The Tenth Song

by Ragen, Naomi

  The bus jolted to a halt just as the first light was breaking over the mountains.

  The ground was broken into many neat craters, carefully excavated to preserve the delicate layers that separated one time period from the next.

  “Here are your tools,” Judith said, handing her a small shovel, a trowel, and a brush.

  “These are tiny!”

  “Yes, well, it’s easy to replant a garden if you mess it up the first time. But if you destroy a tel, it’s destroyed forever, all the layers intermingling, all the artifacts impossible to date. Not to mention that if you dig in big clumps, you run the risk of smashing a priceless fourth-century vase. So, dig carefully. Load the dirt into these buckets, then dump the bucketfuls into this wheelbarrow. When the wheelbarrow is full, you take it over to there—” She indicated, pointing. “That’s where all the dirt from this particular part of the dig must go and nowhere else—otherwise, they lose track of where things were found. Then you come back and start again. Someone else has the job of sifting through this, even washing the mud through a sieve to see what remains.”

  “It sounds like very good exercise,” Kayla groaned, eyeing the wheelbarrow with trepidation. Even empty, it looked too heavy to budge. She couldn’t imagine what it would take to lift it when it was brimming with heavy earth. Judith patted her shoulder sympathetically.

  “If you need help, just ask.”

  “What’s that?” Kayla asked, pointing to a spot in the distance.

  “Oh, that’s the synagogue the professor was talking about. When you get a chance, go down and look inside. It has the most magnificent mosaic tile floor and an inscription naming the zodiac symbols.”

  “I didn’t know Jews believed in astrology!”

  “Actually, they believed the zodiac was simply part of nature, not the voodoo stuff of the National Enquirer or psychic phone calls. It was believed that signs of the zodiac ruled the world. But they also believed that God transcended nature. The signs had the powers of midlevel bureaucrats, but God was the ultimate CEO. One word from Him, and everything changed.”

  “It’s an interesting idea.”

  “I agree. Well, I’ve got to get to work. See you at break time.”

  “You aren’t working in this section too?”

  “No, I’m over there, on the north hill with your roommate Bev. But don’t worry.” She gave Kayla a sly sidelong glance. “You have some very interesting people assigned to your section. I think you’ll be pleased. See you later!”

  “Thanks for everything, Judith.”

  “Not a problem. Hope you survive your first day. After that, it gets easier.”

  Kayla watched her retreating back, then turned and looked down at the earth, the buckets, her trowel, and the wheelbarrow. She sighed, crouched, and began to dig, carefully filling bucket after bucket.

  The desert air was still cold, yet she felt the sweat break out over her forehead and under her breasts and armpits. Shedding her jacket and hoodie, she filled the buckets, dumping them carefully into the wheelbarrow, so that in the slide of earth from container to container no unforgivable damage was done to priceless objects. It was really quite a responsibility, she thought, lifting the two handles of the wheelbarrow and pushing. But nothing happened. She took a deep breath. Slowly, she once again lifted it off the ground, struggling to inch it forward across the rocky terrain. She felt every bone in her body straining and near the breaking point.

  Suddenly, the load grew lighter, as strong male hands slid over her own, replacing them.

  “Wow, thanks!” She looked up, startled. It was him. He didn’t say anything, pushing the wheelbarrow swiftly down the small incline, emptying it out, and bringing it back to her.

  “I . . . thanks . . . but . . . you don’t . . .”

  But he was already gone.

  She exhaled, trying to decide if he was rude and obnoxious or modest and gentlemanly. Either description fit equally well, she noted. Each time she filled the wheelbarrow and began to push, she found him by her side, taking over. There was a kind of rhythm to it, almost like one of those elaborate court dances in Elizabethan England: a forward and backward movement, an advance and a retreat. There was something about the way his body moved in unison with her own, some indefinable way all his movements fit in with hers, solicitous, caring, self-deprecating, always sensitive to her slightest movement, discerning without being told exactly where she needed him to be, what she needed him to do. He didn’t seem to want anything from her in the deepest sense; he left her free. But she felt some unseen force pulling her toward him anyway. She had never felt this way before, about anyone. Certainly not about Seth. This instantaneous burst of fire coming out of nowhere, when all around was damp and cool, was strange, magical, almost frightening. She wanted this wordless dance to go on and on.

  But it wasn’t right. She was still engaged. And Daniel might be married, for all she knew. In any case, he had his own work to do and because of her must be lagging behind. Besides, she hated to think of herself as weak or needy. So, the next time it happened, she was determined to have it out.

  “NO. No thank you,” she said, leaving her hands tightly gripped around the wheelbarrow handles, refusing to budge.

  “I can’t see you struggling like this. Let me help.”

  She was surprised at how good his English was. There wasn’t even an accent.

  “I’m not struggling,” she lied. “I’m getting used to this.”

  “Well, what do you say if while you are getting used to it, you hold one handle and I the other. When we divide the work, it will be easy for both of us.”

  She thought about it. It sounded reasonable and left her pride intact. “Thank you, Daniel.”

  “You’re welcome, Kayla.”

  “You remembered my name.”

  “And you remembered mine.”

  She blushed, rubbing her throbbing arms, examining her hands. Gone were the soft, clean palms, the expensively manicured fingernails, the glowing diamond ring. They were the hands of a stranger: reddened and dirty, the nails broken and rimmed with mud.

  She took off her sunglasses to wipe off the dust. The lenses reflected back a face red with exertion, ribboned with streaks of dust and sweat. She had broken out in a million freckles.

  “What I look like . . .” She shook her head.

  “You look . . .” He stopped himself, as if uncertain, or unwilling, to finish the sentence. They put their hands to the handlebars, and for a moment, they touched as she chose the same side as he. He dropped his hands as if burnt.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, crossing swiftly over to the other side. They walked silently beside each other until they reached the dump site.

  “I’ll take the wheelbarrow back for you?” he offered. It was not a command.

  “Thank you, Daniel. I’d appreciate that,” she said, finally dropping all pretense, accepting him.

  “Dan-y-yel,” he corrected her, a tiny secret smile, the first she’d seen on his serious face, playing around his lips. She could see his shoulders relax.

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  He shook his head. “No. You said ‘Dan-yell.’ ”

  “You know, I did go to a Hebrew Day School in Boston. I’m not completely ignorant.”

  “Really? So why are we talking in English?” he teased her.

  “My Hebrew is not in the same league as your English. You don’t even have an accent! Were your parents American?”

  “No. But my father was a shaliach—a representative of the Jewish Agency—in San Francisco. His job was to talk people into moving to Israel. I was born there—in San Jose. I even have an American passport. I picked up the language, and it never left me. It was a great help in school. Especially medical school.”

  She looked him over once more, aware of having unlocked one more closed chamber, glimpsing the world within. “You’re a doctor?”

  “Don’t look so shocked.”

  “You must look very different in yo
ur scrubs.” The green would match your eyes, she thought. And all the while, something was humming beneath the small, silly talk between them, something deep and resonant she couldn’t explain. A small butterfly threw open its wings and fluttered through her stomach. Oh no! she told herself, recognizing having crossed some tightly guarded border, knowing there was no way back.

  “I haven’t worn scrubs for years. And I don’t think I ever will, again. Excuse me. I have to wash up for breakfast.”

  “Oh, sure. I guess . . . I . . . will too,” she stuttered, trapped in the flow of unexpected emotion, desperate to know more.

  “Hi, ready to eat?” It was Judith.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “You look shocked. What happened?”

  “Daniel . . . he’s a doctor?”

  “Was. A surgeon.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “Did you get a chance to talk to him?”

  She nodded shyly, anxious to hide this new thing that was unfolding inside her. “But he’s not very communicative.”

  Judith nodded. “True. But he’s a special, wonderful man. It’s just so tragic.”

  “You said before he was looking for himself. What did you mean?”

  “I guess what I meant to say was that he was looking for a way to heal himself.”

  “Is he . . . was he . . . ill?”

  “Not physically.”

  “Details?”

  “All I can tell you is what I’ve heard here and there. He was married. He had a child—a daughter. Both his wife and child were killed by a suicide bomber.”

  Kayla held her breath, feeling as if she had started to slip down a long flight of steps, not yet seeing the bottom. “Really?”

  She nodded. “After that, he just up and left everything behind in Tel Aviv and came here. That was three years ago.”

  Picnic tables were laid out with enormous bowls filled with salads, piles of warm pita bread, cheeses, yogurts, and urns filled with piping coffee. Large jugs of cold orange juice and icy lemonade with fresh mint were passed around, as were hot croissants and little Danish pastries.

  Although she had been starving a moment before, Kayla somehow found she couldn’t eat a thing.

  Hours later, when the midday sun was at its hottest and most relentless, the bus came back, mercifully rescuing them. Back on top of the mountain, a hearty lunch was served in the cafeteria. She joined the others, but was almost too tired to chew. She limped back to her caravan, took an icy shower, then crawled into her hard bed. It was heavenly. She slept soundly until four in the afternoon, woken only by her British roommate Bev singing, “When I see you cry it makes me smi-i-ile.” She sat up, suddenly discovering every bone in her body, because all of them were shouting out complaints. She could hardly move.

  Bev looked at her with glee. “You’ll get used to it. You’ll get stronger.”

  “Or not.”

  “That’s a negative attitude. Have you ever read Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking?”

  “No. Have you ever read The Horrible Experience of Painful Blinking?”

  Bev was silent. “Oh. That’s a joke, right? I mean like a pun or rhyme or something?”

  There is a special place in hell for humorless people who dissect and kill jokes, Kayla thought, particularly the ones who say . . .

  “Very funny,” Bev said.

  No court would convict me . . . “Now what?”

  “Some days we have off, and some days we go back and mark all the pottery sherds . . .”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Every piece of broken clay has to have a code number which says where, exactly, it was found. Then we can date them, and even have a chance of pasting them back together.”

  “It sounds very exciting.”

  “It’s not worse than dumping dirt in a wheelbarrow. You might even enjoy it. And afterward, in the evening, if you want, you can join them.”

  “Them?”

  “The religious hippies.”

  “What?”

  “You mean Judith hasn’t tried to convert you yet?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “They call themselves ‘The Talmidim.’ They dress like flower children in a time warp. And they have this guru, except he’s a rabbi, who gives them lectures. They live in this commune up on the mountain, about a five-minute walk from us up the hill. A lot of the workers come from the commune. And a lot of the people from the dig wind up there. You mean to say she hasn’t dragged you to one of Rav Natan’s lectures yet?”

  Kayla shrugged. The too-rapid ingestion of all this information gave her the mental equivalent of heartburn. She had actually been looking forward to meeting the mysterious, all-wise Natan, before she found out he was a rebbe . . . But remembering Judith’s reaction to her telling off the religious recruiter at the Kotel, she felt she must be missing something. “‘Commune’? Is that another word for cult?”

  Bev paused, considering the idea. She shook her head. “They don’t have enough discipline to be a cult. And there is no money changing hands that I can see. And people come and go all the time, so if it is a cult, it’s not very well run. They need some lessons from Sun Myung Moon.”

  “I gather you, yourself, haven’t checked it out? Is it cynicism?”

  “‘Realism’ would be a more accurate word. Oh, I went to a few lectures. Honestly, they were fascinating. But I’m very shallow. I learned everything I need to know about self-improvement from Norman Vincent. Give me a good Hello! magazine with pictures of Prince William to read on my time off, I say. Or a story in The Sun about poor Jade Goody with pictures of her going bald from chemo, then marrying her bloke, and saying good-bye to her kids.”

  Kayla winced. “When does he give these lectures? Can anyone just go?”

  Bev shrugged. “Go if you want. He gives a talk almost every morning and every afternoon. You see that path over there?” She pointed to a white-gravel road nearby. “Just follow it up the hill. You’ll probably see a queue going into this big, round tent. He’s very popular. No accounting for tastes.”

  Every afternoon she considered going. If Bev didn’t like him, Rav Natan couldn’t be all bad! But something held her back, something she couldn’t put her finger on. Perhaps she was afraid of any kind of introspection, ashamed to look.

  The days took on a surprising rhythm. She got used to going to sleep early, waking in the dark to cool showers, and friendly banter under inky skies. After that first day, she noticed that Daniel had begun working on the other side of the tel. At meals, he sat at the other side of the table.

  It was almost as if he knew about her, she thought, knew that she was the enemy. She was hurt. Insulted. Yet in some ways also relieved. What would he do, if he knew? It was better this way. Better for them to be apart. Yet, she could not keep her eyes away from him, or her thoughts. At night, she dreamed of his tragic green eyes looking out at her from his dark face; his lean body standing at a distance, aloof and still. She didn’t understand it herself, this strange obsession. It was chemistry, she thought. That outer ring of electrons always seeking to be completed, to have the perfect eight; looking for the exact match that could supply what they lacked. Like oxygen and hydrogen.

  Or perhaps the attraction lay simply in the mystery he posed. All things are imaginable under the cover of darkness, she told herself, allowing one’s mind to furnish all the right details to make a stranger irresistibly attractive. Reality, she scolded herself, which supplies its own details in the cold light of day, is not always so accommodating to our fantasies.

  What did she know about him, really? That he had experienced a tragedy not of his making? That he had been on the road to a good life when evil forces beyond his control had made him swerve disastrously, destroying it all? That he had abandoned years of study, a profession, running away, because he felt unable to face the life he had worked so hard to achieve?

  It suddenly dawned on her who else that could d
escribe.

  14

  Then one afternoon, when she was off, she walked the white-gravel road up the hill, aware that all around her people she had never seen before were converging on the same path. They wore long skirts and turbans, bell-bottoms and cotton shirts with cowboy boots. Some of the men wore bright knitted skullcaps that covered almost their entire head, while others wore white crocheted caps. The long fringes of the men’s tzitzis, four-cornered garments worn under shirts, dangled down their sides. Everyone greeted everyone else with a smile.

  “Hello, Sister!” “Hello, Brother!” they called out in Hebrew as they passed by. “Shalom Achi. Shalom Achoti.”

  To her surprise, the tent was almost full when she got there. She sank down in lotus position on one of the many colorful pillows, looking around for familiar faces. There was Judith in the back, quietly conversing with a grey-haired woman in a magnificent cotton turban of peacock blue and green. They were laughing. And there, in the far corner, his face suffused in the light of one of the many candles that lined the floor, was Daniel.

  He looked beautiful and tragic, she thought, studying the strong lines of his weathered face in the candlelight, which imparted a gentleness and vulnerability to him she had sensed but not yet seen. His eyes were intelligent and searching. He wore the same dusty clothes he had on the dig. She wondered if he owned another outfit.

  A low murmur began as a tall man entered and walked swiftly to the podium.

  Suddenly everyone stood. “Blessings, Rav Natan!” someone called out.

  He was much younger than she’d imagined, like one of those Israeli paratroopers who take off to India the moment they get out of uniform, returning with a beard and a mission.

  “Please. Everyone sit,” he said in Hebrew, waving his hand with a self-deprecating smile. “Especially the people who dig all day. Sit before you collapse.”

  Easy laughter washed over the crowd, as people made themselves comfortable.

  “How do we know what our Creator wants of us?” he began with no introduction. “If God had told us directly, it would have taken away our choice, and choice is the most precious thing a man has. Yes, we must take ideas and directions from our wise men, but we must add of ourselves. We cannot copy.