Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  "He was very frightened, Lukash. He was frightened of the invisible world. Principalities and powers. He was frightened of God. He thought he was damned. That he knew too much."

  "Did he know about the configuration of the Holy of Holies?"

  "Oh, shit," Lestrade said in frustration. "I don't mean it in any melodramatic way. I mean he thought Yahweh was his enemy. That God despised him as an Edomite and took his wife to give to an Israelite and was about to slay him. And of course he'd always been rather fond of Yahweh. And presumably of his wife."

  "But did he know a lot about the Temple's structure?"

  "He'd been shown around. He knew more than many of them. They were going to use him as a fundraiser in America, so he had to give lectures with slides and so on."

  "I see," Lucas said. "And meanwhile you get whatever you need."

  "Whatever I need," Lestrade repeated slowly, over the expressionist chanting.

  It seemed to Lucas that Lestrade was an unstable character, hence a journalistically desirable figure. It might also be inferred that a man who loudly professed not to suffer fools was a man who talked too much. Lucas's own strategic role, then, should be that of a fool. Insufferable enough to unbind a few inner demons, but not so insufferable as to be thrown, drinkless, into the street.

  "What puzzles me," Lucas said, "is why American fundamentalists would be so interested in the Second Temple."

  "Never heard of millenarianism, Lukash? Have you come so far to have the commonplaces of Yankee Bible thumping explained to you by the likes of me?"

  "Guess so," said Lucas.

  "Revelation," Lestrade said. "The Apocalypse. Last book of the New Testament. Heard of that?"

  "Certainly," said Lucas.

  "Shouldn't be in the canon. Not a grain of faith, hope or charity in the fucking thing. One long, meandering lunatic image after another but, on the whole, typical of Jewish prophetic literature at the time of J.C. And typical of early Jewish Christianity.

  "Now, amid the flaming swords and sparkling whirligigs and falling stars, we have a core of prophecy so nonsensical and non sequitous as to defy interpretation by the maddest of mad monks. Actually, the monks left it alone, because Saint Augustine didn't care for it and the medieval Church didn't want the rabble reading it and going all funny."

  On the record player, the swan about to be roasted for the feast lamented its fate in academic Latin.

  "With the Reformation, however, every dork and yoik at every muddy crossroads read the fucker and swooned with insights meant for him alone. Nowhere so much, Lukash, as in your adopted country."

  "The United States is not my adopted country, Lestrade. I was born there."

  "Good for you. Anyway, in our story a time of tribulation ensues. We're talking grave tribulation—famine, pestilence, nuclear war. The forces of good battle the forces of evil. Upon which a thousand-year regnum ensues. Baddies defeated, goodies exalted. Christ comes back, the much-vaunted Second Coming."

  "Does ring a bell," said Lucas.

  "Only question is, does Christ come back before or after the tribulations? If you believe before, you're a pre-millenarian. You believe in the Rapture. Familiar with the Rapture?"

  "We see it on bumper stickers. People are advised to be ready when it comes."

  "Ah," said Lestrade, "sound advice. But hard to follow given the avalanche of strangeness that's going to descend."

  Lucas knew something more about the Rapture than he was presently prepared to allow. He had first heard it talked up on late-night radio stations while driving through the desert. Then it began to turn up on Christian television, and there were cassettes, in several of which he had invested. They were both breathlessly sensational and boring. Then, since his conversation with Otis and Darletta, he had researched it further.

  As Lucas understood it, the Rapture, when it came, would be distinctly cinematic. The returned Christ would gather up his own. The upgathering would be of a literal nature. One of these mornings, in order to be spared the final trials, the born-again would wake up singing, as it were, spread their wings and commence to fly. They would be rapted, like cosmic chipmunks in the talons of their savior, drawn irresistibly heavenward into the Everlasting Arm. Godly motorists would be wafted from the controls of their cars.

  Since born-again Christians tended to be concentrated in states with high speed limits, things would get ugly. One moment Mr. Worldly Wiseman would be spouting cynical, superficial observations from the passenger seat. Then his motor-pool buddy, Christian, one of the elect, would vanish from behind the wheel and there would be nothing in the driver's seat except a pair of white loafers and plaid golf slacks and a polyester sport shirt, none of them necessary in the world to come.

  Mr. W. W. would stare terrified and confused at the wildly spinning unhanded wheel beside him, like Stewart Granger beholding Pier Angeli transformed into a pillar of salt in Sodom and Gomorrah. Soon the car and Mr. Wiseman (or was it Weissman?) would hurl driverless into a wall of consuming flame. And that would be only the beginning.

  "War," Lestrade was saying. "Armageddon up there in Megiddo. The Emperor of the North, blah blah. Well, someone's got to fight the good fight. And for the pre-mils it's going to be the Jews, operating out of the Temple. The rebuilding of the Temple is a sign of the Rapture's imminence, and it'll be GHQ for the Final Conflict. When the war is over, the surviving victorious Jews will accept Christ. The thousand-year reign of the saints will commence."

  "How do the religious Jews see all this?"

  "Some of them believe that if they rebuild the Temple, the Messiah may be prevailed upon to appear. The more militant would like to get all those mosques off Mount Moriah and start pouring cement."

  "And relations are pretty good between what you call the pre-mils and the messianic Jews?"

  "Very warm and fuzzy on the face of it. For one thing, the pre-mils are making a fortune marketing this shit in the States."

  "Your employers?"

  "There are a number of Jewish religious entrepreneurs as well. But primarily the Jewish extremists are building up a political constituency in the States. Until metaphysics takes over, they can work together. Raising money. Building support."

  "Quite a story," said Lucas. "What if I write it?"

  "Why don't you? Of course it's been written, but it never seems to take hold. Everybody knows about Jewish extremists and American Bible thumpers. No one takes them seriously."

  Lestrade put on the first cut of Götterdämmerung.

  "Really, Lukash, write it. It's an American story. They're all Americans. The pre-mils, most of the Jewish Temple builders. Anglo-Saxons, the Israeli press likes to call them." His face was flushed with booze or anger or amusement.

  "Someone once said," Lucas said, finishing his grappa, "that there are no antiquities here. No past. Everything is present or future." Lestrade refilled his glass. "So I suppose it's just another chapter in the ongoing story of the city."

  "Part of the story now. Since you people got here."

  Does he mean Americans? Lucas wondered. Or Jews? Does he mean me? He decided to ask.

  "We people, Gordon? Which people?"

  "Like the grappa?" Lestrade asked.

  "Smashing. Do you mean Americans or Jews? Jews were always here."

  "Oh, you know," Lestrade said. "It's a continuum. The one is virtually the other, if you see what I mean."

  "Not exactly."

  Lestrade studied him through an Italianate haze of the drink. "Oh, shit. You're going to get fucking politically correct in the American manner." A surprising measure of anger seemed to have descended on him. "You're going to turn into a special-pleading nit."

  "Who," Lucas asked, "me?"

  "Yes you, cock. Moralizing is your only form of discourse. That's why there are so many hypocrites among your people. Present company excepted."

  "My people?" Lucas asked. "I wish you'd stop thrusting identities on me. I mean, it's a drag. I'm only one fella."

 
"Yes, of course," Lestrade said contemptuously. "Sorry. By the way," he asked, "who are those people living in Berger's old zawiya? The old Jew and his followers? The pretty chichi girl you like? People over here used to think she was old Berger's wife."

  "No," Lucas said. "Nobody's. They're sort of Jewish Sufis." He let Lestrade refill his glass. "What does 'chichi' mean?"

  "They wouldn't be ultra-Zionists involved in a takeover, would they? Kachniks trying to set up a yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter?"

  Lucas began to wonder if Lestrade was asking out of his own curiosity or for the information of his contacts on the Muslim side.

  "They're innocents. I think their beliefs come from Sheikh Berger al-Tariq. They're mainly Americans."

  Lestrade put a hand on his breast. "Heartbreak Hotel," he declared. "American innocence again."

  "Think of them as New Age types."

  "Charming," Lestrade said. "I like them already."

  In Götterdämmerung, the Siegfried motif sounded. Lucas had always been moved by it. The promise of human transcendence, of great things to come.

  "Like them or not, they have a right to be here."

  "Surely," Lestrade said. "And a whole army to protect them. Two whole armies." He poured more grappa. "Just, why can't they do their thing in California?"

  "They're Jews," Lucas said. "This is Judea."

  "That's the settlers' line. And screw the natives, right?"

  Lucas's job, as he well knew, was to inquire into Lestrade's researches around the Temple Mount. But the man himself was a distraction.

  "They aren't settlers," he said. "By the way," he asked the archeologist, "what did you mean by 'a continuum'?"

  Lestrade seemed to have forgotten.

  "You said 'a continuum,'" Lucas repeated. "You said ... the one is like the other. Americans and Jews."

  "Ah, yes. The rationalist continuum. A long story. A sort of theory of mine."

  "Tell me," Lucas said. "I can ponder it on my way home."

  "Peoples given to fiddle," Lestrade said. "Tinkering. Mental monkey-fingeredness. Never mind."

  Lucas went over and turned off the record player.

  "Go on, man. I'm writing a book."

  "There exists," Lestrade said, "a certain dreadful energy. A certain instinct for cheerful intrusion that no doubt is seen as helpful. Helping other people out from under the weight of their illusions. Even if these illusions are thousands of years old and have produced much that is beautiful. Even if they represent the creative force of a race." He winced slightly at his last sip of grappa. "I suppose this is on the record?"

  "I suppose so," Lucas said.

  "Well," said Lestrade, "I'd best be careful. Employ my well-known tact."

  "Definitely."

  "A certain despising of other people's excellence. A desire to subvert their culture and their leaders. A noisy, assertive triumphalism that might uncharitably be called vulgar. I realize of course that as an American you don't believe in vulgarity. And at a certain point this becomes profoundly ... profoundly hostile."

  "Just to keep things straight," Lucas said, "to whom are we referring at this certain point?"

  "The Americans and the Jews. Two peoples who may or may not exist, exactly. We sort of have to take their word for it. Talking tradition, tradition, tradition. But actually rather shallow-rooted. Moralizers, a light to the Gentiles, a city on a hill. Two peoples very congenial to each other.

  "But what they can't stand is other people's social order. Bonds and faith and blood—they hate it. They want to liberate everyone. They want to rationalize. They want to help out—bless their little cotton socks. Idealistic, optimistic folks.

  "So it's no accident this brave little colony is out here, this far-flung outpost you set up together. Of course I'm not talking about you personally."

  "Oh," Lucas said, "I don't know about that. Here I am."

  "So a perception grows in the world at large," Lestrade went on, "of enmity. A hostility to your continuum that you perhaps fail to understand. For example, there's a song—I heard it sung in Nicaragua once—about the Yanqui, enemy of humanity. Terribly unfair, but there it is. And for quite real reasons."

  "So what do they sing about Jews in Nicaragua?" Lucas asked.

  "You're being ironic, Lukash. Good for you. Well, I'll fucking tell you what! They sing about La Compañía," Lestrade said. "And they don't mean the Jesuits. United Fruit. Sam the banana man. Mr. Eli Black." He bit his lip. "What I mean is that this energetic collaboration is perceived as hostile on a fundamental level to many people. To a broad spectrum of the human race who do not have the enlightened privilege of being American or Jewish."

  "This may be a naive question," Lucas said, "but isn't this sort of what Hitler believed?"

  "I'm glad you asked me that," said Lestrade. "Have you read Mein Kampf ?"

  "No."

  "No. Have you read Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century?"

  Lucas shook his head.

  "Well I have, you see. And I don't happen to subscribe to the theories expressed in those works. Nor do I happen to advocate murder, nor am I myself a murderer. So a little healthy resistance to the American philo-Semitic juggernaut doesn't make one a Nazi. Nor a practitioner of genocide. Nor a so-called anti-American. The self-pity of the mighty—it's so pathetic."

  Lucas considered his answer.

  "You shouldn't call people chichi," he said after a moment. "Regardless of what you think of them. Certainly not to their friends."

  "Sorry. Old colonial expression. No offense."

  "Right," Lucas said. He looked at his watch and found that it was almost one. A long length of dark street lay between him and the Jaffa Gate. "I better go."

  "Have another. I'll go to the gate with you, if you like."

  "No thanks," Lucas said. He would be damned, he thought, if he would let himself be chaperoned. But he took the drink, to equip himself for the solitary walk. The grappa was excellent, as smooth as any liqueur, a world of taste away from the raw stuff of his own experience. Lestrade was, after all, a connoisseur of things.

  "You know," Lestrade told him as they stood on the steps in the spice-scented air, "your Jewish Sufi friends are up to something with Otis and Darletta at the House of G. I've seen at least one of them there."

  "Really?" Lucas said. "I wonder what?" He was not sure what to believe. He decided to ask Sonia about it.

  "Just a tip," Lestrade said. "Goodwill gesture."

  "Thanks," Lucas said. "Next time you'll have to tell me more about the Temple."

  Lestrade tapped his swollen forehead. "Sure thing," he said in a flat American tone. "Can't I walk you to the gate?"

  "No thank you," Lucas said.

  When they had said good night, Lucas made his way uphill along the dark cobbled street. A single naked light strung from a wire burned above sharpened potsherds at the top of a stone wall. Beyond its barren gleam, a medieval darkness prevailed, through which he had to follow the contours of the buildings. Arches along the route formed black passageways that stank of piss and ambush. In one, he heard half-suppressed, unsound laughter and caught a whiff of hashish. The sky above was as lightless as the streets.

  Lucas walked trembling with rage, his teeth clenched, his jaw locked. Although for much of his life he had studied and written about war and disorder, he was not comfortable with conflict at personal range. Anger did not suit him.

  It was with some relief that he reached the galleries of Al-Wad, among which a few dim lamps burned at intervals. Looking north, he could see lights behind the quarter's shuttered windows all the way to the Damascus Gate.

  Entering a narrow street leading to the Khan al-Zait, he found himself passing the juice shop he had stopped at weeks before, the shop where the young retarded sweeper was employed. Its metal grate was closed to the empty street, the far end of which was darkness. As Lucas approached, two men appeared from the shadows. His blood quickened. Caution weighted his steps. Something about the place
and the men's bearing promised badly.

  Nevertheless he plodded on, giving the pair his best casual glance, practiced in a few tight spots, one that exuded confidence and avoided eye contact. Of course in the darkness eyes went unseen. He registered the fact that they were Palestinians, that one of the men wore a suit and the other was in shirtsleeves. The two of them passed and he breathed easier for a moment, home free. Suddenly there were steps behind him. His relief had been premature.

  "Oh, sir," said a false, insinuating voice, its menace smooth with sarcasm.

  Lucas chose not to turn around.

  "Welcome, sir," said the man behind him.

  He stopped then and turned. It was the man in shirtsleeves. Lucas felt they had met before, but the shadows were too deep for him to be certain. The second man was hanging back, at the edge of an arcade.

  "Hello," said Lucas.

  "Hello, sir," said the Palestinian. "You are welcome."

  He could picture, rather than see, the man's insolent smile. A hand was extended. He took it, and the man's thumb and forefinger lightly encircled his wrist.

  "For what are you looking, sir? So late."

  "Nothing. I'm on my way home."

  "You are living here? From where do you come?"

  "I live here," Lucas said.

  "Please, where is called here?"

  "Al-Kuds," Lucas said. The Holy. So as not to call it Jerusalem.

  "And from where have you come?"

  "I'm an American journalist. On my way home from a friend's house. From the house of Dr. Lestrade."

  "Welcome, sir," said the man, who had not let go of his hand.

  "Thanks," said Lucas, and he turned to go.

  "Welcome, sir. Are you drinking?"

  He was being told he smelled of Lestrade's grappa.

  "Thanks," Lucas said again. "Good night."

  "Welcome," said the man. "Welcome to Al-Kuds. All places to drink are closed."

  "So I see," said Lucas. When he started up the street the man kept pace with him.

  "Welcome to Al-Kuds," said the man.

  "Thanks again."

  "Why come here to drink alcohol?" the man inquired. His tone of mixed unction and contempt had not varied.