Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  But for some years thereafter, as his points of reference and relative sophistication increased, in certain public places—darkened movie theaters of the Upper West Side, for example—he had sat attuned to the unseen audience, trying to gauge from the flimsiest evidence—reaction to newsreels, to pious scenes from New Testament epics, to elements he himself barely understood—whether the people around him were Jewish or not. For practical purposes it was all the same to him; neither comfort nor reassurance would be forthcoming either way.

  Sometimes he would turn in the stippled darkness to observe his mother and her reactions to the screen. Her reflexes, sense of humor, vocabulary of gesture and expression were, in retrospect of course, distinctly Gentile. Lucas had never attended the movies with his father. None of this interfered with his Christian ardor, which flourished as he entered adolescence.

  Looking up from his beer, he saw a handsome young man approaching him. The man was obviously American, beautifully turned out, dressed for safari in expensive earth tones. He was tall and flawlessly athletic of build, his bronze skin slightly sun-reddened. He wore wire-rimmed round tinted glasses that showed off his fine cheekbones. The German Jews observed his passage with a saturnine alertness. Only at the very last moment did Lucas realize that he must be Reverend Ericksen.

  A second man followed a few steps behind Ericksen. This man, though young, had a foxy, unwholesomely rosy face, as if he were suffering from a mixture of sunburn and psoriasis. He wore a dirty white sun hat with a green eyeshade and khaki shorts with anklelength black socks and dusty black street shoes. He looked as unpresentable as Ericksen looked cool and polished.

  Lucas stood.

  "Mr. Ericksen?"

  Ericksen extended the kind of soft handshake that had become current among well-traveled Americans, replacing the Honest Abe bonecrusher grip of the past. He took a seat across the table. The man with him was named Dr. Gordon Lestrade. Lestrade was British and extended his hand as though the custom of handshakes were pathetically laughable. Lucas explained the mission: an article on the Jerusalem Syndrome. Ericksen looked thoughtfully concerned. Dr. Lestrade smirked.

  "Hundreds of thousands of Christians come to the land of Israel every year from all over, Mr. Lucas," Ericksen said. "They come and are inspired for the rest of their lives. A tiny handful are disturbed in some way."

  Lucas had the feeling he was receiving a packaged response. He decided to parry with the counter-package. "But religious obsession is fascinating. And it tells something about the nature of faith."

  "Religious people are being marginalized by the media," Ericksen declared. "Watch television, go to the movies—the religious person is always a bad guy. Sometimes just a prig but usually a criminal—a lunatic and murderer."

  "I'm not pursuing the obvious," Lucas said. He omitted the part about being a religion major. It seemed only to annoy people.

  "All right," said Ericksen. "How can I help you?"

  "I thought we could start with the House of the Galilean. How you came to be there. What the purpose of the place is."

  "Its original purpose was as a hospice for evangelicals," Ericksen said. "They used to be very much outsiders here."

  "And now?"

  "Now we still put up the odd pilgrim. But we're more involved with research. Biblical archeology. Dr. Lestrade's field."

  "Do you work out here?" Lucas asked Lestrade.

  Lestrade turned to Ericksen for the answer. His own features were still constricted in an odd, unpleasant smile, which Lucas began to think might be involuntary or otherwise pathological.

  "Not very much any longer," Ericksen said. "We bring pilgrims to Masada and Qumran and to the Mount of Temptation."

  "I thought you took a special interest in the Essenes?"

  "At the moment our work is in Jerusalem," Ericksen said. "Around the Temple Mount. You ought to come see our place in the city. It's in New Katamon."

  "Yes," Lucas said. "I know."

  "If you like," Ericksen suggested, "you could come out with us tomorrow. We're taking our folks to Jebel Quruntul."

  Lucas drew a blank on Jebel Quruntul.

  The peculiar Dr. Lestrade came to his assistance. "The Mount of Temptation," he explained. "You probably don't know the story."

  "As a matter of fact, I do," Lucas said.

  He was at the point of declining the offer when instinctively he thought better of it. He was attracted by the notion of a night in the desert and curious about Ericksen's take for the pilgrims on the Mount of Temptation.

  "We're leaving at half past five," Ericksen said. "Can you manage it? Plenty of room in the bus."

  "I'll be ready," he told Ericksen. "I have my own car."

  It was a slow night around the spa. The cafeteria closed at seven, the buses for the city departed, and there were few overnight guests apart from the members of Ericksen's tour. A wing of the hotel was reserved for them and, wandering in the gardens outside, Lucas could overhear their pleasant chatter. But after nine o'clock a silence and darkness descended on the desert that seemed to suspend life itself.

  Walking down toward the invisible sulfurous water, Lucas suddenly heard the flutter of a chopper's engine and saw the sweeping light of a patrol helicopter illuminate the roiling surface a mile or so out. Then it peeled off toward Cape Costigan and the darkness settled down again. He turned around and walked back to the hotel. Beside one of the plastic pillars in front of the rows of doors, he happened on Dr. Lestrade, swathed in towels literally from head to foot.

  "Going with us, are you, Lucas?"

  Thus swaddled, and with his cryptic smile, Lestrade looked like the statue of a Canaanite deity, a resemblance his black-rimmed spectacles mysteriously enhanced.

  "Yes, I guess so."

  "Do you actually know what the Mount of Temptation was?"

  "Sure," Lucas said. "I've been to the art museums."

  "American Jewish, are you?"

  "That's right," said Lucas.

  "And do you feel a special affinity? That you've come home?"

  "Dr. Lestrade," Lucas asked, "are you having me on?"

  "No," Lestrade said. "I always ask. Good night." And he was gone like the spectral figure he resembled.

  10

  BY THE TIME Lucas was up, early the next morning, the pilgrims of the House of the Galilean were milling about their bus. Most of them were ultra-American. White loafers, lime-green slacks and plaid Bermudas abounded. Pious foreigners in Israel were forever absurdly behind the times, in pursuit of their own national stereotypes. Wandering among them, making a breakfast of the overripe fruit he had bought the day before, he also heard Canadian and antipodean voices, recruits from wherever the House of the Galilean's world-wandering circus played.

  Dr. Lestrade approached him. "Look," he said, "can I ride with you?"

  Lucas agreed. He assumed the doctor was thirsting for the odd drop of ink. It would be a long time coming, Lucas thought.

  They followed the bus off the hotel grounds and onto the Jerusalem and Jericho road.

  "Your pilgrims seem to be having a good time," Lucas said.

  "Oh, yes. They're Types."

  Of course, Lucas thought, though his patriotism smarted, they were that.

  "Are they always the same?"

  "They all seem the same to me," Lestrade said. "Perhaps not to you."

  "They say clichés exist only in art, doctor. Not in life."

  "Well, if only we knew each other's inmost souls, haw?"

  Which effectively silenced Lucas for the next several miles.

  "You a clergyman, doctor?" he asked eventually.

  "God, no. Archeologist."

  "Specializing in Bible sites?"

  "Recently."

  "And what's your connection to the House of the Galilean?"

  "Scientific consultant."

  "Like," Lucas ventured, "searching for Noah's Ark? That sort of thing?"

  "Noah's Ark," the doctor repeated. "That's good. No, actually, I'm
not a communicant of the H of G. I'm the real thing, in my humble fashion. An actual archeologist. I give a little talk on Qumran and the Essenes."

  Before Lucas could apologize, Lestrade went on.

  "This is, as they say, the Holy Land." He pronounced the term with a mocking delicacy. "There are actual biblical sites here. I mean something happened, eh? Something we're still sussing out."

  "Any new findings?"

  "Oh, you'd be amazed. Who did you say you worked for?"

  "I used to be a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine. Now I'm working on a book."

  "Oh dear," said Dr. Lestrade, "so am I."

  "But mine is on religious sects. I'm not an archeologist. And I might do the odd article."

  "Well, working for the House, one tends to specialize. We've been working on the Mount of Olives and the Qumran caves. Also the Temple Mount, of course."

  "I thought that was off limits."

  "Not entirely. Not to us."

  "What's new on the Mount?"

  "The House is very interested in the Second Temple and the Holy of Holies. The dimensions and so forth. It's all recorded somewhere."

  "The Talmud, you mean."

  "Not only the Talmud."

  "Where else?"

  "Sorry," Dr. Lestrade said. "That's all I'd better say. The House has a public relations officer. Best talk to him."

  On the Jericho road, Lestrade got to reminiscing about his adventures educating the Types.

  "One of them—well, we're in this Byzantine church near Bodrum, in Turkey. On the wall is a huge mosaic of Christ Pantocrator, J.C., the King of Kings. Staring eyes, upraised arm, come in majesty to judge the quick and the dead. Jesus Christ Almighty, right? So one lady inquires, 'Doctor,'"—and here Lestrade flattened his voice to that of a toneless Yank—"'how old is this here church?' 'Oh,' says me, 'dates to the seventh century.' 'Really?' she says. 'A.D. or B.C.?' Hee-haw."

  "She had Jesus in her heart," Lucas suggested.

  "She could have been a fucking Buddhist," said Lestrade, "for all she knew."

  It developed that Dr. Lestrade had studied for many years to be a Benedictine monk. Finishing his studies at Cambridge, he had pulled out at the last minute. "Not really for me," he explained.

  Following the bus that bore Reverend Ericksen and the Types, they took the Jerusalem highway for a few kilometers and then made the turnoff for Jebel Quruntul. At the junction was a moldering building that had once housed a café. Two toddlers sat in the ruined garden beside it, surrounded by aloe, errant vines and litter. As Lucas eased onto the Jebel Quruntul road, one of the tiny urchins picked up a shard and flung it ineffectually toward the car.

  They lost the tour bus for a while, but after a few wrong turns Lucas found it parked in front of the monastery halfway to the summit.

  "Thanks," said Lestrade, heading for the bus, which stood with its motor running for the driver's comfort. "This is as far as I'll go. I've heard the lesson and I've seen the view."

  Lucas walked through the monastery's dark chapel, with its battery of Oriental saints along the walls. Behind it, at the far end of a walled garden, was a doorway, beside which a disreputable-looking Orthodox monk stood with his palm extended in an unseemly fashion.

  Lucas paid his six shekels and started up the limestone path that led to the peak. As he struggled up the steps, the words of the Jesus Prayer kept coming into his mind, matching his labored breathing with the insistence of an insomniac melody. His gut was sore from the bad fruit.

  Reverend Ericksen and his tour group were on a rise near the eastern edge of the peak. Ericksen himself stood on a rock above them, his arm extended in a circular gesture. And the view, in all directions, was spectacular and surprising. Across the valley lay the silver strand of Jordan, the land of Moab, to the north Galilee, to the south the Dead Sea. Westward, it was possible to see the outskirts of Jerusalem in the distance, the buildings atop the Mount of Olives.

  Ericksen was reciting Saint Luke from memory in a voice like country water. He was giving them Jesus in the desert:

  When forty days of fasting were ended, Jesus met Satan, who was out on one of his celebrated walks. For some reason, Satan prevailed on Jesus to accompany him.

  "And the devil, taking him unto a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered to me and to whomsoever I will give it."

  Lucas felt a shiver. The light was blinding and his belly ached. Ericksen took a breath and went on reciting. Dazzled, Lucas broke away from the group and followed a decrepit sign that pointed down the westward face of the slope. Scrambling down, he followed a goat track to an ancient building that appeared to house the toilets.

  It was an odd set of privies that the Mount of Temptation provided. There was a water tank outside, but the building itself, partly ruined, much resembled the main building of the monastery down the slope. Inside, Lucas thought he could make out figures on the walls that seemed older than the Arabic and English graffiti scrawled across them. The pain in his guts seemed to be affecting his imagination. Shapes on the wall appeared to sway.

  Some kind of desolate, sinister insight flashed across his mind and was gone. Across the room from where he squatted he saw a winged figure in sienna—scales, he thought, scaled wings and claws. It reminded him of nothing so much as the Duccio Temptation he knew from the Frick Collection, a painting situated where it was hard to miss, a painting he associated more with lost love and hangovers and rainy New York afternoons than with anything religious. In it, Christ floated under a gold metaphysical sky, dismissing the scaled demon who offered him the world.

  The only light in the privy came through the open door. Washing up afterward, he was stricken again by recall: it was the stinking lavatory of the charity school he had gone to and been scalded as a Jew. His memory was of washing up after his fight with English, washing away the blood from his nose and mouth, the salt taste of it. In that moment he recalled also his pale child's face in the dirty communal mirror. It was a bad and unfamiliar recollection. It upset him. He walked out into the painful daylight, breathing in the sweet desert herbs, laurel, tamarisk.

  He turned to look at the building he had been inside and touched the wall. There was no way to tell its age. Colonial frontier kiosks from the 1920s could look biblical after a few decades of weathering if they were made of the old stone. But something about the place filled him with loathing—a devil-haunted cloister jakes out of Luther's or his own nightmares, where defiling solitude, childish self-indulgence and shameless concupiscence lay in wait. But worse, the stench of his own childhood, the image of himself as victim.

  He ambled back up the jebel and waited to catch Ericksen alone. He kept thinking of the temptations of Christ, the curious text and its mysteries. Jesus challenged to turn stones to bread. Offered Satan's powers. Offered the risk of annihilation at the Temple's pinnacle, provoked to summon angels.

  "Satan must have been curious about Jesus," he suggested to the pastor. "Being an angel himself. And Jesus being a man. Getting hungry and falling off things."

  Ericksen laughed tolerantly. "The whole world was in Satan's power," he told Lucas. "It was about to be redeemed."

  "So," Lucas said, "think Satan was fishing for a deal?"

  "Yes. Maybe."

  "If the world is redeemed," Lucas asked, "why is it the way it is? The Redemption is as mysterious as the Fall. I mean," he said, surprising himself with his own fervor, as though somehow this small-town smoothie would tell him the meaning of it all, "where is He?"

  "Satan knew that they would meet again," Ericksen said. "And they will. Satan," he confided to Lucas, "has many names, and his power has never been greater than it is today. That's why the great contest is near."

  "Is it?"

  "The Messiah of the Jewish people is coming back. He's going to lead the struggle against evil. Then Satan will be known by his true name
, Azazel. His forces will fight those of the Lord. When the struggle is over, everyone living will be converted."

  "I hate to ask this question," Lucas said, "but who wins?"

  "The Lord wins. Azazel will be bound under earth as he was before."

  "Was before?"

  "Azazel was imprisoned in the earth," Reverend Ericksen declared. "But he escaped to America and he was waiting for mankind there. We Americans spread his power throughout the world. Now we owe Israel help in its struggle against him."

  "I thought everyone was going to turn Christian," Lucas said. "Isn't that how it's supposed to go?"

  "After the victory," Ericksen said, "Israel will accept Jesus Christ as the Davidic Messiah. But first there will be war and strife."

  "So you bring people here..." Lucas began to speculate.

  The reverend completed the message for him: "To show them the scene of a great temptation. The first temptation was when Azazel tried to murder Moses. The second was when he approached Jesus Christ. The third will be soon, when he assembles his forces and the Messiah returns to combat."

  "So we Americans," Lucas said, "we have a lot to answer for."

  "We'll pay it back here, helping the land of Israel," Ericksen said. "Well, if there's anything more I can do for you personally, let me know. Otherwise, as I say, we have a PR man."

  Lucas passed Dr. Lestrade on the way back to his car. He asked Lucas how he had enjoyed the view and the encouragements.

  "Wouldn't have missed it," Lucas told him. "Definitely glad I came."

  Dr. Lestrade seemed puzzled but said nothing more.

  Driving back to Jerusalem, Lucas stopped at an army shelter to pick up two armed soldiers looking for a ride toward town. One was a fair youth who seemed no older than a teenager, the second was a hard-faced, graying sergeant.

  It turned out that the fair soldier had worked in his uncle's T-shirt shop in Islamorada, Florida.

  "You could print anything on a T-shirt there. 'Shit.' 'Fuck.' Anything. Then they had to pay. For dirty words, more."