The Body

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “They will ask a price, Your Holiness. Why do you think they chose us?”

  “Didn’t an early report say they just wanted it off their hands?”

  “The Copts could have taken it off their hands. So could the Greek Orthodox, the Abyssinians. Even the Church of England might have taken it off their hands, but we as the Vatican have the only thing they want, recognition as a state. That’s why they chose us. They did not offer all the help to our innocent American because they wanted to escape a few more nasty words thrown at them. I know the Jews.”

  “I think not,” said the Pope. “But if recognition is their price, we will pay it.”

  “This priest you chose is not that strong in the faith, Your Holiness. After all, adultery …”

  “Lord Cardinal, not once did you hear from him that his adultery was not a sin. In our opinion, James Folan was the best. And it is the best, the best, the best of our flock, Lord Cardinal, who will suffer most if that discovery in Jerusalem is loosed among them. No. Pay the price.”

  “The time has passed when it would be easy, Your Holiness. The Church has many Arab communities. They will become the focus of unbridled hate.”

  “We can survive blood and suffering. Pay the price.”

  “The Arab world is highly fluid, the only constant thing is hate. And it has Israel for that focus, but the hatred is constantly turning here and turning there. We are too weak to turn it away. I know the Arabs. Even before Israel, that was all they had.”

  “Pay the price,” said the Pope.

  “Your Holiness, when we entertained the schema exonerating Jews from special guilt for Christ’s crucifixion, we came under immense pressure from Arab governments, and do you know the ones who most fought the passage of this? The Arab Christians. They knew. What will happen to them if we recognize Israel? And what will we say to the world?”

  “That it is about time we recognized that the Jews have come home, according to the Testaments, and that it is time the Israelis recognized the Palestinians have a home, also.”

  “Arabs don’t care what you do for Arabs. They care what you do for their enemies. A bloodbath will ensue, Your Holiness.”

  “It will pass.”

  “And what about Jerusalem, Your Holiness? We have properties and interests and claims in that city.”

  “Let Jerusalem take care of Jerusalem.”

  “It is diplomatic stupidity of the highest, highest order. What will future generations of the Church say?”

  “Yes,” said the man responsible for a much larger church than the one that went with Peter from Galilee to Rome, “that there will be future generations of the Church.”

  Mendel Hirsch was in the busiest time of his year when he was whisked away to the Prime Minister’s office.

  “Do those idiots know tomorrow is Easter?” he screamed. But the demand came from too high an authority, and when he got to the office, he saw the Prime Minister was there, and the Foreign Minister, and the Chief of Staff, and a man whom he did not know. He found out quite quickly by the man’s remarks that he was the head of the Mossad. It was always a secret who held that post.

  “Well, Mendel, the Vatican wants the body and accouterments we stumbled on,” said the Prime Minister.

  “Is that Cardinal Pesci?” asked Mendel.

  “Yes.”

  “I am surprised he didn’t contact me,” said Mendel, concealing hurt in his voice.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “I knew they were concluding soon.”

  “They verified it,” said the man from the Mossad.

  “How do you know?” said Mendel.

  “Through a half-dozen sources, and also consulting the archaeologist, Dr. Golban.”

  “Is she working for you?”

  “No, she was supposed to be working with you, Mendel,” said the man from the Mossad.

  “Well, they want the proof that there was no Resurrection,” said the Prime Minister. “And what do we want?”

  “Recognition,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

  “That is a big thing. A very big thing,” said the Prime Minister. “Just how valuable is this body?”

  Mendel began on what Resurrection meant, to pre- and post-Chalcedonian Churches, who Christ was to which rite, and finally when he was told to state exactly what it meant to the Catholic Church, he ventured, “Nothing.”

  And to explain to his startled audience, he gave an example.

  “Let’s say we discover an absolutely authentic scroll. Absolutely authentic. And it says the writer made up most of the Pentateuch, that he was an Egyptian nobleman who spun this tale to a bunch of slaves to get them to follow him into the desert. And once they are there, he finds they are too unruly, so he goes to a mountaintop, and makes up a fact that the one God told him there are ten things everyone should do, a good set of guidelines for wandering in the desert. You know, to keep peace among these people.”

  “What are you getting at, Mendel?” asked the Prime Minister.

  “Do you think it is going to make any difference to that crazy group in Mea Shearim? Huh? So what? You show that thing there, they’ll stone you to death. What I am saying is, I don’t think the Vatican should care that much.”

  “They do,” said the man from the Mossad.

  “How do you know?” asked Mendel, and everyone looked at him with surprise and just a little bit of contempt. It was an extreme act of naïveté to think that the Mossad would reveal a source to him if it at first had chosen not to do so. Even the Premier would ask only how valid a source was, never who.

  “Mendel,” said the Prime Minister, “we are going to ask for recognition. Therefore we do not want any casual slip-ups when we have to move the body to the Vatican. Instead of the Mossad assisting you, now you work under orders from the Mossad.”

  And then the report on James Folan, CIA, S.J., thirty-five, was read, as Mendel was told he could leave. Outside the office one of the guards commented about a bomb killing two in a city marketplace, and to Mendel it was two more added to the six million, plus those killed after and those killed before, which was why he was a Zionist, when he never believed in the God of the Jews.

  The Middle East commander for the KGB got news of the bombing on his way to a highest-level meeting. An aide stuffed the message in his briefcase.

  The aide was urgent. But aides were always urgent. They were always urgent and impeccably uniformed, and seemed to have constantly to justify their positions.

  The commander wore a common suit made in Russia, and did not feel he had to justify anything of his position. He had seen too much too often to do anything more than his job until he died. And if they took that away from him, they could have it. He had been right on the importance of Haneviim Street, according to the latest reports. And he had been right on the intelligence of the Palestinian, Abouf.

  And that, too, did not matter. He had been right so many times before. He couldn’t read the note without lifting the thick glasses onto his forehead. Two Jews had been killed by a bomb, a bomb in a small market less than two miles from the Israeli Knesset. The PLO was calling it “a deep penetrating phase, advancing toward the Zionist government itself.”

  “Nothing,” he said, giving it back to the aide for filing. Some Palestinian who probably had harbored a bomb maybe a year or two had finally planted it where Israeli citizens passed, and run back to his house. If he planted enough bombs, he would ultimately be caught. If he stopped, he would cease to be even a minor factor in the Middle East equation.

  The commander had developed a nose for the Middle East. He knew that one day you could have an entire government almost in your pocket, and the next day nothing. An ally meant someone you could use at the time. Never was there a place where more words were spoken that meant less. Never was there a place where violence had so little meaning.

  He thought the Arabs were the only people he knew who celebrated assassinations and mourned peace treaties. If they weren’t bombing
Jews, they were bombing themselves.

  How many efforts had failed to get the Palestinians to form a unified command structure only to end in some fire fight when one faction disagreed with another?

  And two more had died, and many more would die, and it all didn’t mean a thing. Years before, he would have said, rather, a hundred thousand deaths to move mankind forward rather than one that did nothing.

  But he knew, in his years, that it all meant nothing.

  That was the secret of his courage. That was how he faced the highest leadership this day inside the Kremlin, telling them what had been discovered in Jerusalem.

  There was laughter and applause in the windowless room with the large felt-covered table. A few of the older ones even started the applause.

  “They found the body. They found it. Good-bye, Christianity,” said several.

  But the man who had seen too much did not join in the celebration or laughter.

  “God is dead, and they have the body to prove it,” said one who could claim scars from fights with the Czar’s Cheka. Everyone was applauding except the man who brought the information.

  When the good humor abated, he said:

  “We have only established that the Israelis have discovered the nature of the body in this archaeological dig to the satisfaction of the Vatican. The Vatican has, we have discovered on highest authority, asked for the body and accompanying artifacts. Israel has responded with a request for recognition.”

  “We won’t let that one go through,” said a general. “We’ve got them all. Good-bye, Church in Poland. Good-bye. That’s it.”

  “No,” said the man who had brought the information. “It will not be the end of the Catholic Church, nor will it be the end of Christianity. Religion is not based on a rational system of proofs. It survives because of needs. If we offer proof that Christ has not risen, those who believe will not believe us. Some will fall away, but Christianity will remain because it fills too much in the human personality.”

  “What, do we have a Christian here?” he was asked.

  “No, a man who has seen too much, comrade.” He could have offered communism itself. There were workers dying to get over the, Berlin Wall to the West to escape communism, where students were struggling to bring about just that system, supposedly for their benefit. No one in the world could convince them they were not saving the masses, least of all the masses.

  The struggle for communism filled their emotional needs, and the real results of communism itself would have little effect on them. It was always the communism yet to be tried that really worked.

  He could have mentioned this, and he knew which of the leadership would accuse him of treason and which would understand.

  But he was too tired to bother with this fight, and had given it up long ago. He just did his job.

  “I don’t think exposing evidence of the body, if the Israelis would let us get some, that is if we could overcome them, would do any appreciable good. But there is a minor, if temporary, good that could befall us. If we make sure that the transfer of the body in secret goes through, then the Vatican will recognize Israel, and the Christian position in the Middle East will be significantly weakened for a while.”

  “Not permanently?”

  “Permanence is not a function of the Middle East,” he said, suppressing the first thought he had, which was, yes, there was something permanent in the Middle East. The Koran, the New Testament, and the Old Testament. Only the word remained there. And he was sure Das Kapital, too, would remain, for it, too, was a hope, and hopes never died no matter how unreal they were. But he was not about to bring any of this up at this table.

  Abu Silwan got two messages in the darkest of morning as he manned his revolutionary suicide outpost, with the help of a Japanese Red Army volunteer, who had the tightest vaginal cavity that was ever his glory to enter.

  The first message was that he was to bring back his man who had successfully completed his mission and keep him from disclosing whatever he knew.

  Abouf could damage something that was going on that Moscow wanted to go on. It was now Silwan’s responsibility to return Abouf to Moscow quietly or make sure he was silenced.

  Apparently, Abouf had failed to follow orders to leave Israel immediately. Possibly this was caused by confusion with contact. It was now up to Silwan to see that it was done.

  The second message was almost too unimportant to be bothered with. If he had to be bothered like that, he could always have his revolutionary suicide outpost in the firing line of Beirut instead of in the strategic hills placed outside the city.

  Revolutionary cadres had struck the day before at the power center of Zionist Jerusalem, killing two and escaping unharmed. This meant possible reprisals by air.

  “They never bomb here, why did you bother me?” said Abu Silwan to the messenger.

  He had to think about important things. Why did Russia want the Vatican and Israel to be successful at something and, most important, who was betraying whom?

  Jim Folan returned to Jerusalem on an El Al flight, seated beside a woman asking why he did not eat his meal. He said he wasn’t hungry. And she asked him if he had lost a loved one.

  He said he had. And she answered that loss was part of life. In another time he could have told her that loss also had meaning. Now, there was no meaning.

  Sharon was not there to pick him up, although he looked for the yellow bug, which he could recognize even by its cough. He had phoned the Friday night of his report and said which flight he was making.

  He was first to escort the disk on one flight back to Rome, and then escort the body on another flight. In case there was a crash, the Church did not want both being discovered together.

  He was not to wear a collar, of course, and both the Israelis and the Vatican Secretary of State believed everything would be safer if the passage looked routine. No great military convoys. They would move safest under the armor of secrecy.

  Cardinal Pesci himself briefed Jim. He wanted Jim to know that what he had said in the special meeting was not personal, and he hoped Jim would not take it as personal.

  “What?” Jim had said numbly.

  “I hope you did not take my position as a personal thing.”

  “No, no,” said Jim. “I wasn’t even thinking about that.”

  “Of course. Let me say that if there is anything this office can do for you, it will do it. Now, we have a minor thing. I sense that Mendel Hirsch, who has been so helpful, might feel somewhat slighted by being left out of recent important negotiations. Please give him this, if you would.” It was an autographed picture of Pesci himself.

  “Okay,” said Jim. And then added, “Your Eminence.”

  The radio had told one of Cardinal Pesci’s assistants that there had been another bomb in Jerusalem, a mother and daughter killed. The aide was worried about that. Jim said those things happened, but caused a lot fewer deaths than auto accidents.

  As a matter of fact, the Israelis had lost more people in traffic than in all their wars.

  Jim remembered that, as he waited for Sharon’s car. And it did not come, so he hired a shiroot, a taxi which took several people, and they left him off at Beit Vagan, Sharon’s apartment. The driver warned everyone that certain parts of Jerusalem were closed off this day because it was the Christians’ Easter.

  With a mercy whose source he did not know, the driver did not explain what Easter meant.

  Sharon was not home. Jim waited awhile, and then went up to Hebrew University. It was a normal school day here. But Sharon was not in the lab. So, he walked up to Naveshanan, and the door to Dr. Golban’s house was open, and the apartment was crowded and noisy, and Jim did not recognize the language. He pushed his way in and there was Dr. Golban and Rani, sitting on low boxes and their garments were rent. They were sitting shivah. Suddenly seeing Jim, Dr. Golban said, “No more Ashkenazi. Enough Ashkenazi for Paula,” and sat down on the floor, giving up the low box. He was sitting shivah. The Jewish rit
ual for death had changed from the Ashkenazi to the Persian way.

  He suddenly felt tugging at his arm. It was Sharon. Her eyes were painfully tear-red.

  “There was a bomb left at the store Paula and Mari used to shop at. It went off yesterday. We buried them this morning,” said Sharon, and she fell into Jim’s arms, crying. It was the first time he held her in that place. Paula was not there to stop them.

  22

  Forgiveness

  It was a Passover of tears. Several times Dr. Golban informed Jim that he was grateful for the Seder, and the duties of the Seder because that eased the pain. One must keep occupied.

  The Arab patient who had become a friend, Haj Suleiman Labib, came to the house to show respect, and when the crowd found out he was an Arab, the mood became ugly.

  But Avrahim, seeing this, went to Haj Suleiman Labib and asked him to perform the act of rending Avrahim’s garment for him. This was a Persian custom, not Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi rend their own garments to show grief. By asking Mr. Labib to do this, Avrahim established him as a friend before all the Persian community gathered there that day.

  “We all grieve this day,” said Labib. “Only a fool does not grieve when the good die.” And everyone agreed it was a brave and caring thing for Mr. Labib to have come at all. For they would have feared if the situation had been reversed.

  Sharon had said already there was a woman in the Persian community who would probably marry Avrahim and prepare all the meals the way he liked them, but he would never love her, Sharon was sure, as he loved Paula. The fighting and the arguments were, if Jim could believe it, the way they expressed love. Sharon missed Paula’s accusing spatula that tried to direct the moral destiny of the Golbans. But she was so pained by the loss of pretty Mari, her niece, that she could not talk about that at all.

  When Rani mentioned he missed Mari complaining that girls didn’t have as important a duty in the Seder as the boys, Sharon had to leave the table for a while.