Authors: Naomi Ragen
Bev paused, considering the idea. She shook her head. “They don’t have enough discipline to be a cult. And there is no money changing hands that I can see. And people come and go all the time, so if it
is
a cult, it’s not very well run. They need some lessons from Sun Myung Moon.”
“I gather you, yourself, haven’t checked it out? Is it cynicism?”
“‘Realism’ would be a more accurate word. Oh, I went to a few lectures. Honestly, they were fascinating. But I’m very shallow. I learned everything I need to know about self-improvement from Norman Vincent. Give me a good
Hello!
magazine with pictures of Prince William to read on my time off, I say. Or a story in
The Sun
about poor Jade Goody with pictures of her going bald from chemo, then marrying her bloke, and saying good-bye to her kids.”
Kayla winced. “When does he give these lectures? Can anyone just go?”
Bev shrugged. “Go if you want. He gives a talk almost every morning and every afternoon. You see that path over there?” She pointed to a white-gravel road nearby. “Just follow it up the hill. You’ll probably see a queue going into this big, round tent. He’s very popular. No accounting for tastes.”
Every afternoon she considered going. If Bev didn’t like him, Rav Natan couldn’t be all bad! But something held her back, something she couldn’t put her finger on. Perhaps she was afraid of any kind of introspection, ashamed to look.
The days took on a surprising rhythm. She got used to going to sleep early, waking in the dark to cool showers, and friendly banter under inky skies. After that first day, she noticed that Daniel had begun working on the other side of the tel. At meals, he sat at the other side of the table.
It was almost as if he knew about her, she thought, knew that she was the enemy. She was hurt. Insulted. Yet in some ways also relieved. What would he do, if he knew? It was better this way. Better for them to be apart. Yet, she could not keep her eyes away from him, or her thoughts. At night, she dreamed of his tragic green eyes looking out at her from his dark face; his lean body standing at a distance, aloof and still. She didn’t understand it herself, this strange obsession. It was chemistry, she thought. That outer ring of electrons always seeking to be completed, to have the perfect eight; looking for the exact match that could supply what they lacked. Like oxygen and hydrogen.
Or perhaps the attraction lay simply in the mystery he posed. All things are imaginable under the cover of darkness, she told herself, allowing one’s mind to furnish all the right details to make a stranger irresistibly attractive. Reality, she scolded herself, which supplies its own details in the cold light of day, is not always so accommodating to our fantasies.
What did she know about him, really? That he had experienced a tragedy not of his making? That he had been on the road to a good life when evil forces beyond his control had made him swerve disastrously, destroying it all? That he had abandoned years of study, a profession, running away, because he felt unable to face the life he had worked so hard to achieve?
It suddenly dawned on her who else that could describe.
14
Then one afternoon, when she was off, she walked the white-gravel road up the hill, aware that all around her people she had never seen before were converging on the same path. They wore long skirts and turbans, bell-bottoms and cotton shirts with cowboy boots. Some of the men wore bright knitted skullcaps that covered almost their entire head, while others wore white crocheted caps. The long fringes of the men’s
tzitzis,
four-cornered garments worn under shirts, dangled down their sides. Everyone greeted everyone else with a smile.
“Hello, Sister!” “Hello, Brother!” they called out in Hebrew as they passed by. “
Shalom Achi. Shalom Achoti
.”
To her surprise, the tent was almost full when she got there. She sank down in lotus position on one of the many colorful pillows, looking around for familiar faces. There was Judith in the back, quietly conversing with a grey-haired woman in a magnificent cotton turban of peacock blue and green. They were laughing. And there, in the far corner, his face suffused in the light of one of the many candles that lined the floor, was Daniel.
He looked beautiful and tragic, she thought, studying the strong lines of his weathered face in the candlelight, which imparted a gentleness and vulnerability to him she had sensed but not yet seen. His eyes were intelligent
and searching. He wore the same dusty clothes he had on the dig. She wondered if he owned another outfit.
A low murmur began as a tall man entered and walked swiftly to the podium.
Suddenly everyone stood. “Blessings, Rav Natan!” someone called out.
He was much younger than she’d imagined, like one of those Israeli paratroopers who take off to India the moment they get out of uniform, returning with a beard and a mission.
“Please. Everyone sit,” he said in Hebrew, waving his hand with a self-deprecating smile. “Especially the people who dig all day. Sit before you collapse.”
Easy laughter washed over the crowd, as people made themselves comfortable.
“How do we know what our Creator wants of us?” he began with no introduction. “If God had told us directly, it would have taken away our choice, and choice is the most precious thing a man has. Yes, we must take ideas and directions from our wise men, but we must add of ourselves. We cannot copy.
“Each man must sing his own song. As long as you live, that song is being written. Your life is your song. No matter how low you have fallen, even if your life is full of misery, find in it one good thing, and that tiny spot of goodness will grow and widen. In an instant, you can reach the truth, see the good inside you. And the moment you find that, you will find God.”
He bent his head. Lifting his legs into a lotus position, he balanced on the chair, his hands extended forward, cupped open.
Kayla looked around her, surprised. The entire roomful of people had taken the same position.
“Close your eyes. Let your worries go. Imagine tiny paper boats holding little candles sent off on a dark river, each boat carrying another worry. Watch them float away into the distance. You know they are there as they sail past you, but you are no longer connected to them. You are cleansed, empty of cares. They are distant. Listen to your inner voice without worry or sadness. Stifle for a moment your own human noise. Listen to the Divine conversation.”
The room went absolutely silent, the only sound the intake and exhalation of human breath.
Kayla imagined Bev’s cynical face. Defiantly, she closed her eyes. What will become of me? she thought. I’ve ruined everything! I’ve left school. She put that thought into a paper boat and watched it flow down the river, distancing itself from her. I’ve abandoned my parents in their time of need! How will they win their court case! My father could go to jail! We will be all over the newspapers. Our family will be ruined! This thought too she lifted and placed in a tiny boat and sent off. Seth! She saw his furious face, his pain, his humiliation. She lifted the worry from her mind, placing it gently in a paper boat of its own, giving it a gentle push to cast it off far from her.
And as each unsolvable problem rose to her mind, she gently lifted it and sent it off, until all that remained was an empty space, a dark river full of tiny points of light like distant stars, detached and irrelevant.
She sat there quietly, at peace, filled with a strange sensation that her hands were no longer empty. Like a lost child whose parent has come to claim him, she felt them tingle with the warmth of connection.
Everything was in ruins. But her soul was still intact. God was with her, on this hill, in this room, commingling with the souls of these strangers.
Oh God, don’t let anything bad happen to my family, to everyone I love, Kayla sang in the silence of her ravaged heart, tears streaming down her cheeks, the prayer so long dammed inside her suddenly breaking free. Let them forgive me, and let me forgive them.
“Now, very gently, open your eyes. Connect to the world again,” Rav Natan said.
She opened her eyes. Across the room, she saw Daniel. He too was weeping, as a lost child weeps.
She walked down the starlit path back to her room filled with a sense of having returned from a long, transforming journey. She was elated, and weary, her heart wrung with grief and hope. Footsteps came up behind her. She turned: It was Daniel. She waited for him to catch up, wanting to reach out to him, to know him. But he passed her without looking up, his eyes fixed on the ground, his back bent, his footsteps weary and slow, as if each movement forward was filled with uncertainty and pain.
“Daniel,” she called out after him.
He turned around slowly, taking her in, his eyes searching hers. She took
two hesitant steps toward him, but he shook his head. “I can’t, Kayla. I just can’t,” he whispered, turning around and walking away.
Weeks went by, the days running one into the other. Mornings and evenings splendid with mountain sunrises and sunsets which blazed across the skies, extinguishing themselves in the sparkling blue sea. Day after day she found herself walking to the white tent, listening as she had never listened before. This was not a classroom, nor was this the kind of knowledge you wrote down in words on lined paper. It was something that melted into you, the way water melts into sand, she thought, invisible yet changing the texture of your being forever.
Wherever she was, she searched for Daniel, homing in on him with some strange instinct, longing to know every moment where he was in relation to herself. This morning was no different. He lifted his head, his eyes acknowledging her wordlessly. As usual, he sat in the back of the bus alone.
Impulsively, she followed him. “Do you mind?” she said boldly, amazed at herself.
He looked up, startled, his body stiff. Slowly he shifted over, making room for her. She sat down next to him. The flaps of their open jackets touched. He seemed uncomfortable, shifting over farther. She felt suddenly furious.
“Look, have I done something to offend you, Daniel?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, since that first day when you helped me with the wheelbarrow, you’ve done everything you can to avoid saying a word to me. You pass me by as if I were air.”
He was silent, shocked, she imagined, beginning to feel like one of those pushy, obnoxious American tourists who insist on getting their due from the natives.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry you feel hurt. I know by American standards, I have no manners. We Israelis are not big on ‘have a nice day,’ ‘please,’ and ‘thank you.’ We behave honestly.”
“Even if it’s offensive?”
“Have I offended you?”
“You’ve ignored me. I’d say that’s offensive, yes.”
“No. I’ve been aware of you every single day. Painfully aware.”
She inhaled. “What, exactly, is that supposed to mean? That my existence here pains you?”
“Yes. It does.”
She was mortified.
“But it’s not personal, not you. It’s… Americans.”
What a jerk! “What do you have against Americans?”
“Wide green lawns, July Fourth parades, Memorial Day sales, and national mourning over the rising price of gasoline.”
“Real tragedies happen even to people with wide lawns, parades, and sales,” she said softly, rising and moving deliberately away. She sat down near Judith.
His eyes followed her, then looked out the window.
“I can’t believe I just did that!” she told Judith, humiliated.
“Leave it alone, Kayla. There are so many things you don’t, can’t, understand.”
“Maybe.” She nodded, not up to a battle with Judith, but disagreeing completely: What was there not to understand? Rejection was rejection. It was a universal language.
The morning’s dig went forward with excruciating slowness. Her whole body felt weary, her mind shutting down, doing the tasks by mindless rote. She was bored with digging, weary of the heat and dirt. And lonely. So very lonely. When break time came, she moved away from the others, impulsively walking down the hill to the ancient synagogue Judith had mentioned. She would be late getting back to work, but so what? What could they do, fire her? Not exactly the worst thing that could happen, she thought bitterly. Perhaps that was what she really wanted.
The area was deserted, being too hot in the day for most tour buses. She stepped inside the flapping plastic covering stretched over the roofless structure. The mosaic floor was magnificent. Dating back to the fourth century, it had a leaf pattern surrounding four birds with long, graceful necks. She wandered
around, looking at the sea framed by every window. And then she came upon an inscription. The ancestors of humanity were listed—there was Seth’s name, right after Adam’s! She would have to tell him this, if he ever spoke to her again. And there was the list of the zodiac signs, but not the symbols, which were considered idolatrous, she read in the brochure from the Antiquities Authority that lay scattered around in piles. Next to that were the names of Daniel’s three companions, the men who by legend upheld the world. Adam, Seth, Daniel, she thought in wonder at the strange coincidence. She read the rest of the inscription:
Warning to those who commit sins causing dissension in the community, passing malicious information to the gentiles, or revealing the secrets of the town. The One whose eyes roam over the entire earth and sees what is concealed will uproot this person and his seed from under the sun and all people will say Amen.
“This person and his seed,”
her mind repeated, shocked. Children punished for the sins of the father.
She went outside, looking up at the path that led back to the dig. She turned in the opposite direction, toward the date palm orchard. Their swaying plumes were regal, their shade tempting and mysterious. They beckoned like a mirage amid the shimmering heat.
She climbed easily over the low fence, ignoring the
KEEP OUT—DANGER
sign, assuming it was meant to scare off potential date thieves. For what could possibly be dangerous about a date orchard? Falling dates? She smiled to herself as she wandered through the magical forest with its cool green shadows. She stopped now and again, looking up at the large orange-hued bunches at the very top of each tree, wondering how people could get up there to pick them once they ripened.