Damascus Gate (40 page)

A young man in a black suit and matching tie immediately approached him.

"Will you be with us for the vigil?" He sounded like a midwesterner, or possibly Canadian.

He looked over the young man's shoulder for Sonia or the other woman. They had vanished in the shadows and intersecting planes of the church. Incense wafted, candles flickered. The place never ceased its effort to beguile the tenth-century mind.

"Maybe," Lucas said.

"You'll have to be here from nine on."

"Right," said Lucas, and went past him. In the unlikely event that Sonia had chosen to pass a vigil in the Holy Sepulchre, he had the feeling that she would make her way to the roof, where the Ethiopians had their chapel. But when he climbed the stairs that led to the rooftop monasteries, he found the door at the top bolted shut.

He had not been in the Holy Sepulchre since Easter, the day of the
majnoon.
The dimness was filled with foreign pilgrims, and he supposed the image of the blonde from Haifa had been a projection of their presence in the city. Or a portent, he thought. The angel of loneliness, calling him to a vanished home. Some strange reversal. And he had seen Sonia there simply for wanting to see her.

The pilgrims wandered, bewildered, drowning in the gloom, awash in the wake of the awesome events they struggled to believe in. Lucas lost track of time. When he went toward the door, the young man who had addressed him coming in barred his way out.

"I'm afraid it's locked."

"What?"

"It's locked. For our vigil."

Lucas looked at him blankly.

"It stays locked until four," the man told him. A sickly grin broke out across his thin, ungenerous features. "We don't have the key, you know."

To his horror, Lucas realized he had arrived on one of the nights designated for nocturnal vigil, during which groups undertook to remain in the church through the hours of the night. It was true that no one in the church had the key. Each night it was taken away by one of two designated Muslim families of the city, who kept it until dawn. Neither fire nor flood would let them out. He was immured.

"Jesus Christ," Lucas said. "Shit!"

The young man stepped back in horror and loathing. A wave of invisible indignation reverberated through the half-darkness.

"You can try to find a sexton, I suppose," the young man said with an air of Christian submission.

Lucas went off in search of authority. There were only bewildered tourists and dank chambers where candles guttered. It was like trying to find his way back from the hereafter.

Eventually Lucas happened on a group of kneeling Palestinians in work clothes, surrounded by a welter of mechanical equipment. There was a huge, dirty gray tube that looked like the creation of Hollywood sci-fi, a giant maggot from space. Near it lay some blowers and metal joints. But the Arabs were so rapt in prayer that Lucas was reluctant to disturb them. He sat down on a corner step near the crypt of Saint Helena and confronted his awful situation. Near the Chapel of the Franks, the pilgrims were gathering for prayer. They began to chant in cut-rate plainsong, their nasal, New Agey monotone informed by a dreadful gusto that sounded as though they might still be going strong at dawn.

Lucas remembered the
majnoon.
If he went well and truly berserk, it occurred to him, if he leapt and shouted and screeched, they might be terrorized into releasing him. On the other hand, he thought, glancing around, he was probably under the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical authority of the Six Christianities rather than that of the State of Israel, at least until dawn. Misbehavior might subject him to ghastly admonitions or severe antique confinements. Chains. The rack.

Jesus Christ. Shit.

The Christians chanted lustily. Then, all at once, a sound like no other he had ever heard exploded in the place. It was like a sour note from a transcendental off-key calliope, as if all the reprobate jackhammers of hell were gearing up to vaporize the universe.

The wailing echoes were magnified beyond imagination by the cavernous hollows of the church, transformed into a cacophonous lament for history, or perhaps a very loud twelve-tone Mass, an apology of some sort for the crimes and follies of religion.

Lucas got to his feet. He was aware of the Christians calling out in protest, but he could not hear their voices for the great sacred noise.

The Palestinian workmen who had been praying before the Catholicon were gone with their equipment. Approaching the Chapel of the Franks, he saw the heart of the matter under dispute. The Orthodox patriarch of the church had chosen this night to launder his stone property—let vigils and mouthings of schismatics be damned. The proprietors of the vigil, priestly-looking foreigners in lay clothes, were remonstrating with the work crew. From the beatific smiles of the Arabs, who kept the steam coming, it was apparent the remonstrances were in vain.

The young man who had been at the door saw Lucas and shouted at him.

"Can you believe it? They're steam cleaning it! Tonight of all nights!"

It was very hard for the two men to hear each other, so they had to strain.

"Maybe," Lucas suggested at the top of his voice, "maybe they're getting ready to sell it!"

Then he went off to find a place to curl up and hide.

T
HAT EVENING,
Janusz Zimmer and Yakov Miller, the leader of the militant settlers' organization, sat under the olive trees in the garden of the House of the Galilean. Dov Kepler, the heretical Hasid, and Mike Glass, the junior-college professor and football coach, were with them. The religious Jews had removed their kippot to blend in with the Christian atmosphere of the House.

Sitting apart, about twenty feet away, in stiff chairs like those the men sat in, Linda Ericksen and a young man named Hal Morris sat side by side. Hal was clean-cut, North American—looking and so shy that, in pretty Linda's presence, he could do little but stare at his shoes.

"The rest of our equipment should come in this week," Zimmer told his council of war. He addressed himself principally to Rabbi Miller. "Everything we need for the removal. Lestrade will give Otis the structural layout and Otis will give it to me. Then we have a number of specialists to plant the material in the right places."

"What are they using?" the man from the West Bank asked. "Just out of curiosity?"

"Gelignite. Made in Iran."

"Will it go off?"

"Want to go and see?"

"I'm concerned with the loss of life," the eccentric Hasid said. "Our soldiers are stationed around the Haram. The Kotel plaza might be damaged."

"It will be minimized. There's nothing we can do about the soldiers. The Kotel will be all right."

"Jews were killed in the bombing of the King David too," Yakov Miller said.

Mike Glass frowned and rubbed his forehead.

"Very true," Janusz Zimmer agreed. "Now, if you don't mind," he said to Miller, "I'd like to talk to the young man you brought me."

Miller called to Hal Morris in Hebrew. The young man, whose command of the language was not expert, looked up startled and pointed questioningly to himself. Laughing, Linda urged him to stand and follow orders.

"You too, Linda," Janusz Zimmer said. "Both of you join us."

"We have some necessities arriving from the Gaza Strip," he said. He looked around at his fellow conspirators, resting his eyes longest on Miller. "This is where you come into our closest confidence," he told young Morris and Linda. "Linda knows this, you perhaps do not. We propose to destroy the enemy shrines on the Temple Mount."

"And rebuild the Temple," young Morris said, his voice breaking. "I've been told."

Miller looked at him with a pride that was like love. "Has a day been set?" he asked Zimmer.

"I was going to ask also," said Dov Kepler, the Hasid. "Some days, I'm sure you know, are more propitious."

"The Ninth of Av would be appropriate," Mike Glass said. The Ninth of Av was traditionally a day of lamentation among Jews. Both the First and Second Temples had been destroyed on that day.

"Tisha b'Av indeed would be," said Miller. "But it's a day lately when security is extra-tight. Although religious people would be observing the fast. That's a plus."

"A
rosh hodesh
at least," said Kepler.

Zimmer only watched them.

"Tisha b'Av is soon," Miller said. "Would we be ready?"

"A wonderful day that would be," Kepler said happily.

"No significant days," said Janusz Zimmer. "There's always the chance of some extra precaution. And a greater tendency to talk."

"Think of it," said Miller. "A holiday in the heart. Perhaps a new one for Jews everywhere. And then for people everywhere. Perhaps Tisha b'Av would be ended forever with the rise of the Temple again."

"It's so exciting," Linda said. "So wonderful to be a part of."

"
Baruch Hashem,
" young Morris said.

"Your black Sufi friend has got to be in the Strip again," Janusz Zimmer told Linda. "She's got to be seen there. On the day we move the explosives, you'll go out there on behalf of the Human Rights Coalition. Get Ernest Gross to let you go if you can. If he won't, just go. And you, Mr. Morris, ever been to the Gaza Strip?"

"No," he said, flushing. "Is it worse than Hebron? I've seen that. I've seen Arab hate before."

"Do you know what the Israeli Human Rights Coalition is?" Zimmer asked him.

"It's a leftist, atheist organization," the young man said, "of pro-Arab Jews."

"Think you can give a good impersonation of an IHRC fieldworker? Because we'll want to pass you off as one. That's how we get your friend to Nuseirat," he told Linda. "Tell her you need company. You're going to help Hal interview some witnesses to the sad beatings of the poor, oppressed Arab youths. With tapes, of course."

"And will there be interviews?" she asked.

"Kfar Gottlieb will round up some cooperative Arabs." Zimmer turned to young Hal Morris. "This is something you have to remember. You don't call them Arabs in the IHRC. You call them Palestinians. Like the anti-Semitic and left-wing press. That's the politically correct term."

Morris laughed. "Well, I'll work on it."

Janusz Zimmer kept looking at him.

"Are sure you want to be part of this? How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"In school?"

"Finished with undergraduate school. In the fall I start medical school at Hopkins. I feel doctors are needed. But I'll be here as much of the time as I can."

"You're convinced this is the right work for you?"

"Medicine?"

"Not medicine," Zimmer said. "This. What we're doing."

"He's convinced," Yacov Miller said. "What do you want from him?"

"It's like getting to be here in the earliest days for me," Hal Morris said. "Like the war for independence. Nothing makes me happier."

"All right," Zimmer said. "As long as you're sure. From now on, your name is Lenny Ackermann. Understand?"

"Lenny Ackermann," said Hal. "Right."

"Don't be too sure you'd have liked the old days, Lenny. The ambiance was very left wing."

When the meeting was over, Zimmer and Linda were leaving the grounds of the House of the Galilean when they happened to encounter Dr. Otis Corey Butler.

"
Shalom, chaverim,
" Dr. Butler enthused.

"Good evening, Dr. Butler," said Janusz Zimmer.

"I just thought I'd mention," Dr. Butler said. "I don't know whether it's important or not. You know the journalist, the American fella? I don't know whether he's Jewish or not."

"Neither does he," Zimmer said.

"Well, someone put him on to us out here. It turns out he's writing a book on the Jerusalem Syndrome, as he calls it, with Pinchas Obermann."

Linda, somewhat alarmed, looked at Zimmer. Zimmer appeared unconcerned.

"Good," he said. "He's picked an eventful period. For the 'Jerusalem Syndrome.'"

"I just thought you'd like to know."

"We knew," Zimmer said. "Didn't we, Linda?"

"Yes," she said uncertainly. "I suppose we did."

"If he should come again," Zimmer said pleasantly, "do let us know."

 

The next day Pinchas Obermann was sitting in the Atara when he looked up from his coffee and saw Linda Ericksen standing over him. Although Obermann was at his usual table, she seemed surprised to see him and behaved as if their meeting had taken her by surprise.

"Linda, my dear," Pinchas said, "please sit down."

He signaled for the waiter, who at first did not come. Eventually, when his curiosity about the young foreign woman at Obermann's table overcame his predisposition to be alone with his thoughts, the waiter condescended to approach and inquire into their desires. Linda ordered café au lait.

"I understand," Linda said, "that you and Christopher Lucas are writing a piece on what you call the Jerusalem Syndrome."

"A book," Obermann said. "Unfortunately, we can't claim to have coined the term."

"I have to ask you," Linda said, "if my husband and I appear in this book."

"No one appears by name."

"But many people would be easily recognizable."

"People familiar with the field, or the theme, might recognize individuals."

"This seems to me a violation of privacy," Linda said. "Possibly hurtful to careers."

"No," Pinchas Obermann said.

"What do you mean, no? Of course it is."

"What you're saying is, people who know the people will see what they know in print. People who don't know the people will see case histories."

"Oh, come," she said. "It's a small world out here. And in the field."

"I fail to see," Obermann said, "how a book like the one I've described differs from all the other books on all the other human subjects in the world."

"I know you so well," she said. "Too well to fall for your rhetorical techniques."

"What rhetorical techniques?"

"Come on, Pinchas."

"Neither your husband nor any of your boyfriends is going to come out looking bad. Nor you. So don't worry."

"Funny, I don't find that assurance very comforting."