The Palace at Midnight: The Collected Work of Robert Silverberg, Volume Five

by Robert Silverberg

  Back at the hotel he ran into Helena and Claudia. They were friendly, even warm, but that moment of unmistakable mutual attraction in the cocktail lounge seemed impossible to recapture, and when he again suggested dining with him, they once more blandly and smoothly refused. To fill their place he found an Episcopalian deacon from Ohio, who suggested an allegedly worthwhile restaurant in East Jerusalem. The Ohio man had come here for Easter services five years in a row. “Overwhelming,” he said, nodding forcefully. “When they surge up the Via Dolorosa under those heavy crosses. The pathos, the passion! And then on Holy Saturday, when the Greek patriarch declares the Resurrection, and the cry goes up: Christos anesti! Christ is risen! You can’t imagine the power of the scene. Bells ringing, people shouting and dancing, everybody going crazy, candles, torches—you’ll still be here for it, won’t you? You shouldn’t miss it!”

  Yes, Hornkastle thought bleakly, I will still be here for it and probably for Christmas, too. Restlessness gnawed at him. This night, perhaps, the Arabs were celebrating the eucharist of the magic mushroom, gathered in some cobblestone-walled hut to turn themselves into gods, and he was here in this mediocre restaurant, trapped in the prison of himself, picking at gristly mutton and listening to the raptures of a wide-eyed Midwesterner. He hungered for escape, for the dive into the abyss of the divine, for the whips of oblivion. The Ohioan chattered on and on. Hornkastle, hardly even pretending to listen, wondered about his ex-wife, his ex-house, his ex-life in his far-off ex-city, and asked himself how it had come to pass that in the middle of his journey he had ended up here, scourged by inner demons he barely comprehended. He had no answers.

  The next day he phoned the university again, this time getting through quickly to Ben-Horin’s department. Yes, yes, Dr. Ben-Horin had returned, he was leaving for Tel-Aviv tomorrow, perhaps you can reach him at home now.

  The home number did not answer.

  To Hornkastle it was like being released from a vow. In a sudden access of overwhelming anger, he drove out toward the Kidron Valley, toward the village of the tigla’ users, eyes throbbing, hands tight to the knobby wheel. In the village all was as it had been: the old men outside the shop with the COCA-COLA sign, two or three boys playing dice in the dust, a radio blaring sleazy music. No one paid any attention as Hornkastle stepped from his car and went into the shop. A dark place, cramped—canned goods, piles of sheets and blankets, a rack of used clothes, and, yes, a squat red Coca-Cola cooler that emitted dull clunking humming sounds. Behind the counter was the Arab who looked just like the falafel-seller. They are brothers, Hornkastle thought: this is Mustafa; the other is Hassan. Abdul and Ibrahim and Ismail are out tending the flocks, and they all look exactly alike. The bulging bloodshot eyes regarded him coldly. Hornkastle said, in a tentative, faltering way, “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes. What do you want?”

  Probably it was meant as a shopkeeper’s What can I do for you? but it came out a lot more hostile than that. Hornkastle moistened his lips. “I want—I am here for—I am trying to learn about—” He halted in confusion and chagrin. This was impossibly stupid. Blurt it out, ask blunt questions about an illegal secret cult? How many months had it taken Ben-Horin to establish contact with these people? I’m ruining everything, Hornkastle thought. He trembled and said, astonishing himself, “Do you sell liquor here?”

  A flicker of the dark menacing eyes. “You must go to Jerusalem for that.”

  “Wine? Beer?”

  “Not here. You are in the wrong place.”

  Hornkastle leaned closer. “I am a friend of Professor Ben-Horin. I study the red plant. You understand?” He pantomimed, trying to draw Amanita muscaria’s phallic shape in the air with his hand, and realized that it looked exactly like pantomiming masturbation. The Arab’s expression did not change. Hornkastle was shaking. “The mushroom. You understand me?” he said in a thick throaty voice.

  “You are mistaken. This is not the place.”

  “I know it is. Have no fear: I’m no policeman. An American, a friend of Ben-Horin’s. I want the mushroom. The closeness to God, do you understand? To taste God, to know the feeling of being divine, of being something greater than myself, of—”

  “You are sick. I call doctor.”

  “No. Please. Trust me. In the name of the compassionate Jesus, help me!”

  The Arab stared. Some changes seemed to be going on at last behind the swarthy facade. Hornkastle, sweating, swaying, gripped the counter to keep from falling.

  “You are American. You want only fun.”

  “I swear it, no—”

  “The mushroom is not for fun.”

  “The mushroom is holy. I understand that. It is holy, God is holy, I—I am not holy. I want to be made holy. To be made whole, do you see?” Hornkastle laughed, a little too wildly. I am babbling, he thought. But he seemed to be getting through. He whispered urgently, “I want to be part of something, finally, does that make sense? To enter a world where I feel I belong. And the mushroom will open the gate. I swear to my need. By the compassionate Jesus, by the eyes of Mary, by the Holy Spirit itself—”

  “You are crazy,” said the Arab.

  “Perhaps I am. I don’t think so. But do you have to be sane to want to enter into God? I’ve been on the outside all my life—looking in, looking for the way, trying to pass that gate and never letting myself do it, never willing to take the last chance. You know, I’ve had mushrooms, in California. But I always took an underdose, I guess, or the mushroom was too mild, because I only got a hint of the experience, the shadow of it, a little light shining through the door to where I stood—” He faltered. “Please,” he said, in a small voice.

  From the Arab came an enormous unending silence, broken after an eternity by a few quick gruff words: “Come with me.”

  Hornkastle nodded. They left the store through a side door, and he followed the Arab on and on, out of the little village, toward the rocky hill to the east. There were a few stone huts up there. The elders of the tribe are convened there, Hornkastle decided, and that is the place of the mushrooms, and I will be presented to them and allowed to plead my case, and then—and then—

  Sudden intense panic surged through him. He felt a buzzing in his kneecaps and fierce pressure in his bladder and stabbing pain at the back of his skull. He had a vision of himself being called into judgment in one of those huts, the prying, snooping, ignorant American arraigned for poking his nose where it did not belong, and found guilty and taken out behind the hill, two quick thrusts of the dagger and over the edge into the dry ravine. This is how we deal with meddlers, Frankish dog. It was absurd. These people might look sinister, but it was all in his overheated imagination; they were harmless peasants, simple shepherds and farmers, much closer to God than he would ever be and hardly likely to do evil to a stranger. Yet fear possessed him. Halfway up the hill he turned and ran back toward the village, feeling feverish, dizzy, more than half-crazed. The Arab yelled after him but did not pursue. Somehow Hornkastle managed to start his car, and in chaos, tears streaming from his eyes as they had not done since he was a child, he drove wildly back to the city, past his hotel, out toward the university area. Angry drivers honked and shook fists at him. Near the Knesset building he saw a public telephone and called Ben-Horin’s home, expecting nothing. Geula Ben-Horin answered. “Hornkastle,” he blurted. “I must come over at once.”

  “Of course. Are you all right”

  “Tell me how to get to your place.”

  It was only five minutes away. He rang her bell and she peered out. A whiff of musky perfume enveloped him; she was wearing a sheer dressing-gown and nothing else, and he was unprepared for that, the absurd, comical, preposterous seductiveness of her, heavy breasts visibly swaying, all that voluptuous Mediterranean flesh. He said, “Your husband—”

  “In Tel-Aviv. Come in. What’s wrong with you?”

  She put a drink in his hand—the foul Israeli brandy—and he gulped it like medicine, and then a second one.
She was warm, sympathetic, trying to find out what was the matter; he was barely coherent. Finally, as the brandy settled him a little, he managed to say, “I’ve just been to the mushroom village.”

  “Ah.” She looked grave.

  “Begging them to give me some. I couldn’t wait for your husband to get back from wherever the hell he’s been. I stood the waiting as long as I could and then I went out there. I talked the ear off some Arab, I reeled off a whole lot of hysterical drivel about wanting to be one with God, you know, the whole transcendental thing—” His voice trailed off in shame.

  She said, “And they gave you some, and now it is beginning to upset your mind, is that it? It will be all right. There will be some hours of great delirium and then ecstasy and then gradually you will—”

  “No, They didn’t give me any.”

  “No?”

  “The Arab told me to follow him and started to lead me toward some huts on the hillside. And I panicked. I thought it was a trap, that they were going to kill me for asking too many questions, and I ran back to my car, I drove, I—I—I fled here. To the only people I know in Jerusalem.”

  Her eyes were warm with sorrow and pity and a sort of love, it seemed to him, and yet her mouth was quirked in what looked very much like contempt. “I think you are wrong,” she said calmly. “What you were afraid of was not that they would do harm to you, but that they really would give you the mushroom.”

  He blinked. “How can you say that?”

  “I think that is so. Often we turn in fear from that which we desire the most. You were in no danger from them, and you knew that. You were in danger from yourself, from your own troubled and tormented soul, and what you feared was—”

  “Please. Stop.”

  “—not what they would do to you but what you would see when the mushroom allowed you to look within.”

  “No. Please.”

  He was shaking again. He could not meet her gaze. She came close to him—she was nearly as tall as he was—and held him, comforting him, murmuring that she was sorry to have upset him when he was already in such a vulnerable state. He pressed himself against her and felt the tension draining from him. He felt like a child, a big foolish child. She was the great soothing mother herself, Isis, Astarte, Ishtar, and the power that she had over him frightened and attracted him all at once; if he could not let himself surrender to the god who was the mushroom, he would at least be capable of losing himself in the goddess who was His mother and consort.

  “Come,” she said, taking his hand.

  Easily she led him to the bedroom and with dreamy willingness he vanished into her warm billowing body, no longer caring, no longer resisting anything. He had no strength left. It was all very quick, too quick, and he collapsed abruptly into deep sleep from which he woke, equally abruptly, finding himself lying in her arms and for a moment not knowing who, how, where.

  He stared at her, aghast.

  Before he could speak she put her finger to his lips and said softly, “You are feeling better?”

  “We shouldn’t have—your husband—”

  “Life is very risky here. Any day the end might come. We live as though there are no second chances.” She winked. “Our little secret, eh?” Helping him up, finding his scattered clothes. “When he gets home I will tell him you called. He has been so busy, running everywhere, lectures, meetings—he has so little time. I am glad you came. About the mushroom village and what happened to you there: fear nothing. They will not harm you.”

  “Will you tell him I went there?”

  “No. He can find that out from you much better.”

  “What am I going to do, though? I’ve bungled everything!”

  “You are a Christian?” She smiled and touched her lips lightly to his. “Live in the hope of glorious redemption. Even bunglers are forgiven if there is a God. Forgive yourself and He will forgive you too, eh? Eh?” She drew him to her for a brief warm embrace. “Go, now,” she whispered. “It will be all right.”

  For ten minutes Hornkastle sat behind the wheel of his parked car, groggy, stunned, before he could muster enough will to drive. All the manic energy in him was spent; he felt bleak, drained, desolate. All was lost. The sensible thing was to pack up and go to the airport and take the next plane out, but he was too numb even to do that. At the hotel he went to the bar for a few drinks and, in a stupor of guilt and bewilderment, dropped into bed.

  He was still sleeping soundly when his telephone rang the next morning. Ben-Horin.

  “Is it too early for you?” the Israeli asked.

  Sunlight flooded the room. “No, no, I’m up.” The hand holding the receiver shook. “Good to hear from you again.”

  “Will you meet me at eleven by Saint Stephen’s Gate?” Ben-Horin said brusquely, icily.

  The day was bright and warm. Crowds of tourists swarmed about the Old City: the climax of the Easter season was at hand. From a distance of twenty yards Hornkastle could feel the anger radiating from Ben-Horin, and it was all he could manage to force himself to approach the little Israeli.

  Ben-Horin said, “How could you have done it?”

  “Sheer idiotic spinelessness. She gave me a couple of drinks, and I was already overwrought, I guess, and—”

  In amazement Ben-Horin said, “What in the name of Mohammed are you talking about?”

  “I—she—” He could not say it.

  Ben-Horin shook his head furiously. “You lunatic, how could you possibly have gone to the village after all my warnings about moving cautiously? You have done me harm that is perhaps irreparable. This morning I went to see Yasin, the falafel-peddler—he pretended not to know me. As if I am police. I could hardly believe it when Geula said you had been to the village. Now they want nothing more to do with either of us. My relationship with them is severed and possibly cannot be rebuilt. How could you? The discourtesy, Hornkastle, the absolute stupidity—”

  “I couldn’t reach you for four days. I thought you were avoiding me, God knows why. Finally the frustration built up and built up and I had to talk to those people, had to, so I—”

  “How very stupid that was.”

  “Yes. I know. Even as I was doing it, I knew it was a mistake, but I simply went through with it anyway, like a dumb schoolboy, I suppose, and even worse, when they were about to give me the damned mushroom—I’m sure that’s what they were going to do—I panicked, I bolted—” Hornkastle rubbed his aching forehead. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Forgiveness is not the issue. I want nothing more to do with you. You may have crippled my own research.”

  “All right.”

  “I advise you not to try to return to the village.”

  “I’m planning to leave Israel as soon as I can.”

  “Probably there will be no flights available until after the Easter holiday. But while you are still here, keep away from those people.”

  “Yes,” Hornkastle said meekly.

  “I take no responsibility for what will happen to you if you approach them again.”

  “There’s no chance of that.”

  “I wish I had never invited you here. I want never to hear your name again.”

  Ben-Horin turned with military precision and strode away.

  Hornkastle felt shame and weariness and a deep sense of loss. It was ended now, the quest, the timid tentative adventure. Out there in the judaean desert are people acting out the ancient love-feast, communing with a god older than Rome, and he would never know a thing of it now. Slowly, defeatedly, he made his way back to the hotel. I’ll call El Al tomorrow, he thought—they’ll be open on Good Friday, won’t they?—and get the hell out of here, back to the real world, back to all that I wanted to flee.

  But there was still tonight and he could not bear to be alone. Recklessly he phoned the room of the Englishwomen—what did he have to lose?—and Claudia answered. Would they join him for dinner? He had asked twice before; maybe he was making a pest of himself and they would tell him to get lost.
But no. A lovely idea, she said. Did he have a place in mind? Hornkastle said, “How about right here? At half past seven?”

  They both looked beautiful—fine clothes, pale skins, fluffy blonde hair. He loved the British sound of their serene voices. Helena’s gauzy blouse revealed fine collarbones, a delicate bosom. Had she been with a man, he wondered, since the unfortunate hunting mishap? Mother and daughter were heavy drinkers, and Hornkastle matched them two for one, so that things rapidly grew blurred, and he was only dimly aware of his food; he hoped he was being brilliant, suspected he was merely being boorish, and hardly cared. They were tolerating him.

  “And your mushroom research?” the mother asked. “How has that been going?”

  Painful recollection nearly sobered him. “I’ve botched it,” he said, and as they leaned toward him, eagerly, sympathetically, he poured out his miserable shabby tale of the illicit visit, the conversation with the Arab, the pathetic, inglorious retreat. “I see now that what I was looking for here,” he said, “was not just a nice little bit of folk-anthropopharmacology to write up for the Journal, but an actual mystic experience, a real communion, and as often happens when you want something too badly, you handle things clumsily, you reach too soon, you blunder—” He paused. “And now it will never happen.”