Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  "I joined a friend," Lucas said, although he thought it might be a mistake to try and explain.

  "What friend?"

  This time he made no answer. The man kept walking with him. Lucas listened hard, trying to tell whether the second man was trailing them. He might be serving as a lookout.

  "Welcome, sir. But the places to drink are gone."

  When they did it, Lucas thought, they did it with a knife. In the last case, he remembered, a male Dutch tourist had been dispatched with an ordinary kitchen knife. The man had either been mistaken for an Israeli or was the nearest available infidel. Perhaps, Lucas thought, he'd had liquor on his breath.

  "Welcome, sir," said the citizen, laughing. The street grew darker as they went. Various questions occurred to Lucas, in no particular rational order. Was the mocking conversation good or bad, a prelude to murder or the alternative? If there was a knife, would it penetrate his lung? Ought he to respond or simply walk on?

  "I think you are courageous person," said the man in the dark street. "Here is very nice. In the day it is very nice. But at night, very dangerous."

  "What do you want me to do?" Lucas asked. "Hold your hand?"

  It was rash of him to mock the citizen; he had forgotten about being drunk. But he was still angry and mortified at his own fear. The man, at least at first, was too pleased with himself to realize he had been rudely addressed.

  "You are welcome, sir. I will walk with you."

  "Suit yourself," Lucas said.

  "What?" the man asked, less unctuously. "Shall I hold your hand? As friend?"

  "Excellent," said Lucas. "We shall go about together. Heard of Shakespeare? Like him? A great American writer."

  "Oh, sir," said the citizen after a moment's reflection. "You are laughing. You are joking."

  Up the narrow street, about fifty yards away, Lucas saw hard white lights on stanchions and the outline of a jeep blocking the way. It was one of the mobile police posts that the Israelis had set up in the Old City during the intifada. A few border troopers usually occupied a market stall commanding a field of fire, sandbagged it and set up communications.

  Lucas made for the lights. He tried hard not to appear to hurry. The man beside him had hold of his wrist, and as they got closer to the police post, he tightened his grip and began to pull back.

  "We will go," he said. "We will drink. Find girls."

  "How about letting go of me?" Lucas asked.

  "Where you are going?" the man asked angrily. "Welcome. We are friends."

  He stopped and Lucas pulled his hand away. Plainly the citizen wished not to approach the police post. He was only a passing wit, a wise guy showing off before a pal, flaunting his aggressiveness, patriotism, insolence to foreigners. His English.

  "What fun it's been," Lucas told him. "Thanks for the walk. Thanks for the welcome, too."

  There were two Israelis at the post, regular soldiers rather than the Border Police, and quite young. Both were curious about Lucas and his late-night stroll. One was polite and friendly, one not so. The friendly one was fair, with a French accent. The unfriendly one asked Lucas for his passport and for a hotel key before motioning him up David Street. Lucas had to explain that he was a resident of the city.

  Halfway up the sloping thoroughfare, he paused to get his breath. Looking down toward the police post, he saw one of the soldiers watching through binoculars, talking into a field telephone. The policemen at the Jaffa Gate watched him pass with professional hauteur.

  The taxi he hailed outside the gate had come up from East Jerusalem; its driver was an Arab who kept a red-checked kaffiyeh on his dashboard.

  "Where you are going?" asked the driver. "What country is your home? Where you are coming from?"

  "From church," Lucas told him.

  In the apartment, most of his books and private possessions were still in boxes. The furniture came with the place: an algae-colored carpet, a few canvas chairs and some butt-scarred blond-wood tables. It was deeply depressing.

  He sat on his unmade bed and turned on his message machine. Obermann was on it, and Ernest from the Human Rights Coalition, and, to his surprise, Sonia, proposing a drive to the Gaza Strip. He was too tired and dispirited to wonder what it might mean. Or to wonder about Lestrade's claim about one of Sonia's religious friends turning up at the House of the Galilean.

  During the remainder of the night he dreamed of crowded streets whose symbols were Hebrew characters. The letters were nowhere displayed, but to find one's way it was necessary to know the vowel points. Then there were people all around, and though it was broad daylight in the dream, he could not tell what anyone looked like.

  After a few hours, he heard the muezzin in Silwan, and the church bells.

  27

  THAT EVENING in Tel Aviv, a party of gay American sailors showed up in Mister Stanley's and provided Sonia a marvelous audience. They stayed reasonably sober and listened to her numbers in a hush of admiration and applauded generously. At the same time, she had the feeling they knew what they liked.

  There were a dozen or so, their drinks paid for by two prosperous South African Israelis who designed beachfront apartments for investors and aspired to some California of the mind. The sailors were variously suburban sophisticates and tough veterans of the inner city, sibilant and acne-scarred. Sonia's favorite was a bespectacled, light-skinned Afro-American named Portis, a Sixth Fleet disc jockey who slipped her good requests and knew every verse of the show tunes without feeling compelled to sing along.

  Stanley was delighted. As it turned out, he was entertaining Maria Clara on one of her flying visits from Colombia. The two of them shared a table at the back and applauded wildly. Maria Clara smirked and sparkled unremittingly. Halfway through Sonia's second number, Nuala Rice of the International Children's Foundation came in and sat alone at the bar. Sonia joined her between sets. The South Africans sent free Cape province champagne.

  "Come in on your own, Nuala?"

  "I'm on an airport run to Lod. Thought I'd stop by. By the way," she asked, "are you still going to come to the Strip with me next week?"

  "Yes, I'd like to. Are you still looking for the rogue soldiers?"

  "Oh, yes," said Nuala.

  "I want to get down to Zawaydah. Berger used to say there were Sufis there. The Nawar."

  "The Nawar are gypsies. Tinkers. They'll be Sufis if you want them to be."

  "Well, I thought I'd have a look anyway. And I wanted to keep in touch. And," she added, "I wanted to bring along a reporter friend I know."

  Nuala laughed. "Christopher, you mean? I know Christopher well. Thought he'd become a religion writer."

  "Yes, he has. But I'd like to take him along."

  During the next set, Nuala disappeared. Sonia did an impression of Sarah Vaughan singing "Over the Rainbow" and followed it with "Something for the Boys." Then she ran through the Gershwin songbook and finished up with the Fields and McHugh version of "I Loves You, Porgy." The place had crowded up and she had been mainly on the money.

  For encores she did "Bill" and "Can't Help Lovin' That Man." "The Man That Got Away," though requested by Portis, was beyond her. For nearly half an hour after the final number, she stood around the dance floor while the sailors took each other's pictures with their arms around her.

  The performance and the adoring sailors gave her a lift. She had slept very little or not at all for the past week. Each night she went over her conversations with Raziel. There was no way to pin him down, no way, literally, to make him stop his verbal entrechats.

  Each night too she thought about old De Kuff at the Pool, holding forth in his sweet Louisiana voice about the revelation of Torah to the world. She was not as convinced as she made herself sound for Lucas. The more closely she tried to examine the things that preyed on her mind, the more elusive they became. The maggid was hard to summon.

  On her way to Stanley's office to get paid, she encountered Raziel himself. He was dressed for town, in his shades, seated at a f
ront table with one of Stanley's regular musicians, a bass player from Winnipeg.

  "You come in to score?" the bass player was asking him.

  "I'm clean and sober," he told the man. "Right, Sonia?"

  "That's my man," she said.

  "Scary," said the bass player.

  In the back, Stanley paid her off. Nuala and Maria Clara were with him.

  "I call myself Sky," Stanley announced to everyone.

  Sonia watched the flexing of his black jailhouse tattoos as he counted out her wages in crisp, fresh American bills. He had declared a bonus, slipping her a few hundred over the agreed-upon sum. She was not in the mood to object. "What you think? Sky! Sky is the limit. Sky all around. Blue Sky smiling at me."

  "Really cool," Sonia said, gathering up the money. "Who suggested it?"

  "Is a character in Guys and Dolls. A cool guy. Gambler. I like the character. Guy like me."

  "We went to see Guys and Dolls in New York," Maria Clara said gushingly. "It was so typical. We thought of you."

  "Luck be a lady-y!" Stanley sang. "Also, we went to Rainbow Roof." He gave a little whistle. "That's the kind of place when I'm a kid I'm dreaming about."

  "America is so problematical," Maria Clara said. "They are without formality, so one doesn't know what to expect. The men without charm, but I think the women are sweet. But they are so strong and the men are weak."

  "Did they really know about the Rainbow Room in the Soviet Union, Stanley? During your childhood?"

  "What?" protested Stanley. "Everyone knows Rainbow Roof! Everyone always knows it. Anyway—Sky! Me. And the place—Sky's! Sky's Joint."

  "Rainbow Room East," said Sonia. She knew Stanley's sense of humor, regarding his own dignity, had limits. She had once seen him beat a porter senseless with a broom handle for liberties of deportment.

  "I like the black Americans the best," Maria Clara said. "We thought of you, Sonia. The way they move. And the others, the Yanquis, are so clumsy. Such a country. They themselves don't understand it, isn't it so? Like big children."

  "I like there," Stanley said. "They have great shit. And not so tough as in the movies."

  "Yeah," Sonia said. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, know what I'm saying?"

  "Fucking right!" said Stanley Sky. He was delighted. "That's right absolutely."

  Maria Clara tottered over on her heels. She was wearing skintight spangled pants from a Paris designer. She took Sonia by the chin. "You are so deep by your eyes. I know you are deep. But not what you are thinking. Stanley, eh?"

  "She's my Sonia," Stanley Sky said. "My Sonitchka."

  When Sonia started to leave, Stanley stopped her. Raziel waited in the doorway.

  "Sonitchka! You're going to Gaza, yes?"

  "Thought I would."

  "Maybe you get UN car, yes? Because I got something I want to take there. But I can't go 'cause I'm Jewish guy. They fuckin' kill me, right? I don't know no one. But you could take down. In UN car."

  "I can't get a UN car, Stanley," Sonia said. She was about to say she would not care to carry packages for Stanley but thought better of it. "I'm going down with Nuala. She's got a Children's Foundation car."

  Stanley made a face. "Nuala..."

  Maria Clara made one too. "Nuala, I don't like her."

  "Nuala is always fighting with the soldiers," Stanley said. "Always pissing them off. I don't like to have her bring things."

  "I'd like to help you," Sonia said. "I don't think I can."

  Maria Clara looked wide-eyed at her effrontery. Stanley kept his smile. "So don't worry," he said. "It's all right."

  After the show, Nuala was waiting for her. The streets near the oceanfront still had a few restless strollers and loiterers in search of comfort. They sat down at one of the Orion Cafe's curbside tables.

  "So, are you seeing Christopher?" Nuala asked.

  "Not really. How about you?"

  Nuala shook her head.

  "You're in Stanley's a lot. Becoming a jazz fan?"

  "It makes a change from the Strip," Nuala said.

  "I miss you," Sonia said when the coffee came. "I miss Somalia. I guess that's a terrible thing to say."

  "Not to me," Nuala said. "We were useful. What about the revolution?" she asked after a moment. "Miss that too?"

  "I thought it was over."

  "Never," Nuala said. She looked up and down the deserted street as though someone might overhear. "Never," she whispered. "Not for me."

  Sonia frowned into her lukewarm espresso. "This is going to sound sort of corny," she said. "But I think something very important is happening in Jerusalem."

  "And what would that be? The Second Coming or something?"

  "Jerusalem doesn't mean to me what it means to you," Sonia told her friend. "I believe in the specialness of it. And I think I may have found what I came for."

  "Oh, Sonia," Nuala sighed. "Well," she said, "to each her own, I guess. That's the way you are."

  "Weren't you ever a believer, Nuala?"

  "Me? Of course. I was going to be a nun like every little twit in County Clare."

  "You don't believe anymore?"

  "I had a selfish, sickly belief. A little girl's. Now I'm a grownup, I hope. I believe in liberation. That if it's possible for me, it's possible for everyone. And I won't have mine until everyone does."

  "I understand," Sonia said.

  Nuala walked her to the late-night sherut stand and put her on the road to the tekke guesthouse in Herzliya where she would be spending the night.

  "By the way," Nuala asked, "how are your contacts on the Hill of Evil Counsel? Do you think you could wangle us a white UN car?"

  "Jesus," Sonia said, "Stanley just asked me that. What's up?"

  "I don't know about Stanley," Nuala said. "I'm on the IDF's list. Certain days they hold me up for hours. With a white car, sometimes if they're busy they'll wave you through."

  "I'm out of contacts up there," Sonia said. "You've got your NGO credentials."

  "Right," Nuala said. "No problem there. But the thing is, we may need your help. For old times' sake."

  "Nuala, I can't get a car."

  "But maybe you can ride through with me. Bring someone else along. I mean, the more of us the better."

  "I don't know, Nuala. You're not running guns, are you?"

  "You'd always know," Nuala said, "what we were doing and what we had."

  "You don't have something going with Stanley, do you? Some dope thing?"

  "Stanley's not my type," Nuala said. "Though I like his tattoos."

  "All right," Sonia said. "I'll help you however I can if it doesn't involve hurting anyone. Call me."

  Nuala smiled and leaned forward and kissed her.

  28

  IN ONE OF the visitors' cottages serving the House of the Galilean, Janusz Zimmer and Linda Ericksen sat side by side on the Welsh plaid bedspread Linda had carefully replaced after she and Zimmer had made love on the day bed. It was the same cottage Lucas had looked into the previous month, the one featuring Holman Hunt's Scapegoat on its wall.

  Now the wall cottages were reserved for visiting evangelists and their chief financial supporters, layers on of hands, charismatics come to recharge their charismas, translators of Aramaic, and other friends of and collaborators with the House. Both Zimmer and Linda qualified.

  "It would have been better for us, my love," Zimmer said, "if we had lived in a less urgent period of history."

  "There's supposed to be a Chinese curse," Linda said. "'May you live in interesting times.'"

  "Well, I have inherited it," Zimmer said. "I was born before the Holocaust, born against reason. And now this remains for me. My only blessing is that I have you to help me."

  "I'm hardly a blessing to anyone," humble Linda said. "I certainly wasn't a blessing to poor Ted. He needed me here in this place and I abandoned him. I know I contributed to what happened."

  Zimmer made a few soothing noises. He could not bring himself to contradict he
r.

  "But he didn't belong here," she said. "And I know I did."

  "Yes," Zimmer said.

  "I've hardly studied. I haven't been brought into the faith."

  "Well, if we used the term 'baptism,'" Zimmer said, "yours would be a baptism of fire."

  Linda stood up, went to the center of the room and folded her arms. "All right," she said, Ruth among the alien corn, "what do I have to do?"

  "This much, my love," Zimmer said. "Nuala Rice goes regularly to the Gaza Strip to pick up drugs. In return she brings weapons."

  "You know about this?" Linda said in horror. "Why don't you inform the authorities?"

  "You mean Shabak? We have some contacts in Shabak. I'm afraid I have to tell you that the authorities are well aware of this traffic. It's their way of arming the one PLO faction they think they can control and that can keep order down there."

  Linda was shocked beyond measure.

  "But the drugs will be used by Jewish people."

  "A few scum. Most of it will be sold in Haifa and Nazareth. At least that's what they say. In any case," Zimmer told her, "your job is essentially this: you will use your Human Rights Coalition status to get into the Strip. As often as you can, get Sonia Barnes to go with you, and try to see that she's on record as accompanying Nuala Rice.

  "We want the association between those two made clear. For example, you might tell her there's information on the beatings of the rock throwers in Jabalia and you aren't able to go. Ask her to get the information for the Human Rights Coalition. As a favor to you.

  "If possible, she should spend the night there. Shouldn't be difficult, because Nuala's Arab boyfriend lives in Jabalia. If they get in trouble with the IDF, with someone who isn't in on the scheme, we'll send you over to get them out."

  "When will this be?"

  "We're not sure. But soon."

  "The purpose," Linda suggested, "would be to stop this traffic?"

  "The purpose is to destroy the enemy shrines on the Temple Mount. To wipe them away and build the Temple of the Almighty."

  "My God," Linda said. "There'll be riots. There'll be war."

  "In religious terms, put it this way: sometimes the Almighty wants us to live in peace," Zimmer said. "Sometimes he requires of us war."