by Dan Sofer
Mario?
Mandy let the question go.
“Dave,” she said. “Have you seen Dave?”
“No. He went after you. Then all hell broke loose.”
“I have to find him.”
Shani studied Mandy’s face, then kissed her on the cheek. “See you outside.”
Mandy turned back. The faux Temple was a flowing waterfall. The rapids discolored as a human shape dropped into the deepening pool.
Mandy ran.
A man got to his feet and gulped air.
“Ben.” She gripped his shoulders. “Where’s Dave?”
The soaked man glanced around. His bald head glistened.
“Couldn’t see a thing.”
She watched the fountain at the Temple mouth and panted. The wetness crept up her legs.
She sloshed around the choppy pool and scanned the waterlogged scenery. “Dave!” she called over the roar of the rapids.
“Dave!” Ben joined the search and they split up.
The heads of miniature buildings poked above water level and blocked Mandy’s view. Dave might have washed up before her. If he was hurt, every second counted.
“Mandy!” Shani stood in the mouth of the tunnel. The flood level washed over her feet. Shani beckoned her to follow.
“Dave!” Mandy shouted.
She’d find him. She had to. Dave had bared his heart. He had risked his life for her. She could forgive him anything. She had held out for a hero and Dave was her hero.
A human form beached on a hilltop. An arm stuck out of the water. Limp.
Mandy waded toward it, then dove in and swam. She turned the body over and cradled the head in her arms.
His eyes were closed, his face blue and cold.
“Dave!”
Mandy dug her heels into the ground and pulled his body onto her and out of the water.
Strands of her wet hair caressed his face. His neck warmed to her touch.
Ben splashed toward her. “Is he breathing?”
Mandy barely heard him.
Don’t die on me, Dave.
She lowered her face to his. Their lips touched for the first time. She opened his mouth with hers and gave him her life’s breath.
Don’t die, Dave. I won’t let you.
His chest rose. Mandy came up for air and repeated the procedure.
After the third lungful, Dave convulsed. She tilted his body to help the liquid drain from his lungs.
How long had he been under? A few minutes without oxygen spelled brain damage. The blue eyes opened. Mandy searched them for a sign.
Dave, are you still there?
He stared at her, his eyes glazed over.
Then he blinked.
“You saved me,” he said.
A short sound burst from Mandy’s chest.
Thank the Lord!
Tears streamed down her face. Or was it floodwater? It didn’t matter. Dave was alive.
“Easy,” he said. “I’m not used to girls drooling over me.”
“Jesus, Dave,” Ben said. “We thought you had drowned. Can you walk?”
Dave never took his eyes off her. His lips curled in the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.
“I’m perfectly comfortable right here.”
“Mandy!”
Shani’s voice was a high-pitched shriek. The waters had reached her friend’s ample chest. Soon, the only exit would be completely submerged.
“Get up,” Ben said. “Now.”
Dave got to his feet with difficulty. Mandy and Ben supported him on either side and walked, then dragged him toward the closing tunnel mouth. The water helped. A flaming torch sizzled and died in the rising water. The flickering light dimmed.
Mandy, Dave and Ben slipped into the tunnel. They pressed their heads together and gulped air at the ceiling like hungry catfish in a pond. Shani’s flashlight danced ahead. The stairs were damp and slippery. Mandy and Dave climbed together, step by step, toward the square of pale blue.
Shani and Ruchama grasped Mandy’s hands and pulled, then Ruchama locked Mandy in a bone-crushing bear hug. Dave collapsed on the dry loose earth beside the open grave. He smiled at her.
Dawn broke over Qumran. The Jordanian Valley glowed in the warm rays of a new day. And behind them, from the car park, came the blue-and-red flicker of strobe lights.
***
The Teacher of Righteousness opened his eyes. Pale blue skies. Dry desert breeze on his face. A gentle, flowing sensation around his body.
Is this Heaven?
A heaviness in his chest. He coughed. Water spilled from his mouth and over his cheeks. He tried to lift his head but it was no use. The ground at his back felt hard but agreeable.
He heard the crunch of gravel underfoot, then silence.
A face filled the blue. A woman of middle age, her blond hair cropped short and sharp. The eyes peered at him with concern.
The angels of Heaven, it would seem, used hair salons and makeup. And spoke with a British accent.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
The Teacher wondered whether he was. He felt fine apart from the fact that he could not move. It took time to adjust to incorporeal existence.
“Over here,” she said, louder.
More crunching of gravel.
“Is it him?” a man’s voice said.
“No.”
A man joined the woman. Were all angels British and middle-aged? Worry filled their eyes. Or was it disappointment?
“What’s your name?” the woman-angel asked.
The Teacher searched his mind, which was blissfully white and clean.
“Teacher.” His throat was rough and parched. “Teacher of Righteousness.”
The woman-angel smiled. “You just rest here. Everything will be all right.”
She kneeled beside him and dripped cool, clear water into his mouth from a plastic bottle.
Images flashed in his mind.
The scroll. He had found the Scroll of Scrolls. The End of Days. A World of Peace.
He felt about for the earthen jar but his hands returned empty. Water trickled around the edges of his recumbent body.
No matter.
He had merged with the scroll. They were one now. Nothing would separate them again. The One Scroll would speak through him.
“What’s this?”
The woman-angel reached out of view. She stood and brushed lumps of wet sand from a circular black stone.
The man-angel fished reading glasses from his shirt pocket and studied the smooth stone.
“Nothing,” the Teacher answered. “Absolutely nothing.” The thought made him laugh, although he could not recall why.
A mobile phone rang.
“Yes?” the woman said. “Oh, thank God. Steven, they’ve found him. We’re on our way. Oh, and we found another one.” She considered the Teacher. “Yes. And a little confused. All right.”
The angelic couple held the stone between them and paused to exchange a soft glance. Then they walked off together. As they disappeared from view, they held hands.
How sweet.
The Teacher returned to his sky of endless blue.
Two men in navy uniforms arrived. They lifted the Teacher onto a stretcher and into the air like an emperor.
Inside the van, a woman in a blue dress shirt sat beside him. She connected a tube to his arm and smiled gently.
Then he was floating again, this time on a wheeled bed, toward a large, square building in white Jerusalem stone.
“Yes!” the Teacher exclaimed. A tear blurred his vision but he managed to read the legend above the wide doorway. Shaare Zedek. The Gates of Zedek. The Gates of Righteousness.
Home.
At last!
Chapter 15
It was the happiest day of Dave’s life.
As he stepped forward, the chorus line of friends and relatives in suits and smiles stepped back. A trumpeter kept pace and blared his song.
Od yishama / Again shall be hea
rd.
Be’arey Yehuda / In the cities of Judah.
Uvechutzot Yerushalayim / And in the yards of Jerusalem.
Kol sason vekol simcha / The sound of joy and happiness.
Kol chatan vekol kalah / The voice of bride and groom.
Dave wore a long white kittel over a blue suit and white tie. His mother, in a salmon evening dress and wide-brimmed hat, locked his left arm in hers, and his father gripped his right.
His parents beamed at him and at each other. Their recent behavior mystified him. He had caught them winking at each other and whispering sweet nothings. In public! Dave wasn’t entirely convinced that his nuptials alone had rekindled their love.
The wedding parade rounded a corner of the Dan Hotel lobby. An expansive balcony came into view and there it was. White silken sheets formed the canopy and colorful bouquets adorned the corner posts. Behind the chuppah, in the soft hues of the setting sun, lights sparkled over the rise and fall of the Jerusalem skyline.
The dancers dispersed. Dave and his parents walked the long, white carpet, passing between the rows of chairs. Under the chuppah, Mishi greeted them with his furry shtreimel and toothy grin.
Ben stood by, packed into a tuxedo like a celebrity bodyguard. He patted his breast pocket and pretended to have misplaced the wedding band.
Dave had seen little of Ben over the last three months, but today Ben had picked him up first thing in the morning. His duties as best man included occupying the groom on the day of the wedding, assisting with errands, and generally making sure that the scatterbrain made it to the chuppah on time. Or at all. As Ben pointed out, the job was known as shomer, or “guard,” and probably served to prevent a skittish groom from fleeing the country.
The day kicked off with morning prayers at the Western Wall. Skipping breakfast—many couples fasted on their wedding day—Ben drove them in his Yaris past the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo and onto a bumpy dirt road. He followed the winding contours of the untamed hillside and parked in a clearing among the tall grasses and wild shrubs. The two friends grabbed their towels and hiked the short trail to Ein Ya’el.
A thin, bearded man walked the other way on the dirt path. He wore clothes of white flannel and a large, knitted kippa. He wrung water from his blond earlocks and smiled as he passed them by.
The waters of the natural spring trickled into a deep, square pool outlined by large slabs of plastered rock and hedged on one side by a wall of rough stone.
Dave had never gone skinny-dipping before. This was to be a day of many firsts.
Ben dive-bombed with a glorious splash. Dave slipped into the chilly water, held his breath, and went under. He assumed a loose fetal position, then broke the surface, reentering the world and gasping, fresh and pure as his first day. He counted three immersions, and then joined Ben, who rested against the side of the pool, his arms spread along the edge. He was thankful for the thick green water of the back-to-nature mikva and their privacy. Tuesday was a slow business day for the spring.
Bushes rustled in the breeze and the leaves of trees played with the sunlight. Birds sang and dove overhead. Images sloshed in Dave’s mind like the waters around him. Between viewing wedding halls, tasting entrees, and buying suits and rings, his thoughts had often returned to Qumran. The Internet had helped him put some of the pieces together.
Professor Edward Barkley had taken up residence in the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center. A fellow archaeologist had taken over his restoration project of a British Mandate–era outpost in the Jordanian Valley. Two of his fellow patients, both Texans, had responded to treatment and returned to their anxious families abroad.
The police, however, deported John White to New Zealand where he awaited trial.
Jason “Jay” Smith had disappeared and was presumed drowned. The details of the orphaned criminal’s life had moved Dave. Delusions aside, he and Jay were not all that different. Most people Dave knew in Katamon were running from something: their families, their past, their future. Unlike Jay, Dave had found something real to run toward.
He read about the Documentary Hypothesis. What if Barkley was right? What if the Bible was a mix of earlier myths and legends? What if the Torah was not dictated word for word to Moses as Dave had learned in kindergarten? Would his life change? Not much. Thousands of years of shared experience, longing, and sensibility did not stand or fall on one text or another. His understanding of the Bible would have to evolve, for sure, but, as he had learned, nothing in life or love slipped easily into the tidy little box of his expectations.
Dave also discovered that the Greek word Katamon meant “beneath the monastery,” a fact that dovetailed well with his recent escapade in Jerusalem Below but, he had to admit, ultimately meant nothing.
Other questions remained unanswered and as he relaxed they bubbled to the surface.
“Ben. You never explained about Ornan.”
The waters lapped lazily against the edge of the pool.
“Ben?”
“OK,” Ben said. “I’ll tell you. But if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone—”
‘“I know, I know. You’ll kill me.”
Ben leaned back and read the answer off the clear blue sky.
“Three thousand years ago, King David, having united the tribes of Israel, needed a new capital. The ideal city would be central, fortified, and with a ready supply of water.”
Dave gazed at the grassy hillocks. In his mind’s eye, a young King David and his warriors scaled the low erosion walls of ancient stone and surveyed the landscape, swords and spears at the ready.
Ben continued. “Jerusalem had all that and more. From time immemorial, the city had served as a cultic center, and tradition long tied the site to the forefathers. Abraham’s Mount Moriah. Jacob’s House of God. But Jebusites held the city.”
Dave knew the story well. “The blind and the lame.”
“Most commentators,” Ben said, “saw that as a taunt. Our walls are so strong, even cripples can defend them. But they got it wrong. The blind and lame were a warning. Beware. Enter at your own risk. For the Jebusites believed they guarded a great spiritual force, a power too dangerous for man to wield.”
Dave hazarded a guess. “Our Foundation Stone?”
Ben’s eyebrows jumped twice. “The Jebusites opened the city gates to David but the young king took no heed of their warnings. He made his home there, and soon the City of David filled with allies of all races from across the kingdom. One fateful night David came across a sealed room at the top of the citadel. He forced his way in and discovered a plain-looking stone. As he examined it, he glimpsed, through the window, a young woman bathing on a rooftop.”
A tingle traced up Dave’s spine and it had nothing to do with the cold water of the spring.
“You mean… Are you trying to say that Bathsheba…?”
“So the story goes. And that would explain a few things. Anyway, King David learned his lesson. He reinstated the Jebusites as Guardians of Jerusalem’s Secret Treasures. Days became years, years centuries. The sacred trust passed from father to son. Then the Babylonians marched against Jerusalem. If the city fell, Jerusalem’s treasures and the all-powerful Stone would fall into enemy hands.
“The Guardians took precautions. They built Jerusalem Below and secretly transferred the Temple’s wealth. They altered holy texts to cover their tracks. The site of the Foundation Stone became the threshing floor of Aravna the Jebusite, they transformed the Welcoming of David into the Daring Conquest of the Jebusite city, and King David was recast as a common adulterer.
“In case their followers dispersed and forgot their traditions, they recorded their treasures in the Copper Scroll. They baked key sections of the scroll into jars, each marked with the letters Tsadi-Dalet-Qof, the sign of the founder of their order.”
“Zadok the High Priest?”
Ben grinned but shook his head. “Malki-Zedek, King of Shalem. In the book of Genesis, he greets Abraham after the battle of the Four Kings. Shalem beca
me known as Uru-salim and even later as…” He paused for dramatic effect.
“Jerusalem,” Dave said. He connected more dots. “So Ornan is…”
Ben nodded. “The faithful heir of the Jebusite Guardians of Jerusalem. They kept David’s trust ever since, even during Second Temple times, awaiting the full restoration of Jerusalem. Empires came and went. The Temple’s gold and silver helped fund their order and convince those who wandered too near to look the other way. Three thousand years of bribes adds up and the treasure ran dry. They had to resort to threats of violence, or they released minor artifacts, like the scroll jars, to divert attention away from the City of David. On occasion, they welcomed enlightened outsiders into their fold. Archaeologists, mostly.”
A lightbulb flared in Dave’s memory.
“Kathleen Kenyon dug the City of David but never published her findings.”
“Right. The same with Father de Vaux and Qumran, and he dug the entire cemetery, blocking that path to future archaeologists.”
“And now the illustrious Ben Green.”
Ben looked away but Dave saw the smug grin.
Dave’s fingertips were turning into prunes. It was time to get out and towel down, but he had to settle one more nagging question.
“So the stone was real after all?”
Ben made a doubtful groan. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“But what about that flashflood? The Drinking Stone? The source of the watery depths?”
“Cold-water geysers are a well-documented phenomenon, especially along fault lines.”
“Come on, Ben. You don’t really believe that.”
“Water rich in carbon dioxide, trapped beneath strata of— Hey! Stop splashing!”
Under the chuppah, Ben found the gold wedding band in its box and winked at Dave.
Your secrets are safe with me, Ben.
Friends and relatives peered expectantly from the rows of chairs and filled the wings. At the end of the white carpet stood the bride. She held a round bouquet to her bosom. A man and woman stood on either side. A gauzy veil hid the bride’s face.
She floated toward him.
A stab of sudden panic pierced his chest.
