An Accidental Messiah

by Dan Sofer

  Shmuel laughed. “An election campaign is going to require a crap load of money.”

  “You’re right. Luckily for us, we have a new supporter with very deep pockets.” He winked at Rabbi Yosef, who swallowed again. The rabbi was still not comfortable dealing with Rev. Henry Adams and his New Evangelical Church of America. He’d get used it.

  “But,” Shmuel said, spluttering at the lunacy of the idea. “Even if we have the money and the numbers to win a few seats, elections are less than two weeks away. How are we supposed to throw together a winning campaign in two weeks? We don’t have that expertise.”

  Moshe had hoped that Shmuel would raise that question. “As it happens,” he said, “I know someone who will be perfect for the job.”

  “Oh, really? And where did you find him?”

  Moshe grinned. “Who said anything about ‘him’?”

  CHAPTER 42

  The renowned sage opened his eyes. A sky of clear, dazzling blue filled his visual field, framed by the branches of leafy trees and what appeared to be a tall monument. Large arcs rose high in the air to form a lattice of metal spires. Never before had he seen such a structure—an object of great architectural beauty and no doubt the life’s work of a master smith—on any of his travels or among the pointy domes of Fustat.

  He brought his hands to his face and studied them, wrinkled and weathered as usual. Then he touched his beard and face, his head, chest, and thighs. His physical body was intact but without a single shred of clothing. No funerary shrouds, not even a turban for his head!

  This was not the World of Souls, the immortal spiritual realm in which Active Intellects merged with the Mind of God, for there were no bodies in that world of pure thought.

  This must be the Resurrection. Ha!

  The deduction amused him. His detractors had accused him of denying the resurrection of the physical body, despite his inclusion of the belief in his Thirteen Principles. Even after he had elucidated his views on the matter in his letter to the Jews of Yemen, still his critics condemned him as a heretic. A disciple of Aristotle, they said. A rationalist. This’ll show them!

  He turned over. The hard ground beneath him was covered in identical hexagons as gray and as smooth as fresh mortar. There was nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes wrote, but the artisans of This World had honed their methods since his death.

  He got to his feet and took a few wobbly steps.

  How long had he slept in the dust? Had the Son of David arrived?

  Was his son Abraham still alive? According to his son’s calculations, the Redemption would begin only a few decades hence, and, although he had warned his son against Calculating the End, now he hoped that his son’s predictions had been accurate.

  A dull pain throbbed in his skull. Headaches resulted from excess humors in the body. As a respected healer, he would have prescribed peppermint tea and the avoidance of dairy products, but as he glanced about the stony hillocks, he found no tea decanters, only a street of black pitch and a table.

  A young man with blond hair sat at the table, which was draped in a white sheet with blue hexagrams. The man looked up from a black tablet of shiny obsidian, smiled, jumped from his seat, and rushed over.

  “Welcome, Honored Rabbi,” he said in Hebrew, not Arabic. How curious.

  The young man helped him into a fluffy cloak as soft as fine wool and as white as snow, and tied the garment with a white sash.

  “Here.” The man dropped two white pellets into the palm of his hand.

  “What, may I ask, are these?”

  “For your headache. Swallow them.” He held out a glass of water. The glass was extremely thin and transparent, and crackled in his grasp like parchment but did not shatter. Curious! He washed down the pellets and returned the paper-glass cup. No, this wasn’t the World of Souls and yet it was not quite the world he had known either.

  He cleared his throat. “Where are we?”

  “Tiberias.”

  “Of course.” He had instructed his son to bury him in the Holy Land. Abraham had fulfilled his father’s wish, although he would have preferred Jerusalem. Perhaps the sultan had not permitted a burial in the holy city.

  “And how long have I…?”

  The man completed his question. “Been dead? Over eight hundred years.”

  “Eight hundred years!” His spirits sank. His son had passed from the world long ago. Or would he meet him again in this new life? “My son, Abraham…?”

  The young man seemed to know what he was asking. “I’ll ask the Head Office about him.”

  “Head Office?”

  “Yes. In Jerusalem.”

  “The sultan’s court?”

  The man chuckled. “There is no sultan here. This is the Jewish State.”

  “The Jewish State!” Jews had regained control of the Land of the Forefathers. The Son of David had arrived. He cleared his throat. “Are you the Son of David?”

  Another chuckle and a shake of the head. He held the black tablet to his ear, then quickly pocketed the item. “You have many questions,” he said. He seemed to be reciting a well-repeated saying. “We’ll answer them as best we can in time. Meanwhile, have some breakfast.” He pointed to a box of pastries on the table. Then he wandered off to a nearby tree, pressed the black tablet to his ear, and talked to himself. Curious indeed!

  Were the denizens of the future world all insane?

  He recited a blessing and gave the pastry a tentative bite. It was very sweet but quite delicious. The pain in his skull subsided. He sat on a vacant chair of thin, shiny material that bent under his weight but didn’t break, and was neither wood nor stone. Fascinating!

  In the Days of the Messiah the laws of nature would remain unchanged. He had reached that conclusion after a lengthy analysis of the sources with the aid of reason and philosophy. Men could discover new materials, however, and learn to bend them to their will. Of course. He knew there must be a logical explanation.

  The young man returned and placed the tablet on the table. “The Head Office doesn’t have a record of your son, Rabbi, but he might still be out there.”

  “But you said that this Head Office is in Jerusalem?”

  “I spoke with them. On the phone.” He looked at the small tablet.

  “Phone?”

  Molding new materials was one thing, but conversing across great distances—how could that be?

  The young man opened his mouth to explain but a loud roar made him glance at the road of black pitch. A roaring beast sped by in a flurry of noise and smoke. Not a beast—a chariot, for he had glimpsed a woman through a window of the shiny exterior.

  “What…?” he mumbled to the young man. “But where is the horse?”

  “There is no horse, Rabbi. That’s a car. Don’t worry about it, Rabbi. They’ll explain everything at the Head Office.”

  “But how?”

  The man scratched his head. “Think of a boat. A boat has no horse but moves on the water.”

  “Yes, but a boat has sails. The wind pushes the boat.”

  “Think of this as a boat on wheels.”

  Metal boats on wheels. Pellets that cured headaches in minutes. Paper-glass. Tablets that carried a man’s voice between cities in an instant! What would they show him next—metal boats that floated in thin air?

  Ha! Some ideas insulted reason and were truly impossible. The thought gave him some consolation. This world was not so different after all. It just needed a little getting used to.

  “I would like very much to meet with a philosopher,” he said, “to learn the wisdom of this New World and—”

  A sudden rumble from the heavens stopped him mid-speech. The noise, which resembled thunder, grew louder but the sky above was cloudless.

  Then he saw it. High overhead, an object advanced through the sky—slender and with wings and a tail. Sunlight glinted off the shiny exterior. That was no bird.

  “Don’t worry, Rabbi. That’s just an airplane.”

  “An air
plane?” He had a bad feeling about this.

  The young man scratched his head again. “It’s like a metal boat that flies through the air.”

  Maimonides gasped and clutched at his beard. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not that too!”

  CHAPTER 43

  Noga had never been in a stretch limousine before but she was quickly getting used to the idea. She relaxed on the soft couch of beige leather as the vehicle glided over speed bumps with ease and the workaday world of mere mortals zipped by through tinted windows.

  Eli handed her a glass of champagne and raised his in the air. “Here’s to a great vacation.”

  The yellow-orange liquid shifted lazily below the rim of the glass as the immense car moved. She sipped the bubbly dry wine. The champagne was a first for her and, she expected, many more firsts awaited her on this trip.

  Two days after her failed romantic dinner at home, the tension in the air had dissipated. She had honored his request—her laptop remained closed on the coffee table and she avoided all talk of Jewish Palestinians and the End of Days—and she had not objected when their week of “cooling off” had become a two-week cruise on the Mediterranean, the nearest departure date available.

  And so Noga found herself in a limousine to Ben Gurion Airport, where they would soon board a short flight to Barcelona. Life was good when you had free time and an unlimited budget. She could get used to that too.

  Noga took another sip of wine. “Are you trying to impress me?” she said. The wine, apparently, was having its desired effect.

  Eli caressed her with his dark eyes and smirked. “Always. Have I succeeded?”

  Sip number three. “Getting there.”

  They turned off Road Number One toward Ben Gurion Airport.

  Her phone tinkled, so she placed her wineglass in the sunken holder on the side table of polished wood, and fished for her phone in her handbag. A text message had arrived from Hannah. “Need any help with the paper?” Noga turned off the screen and dropped the phone back in her bag.

  “Everything all right?” Eli asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Nothing urgent.”

  Eli’s arguments had made more sense as time passed. Some Jews and Arabs shared a common ancestor. Big deal. Some local Arabs believed they had Jewish roots. So what? In the Bible, Abraham had fathered both Isaac and Ishmael, before either Jews or Muslims existed, and all humans descended from one genetic Eve. Their common ancestor might lie much further back in history, and so long as the facts had a competing explanation, she had best keep her messianic speculations to herself. She’d reply to Hannah later. The paper could wait. A deal was a deal, and Noga was on vacation.

  The car slowed as they approached the airport entrance road. The windows slid down and a security guard with a machine gun peeked inside, nodded his head, and waved them in. At a traffic circle, they turned toward Terminal One. That didn’t seem right.

  Noga was familiar with the airport. Her old classmate from Hebrew U, Sarit, had convinced her to fly with her to Eilat one weekend in search of eligible single men. Instead, they had shared the hotel pool with loud Arab kids and aging Japanese tourists.

  “I thought we were going to Barcelona.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Isn’t Terminal One for domestic flights?”

  “Among others.” Eli smiled his rakish smile.

  Her heart sank. She was pretty sure that cruise ships did not pass through the Straits of Tiran to get to Eilat. A born planner, Noga did not like being kept in suspense. “I don’t understand.”

  “Patience, Noga. You’ll see.”

  The limo bypassed the parking lot and proceeded to a gate with another armed guard. After a short conversation with the driver, the guard opened the gate and waved them through.

  Noga sat up on the couch. “Oh my God.”

  The limo drove along a wide expanse of tarmac and crossed two landing strips before pulling up beside a small jet, the kind she associated with celebrities and heads of state. A uniformed pilot and flight attendant stood at attention beside a short retractable staircase.

  Noga flopped back on the couch. “OK,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  Eli chuckled. “My dear,” he said, “we’re just getting started.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Thursday evening, Avi entered his parents’ apartment in Wolfson Towers to the ululations of his mother. Even his father gave him a hug. “Well done, my son. Or should I say, Member of Knesset Segal!”

  Avi savored the hero’s welcome, then plopped onto the living room couch, leaned back, and clasped his hands behind his head. After being screwed over so many times, finally Avi had come out on top. So this is how it feels to be Moshe.

  His mother brought out a tray of cakes and mint tea.

  The only sour face in the room belonged to Ronen, Avi’s brother. “So what ministry will Gurion give you?” he asked, his pale lips quivering with spite. “Chief Garbage Collector?”

  Avi grinned. Ronen was jealous. For once in his life, his snooty older brother had to share the limelight, and his obvious discomfort was the icing on Avi’s cake. “Who cares?” he said. “I’ll get a fat salary and a pension for life, which is more than you get at the Philharmonic.”

  Followed the Segal family tradition, Ronen played the violin at the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, and he had secured the coveted post only thanks to his father’s connections. The tone-deaf Avi had been a source of chronic disappointment to his parents. Until now.

  “You need to serve two terms to get a pension,” Ronen shot back, “and I bet you won’t last that long.”

  “Enough of that, boys!” their mother chided. “Let’s all be happy for Avi. This is a wonderful achievement.”

  “Achievement?” Ronen seemed insulted at the suggestion. “He’s only aping his dead old friend. Moshe throws a demonstration, Avi throws a demonstration. Moshe joins with Gurion, Avi joins with Gurion.”

  Avi wanted to deck Ronen right then and there. “Moshe is out,” he shouted, “and I’m in. All right?” There was no arguing with that fact.

  “Calm down, Avi,” his mother said.

  “For now,” his brother added.

  “Ronen!”

  Their father leaned forward on the armchair and rubbed his hands together. “Don’t settle for any of those minor ministries,” he said. “Go for Defense, Finance, Interior, or Foreign Affairs.”

  Ronen laughed. “Foreign Affairs! He can’t string together two words in English.”

  Avi shifted on the couch. He was positioned to sit in the next government and already his parents’ expectations had climbed a few rungs higher. “I’ll see what’s on the table after the elections. Gurion has to save the big jobs for other parties in order to create a coalition.”

  In truth, Avi had not discussed the matter with his party leader. He’d be grateful with Deputy Minister of the Environment if it came to that. The main thing was to be in the game. Besides, a minor position would free him to pursue his ultimate goal: Galit.

  He had been stupid to threaten her and had written off his mistake to homelessness and desperation. Never mind. After the elections, she’d come to her senses and welcome him back with open arms.

  Avi accepted a steaming cup of sweet tea and bit into a slice of his mother’s honey cake.

  The thrill of victory faded. Finally, he had outsmarted Moshe, but after standing in his shadow so long, a thread of nostalgia pulled at his heart. There was an annoying grain of truth in Ronen’s words. Moshe had guided his actions and haunted his thoughts for ages. Without him, his mind was an empty shrine. If Moshe were in his shoes, what would he do next?

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Ronen said. “Karlin had the Dry Bones Society to rally behind him, but you—how did you pull off that demonstration?”

  Avi’s face grew hot. He had not told anyone about Boris and his thugs. Although the Russian had never spelled out what he did for a living, his line of work did not involve helping old l
adies cross the street. Who cares? Boris and his minions had served their purpose. Once Avi took office, he’d shake them off like an old coat. The thugs had befriended Avi Segal, the miserable tramp, but they wouldn’t dare mess with Avi Segal, the Member of Knesset.

  He washed the cake down with his mint tea. “My dear brother,” he said, his voice greasy with sarcasm, “you underestimate me.”

  CHAPTER 45

  A young woman entered the Dry Bones Society Friday morning, her high heels clicking on the floor tiles. She wore a business suit of elegant cream with a matching Louis Vuitton bag, and her blow-dried hair dusted her shoulders as she gazed about the call center.

  “I missed the old place,” Sivan said.

  Moshe looked on with pride. The spunky girl with the faded T-shirts and torn jeans had grown up since leaving Karlin & Son. Avi had fired her after Moshe’s death, having invented an affair between Moshe and his attractive employee in order to win over Galit. Moshe had learned all this only weeks into his second life, and Sivan had tried to help him set the record straight.

  “Welcome home,” he said.

  She shook hands with Rafi, whom she knew well from her days at Karlin & Son, and Moshe introduced her to Shmuel, Rabbi Yosef, and Savta Sarah. “Sivan is the VP of Marketing at a high-tech company in Malcha.”

  “She’s a bit young,” Shmuel said, as though she wasn’t in the room.

  “And I’m a bit old,” Savta Sarah said.

  “Young for what?” Sivan asked.

  Moshe had not gone into the details on the phone. “For a new challenge,” he said. “Let’s talk in my office.”

  Moshe perched on the edge of his desk and Savta Sarah closed the door.

  “I saw you on TV,” Sivan said, taking a seat in the visitor’s chair.

  “Then you know all about the Dry Bones Society.”

  She nodded. “I saw the anti-zombie demonstrations too. I’d say you have a bit of a PR problem.” They all smiled at the understatement. “I assume that’s why you called me in—to consult.”

  “More than that,” Moshe said. He clasped his hands together for the big revelation. “What are our chances if we were to run independently in the upcoming elections?”