A Long Way to Shiloh

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Barot.’

  ‘Professor Agrot, please. This is Dr Laing.’

  ‘He’s not taking calls today.’

  ‘Just tell him,’ I said, very slowly and very calmly, ‘that Dr Laing is calling from the university and wishes to get into the scrollery right away. He’ll understand.’

  ‘Wait.’

  I waited. Himmelwasser waited. Shoshana waited. After five minutes Shoshana sat down. After ten I fought an obsessional urge to mount Himmelwasser and gallop her round the room.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Yes!’ I snarled.

  ‘He’ll call you at two. Leave word at the exchange where you’ll be.’

  ‘But listen –’

  Click.

  I nearly smashed the phone in fury.

  ‘He wasn’t available?’ She’d been standing two yards away.

  ‘No … No,’ I said, thinking better of it.

  ‘No. He is busy this week. He’s taking only important calls. There is something else I can do for you?’

  There was, but before I could tell her, I was led trembling from the room.

  ‘Never mind,’ the girl said, outside. ‘She has her instructions, and they have their work. In ten days Teitleman will –’

  ‘For God’s sake I’ve got to get in the scrollery.’

  ‘An hour or two. Come, we’ll have coffee.’

  ‘But I can’t wait till two! I’ll go off my head!’

  ‘Your head. A good idea,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to the doctor.’

  She’d been showing an obsessional interest in doctors. She’d taken me to one in Eilat. He’d removed the bandage and applied a big adhesive dressing. He’d advised that the doctor who’d stitched it should have another look at an early moment. The moment seemed to have come. Half an hour later I was in his surgery.

  It wasn’t till I was actually in position that I remembered the shtreiml – left in Tel Aviv. I apologized.

  ‘Never mind the shtreiml,’ the doctor said. ‘Who has done this? It won’t do.’ He ripped the offending plaster off and fixed something of his own, a pad of lint held loosely in position by strips of tape. ‘Here. I give you more of it. You can change it every day or two,’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll return the shtreiml as soon as I can.’

  ‘No hurry. So long as it was of use. My father-in-law of blessed memory has no need of it now.’

  Then I was outside again, and there were three hours to kill. We walked in them. We had more coffee. We had lunch. It was still only half past one when I was back at the campus, prowling like a tiger. But at two sharp, as promised, Agrot rang; and at five past I was in the scrollery.

  4

  When I’d finished with it a couple of hours later I let out a long and fairly lingering sigh. I’d translated in my own version everything that was known in as near to a modern idiom as I could get. I’d underlined certain of the phrases. I was quite sure now, and because of it, curiously flat. I lit a cigarette and looked at my handwork. It read:

  I came out by the north, it has to be understood, and turned north, myself, ten men and twenty pack animals with thirty days’ rations.

  We ate frugally, each man in his heart — — — that former occasion when even birds’ dung had to be sold for food, at ten pieces a quarter, as history records and as we understand it.

  We travelled by night, the consignment as follows: in plain terms, each beast one hundred kilograms, all ingot, private ingot

  For — — the sergeants carried the OEED and the corporals its equipment. The lowest soldiers carried the implements, shovels, picks and crowbars.

  In 65 miles, as understood, we reached the area and buried the OEED. For the highest security the lowest soldiers and myself only were parties to this operation. It was not witnessed. It is here: at a depth in plain terms of two metres, with good — — a layer 20 centimetres thick, of crushed marble, of blue marble, and protected by slabs; the disposition according to separate —.

  The ingot in another place — — will find [?] — — in separate.

  After all the work we returned, more plainly myself, two officers, two sergeants, two corporals, four men. At the first halt the sergeants and corporals call to the lowest two [?] and strangle them.

  At the second halt the animals eat and a corporal works by one and falls under the sergeants in twos [?]; it is with cords and to the letter; all buried in the manner [the true?].

  At night also in our camp as the sergeants sleep, upon them also, in twos, the knives of the officers; it is to the letter up to [and they are buried] — — of the [true?].

  The two officers [have eaten?]. The guilt is — not[?].

  Immediately at the finish we make and go but about midnight there calls — and we stand — — a mounted party, a great party, thirty men. Their leader, their captain – our officers have known – is plainly of Northern Command, I repeat it, of Northern Command, and has signed orders making us to him at his command place.

  When it is read [?] — — no one has told me that our acts are [known to?] Northern Command. I cannot in my soul — — that this Command [authority?] in our acts. The young officer himself — not possible [to say?] But he has said that we must — the consignment and the men to his command. But it is not possible although everything is within the law and to the letter.

  Therefore I refuse to see him and he takes me and we go till two o’clock and reach a night camp in the rocks and stay.

  The young officer is of [clean?] heart at all times and the guilt is [not?] his. He will not make me sleep with the lowest although he has made them to stand over me who also fear me and allow me behind the rock with the animals when I must make — — which times I mount and run.

  The alarm is immediately made and I was in the chase but in this difficult terrain I know [the secret?] — dark — dismount and send the animal one way while I —.

  They chase in the [true?] and — without guilt. I saw from a height till midday when the alarm is made and they make and go.

  I have no food or water. I stay till night. I am weak — — and fall and break my arm — the bone —.

  I am in heat and made worse. I cannot see how — the return, therefore I go to the water place where the people know me.

  I descend in a feeble state, afraid of violence. They keep watchmen watching. They are in fear of —.

  I lay till it is safe and enter the village secretly and go towards a light and to my joy it is the old perfumery. The watchman is making the —.

  He knows me from old times, a good man, not unlettered, and he is [good for it?]. I [in his mouth?] and he takes me in. If I have done against the law — without guilt

  He said to write down the day he died so they will —. It is four days after he come, the 22nd March, he died. He said he tell me what when I bury him but he never, he has evil spirits, so I took him at night in the flower basket and bury him behind the spring.

  I said peace on his soul and God be merciful he is a good man, a priest.

  He not — — help when his arm [of evil?] not tell any man, but I tell the priest who come for flower oil and he said I said right when I — which I hope, but that come for the flower oil not a real [priest?] they keep a different date.

  I write twice what he write, I make my best. He said to say where I put I put one in The Curtains, high, two hundred metres, the Curtain you cannot see from here, it is turned away. It is in the first hole, you get down from the top. I put another farther on, down low, the bottom of the cliff, beyond as you go….

  That was it; a code within a code; clear enough when you spotted it. It had been studied hundreds of times without anyone having spotted it. ‘It has to be understood’, ‘as we understand it’, etc., obviously meant the words had to be understood differently; and ‘in plain terms’, ‘more plainly’ and so on that these words were ‘in clear’. What had to be understood differently? Directions, obviously – south for north – and also figures. And the biblical reference, clear as daylight to h
is priestly colleagues, indicated what had to be done about the figures. They had to be halved. So it wasn’t sixty-five miles south of Jerusalem that the stuff had been buried, but half that. Which watering place came within this new area?

  I hadn’t slept in the night, and I’d not thought of much else since, but I went to the wall map and checked, anyway. It was there on the map, of course, there where it ought to be, where it always had been, sitting under our noses. I got out a pencil and put a little kiss on the spot, but it looked like any other cross on a map. Then I went and phoned my busy friend Agrot.

  5

  ‘It’s the right distance from Jerusalem – slap bang in the area where all the other finds have been made –’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s in “difficult terrain”, you have to “descend” to get at it –’

  ‘Right. Right.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t need any other designation than “the watering place”. It’s the obvious watering place.’

  ‘Right. Yes. So?’ he said, tetchily. It was hot as hell. The sweat was pouring off me. It was pouring off him, too. He’d just climbed down from the top, still too busy to take the road round; he’d “stolen” a couple of hours and nipped over the plateau in a jeep.

  ‘Also,’ I said, ‘the curious detail in the addendum about the other priest – who came for flower oil, who wasn’t a “real” priest because they kept a “different date” –’

  ‘All right – What?’

  ‘Doesn’t he sound to you like a priest from Qumran – an Essene maybe? They kept a different religious calendar. They were persecuted for it by the authorities in Jerusalem – don’t you remember? It’s part of the basis of their apocalyptic literature, The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. Doesn’t this sound to you like –’

  ‘I know what it sounds to me like!’ he said furiously, dabbing his forehead. ‘So? So?’

  ‘So if you happen to be in Qumran and need a spot of flower oil, where are you likely to go? We know that Professor Mazar excavated a perfumery in 1960 –’

  ‘I know what Mazar did in 1960!’

  ‘– here in Ein Gedi,’ I said.

  He dabbed at his forehead. ‘All right. What else?’

  ‘What else do you want? Marble? There’s the biggest deposits of marble in the country. Why the scroll was found here in the first place? Because it was written here. Look – look,’ I said. I felt dizzy. ‘There’s a lot more. Plenty more. If you don’t like it, then I don’t –’

  ‘But I do,’ Agrot said. ‘My God!’ He was sweating like a bullock, rubbing it out of his eyes as he stared wildly about him in the flickering heat haze of the canyon. ‘I like it so much. I’m frightened how much I like it.’

  ‘Well, thank Christ for that,’ I said faintly. I sat down, more than usually bushed. It was over for me, of course. I’d told him a bit on the phone in the afternoon, and a bit more later, about eleven at night. I’d been at Ein Gedi then, sick and faint with excitement, not really able to stay away. It was over, and I’d known it last night, but I still hadn’t been able to sleep.

  ‘But where?’ he said, looking up to the plateau. ‘Where?’

  This was the nub, of course. There were miles and miles of suitable depository ground up there; marble in abundance, eminences in all sizes. Of all the places in Israel it was the most likely to hide the Menorah, and of all the places the least likely where you might expect to find it. Without further directions, without the portion of the scroll the Jordanians apparently had, it could be a lifetime’s task; as Josephus perhaps had found.

  ‘There’s the possibility,’ Agrot said slowly, assimilating this for himself, ‘of working out the route he must have travelled, and from this, perhaps, the distances. Almost certainly he would have observed the Torah regulations for animals – work periods, distances, speed and so forth.’

  ‘He’s vague on times before he was rounded up. It’s impossible to say how many days he was on the job.’

  ‘Maybe we can work back after he was rounded up. My impression is the period was very short between the depositing of the consignment and the ambush.’

  ‘It’s just an impression. And anyway, where was he rounded up?’ I could see he didn’t really expect much in this line himself. He was talking merely to give himself time to think. And there wasn’t, as far as I was concerned, much to think about. He looked at me for a bit.

  ‘It’s a lot of work,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A programme.’

  ‘Yes.’

  We remained looking at each other.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe I’ll be there when it happens,’ I said. ‘If you ask me back some time.’

  ‘So come have something to drink at the kibbutz,’ he said. ‘Barot can wait. We have a lot to talk about.’

  But again, we didn’t really. He was simply being decent. Knowing how much he wanted to get back to Barot, I thought he was being very decent.

  *

  I slept like a log in the afternoon, and after a cold drink and a shower at six, slept again. They’d given me my old guest hut. It was dark when I woke the second time, but I had an idea the light had been on seconds before. I said, ‘Shoshana.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I brought you a drop of brandy. I thought you might like some.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  I sat up. She put the light on. She’d brought herself a drop, too; which was unusual. She poured out the brandy and sipped her own solemnly as at the early stage of some wake; which was not amiss the way I was feeling.

  ‘What’s to do?’ I said at length.

  ‘I wondered if he said anything about me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to return to duty, then.’

  ‘I suppose you will.’

  ‘Oh, Caspar.’

  ‘Now now.’

  ‘Do you want me to lock the door?’ she said in my ear some minutes later.

  ‘Not really. Not tonight.’

  ‘All right… What do you intend doing now?’

  This was a question. Agrot didn’t see his way to starting the action for five or six weeks. He’d seen, very roughly, a preliminary season of ten weeks which would take him into May; after this it would be too hot on the plateau and he’d have to wait till November. He’d seen it as a fairly full-scale operation for a team of fifty or so, with army support. Against this background of planned activity, I felt a bit spare. Tomorrow was Thursday, and I was due anyway to go back a week Sunday. Why wait?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d work things out after a sleep.’

  ‘Would you sooner I went now?’

  ‘I’d sooner you got some more brandy.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you one thing,’ I said, when she’d got it, quite a nice lot of it, and we’d had another one each, ‘I think you were dead right about that raid on Ein Gedi from Massada. I’m sure it wasn’t for food. It was for this. I’ve been thinking about it.’

  ‘Have you, love?’

  ‘Yes, love. Do you want to hear about it?’

  ‘I’d love to hear about it, love.’ The brandy had been one too many for her, and she was kissing my nose as she said it. But I told her all the same.

  The problem had been to account for the Zealots at Massada knowing about the priest at Ein Gedi, and I thought I’d accounted for it now. To explain, it was necessary to recap briefly the recorded events of the period.

  Joseph ben Matthias had been appointed to his command in February, and a couple of months later, at the instigation of his rival, ben Levi, the Jerusalem junta had unsuccessfully tried to arrest him. Shortly after, ben Matthias had gone over to the Romans, and a little later, ben Levi had escaped to Jerusalem to take high office in the government. Just a few months after, the revolutionaries of Massada had carried out their savage raid on Ein Gedi.

 
; This was fact, and to it I added my own hypothesis. The junta had wanted ben Matthias because they’d learned he’d ambushed the treasure party. Since ben Levi had tipped them off, he knew about the treasure party, too. When he later joined the government he found that the priest-in-charge still hadn’t returned and that no report had been received from him. A study of the area where he’d gone would have shown rapidly enough where he must have sought a haven. So the raid on Ein Gedi had been authorized from the nearest revolutionary fortress – Massada.

  Josephus in his history has described the raid as one by terrorists for food and booty. But Josephus was politically opposed to the Zealots of Massada. Why should even a gang of terrorists slaughter the people who could continue to supply them with food? And yet slaughter them they did. They slaughtered seven hundred, all who could not run away. Why?

  Might it not have been during a mass interrogation – for information more important even than a continuing supply of food? Experience of our more sophisticated wars since has shown this type of interrogation to be by no means out of the way when the information sought is of sufficient value.

  And the villagers, doubly luckless, wouldn’t even have been able to give the information. Only one man could have given it, and he’d run away. He’d run into the canyon; after fulfilling as much of his task as he could.

  He’d ‘written twice’ what the priest had given him. He’d placed one copy ‘in The Curtains’ and another ‘farther on, down low, the bottom of the cliff, beyond as you go’ (evidently the one found at Murabba’at). The priest’s original, still undelivered, he had stuffed hastily into the cave in the canyon, together with his money, probably on this very night of the raid, and had never gone back for them. So the villagers of Ein Gedi had died before their time, and nobody had discovered the priest’s secret; and perhaps now nobody would.