Harshly he pulled the handle backward, dislodging a large chunk of semi-rock which started to come toward him, then teetered and disappeared in the opposite direction. Ominously, its fall made no sound. With four vigorous blows of the pick, using it head-on as a ram rather than as a pry, he knocked in the face of the wall and found himself with a jagged hole leading into nothingness.
His lips were parched and his breathing forced as he grasped the lantern, and thrusting it before him, crawled halfway into the opening. At first his eyes could see nothing, for the falling rocks had aroused an ancient dust which obscured all, but as it gradually subsided he saw that his prognostication had been correct. He had come upon a long tunnel cut through the limestone accretion. To left and right the partially filled tunnel ran, its beautifully arched ceiling still showing the careful work completed in the year 963 B.C.E. by his ancestor, Jabaal the Hoopoe, and later reworked in the year 1105 C.E. by his other ancestor, Saliq ibn Tewfik, called Luke. The falling stones had made no sound because they had dropped into soft dust which had been filtering into the tunnel since that April day in 1291 C.E., when the Mamelukes had killed Count Volkmar and had started the destruction of the Crusader castle.
To the right or to the left? Which way lay the well? Stuck halfway through the opening he began patiently reconstructing his orientation, and he had such a keen sense of the land, even when lost in its bosom, that he could deduce that the well must lie to the right, or north, of the accidental junction he had made with the tunnel; so he eased himself through the opening and started lifting his feet slowly, quietly, so as not to disturb the dust, moving toward the phantasmagoric darkness which dissolved like the passage of time as his lantern brought light where for seven centuries there had been no light.
Through those years the dust, thick and silent, had sifted down, and now it rose revitalized by the touch of a living foot, only to fall back as the unaccustomed beams flashed upon his ankles, and at last he came to a silent place where things ended, dust and footfall alike; and as he looked down into the darkness he could not estimate how far below him lay the water, but he dislodged a fragment of the roof and dropped it. After a while water splashed. The well of the Family of Ur was found, that sweet source from which all had sprung.
In the days that followed, Tabari and Eliav tried several times to acquaint Cullinane in Jerusalem with the stunning developments, but the telephone operators were unable to track him down, so on their own initiative the men strung lights which enabled them to work at the well, and after digging about the rim and finding only fragments of Crusader pottery—water jars broken by careless Christian women seven hundred years before—Tabari happened to notice in the wall, slightly above eye level, a discoloration of soil which previous visitors had failed to find, for they had been Canaanites or Jewish women like Gomer or Crusaders, and not archaeologists. But on a hunch Tabari began digging into the darkened earth and thus uncovered the original level of the well, finding a few charred stones on which men had sat around one of the world’s first intentional fires, and it was among these stones that Eliav found imbedded the item that was to give Tell Makor its prehistoric significance: a piece of flint the size of a large flat hand, shaped into an obvious weapon, slightly convex on the sides and sharpened along the pointed end. It was a hand axe dating back some two hundred thousand years to that nebulous period when beings walked half-erect and hunted animals with simple rocks, cutting the flesh apart with precious hand axes like the one the Englishman was now photographing in situ.
“My God!” he cried. “What’s that?” His flash bulbs had disclosed in the darkness a monstrous shining object, as big as a plate, serrated in many ridges. He had found a petrified elephant’s molar, relic of a great beast slaughtered at the water hole when the climate of Israel was different and the wadi a deep river.
To call them men—those walking creatures that had killed the elephant—was in some ways repugnant, for they could neither farm, nor fish, nor tend fruit trees, nor tame a dog, nor build a house, nor make clothes, nor even form words with their apelike lips; but neither could they be called animals, for there were these things which they could do: they could make a tool; they could grasp it in a hand; and by grunts and shoves they could organize a team and plan a system for killing a huge thing like an elephant … and for these reasons they were men.
When Cullinane finally returned to Makor he wore a black patch over his left eye, which he explained merely by growling, “Hospital.” Then he added, “The nurses told me you were trying to phone, so I knew you’d struck something great, but there was nothing I could do about it.” He climbed down to the first cache of bones, then on to the well and the charred stones. It was more than he had hoped for, more than any archaeologist had a right to expect. When he crawled back to sunlight he assembled the group and said, “We’ll be working here for years, and when Ilan Eliav becomes prime minister of Israel, say, about 1980, we’ll invite him to deliver the closing-down address.” The kibbutzniks cheered, after which he said, holding aloft the hand axe, “Whenever you think Israel is moving too slowly, remember that our ancestors used implements like this for more than two hundred thousand years before they reached the next big invention. Small flints shaped to a point that could be used in subtler weapons.” The first year of the dig was ending in a blaze of accomplishment.
When he was alone with the staff he said, “Tomorrow we must airmail carbon samples from Level XIX to Sweden and America. And I want everybody to pray that they prove out to some date before 30,000 B.C.E.”
A moment of silence followed, after which the photographer ventured, “There’s got to be one stinker in every show. Where’d you get the shiner, boss?”
Cullinane did not laugh. “It was Saturday morning and I was riding in a taxi to an informal meeting with the minister of finance. About getting our spare dollars cleared for transfer to Chicago. And suddenly out of hiding came a gang of boys and young men in fur caps, long coats and curls about their ears, screaming at us ‘Shabbos’ and hurling rocks—not stones, rocks. The taxi driver shouted, ‘Duck,’ but I didn’t catch the Hebrew soon enough, and by the time he repeated his warning I had taken one hell of a rock right in my eye. The doctors thought I might lose it.”
“I didn’t read about it in the paper,” Eliav said, half defensively.
“The government wanted no publicity. The cab driver said it was nothing unusual. Orthodox Jews insisting that no vehicle move on the streets of Israel during Shabbat.”
“So they’ve started the stoning business again?” Eliav groaned.
“I almost lost my eye. And the police made no arrests. They say that when they do the rabbis fight with them, pointing out that the Talmud condones the stoning of Jews who break Shabbat.”
“It’s your problem,” Tabari said to Eliav. “You’re in the government now.”
“Not quite,” the Jew argued. “But when I am I’ll do what I can to halt this Mickey Mouse stuff.”
“This what?” Cullinane asked.
“A bad phrase I picked up,” Eliav explained. “I’ll have to drop it now.”
“That Shabbat the young hoodlums broke lots of taxi windows,” Cullinane said. “The taxi men are becoming afraid to drive on Saturday.”
“That’s what the religious group is after,” Eliav explained. “They argue that Israel can exist only if it goes back to the laws of the Torah … in every detail.”
“Preposterous!” Cullinane said.
“As a Catholic you know it’s preposterous,” Tabari laughed, “and as a Muslim so do I. But the Jews don’t, and even Cabinet Minister Eliav isn’t quite sure. Because pretty soon he’s going to have to face up to that problem.”
“While I was in the hospital,” Cullinane said, “I had the gloomy feeling that one of these days all of us were going to have to face up to certain moral problems. And we just don’t seem to be willing. I had a long talk with an official of the Italian government. Up to arrange with the Jordanians for the entr
y of Catholic pilgrims into Bethlehem. He told me how close the Italian voters had come to electing a Communist government. Explained how a small swing of the total votes would have done it. He asked, ‘Supposing this happens? What does the world then do with the Vatican? Does it go to Russia? Or to the United States? Or does it stay locked up within the walls, impotent, in Italy?’ The day could come when we’d have to face that problem.”
“Religions are always in trouble,” Tabari said. “In adversity they grow honest. It’s good for them.”
“And I also had the feeling,” Cullinane added, “that perhaps at the same time the world might have to face up to the problem of Judaism. ‘To what extent are we prepared to protect Judaism as our parent religion?’ ”
Eliav caught the significance of this question, but Tabari did not. The Arab spoke first: “The other day I joked about putting the world’s Jews into orbit, but seriously, I suppose the day is past when you can exterminate six million Jews.”
But Eliav said, “You’re equating Israel with Judaism and you wonder what the world will do if the Arabs try to eliminate Israel altogether?”
“Yes,” Cullinane said. “For the first time since I’ve been in Israel … lying there in the hospital with the crazy cut across my face, thinking of the distorted ideas behind the religious hoodlums who threw the rocks … What I’m trying to say is that if such zealots represent the new Israel, you can’t expect people like me to come to your aid if the Arabs attack. And the death of Israel would raise the moral problem I spoke of.”
“You’re wrong and you’re right,” Eliav said. “You’re wrong in equating the state of Israel and the Jewish religion. No matter what might happen to Israel, Judaism would continue. Just as Catholicism always continued when the territory of the Vatican was held by others. But you’re right that all of us, Catholics, Arabs, Jews, have got to work out some sensible pattern of life for the world, or new alignments will occur so radical that no one here can visualize them.”
“One afternoon,” Cullinane said, “the doctors gave me a shot of something and I had one of those visions … of a Jerusalem that had been agreed upon by all the world as an isolated zone of ghosts in which the Pope had his little Vatican because he was no longer welcome in Italy, and the chief rabbi had the area around the Wailing Wall, because he was no longer acceptable in Israel, and the new prophet of Islam had his territory, because no one in the Muslim countries wanted him, and the Protestants and Hindus and Buddhists each had their corner, because nobody wanted them either, and all the rest of the working world was, as you say, realigned into radical new patterns. And over each gateway to Jerusalem stood an arch with a bold sign which read in sixteen languages: MUSEUM.”
“It was no vision,” Eliav said, “and it’s our job to see that it doesn’t become fact.”
On Friday the cable from Stockholm arrived, and three excited archaeologists gathered in the arcaded building to read the news which would determine whether the human bones imbedded at Level XIX were of crucial importance or not. The Swedish scientists reported:
YOUR SAMPLE NINETEEN STOP REPEATED TESTS YIELD SIXTY-EIGHT THOUSAND B.C.E. PLUS-MINUS THREE THOUSAND STOP SOUNDS EXCITING
Tabari cheered. “I’ve got a job here for the next fifteen years, plus-minus five.”
“Were we lucky!” Cullinane said. “Of all the available tells we picked the good one.”
Eliav, always practical, reminded the men, “But to dig out that solid breccia will cost money.” The planners looked up from the cable, and Eliav made it clear that the Israeli government could not advance the funds, exciting though the find promised to be. After the men had explored various alternative avenues Tabari said glumly, “Well, let’s say the ugly word.”
“Zodman?”
“Correct.”
“After the way I gave him hell?” Eliav asked.
“I’d never ask Zodman and Vered for the dough,” Cullinane protested.
“My Uncle Mahmoud,” Tabari said slowly, “once wangled money for the same dig from the chief rabbi in Jerusalem, the Catholic bishop in Damascus, the Muslim imam in Cairo, and the Baptist president of Robert College in Istanbul. His rule was, ‘If you need money, shame has not yet been invented.’ I’ll send Zodman a cable that will break his heart.” He began to play an imaginary violin.
Cullinane advised, “Let’s wait till we get confirmation from Chicago on the carbon dating,” and the three leaders spurred the workmen to close down the dig, but each day one or the other crawled down the tunnel to sit beside the well of Makor where living creatures had crouched two hundred thousand years before. For each of the archaeologists it was a mystic rite, huddling there in the cavern: to Tabari it was a return to the ancient sources of his people; to Eliav it was the spot where man had begun his long wrestling match with the concept of God; to Cullinane it was the beginning of those philosophical analyses with which he would be engaged for the balance of his life; but to all it was the source, the primeval spot where the growth of civilizations had begun. At the end of the week Chicago reported:
YOUR LEVEL NINETEEN STOP WE GET A FIRM SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND PLUS-MINUS FOUR STOP CONGRATULATIONS
As soon as he read the confirming report Tabari drafted a hearts-and-flowers cable to Paul Zodman, begging him for money. When Cullinane read it he growled, “It’s repulsive. I forbid you to send it.”
So Tabari prepared an alternative which said that since Cullinane and Eliav were absent in Jerusalem he was forwarding the laboratory reports, and he trusted that a man as generous and as far-seeing as Paul Zodman … “It’s still repulsive,” Eliav grimaced.
“It’s how we handled the British,” Tabari joked.
“You really have no shame, do you?” Cullinane asked with admiration.
“You ever hear about my father, Sir Tewfik, when he was judge at Akko? One night he slipped in to see the litigant in a crucial case and said, ‘Fazl, I know I shouldn’t be here, but I just want to point out that you have three lawyers to choose from: an Arab, a Greek and an Englishman. Be sure you choose right.’ Fazl replied, ‘Ya-effendi, I was going to use the Englishman, but if you say so, I’ll switch to the Arab.’ My father said, ‘You misunderstand. Be sure to use the Englishman, because when he bribes me it’s in pounds sterling.’ I’ll bet my cable gets us another half-million dollars.” Two days later they had their answer:
I SEE THAT CULLINANE AND ELIAV DIDN’T HAVE THE GUTS TO CABLE AND AFTER THEIR INSULTING BEHAVIOR NO WONDER STOP BUT YOU HAVE THE GALL TO ASK FOR AN ADDITIONAL HALF MILLION DOLLARS TO COMPLETE EXCAVATION DOWN TO LEVEL TWENTY-FIVE STOP YES STOP YOU HAVE GIVEN VERED AND ME A TREMENDOUS WEDDING PRESENT STOP MILLION THANKS
“A man like that, it’s easy to hate,” Tabari laughed. “I should have asked for a million.”
“He has style,” Eliav granted. “Wedding present!”
Cullinane broke out some champagne and announced, “I’m going to crawl down there and give those old bastards at the well one of the best parties they ever had.” He lugged the bottle down the tunnel shaft and splashed the liquid against the bones protruding from the breccia of Level XIX. “My God, we’re glad to find you,” he whispered. Then he proceeded to the well, where he sprinkled the champagne as if he were a priest. “To all of you. We’ll be back.” And as he made this flippant remark the echo of his voice came back to strike him, and he fell heavily on one of the marble benches set there by Timon Myrmex in the time of Herod. He put the bottle aside and covered his face with his hands. “Vered!” he whispered, and where no one could see him except the ghosts he admitted how forlorn he was, how deep had been his need to marry the little Jewish scholar. He had the vague feeling, at that lonely moment, that he was not going to find a Catholic wife in Chicago, nor would Ilan Eliav find a Jewish bride in Jerusalem; like huge Father Vilspronck they would move about the Holy Land for some years, respected and even loved, but men apart—a Dutchman married to a church, a German Jew married to a state, and an Irishman obsessed by the philosophical ana
lysis of history. “Vered! Vered!” he muttered. “You could have saved me.”
At the surface he reported lightly, “The old reprobates lapped it up. They said that if civilization could produce something as good as champagne they were going to have children like mad so as to speed up the process.”
“How did they communicate those sensible ideas,” Tabari asked, “seeing that when they lived speech hadn’t been invented?”
“To the silent ones,” Cullinane proposed, “deep in the earth.” And that afternoon he took a plane for Chicago.
The last man to go down the tunnel before things were locked up for the year was Ilan Eliav, who felt regret at leaving the dig just as the exciting years were beginning. Descending to the well he sat in the gloom beside the cool water that had brought life to so many. It surely didn’t start a mere two hundred thousand years ago, he reasoned. Below this must lie the plain where animals had always come to drink, and over there, hiding behind a tree, waited some creature who had wandered up from Africa a million years ago, holding in his hand the first rock of Israel that had ever been formed into a weapon. That had been the beginning, that ancient first, and it would never be known, that hairy hand waiting in the reeds as the animals came to drink; nevertheless, Eliav felt communion with that hunter. At Zefat we Jews held the rock in our hand and damned little else. At Akko and Jerusalem, too. He patted the cool wet earth. And now we’re climbing our way once more. And he started the long crawl back to where Tabari waited.
The Source: A Novel Page 130
