by Alan Gold
“Is that not what I did? As I said to him two days ago, and last week, and two weeks before that. I have been telling him since I made the decree. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, brother; it’s that he doesn’t want to understand.”
“But—”
“Our job as priests of the temple, by our descent from the line of Zadok, is to ensure that the worship of Yahweh is conducted properly, purely, and by all. Any deviation, any breaking of the rules, will weaken us.”
Ahimaaz contemplated the words of his brother and couldn’t help but wonder who Azariah meant by “us”: the people or the priesthood?
* * *
October 17, 2007
YAEL RIPPED OFF her gloves and mask as she left the theater and threw her bloodied gown into a dump bin. Dressed only in surgical shoes and a light frock, she walked briskly to the doctors’ changing room and showered. Now, dressed in modern street clothes and partly refreshed but tired after standing on her feet for four hours, she walked to the parking lot and drove the few miles from the Jerusalem Hospital in the direction of the center of the city until she reached the Israel Museum. She could have left it for a couple of days until she had more time, but she was anxious to see her grandfather again, and the object she’d taken from Bilal’s hand gave her the perfect opportunity to go to the museum.
Even though she had lunch and dinner with her grandfather regularly, she missed his gentle ways, his wisdom, his knowledge. And especially his link to her grandmother. Judit had died when Yael’s own mother was a baby, killed by snipers when Israel was first declared a state in 1948. Yael loved hearing his stories of the old days in Russia and Germany, his work founding a kibbutz, and his training in archaeology.
She wondered what the precious stone was; she’d never have taken it to the museum had it not been for the inscription, which she recognized as ancient Hebrew writing. As she walked from the parking lot, she saw to her right the extraordinary building that housed the Dead Sea Scrolls, the roof of which was created in the shape of one of the ancient jars in which an Arab smuggler in the last days of the British mandate in 1947 had discovered the greatest treasury of biblical Jewish writings. There was a time when she would have loved little more than walking around the Shrine of the Book and the grounds of the museum. But that was a different Yael, a different life.
After passing through the metal detector and having her bag searched, Yael walked to the reception desk and announced, “I have an appointment with the director, Professor Shalman Etzion. My name is Yael Cohen.”
The receptionist looked down at her list and saw Yael’s name. She smiled and nodded, then phoned through to the director’s office. “Do you know the way?” she asked, and Yael nodded. She knew the way very well, as she had visited her grandfather here on many occasions.
Walking down the corridors, up the stairs, and along passage-ways, she breathed in the perfumes of the ages. This wasn’t public territory; the men and women who worked in these offices were working on stones and clothes, woods and metals, papers and parchments and all other types of things that hadn’t seen the light of day for thousands of years. She felt strangely nostalgic but quickly dismissed it as whimsy.
As she walked purposefully down the upper corridor, she heard a deep baritone voice behind her.
“Ms. Cohen? Yael?”
She turned to see a short, gray-haired Palestinian in a dusty cardigan. For a moment Yael didn’t recognize him, but distant memories from her youth enabled her to remember the man’s name.
“Mustafa?”
The old man smiled and gave a short single nod of his head.
Mustafa was a museum expert on ancient Islamic arts and culture, respected throughout the world for his knowledge, and often appeared on television panel shows dealing with cultural issues. But to Yael in that moment he was an awkward and distant memory from childhood: a man her grandfather, Shalman, knew, a friend from times long gone, times of which her grandfather rarely spoke. They had visited Mustafa and his wife, Rabiya, when she was a child. She had played with their children. But that was a long time ago, and a lot of bullets and bombs separated that time from now. And Mustafa had told Yael, many years ago, about how Shalman had changed his life, about his sponsorship and encouragement of Mustafa’s love of archaeology. How Shalman had fought to have Mustafa accepted into the university and how he’d become a top-grade student. But rarely did the two men talk about the old days, no matter how much she pressed them to do so.
Yael looked at Mustafa and thought that perhaps she should hug him, kiss him on the cheek as she might have done as a child. But she didn’t. Childhood was her past, and the man before her was no longer a part of her present.
Instead Yael smiled and said, “It’s been a long time. Are you well?”
Mustafa shrugged and said, “I’m old, like your grandfather. We have earned our right to complain.”
Yael laughed. Grandfathers, it seemed, transcended culture.
“I have many grandchildren now, Allah be praised. But they grow up too fast. One moment you’re cuddling them on your knee, the next moment they’re helping you find your walking stick.”
“But we love them for all their faults of growing up, don’t we?” replied Yael. She struggled for what to say next, strangely awkward as she stood in front of the old Muslim after having just saved the life of Bilal, who had murdered in the name of Allah. She was almost relieved when he broke the strained moment of silence.
“You are here to see Shalman?” asked Mustafa.
“Yes,” and before she had time to think about what she was doing she added, “I’m taking him this . . .”
She took the stone out of her pocket and unwrapped it carefully, handing it over to the elderly archaeologist. He looked at it thoughtfully, turning it over in his fingers.
“This is not in my expertise; it’s not Arabic. It’s Hebrew. But it looks very interesting. Where did you find it?”
“In the hands of a Palestinian terr—” she began, but cut herself off before she completed the word. Mustafa looked at her as if he understood and slowly handed the stone back to her with a frown on his face.
“Shalman will be excited to see this.”
Yael didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing as she folded the stone away into her pocket once more.
“It is good to see you, Yael.”
“Yes.” It was all she could say.
Then the old man turned and shuffled off down the corridor.
* * *
SHE WALKED ON until she came to the outer office of Shalman’s suite, and his secretary of thirty-five years beamed a smile and walked around the desk, hugging and kissing her like a beloved daughter.
“Nu,” said Miriam, looking her up and down, “you’ve lost weight.”
“Don’t start,” Yael said with a smile. “No, I’m still not married; no, I don’t have a boyfriend; no, I’m not joining an online dating club; no, I’m not interested in your neighbor’s son; and no, I’m not ill. I’m just busy.”
“Did I say a word?”
“You’re a Jewish mother!”
“How’ve you been? Seriously, you look tired.”
“You’d think there was a war on. We’re still packing them in, ten operations in a day. Mines, bullets, accidents. It never stops. God help us if Iran or some other basket case decides to get nasty. Peace is busy enough for trauma surgery.”
Miriam smiled. “I’d better let you go in. He’s been ringing every half hour, asking whether you’ve arrived yet.”
Yael grinned and walked to her grandfather’s office door, knocking gently. She heard his chair scraping and waited for him to open the door.
He stood there, diminutive, overweight, balding, white-haired, and pink-faced despite the cold air-conditioning, but just as beautiful as she’d always known him.
“Bubbeleh,” he said, and hugged her.
“Shalom, Shalman. How are you?”
“Now, good. An hour ago, lousy. But come. Sit. M
iriam, tea. And some cookies. The chocolate cookies, not the ones you usually give me.”
“But your doctor said—” Miriam began.
“Phooey!” he said. “I’m the boss. Not him. What does he know about chocolate cookies?” He winked at Miriam, and said softly, “Miriam and my doctor conspire to stop me eating chocolate, but sometimes I’m clever and I fool them.”
“But, Zaida,” Yael said, “you know you shouldn’t . . .”
“Not from you! I have enough trouble with Miriam,” he said, grinning and holding his granddaughter’s hand as they walked into his huge office. They sat on opposite couches, the coffee table separating them.
“It’s been far too long, Yael. Why have you stayed away so long?”
“I had lunch with you three weeks ago,” she said defensively.
“In three weeks, I could have died and gone to heaven. I’m an old man, bubbeleh. Three weeks is a lifetime.”
She smiled. Her beloved grandfather Shalman was laying on a guilt trip. Why did Jews always play the guilt card? she wondered. Her mother had always laid on the guilt when Yael didn’t call her regularly. Her excuses that she was busy or out of town never cut any ice. “What?” her mother always used to say. “There aren’t any phones where you live? And why don’t you phone your mother more often? Sure you’re busy. We’re all busy. But who’s too busy to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello, Mom’? She’s all alone in that big apartment with nothing to do except have tea with the girls. What are you, the secretary-general of the United Nations, you’re so busy?”
Yael didn’t let the guilt trip bother her, but she suddenly felt sad, sitting in Shalman’s office, conjuring images of her grandmother, Shalman’s wife, all based on photographs taken with an ancient Kodak. But she had died before Yael was born, when Yael’s own mother was a baby, so all she really had of her were a couple of indistinct photographs and the narratives from other people. Yael’s sadness was because her grandfather had been so devoted that he’d spent the rest of his life in almost perpetual mourning.
Shalman was looking at her, waiting for a response. “I’m just so busy,” said Yael apologetically. “The hospital, my work. What can I say?”
Shalman looked at her sternly. “You can say that you’ll have lunch with me every two weeks. Is that too much? You’re all I have left in the world, darling, and—”
“Bullshit, Zaida!” she said in exasperation. “You think nobody knows about you and Miriam? Or five years ago, you and Beckie? Or before her, that research assistant—”
He put his finger to his lips, and motioned to the roof. “Shush! You want your blessed grandmother aleha ha-shalom to hear what I’ve been up to since she died? God rest her beloved soul.”
Yael looked at the old man with a depth of affection, part granddaughterly, part maternal; she loved him so much, but his loneliness was of his own choosing.
“Why didn’t you marry again after Judit was killed? You were a young man. You had a young daughter. Yet you never married.”
He looked at her mischievously. “I had lots of good times with ladies. Why should I upset so many by choosing just one?”
“C’mon, Zaida. We all know about your affairs. But why didn’t you marry? Seriously!”
The old man shrugged. “After your grandmother . . .”
He shook his head sadly. There was no need for him to finish the thought. It was eloquent testimony to Judit’s extraordinary qualities. Yael only wished she could have known her as she knew Shalman.
Then the twinkle came back into his eye, and he said, “Yael, darling, love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener. Why get married again when I was looking after your mother and dozens of women felt sorry for me?”
Yael burst out laughing. She loved his irreverence with all her heart. But there was always something in his eyes when he made such jokes, and Yael had often found herself wondering if it wasn’t a façade hiding some deeper, long-forgotten event. From the time she’d first begun inquiring about her family’s history, her mother’s mother, Judit, had always been spoken of with reverence—too much reverence—and to her young and inquisitive mind it always seemed as though her grandfather and her mother were trying to hide something from her.
Miriam reentered with a tray of tea and chocolate cookies and set it down on the coffee table.
“I think I can make up for your disappointment in me. I have a gift for you. I think it’s very old, but I’m not sure it’s anything important . . .”
“Oh, yes?” Shalman said with a raised eyebrow.
Yael drew the object from her coat pocket and placed it unceremoniously on the table, wrapped as it was in a bandage taken casually from the hospital. Shalman wrinkled his nose as if fearing the swaddled object might be some macabre hospital souvenir or practical joke—a severed finger, or worse . . .
“What’s this?” he asked quizzically.
“Not sure. Probably nothing. Something for your collection of historical tidbits. Maybe just a peace offering,” replied Yael with a smile.
Shalman gingerly began to unwrap the object, his curiosity piqued. Yael turned her gaze to the window and unconsciously changed topic.
“So I thought we might go out for lunch. I can make time. Beautiful day outside . . .”
Shalman suddenly cut her off. “Where did you get this?”
Yael turned back to see the small object unwrapped on the table and Shalman’s eyes wide and staring at her.
“It was in the hands of a Palestinian kid who tried to blow up the Haredi at the Kotel. The police shot him, arm and leg, and—”
“Where?” Shalman cut her off sharply. “Where did he find it?”
“He tried to explode a bomb underground, near to the entrance to Warren’s Shaft—King David’s tunnel.”
Shalman leapt to his feet, holding the object tenderly in his hands, retreating to his desk to examine the stone more carefully. Yael continued the story, although she doubted that her grandfather was still listening.
“Only the detonator cap went off, thank God. But it must have brought down some masonry. Anyway, he was brought in unconscious for me to operate on, and I found that in his hand.”
Shalman studied the object methodically yet held it like a newly delivered granddaughter. He read the inscription, turned it over, turned it back again to reread. Then he viewed the sides, then the reverse, then the obverse; then he reread the inscription, then he turned it over and then over again.
Yael realized that she’d been holding her breath and was surprised at herself. She wanted to ask what he was thinking, but knew to keep silent.
Finally Shalman looked up at her and smiled. “You have . . .” He couldn’t continue. She was surprised by the emotion in his voice.
Holding the object, he stood from his desk and walked over to his library, taking one book, then another, flicking over some pages but not really looking. Instead, energized, he walked to the window and continued to look at the object that the Palestinian boy had grasped with a handful of dirt just before he blacked out.
Yael sat there in fascination, wondering whether it was her grandfather’s usual sense of exaggeration or something else.
“Well?” she asked after what seemed like minutes of silence.
Instead of answering, Shalman bellowed, “Miriam!”
Suddenly the door flew open. “Fetch Mordecai. And Zvi. And Sheila. And fetch Mustafa . . . he’d be fascinated by this. And . . . oh, hell. Fetch everybody! Now! Immediately! Go! I don’t care if they’re in a meeting. Go! You’re still there. Why? Go!”
“What?” asked Yael.
Shalman shrugged, suddenly coy. “What do you think it is?”
“Don’t play games, Shalman.”
“No game. I want to know. What do you think it is?”
“If you don’t tell me what it is, I’ll take it to the Bible Museum.”
“Don’t even joke! Treasure hunters and publicity hounds. Amateur mamzers!” He motioned with a theatrical gesture for
Yael to come over to the light of the window. On the sill, there was a magnifying glass. Holding the stone, he turned it slowly, lowered his voice to a reverential whisper, and said softly, “It’s a seal, of a mason from Solomon’s Temple, when he was building the underground walls. It’s perfect. It’s intact. It’s wonderful . . . I’ve never . . . didn’t even think that in my life . . .”
“That’s it? A seal? You’ve got to get out more often, Shalman, and get some perspective.” It might have been a casual joke, but again the words were harsher from her lips than she intended them to be. She turned away from the window.
Yael turned suddenly when she heard a gasp from the doorway. Shalman also turned and saw Miriam still standing there, looking on in rapt attention.
“Go! Now! Bring them all.”
He turned back to Yael, and calmed himself down. “It says, ‘I, Matanyahu, son of Naboth, son of Gamaliel, have built this tunnel for the glory of my king, Solomon the Wise, in the twenty-second year of his reign.’ ”
Yael turned back to face her grandfather; she’d never seen his face so luminous. He’d always been a lovely old man to her, but now he looked zealous, electrified.
“I have to get Zvi to give an exact translation—not just the words, but their meaning, the nuance, but I’m pretty sure . . .”
Yael stared at him lovingly, the significance of what he had just said not lost on her. Shalman’s thin voice shifted register into his “lecture voice.”
“Let me try to explain . . . The tunnel builder, Matanyahu, son of Naboth, son of Gamaliel, mounted it somehow onto the wall so that everybody who passed by climbing up the tunnel would see it and know who’d built it. And God would know that he built it.” Shalman stopped and faced Yael directly with a smile. “Or something like that.” He lowered the object. “Over the millennia it must have got covered up by dirt or mud or something. But after three thousand years, to know the name of the man who built the tunnel under David’s city . . .”
Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps approaching quickly. The door flew open, and two elderly archaeologists rushed into the room.
