The Tenth Song

by Ragen, Naomi

  “I . . . I’m . . . so . . . sorry . . .” Kayla whispered, appalled.

  There was a long silence. “Yes, well. I came to terms with it as best I could. I needed a hysterectomy. I was nineteen years old, and I would never have children.”

  The hot, dusty desert wind whistled through the silent car.

  “I broke up with my boyfriend, whom I didn’t deem sufficiently sympathetic. Or maybe I wanted to be the one to decide he’d leave, before he did. I plunged back into my studies, getting in over my head. I had enough sense to realize I needed to get away before I drowned. So I went on a dig in Turkey. The last thing I expected was to meet someone. But I did. He was an assistant professor at Santa Clara University. He had a narrow, intense face with dark hair and blue eyes that lit up when he smiled, which wasn’t often. Naturally, after telling myself that it could never happen again, I fell in love . . . we fell in love. I told him that I could never have children. And he said: ‘I don’t care. I want you, just the way you are.’ Besides, he said, there are so many orphans in the world. Someone has to care for them, no?”

  “He sounds wonderful.”

  “He was,” she answered wistfully, without a trace of irony. “We were married on the beach at Corfu: sunset, torches, Greek dancing. The works. And for ten years, we lived and worked together. He was my best friend, my colleague, my lover. But every time I brought up adoption, he changed the subject. It was either: ‘We’re still so young, what’s the rush?’ Or there was this one really, really important dig he wanted to do that would put us both on the map so we could field offers from the top universities before settling down. And after that dig, there was always another, and another. Get the picture?”

  “I think so.”

  “Finally, I said: ‘You don’t want to adopt, ever.’ It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I guess I was expecting a fight, a heated denial. Instead, he looked at me, and said: ‘I want my own children.’ ”

  Kayla turned her head, looking out the window. The dunes had given way to strangely ridged sand mountains where nothing grew. Bedouin compounds dotted the surreal landscape, their tattered tents and forlorn-looking donkeys and camels a blight. And then, there was nothing, nothing at all but sand-colored mountains undulating in a vast emptiness. She turned back to Judith, feeling suddenly chilled, the goose bumps rising on her arms.

  “What did you do?”

  “I cried. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. And then I stopped hating him and just accepted the simple fact that he was a healthy young man, with healthy instincts, and that he had simply changed his mind.”

  “But there are surrogates . . .”

  She shook her head with a sad smile. “He wasn’t into anything that high-tech. He simply wanted to make love to the mother of his children, get her pregnant, and watch their child grow inside her. It was natural . . .”

  “It was unforgivable. He had made his decision. You had let him into your life based on that decision.”

  “Oh right. I should’ve sued him. Taken him to bloody court. Have the magistrates string him up. After all, what he wanted was criminal. A wife and child.”

  “You depended on his word, on his love!”

  “Life is a series of demolitions and rebuildings. And you can’t really know anything about anyone. There is no such thing as ‘ever after.’ ”

  Kayla thought of her last phone call to Seth.

  “But you should be able to figure out in advance if your partner is trustworthy and honest and steadfast, or if he will cut and run at the first sign of trouble.”

  “Should you? How, when he himself can’t know! Okay, sometimes there are warning signs, things we deliberately ignore. In that case, you need to get out. Fast. But not always. Not in my case. Yes, my husband did cut and run. But he could just as easily have stayed or come back. There is no use in my berating myself for having chosen him, or for him to have mistakenly chosen me. People don’t know themselves. They don’t know what they are capable of feeling and doing. They may think they do. They may even make promises based on what they think they know about themselves. But it’s building on quicksand.”

  “Then how can anyone ever get married? Ever decide to trust someone?”

  Judith shrugged. “I had ten years with a man I loved. Wonderful years. It didn’t last forever, but that doesn’t mean they were a mistake. That he was a mistake.”

  It was so overwhelmingly simple, and yet so complex. Not to let the present color the past. To accept what is and what was without any shadows.

  “If it were me, I’d be furious. I’d want revenge.”

  “Oh, I felt that way too. Believe me. It took me a long time to get where I am now. And I would never have gotten there at all if it hadn’t been for Natan.”

  “Your therapist?”

  She smiled. “You could say that. But more like a guru. He’s the one who taught me about risking everything, about prying yourself open to let in the light, and to let out the poison. You’ll meet him.”

  “Is he on the dig?”

  “Not exactly. He’s . . . well, you’ll see.”

  “I don’t believe in gurus. And I don’t believe in risks.”

  “And yet, your bridges get burned without your even striking a match.”

  Kayla looked at her, startled, then looked away.

  TO THE LOWEST POINT ON EARTH read a sign on the side of the road. How ironic, she thought, shaking her head. She had always thought of herself as an explorer, one with those unswerving, determined adventurers covered with frostbite, determined to reach the top of the world. But sinking down was also an adventure, she admitted to herself.

  A sign pointed to Jericho on the left; then, suddenly, the landscape changed once more. Her eyes, her heart, lifted upward to the high mountain cliffs dotted with secret caves. They were so old, older than anything she had come across in her lifetime. There was something primordial about them; something overweening, dwarfing anything human. She looked at the deep canyons carved out by desert flash floods, imagining the thundering cascade of water exploding through the rocks, washing out the roads with dangerous suddenness.

  Everything about this place was wild and hard and untamed, inimical to the core of the human need for nourishment and predictability. A place full of risks.

  The precipitous plunge from habited to uninhabited, from human settlement to wilderness in such a short time span was awesome and terrible, especially to someone like Kayla Samuels, who had spent her entire life amid nurturing abundance. She felt small, helpless, abandoned. A stranger to herself. Perhaps, then, Judith was right. You couldn’t know anyone, because you couldn’t know yourself. Not completely.

  “That’s where the Essenes lived, the Qumran Caves, at the time of Jesus.” Judith nodded in the direction Kayla had been looking. “That’s where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone living here. How did they survive?”

  “They didn’t need much. They had desert springs for water. They had animals for milk and meat and skins. There were wild trees with dates and figs, and olives. They imported flour and wine from Jerusalem.”

  Kayla shook her head incredulously.

  Judith shrugged. “People do strange things when they want to be left alone. Look at Venice. Those people were also running away. They built their homes in the middle of the sea! The Essenes wanted spiritual purity. They felt they were running away from the corruption of their coreligionists, and the domination of the Romans. They thought that the Messiah was on his way, and they wanted to be worthy of being chosen to survive the cataclysms of the End of Days.”

  People going to wild extremes, living where no one else wanted to live simply to be left in peace. Yes, Kayla thought. She could certainly understand that.

  “They say the Essenes didn’t write the Dead Sea Scrolls. That there were other groups, and many more scrolls still to be found. Some of them filled with prophecies . . .”

  “About our future?” Kayla asked. �
��Or about the past, which was their future?”

  Judith hesitated. “Natan once spoke about it.” She didn’t elaborate.

  Kayla was surprised, sensing a certain discomfort. How odd, that such a theoretical question about such an obscure topic could make this very honest, open, free spirit suddenly clam up! Kayla wondered at it, her curiosity growing together with the feeling that not everything was as it seemed. There was some underlying mystery about all this, something strange, even frightening. It was more than just a desert dig.

  The towering mountains dropped behind them. Looming ahead were the reddish hills of Jordan and the rising blue haze of the Dead Sea, which almost melted into the sky, making you wonder if you were dreaming of water rather than seeing it. And then the blue gave way to a shimmering silver band and the grey outline of a faraway mountain range.

  “Look over there!” Judith said, pointing. “That’s the mountain in Jordan where Moses stood looking toward the Promised Land that God refused to let him enter.”

  Kayla stared, thinking with sadness how Israel’s greatest prophet had been denied his heart’s desire, forbidden to complete his long journey home, condemned to die in the desert. And how she, Kayla Samuels, had made it here. It made her feel blessed somehow. How strange and inexplicably detached from our actions are our fates sometimes, she mused.

  The sun-dappled waters sparkled, deceptively lovely, giving no hint of the thick concentration of minerals that stung the eyes and could even hold a person upright, making it impossible for her to drown. A group of cyclists rode past them, their taut bodies stretched out in spandex blue, their helmets low on their foreheads. Where were they cycling from? she wondered. And where was it they were they risking so much to get to?

  “What if they run out of water or something? It’s dangerous. Don’t you feel that way? Or didn’t you, when you first came here?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. It feels as if I’ve been here always. Besides, civilization is always just around the corner.”

  The car began to slow down. There was a series of low white buildings. “Come out and stretch your legs. Can I buy you a Coke?”

  “Oh, thanks! Water would be great.”

  The pungent odor of camels permeated the air as they strode toward the roadside kiosk selling everything from cold bottled water to roasted lamb stuffed into pita bread. Underneath flapping canvas tents, an Arab squatted beside earthenware pottery, hawking his wares. Farther down the road, a Bedouin held the reins of a gaudily festooned camel, as Israeli tourists with a small child crowded around the animal, no doubt negotiating the price of a ride and a souvenir Polaroid. Kayla relaxed, a sense of familiarity flooding her with relief. There were bathrooms and phones and ice cream and cold drinks and young families. It was a tiny desert in a tiny country, not the Sahara.

  “Ready?” Judith asked in her patient way. She never seemed to be in any hurry. It had such a calming effect, Kayla realized, to be around someone like that. The people she knew were the opposite—Seth, her mother, her teachers. For them, life was one marathon relay race. If you slowed down, you were letting down the team.

  “Sure. Let’s go. Is it far?”

  She shook her head. “Less than a half hour. We should be there way before dark.”

  Kayla thought about being in the desert with this stranger, her sense of ease suddenly evaporating.

  Was this an answer to her prayers, she wondered, or punishment for her sins?

  13

  It was two thirty in the morning. Portable lanterns lit their way. Long tables were set outside with drinks. Kayla counted twenty-five people waiting for the bus that would take them to the excavation site, including Judith.

  “Sleep well?”

  “It’s a mistake to put that into past tense.”

  Judith grinned. “Well, your eyes are open, so good for you. It will be our secret. Come with me, and I’ll introduce you.”

  “Uh, that’s nice of you, but I’m not really up for socializing yet.” She ran her hand through strands of her now-curly hair, still soaking wet from her hasty shower. She tucked a voluminous T-shirt into her sweatpants, pulling her army jacket around her. As promised, it was freezing outside. Thank God Seth couldn’t see her. He’d have a heart attack. “Maybe after breakfast. There is going to be breakfast, isn’t there?”

  “Of course, and a really good one too. They serve it around six A.M. at the site.”

  “Any reason we can’t get there at six A.M.?”

  “It’s a desert dig. By the time the sun comes up, you’ll be sitting in a frying pan slowly sautéing. Professor Milstein, this is Kayla, our newest worker. Kidnapped at the Kotel. She’s taking a break from Harvard Law.”

  He bowed with old-world courtesy, offering her his graceful old hand. He had dark eyes under great bushy brows that were halfway to grey. “Harvard Law, you say? I’m impressed. But you are missing your semester, no?”

  “I’m not sure I’m going back,” she murmured.

  “Oh, I see. Their loss. Our gain. We’ll start you out with digging, but we will find more responsible things for you to do soon enough. Can you draw?”

  “Yes. I mean, basic stuff.”

  “Good enough. We will exploit you mercilessly, child.” He kissed her hand.

  “You’ve already met Judith. And this is Carla, and Michael and Efrat, and this . . . this is Daniel.”

  He was a little older than the others—who looked to be in their early twenties—with a large head of unruly brown curls. His light green eyes jumped out at you, mesmerizing against the dark brown of his deeply tanned skin. His simple work clothes were stained but had the fresh smell of having been washed and hung out to dry in the desert air.

  “Good to have you on board, Kayla.” Carla smiled.

  “Yes, we can use the help,” Michael echoed, while Efrat just smiled and held out her hand. “My English. Not good. I from Haifa. Port, fishes.”

  Only Daniel said nothing, barely inclining his head to acknowledge her existence. Kayla nodded and smiled back at the others, but her eyes followed him, curious and a bit offended. If it had been Seth, he would have been commenting on everything from the appropriateness of her hat to the UV rating of her sunglasses, describing in detail his own very important job and how extremely vital it was to do everything just the way he did it . . .

  Daniel climbed on the bus. He took a seat alone near a window, glancing out, silent and preoccupied.

  Transportation was an old school bus with indiscernible suspension, every rock making its presence known as they bumped and rolled down the mountainside. She sat down next to Judith.

  “Who are these people?” Kayla whispered.

  “Carla is an exchange student from Bologna. She is finishing some credits at Hebrew University, and this is part of her course. Michael showed up six months ago. He’s from Virginia. He has a degree in architecture from Stanford. He said he was backpacking around the Middle East, and had experience in digs. He’ll be moving on when the mood strikes him, or a letter bearing more cash arrives from his parents. He’s gay, by the way. Efrat is Israeli. She just started here a few months ago. And then there’s Daniel.”

  “Are they a couple? Daniel and Efrat?” She was annoyed at how much she cared about the answer and how deeply she was prepared to feel disappointment.

  “What? Because they’re both Israeli? No, at least, not that we can see. He isn’t involved with anyone.”

  Not yet, she thought, finally being honest with herself for the first time since she boarded the plane at JFK.

  “The earliest remains we found were from the Chalcolithic period,” the professor informed her companionably. “That’s fourth millennium BCE. There was a pagan temple here that probably served as a cultic center for the tribes who roamed the region. They chose this spot because of the freshwater springs that flow down from the high cliffs. Then at some point the priests fled, leaving behind all these little idols, which are now in the Israel Museum. It’s so dry, eve
rything was preserved beautifully for thousands of years. Much later, David hid here from Saul.”

  “As I told you. The desert is a good hiding place,” Judith whispered. “You’ll find many volunteers with that idea.”

  “Including Daniel?” Kayla asked.

  “Daniel . . . that’s sort of a different story.” She hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Not so much hiding as trying to find himself.”

  “The houses of the first village were crowded together on terraces,” the professor continued. “They had two rooms and a courtyard. They had large clay vats for storing drinking water and beverages made from local plants. A while back we found a hoard of silver pieces!” His voice rose with excitement.

  “We’ll talk later . . .” Judith whispered. Kayla was disappointed, anxious for the story to continue.

  “Then there were the Persian and Herodian periods. The Jewish settlement thrived. A citadel was built to protect the village and its farms from marauding nomads. All that ended with the first Jewish rebellion against the Romans in 70 CE. But during the Byzantine and Roman periods, it was once again a large, prosperous Jewish village. They credited their prosperity to the cultivation of a tropical plant from which a rare and wonderful perfume was made. They say it was Cleopatra’s favorite, the source of her seductive powers. We think the plant was called balsam, but we can’t be sure. Even then, it was a closely guarded secret. On the floor of the synagogue there is even a verse cursing anyone who reveals the secret formula.”

  “And here we are, centuries later, trying to undo all that secrecy by digging up and revealing all.” Judith laughed.

  Kayla shifted uncomfortably. Some things were best left buried, she thought, wondering if she would ever tell these people anything about herself.