by Nathan Erez
The tour of the island was brief, and immediately afterwards they sailed back to Ibiza. In Ibiza, Ruth took him to one of the famous beaches.
Toward sunset, they walked along the beach, and Elijah kept glancing - and immediately glancing away in embarrassment - at the European women with their very scanty bathing suits, either sitting or lying on beach chairs or on the sandy beach. They sat down in adjacent chairs, and Elijah sighed.
“What’s that all about?” asked Ruth.
Elijah did not know how to answer the question. It was a typical Jerusalem sigh, which in Jerusalem would not even be noticed. He thought that the sigh might be in reaction to all the pretty girls out there, but decided that this was hardly something he could tell Ruth.
“There are different interpretations,” he answered. “Some say it is a sigh of despair at the world. Cynics might interpret the sigh as regret for being unable to sit here each evening, watching the sunset. Doctors would say that sighs have a medical purpose, in that they cause you to breathe more deeply and thus inhale more oxygen. Jewish mothers would say it is brought about by guilt – for feeling no guilt for not having any feelings of guilt. Sociologists would no doubt interpret it as a typical Jewish sigh.”
Ruth laughed and Elijah felt at the top of his form. Further down, aging hippies sat on the rocks singing, accompanying themselves on tambourines. The evening gave way to night, and the hippies celebrated the night of the full moon. When it was late enough, Ruth and Elijah went to collect Isabel at one of Ibiza’s famed discotheques.
When Ruth had told him that they would be going to a discotheque, the closest parallel Elijah could envision was one of the student lounges at the university, which he had entered every so often as a student. He could not believe his eyes when he finally stood at the open door of the discotheque. It was packed with people shoulder to shoulder, and the clothes they were wearing were either extremely revealing or bizarre - or both. The sound of what was evidently supposed to pass as music was deafening, and he covered his ears with his hands. He was in total shock. Ruth moved into the discotheque and almost disappeared from view. This must be the trap they had set for him! Now, finally! They had done a good job of camouflaging their intentions until this moment. He had to do something to save himself!
He finally spotted Ruth and made a dive to reach her. Frantically, he clutched her hand. He tried to speak to her, but the noise made it totally impossible. With very great effort, she was able to decipher what he was trying to communicate by screaming into her ear. “If you leave me, even for an instant, I am lost! I am unable to navigate in unfamiliar places.” She nodded that she understood and led him, using hand motions, through the crowd of people. He followed her blindly, the noise crashing around his ears. They crossed the hall and wound up at a flight of stairs at the other end, which they climbed slowly, having to flatten themselves to the side to allow other people to descend. They eventually reached a sort of balcony, which overlooked the entire hall. One part of the balcony was open to the Mediterranean night, and Elijah breathed the relatively purer air there deeply. Here too the music was extremely loud, but it was at least possible, with great effort, to hear what the other person was saying.
He found a seat, while she disappeared for a while and returned with three bottles of beer and a bottle of juice.
“I’m going to look for Isabel, but she will probably come up here looking for me, as this is the place we normally meet. It is best that you remain here.” Elijah was delighted not to have to make his way through the sweating, heaving crowd.
He looked down onto a minuscule stage surrounded by a fence, on which an almost nude woman was dancing.
Among the entire hubbub, he suddenly heard a female voice speaking excellent English, but with Spanish accent.
“Hello, Professor Shemtov. I’m Isabel, Ruth’s friend.”
Elijah turned around to find where the voice was coming from. Isabel was a young woman with short, very curly black hair. She wore very narrow glasses. He could sum up her look very easily: student; feminist; fighter for the environment and against the intellectual dictatorship of white, dead, European males.
“Yes, I’m Professor Shemtov,” he admitted. “How did you recognize me?”
“From the photograph that Mr. Norman gave Ruth. How do you think she recognized you at the airport? Did you think it was some type of divine inspiration? Thousands of people fly in every day.”
Isabel sat down next to him, and he noticed that she was drunk. He tried to think of where Norman could possibly have gotten a photograph of him.
“Are you a professor of mathematics, like Norman and the others?” she asked, and his ears perked up. He realized that in her inebriated state it might be easy to pump her for information, but he had to do so before Ruth returned.
Norman a professor of mathematics? That was news to him.
“Are the others also going to come? How about John McDonald? Will we be meeting him as well?” he asked.
“You already have!” she answered.
He tried to process that bombshell in a hurry. “Are you telling me that Norman is John McDonald?”
“Of course! He changed his name after he was placed on the Wanted List during the Spanish Civil War. Did you meet Maria? It was her mother who saved him from death. They say that he arrived in Spain when he was still a young boy, and he was found searching through all sorts of dark, dusty monastery attics. He was almost put to death by the Republicans after he tried to steal the treasures of a church that had caught fire. His claim that he was simply searching for old manuscripts was received with scorn. He was saved by his youth and the pity of a woman named Rosa, who interceded on his behalf. Rosa was Maria’s mother.”
If that’s the case, Elijah reasoned, the scroll I have just seen must have come from that church. Norman’s claim that he had just found the scroll was a pack of lies. It appeared that what was written in this scroll was one of the links in the chain of hints.
“And what is this about the mathematicians?”
“Norman wound up in the United States, where he studied mathematics. These were evidently friends of his from those days. In the past six years, Norman has only brought three guests: a woman and two professors of mathematics. I never met them, but I did see photos of them, each with a black border around it, because Ruth said they had died a short while after visiting here. I hope you’re not the next in line,” she added. Elijah was understandably distressed.
Isabel looked at him with the same look a drunk gives an electricity pylon in trying to gauge if he can beat it in a fight. “Didn’t Norman tell you how he found Ruth?”
“Tell me.”
“Ruth is Norman’s housekeeper the same way Madame Pompadour was the housekeeper of Louis XIV.”
As Elijah did not know the relationship between Madame Pompadour and Louis XIV, he chose discretion as the better part of valor.
“I’ve known Ruth since she was thirteen. We were in high school and university together. Did you know she’s a medical doctor?”
Elijah could detect a certain strain of envy in her words. He wondered why he was always attracted to doctors.
“She was my brother, George’s, girlfriend. One summer, she went to work on some farm in southern Spain. Norman happened to visit the farm. He asked Ruth to come to Formentera for a month, to take care of a sick guest who was staying there. I have no idea how he managed to bewitch her, but she came to him and she hasn’t left him since. Six years!”
“How do you fit into the picture?”
“He pays me enormous amounts of money to come here. Whenever he travels, I come here to keep Ruth company. He doesn’t like leaving her on her own. Ruth can spend as much as she wants on anything she wants. But what kind of life is it for a young woman? To stay here with an old man? To my mind, he must be over eighty years old. To this day I have no idea where his money comes from. Do you know where he was born? Where his family is from?” Elijah got the impression that Isabel too w
anted to find out as much as possible about Norman before Ruth returned. He waited, and she continued:
“She worships Norman and follows him blindly. That word is a bit of a misnomer, because if anyone is blind, it is he. Maria comes in once a week by plane from Barcelona to cook and clean for them, and she is not exactly a friendly person. Sometimes she sleeps over and works another day, flying back at the end of the second day. Ruth, though, is totally isolated.”
“Have you ever tried to speak to Maria?” Elijah asked.
“Sure. She’s never answered a single one of my questions, and then she goes to Norman and Ruth to complain that my nosiness is disturbing her work. Ruth yelled at me. Do you know that Ruth never enters Norman’s study, so as not to disturb the privacy of the genius at work? It’s enough to drive you mad. Whenever Norman isn’t there, Maria locks up his study. I once actually entered the holy of holies. Maria had been cleaning it and had gone down to the kitchen for a few minutes.”
“And did you find the secrets of man’s existence there?”
“I’m glad you have a sense of humor, but I found nothing at all, except for the black-bordered photographs I told you about. Ever since that time, Maria locks herself in when she works in the study and locks the study from the outside as soon as she steps out of it. It’s totally unbelievable. You’re the only person I’ve ever met, besides Maria, who knows Norman. Now it’s your turn. Tell me what you know about him.”
He thought to himself. What indeed did he know about Norman? He had even been surprised to find out how old the man was. He certainly did not look like a man who was over eighty. In the few minutes he had spoken to Isabel, he had found out more about Norman and Ruth than he had in all the time he had been working for the man. He decided to remain silent. He had his own problems, and Isabel’s revelations had not made things easier in any way. On the contrary - now he had an additional element of fear. The three people who had visited Norman had all died soon afterwards. What he did remember was that often the best way to deal with a problem is to simply ignore it. Indeed, problems often have a way disappearing of their accord.
Isabel, though, did not go away, but now devoted herself to the task at hand - polishing off two more bottles of beer - when Ruth came up behind her.
The two embraced, and Isabel asked Elijah, “Would you like to dance?”
He shook his head vigorously from side to side and the two women disappeared. His mind worked in slow motion, as if in a trance. And there, with all raucous noise of drums and guitars and the wild gyrations in the discotheque, he remembered an ancient legend he had learned in school about Rabbi Akiba and three other great rabbis who had become involved in studying the Kabbalah. Rabbi Akiba had warned the other three great rabbis, Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, and Elisha ben Avuyah, and had made the cryptic comment: “When you reach the pure marble rocks, do not say, ‘Water, water.’” His warning had not helped. The legend goes on to state that because of their studies of the Kabbalah, Ben Azzai died, Ben Zoma became insane, and Elisha ben Avuyah became a heretic, rejecting everything to do with Jewish belief. Only Rabbi Akiba had emerged intact after his encounter with the Kabbalah. The warning Rabbi Akiba had given the other rabbis was identical to the seventh line of Norman’s manuscript. Could this story have been what the manuscript alluded to? But try as he might, Elijah simply couldn’t see the connection. And could whatever the three dead people in the black-rimmed photographs been working on provide the key to their subsequent deaths?
About twenty minutes later, Ruth and Isabel returned, dripping with sweat. Elijah was delighted when they finally left the discotheque and headed for the port in the jeep. Elijah helped Ruth and Isabel untie the ropes securing the yacht to the dock, and they set sail.
“Do you like Trance?” Isabel suddenly asked Elijah.
“I really am not used to that type of music,” replied Elijah.
“If you listen to Trance, you can be elevated spiritually. It enables people to free themselves from their unnatural preoccupation with their ego. If you immerse yourself in this music, you can cast off all your chains. In a Trance session, everyone concentrates on the music like a single beating heart.”
Elijah was totally amazed. He had never imagined that anyone could reach so sweeping a conclusion about the excruciatingly loud noise he had just been subjected to. Isabel laughed.
“I think I’m just too old for that type of music,” he finally commented lamely.
“It has nothing to do with age,” said Ruth. “Norman is older than you, and he loves to listen to it. It is a question of being open to new thoughts and ideas.”
“Your Norman is the greatest genius of our age,” said Isabel. “I’m surprised that God doesn’t come to him each night for advice as to how to run the world.”
Elijah suddenly felt unbelievably tired. It was the end of a very long, very wearying day, and all he wanted was to sink into a comfortable bed. Ruth led him to his room like a lamb to the slaughter. He plopped down on the bed, and hoped to have a full night of restful sleep.
But it was not to be. He tossed from side to side while sleep eluded him. He dozed off for a while, but never entered a deep sleep. He found himself neither sleeping nor fully awake. He was too tired to get up, but too awake to fall asleep. He kept picturing in his mind’s eye the scroll he had seen earlier that day, with the image of the Ibiza beach superimposed on it. Everything he had experienced during that long day appeared in his mind as a hopeless jumble.
Thinking back, Elijah recalled having seen the mark of a rubber stamp and a signature on the other side of the scroll, but he had not paid attention to them at the time, possibly because Norman had been so insistent that they finish as soon as possible and that Elijah should go out and enjoy himself. Altogether, the whole day had been strange. He tried to concentrate on everything he had seen. Soon it came back to him, as if the reverse side of the scroll was before his eyes. This scroll had been copied from the scroll collection of the Templar monastery in Geronda. Permission to copy it had been given by Cardinal Pedro Reuchlin, who sold holy works to the Templars in Spain. Reuchlin’s signature appeared on top of the rubber stamp of the monastery.
Who needed to receive such permission? Elijah knew that if he racked his brain he would remember the answer to that question. After all, he knew a great deal about the Templars from his study of the Crusaders. Now, who needed the Cardinal’s permission? He finally remembered - someone who was not a member of the monastery, and especially if the matter concerned internal monastery documents. A Muslim or Jewish scholar would certainly need such permission before copying anything. The chances of a non-Christian scholar being given access to any church document were very slim to nonexistent, unless - wasn’t there always an “unless” - a considerable amount of money changed hands. And the one thing Elijah knew from the time he had started working for Luzatto was that money was absolutely no object to the Institute. With that thought in mind, he finally dozed off.
All of a sudden, he jumped out of bed as if bitten by a snake. With no idea what had awakened him, he went over to the window and looked outside. The light of the full moon illuminated the garden outside. He suddenly noticed two people, dressed in white, walking, and their backs to him. They looked like ghosts. At first he was terrified, but when he looked more closely he saw that the “ghosts” were Ruth and Norman, walking hand in hand. Elijah wanted to beat a fast retreat from the window, but soon realized that was unnecessary, as there was no way they could see him. The room itself was pitch dark, and the only light reaching it was from the outside. From afar, he saw Norman whisper something into Ruth’s ear, and he heard a faint laugh from her. For a few seconds he felt a twinge of envy, but that thought soon ended. He saw the two entering a room in the garden near an ornamental pool; they closed the door behind them.
Suddenly, for some reason he could not fathom, Elijah wanted to see the scroll again. But of course, Norman’s study was locked - so Isabel had said. Yet something impelled him, and he de
cided to try his luck anyway. He hurried to Norman’s study with his flashlight-camera in hand. The distance to the study seemed immense, and the noise made by his slippers seemed deafening. The door was closed, but was it locked? Gingerly, he tried the door handle. The door had not been locked! An oversight? Well, whatever the reason, he now had access to the study.
The room was dark, and Elijah didn’t dare turn on a light. Isabel was sleeping somewhere in the house, and Maria might also be there. As he entered the room, he saw that the computer was in standby mode. He tapped a key and brought it back to life. On the desk were four picture frames, which had not been there when Elijah was invited into the study that morning. Elijah looked at the first, and his blood ran cold. It was a picture of Norman embracing an elderly woman whose beauty was still discernible. From the surrounding scenery, he saw that the photograph had been taken in Formentera, near the lighthouse. On the photograph there was an inscription in English in a small feminine hand. The signature was clear: Odel Weiss. Odel Weiss smiled at Elijah from the photograph. Odel Weiss had also been on the island, and was dead!
Elijah looked at the next two photographs. Both were of a group of people whom Elijah could not identify, together with Norman. He assumed these must have been the guests that Isabel had mentioned. The last frame did not contain a photograph, but a letter. It was hard for him to identify the handwriting. With great difficulty, he realized that the script, very small and compact, was a Hebrew script known as nus-kalam– “half reed”.
Elijah photographed all four items. He made sure to photograph the letter several times, from different angles. He opened the drawer from which Norman had taken the wooden box containing the scroll. As he had imagined, there were seven such boxes there, one for each scroll. He saw his life contained within those boxes. As soon as the boxes had all been filled, he assumed that he too would be dead.
