The Body

by Richard Ben Sapir

  Nevertheless, from that coughing, whining, screaming engine, Dr. Sharon Golban got the beetle up to what Jim estimated was almost sixty miles an hour very quickly, and kept that pace out of the airport, onto the highway to Jerusalem.

  “Excuse me, please, would you watch where you are going?” said Jim. His bag was on his lap, and his hands were sweating. They had just gone by another car with only inches to spare and the bug was still accelerating.

  “I am watching,” she said, turning to look at him directly as they missed a Mercedes-Benz bus by what must have been no more than a layer of paint.

  “All right, now?” she said when they were on flat open-stretch highway between green irrigated fields bordered by golden brown hills.

  “Yes. I feel safer.”

  “Well, I’ll slow down more if you want.”

  “Just look at the road.”

  “I am looking at the road now. Where did you do your work?”

  “Georgetown University.”

  “Good school.”

  “Thank you,” said Jim.

  “I must admit I was apprehensive over whom the Vatican would send, especially when I did not see any of your work anywhere. But Georgetown is an excellent school. Whom did you work with?”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone you’ve heard of. I’m not an archaeologist. Look at the road, please.”

  “What is this? I am driving. Do you wish to drive?”

  “Just look at the road.”

  “I am looking at the road,” said Dr. Golban, staring Jim directly in the eye for what must have been a full minute. It had to be a full minute, or at least it felt like it. She turned back to the road in time to avoid a full head-on collision with a military jeep passing a truck.

  “So you are not an archaeologist at all?” she said.

  “Right,” said Jim.

  “You are a priest?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t dress like a priest.”

  “How do you know what a priest dresses like?”

  “Nowadays I don’t know. I used to know. But with Dr. Lavelle and you now, I do not know.”

  “You were friendly?” asked Jim.

  “Pierre Lavelle is a good archaeologist, and he examined the dig briefly, and then left.”

  “How briefly?”

  “Very. He looked at my notes and the photographs and went to the site, and then left. I must say, I felt sorry for him. He was disturbed by it. I never knew he was a priest. He was such a good archaeologist. He is a good man. I take it you are just a priest, nothing else.”

  “I am the one who is sent,” said Jim.

  “And I am under instructions from our Ministry of Education to assist you in anything you want, and my new department head is Mendel Hirsch, Director of Christian Relations for Jerusalem. You’ve heard of Mendel Hirsch?”

  “Yes, I have,” said Jim.

  “You should get along well.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Director Hirsch is not an archaeologist also. I must tell you, I am not going to lie to conform to either of your wishes. I will tell you that.”

  “Have I asked you to lie?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You expect me to?”

  “I expect you to be like the people who throw stones. Yes, somehow people who think they speak for God think they are above normal human constraints. They throw stones if you drive on Saturday. They try to stab you, yes, with knives, if you disturb a graveyard. You people don’t even think you speak for God after a while. You think you are God. All right, there you have it. Right there. That is it. That’s what I feel about you,” said Sharon. Her face flushed, her jaw set, her dark eyes lowered with hostility.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Golban, but if I am correct, I think you are describing the actions of a certain sect of Jews in Jerusalem, not the Catholic Church.”

  “Same thing. You’re all alike. They stone people to death. What did you do, burn them?”

  “I haven’t burned anyone. And I think you are referring to isolated events of five hundred years ago.”

  “What about Khomeini? He’s not yesterday. How many has he killed?”

  “Khomeini is a Shi‘ite Muslim leading Iranian Shi‘ite Muslims.”

  “Same thing.”

  “By definition he is not,” said Jim. He reminded himself she was serious.

  “All of you who claim everyone should act according to the way you hear it from God feed from the same trough. Maybe you don’t burn people or stone them or cut off their hands or heads or whatever, but you do it in subtler ways. You do it to the truth, as though it is some kind of danger to you.”

  “I happen to believe that the truth leads to God.”

  “And that which doesn’t you’ll destroy, right?”

  “Dr. Golban, I have not asked you to lie. Nor do I see myself asking you to lie. Nor do I think you would, should I ask you. I would appreciate your judging me on what I do and not the lowest standards of every extreme deviant action by any sect anywhere at any time.”

  “I just want to let you know what I think.”

  “Well, you certainly have,” said Jim. He wondered if it was something he said. But she was just too hard too quickly for him to have been the cause of this. He was catching the severe resentment of this woman for things he obviously had nothing to do with.

  Jim thought of being diplomatic and saying nothing because he did not need a major argument within the first hour he set foot here. But also he felt he should let her know what he thought of her actions. After all, perhaps she did not know how hard she appeared.

  “You know, to me, you sound prejudiced,” said Jim.

  “No. That means judging beforehand. I have had ample experience with rabbis, thank you. And I have seen otherwise intelligent human beings devote lifetimes to haggling over subordinate clauses of codified superstition. That to me is murder of a mind, too. I have yet to see any evidence that any of you are any different.”

  “You said Father Lavelle was a fine archaeologist.”

  “He was an archaeologist when he entered the cave. When he left it, poor man, he was a broken child. The murder of a mind.”

  “How do you know?” said Jim.

  “He was crying.”

  “You saw him cry?”

  “I saw tears on the hewn steps when he left. I mean, there it is. Presented with archaeological evidence, he broke down and cried, not because of his poor archaeological training, not in the least. The man was a graduate of the Sorbonne and had worked with Yadin and Shilo and McAlister, so of course he was solid.”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know Yadin, Shilo, and McAlister? Next you’ll tell me you haven’t heard of Kathleen Kenyon.”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Jim.

  “Among many important accomplishments she devised the way we all excavate a large city. Before her they just used to dig down, removing era after era. She developed a way to dig down in a grid sort of thing, leaving stratification so you could see the levels. You see?”

  “I see.”

  “You were not joking when you said you had not heard of Kathleen Kenyon?”

  “No, I wasn’t joking.”

  “I didn’t think so,” said Dr. Golban. Now she not only was avoiding glancing at his face, she was looking out the opposite window in despair, her hands rising from the wheel of the wildly chugging Volkswagen. Jim reached for the wheel and collided with her hands.

  “What are you doing?’ she said. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

  “I thought someone should be steering.”

  “I was.”

  “Your hands were off the wheel.”

  “For a moment.”

  “Please look at the road.”

  “This is ridiculous. Do you know I was ordered to give up lecturing this semester just to assist you?”

  “Please watch the road. If this will relieve your worry, I am going to bring in an archaeologist whom I will choose later. I am go
ing to bring in a geologist, and all the other technical people the twentieth century can offer. At the end of this investigation, we will know every possible fact man can know. You can be assured of that.”

  “That is not my concern. I care that I have to work with you. I care that I was asked to lie, and have to live with a lie.”

  “Just what was this lie?” said Jim, careful not to show how much he was really alerted by this.

  “To the volunteers. Mendel wanted me to swear to some hokum story about why the dig had to be closed suddenly. The minute politics comes in, lies begin.”

  “In what way?”

  “The fact that Israel doesn’t want to be held responsible for this find, as though we are attacking allies or something. I mean, it is there. And why do we have to go about this like some criminals?”

  “You mean secret?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It is a favor your government is doing for the Vatican.”

  “Why, have you stolen something? Have you done something criminal?” said Dr. Golban, looking directly at Jim, waiting for an answer as a large tractor trailer hummed up the road toward them.

  “Please look at the road.”

  “I am,” she said, staring directly at his eyes, and just as angrily finally turning back to the road in time to miss the truck. Jim decided to keep quiet while Dr. Golban was driving, so as to reach Jerusalem alive.

  He cradled the overnight bag in his lap and just watched the autumn fields go by, fields which, according to a brief survey he had read, produced three crops a year.

  As they climbed the hills to Jerusalem, Jim remembered the oft-used phrase of the Bible, “going up to Jerusalem.” It was both a spiritual and a physical description.

  Jim noticed how green the land became with the intensity of trees the closer they came to Jerusalem.

  The little yellow Volkswagen spit furiously and the car rattled and passed another truck.

  Dr. Golban lit another cigarette. She was surly and silent.

  Jim ventured what he hoped was a question not sufficiently emotional to get her to take her eyes off the road. He was still not sure why she was so angry. That amount of anger seemed entirely inappropriate.

  “Was this a Roman road once?” he asked.

  “No. This one will take valleys. The Romans like their roads under the crest of hills to move legion columns free of ambush. You can see their roads over there,” she said, nodding to the left in the far distance.

  It struck Jim that all the time he had studied Roman history and the history of its empire he had been studying about a place over there somewhere. Just talking to Sharon, he knew now everything he had ever read about the Roman Empire, and the life of Jesus, was not a “there” anymore, it was here. All around him, in the terraces of olive trees under the new forests planted by the Israelis, in the stones that talked to people like Dr. Golban. It was here that He was crucified, just up the road, and here that He was buried, and here that He rose again on the third day.

  Right here, at a point in time, the offering up of God unto His Father was the sacrifice for the salvation of all mankind. From that point onward, all people had access to heaven through His blood. And somehow not only did Jim feel it was all here, but he sensed somehow that it was also now.

  And then Jerusalem came into view, a warm brown-gold city on two hilltops in the distance, under the smiling sun of God. He could see the frustration in Dr. Golban’s face soften, and a joy reflected by this city on a hill. The face became warm and delicate and fine, looking at the city.

  “Dr. Golban, forgive me if I am wrong, but I sense a distinct hostility toward me on your part.”

  “You are correct.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because you have come here to disrupt a perfectly scientific archaeological dig. It is hard enough to scientifically estimate what has happened by the fragile fragments left us without someone with a preconceived set of suppositions taking charge.”

  “Isn’t this your dig?”

  “If it were, would I be bothered by your religious beliefs, by your lack of credentials? But if you are supervising this particular dig, then it certainly does bother me. Yes.”

  “I had thought that this was your excavation, and I was just observing.”

  “No,” said Sharon sharply, as they turned down a gentle slope into the city itself, losing its overview by the rise of close gold-brown buildings, all of the same warm yellow stone. The air was somehow wine-cool, and Jim felt a sense of joy with the very stones of the city itself.

  Most of the buildings were two stories high, and each had that warm brown facing. Everywhere there was greenery, trees and shrubs, and neatly laid-out streets.

  There were a few more people in dark Orthodox Jewish suits. Except for the presence of Arab kaffiyehs, the people could have been from any American or European city, he thought.

  Then he saw a donkey make it up a road, with an Arab on him carrying two large bundles. Then he saw several donkeys, and large stalls of produce that seemed to swim in flies. Down the street was a wall with parapets and a large ancient gate.

  “That’s the Old City,” said Dr. Golban, nodding toward the street. She parked the car. “Suleiman put up that wall.”

  “Suleiman, the Magnificent,” said Jim.

  “Yes.”

  “He drove out the Crusaders.”

  “No. No. Sal Ah Din defeated the Crusaders up north.”

  “Saladin,” said Jim, confirming who he thought it was by giving it the English pronunciation he had learned.

  Sharon got out of the car. She didn’t lock it. Jim got out also. He waited for her to lead him somewhere. There was a storage building from which crates of food were loaded, an empty lot across the street, and an empty lot to which Sharon was pointing.

  In the lot were stakes with bright yellow ropes surrounding a hole approximately forty feet by forty feet.

  “Is that it?” said Jim.

  “This is Haneviim Street.”

  “Is everything secured? Can people get in or out freely?”

  “Absolutely not. The stone has been moved back over the tomb. You would need several people, and I mean several, or a crane to move it, and we have an Arab watchman at night, and nobody is going to move it during the day.”

  “So everything in there is secure?”

  “Yes. And we have dropped a few plywood eight-by-eights over the stone.”

  “To protect against what?”

  “Anyone thinking it might be a tomb.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We are near Mea Shearim. There is an ultra-Orthodox sect that believes God has given it the right to stone people, lie, stab people, and generally do any harm for the sake of not disturbing the dead,” said Sharon. “Well, let us go look at the dig.” She started walking toward the roping around the hole.

  “No, I don’t want to look at it,” said Jim. He shook his head and did not move.

  “Wonderful,” said Sharon. “Would you mind telling me why?”

  “There are other things I have to do first,” said Jim.

  “Wonderful,” said the beautiful Israeli archaeologist. And she was laughing in despair.

  The laughter was a bit infectious.

  “I can see what you’re thinking,” said Jim, smiling. “But I do have my reasons. I really do.”

  “That’s what I said,” said Dr. Golban. “And no fact will ever change them.”

  7

  The Holy Sepulcher?

  Father Folan discovered the purpose of the Israeli moves too soon, and too suddenly, and with too much finality. By the time he knew of it, the Israelis had gotten what they wanted.

  The reason His Eminence Almeto Cardinal Pesci hadn’t thought of it was that it was quite simply too obvious.

  Dr. Golban had driven Jim to Director Hirsch’s office off Ben Yehuda Street. Director Hirsch, a middle-aged Israeli, was affably correct and courteous. Dr. Golban smoked sullenly. Apparently there was tens
ion between the two.

  Director Hirsch made many references to the Vatican hierarchy, correctly referring to each title in that intricate structure. When he talked of Jerusalem, he overflowed with ecclesiastical titles of the many Christian sects: “His Excellency, His Beatitude, the Archimandrite, the Patriarch, the Right Reverend, the Very Reverend, the Reverend Custos, and Venerable Brother.”

  As he mentioned each, he nodded to pictures of them on his wall.

  One could see the multitude of different Christian faiths on Director Hirsch’s wall. They also demanded an answer to a very big question Jim had been asked by His Eminence Almeto Cardinal Pesci, himself, back in Rome.

  Through Pesci’s office, Jim knew Hirsch’s job was not new with Israel. Because of the multitude of Christian sects, and because of the many claims to holy places, whoever ruled Jerusalem had to provide a mediating service. This had been done by Turks and British and Jordanians before. In fact, when the British took Jerusalem in 1917 these experts at empire immediately announced, “Status quo.”

  And that meant that the centuries of intricate relationships to time and place at holy sites would stay the same because it was beyond the skill of man to rearrange them without religious warfare.

  Jim let Director Hirsch serve him coffee and cakes. Dr. Golban just took coffee.

  “How did you get assigned to this project?” said Jim to Director Hirsch. They all spoke English. Jim noticed Dr. Golban perk up. Maybe this would be news to her also.

  “You want to know why I am involved in this?” said Director Hirsch.

  “Yes,” said Jim.

  “Well, when we realized what we had, someone had to coordinate things, and it fell on me with my knowledge of Christian hierarchies.”

  “All right. Now I know why you. Why us? Why the Roman Catholic Church? Why not the Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox, the Church of England? The International Council of Churches? Why the Roman Catholic Church?”

  “I could say that because your founding head, the first Pope, was a Galilee lad,” said Director Hirsch with a warm smile.

  Jim smiled back. Sharon lit another cigarette and exhaled.

  “But we know you know that St. Matthew left for Cairo just about the same time St. Peter left for Rome,” said Jim. “So you might just as well have chosen the Copts. And the Greek Orthodox have claims in your eyes equal to us. Just as old. So how did we get this honor?”