Tree of Life

by J. F. Penn

  A group of students laughed nearby, their faces transformed by the sun into the epitome of carefree humanity. They sat on manicured grass surrounded by ornate flower beds. They walked in constricted and controlled Nature, and they could not fathom the danger they faced if She was let loose upon the world. Guram hoped they would never know, and his job today was making sure that Eden could not be discovered in this generation.

  He pushed away from the tree and slowly followed the two men into the library, retracing the steps he had already taken in the early hours of the morning to lay his trap.

  Martin and Sebastian passed through the main entrance beneath a chandelier that hung low from the high ceiling and walked on through the corridors until they reached the Labrouste Reading Room. Martin stopped to gaze up at its vaulted roof, supported by slender iron pillars with decorative filigree flanked by six stories of book stacks. Nine domes painted in muted shades of terracotta and ivory arched above, each topped with glass so that light flooded the space, making the room a true architectural splendor.

  Students sat at desks, heads bent over their books, and Martin thought that he could never concentrate in such a place. He would look up at the sky through the high windows and marvel at the way the light played over so many volumes of learning. He spent his days in the buried rooms of ARKANE under Trafalgar Square and for a moment, he dreamed that perhaps he could have a sky office, one with a view of the heavens.

  “There she is.” Sebastian’s words were soft, almost a sigh. They captured a sense of unspoken history, as if he had been waiting for her all his life.

  Martin followed his gaze across the library. A woman stood under one of the arches wearing a tailored grey suit and towering stiletto heels that only served to emphasize her trim figure in a way that French women mastered from a young age. Her profile was regal, like an African matriarch used to commanding armies, her makeup perfectly applied to highlight her petite features. Martin recalled her face from the research he had done on the library. Professor Camara Mbaye, a French-Senegalese biblical scholar who also specialized in paleo-botany, the evolutionary history of plants and the biological reconstruction of past environments.

  Camara looked across the room and her gaze alighted on Sebastian. She stood a little taller, her dark eyes fixed on his face and as she smiled, a ray of sun illuminated the library with its warmth.

  Sebastian walked toward her and she toward him. When they met in the center of the Reading Room, it was as if no one else existed. Their eyes locked onto one another, oblivious to the surrounding students. Camara walked into Sebastian’s arms and hugged him, kissing him on both cheeks. He held her for a moment longer than strictly friends would and just before she pulled away, she whispered something. Martin couldn’t hear the words, but when Sebastian turned to beckon him over, his cheeks were aflame with a blush.

  Once they were all outside the quiet of the Reading Room, Sebastian introduced them both, emphasizing Martin’s expertise in research and his position at ARKANE and Camara’s extensive knowledge.

  “What brings you to Paris, Sebastian?” she asked. “It’s been a long time since we saw each other.”

  “Too long,” Sebastian said. “I didn’t know if you would forgive—”

  Camara cut him off with a wave of her hand and a shake of her head. “The past is past. I do not live with regret.” She looked at Martin. “Tell me what you need. I know a little of what you do at ARKANE and I have to admit, it intrigues me.”

  “We need help to locate the Garden of Eden.” As Martin spoke the words aloud, he realized how crazy it sounded.

  Camara laughed with delight. “Ah, this is a true quest and one that all have failed at so far.” Her dark eyes twinkled. “But you’ve come to the right place. I uncovered some fascinating clues at a dig in northern Iran last summer. Then my funding ran out, our local fixer disappeared, and they revoked my permits. I had to leave quickly, but the run of bad luck makes me even more curious. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Camara led them away from the grand historical section of the library to a more functional wing where doors opened off a long corridor. Martin itched to see inside these rooms, aware of the treasures held within that he longed to add to his vast collection. Not all the knowledge of the world had been scanned and so much was inaccessible to his powerful algorithms — at least for now. Camara stopped at one particular door and swiped a key card. It clicked to open and lights flickered on inside.

  She waved them inside. “Welcome to my domain.”

  The unprepossessing exterior hid a cornucopia of academic delights and Martin’s eyes widened as they walked in. The long room stretched back into the shadows with most of it separated off into temperature-controlled glass areas with ancient manuscripts, maps and illustrated documents pinned down for study.

  An oversized teak desk covered with folders, loose papers and books, some open with pages marked, nestled in a cozy alcove near the door. An Iranian samovar stood on a side table, a copper vessel used to boil water and prepare tea. This one was a mix of ancient and modern as it was plugged into an electric socket, constantly providing the sustenance that every academic needed. Martin smiled at how the office was laid out as it echoed his own world. Camara was perfectly put together in her lab and her physical appearance, but her desk betrayed a riotous intelligence behind closed doors, one that could not be tamed so easily by the expectations of others.

  Flowering plants in rich vibrant colors surrounded the desk and above them, a wall of maps from different eras — all depicting the Middle East.

  Camara led them over to the wall and pointed to one map that showed several pins dotted around a specific area. “These are some dig sites I’ve been researching, and this is the one where things were disrupted. I think Eden might be near here.”

  12

  The library was in downtown Kingston, an unremarkable building with three stories of concrete and louvered windows, a relic of the 1970s. But sometimes, it was the non-descript buildings that held the most interesting objects. Jamaica had not digitally archived all their treasures, so this was the only way they could truly investigate the thread that Martin’s database had discovered — a link between the Jews of Amsterdam and the pirates of Port Royal in the seventeenth century.

  A tall, slender Jamaican woman greeted them at the door. She wore a professional trouser suit in dolphin grey with an ivory shirt beneath, the very model of a senior librarian. But as she reached out her hand to welcome them, Morgan noticed a tattoo on her wrist, a string of numbers running up her sleeve in the beginnings of a Dewey Decimal number.

  “Welcome to the island. I’m Kimelia Washington, Head Librarian here at Jamaica’s National Library.”

  Kimelia led Morgan and Jake into the main reading room. Students sat at long tables researching from books with broken spines, an old photocopier whirred in the corner, and a fan rotated slowly overhead. It didn’t have the ancient beauty of some of the libraries of Europe, but Morgan recognized a love for knowledge in those present. A common thread that bound bibliophiles the world over.

  “I believe you wanted to see William Jackson’s journal from 1643?” Kimelia whispered.

  Morgan nodded, respecting the quiet.

  Kimelia led them on through the reading room and down a staircase lit by dim bulbs. “We keep the older documents away from sunlight and we can control the temperature more easily down here.”

  She opened a door at the bottom of the staircase, and they emerged into a storage area. Rows of shelves stacked with leather-bound ledgers of land deeds, tax records and business transactions stood next to boxes of documents, each marked with precise tiny writing.

  Kimelia pulled down a box from the stack. “William Jackson was an English privateer. He captured Spanish ships and ‘liberated’ the cargo for England. In 1643, he anchored at Port Royal and led a successful raid on Spanish Town. Port Royal was notorious at the time, a haven for privateers and pirates.”

  She placed the box on
the table, pulled white gloves from her pocket and put them on, before carefully reaching into the box and lifting out an old leather-bound book.

  “This is his journal, but as you can see, it’s difficult to decipher.”

  Morgan gazed down at the elaborate handwriting, a scrawl that would take even Martin’s algorithms some time to translate. “We’re looking for any mention of the Portuguese Jews.”

  Kimelia brightened. “You’re in luck. I helped an author research this not long ago.” She carefully turned the pages to a particular diary entry, the dark lines slightly faded with ink spots dotting the edges, and read a passage aloud. “Jamaica’s capital was deserted except for diverse Portuguese of the Hebrew nation who came unto us seeking asylum and promised to show us where the Spaniards hid their gold.”

  Kimelia turned from the book and went to a large bookcase, pulling down a folio with loose maps. She selected a print. “An earthquake and a subsequent tsunami destroyed Port Royal in 1692, but this painting from National Geographic has a depiction of what it might have looked like.” She pointed to one area. “This was apparently a synagogue near the courthouse. There are also tombstones from the time with Hebrew writing alongside Portuguese. As experienced traders, the Jews were an important part of the Port Royal community.”

  Jake raised a questioning eyebrow. “So, there really were Jewish pirates?”

  Kimelia nodded. “Yes, even a couple of famous ones. Sinan, Barbarossa’s second-in-command, was referred to as ‘the great Jewish pirate’ in correspondence with Henry VII of England. The founders of the Amsterdam Jewish community, Samuel and Joseph Palache, were also originally pirates. They carved a phoenix on the bow of their ship, the bird that rises from the flames, who cannot be burned, representing the faith of the Jews that would always rise again from the fires of the Inquisition.”

  Morgan thought back to Rabbi Cohen on the edge of the pyre in Amsterdam, when he had looked like he would walk over the embers to the lost manuscripts buried beneath. The Jews of the Diaspora were a hardy bunch indeed, but it was hard to reconcile what she knew of bookish scholars like her father with the archetype of pirates brandishing cutlasses and hijacking treasure ships.

  “They also acted as spies for the enemies of Spain,” Kimelia continued. “Oliver Cromwell said that the Jews were good and useful spies when they assisted Britain in the conquest of Jamaica. They even sent word to Queen Elizabeth that the Armada was sailing.”

  “But how did the Jews come to be here?” Jake asked.

  “Many came from Recife in Brazil.” Kimelia pulled out an older map showing trade routes from South America into the Caribbean. “The Portuguese settled in what became known as Brazil in the mid-1500s and the Jews kept their faith a secret. But when the Dutch took some of the northern region and founded New Holland as a base for the West India Company in 1630, Jews were allowed to practice their faith openly.”

  Morgan imagined the freedom that suddenly opened up for people, and it made her smile to imagine them finally saying their prayers aloud.

  “But it didn’t last long,” Kimelia continued. “The Spanish recaptured Recife in 1654 and the Jews left along with the Dutch. Some went to New Amsterdam which eventually became New York, some returned to Dutch Amsterdam and others sailed here to the Caribbean. They were successful traders and by the 1660s, there were Jewish settlements across the islands.”

  “Do you have any other documents from the time?” Morgan asked, walking over to look at the boxes more closely. They seemed to contain only land deeds and other historical documents, but she knew how much could be hidden. Books inside books, manuscripts inside tax records. The fragment of a map could be concealed anywhere.

  Kimelia nodded. “Of course, what are you looking for in particular?”

  “A fragment of an illustrated manuscript, part of a map. It might have plants on it or a tree and maybe some words in Hebrew.”

  Kimelia shook her head. “I’ve seen nothing like that and we have no illustrated works of that kind, but the Shaare Shalom Synagogue has an archive of Jewish material. It’s just a few blocks from here.”

  Bright sun glared off the stark white exterior of the Shaare Shalom Synagogue as Morgan and Jake walked inside its gates. They passed palm trees and a well-watered garden as they headed toward the giant door.

  It opened on their approach and an elderly black man walked out, wrinkles belying his age even though he moved with the sprightly ease of a younger man. He wore a kippah over his close-cropped white hair and beamed in welcome, holding out his arms wide. “Shalom, friends. I’m Desomond. Come on in.”

  The synagogue had two levels of dark wooden seating either side of a central area where the Torah Ark stood on a raised dais. There was sand on the floor, echoing Ets Haim in Amsterdam.

  Desomond noticed Morgan glance down and explained the custom. “It’s not a memento of the island’s beaches as some think. It’s to remind worshippers of the sand used to muffle footsteps back in the days of the Inquisition when we hid our faith. Others say that until we are back in Jerusalem, we must walk through the desert.” He grinned. “But maybe it’s just to keep out the snakes and insects.”

  He led them on to a less formal area for community events with plenty of plastic chairs, children’s art and pictures of local festivities.

  “We’re a Reform synagogue with prayers in Hebrew and English and we encourage people of other faiths to visit. The more we understand each other, the more we can live together in peace.”

  Desomond stopped in front of a board of pictures and pointed to an image of a black man in glasses and a skullcap shaking hands with a Rabbi. “That’s Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam. He came here in 2002 in his first ever visit to a synagogue in an attempt to rebuild his relationships with Jews.”

  Jake pointed to a colorful picture, a group of people singing together against the backdrop of the white synagogue. Some had long dreadlocks tied back with green, yellow and red bands, others tucked their hair away in tams, round crocheted caps.

  Desomond smiled. “That’s a Nyabinghi we had here in 2012, a gathering of Rastafari people. They are not so far from the Jews, you know, singing songs of freedom in a strange land. Their Zion is Africa, and ours is Israel.” He looked off into the distance. “Funny though, most of us have never been there. This is our home.”

  He led them on. “So I understand from Kimelia that you want to see the museum?”

  Morgan nodded. “Yes, and in particular, any documents or fragments that might have been brought here by the Jews who came from Recife or even Portugal originally.”

  Desomond nodded. “We have some manuscripts stored in the archive. Have a look around and I’ll go get them for you.” He pushed open the doors of the museum and waved them inside with a smile. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Jake walked over to the nearest display case, which contained several open prayer books. He bent to look more closely while Morgan walked to the back of the room. She noticed something, an illustration of some kind, in one of the glass cases.

  But as she walked closer, she could see it was a map of Jamaica illustrated by a local artist. Beautiful, but not what they sought.

  The sound of rapid footsteps came from the corridor.

  Jake spun around, his expression alert. “What—?”

  Morgan instinctively ducked down behind an exhibit, her years of training in the Israel Defense Force serving her well. She crouched low and peered around the corner of a cabinet.

  The door to the museum burst open.

  Desomond strode in, a pistol held out in front of him. Three scowling young men rushed in behind him, two with guns and one with a machete. Desomond was no longer the smiling custodian.

  His face contorted with anger as he looked around the room. “Where’s the woman?”

  Jake didn’t miss a beat. “She went to the bathroom. What is this? What’s going on?”

  One man slipped out to check.

  Desomond brandish
ed his gun. “You pursue a dangerous goal and your actions risk us all. There’s a curse on that piece of manuscript and as I am a servant of the Lord, I cannot let you take it, no matter your credentials.”

  He motioned to the men, and they walked toward Jake with menace.

  As they advanced, Morgan crawled silently around the back of the museum and slipped out the door into the garden.

  In the reflection on the shiny wood, she could just glimpse Jake roughly pushed out through the main doors.

  A shout came from the women’s bathroom. “She’s not here!”

  Morgan ran.

  She sprinted across the small garden and vaulted over the fence, landing heavily in a dusty backyard.

  A dog started barking. The men would not be far behind.

  Morgan rolled to her feet and ran again, out to the road and into the warren of streets around the synagogue. She stood out here as a white woman and they would find her trail soon enough. She had to get back to help Jake, but right now, she needed sanctuary in a strange city.

  The library.

  Kimelia’s passion for history and her edgy tattoo made Morgan trust her. She would not have sent them to the synagogue if she’d known of what they sought or Desomond’s clear relationship to the criminal side of Kingston.

  Decision made, Morgan darted off through the streets.

  The vicious kick glanced off his injured ribs and Jake let the wave of pain wash over him as he lay curled on the floor. He was no stranger to a beating, but he’d had a few too many lately. At least this man was an amateur, which gave Jake some hope. The blows were enthusiastic but not well-executed, and from what he’d heard about some criminal gangs in Jamaica, he could be in a lot more trouble right now.