Dr. Golban had been a fanatic for archaeological procedure, and a fanatic about student work. She had been known to dismiss an entire class because they were unprepared. She would fail an entire class, too. Everyone knew that, and knew what a hard marker she was. Yet, it was impossible to get her to be more lenient or understanding. It was as though she was out to prove she would out-Ashkenazi an Ashkenazi, or out-European anyone.
She had not been pleasant when told she was given the leave for the autumn semester, even though she had agreed to it.
“What else was I going to do? You stuffed it down my throat, and with it already stuffed, you then say, would you care to eat, and how sorry you are. Well, thank you for nothing.”
That was what she had said for the fall semester. She had also added she was willing to give up only one semester. But there was going to be a fight of fights if there was even a hint of her having to give up another semester. Even a hint.
Now the department head had the responsibility of telling her she was on indefinite leave from the university.
She came in to his office happy, dancing in on the knock. There was something different about her this day. She still avoided lipstick, and her hair was still severe, but there was a softness about her today, an easy laughter, a willingness to enjoy the moment. The department head smiled nervously.
“What a lovely, lovely necklace,” he said.
“Yes. I thought I would wear it today. It was a bribe, you know. Actually not. I joke. It was a gift of appreciation from an Arab businessman who was glad that I kept him informed. I got it on the last dig. Do you really like it?” she said, lifting up the necklace Mr. Hamid had given her so graciously, and which before was too flamboyant for her, but now was just right.
“Beautiful. Exquisite. I am afraid I have bad news for you. You are on indefinite leave.”
“I thought that was what you were going to tell me,” said Sharon. “You know, for the first time I understand what Mr. Hamid saw in this necklace. The man saw me in the necklace. You know. It is amazing what people will know. People can even see what you will be or could be.”
“Absolutely,” said the department head. “You know, of course, we will welcome you back after your leave, and you will have your rightful seniority, and everything.”
“Yes. I know.”
“So you are aware you are on indefinite leave?”
“Absolutely,” said Dr. Sharon Golban. “The rest will be good. I will come back refreshed.”
In a New York City bar, a Moroccan Jew from Israel realized the horrible truth of America. It had taken him a long while to finally acknowledge this, but in the grimy slush of Fifth Avenue, where so much money was, with the ice water totally permeating his socks, Dubi Halafi had to accept he was not going to become a millionaire.
He was not going to make it on his dark good looks. He was not going to make it on his large penis. And he was not going to be able to successfully steal it without being caught.
America was not easy.
American Jews were not going to welcome him as a partner in their businesses.
American Jews were Americans. They might talk for Israel. They might send money for Israel. But when an Israeli like Dubi Halafi should possibly be a little bit short of funds, and possibly mistakenly fail to ring every little penny in a cash register, they would fire him like some nigger, a word he had learned his first week in this new country, a word he suspected some might use for him when his back was turned, although he was not as dark as a Black.
Blacks were friendly to him because of his dark skin, but they were Americans, too. They talked of Third World, but they were on the hustle, too. The worst thing was that he and they were competing in the same market. And they had a better chance because there were laws that protected them.
But there was no law that protected Dubi Halafi in his new country. And he could not return to Israel, because he had left telling everyone he was not going to hang around for spare change but going to America to make big money, where a real lover could be a millionaire and drive Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces. What was he getting there in Israel—the leftovers from some professor whose family looked down on him?
A man who left to become a millionaire could not return home owing for the wet suit on his back. Everyone would say, “Dubi, millionaire, buy me supper.” That’s what they would say, and they would hate him for not doing so. Sure, he could cut up anyone who talked to him like that, but how many could a man fight? There were limits.
But that cold day, Dubi smelled golden hope. He was bartending when another Moroccan Jew told him he had heard from someone who had just arrived from Jerusalem about Dubi’s wife back in Israel.
“I don’t care about her,” said Dubi, and used a Moroccan slang word for a skinflint. He was remembering how he had covered himself and offered his own body for the mere cost of getting him to Jerusalem. Less than cost. Just a helpful few dollars. That he didn’t intend to use the airfare, Sharon couldn’t know. She was Talmud stupid in a way, and that meant someone who just studied and didn’t know the real world.
He had written her off as worthless.
“She is living with someone now,” said the man, who had heard this from a friend, and immediately Dubi saw Sharon crazy in some kind of love, and himself selling her that divorce, which was just one of many possibilities that would force her to open her pocketbook.
“With a Gentile, too,” said the man.
“The whore,” said Dubi righteously. He was working up the proper feeling for the best kind of settlement. His money was back in Israel.
17
And Ye Shall Plant Trees
He had betrayed his God, his Pope, his order, his vows, and even his dead mother.
“What have I done to your mother?” asked Sharon.
Jim was in a pair of undershorts, drinking awful coffee and reading notes in Sharon’s apartment, preparing to remove the jaw from the skull this day at the dig.
“You haven’t done anything. I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” said Sharon.
“I’ve broken every vow in my life by living with you. I don’t know of anyone I haven’t betrayed by living with you.”
“Me. What about me?”
“I am betraying you by telling you this. It’s not your burden.”
“You mean I get you only for the laughs?” said Sharon.
He stood up and hugged her. She felt so good in his arms. He felt so good holding her, the very act of the giving of his body warmth felt holy and good. That’s what it felt like. What it was, was mortal sin.
“We were poor, Sharon. I know there is the impression in the rest of the world that all Americans are rich. We weren’t. And my father had this drinking problem and when I got out of the Marines, I could have supported my mother.”
“You were a good son,” said Sharon.
He felt her lips say this on his bare shoulder.
“Well, yeah. I tried to be. I really did. And I wanted to be. Not just for approval or anything. I chose to do it.”
“Good for you,” said Sharon.
“Thank you,” said Jim. “Well, my mother, who never had an easy life, chose to do without to share in my priesthood. She gave a son to God, do you see?”
“Human sacrifice,” said Sharon.
“No,” said Jim, pushing her shoulders away so he could look at her. “Sacrifice of certain daily things, but not the life, you see? Because if you love something, you give up something for it, because you love the other thing more. You see? Like you thought Tabinian should give up his money for scholarship because of his good mind, you see?”
“That’s Tabinian. He has his problems. But I want to do what I am doing, why not you?”
“Did you want to take second place to a holy man on this dig?”
“No.”
“Why did you?”
“Our streets might seem peaceful to you, but we are surrounded.”
“But you ga
ve up the dig because you loved your country more.”
“I don’t think survival is really a choice, Jim. It is not an option one chooses or does not choose. So I did it, yes.”
“Well, I chose,” said Jim. “And then, I chose again.” And he hugged her, and kissed her neck and smelled her hair in the morning, and it all felt so good, how could it be wrong? Which was what a seventeen-year-old kid should think, not a thirty-five-year-old Jesuit selected from all the soldiers of Christ to defend the faith.
Good for you, Jim, he told himself, not without bitterness. And then he forced himself to a working compromise. His first mission was for the Church, therefore his own feelings had to be secondary. If guilt got in the way, he had to ignore it, or betray his mission further.
Perhaps he might be lucky. Daily routine often wore on passion. He had seen it in so many relationships, especially those that seemed the most furiously wonderful. Like his.
Perhaps his passion for Sharon was that way, precisely because it was new. The whole thing was new to him. Perhaps time, God’s great healing tool, might cure him of it. He might just drift away from Sharon in time. It had happened to others, why not him?
But as he dressed he remembered he was no longer doing his examen, and he had to give up saying the Mass, because not only was he in a state of mortal sin but he did not have an immediate intention of amending that state.
On the other hand, he had seen Sharon change before his eyes, hear her say she had never been so happy, hear her comment that he was the first man who seemed to have everything.
In the car, going to the dig, with rain pelting the Volkswagen top, and the streets running so heavy with water that Jim saw how ancients could store in winter cisterns a supply of water for a year, he asked her what she meant by his having everything.
“You’re such a fine person, and there’s, well, the sex, too. It’s so good.”
“You mean you never enjoyed it so much?” said Jim.
“It is special with you, Jim,” she said, and she smiled so softly, and so nicely, he became excited, just sitting there watching her in the cramped bug.
“It wasn’t good with Dubi?” said Jim. She had told him about how he had hurt her so much in so many ways.
“With Dubi it was great, but it was the only thing, you know.”
He fought with himself not to ask the next question.
“Was he, uh, better than me?” asked Jim.
“That’s pride, Jim. I’m counting sins,” said Sharon.
“No, it’s not pride. If some man gave you more pleasure, I want to know.”
“Dubi was Dubi, Jim. I feel like a full woman, now, Jim. You love me. Me. Dubi was a warm, active dildo.”
“He was better,” said Jim.
“You don’t understand what a woman feels.”
“He was better. Say it. I will not mind. I am curious. He was better. Say it. Say it.”
“I won’t.”
“But you mean it,” said Jim.
“No. I mean what I mean. And I say what I mean. You want me to mean something else.”
“I don’t know what the hell I mean,” yelled Jim.
“Well, neither do I,” yelled back Sharon.
“Is that so?” said Jim.
“No,” yelled Sharon. “I know exactly what I mean. I love you.”
“Okay,” said Jim. “You know we have no long-range future.”
Sharon pulled the car over. Never before had Jim seen her stop for anything. This time she parked, and turned to stare at him directly.
“What do you want from me, Jim?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to lose you and I want you to go away.”
“Good. I’ll do just that.”
“What?”
“None of your business. Why are you doing this?”
“I’m sorry,” said Jim. “I really am.”
“The one thing I have feared all my life was loving someone and being left by that person. You know?”
“So you fall in love, first with a lout and then a Jesuit,” said Jim, and he was crying.
And she was crying. But she thought about what he said, and then she was laughing. And he laughed. They laughed with tears on their cheeks, hugging each other, taking this precious moment in Jerusalem.
At the dig one of Reb Nechtal’s men sat in a wooden shed, doing his mitzvah for the dead, and that meant being there to see that the bones were not moved unless, of course, they could be proved to be Gentile. He nodded to Jim and Sharon as they arrived, and Jim returned the nod.
A wooden stairway anchored into the walls now replaced the ladders. Electricity had been run five feet under the surface of the lot and then dropped through a drilled hole down to bedrock, where it came out under a shield of plastic that stretched to the metal door. All the improvements had been done in one night under the guise of street repairs.
Jim had suspected this was the work of the Mossad, and asked forgiveness of Sharon if she thought this was paranoid.
“Sounds like the Mossad or Army to me. I can’t imagine the Jerusalem municipal authority running a line in one night, and having it work, no less. That’s a year of paper work, let alone the histadrut, which will demand that one man dig, the other hold the shovel, another drive the truck with earth, and everyone get overtime and vacations. This is Israel, not South Portland, Maine, where everything gets done well.”
“Not everything gets done well in America,” said Jim, smiling.
They entered the cave, which was warm and dry. Jim had put the body on a case with an opaque plastic shield over it, much like a gigantic dust cover for a photograph.
Sharon knew that he insisted there be no levity inside the cave itself, in accordance with his promise to the Reb Nechtal that the body would be respected at all times. And this included a prayer before the body was touched and that the prayer was to Jesus, not incongruous with the promise to the rabbi, since it was how Jim showed respect.
The bones were still on the palette Jim had carefully edged under them. He moved his hands with stately precision to the head, reminding himself how he moved saying Mass, turning his whole body to turn the hands. He could not help glancing at the orange marks on the tibia. He pressed the jaw, ever so gently. It was supposed to come off. He looked to Sharon.
“I can’t do it,” he said.
“That’s all right,” she said. She stepped in front of the manmade platform on which the palette rested, and asked for a small pick. Ever so gently she worked it into the jaw. Jim turned away. He heard scraping, and he stared at the side of the cave. He knew the jaw was off now, and he knew she was collecting whatever hardened connecting tissue had once held the jaw shut.
“That’s it,” she said, and Jim saw the jaw was off, with just a shade scraped from the skull beneath where the openings for the ear were.
She showed him a dark rocklike substance, with small dusty fragments around it.
“That’s it, huh?” said Jim.
“Uh huh,” said Sharon. “That’s plus or minus eighty years in dating.”
They put the cover back, closed the dig, and went up to the surface.
Sharon had given Jim a list of three places nearby that could do carbon 14 dating. She also said he could send it overseas if he would feel better. He had chosen the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot.
Sharon was the first person who ever explained carbon dating to him clearly.
“To take the mystery out, carbon 14 dating really measures how long an organism has been dead. And it does it by measuring the amount of carbon 14 released. Now, how does that work, and why does it work?” said Sharon, and she answered her question.
“Plants, which are the basis of the food chain, absorb carbon 14 through carbon dioxide. We eat plants. We get it. We die. We stop collecting it, and start giving it back to the atmosphere in carbon dioxide gas as we decompose. And we can tell from the rate of emission, and from what is left, how long this has been going on. Okay?”
“Sounds simple,” said Jim.
“In theory. In practice measurements are not that easy because of competing radiation even from the measuring machines. I think of it as an art in a way.”
The Weizmann Institute at Rehovot was a modern, technological campus. Sharon personally knew the woman who would do the carbon 14 dating. She spoke pleasantly with her, reminding her it was a rush. Jim felt uncomfortable near this middle-aged technician. On her right arm was a tattooed number. She had survived a Nazi concentration camp.
Jim realized he was looking at the arm just as he was reminding himself not to look at the arm.
While waiting for the report from the Weizmann Institute, Sharon and Jim prepared the disk, which they had retrieved from Reb Nechtal.
At first they had planned to tape over half the disk and photograph that for one expert to examine, and then do it to the other half for another expert, and then have someone else examine just two indentations in the disk to ascertain that indeed this was done by hand a long time ago, and not by some modern tool.
But with their two heads together they came up with a solution, so fiendishly clever they even joked about going into a life of crime. The solution could have come from Solomon.
They cut the disk in half with a diamond saw and locked away the half that said “Melek,” because any scholar seeing that half would become overwhelmed with curiosity to find out which king it referred to. The portion with “Yehudayai” was hand delivered to a Semitic scholar in the Biblical Institute for his analysis. Any aberration, or scholarly clue, would be just as present in the left side as the other.
Jim had Sharon deliver the disk half lest the Jesuit at the Biblical Institute was one of the ones who had been called to Rome. He might recognize Jim, and attach Vatican importance to that half.
The man’s name was Jeremiah Murphy O’Connor, S.J., D.S.S.
“Another Irishman,” said Jim when Sharon returned to the lab at Hebrew University.
“Really. I thought he was English,” said Sharon.
“He might be a British citizen, but he is of Irish descent.”
“Jeremiah Murphy O’Connor is not an English name?”
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