out. His voice carried, and faces turned to stare at him. Men looked up at the gesturing Ibrahim and then down at the man in the English uniform who struggled and shouted as he attempted to get away.

  “Allah is good to us, my children,” intoned the Mufti. “Allah Ahkbar! God is great, and here is proof for us today! Allah the Avenger has sent to us the murderer of these two faithful . . .

  From her position to the right of the platform, Victoria’s eyes followed the Mufti’s gesture.

  Eli! Arms pinned. Hat off. Hair falling over his pale forehead as he struggled.

  “No!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “I am Victoria Hassan! I am not dead! It is a mistake! That is not Victoria Hassan in the coffin!”

  Some turned to stare at her. Was she insane? Ah, well, there were many here today who were insane.

  “You have come to mock us!” the Mufti roared, and there was total silence except for the echo of his voice against the stones. “Allah is just! Eli Sachar, you are delivered into our hands for justice as the prophet commands!”

  Victoria continued to shout and push against those around her. “Eli!” she screamed in horror.

  He heard her voice. Called out her name. “Victoria! Victoria!” His eyes searched wildly for her. Hands reached out for him. Yes! This was the one the Mufti was addressing! This is he! The one in the English uniform!

  “Eli!” she screamed. The loudspeaker of Haj Amin drowned her out. Ibrahim saw her. His eyes darted nervously. He rose again and whispered to the Mufti. There was no time for the cat to play with the wounded bird. They must strike now or perhaps be discovered in their deception.

  “There is the man who killed them!” Ibrahim screamed and pointed to Eli. His face was contorted by hatred, as if he believed the lie.

  The crowd went wild! Those surrounding Eli tore at him from every side! They lifted him high above their heads, as they had the coffins, for all to see, “ALLAH AKHBAR!”

  “Victoria!” Eli cried as he saw her only yards away. His fingers spread wide as he reached for her. She st
rained to touch him. The gulf was too great. His eyes embraced her one last time.

  “No!” She pounded on those between them as she struggled to reach him. “You cannot do this! Cannot! He is innocent! Innocent! I am Victoria Hassan! He has murdered no one!”

  Those around her did not notice the fury of her fists. They did not hear her above the tumult. Even if they did hear, they did not care.

  Daggers were unsheathed by the thousand and raised skyward to receive the Jew as he was passed above them. Leaving a wake of blood, Eli was swept away from her over the heads of the mob, carried on a current of rage.

  45

  What Is a Lifetime?

  Murphy stepped off the red London omnibus at three minutes after six in the morning. The Fleet Street office of TENS had been running wide open since yesterday when the news of the Paris assassination attempt and word of the Palestine riots had both clacked over the wires within minutes of each other. Murphy had gone home for three hours of restless sleep while Anna and Elisa had sat up and listened to the news on the BBC.

  Elisa still did not know that her father was in Berlin, but mention of Herschel Grynspan as the would-be assassin was enough to keep her wide awake. Murphy had left her with the promise that he would call the moment he heard anything new.

  He had not counted on the fact that every few minutes word of fresh violence would be clacking over the wires into Trump European News Service.

  Twenty of the best American journalists in Europe sat at their desks, with their eyes riveted to typewriters. Murphy took a deep breath before he pushed through the swinging door and into the thick of it.

  No one seemed to notice that the boss had arrived. The unrelenting tap of fingers on keys and the blue haze of tobacco smoke filled the newsroom, reminding Murphy that this office was a reflection of the battles taking place right now in Palestine and in the hospital room of Ernst vom Rath in Paris. Both events, though seemingly distant and unrelated to each other, could affect the fate of millions of Jews trapped within the Nazi regime. Murphy knew that well enough. The truth of it made him shudder and pray that Ernst vom Rath was still hanging on to life.