The Body

by Richard Ben Sapir

  He had misled his Church and his Pope.

  It was good that he was ashamed. What he owed his Church and his God was the best use of his mind. He did not have a right to be afraid. This was God’s World, and His City, and His Church, and His Truth.

  What God wanted to be known and when, He would decide. Jim was just his soldier.

  He apologized for his sins. He asked for help, and the man who returned to the dig the next day was not the one who had left it days before for an appointment with truth on a Tel Aviv beach.

  “What happened?” said Sharon. She noticed it immediately.

  “Is something different?”

  “You,” she said. She had been chatting with the watchman, who now had a chair and a little shack to sit in because of intermittent rains. As soon as Jim had started across the lot she had run over to tell him she missed him. She wore heavier lipstick this morning, with strong dark eyeshadow. On a face less majestic, it would have looked severe. But on Sharon it had a deep sense of quiet and beauty, a fluid grace that only the best sculptors seemed to capture.

  “You think I am different?” said Jim.

  “Absolutely, night and day. Who is this man?”

  “Who do you think it is?” said Jim, smiling.

  She grabbed an arm naturally as they walked. “Well, the first man was burdened, then the next man was elated and that was after the false hope, and then, on the drive back to Jerusalem in silence, there was a man in despair with even greater burdens.”

  “And who is this?” said Jim.

  “This is Jim Folan, I think. Who was always there.”

  “And who is that?”

  “A very nice person, I think. A man in the finest sense. Yes, you’re quite a man, I think.”

  “I thought you didn’t like clerics.”

  “I like the man, Jim.”

  “The man is a priest, Sharon.”

  “I try not to think about that,” said Sharon.

  Jim laughed. He shouldn’t like that. He knew he shouldn’t like that. But he loved it. She was wearing shorts this day because it was one of those intermittent warm days heading toward winter. Back home in New England it would be called Indian summer.

  Jim descended the ladder first and refused to talk as he climbed down, because then he might look up at her legs, which were so close, and so beautiful, and so incredibly tantalizing. But more important, he had never looked up at panties in high school and he certainly wasn’t going to do it now as a Jesuit in Jerusalem on a mission for his Pope.

  At the bottom, he told her.

  “You know, I got everything straightened out through prayer. I want you to know that, Sharon. I don’t know how much you know about the Church, but pride is a sin. And I, through pride, had felt I didn’t want to be the one to fail.”

  “I thought so,” said Sharon. “I thought you felt that. But I held back mentioning it. I didn’t think my judgment on that would be proper.”

  “I didn’t think you held anything back, Sharon.”

  “Fuck you. Is that how you say it? Fuck you.”

  “I never say it,” said Jim.

  “I bet you didn’t let anyone copy from your paper, either.”

  “They never wanted to. I wasn’t smart enough. Were you a copier?”

  “I never had to,” said Sharon.

  “Did you let people?”

  Sharon laughed. “That was cheating. I never did. I was the little stinker who didn’t let other people copy. And I always heard from others what a horrible sort of person that was. I was a bit ashamed of it. It was the best insult I could think of. It certainly bothered me. I assumed it would bother you.”

  “No. I was not the smartest. I was not the strongest or the largest, but I was chosen. Because I was chosen.”

  “You should be a rabbi.”

  “You recognize the passage?”

  “Of course. Our religion is our history. You were chosen like God chose the Jews.”

  “I wish I hadn’t been.”

  “I guess we should wish the same thing if you read history.”

  Jim noticed that there were puddles forming at the south end of the dig facing Damascus Gate, the water now free to follow the slope of the bedrock. He mentioned that they should get it pumped out, and opened the metal door.

  They had left the flashlights in there. And when Jim touched the metal, it felt moist and cool. He wondered how long the bones could endure the dampness even with the polyvinyl coating.

  “That’s just one of your problems,” said Sharon. “The main one is, how are you going to go about this whole thing?”

  “You can understand why we don’t want knowledge of this to get out yet. Not because we are trying to hide something, but because, before the full truth is known, there can be quite a danger of speculation, to say nothing of the interference from outside. Could you imagine conducting a dig with television reporters around?”

  “I can see your point.”

  “The problem is, any Christian coming in here is going to know what we have and I can’t let one more person know about this.”

  “Simple,” said Sharon.

  “I can’t imagine a Christian finding a crucified body in a tomb like this and not jumping to an immediate conclusion.”

  “It doesn’t have to be here. You can have your pathologist examine the body in a lab. Many of them aren’t done on site, either. The disk can be examined in another lab. You can have one person examine the disk for age and another for the authenticity of the Aramaic. You mentioned you wanted a geologist. Have him look at an empty tomb. But one thing you’ve got to do, and this is a must in any archaeological dig—for God’s sake, don’t rush,” said Sharon. She had both his arms in her hands, now. “Above all, don’t rush.”

  “I know already.”

  “I hope you choose the right lab and the right people.”

  “You know I am going to have to get another archaeologist.”

  “I know.”

  “How am I going to keep the archaeologist from knowing?”

  “You can’t,” said Sharon. “Your archaeologist is the one who puts all the facts together.”

  “The archaeologist will know as much as me,” said Jim.

  “Absolutely.”

  “And he’ll know where and why everything proves anything.”

  “He’ll have to,” said Sharon.

  “I don’t want anyone else knowing,” said Jim. “It’s not that I am afraid of what this is, it is that I am afraid, perhaps, that the evidence won’t show who it isn’t. Can you believe that?”

  “It would be an effort,” said Sharon. “I saw your despondency when a piece of cloth was shown not to be what you thought it was. What is going to happen to you if by some chance evidence starts mounting that this is … is …”

  “Is Jesus?” said Jim. He could say the word. Mendel had thoughtfully assured him voices inside the tomb could not be discerned up above.

  “Yes,” said Sharon.

  “I hadn’t planned on that.”

  “What if?”

  “You yourself said that in archaeology there is always leeway for different opinions. But let me ask you, what do you think your rabbis would do if I came up with proof that Judaism was flat wrong?”

  “Stone you to death.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Maybe they would use knives.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Tomorrow night, if I were to drive through Mea Shearim, I would be stoned. So don’t tell me I am not serious. Already, respected archaeologists have been physically attacked by those animals. So yes, I am very serious.”

  “But other rabbis would try to prove me wrong. I know rabbis, and I know some very rational rabbis. And they would attempt to disprove my evidence. I do not believe they would destroy the evidence, or me. We don’t burn or stone anymore.”

  “All right,” said Sharon. “But I tell you I was bothered by what I saw in you, coming back from the beach, I wa
s bothered.”

  “It’s all right now,” said Jim.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Jim.

  “Are you aware that I had a vested interest in that body being Jesus Christ?” said Sharon. Her voice was sharp.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Well, you would have found it out. That’s how minor archaeologists become major ones. By a famous dig. And that means they get more money for more famous digs, and so on. But coming back in the car from Jerusalem, I didn’t mind not having this dig as my own anymore. Not after seeing you.”

  “I’m all right,” said Jim, “and thank you for telling me about your vested interest.”

  “You would have found out.”

  “But you told me.”

  “Yes. I did that. I did,” said Sharon. She was trying to look at some place where Jim wasn’t and she didn’t know where to look.

  “I’m all right, Sharon. Now don’t make me have to worry about you, all right?”

  “Fuck you,” said Sharon. And turned away.

  Jim took a light and went to the niche. The bones were shaded white now, and the jaw was still in place. The covering of polyvinyl was so light that the dark iron showed right through. It was almost transparent. Jim noticed how good the teeth were. He thought briefly that, if he could find a filling, he could pack up and go home. Fillings were recent. Although, the Egyptians had been great doctors, and they might have had some ways to handle cavities, which the Romans might have picked up.

  He did know the Egyptians were doing brain surgery back then, so why not fillings? Don’t jump to conclusions, he told himself. His eyes kept going back to that rusted iron. To think that people purposely hung a human being on a cross so that he would die more horribly, to create pain, to create humiliation, to create helplessness.

  And to think it was done to thousands. And to think how his Lord had allowed Himself to be killed like that, where the most powerful object in the world became a spike that held your legs. Jim said a prayer for the poor fellow who had died like Jesus.

  Sharon had regained her composure and was coming back up with more suggestions.

  “We can cut the clay wall into sections, although some of it will crumble. Also, there might be something mixed in the clay. Sometimes it happens. We might find a dating object. You know if you found a coin from Governor Glaucus in the clay, that wall could not have been there at the time of Christ’s crucifixion.”

  “Yes,” said Jim. “The wall.”

  The clay bricks that had been formed by hand were irregular in line, a technique used thousands of years later in World War II to camouflage ships.

  It had dried so that, with the irregular lines, it seemed to blend into the back of the cave so well that several of Sharon’s volunteers hadn’t noticed it.

  Even with the hole she had punched into it, Jim had not been aware of the wall when first entering. He had to be shown.

  Now according to the Gospels, Peter saw an empty tomb. Mary Magdalene saw an empty tomb.

  And Jim Folan, two thousand years later, saw an empty tomb.

  “You know,” said Jim, “this looks at first glance like an empty tomb with that wall there.”

  “Today, but what about two thousand years ago?” said Sharon. He was onto something. But she held back. She had some questions herself. “Do we know whether wet clay back then would be so similar in color?”

  “But in the Gospels, when did people see the tomb? They didn’t see it right away.”

  “Good point. If we are going by the Gospels as a guide for possibilities as to what this might be, then we know it was not the time of winter rains, when it would take quite a while to dry.”

  “It was springtime. Easter,” said Jim.

  “Friday, he is crucified, and put in the sepulcher, and, let’s say, right away this clay wall is put up. Okay?” said Sharon.

  “Theorizing,” said Jim.

  “Scenario. Okay, the next day is Shabbat, so nobody comes here, especially not Mary Magdalene, who is a Jew. According to the Gospels, she skipped Saturday for that reason, and came here the third day, and saw that the tomb was empty.”

  “That’s three days,” said Jim. “The Gospels spell out those three days. Good Friday to Easter Sunday, springtime.”

  “It could be dry by then,” said Sharon. “In springtime, three days would make it dry as now, I think.”

  “As dry as Easter Sunday when—Shhh,” said Jim.

  “What?” said Sharon.

  “Shhh,” said Jim.

  He heard movement on the ladders outside. Someone was coming down. Jim went to the steps to look out. He saw a brown leather shoe covered with dust descend to the bottom. The man wore greenish pants, like the guard up on top.

  When he bent down to the hole, blood filling his face, Jim saw that he was the guard.

  He spoke Hebrew, and Jim caught that he wanted to look around. Jim asked if he spoke English and the guard apologized that he didn’t.

  “Sharon, stand in front of the small hole in the clay wall,” said Jim in English, and then in Hebrew told the man to see for himself. The man looked puzzled, straining his eyes.

  “It is empty,” he said in Hebrew.

  “Yes. Yes,” answered Jim in the same language.

  “I heard there were bodies here,” said the man.

  “Rumor. Rumor,” said Sharon.

  “Then, why was I hired to make sure no one comes down?”

  “We can’t have our own interests without you knowing?” said Sharon.

  “Sure,” said the man.

  “Come on in,” said Jim.

  “My back hurts,” said the man.

  “Well, look in closer,” said Jim.

  “Do I have to?” said the man.

  “You’re down here,” said Sharon.

  “I’m looking,” said the man, lowering himself to his knees to peer deep into the cave. Sharon shone the hard light from one of the flashlights on the wall behind her.

  “Empty,” said the man. “It’s empty.”

  “You sure?” said Sharon.

  “Sure,” said the man. “I heard there were bodies.”

  “Well, now you can tell everyone there aren’t,” said Sharon.

  “So what are you doing here, you two lovers?”

  “You must know from our voices,” said Jim.

  “It just comes out mumbled up there,” said the man.

  “We’re making sure that a rock foundation is solid,” said Jim, who had just verified that his voice didn’t carry.

  “It’s solid,” said the man, knocking the entrance to the cave, and with a grunt lifted himself up from the painful kneeling position. They watched his feet walk away.

  “Well,” said Jim. “You certainly would think it is empty from the outside. It would look that way.”

  “Did you check it at eye level?” said Sharon when the man’s footsteps sounded high in the dig.

  “Mary Magdalene had to see this at eye level, because there is a slight slope down. We can excavate farther south, toward the Old City walls, for you to get a better look.”

  “That’s all right,” said Jim, who went out into the base of the dig, and lay down in the little puddles formed by the dips and crannies of the bedrock limestone, and looked into the cave on his belly. Even with the flashlight, which of course Mary Magdalene would not have had, the clay looked like the back of the cave.

  “Jim, you’re getting wet,” said Sharon.

  Even from the outside the wall appeared to blend into the back of the cave. Wet clay or dry clay, two thousand years or three days, inside or out, the tomb looked empty.

  Back at Isaiah House, inside the gardens, an Israeli was talking to one of the Dominican brothers. Jim could tell some Israelis now, just as he could tell some Arabs, by looks. But mostly one discerned by the clothes. And an open white shirt without a tie, under a sports jacket, was as much a sign of an Israeli as a kaffiyeh was of an Arab.

  He understood
they were talking about Father Lavelle. He heard the brother, a lecturer on Hebrew literature at Hebrew University, explain that “that man saw Father Lavelle in Rome.”

  Jim stopped. His Hebrew was better than it had been but still like new legs. His Hebrew was for the reading of the Pentateuch, not for some medical discussion, which this became immediately. The man preferred German. Did Jim speak German? No, said Jim, shaking his head, so they settled on the second language of Israel, English.

  The man was a doctor. He was a psychiatrist. He had been treating Father Lavelle, and he was worried about him.

  Who was Jim? the psychiatrist wanted to know. His name was Dr. Baumgarten. He had white hair, and stood somewhat stiffly, hands resting one on the other, the top one liberally sprinkled with age spots.

  Jim, explained Brother Maurice, was from the Vatican, doing studies in Israel, and had met Father Lavelle in Rome, and was here to continue some of Father Lavelle’s work.

  Jim wanted to know more about Father Lavelle, but he did not want to reveal the suicide. He did not want questions because that might bring up what had provoked it.

  How was Father Lavelle the last time Jim saw him?

  “When I met him,” said Jim, “he was or—‘seemed’ is the word—seemed depressed.”

  “Of course,” said Dr. Baumgarten. “Exactly. He is a chronic depressive. That is why I am worried. Do you know what is chronic depressive?”

  “Medically, I do not.”

  “A chronic depressive runs a risk constantly of suicide.”

  “You mean a major traumatic experience can bring about suicide?” said Jim.

  “No. Anything can bring about suicide. A chronic depressive is a suicide that is going to happen unless something is done.”

  “From what I knew of him, he had never attempted suicide. That is what I was told,” said Jim.

  “Yes, of course,” said Dr. Baumgarten with a sad laugh. “That is the problem with male chronic depressives. The female will make a few attempts before success. The man, unfortunately, will succeed the first time. When they do it, they just do it. Their suicides are not a cry for help, their lives are.”

  “So, what you are really saying is that they cannot judge reality with accuracy? Sort of interpreting everything at its worst?”