Necropolis

by Santiago Gamboa

  That night José felt frustrated and slit his wrists in his room, but they found him in time. Exactly as he told it, although I don’t know if his motives where those he said. José was ready for anything. It’s hard to see the danger when it’s disguised as love and lives with you, when you see it every day and have stopped recognizing it and it doesn’t surprise you. I never stopped seeing it, which is why one day I made up my mind to talk to Walter. I had to warn him and tried to find the words, but couldn’t. I wasn’t good at putting the blame on others, or speaking out of turn. My love for Walter was too strong. But in order to protect him, I was ready even to do that, so I talked to him on the plane during a trip to Charleston. I told him what I thought of José, how scared of him I was, how sure I was that he would end up hurting both him–Walter–and the Ministry; he let me speak without interruption, looking straight at me, his eyes like two letters blazing in the darkness, a and f, for example, standing for always and forgive, two words he used a lot; when I stopped speaking he hugged me in a fatherly way, and said, poor Jessica, what you must have suffered, feeling all that, being scared without my knowing it, without my being able to help you; he hugged me tighter and said, listen, listen carefully. What, Father? and he said, my heart, Jessica, do you hear it beating? Yes, Father, I hear it. Then remember, those little heartbeats are the life that you give me, through your love and faith. You are the one who protects my heart. While there is love in you, it will continue beating in my breast, whatever happens. He closed his eyes and we both cried. I felt relief for a few days, but then the fear returned.

  When José started writing the book, there was a lull. We’d stopped going to the Flacuchenta together, so I was able to devote myself body and soul to Walter, to him and to prayer, because the call that God made to me was great and my answer a genuine one, although you may find that hard to believe. My devotion and my vocation are as strong as ever, do not doubt that for a second. The same could have been said of Walter, who was a pure soul; that was the only thing his burnished, muscular body had ever expressed, yes, it may have been a beautiful wrapping, but his strength came from inside, from his will and his love and his word. I don’t want you to think that I’m some kind of fanatic. In talking of him I talk of God. Many people accused the Ministry of being a cult, like the Moonies or the Davidians; they accused it of stealing from believers, of selling false dreams to the working classes. Poor accusers, what ignorance and what wickedness, what energy expended on wickedness. Why don’t they accuse the Church of Rome, with its marbles and alabasters and artistic salons? Churches are powerful because they represent something powerful: the faith of those who believe in them.

  After the Ministry was destroyed, I devoted myself to study, I took two university courses, in theology and philosophy. For more than ten years I’ve been reading, learning about ideas, examining the images of devotion from the inside. When I first arrived at the Ministry I was seventeen, I was a scared girl, and in twelve years of spreading the word with Walter I turned into a good priest; today, with twelve years of university studies behind me, I still believe in Walter. I’m a monotheist. Nothing of what I learned in all those years has made me doubt what I felt about him, and if I could put the clock back and see the house in South Beach reemerge from the dust, I would renew my love and devotion to Walter, who represents the supreme idea of holiness.

  I realized that she was about to finish, so I ventured to say, to ask rather, if Walter was so holy, why did he suddenly turn into a soldier and open fire when the police came for him? Jessica cleared her throat and took a sip of coffee. She looked around, nervous again, and said: there were weapons in the house, I don’t deny that, and the reason is that there was always money, a lot of money in cash. I never agreed with all that, but there were weapons and money. The way José tells it, it’s as if Walter was a sniper or something like that, but it wasn’t like that. José was in his cabin and didn’t see anything, he imagined it all. But I was in the tower and I know that the people who kept shooting right up until the end were Jefferson and the bodyguards. There were bullet casings clattering on the floor, the boys were jumping from one window to another and throwing each other cartridge clips, everything was filling up with smoke but they carried on; remember they came from the underclass, the school of the street. A shoot-out was a game to them, and better still, it was against the law. While this was going on Walter was kneeling on the floor, with tears in his eyes and an expression that had stopped being human. When fire started to engulf the house, he ordered us to leave and he stayed behind. In my last image of him, he is silhouetted against the flames, bare-chested and with his arms open in the shape of a cross. The Lord decided at that moment to come and take him back and that is why nobody found any traces, of his body or anything. He vanished into thin air.

  Having said this, she looked at her watch anxiously and said, it’s getting late, now it’s your turn to tell me why you’re looking for me, and especially how you found me.

  I hadn’t expected that question, so instead of replying, I took the message out of my pocket and threw it on the table. We’ve found you. She looked at it in silence and nodded, then said, so it’s because of this. I thought I saw, deep in her face, the beginnings of a smile. You traced the call back to the Coptic Church? I assume the answer is yes, otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here. Let me ask you another question, why are you interested in this story?

  I came across it by chance, I said, a thread flung down in front of me that I decided to follow. I could have decided not to, but I did it for no other reason than that it was there. I did it because I could.

  Jessica read the message again, and this time she did smile. Poor José, maybe he never even read it. Yes, I said, he did. I found it in his room, inside his book, Encounters with Amazingly Normal People. By the way, who was with you when you made the call? why the plural?

  She left the paper on the table and said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I insisted: if you’d been alone you would have said, “I’ve found you” wouldn’t you? Jessica seemed confused and looked toward the door. That’s none of your business, let me remind you I’m under no obligation to answer your questions, this is a pointless conversation, do I have to justify myself? well, I won’t, but I will answer your question, the reason I used the plural is that I was referring to God, who is always with me. And now I have to go, they’re waiting for me at the church.

  She stood up, looking nervous, and walked toward the door. Before she reached it, I said, is God the guest in Room 1209? As I uttered the question and saw her turn, something welled up in my memory: her voice. I had heard it before. It was the voice from the first night. She came back to the table and said, what else do you know about me? I looked her in the eyes. I know you went to the morgue at the Notre Dame de France hospital to see José’s body–actually I was starting to have doubts about that–and that you went there with somebody, I don’t know who, perhaps with the mysterious William Cummings, is that his real name? For the first time she looked at me with a defiant expression, and said, the person you’re referring to is a companion in faith, who’s been with me on and off over the years. He has nothing to hide and has no connection with José, so I would ask you not to call him “mysterious”; he’s no more mysterious than that young man who came in with you and is waiting for you at the back there, throwing those very crude glances at us, trying to figure out where our conversation is heading, do you think I didn’t see him?

  That’s Momo, a young employee from the hotel. He brought me here because today is his day off, and he was coming to Tel Aviv to visit his mother. Why didn’t he come and sit with us? asked Jessica, but then she snapped her fingers and said, I know why, he was the one who told you about my calls, about the message, about Room 1209, tell him to come here. I refused. He doesn’t speak Spanish and he doesn’t know anything about this story. She paused again, then asked: what do you find so strange in the message?

  It’s quite a coincidence that José
decided to kill himself after reading it, don’t you think? But you didn’t know that. Why didn’t you put your name on the message? did you think those three words would be enough to tell him it was you? Jessica’s eyes filled with tears, and she said, I don’t know, I didn’t want to leave my name, maybe I felt scared again, I don’t know, you said people do things without knowing why, just because they can, well, this was like that, believe me, there is no puzzle, I simply didn’t want to.

  Knowing you’d found him wasn’t sufficient incentive to stay alive, I said, why do you think he killed himself? and another thing, from the message I assume you hadn’t heard from him in quite some time, why were you looking for him? what was José running away from?

  Miss Jessica took a deep breath and looked toward the door again. There are many things I haven’t told you, she said. In the last years of the Ministry, José used a power of attorney signed by me to steal large sums of money. He would put some little phrase like “miscellaneous expenses,” “contribution for Oregon Street,” “infrastructure,” and nobody asked any questions; at first it would be amounts like seven thousand dollars, but then they crept up to twenty-five thousand, and once even fifty thousand. He must have had someone advising him, because after a while it became very difficult to understand what he had done, and impossible to trace. Of course there was still money left in the Ministry, but it was all very strange. So I told Walter and he summoned José to the tower one night, just the two of them alone. He asked me to listen from behind the door, because he wanted me to help him figure it out afterwards. Walter said to him, are you taking money out, José? what do you need it for? He said he wasn’t taking it out for himself but for charitable works, and he didn’t know he had to justify himself. But Walter insisted. Look, brother, there are days when you withdrew seventy thousand dollars, why? what do you need so much money for? I want you to know something, José, if you want money just tell me straight out and I’ll give you all you want, this is just between you and me and all you have to do is ask, you know that, but don’t go taking out money here and there like that, it makes everyone nervous.

  José didn’t own up, he denied it, saying that these sums of money were not for him but for charitable works, that Walter could go out on the streets and see what he had done, everything was there, invested in young people and in reformed prostitutes who were worth more than that money. Walter wouldn’t listen to him anymore, he sat down on the floor and asked José to leave him alone. A week later the police arrived, doesn’t that seem strange to you?

  I was about to speak, because I still had a lot of questions, but she raised her finger to her lips and said, that’s enough now, we’ve talked for a long time, I suggest you go back to Jerusalem and think about everything I’ve told you. In a couple of days I’ll get in touch with you and we’ll continue our talk. But I want you to know that I didn’t go to the morgue. The last thing I want is to see a dead body, let alone José Maturana’s. I saw him from a distance at that cocktail party, and left again immediately. Then I saw him during his talk. Actually I just heard him, because I was sitting at the back of the room with my eyes closed. It hurt me just to look at him, anyway I can’t go on, goodbye. She left the café and crossed the street without once turning back.

  The highway to Jerusalem seemed shorter now, in spite of the fact that the army stopped us several times. The Jerusalem number plates helped Momo to get through, but he constantly had to give explanations and show his safe conduct. We soon arrived at the military checkpoint on Jaffa Road and passed the hillock that leads into the valley.

  There again was the tortured face of the city.

  On the horizon we saw the skeletons of buildings that had burned after the first explosions and were now black and covered in dust. Eviscerated apartment blocks, twisted girders, towers turned into huge torches, heaps of broken glass, soot-blackened windows like empty eye sockets. On the corners, mountains of garbage from which foul-smelling streams flowed and buzzards pecked in search of food.

  The whole city was laid out before us, and Momo pointed it all out to me. There was the Jewish district of Mea Shearim, with its synagogues and its Hasidic population; there, Bekaa, which had previously been Arab; to the south, Ohel Moshe; the elegant Rehavia and Kiryat Shmuel, near the hotel, and farther out, Talpiot; then the Arab districts, Katamón, Beit Safafa, and East Jerusalem, the German, Greek, and American colonies, and in the middle, like a giant jellyfish run aground on a coral reef, the Old City, that much sought-after treasure.

  All this, said Momo, is no more than the entrance to a place that can’t be seen from here but is down there, the Valley of Josaphat, where the trumpets will sound for the Last Judgment, because this city, basically, is made for death. Everyone’s death. That’s why it’s the great necropolis, the cemetery of East and West.

  I looked with interest at the stumps, mutilations, and pustules of that capital still under siege, which seemed to keep reserves of strength in its centuries-old memory that might allow it to rise again. The sun was setting.

  The sharp crack of a grenade broke the fantasy and Momo started the engine. Let’s get out of here, he said, and may God protect us.

  It was after five in the afternoon by the time we got back to the hotel. As I crossed the lounge on the first floor, one of the organizers of the ICBM approached and said, my dear friend, are you all right, we missed you at the round table this morning, I hope you weren’t in any kind of accident? I looked at the board with the conference schedule and read, 11:00 A.M. Round table. On the manifold forms of remembering, evaluating, understanding, and transmitting a life. My name was on the list of speakers. How embarrassing, it had been at eleven in the morning.

  I’m so sorry, I had some urgent business to attend to in Tel Aviv and got back late, but to tell the truth, I didn’t know about this, I forgot to look at the program before I left, you must forgive me, please add my name to any of the remaining round tables, I beg you, but he said, don’t worry, my friend, life is full of imponderables, we just have to carry on with the conference, we’ll wait for your next contribution, he said, adjusting his glasses, and added, I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait, in fact, I can tell you that there’s a great deal of expectation building up among the public and the specialized press.

  I took my leave shamefacedly, how could I have forgotten something like that? Then I ran to my room, eager to get my encounter with Miss Jessica in Tel Aviv down on paper.

  When I got to my room, I found a note from Marta saying, take a look at these papers, I’m going out with Amos, don’t wait up for me. It was the medical report on Maturana. I didn’t understand most of it, but a few things caught my eye: Kaposi’s sarcoma, pustules in the liver, pneumocystis carinii, fungus in the mouth and the wall of the esophagus, dying lymphocytes, presence of the HIV retrovirus in the ganglions, plus a series of figures I couldn’t make head or tail of. He had AIDS! I immediately went to the table and started writing.

  The next day, the telephone jolted me out of my sleep, like an arm grabbing me by the neck and pulling me out of deep water. It was Rashid, and he was in the King David, he had come to hear Sabina Vedovelli and suggested we meet down in the bar. I told him to wait for me. I threw water on my face and walked to the elevators, but when I got downstairs I found that Rashid was not alone. He was with Kosztolányi, Supervielle, and the head of Tiberias, Ebenezer Lottmann.

  When I arrived, the three men looked at me.

  Rashid rose to greet me and said, I think you all know each other? I felt somewhat ill at ease. The only one who seemed pleased to see me was Kosztolányi, who said, my dear colleague, what a pleasure you can be with us, would you like a coffee? we were talking about the latest events. I assumed a surprised expression and asked, which events, exactly? Supervielle threw me a sardonic glance and said, which events? well, Maturana’s suicide is . . . striking, wouldn’t you say? I’d go so far as to call it outlandish; perhaps the ICBM should suspend the scheduled sessions and host a panel with the
title Interpretations and Variations on a Suicide, what do you think? and he added, in an irritable tone: everyone’s interest has shifted away from the lectures and debates because of this unfortunate event, and obviously a suicide deserves our attention, but . . . isn’t it, when you get down to it, merely the story of a man reaching the limits of his contradictions? In France, nobody would hesitate to call that famous Ministry a cult, and of course, between ourselves, what they did would be considered a crime; both the pastor, may he rest in peace, and his guru, may he also rest in peace, if they were French would have been put behind bars and nobody would think of them as heroes. Anyway, sighed Supervielle, poor man, although I’m not sure his tragedy is worth the incineration of a conference like this.