Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  "I guess she's got something going with young Dr. Rashid."

  "Oh."

  "Uh-huh," Sonia said, and laughed quietly. "He's cute, too. Clean-cut kid. Good for Nuala."

  "She might have told us," he said. "What are we supposed to be, the beards or something?"

  "Good question," she said. She stood up and turned out the light in the office. "Who knows?"

  Sometime later, he made his way down the hall in the direction Dr. Naguib had pointed and let himself out into the night to find the toilet. He slid a shoe in the doorjamb to keep the outside door from locking on him. He was edging toward the little shed when the noise of a motorbike exploded in the silence. As it passed the naked lights over the main entrance, he saw that there were two riders on the bike: a man up front and a woman riding pillion. Nuala.

  Within seconds, with a roar and torrent of wind a helicopter was prowling overhead. The tin roofs of the alley rattled in unison, the street refuse flew in an eye-stinging whirl, dogs howled. A great column of light descended and he saw the running lights of the chopper only a couple of dozen feet above him. Breathless, he huddled in the moist darkness of the washroom, waiting for the big machine to move off.

  Back inside the dark Education Department office, he stood outside the cubicle where Sonia lay. Surely, he thought, she must be awake.

  "I just saw Nuala taking off with Rashid," he told her.

  "She's probably going to Al-Amal to spend the night with him. And tell his people she brought them what they need."

  "I hope they make it."

  "They will," she said without opening her eyes.

  He went and lay down on his cot in silence. After a moment, he got up.

  "I think now," he told Sonia, who lay with her eyes closed, "I think I'd like to hold your hand."

  "I'd like you to hold it," she said. Her eyes remained closed.

  He went over to her and took her hand and kissed it.

  "Now I have to tell you," she said, "that we are deep in Islamic territory. And we must do nothing to give scandal." She shifted so that she rested her face against his arm. "So if you have any unseemly impulses, you better forget them."

  "And I suppose there are nasty little kids on the lookout for non-Islamic behavior," Lucas said.

  "Damn right," she said. "Especially among infidel women. And they sneak up to windows."

  "What will we do, then? Will you sing for me?"

  "No fucking way, Jim. After hours."

  "Then I'll tell you a story," Lucas said. "Would you like that?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "So one time," Lucas said, "before the Second World War, this tourist goes into Notre-Dame in Paris. Someone's playing Bach's Fantasy and Fugue in G. An angelic rendering. So the tourist goes up into the choir loft to see who's at the keyboard, and who do you think he sees?"

  "Fats Waller?"

  "Hell," Lucas said. "You knew."

  "Damn right," she said.

  "So Fats says, 'Just trying their God box, man.'"

  Sonia had begun to cry.

  "Poor Thomas Waller," she said. "He loved Bach. He loved the organ. After his radio show was over, he played it on his radio station for hours. For free. Uncredited." Tears rolled down her cheeks and she opened her eyes to wipe them.

  Lucas patted her shoulder. It had been a strange day. He had gone to Yad Vashem. He had come through the smoke of Gaza. Now he was listening to a woman in God's most ancient wilderness, weeping for Fats Waller.

  "I think it's great," he said after a moment, "that you're crying for him."

  "I always cry for him," she said. "He was sort of like my daddy. They knew each other when Daddy was young. I cry for them both."

  Lucas kissed her gently and went back to his cot and fell asleep at once.

  30

  LONG BEFORE, during the years of the British mandate, part of the cellar of the main building of what was now the House of the Galilean had been taken over by one of the Arab merchant's sons as a radio room. The boy had been a ham operator with vast resources, and he had equipped the cellar lavishly, turning it into a cross between an American commercial broadcasting studio and the radio shack of an ocean liner. He had performed live together with his brothers and sisters, singing Arab songs and continental ballads of the day, staging and reading his own radio plays.

  The young man's relaying equipment was long gone; his rig had been closed down by the British during one of the emergencies and his expensive gear confiscated in 1939. But the trappings of an old-time studio were still there—baffled walls, curving tweedy sofas, spare modernistic tables and cylindrical lamps.

  There was a long horseshoe-shaped table like a newspaper copy desk, and Janusz Zimmer and some of his associates had just held a meeting there.

  The representative of the principal organization in attendance was an American rabbi from California who had lost one son to drugs but redeemed the other to militant religious Zionism. His group had committed itself to armed violence against the Palestinians and, if need be, against the Israeli state.

  Its sages, consulting the tractates as the youth division trained with modern weapons, had come to the conclusion that only the strict and literal application of the most militant adjurations in the Torah could bring about the return of the Messiah. The return centered, they believed, on the expulsion of idolaters and aliens— according to the letter of Numbers 33:55—and the reestablishment of the Temple and its priesthood.

  The rabbi's organization regarded itself as the only serious participant in Janusz Zimmer's plans, and was so seen by Zimmer. It had a few small but avid cells in the army and the bureaucracy and especially among the pioneers in the harsher settlements of Gaza and the West Bank, where the Arabs were many and the amenities few. The other outfits, whose representatives had been in attendance at the radio shack, both Zimmer and the American rabbi regarded as potentially useful idiots.

  One of these groups, founded by another American, in this case a renegade Hasid, had its roots among the Essenes and the Books of Jubilees and Enoch. It made an effort to proselytize among Ethiopian Jews, for whom those texts held great importance. Its aim was to restore the balance of time as conveyed to Moses by the angel Uriel, so that the feasts might be celebrated as the Almighty desired. The introduction of the solar calendar had caused the destruction of ten thousand false stars that whirled in torment in some subcelestial sky. This group, too, required the rebuilding of the Temple, where they believed the solar calendar would prevail and the feasts be properly observed.

  Another sect in attendance, represented at the meeting by its founder, was the creation of Mike Glass, a junior-college professor of Jewish background who had grown up in an anti-Semitic New England town and lived a secular life. After teaching poly sci and coaching football, he had turned to Jewish studies following the breakup of his marriage.

  He had come to the Apocalypse through his readings of Scripture, the agrarian pessimism of Wendell Berry and the predestinarian poetry of Larry Woiwode. The history of Israel, he felt, provided evidence of divine election and the human depravity from which only God's choice could rescue humankind.

  Raziel Melker had also attended, representing, in a way, the disciples of Adam De Kuff. Neither De Kuff nor Sonia, nor anyone else close to them, knew about Raziel's association with Zimmer and his attendance at the meeting.

  The officials of the House of the Galilean knew the purpose of the meeting and the intentions of the participants but did not choose to be represented at their deliberations.

  When the other delegates had left, Zimmer and Linda Ericksen, Raziel and the rabbi from California remained seated at the horseshoe. It was plain that the presence of Raziel and Linda troubled the California rabbi, whose name was Yacov Miller. In a few minutes, Zimmer asked them to leave.

  "You should adjust to Linda," Zimmer told the rabbi bluntly. "She wants only to be of service. But she is, finally, an American woman. She will resent being ordered out of rooms."

  "The '
American woman' is not an ideal of ours," Rabbi Miller said. "You obviously trust her completely."

  "I don't give my trust easily," Zimmer said. "If I did, I wouldn't be alive and present at this moment. She has a rare sense of dedication. Great rectitude."

  "I hope you don't mind my pointing out," Miller said, "she's a multiple adulteress. Supposedly a religious person, she shamelessly took up with that man Obermann. And now," said the rabbi, with the interrogative tone of a religious disputant, "she comes to us?"

  "You're supposed to be a religious person as well," Zimmer said. "Don't you understand the soul when it searches? Don't you understand the female temperament?"

  Miller only looked impatient.

  "Have you never heard," Zimmer asked, "that the power of Din seeks souls from the Other Side?"

  Miller bridled, flushing. "I have no interest in Kabbala. It's medieval superstition. And I distrust, shall we say, the lingo."

  "Well, you're not dealing with the president of your congregation and his wife in the suburbs," Zimmer said. "If you want to break some eggs, you better get used to meeting colorful characters."

  "Like that Melker, I suppose."

  "You don't like Melker?" Janusz Zimmer asked. "A pity. I like him far better than I like you. But we put up with each other."

  "I wonder about him," said the rabbi, blushing in full measure now. "I distrust him."

  Zimmer fixed Miller with his falcon stare. "You want the redemption by violence. You're ready for war, for death and maiming. Have you ever seen it?"

  Miller declined to answer.

  "Have you?"

  "I've never personally witnessed combat," Miller said. "Many of our group have."

  "I didn't ask you about your group." Zimmer leaned his hard mask into Miller's angry face. "I have seen it. All over the world. People burned alive at roadblocks. Starvation. The water torture, caged rats eating people's brains, young boys and girls bleeding to death, dying of thirst. It makes you thirsty to bleed in the desert. Never knew that? Ever had to elicit intelligence from fanatics?"

  "I believe God will preserve his people," Miller said.

  "A war where only one side will suffer and die—is that what you expect?"

  "I don't know what to expect," Miller said. "I have faith."

  "Miracles."

  "Yes," shouted Miller, "miracles! How else?"

  "The miracle of dynamite," Zimmer said. "That boy has access to explosives. He will procure them. If the attempt fails, his group will assume responsibility."

  "Why?" Miller asked. "It sounds crazy."

  "In the event of failure," Zimmer said, "the investigations, the accusations, the name-calling will never end. With success, the country will unite. If necessary against the world."

  "But why? Why would he do it, this hippie? I won't ask how."

  "You won't, Rabbi? Suspect drugs are involved? You could be right."

  "I have only to look at him to suspect that," Miller said. "Young Mr. Hip with the dark glasses. But what about the assuming of responsibility? Why would he do that?"

  "Because he's what you look down on. A mystic. I think he believes if the act is performed no one will be hurt on any side. As you say, a miracle."

  Miller sneered. "How can he believe such a thing?"

  "You despise him, Rabbi? You who believe in bloodshed where God sees that only the right blood is shed? In a one-sided war? Gott mitt uns! I suggest you not despise him. He may be deluded and drugged out, but he has more humanity than you."

  Miller brooded for a minute.

  "Sure thing," he said at last. "OK, you got it. I won't despise him. To tell you the truth, the element that most puzzles me is this: What moves you, Zimmer? What are your hopes?"

  "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

  "Condescend," said Miller. "Try me."

  Zimmer stood up abruptly and went to the wall consoles where most of the radio equipment was. "I wonder if they listen in," he said.

  "The goyim upstairs?"

  "I don't suppose they're interested as long as the money comes in."

  "I agree," said Miller. "But you haven't answered my question." He kept his seat at the end of the horseshoe and watched Zimmer pace up and down.

  "My father believed in the brotherhood of man," Zimmer said suddenly. "He gave his life to the Communist Party of Poland. Then two years before the war Stalin abolished the Party and shot its leaders, my father included. Then came the Nazis. Everything had to be rebuilt."

  "And I suppose you were right there. With your Polish brothers who love you so well."

  "We rebuilt over and over," Zimmer said. "When one structure we rebuilt was destroyed, we rebuilt again. Over and over our plans foundered on human nature. Not just Polish nature or Jewish nature. On the mediocrity of human nature that betrays its better self, its best ideals, that is unworthy of itself everywhere..."

  "Over and over," said Miller, "the people betray the covenant. Even us, to whom so much is given. Without the coming of the Promised One we'll always fail." He seemed unable to stop blushing, and it was hard to tell which prevailed in him, anger or embarrassment. "I'm sorry about your father," he told Zimmer. "But it's an old story. And I'm sorry for you."

  "Are you?" Zimmer asked. "How kind. Now tell me, Rabbi. Here you are in the Promised Land. Is it what you hoped for?"

  "It will be," Miller said. "That's what we're doing here today."

  "Shocking, the mediocrity of everything—is it not? The country of a people with such gifts? Without their genius European civilization—and not only European civilization—would have been impossible. And yet here you have a corrupt bureaucracy, ugly cities, vulgarity. Cheap tabloids, bad art. Everything made by the hand of man looks second rate. Not quite the light to the nations we had in mind. Or hadn't you noticed?"

  Miller trembled with fury. "Excuse me, I'm not a European aesthete like yourself. It's too bad while the world is occupying itself in murdering us we can't find the leisure to provide an artistic and cultural renaissance for its edification. So that when we're destroyed the goyim might grow contrite—'Poor Jews, they were so talented. Too bad they had to be driven from the earth.'" Then he stood up, to address Zimmer from, so to speak, his own level.

  "The mediocrity that concerns me is a moral mediocrity. A refusal to accept our covenant, to create a Jewish nation that will truly light the world. Then maybe we can have the pretty pictures you require."

  "Has it not occurred to you, Rabbi," Zimmer asked, "that the one thing might have to do with the other?"

  "All that has occurred to me," Miller said, "is that what should be a Jewish land is not one. Yet."

  "You're an intelligent man," Zimmer said. He flipped one of the wall switches on, then switched it off. A small red light came on and went out. "You question my motives? I'll answer you. I have a choice and I cannot escape it. That is, I cannot escape it and live. I've seen a lot of dying, my friend. I know the difference between life and death, and for me it's one or the other. I don't propose to stop living until I'm dead."

  "All," Miller said, "very personal."

  "Yes," Zimmer agreed, "very personal. Now I have the choice of meditating all my life on what I've seen and learned. Perhaps I can transcend it through insight, eh?"

  Miller only watched him.

  "Or I can be part of the process of becoming. The relationship between this land and the Almighty I leave to you, Rabbi. But I don't propose to watch this country, the country of my allegiance, remain a pawn of hypocrites in the west or the refuge of mediocrity. We engage in the process of becoming or we die. We have an adventure before us and a historical destiny, if we can seize it. In that process of becoming I can and I will lead."

  "In that process," Miller said with a slight smile, "you may be sure you'll be judged. Who knows? You may be chosen."

  "Not I only, Rabbi. Fools who expect God to do their fighting and dying for them will be disappointed. The force at work here is history. History will judge us as men and
as a nation. If we prevail, maybe you'll have your Zion."

  "You're an odd kind of Jew," Miller said. "I suppose Vladimir Jabotinsky was like you."

  "I'm no Jabotinsky, Rabbi Miller. But I'm sure if Jabotinsky had his way, the clergy would have stayed out of the way and awaited the Messiah. Recruiting the religious element wasn't necessarily the benefit some people think. In my humble opinion."

  "Mr. Zimmer," Miller said, gathering up the notes on which he had done no more than idly doodle, "who ever said your opinion was humble?"

  31

  THE AL-AZIZ lying-in center in Khan Yunis had been a place of shadows the night before, but in the morning it seemed charged with insistent life. Babies squalled from the maternity clinic in the other wing of the building. On a quick excursion to the washhouse, Lucas observed that the alleys beyond the compound were peaceful enough. Smoke from breakfast fires drifted toward the smoggy sky, although there were few people in sight.

  When he and Sonia had stowed their cots, Dr. Naguib took them on a tour of the clinic. Amid homespun nursery decorations, dozens of shy, ample Palestinian women rested with their infants, everyone swathed in a vast profusion of sheets, curtains and robes. A few of the women smiled at the visitors, most stared evenly or looked away. Babies were everywhere.

  Lucas bowed and beamed, trying in vain to experience the good cheer he was dutifully projecting. The women's plump pale faces, uniformly encircled by scarves, had a charmless interchangeability. The raw, unlovely newborns wailed. Strolling the ward with a politician's smile, he felt pity and vague despair. It must be only awkwardness, he told himself, a foreigner's embarrassment.

  Adjoining the lying-in center was a children's ward. The children were mainly toddlers, one or two with sleepy mothers attending them in plain folding chairs beside their beds. Communal toys hung suspended from the ceiling: stuffed animals or leering rubber dolls in bright ugly colors.

  "We have bad water," Dr. Naguib told them when they went back into the foyer. "This is our major trouble in Gaza. Politics aside," he added.