He might be able to kill that man right now, and get away with it. After all, who knew what Mendel Hirsch’s influence could accomplish? And this man would be gone forever.
In a flash, Jim thought of Biblical precedent. David and Bathsheba. Right. But that was an example of a sin.
And what he was doing here was thinking of endangering his mission for Christianity, for his own lust.
“All right, come on in,” said Jim. He opened the door and Dubi angled his way in front of Jim so the door could not be shut on him. He strode around the apartment, commenting on how well his wife had done while he was struggling.
Jim could see that Dubi dressed to exploit his sex appeal—from the tight white pants to the jeweled chest.
He could see how Sharon would think of Dubi as sexy. She had never called Jim sexy. She would run up behind him and hug him and say how happy she was, but she would never call him sexy, not so that he would believe it.
When Sharon arrived, Jim hurried to the door to let her know what she was walking into. It was simultaneous with her discovery.
“Dubi,” she said, and Jim saw her face instinctively light with joy. He felt a sword pierce his own heart, and he said a quick silent prayer he regretted, even as he said it, for its blasphemy:
“Jesus. Please don’t let her go with him!”
“I am back, and I see you are living well,” said Dubi.
“One does live better when one’s pocketbook isn’t rifled,” said Sharon.
“When I returned, I thought I might be able to arrange a divorce for you. But now that I see what you are living with, I see you need a real man. Need a real man, Sharon.” Dubi smiled with the content of a leopard.
“Dubi,” said Sharon, putting down some packages on the table in the kitchen, and returning to the living room–bedroom so that her words would be heard and understood. “This is a man,” she said, putting her arms on Jim’s shoulder. “You are an organ.”
Dubi blanched. But he recovered quickly.
“A man without a penis is not a man.”
“This man has everything a man should have. He is a whole man. Just go, please.”
“You’re a whore, living with a Gentile, and I’m not leaving. You’ve offended my honor.”
“Excuse me, Dubi. Sit there, Jim,” said Sharon, and she went to the telephone.
“You can call the police. You are my wife, and you are living with another man. Guess who they will throw out?”
Sharon dialed.
She got Mendel Hirsch. She explained that their mutual guest was having difficulties in her apartment and faced some danger. Then she hung up.
Dubi waited, confident. He even sprawled out on the bed, laughing.
Sharon stood by Jim.
Within ten minutes a car pulled up outside.
“Now we will see,” said Dubi.
Sharon opened the door. Three dark Yemenis in suits entered. They were the escorts in Mea Shearim. Sharon pointed to the bed.
“I am the husband. I belong here. That man must go.”
“Please, sir,” said one of the Yemenis softly. “This is her apartment. Please leave.”
“I am the husband.”
“It’s her apartment.”
“Where’s your identification?” said Dubi.
“You don’t want to go to jail, and we don’t want trouble. Why don’t we go outside and talk?” said the Yemeni softly. Jim wondered what the man could really do against that knife of Dubi’s. The Yemeni had such delicate black features. He was not a big man, either.
“Are you some muscle that whore has hired?”
“Let’s talk about it outside, please.”
Dubi flashed his knife. “We talk here,” he said, and then interposed an American word: “Nigger.”
Instinctively, Jim thought the Yemenis would react strongly, but then he remembered it was not a word they had lived with. The Yemenis might not even know what it meant.
Later, Jim would understand why the Yemeni could be so polite and calm with a knife pointed at him. But at that moment Jim, like Dubi, took it as a sign of weakness.
“Make me,” said Dubi contemptuously.
The Yemeni asked once more, and Dubi moved on him. The knife went onto the floor, and Dubi’s knife arm was instantly behind him in the Yemeni’s grip, and Dubi was doubled over perfectly, with his head on the floor, while one Yemeni stepped in front of Jim and Sharon so they wouldn’t see what was coming. They heard a single blow, and Dubi was blissfully at peace with the universe. One Yemeni picked up the knife and they lifted the sleeping Dubi to his feet and had him out the door, wishing Jim and Sharon, as they left, a most happy Tubashvat.
Later that evening Mendel called to say that Dubi Halafi was on an El Al flight to America, where a job was waiting for him.
“He had a sudden desire to return,” said Mendel.
The apricot tree went into the ground behind the house of Dr. Golban with the singing and clapping of hands. Jim had dug a very deep hole, much deeper than one would have assumed was needed. But Sharon said that was necessary, so the tree could root.
And even as he packed the earth back around the tree, he realized he had told himself the greatest lie he could have invented. He had been counting on time to enable him to leave Sharon, for the days to wear at the love.
But like a good tree, it had taken deep root. Out of Paula’s sight, he squeezed Sharon’s hand, as everyone sang the blessings of the earth.
18
Ash Wednesday
Jim and Sharon pulled a heavy tarpaulin over the opaque plastic cover concealing the body.
“Okay. Now push against it. Go ahead. Fall,” said Sharon.
Jim pushed, as though accidentally coming into the cover, with the horizontal thrust of his left hand. The cover groaned but didn’t move. Not an inch.
“He can’t accidentally see the body now. You’ve got to lift off the tarpaulin,” said Sharon.
“Why does that work?” asked Jim. “Equalized pressure?”
“I don’t know,” said Sharon. “But it works, doesn’t it?”
“Good,” said Jim. He gave a little nod to the tarpaulin cover.
“Why did you do that?” asked Sharon.
“Do what?”
“Bow.”
“I was just agreeing that the tarpaulin was a good idea.”
“You did that before the cover was on. You do that all the time.”
“No, I don’t. But I do respect the body. I have a promise to the Reb Nechtal to honor this body.”
Sharon said nothing. But the bow did not look like honoring a body. It looked like reverence.
“We’ve got to hide the dehumidifier,” said Jim.
The dehumidifier in the niche was too heavy to move up the ladder to Haneviim Street, so they put that under a flap of the tarpaulin.
The thermostat control could be taken out completely, and was unscrewed from its wall casings, and its bulky wires rolled up, so that they both just fit into the long, plastic bag they had once intended to remove the body in.
“Maybe the cover won’t hold now?” asked Jim.
“Do you want to try it again?”
“Too late now,” he said.
They turned on strong, battery-powered lanterns, and then unscrewed the light from above and hid the wires, also under the tarpaulin.
“Looks like a dig again, kind of,” said Jim.
“That’s what we’re going to say it has become. An archaeological workshop, which we are closing. I’m in charge, remember,” said Sharon.
“Fine. Do you think this is going to work?”
“No. But I don’t think he is going to matter anyhow. I don’t even see why we need a geologist in the first place. You can see no one planted the body through another tunnel. Secret tunnel. Secret body. Things don’t work like that.”
“Is everything all right? I don’t want the moisture to get in here too long,” said Jim.
“The clay,” said Sharon. Jim shone
the lantern on the pack she was carrying. Inside was a plastic bag of the same light, red-brown clay so common to this area. She took a handful and smeared it into the ceiling where casings for the light fixture had been set, covering them, and then into the holes in the wall where the thermostat had been set.
“Okay, ready,” said Jim, as he bent down and climbed up the steps, and through the low opening.
It was sunlight outside. The stone was hidden by a large plank of leaning plywood, and the pump to keep the water from building up the base lay under another tarpaulin.
“Hut, hut,” said the Reb Nechtal’s man, pointing at the black bag Jim carried.
“Wires, thermostat,” said Jim. “Heat. Hot. Humidity. Tools.”
The man would not let him walk to the street. Jim had to open it. When the man saw the wires, he looked at Jim, smiled and nodded.
“He wanted to make sure it wasn’t a body,” said Sharon.
“He doesn’t check the little bags,” said Jim.
“That’s foolish,” said Sharon. “You could take the damn thing out in olive jars if you broke it up right.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Jim.
They put the bag in the back seat of Sharon’s car. They waited half an hour, and then the geologist, who wanted everything explained to him, arrived. He drove up in a jeep and wore an army jacket.
Jim went along as Sharon lied her head off. They were on an archaeological dig, and they found some valuable things, and they were lucky to find a very cheap watchman. They had a door down there that locked because of the valuable things, and now they were closing it up, and they wanted to help the owner of the property, if they could, by finding out if there were any fissures in the rock, any possible ancient tunneling, so the excavation wouldn’t take that long.
The geologist was suspicious as soon as he looked down into the dig.
“How deep is the basement going to be?”
“Three stories, at least,” said Sharon.
“Right,” said Jim.
“Hmmmmm,” said the geologist suspiciously.
At the bottom he cast a baleful glance at the metal door with the lock set into a frame, covering a hole into the cave.
“How long have you been working down here?”
“Awhile. We’re closing up,” said Sharon.
“Giving it back to the owner,” said Jim.
Inside the cave, he looked at the tarpaulin. Then at the walls.
“When did you uncover this?” he said.
“Some time ago.”
“Then how come it feels so dry?”
“I don’t know,” said Sharon.
“Does it feel dry?” said Jim.
The geologist took the lantern from Sharon, and made one sweep around the cave horizontally, and then one vertically, and handed the lantern back to Sharon.
“I don’t know what this shit is, Dr. Golban, but you didn’t need me. This is limestone. There is no crack anywhere. There has been no tunneling. You know that.”
He walked up the little tomb steps, and through the door without pausing.
“Well,” said Jim. “That’s a valid report. I’ll just put his name down on it. No tunneling, no fissures.”
“Right,” said Sharon.
“You’re getting good at lying,” said Jim.
“Jim, that bothers me. I am not lying about the facts, I am lying to people to protect your interests.”
“I know that, Sharon. I was joking because it did seem like an uncomfortable position, in a way.”
“No. You don’t understand. I would never falsify anything to make something appear different for history.”
“I know,” said Jim.
“No. I am a liar. I am a liar. You are a liar and we are going to be found out by Dr. Sproul. If the geologist knew something was wrong, Dr. Sproul is going to find out everything. Everything. That’s it, Jim. Everything.”
“No, the geologist didn’t know what we had. He was just suspicious of us. I can live with that,” said Jim.
“He wasn’t Dr. Sproul.”
“We fooled the Jesuit at the Biblical Institute. We have his report in detail about how valid the writing on the disk half was. He even thought it probably referred to some Roman captives because of the rebellions that went on here. That’s why the label ‘Jews, Yehudayai.’ He had no idea what the disk was.”
“He is not Dr. Sproul,” said Sharon. “I’ve been to his lectures. The man is eerie, he is so logical.”
“Yes,” said Jim, “but even he is not going to suspect, if he believes that we have dated this body at 500 B.C. And he has the word of Dr. Sharon Golban of Hebrew University.”
“Yes,” said Sharon. “And everyone knows she would never lie.”
They picked up Dr. William Sproul at Ben Gurion Airport and drove back through the late winter fields of Samaria, not yet producing the flowers of olive, pomegranate, and date.
“I am glad to be here in Israel early. Usually, I arrive no earlier than Easter and stay for part of your digging season, or come after digging season and stay for Christmas,” said Dr. Sproul.
“That’s good,” said Jim, not knowing why he said it was good.
“I will do my Lent here in the Holy Land,” said Dr. Sproul. “Are you familiar with the exact meaning of Lent, Dr. Folan?” He turned to the back seat, where Jim sat.
“Yes, I am,” said Jim, who had been introduced as an archaeologist.
“It’s a meaningful period for a Christian. It prepares you for Easter. The problem with Easter in the States is that it has become rabbits and Easter eggs and pretty clothes on Easter Sunday.”
“Uh huh,” said Jim.
“Now I have got nothing against those things, but the children lose the real meaning. Easter is God’s hand on man. It is the Resurrection of our Lord, and the promise of your resurrection. Easter is a lot holier than Christmas. You have Palm Sunday, when Jesus came to Jerusalem, Good Friday, when he suffered his crucifixion to share our death, and then you have that great day, Easter. It is the most important day. It is the Christian holy day.”
“Yes,” said Jim.
“Now, you take Christmas. What is that? We don’t even know when Christ was born. The Catholic Church picks a date out of a hat, and Christendom goes celebrating it for two thousand years.”
“It wasn’t exactly out of a hat. The Church did it to coincide with a pagan sun festival of gift giving, which it superseded.”
“The blazes you say. You go into a department store and you show me Christ, will you? You’ve got Christmas trees from the German pagan rite, Santa Claus, some other Nordic tribalism, and the gifts. You ask any American child what Christmas is and he will give you an answer that will fit in with pagan Rome. Gifts and good cheer. Well, dammit, that’s not Christian. I’m sorry. Every time I get to the Holy Land, I touch down talking. I’m not like this ordinarily.”
“Dr. Sproul is usually quite subdued,” said Sharon.
“You can’t get angry about a fact, but you can get angry at what we have done to Christianity.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Sproul, but you don’t have a lien on theological bastardization. You are entering a city where the revolt against Greek ways was led by the Maccabees, whose descendants ended up following Greek ways. The Pharisees started out to bring Judaism to the people, whereupon they got bogged down in externals,” said Sharon. “You are just part of a tradition. That’s all.”
“You’re not especially Orthodox, if I remember,” said Dr. Sproul.
He turned around to the back seat to see why Dr. Folan was laughing.
“I am not. No. He didn’t have to laugh,” said Sharon.
“You know each other well, I take it,” said Dr. Sproul.
“We’ve been working together,” said Jim.
“Now, you’ve got this rather special body you wish me to examine, and it is at least 500 years B.C.E. Correct?” said Dr. Sproul, and his voice suddenly became quite soft, almost like clouds in the blue winter
sky.
“How do you know it is special?” asked Jim.
“You didn’t have to offer to pay my way. You could have asked me when I was coming back again, instead of when could I.”
“It is special,” said Sharon. “We have carbon dating of bones that absolutely puts the body 500 B.C.E. plus or minus eighty, of course.”
“Who did the carbon dating?”
“Weizmann Institute.”
“That’s good. You’ll let me see the report.”
“Sure,” said Sharon, and Jim knew they were now going to have to get a phony one made up.
“I ask for that only because you would be surprised how many slip-ups you encounter with technical things.”
“Sure,” said Jim.
“Right,” said Sharon.
He went on about dating of bodies, and how the bones themselves encapsulated what a person did in life. Such as a particular spine fracture, which helped him identify what started out as a half skull in Skokie, Illinois. The fracture was common to athletes, and it was discovered ultimately that the body belonged to a sixteen-year-old ballerina who had been missing from a nearby town.
Bones would enlarge, depending on the kind of jobs a person did. Calcium deposits would build up in different places. The size of people differed with their diet, and Jim, as an American, would have to know that the second generation of immigrants was always taller than their parents because of the diet.
One could trace the Little Ice Age in Europe from the thickness of the pelvis.
“I guess that’s why they say you know what a person is thinking, from the bones,” said Jim.
“You know a lot, but you never know a person. A person has to be alive for that,” said Dr. Sproul seriously.
“This body is special because it was crucified. We think it’s the first Babylonian crucifixion we have discovered,” said Sharon.
“Did the Babylonians crucify?” asked Dr. Sproul.
“The Persians did,” said Sharon. “That’s who the Romans got it from.”
“But did the Babylonians? You must be talking Nebuchadnezzar at that date.”
The Body Page 28