“Why? You have me.”
“Not always.”
“Well, you should not have me like that always,” she said and there was the very big grin.
“One more button.”
“Never.”
“Let me.”
“This is silly.”
“Let me.”
“Not here,” she said, and Warris followed her, trying to read the instructions for indoors. All he saw was that he should keep the camera very steady because indoors there was less light and therefore longer exposure was needed.
On the bedspread, Tomarah opened the other button, then stuck out her chest.
Warris snapped the picture.
“You don’t need the shirt.”
“Oh, never. Never. Put away the camera.”
“I want to see.”
“Nooh,” cooed Tomarah.
“Yeeees,” cooed Warris.
“Put away the camera,” said Tomarah.
“No.”
“Put it away or I’ll break it.”
Warris rested it on a wooden bureau.
Tomarah unbuttoned the rest of her blouse and flung it off. Two mounds bumped up through her thick white bra. Her nipples were hard. She was excited.
Warris grabbed the camera.
Tomarah screamed like a little girl being tickled. Warris snapped. It was not a good picture, he knew, but she didn’t know that.
“You’re awful,” she said. “You cheat. You’re unfair.”
“Stay still.”
“No.”
“I already have the picture.”
Tomarah, with a girl’s grin on a woman’s lust, pushed forward her bosom, bulging into the straining bra.
Warris was very steady, snapping two pictures perfectly.
“Take it off,” he said.
“You wouldn’t dare shoot me like that,” said Tomarah.
“Go ahead,” cooed Warris.
“Here. Nothing,” said Tomarah, reaching behind herself and unsnapping her bra, hurling it across the room, her white breasts rising to the hard pink nipples thrusting in front of her like regimental glories.
Warris’ hand trembled slightly. He photographed at three different exposures to be sure.
“You love your breasts, touch your breasts. Play with them.”
Tomarah raised one eyebrow and, like a matador in a proud display, in full control of her bull, put her two fingers to the tips of the nipples, and played with them, watching Warris’ face.
When Warris did perform the required sex, she needed no more stimulation. She was as moist as a wet marsh, and came to a screaming orgasm almost upon entry.
Several days later, she wanted to play “slut and cameraman” again, as she called it.
“I have no more film,” he said.
“Liar,” she said.
“Really,” said Warris.
“Of course,” said Tomarah. “There was never any film to begin with. Right?”
“Right,” Warris would say. “Unfortunately, I have returned the camera to where I got it as loan.”
“We can pretend you have a camera, no?”
“It’s not the same thing,” Warris would say.
“Liar,” she would say.
The pictures did not come back for a long time, and when they did the corners of the nude shots were dark from finger marks.
Warris had to confess to Major Vakunin one day that indeed his wife had been a great disappointment to him. He suspected she would sleep with some officer. They always turned her on.
“What evidence do you have for that?” said the major.
Warris lowered his head. He let his eyes fall downward. “She was the one who wanted me to take pictures of her. She wanted them to give to someone.”
“Who?”
“No one, yet. The poor woman had it in her head she can seduce some man by handing provocative pictures of herself to someone. I told her no decent man would consent to that.”
“Of course not,” said the major. “I saw the pictures. But I thought they were your own personal business. And does she have them now?”
“No. I have them. And I am going to burn them.”
“If you want, I will do it for you,” said the major.
“No. No,” said Warris. “It is my trouble. You are too kind. I tell you this, however, I am going to stay near her whenever I can, because I know that if I should be away for any length of time, that woman is ripe. Like a plum. Like a pear. Like a well-rounded, juicy peach.”
“You poor man,” said Vakunin. “Do not torture yourself anymore. Let me destroy the pictures for you.”
And Warris did, handing them over in a little packet.
“You are not just my commander, sir,” said Warris. “You are my friend.”
13
“Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
Winter was upon Jerusalem, and the rains were cold. Jim bought himself a warm coat for $75 American. He missed Thanksgiving, and football, the other Jesuits and Boston College, Boston, and the officiousness of Father Wingren. He also missed phoning an aunt once a week in Portland, and performing the personal sacraments for the family, such as baptism, weddings, and funerals.
An uncle had died, and he was not there. His little cousin, Mary Elizabeth Coffey, was going to marry a boy from Georgia, and he would not be there.
Pots of chemicals to absorb moisture out of the air were placed in the cave until the plastic cases were ready. These would be opaque, airtight, and crushproof. One would conform to the bones, and the other to the disk. They would have to withstand a truck falling on them, at least. Jim had told the manufacturer the cost did not matter.
He had rented a secure laboratory just outside of Rehovot for the bones. Sharon had supervised the construction of the temperature and humidity controls. Jim had taken care of the more mundane dangers, such as breaking and entering, with locks and alarms.
The clay wall covering the niche had been sprayed so it would not crumble, and then cut with diamond-edged saws into squares. Each square was photographed, and then removed to Hebrew University, where Sharon was given a laboratory. Jim had a key to the lab.
Making sure every square matched every picture, they reconstructed the clay, which conformed to the arch of the niche. Jim felt when the entire clay covering was removed that the bones of the little man looked somehow naked, and that it was wrong to look at him, so helpless with that disk lying over his spine.
It was as though the clay wall over the niche had been his one blanket of respect and now he was an object again. Several times Jim had prayed for him, asking that, if he were not in heaven already, he be accepted through the blood of Him who had died the same way.
Jim offered up his own loneliness for him.
Rumors kept coming back that he was working on some bodies. These were usually from people in the halls of Hebrew University. There he met Brother Maurice, the Dominican from Isaiah House, strolling with some students, chatting in Hebrew, and he could see how Sharon would not know Father Lavelle was a priest. One couldn’t tell, if one didn’t know, that Brother Maurice wasn’t just another teacher of Hebrew literature.
He was also a citizen of Israel.
Both Jim and Sharon disassembled the wall again on a long metal table, and then hammer blow by hammer blow shattered it, looking for objects in the clay. They found none. They even shattered the little bits, until they had a pile of powder. If they wanted, they could have added water to it and made clay again. They poured it into a plastic bag and labeled it “Niche covering.” A small portion was sent to a laboratory even though Sharon said it was clay common to the entire eastern part of the Mediterranean.
“There is a point where thoroughness becomes foolishness,” she said, with his right arm firmly in her hand. She had him backed against the main table in their private lab at the university. “No one is more thorough than me. I know what clay is. But I think you’ll answer that you don’t mind being a fool for Christ, right?”
“I can’t be too thorough. Please step back.”
“What?” said Sharon.
Jim felt the closeness of her body, her hips against his, her braless breasts pressing against his chest.
She always seemed to have her hands on him when they talked.
“We’re touching,” said Jim.
“Yes,” said Sharon. She seemed puzzled.
“Well, it’s uncomfortable,” said Jim.
“Why?” said Sharon. “We’re just talking.”
“But it’s sort of, well, sensual.”
“I was just talking.”
“Could you do it without touching?”
“No. I feel uncomfortable just saying the words, when I know someone. Do you understand?”
“Could you try?”
“Sure,” said Sharon.
“Well, are you going to try?”
“Yes, but not now. We’re talking,” she said.
“If I stay in this position, it is a sin for me, because it arouses desire. I am going to have to move,” said Jim.
“Move,” said Sharon, stepping back. “I was just talking. You sound like some rabbi calculating sin by where you stand or don’t stand. What’s the purpose of Christ if nothing changes? He was supposed to bring change, right? So where is the change?”
“You’ve been reading Christian books.”
“I am on a dig. I have a responsibility as long as it lasts. Answer the question. Why has nothing changed?”
“Because, as He said, He came to fulfill the law, not change it.”
“You always have an answer,” said Sharon.
“Does that bother you?”
“It bothers me that you have a good mind and are wasting it. But it is your mind, isn’t it? If you want to believe you are different from the others, then believe.” Sharon sighed and looked at her watch. “It is getting on Shabbat Eve and I must go.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in religious forms,” said Jim. “Yet every Friday you leave early.”
“The rabbis wouldn’t call me a good woman, but I observe Shabbat. I have a family, my brother, whom I share Shabbat with. It’s his family and mine. I love them. Paula, his wife, is from America.”
“Are you going to ask if I know her?” said Jim.
“No. No. Did you think I would?”
“No,” said Jim. “May I walk with you?”
“Certainly,” said Sharon.
He wanted to walk with her because he had come to like her companionship, and felt that somehow on Fridays he was always cheated by her leaving early. He wanted the rest of his workday with her.
Outside it was raining, and Sharon wore a yellow rain slicker with a broad yellow hat. She looked like a tall mushroom. She grabbed Jim’s arm as he hunched down into his jacket. She knew he could not go to her apartment, but wanted company, so she walked with him in the rain. He found a fast-food store and got a pita stuffed with falafel and tomatoes and onions, and ate it as the rain soaked it, threatening to break the bread.
They walked up to the Dome of the Book, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were now housed, and Jim commented on how the scrolls had helped shed light on early Christianity.
“I have a question about that, Jim. I have puzzled over it, and I had intended to ask you during your first interrogation. I find it the most emotionally appealing part of the Gospels, and yet the most illogical. I don’t understand how you can explain it.”
“I think I know what you are thinking of,” said Jim. He was smiling. The sandwich was bursting, and he had to let it go into a trash can or wear it over his jacket.
Hebrew University was beneath them now in the valley made by one of the many hills of Jerusalem. Across the valley, he knew, was Sharon’s apartment, which he would not let himself enter.
“If you know, Jim, then tell me.”
“Just before He dies on the cross, Jesus exclaims, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
“Yes, that’s it. Why? If he were God, if he could prophesy, if he said, as the Gospels claim, that he would rise again, that he would outlast the Temple building itself, how could he suffer such despair, such hopelessness?”
“Because,” said Jim, “He is not Socrates.”
“Explain.”
“No. You think. You read the life of Socrates, and then you tell me what you think.”
“That’s not fair,” said Sharon.
“You did it to me with the Gospels.”
“I’m not strong on the Hellenes. You can tell me, I’m not a child.”
“Read the life of Socrates and you tell me,” said Jim.
“Let’s see, Socrates was a Greek philosopher, and a good man, who was also executed.”
“Read the life of Socrates,” said Jim.
“I don’t like it when you play games.”
“You played games with me.”
“I also had to have someone to go to the beach. It is not the same thing.”
“Right, yours was a form of blackmail. Mine is a form of education. Maybe you will know something of Christianity that is hard to understand.”
“All right,” said Sharon, with a bite of threat in her voice. “If you are going to educate me, then I will educate you.”
“It sounds ominous,” said Jim.
“I have mentioned that you should know politically what everyone in the Gospels was doing, where they were coming from, as you say.”
“Yes,” said Jim. It struck a chord. “You mentioned that when I noticed how the tomb looked empty with the niche covering in place.”
“Yes. That is part of it. You have a good memory. You know Pilate was washing his hands from other things than guilt, which he may not have felt at all.”
“I would appreciate very much your suppositions. As damaging as you apparently think they are, I would want nothing less than your suppositions.”
“Actually, they’re not that damaging. They’re just suppositions, things we usually put together at the end. I was just trying to force you to answer your riddle.”
“We’ll both be educated,” said Jim.
“Damascus Gate, 10 A.M., Monday morning. You’ll see the whole Second Temple period, everyone, Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas. We’ll go to the courtyard where Christ was sentenced and Pilate was politically trapped. We’ll see the Second Temple itself, and we’ll go right to the end of the Via Dolorosa.”
“To the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,” said Jim.
“Yes,” said Sharon, and she gave him a little good-bye hug sealed with a kiss on the lips.
“Don’t forget,” Jim yelled after her. “Why was Socrates different from Jesus? There’ll be questions.”
He watched her go, and he went back to Isaiah House alone, in the rain, tasting her lipstick on his lips. At first he tried wiping it off, but when it was gone he realized it hadn’t lasted long enough.
“Socrates went to his death calmly, rationally accepting,” said Sharon, meeting Jim at the Damascus Gate. It was a sunny, wintry day and blessedly dry, so a light sweater was all he needed.
“Good morning,” said Jim. He had brought the coffee and Arab bread.
“Is that right, is that right about the death? Was that the point?”
“Yes. Do you want bread?”
“No. Just the coffee. I never have bread until I’ve had enough cigarettes.”
“When is that?”
“When my throat hurts. Is what I am saying right about Jesus?”
“You have it exactly. Socrates was a philosopher and a good man who went to his death accepting death as a natural progression of life. Christ first prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to be spared what He knew would come, and then, on the cross, despaired of having been abandoned.”
“All right, but how does that all fit?” said Sharon. “How can you say to me that Christ despaired because he was not Socrates, tell me that?”
“First of all, which has the elements more of fairy tale, the life of Socrates or the life of Jesus?”
“Well, when you get to the Resurrection I would have to say …”
“No. No. The life. The life itself, as a man.”
“Oh. Socrates is more of a cartoon character and less believable. He is too perfect. Christ curses fig trees, and most of all Christ fears death. Which I am asking, how can Christ fear death if he knows he will be resurrected? If he is God?”
She saw him smile as she took the coffee. She did not enter the gate. She was not interested in walking. She wanted to know, and there was something here that moved Jim Folan deeply, that was something strong in his life.
“When God was man in the life of Christ, He shared that life. Now some will say manhood is standing up to someone or being brave, but that I believe is a virtue, and not a natural thing necessarily. What is most man about man? And by that, I am sure you know, I mean people. What is it that makes us different from statues, from giraffes?”
“Yes. Go on. The winter is not long enough to explore that one,” said Sharon. She was not joking.
“Manhood, real manhood, the thing of manhood is knowing you do not control the really great events of your life.”
“Define ‘great.’”
“Whether you are born or die,” said Jim, “you have no control over that. When you are born, you will die. And man knows that, and pushes that out of his mind when he can. At the time, just before His death, in that helpless despair, Christ was most a man, significantly the time of His greatest manhood, just before His eternity, and the glory of Resurrection. That helpless despair was our humanity.”
“Ah,” said Sharon. “But Christians aren’t supposed to despair. They are supposed to hope. Christ, therefore, was not a good Christian.”
“Christ was not a Christian. He was a Jew,” said Jim. “And what we have, that He did not have at that moment, was Him. We have His Resurrection,” said Jim. “His Resurrection is our hope.”
“His philosophy, I think, as far as people go,” she said, “is probably the best in the world. Christ certainly understood people. He really understood people.” Sharon looked around the stone walkway into Damascus Gate. People were coming in now, as the Old City hummed into its day of commerce and prayer. She looked up to her left at the beginning of Haneviim Street. She couldn’t see the street from there because of a rise of new limestone steps. Jim wasn’t talking. She looked back to him, and then he caught her eye.
The Body Page 20