The Tenth Song

by Ragen, Naomi

Maybe this is what it’s like to die—she suddenly thought. Your consciousness lives on with all its experiences and memories, detached from anything physical. You have no arms with which to embrace, or build, or fight. No legs to carry you from place to place. No eyes to see outward, only inward toward memories. No taste, but the memory of taste.

  The living were blessed with powers to create. When these powers were gone, they never returned, she understood for the first time, startled at how simple a thing that was, how simple and true. She felt like mourning everything she had not yet done, filled with a new ambition to use her lips to pray while she still could; her tongue to taste delicious fruits while she still could; to dance, to kiss, to speak, to sing a beautiful new song. So many things that only the living can do for such a short time.

  “Dear God, help my family. Help me to find You again.”

  For the first time in a very long time, she could hear God listening. She understood how distant they had become, and how lonely she had been for Him. And how lonely He had been for her.

  “Mom, there you are! I was so worried . . .”

  Abigail got up and held out her arms, enfolding her daughter’s young body, all the years stored up ahead of her to feel and experience, all the years to create those things she would take with her into eternity. Who was she, or Adam, or anyone, to take those choices from her, the essence of being alive, the freedom to choose?

  “I’m so sorry, Mom! I never wanted to hurt you or Dad! I’ve been incredibly selfish. Dad needs me. And . . . Seth. I’ve treated him really badly. Maybe you are right. Maybe I should go home.”

  “NO! NO!” Abigail wanted to shout: “Don’t do it! Don’t weaken! Don’t listen to me! Or your father. We don’t know anything!” Instead, she found herself thinking of Adam, alone in the house thousands of miles away. She was here to plead his case, to wrench her daughter back to familiar ground, to the only life they had both ever known.

  “That would make your father and Seth very happy, Kayla,” she said, betraying them both.

  24

  When Kayla rose for work early the next morning, her body felt heavy and her mind dizzy with uncertainty. For weeks, she had been jumping out of bed joyfully, eager for the day to come. She had come to love the tingling cold as she walked to and from the showers to her tent, the hot cup of coffee, the easy conversation with Daniel and the others as they bumped down the road to the tel. Recently, the dig had begun to yield some fascinating artifacts—coins, utensils, even a gold ring. There was a growing excitement in the act of plunging her shovel into the ancient earth, as if it were a treasure hunt, or a story whose exciting plot unfolded day by day.

  But now she was torn. Was it merely obligation and guilt? Or were her parents right? If she went back now, she could talk to her professors, even patch things up with Seth. She might even be able to redeem herself with her father although she was undoubtedly more useful to him exactly where she was. But he didn’t know that. By moving back into the house, she could give both her parents true moral support. In no time at all, she could get her old life back. The question was: Did she want it back? Were those words she had spoken to her mother true, or a cover? Was she tossing away her future on a childish whim, an act which could never be undone? Or was staying the most adult decision she had ever made?

  She looked up at the great mountain towering over her, and it seemed to look back, as if it were trying to tell her something. But what? It wasn’t like looking into a mirror, she thought, which reflects back what you want to see, the sum of all your artifices. The opposite. It somehow forced you to look inside at all the things you wished to hide, even from yourself. Was it not enormous hubris, she asked herself, to even try to live in such a place? It was so harsh and pitiless, forcing human beings to draw a line in the sand between life and nothingness. Only so far, we say to the desert. Here, at this line, life begins and flourishes. We can do this, make this bloom, because we are human. We can keep back the tide of encroaching death. We are stronger than the silence. We can fill the air with sound.

  Equally hard to believe was that a settlement filled with people who had had the same religion, rituals, and God as her own family had lived and flourished here two thousand years before. They had come here looking for purity, brotherhood, and peace. They believed it was possible, if not for themselves, then for future generations, prophesying in their scrolls about the coming of a different age, a holy age when mankind would once again find its way, undoing all the human harm that had been wreaked on Eden.

  She thought about The Talmidim, this strange community in the middle of nowhere, led by its strange preacher, a man who had roamed the ashrams of India and the mountains of the Himalayas, only to find that all he learned pointed him back to his own roots and the land of his birth. Like those before him, he had come with some followers to this place, trying like them to plant the seed of a new kind of human community, based on old rules that had simply been forgotten. And others, hearing about it, had followed, many of them drifters, most of them wounded, in one way or another, by human selfishness or violence, people who had tried and failed to find a home elsewhere in more hospitable surroundings. In this unforgiving, almost inhuman environment, they had finally found community, and friendship, and hope. As they huddled together on this small mountaintop, they nourished these things, the way a man lost in a snowstorm fiercely nurtures and protects a small flame he has managed to ignite.

  It was impractical, silly really. How would they ever support themselves? From goat’s milk? From tourists? From selling tapes of Rav Natan’s lectures on busy intersections to indifferent drivers? From their savings? And when the savings ran out, then what?

  She looked around at what they had planted: the baobab tree, brought as a seed from Africa; the ficus and the fast-growing cotton silk; the myrrh and frankincense bushes; and the Sodom apple trees, which let loose thousands of pieces of fluff, each holding a seed in its center that the wind carried for miles. She looked up at the top of the mountain, where the fig trees flourished. Fed by an artesian well that had taken a hundred years to travel through the mountains from Jerusalem, the water had finally reached this spot to nourish their roots. It was unimaginable.

  Looking at all this flourishing growth made you think God had changed His mind and decided to bless this place after all, plucking it out of desolation. It made you believe in miracles, in taking leaps of faith.

  She loved it.

  But what of tomorrow? she thought. What would it be like here in the summer, if it was so hot in the middle of the winter? The heat would be unbearable, although there were those who had borne it. And what of next year, and the year after?

  Once again, she felt that tightness in her chest she thought she had left behind her forever, along with her textbooks and day planner. It made her want to cry. She didn’t know what to do. Her gut was telling her one thing, her mind another.

  “Kayla, the bus is here,” Judith said, touching her shoulder lightly, peering into her face, concerned. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really sleep much last night.”

  “Sometimes that happens to me too after Rav Natan’s lectures. My mind just keeps running in circles, trying to absorb everything.”

  “It’s that too, but . . . My mother is here.”

  “Yes. I heard.”

  “She wants me to leave.”

  Judith pouted, making a funny “sorry” face. “And what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Kayla shook her head. “I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t made a terrible mistake.”

  Judith seemed disappointed. “Kayla, it’s not a question of a mistake. Nothing is lost. You can leave anytime. I told you that. As long as you think the time is right for you, that you’ve taken all you can, all you need. As long as you don’t go back to the old life.”

  “If I leave here, I don’t know what other life I can go back to, Judith. It’s the only one I’ve ever known. I have no idea wha
t another life would even look like.”

  “It would look like this.” She spread out her arms.

  “Not in Brookline . . . Not in America.”

  “You can make changes. You can make it look any way you want. It’s up to you. But if you are still unsure, then you shouldn’t go. At least not yet.”

  “But my parents need me. I’m abandoning them.”

  “Is that what your mother said?”

  “Yes, more or less.”

  “Or is that just what you heard? Do they want you to go back to help them? Or do they want you to go back because they think they are helping you? It’s not the same thing, you know.”

  Kayla thought about it, winding her way thoughtfully toward the bus.

  Daniel was waiting for her.

  “How did it go? How is your mother feeling?”

  “She wants me to go back with her.”

  His face fell.

  They sat down side by side on the rickety seats.

  “Daniel, I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, leaning against him. The strong young bones of his shoulder held her up.

  He leaned his head toward her, kissing her forehead. “I know,” he whispered back.

  Abigail felt the sun warming her eyelids. She sat up, a smile on her face as she looked around her at the small, dismal room. Who would have ever thought she could be happy in such surroundings? My real wants are so small, so basic, she realized suddenly. A roof over my head. A bed. A bathroom. Clean clothes. Simple food prepared simply. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, then opened the door. The glorious view of the mountains and the sea filled all her senses.

  She would call Adam. She would explain this to him. She would explain that their daughter Kayla had found something precious and real and that she should be left alone to reap all the joys of her discovery. She would tell him that he mustn’t pressure Kayla to come back. That it would be a selfish thing, not a kindness, not to her benefit. They mustn’t push her back into the old life. It wasn’t going to make her happy.

  It hadn’t made them happy.

  He wouldn’t like it, she considered. He might even be a bit sad at first, at the thought of his daughter having chosen so different a path from their own, from what they’d envisioned for her. But he would get over it. After all, he really did love Kayla, and all he had ever wanted for her was a good life. Talking her into coming back now would only fulfill a selfish need for companionship, someone with whom they could share their misery. Why would he want that? After all, he had sent her, Abigail, away, willing to live in that house all by himself, for Kayla’s sake. He had prevented Shoshana from coming to visit for her own good. Why would he insist on having Kayla there if it wasn’t in her best interests? That wasn’t like Adam.

  She would straighten this out with him today, then she would talk to Kayla. She would tell her how she really felt, that she mustn’t go anywhere. That she must explore the things she had discovered and her relationship with this Daniel. Just the fact that she had formed another romantic relationship so quickly meant that her feelings toward Seth did not have the depth and passion needed for a long, happy marriage. It was a blessing Kayla had realized it now rather than after ten years of miserable married life filled with innocent children who would have been damaged beyond repair by their parents’ incompatibilities, no?

  She smiled at the mountains, the green treetops, the sparkling sea. “Boker tov, Brothers and Sisters!” she called out to passing strangers in sandals and long skirts and knitted skullcaps, who waved and smiled back.

  She didn’t know anyone here, and no one knew her. There was nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to explain or justify. She put one foot behind the other, improvising a little dance, twirling in the cool mountain air. Maybe it was all that bromide that was acting like tranquilizers, but she suddenly felt fantastic.

  25

  Adam opened the door to his study. Thick, open folders covered his once-pristine work space, and boxes of legal documents were piled high on the floor. Just the sight of it made his heart sink with misery. And yet, what choice did he have?

  He had been targeted by forces he had not known existed in the world, forces that wanted to destroy him, everyone he loved, and all he had worked to achieve over a lifetime of honest toil. For what purpose or possible benefit, he could not imagine.

  But then, he had never been a man with a prolific imagination, preferring nonfiction to fiction, history and biography to novels. He was a man who, until recently, slept well at night, untroubled by visions of mysterious disasters lurking in the shadows that kept more sensitive souls awake. He had actually always been rather proud of that. Now he thought that perhaps such a life and such a temperament had not prepared him for the world he lived in, a world in which the suddenness of change had replaced the slow, incremental buildup of transitions made naturally from one state to the next, a life where rewards and punishments flowed inevitably from one’s own choices and actions.

  Now the world seemed hopelessly muddled, good and evil mixing together like paint, producing hues of neither color. Accusations and innuendos ruled the airwaves, and the people most talked about were those least admired. No one cared about guilt or innocence anymore, just consequences. Would the murderer sit in jail, or be playing golf when his lawyers got him off? Would the famous, useless party girl arrested for DUI face lockup, or community service? Would the rock star arrested for assault, pedophilia, or indecent acts sell more or fewer records?

  He could not accept that. Whatever the consequences, what was most important to him was his good name. He was willing to sacrifice almost anything to protect that. Reluctantly, he pulled back his chair, confronting the documents as one would face off with an enemy with whom one was in mortal combat.

  He had gone over them again and again, reading the carefully constructed lies meant to convince the world of his culpability in the worst crimes imaginable to a man of his character and position in life.

  It had been so hard.

  His lawyers had ascertained that everything Dorset had told Adam was untrue: He and Van weren’t old college buddies, nor did either of them have children in Harvard Law. So what had they both been doing there?

  The answers had been brewing inside him, rising up slowly from deep within his consciousness. And then, one morning, he had opened his eyes and found the solution staring him in the face: It had not been a chance meeting at all. Both Van and Dorset had been there simply because they knew he was going to be there. The whole thing had been a careful, lethal, setup. He was simply the “mark”—as he knew con men like to call their victims.

  This idea, so long resisted, overwhelmed him with fury and fear.

  Why? he asked himself a million times. What had he ever done that Christopher Dorset, with whom he had had only brief, cordial relations, and Gregory Van, who was a complete stranger, would want to ruin his life? What possible good had come to Dorset from A. J. Hurling’s money being transferred to Van? There was proof that Dorset had known Hurling, even worked for him. Why would he want to hurt Hurling? Dorset’s bank accounts had been examined. He had not received anything from Van. What malice, then, what benefit or self-interest could such a plan serve? Adam couldn’t imagine it. And neither, so far, could his lawyers.

  In fact, they weren’t even searching for the answer. All they wanted, they told him, was to prove that Dorset and Van knew each other before Adam’s involvement. Such evidence would destroy the prosecution’s most damning witness, and more or less decide the case. Adam had wracked his brain to no avail. As far as he could see, the only one who could possibly answer that question was Gregory Van himself, and he—despite the considerable efforts of British law-enforcement agencies to lay their hands on him—was still missing.

  The only person who had really been any help in all of this was, surprisingly, Seth. He had brought up an intriguing topic no one else had yet touched upon.

  “Listen, Adam. Who’s the one person in all of this that is deeply
involved that no one has investigated, or even accused?”

  Adam shrugged. “Who?”

  “A. J. Hurling.”

  “Please. He’s the victim. I feel badly enough already.”

  “Hold on a minute! Don’t you think it’s a bit convenient that he contacted you out of nowhere, then soon after—out of nowhere—Dorset introduced you to Van? I’ll tell you something else. I have information about Mr. Hurling that is not widely known. Did you know that he was arrested for drug possession? He did time.”

  “Everybody knows that. It’s part of the A. J. Hurling legend: Convict becomes community leader, millionaire software technology genius, businessman, and philanthropist.”

  “Did you ever look into how, exactly, he did it?”

  “His company, Survivor Systems Technology, is privately owned. There is not much out there.”

  “There are a number of people on the board with Islamic names.”

  Adam caught his breath, leaning back in his chair. “Are you serious?”

  Seth nodded. “Right after 9/11, their V.P. of sales went to the FBI in Boston and said he thought there might be a connection. Their software is installed in everything. It lets you forage for information, and it lets you change codes . . .”

  “Who gave them security clearance?”

  “That’s a question, isn’t it?”

  “What else?”

  “Their main stockholder is Muhammad Al Mafouz, who is the director of the Saudi Cooperative Relief Organization, which gave Survivor Systems Technology over $50 million in loans, and another $50 million in investments.”

  Adam’s face paled. “Where did you find this out?”

  “That’s not important. The point: It’s true. The FBI raided Survivor Systems a few years ago based on the information. But they didn’t make any arrests. And there’s something else. About the same time he founded Survivor Systems Technology, Hurling converted to Islam.”

  Adam leaned back, drained. “Really?”