Birthright

by Alan Gold

  And now here they were. The excitement of it, entranced by her as he was, made Shalman forget his misgivings about the attack the night before and his own hesitation to pull the trigger. Judit raised the topic nonetheless. “That wasn’t easy for you last night, was it?”

  Shalman didn’t answer the question, though he knew exactly what she was referring to.

  “It’s okay,” she continued. “It shouldn’t be easy. We have to remember that we’re not killing sons and brothers and fathers but targets. It’s never easy, Shalman, but it has to be worth it.”

  Shalman pondered what that meant. Was the creation of a nation of Israel, a land of history and culture, morals and intellect, worth being rebuilt on the blood of British soldiers? Was the way Lehi performed its goals worth the grief to soldiers’ families? Both ideas seemed right, and yet both were hideously flawed in his mind. And these thoughts, at this moment in the restaurant, were a distraction. Enough of war and killing: All he wanted to think about was peace and calm and the beautiful girl in front of him whom he so desperately wanted to know.

  Shalman tried to change topics and asked about her family, where she was from, how she came to Palestine. Remembering her training, Judit told him the story that had been created for her. She answered openly and honestly as best she could about her family but of course said nothing about her training, her enlistment into the spy ranks of the Soviet Secret Service. What she told him, and the way she explained things, denied the gravity of her story. Her tone made even horror stories seem bright. Her attitude entranced Shalman further.

  “So tell me, do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

  He was stunned by her question. What could have caused her to ask? No, surely . . . but while he knew he should answer, all he could manage was to shake his head.

  Judit filled the void left by Shalman’s silence. “I don’t have a boyfriend. Mind you, that’s because I’ve not been here long. Some of the guys in Lehi are sniffing around, but I’m not interested in them. You fascinate me, Shalman. You’re so reluctant as a soldier, I don’t understand why you’re here.”

  He told her about the British arresting his father, about his mother’s grief, and about Dov enlisting him in the youth group of Lehi. She nodded and reached across to hold his hand. Hers was warm and dry, and he thrilled at her touch.

  “Tomorrow night,” she said matter-of-factly, “there’s a film being shown at the cinema on Ben Yehuda. It’s called Here Comes M. Jordan, and it’s about a boxer who goes to heaven but he’s not supposed to be there, and he’s sent back. I love romance and comedies, and this is both! We never had films like this in Moscow. Will you take me?”

  Shalman looked at her in amazement. She continued talking as if it were the most natural thing.

  “Back in Russia, the films were all so serious. And how can you be interested in a two-hour movie about tractors and great leaps forward and Stalin’s next five-year plan? But here you have Hollywood films. When shall we go? Shall I tell you where I live? Do you want to go for some food before or after the movie? I don’t mind, because I’m used to being hungry, but you might need something to eat before the movie starts.”

  He looked at her and realized that he hadn’t said a word in minutes. He was sitting in a café in Jerusalem with a girl who just the previous night had killed three soldiers, and now she was talking excitedly about going out to see a movie. And Judit wanted Shalman to take her.

  Kedron River

  161 C.E.

  “YOU MUST SWEAR that you’ll never ever tell them, even if the end of the world happens and everything around us is destroyed—not even then. Swear it to me, Abram. Swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “By the most holy?”

  “By the most holy. How do you get past the guards and into Jerusalem?”

  It was the morning following the meal he’d eaten at her parents’ home, and in the sunshine, their feet were dangling in the Kedron River. Ruth smiled and looked up to the white city gleaming in the sunlight on top of the hill.

  “I put on a special dress made of the wings of seraphim, and I fly over the gate at night, and I become one of the teraphim and smite the Roman soldiers and leave many dead.”

  Abram looked at her, his eyes wide. Everything about her seemed so extraordinary that even the tale might have been true.

  Ruth held the moment before bursting out with laughter. “You’re silly, Abram Nothing. There’s an old disused tunnel that leads from the floor of the valley up into the city. Nobody goes there. It comes out in the middle of Jerusalem, at the foot of where the old temple used to be. I’ve climbed the tunnel. The Romans don’t know about it because the entrance in the valley where the water trickles out is covered with rocks and grass and rubble . . . Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, suddenly aware of Abram’s strange gaze.

  “That’s the tunnel . . . That’s the tunnel the rabbi sent me to look for,” he said. “That’s . . . that’s . . .” He was speechless.

  “You mean you do have a sacred quest? I was right! I thought you were special, Abram Nothing. What is it? What do we have to do?”

  The word “we” made Abram recoil and look away.

  “It’s very simple, Abram Nothing: If you don’t tell me, I won’t show you the tunnel. You won’t complete your quest, and I won’t get to go on an adventure. And neither of us will get what we want.”

  It was all so matter-of-fact that Abram told her before he could stop himself. “I was given something to put back in the tunnel by Rabbi Shimon. The rabbi and his son live in a cave near my home, hiding from the Romans.” Despite the caution he’d shown since leaving home, and the injunction from the rabbi not to speak to anybody about the seal, Abram took it out of his special inner pocket and showed it to her.

  She held it toward the sun so that it caused shadows to fall across the letters. “I can’t read it. What does it say?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Abram honestly. “But I know what it is. The rabbi told me. It was made by the man who built the tunnel for King Solomon of blessed memory, and when the rabbis escaped from Jerusalem, they took the seal to protect it. Now they want me to put it back so that God will know that the tunnel is ours and not the Romans’. The rabbi said it was something to do with our birthright. That Jerusalem and all of Israel is ours and not the Romans’.” Abram took the seal back from Ruth and slipped it inside his shirt. “I have to return it.”

  “But of course God will know. He knows everything,” she said.

  Abram shrugged. “The rabbis have given me a special mission to put it back.”

  Ruth seemed to ponder this before saying, “Why?”

  It was a very simple question, but Abram found his mind blank for an answer.

  Ruth pressed on. “Why do you have to return it?”

  “Because it’s important . . .” It was all Abram managed to say but the answer was unsatisfying to Ruth. She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him a little to face her more squarely, probing for more.

  And then he confessed. Her brilliant purple eyes made him open his heart and tell her the truth. “Because it makes me feel important.”

  All his life Abram had been a nobody. A small boy in a small village in a tiny outpost of the Roman Empire, a family under the heel of conquerors. But with the seal tucked inside his shirt and the task before him, he didn’t need to feel like a nobody. He was a man, and he had a mission for the Children of Israel.

  “Because it makes me feel important,” he said again, as if saying it twice made it more real, more honest.

  Ruth tilted her head and gave him a wicked grin. “And because it’s an adventure . . . our adventure!” She thought for a minute and said softly, “You’ll still be my Abram Nothing, even when we’ve put the seal back in its place. But if we succeed, I might let you kiss me.”

  • • •

  After they’d eaten their midday meal, Ruth and Abram wandered off, and now they stood inside the ancient tunnel. Until
they’d struck their flints and lit the wicks, producing a thin but welcome light, the tunnel had been as black as pitch and as silent as a grave. The entrance had been almost impossible to see, covered in rocks and scree and vegetation. But weeks earlier, Ruth had traced the source of the water coming from the mountain, and she’d discovered the narrow opening into the mountain.

  The only noise they could occasionally hear as they rounded a bend was distant running water and droplets that fell from the roof onto the slippery floor. Sometimes the droplets fell onto their heads or backs, but usually, they fell onto the sodden, moss-covered ground and made ascending the tunnel treacherous.

  Ruth had taken two large oil lamps from her home, secreting them inside her cloak so that her father didn’t see. She knew she was disobeying him and knew too well the rage that would descend should he learn what she was doing. But this knowledge only quickened her heart and set her skin tingling with excitement.

  The oil lamps lit their faces and the walls, floor, and ceiling in their immediate vicinity, but the light was soon overwhelmed by the enveloping blackness. Abram had never been anywhere as dark. In his life, he was blessed with light, either from the sun or from the plethora of stars that illuminated the sky above the Galilee. But the tunnel, stretching upward ahead and falling to the floor of the valley behind, was blacker than anything he’d ever known.

  “What happens now?” whispered Abram. “Which way does the tunnel go?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruth.

  “But you said that you’ve been up and down this passage many times.”

  She remained silent.

  “Ruth?”

  She was still silent.

  “Ruth!”

  He could barely make out what she said next. “I’ve only been to the entrance in the valley floor. I was too scared to go farther. I didn’t have a lamp. I’ve never been this far. I don’t know what happens now.”

  He should have been angry, but her voice was so soft, so different from the confident and arrogant Ruth of the open air, that the emotion soon dissipated.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, trying to sound confident. “According to the rabbi, this tunnel was used by lots of people for many years. It takes the water from the city, so it must be safe.”

  They climbed and slipped, rested and continued, climbed and slipped again, until they were hungry. They placed their oil lamps on a rock ledge and sat down to eat the food that Ruth had taken along with the lamps. Simple bread and olives, but they ate them greedily.

  Ruth seemed lost in thought as she chewed the bread, and Abram found himself staring at her. When she saw his gaze, she looked him hard in the eye. “Do you like me?” she said.

  The question stunned him and seemed loaded like a slingshot, but his answer was given without any thought. “Yes.”

  “Do you want to kiss me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you ever kissed a girl?” As an afterthought, she added quickly, “Not your mother or your sister.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I’ve kissed a boy before. His name is Uriel, and he lives half a day’s walk from my home. We were in a field and we lay down and I rolled over and kissed him. He enjoyed it and he kissed me back, twice. Then I went home. I haven’t seen him since, and that was four months ago. I suppose he’s still thinking about me and that kiss.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Ruth?”

  “If you want to kiss me, you can. But only once.”

  He tried to find a suitable response but grasped nothing except air. He looked away and quickly began to get to his feet and put away what was left of the food.

  “We have a tunnel to climb, and I have to find the place for the seal.” The response sounded weak, but it was the wrong time and place to be thinking about kissing Ruth. “If we succeed and find our way out, then I’ll kiss you,” he stammered in an effort not to let the opportunity be lost forever.

  “When we’re back in my home and we’re safe, I might not want you to then,” she warned.

  They climbed higher and higher into the tunnel, ascending all the while, slipping on ground that was almost totally covered in ugly, spongy black moss, and squeezing through gaps in the rock that were little wider than their slim bodies. At one point, they had to walk sideways and bend almost double because their shoulders were too wide for the gap, and the rock seemed to have fallen in an ancient slide. But after what seemed like an eternity, they ascended to a larger and more open space. They felt like they’d climbed from the bottom to the top of a mountain, but in reality, they had no idea how far up into the city of Jerusalem they had climbed.

  After a final steep ascent up steps that had been carved out of the rock and were little more than half the length of their feet, Abram and Ruth rounded what appeared to be a bend in the tunnel. Here, out of the deadened silence, punctuated only by their footfalls and their breathing, they heard a noise.

  “Hide your lamp,” warned Abram. “Listen. People.”

  Fear rising in her throat, Ruth hid the lamp inside the folds of her dress, and they were plunged into darkness. They listened, their skin prickling in fear, and held their breath. Their hearts were thumping against their chests.

  The more they strained to listen, the more they realized that the noise wasn’t coming from the tunnel but from somewhere else. It was the sound of footsteps, but not just one or two pairs of feet. It sounded like a whole army of feet trampling above their heads. And in the mix of the sounds, they clearly heard people talking, laughing, coughing. The language wasn’t Hebrew. It was Latin.

  “It’s the city. It’s the streets of Jerusalem. We’re almost touching them. They’re on top of us,” said Abram. He brought out his lamp from inside his cloak and climbed a few more steps in the tunnel and farther around the bend.

  As they edged forward, they saw a brilliant thin ray of sunlight piercing the blackness above their heads. The sun was shining through a tiny crack in what must be the pavement above. Inside the roof of the tunnel was a corner of a massive stone block thrown down from the Temple of King Herod when the Romans were taking it apart stone by stone. The block was now embedded for all time in the ground. When the Roman general Titus had destroyed the temple, this block must have been too big to move.

  “Ruth, I’m going to find a crack in the rock and put the seal inside it. Can you scoop up some mud and I’ll use that to cover and hide the seal so it’ll be secure?”

  Ruth bent down and picked up mud from the floor of the tunnel. Walking up to where Abram was standing, she waited for him to push the seal into a small crevice in the roof of the tunnel. But before she was able to push mud into the crack, Abram stayed her hand and looked at her.

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

  He thought for a moment and looked up as if he could see through to the Roman soldiers marching above. He then looked down into the black depths of the tunnel, where the water was flowing.

  It was then that he realized the flaw in what he’d been asked to do by the rabbi.

  “What if the Romans find this seal? What if they go to the bottom of the well and open the tunnel to find the source of this water, and they find the seal? They’ll destroy it. Then the Almighty One will never know the name of the builder.”

  Ruth nodded. “What shall we do? Take it back with us?”

  Abram shook his head. “No.” He sighed and continued to think. Then he saw the mud in Ruth’s hand and beamed a smile. “Give me some of that mud,” he said. “I have an idea.”

  She put some of the mud into his hand. He smoothed it into a level surface. Then Abram buried the seal deep inside, pushing it in so the impression of the seal was left in the mud. Satisfied, he removed it, and on another lump of mud that Ruth gave him, he buried the other side of the seal. He carefully removed the engraved stone, rubbed it onto his tunic to clean it of mud, and slotted it into the wall. Abram took more mud from Ruth and caked it over the entrance to the fissure.

 
; “This will dry soon and become hard as rock. Then the seal will be hidden for all time. And now that we have impressions of the front and back of the seal, it’ll be easy for a metalworker to make a copy. I’ll give one to the rabbi, and I’ll keep one myself. Then, Ruth, if the Romans find the seal, we’ll have enough copies so we can bring it back.”

  The logic was clear to Ruth, and she smiled at Abram and nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him how clever he was, because that might have made him arrogant. But she knew, and that was enough.

  As soon as they were convinced that the mud over the seal was drying hard and protecting it from falling out, they descended the steps, slipping and sliding as they went. Abram carefully nurtured the two pats of mud, which were getting harder and harder in the warmth of his hand.

  It took them as long to negotiate their way down the tunnel as it had to ascend, and by the time they emerged, cautiously checking that nobody was near the overgrown vegetation that hid the tunnel’s mouth, their oil lamps were almost exhausted. Any delay in descending and they’d have been plunged into the dangers of darkness.

  But they walked away from the tunnel entryway to make their way downstream into the Kedron Valley, where the river narrowed and deepened.

  Ruth and Abram lay on the northern bank and looked up into the sunlit sky. Sweating, tired from the exertion, still tense from the dangers they’d faced, they remained silent for what seemed a very long time, and sunset came.

  Ruth reached over and felt for Abram’s hand. She clasped it. “When I first saw you a few days ago, I thought you were a silly little boy. You were filthy, lost, and nervous. You were Abram Nothing. But you were very brave, climbing the tunnel today, and that idea of making a mud copy so the seal will be safe for all time . . . Well, Abram, that was really very clever. Now I think you’re Abram Something and no longer Abram Nothing. And I like you, Abram Something.”

  Abram’s tongue searched for words but found only the echo of Ruth’s voice in his mind.