The Tenth Song

by Ragen, Naomi

  “No, I didn’t care.” She shrugged. “Maybe this will surprise you a little, darling, but I’ve been through something myself these last few months, Kayla dear. And before that, with your father’s cancer. I’ve learned about loss, and about limits. I always did what I thought was best for you. But I was ready to let go, to let you make the worst mistake of your life, if that’s what it turned out to be. I wasn’t coming out here to rescue you.”

  “So, all those things you told me when you first came . . .”

  “That’s what your father wanted me to say to you. That was my job. To get you to come back.”

  “Then I’m confused. You did a very bad job!”

  “I had pity on you. And your father will never forgive me for it. I betrayed him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He expected me to get you and myself on the next plane back. I told him it wasn’t going to happen. I guess that’s why he sent Seth. I guess he thought Seth would have more of an incentive. Does he?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Does he really want you back? And do you want him back? Is it love? Or is it just pride, power, jealousy, fear of poverty?”

  “He says he wants me back.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like those photos of smiling people. If you cover their mouths, can you see the smile in their eyes? How deep does it all go?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said petulantly.

  “Oh, your pride is hurt at the very thought that your fiancé might be faking it.”

  “I can’t believe this! You were the one who was skywriting about this engagement! He was your dream son-in-law! The CEO of your nachas factory.”

  “Maybe I’ve gotten over waving my achievements like a flag to win the approval of a bunch of hypocrites who proved they could turn against me on a dime,” she said bitterly. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I am extremely grateful to Seth for how he’s helped your father with this case. I understand he’s done some incredible research that might just turn the whole thing around. It was amazingly generous to invest his precious time like that . . .”

  “Oh, whoa, wait a minute. Who told you that?”

  “Your father. The lawyers say the information Seth came up with is all true and could make a world of difference.”

  “Really . . . ?” Her heart leapt.

  “Kayla, my dear, your life is your own. But if you are interested in my opinion, I’d be happy to share it with you.”

  Kayla thought about it. This was just the thing that she had only recently convinced herself she didn’t want to know at all costs: her mother’s smothering opinions. But ever since the dance circle, this person seemed different from the mother she knew, a person whose opinion would be based on real things, not superficial ones, whose opinion would be worth hearing and considering.

  “Tell me.”

  “With Seth, you will never be hungry. You will always live in a beautiful home. But you will never make a single decision that is not colored by what he wants. You will live in his shadow. Some women like that. Freedom terrifies them. They crave a life like a fifties sitcom: Husband Knows Best.”

  “Seth can be pushy. But I can hold my own. And what do you think of Daniel?”

  “I think he has tragic eyes, and I think it will take him a long time to heal, if ever. But you tell me, Kayla, since you are the one working in archaeology, don’t you sometimes find when you put together the pieces of a shattered pot that it is more beautiful than the new whole ones you can buy for a few shekels all along the Dead Sea road? That it was worth the effort?”

  Kayla stared at her mother. Slowly, she moved closer, putting her arms around her and resting her head on her shoulder.

  “Come, child; lie down next to me and look at the stars.”

  They lay next to each other, their arms entwined, sharing the wonder.

  The light broke softly. It was as if the world lay under the rays of a gentler, kinder orb—less fierce than the sun, less cold than the moon—whose rays painted the sky with a thousand colors. Opening her eyes, renewed, gave Kayla the feeling that the world did not yet exist, but was in the midst of being created, and she had a front-row seat. She hugged her knees against the cold.

  Looking up the hill, she watched as Daniel put on his skullcap and rolled up his sleeve, winding the strange leather straps of his teffilin around his arm. He turned his face to the east, toward Jerusalem. As he prayed, his look was somber, then yearning, then finally at peace. She waited for him to finish, then walked to him.

  “Daniel,” she said, putting her arms around him. “How can I ever thank you?”

  “For what?”

  “All the information you gave me about my father. How did you . . . where did you . . . ?”

  “I told you, Kayla. I can’t say. But my contact told me that Israeli Intelligence has been following Hurling and his connections for a long time. I believe your father was set up. They chose him deliberately. He had no way of knowing.”

  “My mother says my father’s lawyers are astonished. It might make all the difference.”

  “I’m so glad, Kayla.”

  “How can I ever thank you?”

  “If a blameless man is freed, that will be my reward.”

  She laid her hand over his heart. “Daniel, can you free another blameless man?”

  He covered her hand with his own.

  “So it was you all along?” Abigail interrupted, astonished.

  “Mom? Where did you come from?”

  “I was just bringing you two some breakfast . . .” She held up a thermos and some cookies. “Kayla, why didn’t you say anything? You just let me go on and on about Seth . . .”

  “Someone once said that you can achieve almost anything if you don’t care who gets the credit,” Daniel interrupted her. “What does it matter? Isn’t the important thing that we are helping to bring justice to an innocent man?”

  “It matters to me. How can I ever thank you?”

  “There is no need.”

  “Well, I have a need.” Abigail leaned over to kiss him. “And another favor; if you’re finished, can I borrow your prayer book?” Abigail asked.

  He kissed it reverently, handing it to her. “How are you feeling, Abigail?” he asked.

  “Never, never better,” she lied, willing it to be true, going off to be alone. She closed her eyes, feeling the healing warm rays turn the darkness behind her lids to gold. Her breathing slowed as the clean desert air filled her lungs with peace.

  I am happy, she thought. It was startling. Nothing was different, after all. Adam was, no doubt, still furious. Financial and social ruin still loomed. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had.

  Because I have changed, she thought, filled with hope.

  The time had come to speak to Seth, Kayla thought. Although the information he had relayed to her father was not his own, still, he could just have easily refused. If her mother was right, he had made this breakthrough possible.

  He was sitting by the edge of the mountain, seemingly engrossed by the view.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Kayla said softly, putting her hand lightly on his shoulder.

  He flinched.

  She took it back, startled. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, why should anything be wrong?” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “Right. Dumb question.”

  He reached up and took her hand, putting it back on his shoulder. “You know there isn’t much time left, Kayla. We are on this make-believe quest for some imaginary revelation, then the sun will set and come up again after your Rav tells you how the world is coming to an end. And you’ll be hungry and dusty and tired. And your new boyfriend will go back to digging in the mud, and you’ll lie down in your tent, brushing away the flies. But I won’t be here to rescue you. No one will. Even if your mother is in the middle of her own postmen
opausal breakdown, your daddy—who is the only sane one left in your family apparently—will be fed up with you, at long last. Even he won’t be able to buy you out of this one.”

  She felt pierced and bruised, the angry hurtful words slashing at her like weapons. But he could not destroy her, she realized, startled. He doesn’t have that power. Not anymore. No one does. She turned, walking away. She felt her shoulders gripped firmly. Seth turned her around. “Kayla, I’m trying to help you! I’ve come all the way out here, jeopardizing everything I’ve been working for all these years, to help you through this! Don’t brush me off. Listen to me!” He shook her urgently.

  She looked deeply into his eyes but could read nothing. They were the same blank, cool blue they had always been. It was like trying to read meaning into a poster of the Caribbean. “Please, Seth,” she said so softly that he had to lean his cheek in closer, almost touching hers. “Get your hands off me.”

  “I’d expected at least some gratitude,” he said stiffly.

  “I am grateful. Extremely grateful.”

  “Then show me!”

  She went limp. “Knowing you, Seth, I guess I should have expected this. After all, only fools work pro bono, right?”

  He dropped his hands abruptly, turned around, and walked off.

  She found Daniel getting ready to go. Next to Seth, he looked like a wild man, she thought, the uncombed curls, the thick stubble, the frayed T-shirt and jeans, the worn sandals. She looked into his brown eyes. They were full of concern.

  “Everything okay?”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  He put his arm around her. It felt like an answer.

  31

  They spent a fitful night, unable to sleep from the excitement of what lay ahead. And when the first light broke, they packed up their things and began to walk slowly upward along an unmarked path. Unlike the beginning of their journey, it no longer felt like being part of a tourist group. It felt like being part of a tribe, Abigail thought, as she walked along trying to keep up.

  She had to admit to herself she felt weary, and older than she’d felt when leaving Boston. Pitching yourself against others gave you a certain energy, all the fight-or-flight endorphins kicking in. But battling yourself left you drained.

  Suddenly, Ben Tzion called out: “We are here!”

  The words echoed through the desert down the long line of people scrambling up the hillside.

  “I don’t see anything,” Seth grumbled, looking around. “But, hey, thank God it’s over.”

  “It’s just up ahead,” Ben Tzion told him. “The cave entrance.”

  Kayla held her mother’s arm in hers, helping her along the rocky path.

  “You’re trembling, Mom!”

  “I’m . . . I don’t know. Excited, I guess. Worried. It’s so unlike anything I’ve ever been involved in. Such a strange place, such a different kind of people. Such a different concept of success and failure.”

  She squeezed her mother’s arm.

  “It must be how the Israelites felt in the desert the day before God gave them the Torah,” Ariella said breathlessly.

  “As I recall, they were terrified,” Seth murmured.

  “No, that was the next day when the mountain thundered and flamed, and the voice of God came blasting down,” Ariella corrected him. “That’s when they started backing away and telling Moses to go up by himself.”

  “And when Moses didn’t come back, they found a substitute, a golden calf, to mediate between themselves and the irascible mountain,” Seth observed, laughing.

  “Not the mountain. Between themselves and God,” Ariella said seriously. “That’s what idolatry is, when you need some intermediary between yourself and God.”

  “Like gurus and rebbes?” Seth asked innocently.

  “Needing an intermediary comes from fear and lack of faith, neither of which we suffer from, thanks to our teacher,” Ariella chided him.

  “What do you all expect is going to happen exactly?”

  “Nothing you could sum up in a sentence, Seth,” Daniel replied softly.

  “If you can’t sum something up in a sentence, that’s a sure sign it makes no sense.”

  “Not everything makes sense, Seth,” Kayla challenged him. “Not everything fits into a day planner and a study outline. The universe is not such a neat, predictable grid. When you come right down to it, what do human beings understand about anything? Can you understand what it means that you didn’t exist, then you were born? Where do we all come from? And what does death mean? What happens to that part of us that is ‘us’—our ideas, our feelings, our memories?”

  “Wheeet,” Seth mocked, passing his hand in the air over his head. “You got me there. Way over my head!”

  “Don’t mind him,” Kayla said, turning to the others. “He thinks he’s a wit, but he’s only half right.”

  “Now, now, Kayla dear. Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but it’s the highest form of intelligence,” Seth countered.

  “That’s Oscar Wilde, isn’t it?” Daniel smiled.

  “Why, Daniel, I had no idea you were so well-read!” Seth said with mock amazement, shaking his head.

  “Oh, I read a great deal. Didn’t Wilde also say: ‘I’m so clever that I sometimes don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying’ ”

  Everyone laughed but Seth.

  “Well, this has been most enlightening,” Seth finally said. “And I’d really like all these fun and games to continue until the great revelation, which I am somehow guessing will be no laughing matter at all: all fire and brimstone and Kool-Aid. So I guess I’ll take the coward’s way out and just go to sleep for a few hours or whatever, until we are summoned. Bye all.” He turned his back and walked off.

  “I’m sorry, Seth, it was just a joke,” Daniel called after him apologetically.

  “Whatever,” Seth called back over his shoulder, disgusted at his rival’s uncanny ability to earn points at every turn. He felt his stomach churn. He had underestimated Daniel, he realized. He was not just some country bumpkin. He was a challenge, and a formidable one. Seth just hoped that this revelation had not come too late.

  “I didn’t think he was so sensitive,” Daniel said, worried. “I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings.”

  Kayla shook her head. “For Seth, conversation is a blood sport. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, I guess he’s right, though. We should all try to get a little rest,” Ariella said.

  “Yes, I think I will too.” Abigail nodded. She was drained.

  “Mom, are you okay?” Kayla asked searchingly, taking in her pallor, the strange knot between her brows. She exchanged worried glances with Daniel.

  “Now don’t you two worry about the old lady.” Abigail smiled, reaching out for her daughter, holding her close and kissing her. “I’m fine. Thank you for your concern. I’m sure I’ll feel better after a rest.”

  “You’re probably right,” Daniel agreed cautiously. “But I’d be happy to check your pulse . . .”

  “Let me help you get settled,” Kayla offered.

  Abigail waved them both off. “Thanks, but there’s nothing either of you can do to help me.” She pointed to a shady spot nearby. “I’m just going to set myself down there and cool off,” she murmured, walking off.

  Kayla started after. “Remember to drink, Mom!” She handed her a cool thermos of water.

  “Thanks, Kayla, but I’ve got plenty of water in my own canteen.”

  “Let her go, Kayla,” Daniel said quietly, putting a restraining hand on her arm. “She needs rest. And so do you.”

  “I am exhausted from all the anticipation,” Kayla admitted. “We all are.”

  Daniel folded his fingers through hers, leading her to higher ground near a large, flat rock. “We can see your mother clearly from here.” He spread their sleeping bags on the ground under the shade of the mountain. Kayla sat down, studying her mother, who lay motionless, one hand flung over her eyes, the other crad
ling her stomach on the right side.

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Well.” She yawned, stretching out gratefully, her head resting on her lumpy backpack.

  Daniel took his jacket out of his backpack, folding it and placing it gently under her head.

  “Daniel!”

  “Hmm?”

  “Daniel,” she repeated softly, her eyes closing.

  He stayed up, watching Abigail uneasily.

  “Rav Natan says it’s time,” Ben Tzion announced.

  Kayla felt an electric thrill course through her body. She squeezed Daniel’s hand as he helped her up.

  He looked worried.

  “I don’t like the way your mother’s holding her stomach.”

  Kayla took another look. “I hadn’t noticed. What do you think is wrong?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Even if it’s only a precaution, she needs a real medical workup. Soon.”

  Kayla nodded. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  They began the slow upward climb of the last leg of their journey. It was their steepest climb yet. Someone had hung ropes for rappelling. They held on tightly, their hands blistered as they pulled themselves up, their knees scraping against the jutting granite and sandstone. Progress was slow and painful as they navigated the tiny stones and big rocks that blocked their path, holding on to the thorny charmless shrubs clinging tenaciously to life through the crevices. Daniel and Kayla helped pull Abigail up, each grabbing one of her hands.

  Seth, an experienced climber, was up there waiting for them.

  “Well, there it is.” Seth gestured toward the opening in the side of the mountain.

  The cave entrance was several meters tall and round, as if the mountain had opened its mouth in an expression of wonder. Rav Natan and Professor Milstein stood next to the entrance.

  “Talmidim, friends, please come up and come inside. There is room for all of you,” Rav Natan said. A young boy with platinum blond hair was clinging to his leg. The Rav laughed, reaching down to lift his small son up in his arms. The child wrapped his hands around his father’s neck.