Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  They were predominantly elderly, Frenchified or Anglophilic intellectuals, but some were men of courage. A few actually represented minorities. There would also be mistresses, Lucas assumed, informers, spies and double agents, dealers in pursuit of bland cover and professional government apologists. Some of these latter would have packed suitcases full of hard currency, their life's acquisitions, to be opened only in Switzerland, behind double-locked doors in their suites at the Beau Rivage. There, beside the lac, they hoped to shake the sands of the desert from their pointy Italian shoes forever—if only they could make it out of Cyprus alive.

  The Stavrovouni had closed its lobby bars in deference to religious sensibilities, but its terrace café served beer and wine. After the first session, Lucas became a regular.

  The first meeting was the customary tower of babble—the droning of professors, recitations of Arab poetry, attacks against imperialism and its agents, who were responsible for transforming the peaceable kingdoms of the East into places of distress. Each local tradition was declared to be more tolerant than the next. Perfidious Albion was anathematized, also the Pentagon, along with the Elders of Zion. The translators, more used to corporate negotiations, lost their way in the meaningless courtesies and compliments and tropes.

  That evening in the café, above the bright, sour sea, Lucas found himself dining with a scented old professor, representative of some antinomian sect from the Caucasus. Gnostic? Sabean? Hashishian? In any case, the old man drank wine. They shared a bottle of retsina.

  "The minority situation in the United States is well known," the old professor declared. "But we in the Middle East, unlike you, have never had slaves."

  "Really?"

  "Servitude in our part of the world was never opprobrious. Rather, it was benign."

  Lucas had been drinking for a while.

  "Someone," he said, "once told me that at Darfur there was a house where African children were castrated for service as eunuchs."

  The old boy shrugged patiently.

  "I mean, not just a lean-to, you understand," Lucas continued, "but a huge fucking warehouse where they processed kids. And for every kid that survived the operation, fifty died. But the place still made money."

  "A practice adopted from the Byzantines," said the scholar.

  "Maybe, maybe not. Or else adopted like crazy," Lucas said. "Like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. If you'll pardon the expression. And they worked half of Africa. Coptic monks specialized in the operation. And dervishes. Regional minorities. Probably had to get by somehow, what do you think?"

  And he went on about it.

  "Who do you think you are?" asked the dignified old man at last.

  "Ah," said Lucas, "you got me there, fella."

  At the next sessions and in the corridors he was whispered about as a representative of the CIA. He thought it reflected badly on the agency.

  On his third night there, with the translator-deconstructed prattle ringing in his ears, he fastened on a piece of wisdom: foolish, drunken, insolent behavior did not play in the Fertile Crescent, and he was out of control. There was even a phone in the room to get him in further trouble. Moreover, he already had what he needed for the piece.

  At the airlines office he found the flights to Lod and Haifa booked and decided to endure the ferry once more. In Limassol, he was killing time, strolling the streets of the waterfront, when, rounding a corner near the Lusignan Castle, he encountered Nuala Rice. When he stopped she simply walked around him. Not a glance, instant incognito.

  Walking on, he wished he had been cooler and not stopped at all. Even better would have been not to have met her. Turning at the next intersection, past chips shops and signs for Wall's ice cream, he saw that the street ended at the landing where the hydrofoil to Beirut was tied up.

  Might Nuala have been coming from Beirut? It was on her map of adventure. An Irish girl, alone, with the right connections would have no reason to stay away. If she had business there.

  Then, on the Haifa ferry, he saw Rashid, her friend from Gaza. Nuala was nowhere in sight. He and Rashid avidly avoided each other, but Lucas was puzzled. Shin Bet or Mossad, or both, surely had agents in Limassol, and in Beirut for that matter. Surely the ferry was watched. It was such a small world and there were too many secrets.

  Late that night, he got himself into a pocket hotel in the lower city of Haifa and looked over his conference notes until they disgusted him. Then he had recourse to the Bible, idly checking notions. Somewhere in the night, not far from his open window, Deadheads dwelled. He heard "Box of Rain," "Friend of the Devil," "Sugar Magnolia." The album, American Beauty, was twenty-two years old now. He had been living on East Fourth Street with a woman who went to graduate school at NYU.

  Psalm 102, the one with a sparrow in it, was mournful stuff and even carried a warning preface: "A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord."

  "I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert.... I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop."

  Lucas felt suitably afflicted and ready to pour out his complaint, had there been anyone around to drink it with. The hypocrisy and shallowness of his Cyprus encounters throbbed against his nerves like an impending toothache.

  During the night, two things occurred to him that could be looked into from Haifa, which might or might not cap the minority story. One was the headquarters of the Baha'i, on the slopes of Mount Carmel, and the other was Father Jonas Herzog, a man of French-Jewish origin who had applied for and been denied Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. He lived and worked in a Benedictine monastery up above town.

  Just after sunrise, Lucas took the funicular railroad to the uppermost level and strolled toward the Persian domes of the Baha'i sanctuary. There was dew on the olive trees and riotous bougainvillea. Doves lowed on the whitewashed walls, and below the sea sparkled.

  The world in the morning, he thought. So encouraging. Despair was foolishness. But he was foolish.

  There was a touch of self-conscious Orientalism about the Baha'i holy place and the tomb of the Bab. "Orientalism" had been a word much invoked at the Cyprus conference. Obviously this place was meant to suggest the great Shia shrines of Persia. Why not, since just beyond normative Shiism lurked the Aryan speculation, the paradoxical symbols, the universalist urge that had sometimes burst forth in heresy.

  The oneness of God and the brotherhood of man—such liberation in that reduction! You had to wonder what it had felt like to be the Bab, to see it all converge. A thousand years before him, the Karaite Jew Abu Issa al-Isfahani, another Persian, had argued for the resolution of monotheism, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad. And with them, of course, al-Isfahani himself. With a little imagination it could all be made to connect with De Kuff.

  He took off his shoes and went into the martyr's tomb, accompanied by an attendant. The silence, the dimness, the streaming light—a touch of Isfahan, a touch of Forest Lawn.

  The attendant was an American black in a blue polyester suit who had what looked like a razor scar on his face. Maybe he had done hard time, Lucas thought, got religion in the slammer. He spoke pleasantly and well, with a southern intonation, reciting the story of the Bab, the history of the faith. Lucas paid more attention to his voice than to his words.

  "Peace, brother," the man said when Lucas made his contribution and was leaving.

  A fierce dude. Peace was worth nothing to those who had never known war. On this man's lips it sounded green and golden. Nothing was free.

  "And to you, peace," Lucas said.

  Maybe the Baha'is had some dark, crazy side, he thought, walking down the hill. Intrigues over power and money, cultish connivings. But on such a pleasant morning it was nice to imagine there was nothing like that. He walked the winding residential streets of the upper city to the lower reaches of town and sat at a café to watch the water. In the afternoon, he telephoned the Benedictines to ask if he might have an int
erview with Father Jonas Herzog. The monk on the phone informed him that Father Jonas no longer gave interviews.

  "It wouldn't necessarily be an interview," Lucas said. "I'd just ask him to comment on a recent conference. And," he added, "I have a few personal questions."

  The monk, sounding dubious, replied that Friday was a busy day for Father Jonas, who had administrative duties and had in addition to hear confessions. Lucas thanked him and resolved to try confession.

  The monastery church stood among poplars, half a mile's distance from the Baha'i shrine but out of sight of it. It was not particularly old: a Neo-Romanesque structure looking a little like St.-Ger-main-des-Prés and representing another concession to the French by the Ottomans. A busy road ran past it, on which traffic slackened only slightly with the advent of Shabbat. Haifa was a mixed and generally secular city.

  A Palestinian in a patched cassock, standing just inside the doorway, politely asked Lucas his business.

  "Just thought I'd pop in," he said.

  That seemed to do it. He had not been able to bring himself to ask the hours of confession, but once inside, he saw he was on time. Lines of Palestinian teenagers in family groups stood against both walls of the church, waiting for their turns in the confessional, boys to the right, girls to the left. Priests were identified by plastic strips on their confessional doors, which stated their names and the languages they commanded: Father Bakenhuis, who received penitents in Dutch, French, German and Arabic; Father Leclerc, who advised in French and Arabic; Father Waqba, who understood French, English, Arabic and Coptic.

  Jonas Herzog's booth was halfway to the altar on the right hand side, but none of the kids were waiting for him. There was no strip on his door and the booth was empty. A queue of assorted foreigners stood nearby along the wall. Lucas turned to the sextant.

  "What language does Father Jonas speak?" Lucas asked.

  "All languages," the sexton replied.

  Like the devil himself, Lucas thought, and took a seat in an adjoining pew. Ancient the place might not be, but it had the smell of cool old stone, incense and mortifications.

  Then the man entered who must be Herzog. Lucas had read that he was sixty, though he looked even older. Out of the splendor of the Holy Land's light he came, and into the gloom of apostasy, genuflecting before the sacrament, bowing to the cross. He appeared cramped and stooped in his black and white Benedictine habit.

  Herzog carried his own strip and hung it on the confessional door. It displayed his name in Hebrew characters, along with the Arabic and roman. Yonah Herzog—Jonas Herzog, OSB.

  One waited long for Herzog. When the last penitent had gone and Lucas got to his feet, he was preempted by the sudden arrival of a young European woman. She was simply dressed, a pretty blonde in a white sundress and a cotton sweater that covered her shoulders. She wore a white scarf over her fair hair. German? She appeared somewhat distraught.

  She looked married, Lucas decided, a young matron, a vice consul's unfaithful wife or an unfaithful vice consul. There were so many ways to be unfaithful in this place, so many unforgivable couplings and covenants to betray. Sleeping with a married colleague, or a dashing Palestinian guerrilla like Rashid, or her Shin Bet control. She would naturally go to Herzog, who knew the price of betrayal and its fascinations.

  Her confession went on for a long time. Lucas could hear it only as a murmur in what sounded like French. Then the young woman came out and walked to the altar to say her penance in the ancient way.

  Lucas rose, his stomach in a knot as though he were a child again, and went into the darkness and knelt alone with the crucifix. Then Father Herzog's sliding window opened. He could see the man's keen profile and the glint of steel-rimmed glasses in the semi-darkness. Suddenly he had no idea where to begin. Although he had no intention of confessing, he tried to remember the formula for confession in French.

  "It is twenty-five years since my last confession," he heard himself say.

  "Twenty-five years?" asked Father Herzog, with only the faintest surprise. "And you want to confess now?"

  Lucas had to try and puzzle out the French and then the nature of the question.

  "Are you guilty of a crime?" the priest asked.

  Un crime. It made him think of Balzac.

  "No, Father. No great crime. As they go."

  "Preparing to receive the sacraments?"

  To which the only right answer was yes. But instead Lucas said, in English, "No. But I wanted to talk with you."

  "I, in my person, am not at your service," the priest said in English. "I'm here as a priest."

  "I have questions of a religious nature."

  "I have only the sacraments to offer you," the priest said. "And only if you are a baptized person."

  "I am," Lucas said, "and also ... like yourself ... of mixed background."

  Herzog sighed.

  "If you could give a few minutes," Lucas said, "I think it would help me. I could wait. We could make an appointment."

  "Are you a journalist?"

  "I happen to be a journalist," Lucas said. "Yes."

  "And your topic is religion?"

  "War, mainly."

  "Since the court's decision, I no longer give interviews."

  "Then I won't ask you for one," Lucas said. "Only for advice. In private. Off the record."

  "Do you want to hurt me?" Herzog asked, almost humorously.

  "No."

  "I see. Well, I have to ask. If you can wait, I can see you after confessions."

  "Yes," Lucas said, "I'll wait."

  So he left the booth, like a good child, and sat in the same pew he had occupied before. The process was infantile, but there was no way around it.

  The young blond woman was still at the rail saying her penance, and he envied her the prayers. When she went out, crossing herself, he wanted to follow her. He wanted her faith and her secrets, her life. He felt altogether alone.

  No one else went to Father Herzog for confession. Lucas fell asleep in the pew and awoke in an empty church with the priest in the aisle looking down at him. The light in the doorway had faded.

  "Sorry," Lucas said.

  "Bien."

  "Should we go somewhere?"

  The priest sat down beside him.

  "Here will do. If it's all right."

  He seemed very French, courtly, ironic.

  "Sure," said Lucas, and moved away slightly.

  "You mentioned a mixed background. Is this a problem for you?"

  "I was Catholic," Lucas said. "I believed. I should understand faith but I can't remember it."

  Herzog gave the faintest shrug. "One day it may occur to you."

  "I feel tempted by it," Lucas said. "But I can't quite recall how it goes."

  It was not at all what he had intended to say. He had cornered himself with his own interviewing strategy. Sometimes, an editor had told him once, you have to tell them the story of your life. But this was beyond that, out of control again.

  "Then you have to pray."

  "I find prayer absurd," Lucas said. "Don't you?"

  "It's childish to pray like a child," Herzog said, "if you're not one."

  "Tell me about being Jewish," Lucas demanded. "Does it have a spiritual dimension?"

  "'There is neither Jew nor Greek,' " Father Herzog quoted for him, "'there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.'"

  "I know that," Lucas said. "But Jewishness must mean something. It's always been the conduit between humanity and God."

  "What Paul is telling us," Herzog said, "is that we are alone with God. Which does not mean we have no responsibility to man. Our moral landscape is human. But finally we are all individual men and women, waiting for grace.

  "We cannot make our condition less lonely. You ask me why God revealed himself through the Jews? I suppose we could find social and historical reasons. But the fact is, we don't know why."

  "Do you feel as though you were a Jew
?" Lucas asked.

  "Yes," said the priest. "And you?"

  Lucas thought about it at length. "I don't think so."

  "Good," said Herzog, "because you aren't one. You're an American, are you not?"

  Lucas felt dismissed. Being an American, he felt like telling Herzog, does not necessarily make my condition more trivial. "But I feel," he said, "that part of me has lived before."

  After a moment, Herzog said, "Not everything we feel is revelation."

  Embarrassed, Lucas prepared to risk humiliation. Working press, he thought. He had a card; he could go anywhere, say anything. Their voices echoed off the stone.

  "In the Kabbalist rabbis," he told the priest, "I find the greatest interpretations of life and truth I've ever heard. And I find it brings me back to religious feelings I haven't had since..."

  "Since childhood?"

  "Well, yes. And I wonder if these aren't things I've always known. I mean always."

  "First time in Israel? You can choose to be Jewish. It can be arranged. Not by me, unfortunately."

  "I understand the one in terms of the other," Lucas said.

  "I suggest you not tell a rabbi you're so moved by books you cannot possibly understand in a language you don't read. He'll throw you out of his study."

  "Is it true," Lucas asked, "that we have to lose one life to gain another?"

  "Unfortunately," said the priest.

  "But you claim to go on being Jewish."

  "Because I am. That is my condition. My problem, my means of grace."

  "What about me?"

  "What about you? You're one American in a world of poverty and pain. What more do you want?"

  "To believe. Sometimes."

  "Look," Herzog said, "all I can tell you honestly is what any priest—the most bigoted, the least enlightened—could tell you. Trust in God. Try to pray. Try to believe and perhaps you will believe. If you seek God, some say, you've found him."

  So they sat in silence for a little while and Herzog cleared his throat and was about to go.

  "As a journalist," Lucas said, "as something we call background, not for attribution—what did you tell the court?"