Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, not well matched, two of them had flaws. But I think in the time they were matched, they would have looked identical to those doing the matching,” said the son of the rabbi.

  “Does that mean something?” asked Claire.

  “To a Jew, yes, but a Jew would never match six, not an Orthodox Jew.”

  “Why is that, Rabbi?” asked Claire.

  “Six to us means evil.”

  “Jesus Christ,” mumbled Artie, but no one was listening to him.

  “It was a warning I didn’t listen to,” said Baruch Schnauer, the son of the rabbi.

  “The message you didn’t listen to was in the Talmud. Thou Shalt Not Steal, Thou Shalt Not Lie, Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness, Thou Shalt Not Covet,” said Rabbi Schnauer, his voice rising, his hand trembling, because it was apparent even to Artie that the boy’s biggest sorrow was not that he had sinned, but that he had gotten caught.

  “This day we have both lost something,” said the rabbi to Claire and took her hands in his and gave her a blessing, as he did for the soul of her father, and for all those who loved her. He asked that her way be made safe, that her journey be fruitful, and that her righteousness be her shield and her convictions be her sword.

  He told her that they would assist her in her search and that he already thought he remembered a reference to matched large diamonds, but not in a place that one would expect to find a mention of stones.

  What Claire should know was that diamonds were not always a thing for trading or marriages. There was a time when people actually believed they held wisdom.

  Eight days later, one more because they would not give her something on the sixth day and still another because they would not bestow it on the Sabbath, the Linzer Hasidim gave to Claire Andrews, daughter of Vern, of the little American town of Carney, Ohio, the fragments of scholars who referred to the Seven Eyes of Seville.

  There were three wood boxes, some of them containing rare manuscripts, some photocopies of manuscripts. It was all for her. She felt a bit awkward in her dungarees, receiving such a gift from these formal black-coated men. But they had not really announced themselves. She offered them tea, but they refused, thanking her.

  They repeated what the Reb Schnauer had told them.

  “If these are the same diamonds, then the greatest of all commentaries on them comes from Rambam, the great Maimonides, when he says there is no wisdom in a stone, for it is not the property of objects to be wise. He says the only value in a diamond or any other gem is what man places on it. Otherwise it is no different from the pebble underfoot. A stone can no more make a person wise than it can make him good. A stone has no will of its own, much less power to act on it.”

  “And it was in Seville, not England, that these stones were seen?”

  “There is no mention of England. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure what happened to these diamonds, or even if they are the same. They did not use our measurements then,” said one man, who appeared to be the leader in the absence of the rabbi.

  “What measurements did they use?”

  “All great learning in Spain at that time used Arabic. The references are in qurots, and we can’t be sure how accurate they are. Maimonides wrote a very humorous commentary asking if a one-qurot diamond made a person somewhat bright and a ten-qurot diamond made him a genius.”

  “Could you show me where in these writings the qurots are mentioned?” asked Claire. She finished drying her hands from the sink and booted up her computer.

  “We cannot verify the weights.”

  “I wondered that, too, but I’ve found that weights are business, and when it comes to business and numbers, there is more accuracy than, excuse me, even in the scriptures,” said Claire. The screen came up black with flashing green, and she got into her weights directory.

  “No, this is not so,” said the leader. “Numbers in scripture mean different things. Some are exact and some are symbolic. Except the size of things. In Israel there are archeologists who are anathema to the A-m-ghty who believe no scriptures find the measures of stones and places to be exact.”

  “So we can trust measurements. They are exact,” said Claire, glancing back. The men buzzed among themselves. There was general nodding.

  “Just read me the weights,” she said, and there was more discussion. And then the weights came in qurots from one reference to another, all from Spain and from North Africa. None was from any source they knew in England.

  There was also another problem.

  “In the Seville coda, it is said a Jew owned the diamonds. It is so unlikely he would ever break up seven to make six. A Jew would not do that,” said the leader.

  “Well, let’s see,” said Claire. “And thank the Reb Schnauer.”

  That night she compared the numbers on her screen from the manuscripts to the Rawson gem list. A modern karat was exactly one-third bigger than an Arabian qurot. Claire had never been good at math and she hadn’t bothered to buy a math program for her computer, which she probably couldn’t use well anyhow, she reasoned. By hand, she copied the Rawson numbers from the screen in pencil and then multiplied each by one-third and then took the third and added it to each of the six gems. Then, saying a little prayer, she looked back up at the screen where there were the seven qurot weights for the seven stones.

  “Oh my,” she gasped, holding a hand over her mouth. “Oh my, oh my, oh my.”

  Five of the six matched to the first decimal, and the sixth matched to the second. Her eyes went up and down from pad to screen, from screen to pad. She now even knew the size of the missing stone.

  “I found them. I found the diamonds. I found you. I found you. I found you,” she screamed, blowing kisses at the screen.

  She jumped up and danced around the bare floor, her arms raised in victory. There should have been a stadium of people cheering for her here, but it didn’t matter. For sure, she had broken through the centuries. And if she could do it once, she could do it twice. She could do it for the sapphire and the ruby and probably for every mystery of the entire cellar.

  What a breath of victory. What a triumph. What a sense of awe that history should be speaking to her from her IBM PC. She had done something and knew something now that no one else in the world knew. The diamonds were the same. Six or seven. No matter if a Jew owned them or not. She had found them to be the same.

  The Hasidim had translated most of the manuscripts into English, and she made out that the family that had owned the diamonds was called de Cota. And they were quite powerful in Spain for a while.

  She made herself a cup of cocoa and, careful not to spill any on some of the old manuscripts, glanced between them and the translations.

  The jewels were an oddity on that sort of saltcellar in the first place. Maybe the jewels were a message about the cellar? But what was the message? Would a Jew sell off the matched perfection of seven to make the ultimate evil of six? Wouldn’t he sell off two instead of just one, to avoid that symbolism?

  She blew on the cocoa and looked at her separate date chart for the diamonds, references in the 1100s on the Christian calendar and the last in 1288 by a Talmudic scholar comparing the belief in diamonds as having wisdom to worshipping an idol. Wisdom was a property of man and was holy; the diamonds themselves were worth only what men declared they were worth. The diamonds were less than animals because animals could give sustenance to people, but the Seven Eyes of Seville in themselves could not feed one person one meal, much less tell him the meanings of the Almighty or the ways of man.

  Claire sipped the cocoa. The last time the diamonds had been seven was at the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition, a brutal and successful effort to remove any Jews or Moslems from Spain. Could that have anything to do with seven becoming six?

  By the time Claire finished the cocoa, she realized she didn’t know why Jews thought the numbers had meanings. It was a good question, and she knew where to get the best answer if she wanted to understand s
omething.

  Riding to Bensonhurst in the back of a taxi the next morning, wearing the lightest possible makeup, no jewelry, and her most conservative black dress, Claire understood how much she looked forward to each day now with this work at hand. She had been forced into it by circumstances more numbing than she wished to think about, but now that she was in it, she was glad. Where else would she meet someone like the wise Reb Schnauer and the Linzer Hasidim? She wondered what it would be like to spend a life studying like these men she had gotten to know in their brief chaperoned encounters. Of course, as far as she knew the Linzer women never studied like the men.

  She saw them for the first time on her visit to the Reb Schnauer, all wearing bandanas of a sort, even the little girls, all of them staring at what Claire knew was the strange woman who studied with the men. Herself.

  A woman led her to his dark study with books stacked up to the ceiling. The door was left open slightly so that others could listen to his words if they wished.

  Reb Schnauer sat in an easy chair, his frail white hands resting on his lap. Claire sat across the room on a metal foldout chair. She felt herself closing her knees tight and making sure her dress covered them.

  “Why, Rabbi,” she asked, “is six evil and seven good?”

  There were many explanations, he said. But they all came from the book she called Genesis, where in six days the Almighty created the world and on the Seventh He rested. So too on the Seventh, the Sabbath, should man rest and give this day to God.

  “Six is the world without the Sabbath. Six is man without God. Six is man alone.”

  “And that?” asked Claire Andrews.

  “Is a definition of hell,” said Reb Schnauer, and she heard muttering from outside the door and she realized people were listening in.

  “Then, if the removal of one stone was a deliberate message and if it were a Jew sending it, he would be saying this thing he put it on was either hell or without God.”

  “Of course, what is the difference?” asked Reb Schnauer.

  “That’s an awfully expensive message,” said Claire.

  “It is the ones that are not listened to that are expensive,” said the Reb Schnauer. And there was sadness in his eyes and his voice, and Claire wanted to hug him, but she knew she would probably be violating some of their laws if she did. Only the men seemed to hug each other among these people.

  That day, the rabbinical court had decreed that never again would the son of Reb Schnauer be allowed to trade in the commerce of diamonds. Because of his dishonesty, his word and his goods would no longer be accepted among these Jews around the world.

  And in a New York court, he had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of being an accessory after the fact, naming Avril Gotbaum of Tel Aviv as his source for the stolen gems.

  Back at her apartment, Claire got a phone call from Detective Modelstein with his thanks.

  “Good for you. We won,” said Detective Modelstein.

  “What did we win?” asked Claire, still feeling the weight of sadness from the old rabbi.

  “Reb Schnauer’s kid pleaded guilty today, naming Gotbaum. We got him. We’re the only ones who can keep him from jail, and this only if he talks. Two months ago when you came into Frauds I would have given you no chance at recovery. None. I think we’re going to get these guys. I think we’re gonna do it. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “No,” said Claire, thinking about the man who had lost a son.

  “We are gonna get the people who killed your cat.”

  “Well, that’s good, I guess.”

  “What’s the matter with you? I can’t figure you out.”

  “Reb Schnauer lost a son today.”

  “The kid was a crook.”

  “Oh Arthur, I so wish you were better than that,” said Claire, and she asked that the conversation end there, because she felt tears coming to her voice.

  XIV

  Avril Gotbaum didn’t care if the phones were tapped. He was already going to jail. He spoke loud enough into the phone so anyone within fifty feet on either side of a wall could hear him. He wasn’t looking for discretion anymore. He wanted penetration.

  “Gonna be no problem, right? I’ll tell you no problem. All I got is you to trade now. The little momser Schnauer handed me up. These detectives are all over me. There’s a homicide with this one. You didn’t tell me that at the beginning.”

  “Don’t do this to yourself,” came the voice.

  Gotbaum laughed and rolled out of the New York hotel bed still holding the receiver. He wiped the cake crumbs off his undershirt and looked in empty packs by his bed for another cigarette. His large stomach stretched his white rumpled undershorts, the elastic band cutting little red welts into his hairy girth.

  Gotbaum looked up to the ceiling as he talked.

  “Myself? Do to myself? My big New York protection has just pleaded guilty. Gone. All I can do is cop a plea and give them you for a trade in sentence.”

  “You don’t want to do that.”

  “I am not hearing very good reasons.”

  “The only proof they have is that you are identified as having supplied the diamonds. They have to prove you knew the stones were stolen.”

  “They can do that, asshole,” said Gotbaum.

  “How?”

  “They can get a half-dozen people to testify that the way I sold them was suspicious.”

  “They still have to prove it. They still have to convict you. With fifty thousand dollars you could get a very good defense.”

  “I think I could get that just for giving someone your name.”

  “That’s not smart.”

  “You’re going to have to show me why. Avril Gotbaum is hereby officially and totally for sale. I’m in a hotel with a hooker in every other room, and the only difference between Avril Gotbaum and the ladies is price and where I’ll let you stick it in me.”

  “Wait.”

  “You better have a nice package for me.”

  “I have the cash you need.”

  “We’re talking about my life,” said Gotbaum. He got two other offers that afternoon. And his line never varied, even to the New York City policeman from Frauds/Jewels.

  “Hey,” said the tall muscular detective with the gun hidden under his armpit, “I’m the only one who can keep you out of jail.”

  “I hear the way they work it in America is I am not guilty until convicted,” said Gotbaum to New York City detective Arthur Modelstein.

  “With a rabbi’s son as a witness against you, I’m not too much worried about conviction. You’re ours for when I want you. On the other hand, have you ever thought about dying? There’s at least one certain death with this thing, and maybe two.”

  “I’ve been through four wars. I’m an Israeli. I can take care of myself.”

  “Good, then you’ll enjoy our jails,” said Detective Modelstein.

  Captain Rawson came later. There was a slightly more difficult situation for him. Before, he had something to trade for information on the man who had sold Gotbaum the polished stones. That went out the window when some lady from America’s hinterlands couldn’t be convinced to withhold charges. As the British captain explained, it was her steadfastness that finally broke the rabbi’s son, and so now the political influence Gotbaum might have counted on was, if anything, turned against him.

  “But there are things we can still do,” said Captain Rawson.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m tellin’ everyone. Whoever brings Avril Gotbaum the best package will get Avril Gotbaum.”

  “I have no desire to see you in jail, and I really am not competing with the police department of this city,” the captain said. He had that very British way about him. He could look dressed for high tea climbing out of a sewer at midnight. “I understand that now only the police can offer you some kind of deal on jail.”

  “You got it.”

  “What I propose is to not interfere with them in the least. They want what I want. The name of your source
of the diamonds. The difference is I will pay just to get that information earlier. You’ll still have it. You can still trade it off for a reduced sentence. And you’ll have the cash bonus from me to boot. What could be better than that?”

  “I’ll see. There’s still more bargaining out there.”

  “Obviously, it’s the man who sold you the diamonds.”

  “See. You know the score.”

  “Then do me a favor, old boy, would you get yourself protection please? There was a killing that alarmed me considerably. It was perhaps the most professional thing I’ve ever seen. A perfect clean stroke into the cerebral lobe. Victim must have dropped as though someone turned out a light. These are not people to play with. I want you alive to tell the courts where you got the diamonds from.”

  “I don’t panic into deals,” said Gotbaum.

  The British captain sighed. “Then at least let me stay with you until you testify or hire someone to be with you at least. I do believe there is a very dangerous killer involved with what those diamonds came from.”

  “What is it with you Brits about professional killers. Killing is killing. The whole world does it. I’ve done it. I can take care of myself. You want to sweeten the pot, we’ll talk. Otherwise our business is done.”

  Gotbaum nodded to the door and ordered cigarettes and a sandwich from room service. He wasn’t supposed to smoke and he wasn’t supposed to overeat, and right now he didn’t care. A heart attack could be a relief in this situation.

  At 3:00 A.M. he phoned home to Tel Aviv, where it was 8:00 in the morning. He told his wife everything was going to be all right, but she was worried. There had been people asking questions about him in the neighborhood, she said. A friend had a premonition. She, too, never liked the idea of six when she heard that was the number of the stones he was selling.

  “You would have thought a rabbi’s son would know such a thing, no?”

  “It’s going to be all right. Tell everyone I’ll be home soon.”

  About 4:00 A.M. there was a knock so light Avril thought it was one of the prostitutes working the hotel. He put on his pants and thought it was funny that for a prostitute he was going to dress.