Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  Then he went off to find a place to curl up and hide.

  36

  THAT EVENING, Janusz Zimmer and Yakov Miller, the leader of the militant settlers' organization, sat under the olive trees in the garden of the House of the Galilean. Dov Kepler, the heretical Hasid, and Mike Glass, the junior-college professor and football coach, were with them. The religious Jews had removed their kippot to blend in with the Christian atmosphere of the House.

  Sitting apart, about twenty feet away, in stiff chairs like those the men sat in, Linda Ericksen and a young man named Hal Morris sat side by side. Hal was clean-cut, North American—looking and so shy that, in pretty Linda's presence, he could do little but stare at his shoes.

  "The rest of our equipment should come in this week," Zimmer told his council of war. He addressed himself principally to Rabbi Miller. "Everything we need for the removal. Lestrade will give Otis the structural layout and Otis will give it to me. Then we have a number of specialists to plant the material in the right places."

  "What are they using?" the man from the West Bank asked. "Just out of curiosity?"

  "Gelignite. Made in Iran."

  "Will it go off?"

  "Want to go and see?"

  "I'm concerned with the loss of life," the eccentric Hasid said. "Our soldiers are stationed around the Haram. The Kotel plaza might be damaged."

  "It will be minimized. There's nothing we can do about the soldiers. The Kotel will be all right."

  "Jews were killed in the bombing of the King David too," Yakov Miller said.

  Mike Glass frowned and rubbed his forehead.

  "Very true," Janusz Zimmer agreed. "Now, if you don't mind," he said to Miller, "I'd like to talk to the young man you brought me."

  Miller called to Hal Morris in Hebrew. The young man, whose command of the language was not expert, looked up startled and pointed questioningly to himself. Laughing, Linda urged him to stand and follow orders.

  "You too, Linda," Janusz Zimmer said. "Both of you join us."

  "We have some necessities arriving from the Gaza Strip," he said. He looked around at his fellow conspirators, resting his eyes longest on Miller. "This is where you come into our closest confidence," he told young Morris and Linda. "Linda knows this, you perhaps do not. We propose to destroy the enemy shrines on the Temple Mount."

  "And rebuild the Temple," young Morris said, his voice breaking. "I've been told."

  Miller looked at him with a pride that was like love. "Has a day been set?" he asked Zimmer.

  "I was going to ask also," said Dov Kepler, the Hasid. "Some days, I'm sure you know, are more propitious."

  "The Ninth of Av would be appropriate," Mike Glass said. The Ninth of Av was traditionally a day of lamentation among Jews. Both the First and Second Temples had been destroyed on that day.

  "Tisha b'Av indeed would be," said Miller. "But it's a day lately when security is extra-tight. Although religious people would be observing the fast. That's a plus."

  "A rosh hodesh at least," said Kepler.

  Zimmer only watched them.

  "Tisha b'Av is soon," Miller said. "Would we be ready?"

  "A wonderful day that would be," Kepler said happily.

  "No significant days," said Janusz Zimmer. "There's always the chance of some extra precaution. And a greater tendency to talk."

  "Think of it," said Miller. "A holiday in the heart. Perhaps a new one for Jews everywhere. And then for people everywhere. Perhaps Tisha b'Av would be ended forever with the rise of the Temple again."

  "It's so exciting," Linda said. "So wonderful to be a part of."

  "Baruch Hashem," young Morris said.

  "Your black Sufi friend has got to be in the Strip again," Janusz Zimmer told Linda. "She's got to be seen there. On the day we move the explosives, you'll go out there on behalf of the Human Rights Coalition. Get Ernest Gross to let you go if you can. If he won't, just go. And you, Mr. Morris, ever been to the Gaza Strip?"

  "No," he said, flushing. "Is it worse than Hebron? I've seen that. I've seen Arab hate before."

  "Do you know what the Israeli Human Rights Coalition is?" Zimmer asked him.

  "It's a leftist, atheist organization," the young man said, "of pro-Arab Jews."

  "Think you can give a good impersonation of an IHRC fieldworker? Because we'll want to pass you off as one. That's how we get your friend to Nuseirat," he told Linda. "Tell her you need company. You're going to help Hal interview some witnesses to the sad beatings of the poor, oppressed Arab youths. With tapes, of course."

  "And will there be interviews?" she asked.

  "Kfar Gottlieb will round up some cooperative Arabs." Zimmer turned to young Hal Morris. "This is something you have to remember. You don't call them Arabs in the IHRC. You call them Palestinians. Like the anti-Semitic and left-wing press. That's the politically correct term."

  Morris laughed. "Well, I'll work on it."

  Janusz Zimmer kept looking at him.

  "Are sure you want to be part of this? How old are you?"

  "Twenty."

  "In school?"

  "Finished with undergraduate school. In the fall I start medical school at Hopkins. I feel doctors are needed. But I'll be here as much of the time as I can."

  "You're convinced this is the right work for you?"

  "Medicine?"

  "Not medicine," Zimmer said. "This. What we're doing."

  "He's convinced," Yacov Miller said. "What do you want from him?"

  "It's like getting to be here in the earliest days for me," Hal Morris said. "Like the war for independence. Nothing makes me happier."

  "All right," Zimmer said. "As long as you're sure. From now on, your name is Lenny Ackermann. Understand?"

  "Lenny Ackermann," said Hal. "Right."

  "Don't be too sure you'd have liked the old days, Lenny. The ambiance was very left wing."

  When the meeting was over, Zimmer and Linda were leaving the grounds of the House of the Galilean when they happened to encounter Dr. Otis Corey Butler.

  "Shalom, chaverim," Dr. Butler enthused.

  "Good evening, Dr. Butler," said Janusz Zimmer.

  "I just thought I'd mention," Dr. Butler said. "I don't know whether it's important or not. You know the journalist, the American fella? I don't know whether he's Jewish or not."

  "Neither does he," Zimmer said.

  "Well, someone put him on to us out here. It turns out he's writing a book on the Jerusalem Syndrome, as he calls it, with Pinchas Obermann."

  Linda, somewhat alarmed, looked at Zimmer. Zimmer appeared unconcerned.

  "Good," he said. "He's picked an eventful period. For the 'Jerusalem Syndrome.'"

  "I just thought you'd like to know."

  "We knew," Zimmer said. "Didn't we, Linda?"

  "Yes," she said uncertainly. "I suppose we did."

  "If he should come again," Zimmer said pleasantly, "do let us know."

  The next day Pinchas Obermann was sitting in the Atara when he looked up from his coffee and saw Linda Ericksen standing over him. Although Obermann was at his usual table, she seemed surprised to see him and behaved as if their meeting had taken her by surprise.

  "Linda, my dear," Pinchas said, "please sit down."

  He signaled for the waiter, who at first did not come. Eventually, when his curiosity about the young foreign woman at Obermann's table overcame his predisposition to be alone with his thoughts, the waiter condescended to approach and inquire into their desires. Linda ordered café au lait.

  "I understand," Linda said, "that you and Christopher Lucas are writing a piece on what you call the Jerusalem Syndrome."

  "A book," Obermann said. "Unfortunately, we can't claim to have coined the term."

  "I have to ask you," Linda said, "if my husband and I appear in this book."

  "No one appears by name."

  "But many people would be easily recognizable."

  "People familiar with the field, or the theme, might recognize individuals."


  "This seems to me a violation of privacy," Linda said. "Possibly hurtful to careers."

  "No," Pinchas Obermann said.

  "What do you mean, no? Of course it is."

  "What you're saying is, people who know the people will see what they know in print. People who don't know the people will see case histories."

  "Oh, come," she said. "It's a small world out here. And in the field."

  "I fail to see," Obermann said, "how a book like the one I've described differs from all the other books on all the other human subjects in the world."

  "I know you so well," she said. "Too well to fall for your rhetorical techniques."

  "What rhetorical techniques?"

  "Come on, Pinchas."

  "Neither your husband nor any of your boyfriends is going to come out looking bad. Nor you. So don't worry."

  "Funny, I don't find that assurance very comforting."

  "I was the one you left Ericksen for," Pinchas said. "You think I'm going to demean myself?"

  "Honestly, you're so weird," she said, "it wouldn't surprise me."

  "Linda," Obermann said, "don't worry. You'll enjoy the book. It'll be a souvenir of your youth. Of your quest."

  "You are the most cynical individual I've ever encountered."

  "You should know me well enough to know I'm not cynical. Maybe you think I wasn't fond of you."

  Linda stirred her coffee. "I'm still fond of you, Pinchas. Of course, my life is with Janusz now. But we're not enemies, are we?"

  "Enemies? I don't know. I don't write defamatory books. You shan't find yourself mocked or attacked."

  "But you're not still fond of me?"

  Obermann looked at her. She fixed him with an expectant smile, as though they should both be resigned to her universal appeal.

  "No. Not fond."

  She smiled stiffly. "Not fond? What then?"

  "Not fond," said Obermann.

  "Look, Pinchas," Linda said. "I'm not going to give you any trouble. But Janusz is a hothead. He's not young but he's plenty tough. You should be careful."

  "You wonder what I know—is that it?"

  "I wouldn't want to see you and your friend get in trouble."

  "If I didn't know you were so fond of me, Lindaleh, I would be tempted to call this little chance visit a threat."

  Linda laughed unpleasantly. "A threat? A threat! Now really."

  "What shouldn't we say? What should we conceal?" Obermann asked. "That the characters in the House of the Galilean are con men? That they're in with Moledetniks and worse? Anyway, what's that to Janusz? Or to you?"

  "Maybe we think you're turning your back on what the country stands for. And this book that you and that other man are writing is part of that."

  "Maybe I think what the country stands for is my right to sit and drink a cup of coffee without religious fanatics breathing down my neck. Like people do in other countries like this one, where religion is practiced and personal freedoms are guaranteed."

  "Freedoms," she said, with scorn.

  "One thing Israel should guarantee me—I shouldn't have to argue theology with Swedes. Especially ones from Wisconsin. Before noon. By the way," he asked her, "did you know that Vladimir Jabotinsky translated Poe into Hebrew? 'The Pit and the Pendulum'? Have you learned the Hebrew word for 'nevermore'?"

  "If you stop being a smartass, Pinchas, we might have a story for you and your friend that will knock this country's enemies on their ear. A purely secular story, I assure you. Involving the UN, the NGOs, arms and dope smuggling. About how these organizations engage in terrorism and blame it on Israel."

  "If it's a secular story," Obermann said, "we can't use it. Anyway, what's the point of this stick and carrot? What are you afraid of? Why are you threatening me?"

  "This is not," Linda said through clenched teeth, "a threat."

  "What then? A greeting? A hello?"

  "Goodbye, Pinchas," Linda said.

  37

  WHEN LUCAS AWAKENED, a little girl was standing in the candlelight of the chapel in which he had gone to sleep. She was honey-haired. Her skin was fair and flushed as though with cold. She had bright blue eyes and a slender, pointed nose that was flushed at the tip. The effect was elfin and not unattractive.

  "Did you light all those candles?" Lucas asked her sleepily.

  "Yes," she whispered. "Is it good?"

  "Very nice," Lucas told her, sitting upright. "Wow," he said, "you lit a lot of them." There were upward of fifty candles burning in the small chapel. Smoke swirled around the uneven ocher ceiling. The roar of the steam-cleaning apparatus which had resounded in his sleep seemed to have stopped.

  "There was once a fire," said the girl. "Many died. Standing together."

  She wore an odd kind of uniform. It had a high-necked blouse with three buttons on the collar and bouffant sleeves narrowing to tight white cuffs. Over this was a smock that stretched to her ankles with a white apron over it. A wide-brimmed straw hat with a blue band rested on her shoulder blades, attached by a cord around her neck. Stuck in the band was a tiny bouquet of lupines and cornflowers.

  "The fire that comes from on high," she said. She had long, thin upper teeth. Pearly white. Her name, she confided to him, was Diphtheria Steiner. She was Rudolph Steiner's daughter.

  "Yes," Lucas said. "The Holy Fire of the Greeks. It started a panic. Many, many years ago. In olden days." "Olden days" was the term Lucas's mother had used to refer to the past.

  "Many died standing together," the girl repeated. "And many were burned alive. Piled by the gates."

  "Who told you about it?" Lucas asked. He could see dim figures around him in the adjoining chapels. He heard distant chanting. When he looked at his watch, he saw that it had stopped at ten. It was a thirty-dollar Timex. He wondered if the women he had impulsively followed into the church were also confined by the vigil, or engaged in it.

  "God's will," the child said. "God's fire." There was a heraldic device sewn on the breast of her smock on which he read the words Schmidt and Heilige Land. "Yet it was not from God the fire came."

  She seemed to be posing him some sort of riddle, and Lucas felt that he ought to find a moral for her. He was not good at talking to children.

  "We always have to be careful," he explained, "with fire. Even in church. Lighting candles."

  "The prophets of Baal could not call down fire," she said. "Not one escaped."

  "Prophets of Baal?" Lucas asked. "Never mind the prophets of Baal. Just be a good girl and behave yourself."

  "And go to heaven when I die."

  "Right," said Lucas. "You'll die and then you'll be in heaven." He stood up and stretched. "What are you doing here? Are you with a group?"

  "It was a false miracle," the girl said. "Is that right?"

  "They're all false miracles," Lucas said. "Well, I don't really mean that. I mean, we don't know what makes things happen."

  "God punished the Greeks for the false miracle."

  Lucas was annoyed. "Who told you that? It's not very Christian. I mean, you're supposed to be Christians together. We, I mean. Nobody punished anybody."

  "Is it not right to punish?"

  Lucas began to look about him for another place to wait out the vigil. The kid was tiresome and he felt exhausted, almost as though he could not put one foot in front of another. The fatigue made him sit down near the carved mausoleum beside which he had been resting. The carving on it showed a bound figure. Christ, bound to be scourged, perhaps.

  It reminded him of a carving he had seen years before on a parish church in England, traveling with his then fiancée. A bound devil. A very ordinary little devil, almost a stick figure, confined in bonds, licked by little flames. It was a strange thing to put on a sarcophagus, he thought, unless the person entombed had gone to hell.

  The child, who was tall, stood a head higher than Lucas when he leaned back against the tomb.

  "Well," he said, and closed his eyes wearily. "Is it not right to punish?" He tried hard to m
ake sense of it. "I guess you have to punish people to make them behave. That's human nature. But," he added, "you can't punish people before they do something wrong. Only after. I mean, you can't punish people in advance."

  "Not one of the priests of Baal escaped," the girl from Schmidt's declared.

  "It's just a story," Lucas said. "People used not to be able to think straight." The child only looked at him with her politely pleasant half-smile. Being presentable for the grownups. "Unlike now," Lucas said. "Now we have it all figured out."

  "God wanted to kill Moses," Diphtheria declared. "He wanted to kill him at the inn."

  "Ah," Lucas said. "No he didn't."

  "But the wife of Moses cut the baby on the little place. And with the blood touched Moses there."

  "Come on," said Lucas sleepily, "they don't teach you that in school. What are you doing here, anyway?"

  "Blood and fire," said the child. "Ice and oranges for diphtheria. God makes his enemies die."

  "God makes everyone die. That's what makes him God."

  "In the mind is the source of all," the Schmidt's girl said. "Papa tells us."

  "He does?"

  "What we think is what shall be," she explained. "In the mind is the future."

  "What an awful notion," Lucas said. "I suppose you had diphtheria long ago."

  But she was gone. It took him a moment to admit the possibility that she had not really been there. Or perhaps she had been a djinn. She had seemed a malign figure; it was agreeable to believe she did not exist.

  His wanderings led him around the wretched little ark and cross some Victorian Englishman had built over what was supposed to be the tomb of Christ. The chanted beads grew louder as he went. Through the arched entrance of the Franciscan choir, he saw half a dozen friars kneeling in front of a group of pilgrims. One of the friars led the prayers in French, with an accent that might have been Spanish or Italian. Lucas went next door to the Magdalen chapel and listened. The chant took him back to boarding school, the fight with the boy named English, the Jew business, his own fervent tearful prayers. He had believed absolutely.

  There were icons of the Magdalen on the walls and paintings in the Western manner, all kitsch, trash. Mary M., Lucas thought, half hypnotized by the chanting in the room beside him; Mary Moe, Jane Doe, the girl from Migdal in Galilee turned hooker in the big city. The original whore with the heart of gold. Used to be a nice Jewish girl, and next thing she's fucking the buckos of the Tenth Legion Fratensis, fucking the pilgrims who'd made their sacrifice at the Temple and were ready to party, the odd priest and Levite on the sly.