Damascus Gate (18 page)

"Well, Ernest Gross at the Human Rights Coalition says an Israeli publication should do the story. For the honor of the country."

"Ah, yes," said Zimmer. "Ernest is a
tzaddik.
"

Lucas thought he was being contemptuous, but could not be sure.

"You worked Vietnam, didn't you, Zimmer?"

"I worked Vietnam. And don't forget I was on the other side. I was under your selective ordnance and your gunships and B-52 bombers."

"Why were the Vietnamese so good?" Lucas asked. "Why did they fight so hard? Do you think they were believers?"

"No," Zimmer said. "They just failed to see the funny side. They lacked that American sense of humor. Seriously," he told Lucas, "they were just conscripts. But they never thought of themselves as separate from their army. And they didn't have comfortable American lives to lose. Good soldiers."

"Been back?"

"Twice. If you brought the Communist dead back to Saigon today—or even Hanoi—they'd die a second death. The present regime down there is more corrupt than the last."

"How do you know? Did you see Saigon then?"

"Sometimes I got to Saigon. Remember, we had Poles for a while on the International Control Commission. They could get me the right documents. So I saw the fleshpots. Also the tunnels out at Cu Chi. Amazing. I suppose that was before your time?"

"Just," Lucas said.

"Funny," Janusz Zimmer said, "how we saw the world from different sides. I could never get to the West without a struggle. But wherever what they called 'socialism' prevailed, I was welcome."

"Miss it?"

"I traveled all over Africa for the Polish News Service," Zimmer said. "There wasn't an aspect of African socialism I didn't witness."

"That's not an answer."

"Oh, come on," Zimmer said irritably. "It was ghastly beyond description. Supremos, cannibal potentates, thugs in sunglasses pretending they were KGB. Naturally I wrote about it with enthusiasm and approval. Your side didn't have such great humanitarians either. Your side had Mobutu."

"I wonder what Sonia Barnes would have thought of it," Lucas said.

"In the worst places she would have been killed immediately. Well, not immediately. Raped and tortured first. But she had the sense to be in Cuba. And Cuba was different."

"Was it?"

"Certainly. The most hardened anti-Communists had a soft spot for Cuba. Even me."

"But, Janusz," Lucas said. "You weren't an anti-Communist. Were you?"

"Not at first. I was a Party member."

"And then?"

Zimmer made no answer.

"I used to be a Catholic," Lucas said. "I believed. I believed everything."

Zimmer watched him.

"It's good, no?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "Do you think it's good? Believing?"

"Depends on what you believe, wouldn't you say?"

"You're so annoying, Zimmer," Lucas said. "I'm trying to talk philosophy. You're giving me common sense."

"Well," said Zimmer, "I'm from Poland, where faiths come equipped with tanks and gallows, gas and truncheons. I'm particular about faiths."

"Fair enough."

"I'll tell you what," Zimmer said, getting up to leave. "You keep me posted on the Syndrome, I'll keep you posted on the Strip."

S
YLVIA CHIN
was a very young, cool and attractive official of the U.S. consulate in West Jerusalem. There were two American consulates in town, and according to journalistic lore they were bitterly divided in terms of Middle East policy. The one on Saladin Street, in what had once been the Kingdom of Jordan, dealt daily with Palestinians and was considered pro-Israeli. The one downtown, which lived with the Israelis, allegedly inclined toward the Palestinians.

Sylvia was California Chinese, her Valley Girl inflections starched at Stanford, a vice consul whose collateral duties had involved the retrieval of quite a few deluded American nationals from variously unsound spiritual enterprises. She was knowledgeable about the religious enthusiasts in town and about cults in general. She was also cagey, with a lawyerly reluctance to opine. At the same time she was genuinely fond of Lucas, whom she recognized as a true admirer.

"Mostly we have individuals," she told Lucas. "Sometimes the families call us. Sometimes they pull a stunt and the police call us. We've had a few disappear."

"What about the groups?"

"Well, the groups I can't formally comment on. It takes all kinds."

"I'm after the more colorful. Or interesting. Or original."

"OK," said Sylvia. "Know about the House of the Galilean?"

"I know a preacher there. Never been to their place."

"Check it out. They're fun."

"Any further comments? Not for attribution. We'd call you 'a Western diplomat.'"

Sylvia shook her head.

"'An informed observer.'"

She thought about it. "If you stumble on any insights," she suggested, "you might share them with us, OK?"

Her suggestion smacked of the old pitcheroo, Lucas thought. He felt a pang of nostalgia for the Cold War. Who didn't?

"Any time, pal." The notion of lunch with Sylvia was always agreeable.

"They're Christian ultra-Zionists," Vice Consul Chin told him. "Close to the Israeli right wing. Funny, because some of their leadership was once really anti-Semitic. Now they're here and they seem to like it."

"Their thing is 'Repent, the end is nigh,' right?"

"Right," she said. "End-of-the-world type thing. Big moneymaker back home."

"Are they considered legitimate?"

"Well, like, what's legitimate?" she asked with an expression of bright false naivete. "What about freedom of conscience?" Her expression faded. "You won't quote me by name?"

"Hey," Lucas said, "stand on me."

"The question about religious entities here is whether they have political clout. In country or U.S. or third country, whatever. Christian, Jewish, Muslim or anything else."

"And the House of the Galilean?"

"House of the Galilean is liked by certain quarters here. And liked by the certain quarters back home that like those certain quarters. And has some drag with evangelicals."

"In that business," Lucas said, "it's considered more blessed to give than to receive."

"Right," Sylvia said. "And they're contributors. They don't ask the fat cats for money—they provide it. For political campaigns and whatnot. Investments. Their money comes from cable television pitches and direct mail."

"Interesting," said Lucas. He also asked her if she had heard of a young man named Ralph or Raziel or Razz Melker.

Sylvia knew him at once. "Ralph Melker is a major headache. The Ralph Melker file is a tale of woe."

"Yes?"

"First a congresswoman gets this angry letter about Raziel's group staking out old synagogues in Safed. Complains that they were Jews for Jesus or something. People do that, you know—they see something here and write their congressperson in the States."

"Why not?" asked Lucas. "It's their money."

"The congresswoman sent it to the embassy, and they forwarded it to us. Just buck-passing, no comments on it."

"Naturally."

"As it turns out, Ralph really is a former Jew for Jesus. He's also got a DEA file. I mean, a musician and heavy into drugs. Then it turns out Ralph's old man
also
is a congressman
and
a former ambassador. Active in politics in Michigan, a Democrat. The family sends Ralph over here to straighten him out—they imagine he's reading Torah and working in the vineyards, singing folksongs around the fire. So this is tucked away. Background for us. In case anyone has to cope on some level."

"How about an older man named Adam De Kuff?"

That one called for a short excursion up the diplomatic corridors. Sylvia came back with a shrug.

"
Bubkes
on De Kuff." She had picked up some Yiddishisms in L.A. and it amused her to employ them in country. "But there are people here who go in for what they call 'cult awareness.' They may have heard of him. You might also check with Superintendent Smith at police headquarters. He deals with the prophets and messiahs."

Accommodating as Sylvia was, she declined to let Lucas use the consulate's telephone, even for a local call.

"A no-no," she told him. "And remember, all the free phones are tapped."

 

In June, Lucas finally moved out of Tsililla's. He had seen little of her since her return from London. For a while she had repaired to a horse farm near Tiberias, ostensibly to ride and work on a film script. They kept arranging to meet and talk things over. When a Canadian journalist Lucas knew was transferred out of town, Lucas arranged to house-sit. The apartment was downtown, near Zion Square, on the eighth floor of a sleek, sinister-looking building that catered to jewelry salesmen. It was supposed to be very secure.

While he had tended to hole up for long periods in the place he'd shared with Tsililla, Lucas now welcomed every opportunity to get out of the downtown place. One day he volunteered to carry some of De Kuff's things to the Old City apartment. Sonia had given him the key.

Sonia's place in Rehavia, in the upper story of a peeling, leafy Ottoman building, was not far from Tsililla's, and not dissimilar to it, at least on the outside. Inside, it was decorated with
santería
figures and Cuban movie posters and mementos of colleagues in various crisis zones. Her souvenir photographs featured groups of toothy young white people in lightweight khakis, posing among thin dark-skinned folk in landscapes that were parched and brown or overbright with fleshy green plants.

Her living room was awash with De Kuff's possessions, books mostly, and bound monographs. Since Berger's death she had been busy transplanting and transposing tomes, his and De Kuff's. The old Austrian had died after several hours in a coma at the university hospital. Most of his last days at home had been spent with Raziel and De Kuff; it was as though the three of them had gone into some psychic space together.

Many of Berger's books, diaries and journals remained in his Old City apartment. His writings were in German, which De Kuff could read and Sonia could not. Sonia had inherited his only possessions of worldly value: a few old Persian manuscripts, his small collection of Islamic art—Kufic rubbings and calligraphy—and his furniture. There had also turned out to be several thousand U.S. dollars in an external account in Amman.

Finally, Sonia had contacted the offices of the Waqf, the Muslim religious authority, to have Berger buried in a Muslim cemetery. The Waqf had not asked for the return of his apartment, which was presumably its property, but it was not yet aware of Adam De Kuff and his followers.

Lucas carried half a dozen or so cardboard boxes down to his car and drove through the east end of the Lions' Gate, which was as close to the apartment as he could bring the car. While parking, he told himself that his yellow Israeli plate would get his car torched one day.

As he carried the first load of books up the ancient stairs, he saw Raziel perched on the terrace watching his labor. He returned without a greeting for the next box.

When he had carried all the boxes up, he saw Raziel smiling up at him from the terrace divan.

"I should have helped you," Raziel said. "I'm sorry. We've been meditating all night."

"No problem," Lucas said. There was a peculiar ornament around Raziel's neck that he had not seen before. "What are you wearing?"

"Oh," Raziel said. He slipped it off and handed it to Lucas. "It's an ouroboros. The serpent swallowing its tail. An Ethiopian silversmith near the Machaneh market did it for us."

"In all the versions of the stories I've heard," Lucas said, "the snake is the bad guy. Except for the Gnostic versions."

He could see the yeshiva boy Raziel roused to disputation.

"The ouroboros is repeatedly cited in the
Zohar,
the
Book of Splendor.
There, it refers to
bereshit,
'in the beginning.' Actually, '
at
the beginning' is more like it."

Lucas produced his notebook. "May I write this down?"

"Be my guest," Raziel said. "Write this: it means 'in my beginning is my ending.'"

Lucas wrote it. This is strong, he thought as he wrote. Something made him feel that Raziel was not to be despised. It frightened him slightly.

"Are you familiar with kundalini yoga?" Raziel asked.

"I've heard of it."

"The forces we work with are similar. Maybe the same. They aren't forces that allow for half measures or for dabbling."

"But Kundalini is a snake goddess," Lucas said. "That doesn't seem exactly kosher."

"Kundalini is a metaphor, Christopher. The underlying forces are the same. The sages called the outer garment of the world a snake's skin."

Lucas wrote
kundalini
in his notebook.

"I have to ask," Raziel declared. "Is your father Carl Lucas of Columbia?"

"He died three years ago."

"Sorry."

"Sonia tell you that?"

"Not at all," Raziel said.

"You saw an intellectual resemblance?"

Raziel smiled. "Is there one?"

"Yes," Lucas said. "But I'm an epigone. The bastard son, a midget."

"No you're not," Raziel said.

"What about you?" Lucas asked. "Your old man the congressman?"

"Yes he is. A friend of the President. Chairman of the House Committee on Education. So I know what it is to be the son of ... that kind of father."

"I see."

"And your mother sang," Raziel said.

"Funny," Lucas said. "I'm asking the questions. But you know more about me than I know about you. Yes," he told Raziel, "my mother was a well-known singer, Gail Hynes. She made a good living while she worked. My dad was proud of her. Unfortunately he was married elsewhere."

"I've heard her."

"You're putting me on," Lucas said.

"She sang
lieder,
right? She made some famous records of Mahler and Brahms for Decca."

"Yes, that's right," Lucas said.

"
Das Lied von der Erde,
" said Razz. "
Kindertotenlieder.
She was wonderful. As good as Ferrier. You must be proud of her."