Damascus Gate (24 page)

"The prophets died the Death of the Kiss," he declared. "And I will. And I will die to the world and all who follow me. And where I was, the old world will disappear and things will become the word of God incarnate. And this is what we mean when we say the world will become Torah."

The Gentile crowd praised the Lord. But at the gate that led out of the Pool enclosure to the
tariq,
an elderly, well-dressed Palestinian man, his features flushed with rage, was struggling with some men his own age who sought to restrain him. There were catcalls in Hebrew from the upper story of a nearby building. Someone threw a stone. De Kuff came up to Sonia.

"Do you remember the song, Sonia?" he asked her.

"
Yo no digo esta canción, sino a quien conmigo va,
" she said. She looked at Lucas, dry-eyed but obviously in a bit of a state. "It means," she told him, "if you want to hear my song, you have to come with me."

De Kuff had wandered off again; he had gone, pursued by his followers, out into the Via Dolorosa. There was a scuffling match between the disciples and a few people in the road. A police jeep started slowly up the cobbled street from the Lions' Gate. Lucas and Sonia fought to stay behind De Kuff. As they struggled to follow, he went through the door of the French Catholic hospice next door to Bethesda.

"He's going to get himself in big trouble," Lucas said. "And you along with him."

"We should get him out of there," Sonia said.

The crowd around them was mainly Palestinian now, as the Muslim Quarter began its working day. Boys were pushing wheelbarrows full of eggplants and melons over the cobblestones. Passersby, seeing all the agitated foreigners, stopped to ask what was going on. Lucas and Sonia went into the hostel and found De Kuff in argument with a French Sister of Notre Dame.

The interior of the hostel was redolent of France. Lucas breathed in the aroma of floral soap, sachet and varnish. There were fresh cut flowers at the reception desk. The first guests had come down for breakfast and were speaking French, adding the smoke of their first Gauloises to the mix, along with the smell of coffee and croissants.

A sleepy-eyed Palestinian youth behind the desk had put aside his copy of
Al-Jihar
and was staring in disbelief at De Kuff as the old man, all courtesy and deference, spoke to the nun in French.

She had gray hair and wore a seersucker dress with a black apron and dark cap. She looked over De Kuff's shoulder to assess Lucas as he came in. Her face clouded with suspicion.

De Kuff was clearly and confidently informing her that he might, upon occasion, require a room.

"Why are you here?" she demanded sternly in English. "What do you want with us?"

Lucas thought he understood what was happening. The French nun had recognized them, or at least De Kuff, for Jews. The Palestinian clerk, a non-European, was unsure.

"From time to time a bed for the night, Sister," De Kuff said. "No more than that."

"But why?"

"To be near the Pool," he told her. "And the church. In case of need. If the time comes."

"I wish I could believe you were only an enthusiast," the nun said. "I'm afraid you have come to dispossess us."

"You're mistaken," said De Kuff.

When the Palestinian clerk came around from behind the desk, she placed a restraining hand on his chest and addressed De Kuff.

"We have been here for three hundred years and even before that. Our rights have been confirmed by every authority. Your government is committed."

"You're mistaken," De Kuff said kindly. "I understand your mistake. You take me for an Israeli militant. But I was once a Catholic like yourself. I can show you a certificate of baptism."

He reached inside his jacket and fumbled for the thing and eventually found it among the mysteries of his pockets. He withdrew a decorative little folder in an envelope with a gold cord, with the signature of the friar who had baptized him.

The nun took it and put her glasses on to read it and struggled with the corded envelope.

"I must stay here," De Kuff said. He was becoming agitated. "You have to understand. I need to be close to Bethesda. I require its blessing."

He hurried from the room and into the refectory where the French pilgrims were having breakfast.

"If you could have seen the things I have seen this one morning," he announced, "you would glorify the Holy Ancient One for the rest of your lives. What you have come here for—I have seen."

The pilgrims at their café au lait and croissants stared at him.

"Who are you?" the nun asked Lucas. "Who is he?"

"I'm a journalist," Lucas said.

The nun cast her eyes heavenward and touched her brow.

"A journalist? But why are you all here?" she asked again.

"Only because he's our friend," Sonia said, "and he's not well." The nun stared then at Sonia and the coiled serpent at her throat. "In fact, he's a good man who believes in all religions."

The Sister of Notre Dame laughed bitterly. "Do you say so? In all?"

She turned away from Lucas and pursued De Kuff into the breakfast room. "What is it you want, monsieur?" she asked in measured tones, as though the language of clarity might put everything in order. "Why must you be near the Pool? Or St. Anne's?"

"To meditate," De Kuff shouted. "To pray. To hear my friends sing. And I can pay."

The nun puffed out her cheeks and exhaled, in the French manner. "I don't know what to think of you, monsieur. Perhaps you are ill." She turned to Lucas. "If he's ill, you must take him home."

De Kuff seated himself at the refectory table and rested his head in his hands. Sonia went in and sat beside him.

"Come on, Rev. Let's go."

"I told them," he said, "about
mors osculi.
I proclaimed the Death of the Kiss and I thought they would be afraid. But everyone was strong and it was all joy."

"I know," she said. "I was there."

"Presently," De Kuff said, "I'll lie down."

The nun sat down across the table from them.

"I think you
are
ill, monsieur. Where are you staying?" she asked Lucas in English. "A hotel?" The ouroboros, which De Kuff also wore, plainly made her unhappy.

"If I can rest a moment," De Kuff said. "Suddenly I'm very tired."

"You must understand," the nun said more gently, "the situation is very dangerous. An intifada is in progress. There are incidents every day. It may become dangerous. Do you understand?"

"We understand," Lucas said.

The nun was still working on the gold cord that sealed De Kuff's baptismal certificate.

"You must have seen others the same way," Lucas suggested to her.

"Yes," the nun said. She checked out his collar to see if he had one of the same necklaces. "Many," she said—relieved, Lucas thought, that he did not wear one. "But never such eyes."

"He's a good man," Sonia said. "He loves the holy places."

"So it seems," the nun said.

"We have to get him out of the Muslim Quarter," Lucas said. "People are thinking territory, period. Someone will hurt him."

"All right," Sonia said, "take him to my place in Rehavia for today. We'll find him a place somewhere."

Standing over De Kuff, the Sister of Notre Dame unfolded the certificate of baptism De Kuff had given her.

"St. Vincent Ferrer, New York, New York," the nun read aloud. "
Ah,
" she said, as though things had been instantly made clearer, "
vous êtes américain!
"

O
NE MORNING,
at her apartment in Rehavia, among her souvenirs of famine, pestilence and war, Sonia played Meliselda's song for Lucas on her guitar, singing along in Spanish and Ladino.

He had risen early from a sleepless night and gone over to her place. It was one of those Jerusalem desert days that could be a thing of dewy beauty at dawn and leave you suffering through a
hamsin
all afternoon.

"
Meliselda ahí encuentro,
" Sonia sang. "
La hija del Rey, lumi-nosa.
"

And it always ended: "If you want to hear my song, you have to come with me."

Sitting there, he realized how unlikely it was that, within the limits of his life as he foresaw it, there would ever be a woman to whom he would be more attracted, whose company and person he would desire more. He allowed himself to entertain the notion that her credulity, as he saw it, was a factor that could be overcome. As far as believing impossible things went, she could do it for both of them.

"I've got the whole group in a hospice out at Ein Kerem," she told Lucas. "Keeps them from wandering into the Old City, getting in trouble."

"Doesn't he still show up at the Pool?"

"Sundays at dawn," she said. "He hires a Palestinian car service to take him there and back. Not just a
sherut,
a full-dress limousine. He pays for the hospice too."

"Probably safer," Lucas observed, "if people think he's rich."

"Well, he is. It's handy. And I think he's converting his driver."

While the mood was still light, Lucas asked, "To what? I mean, what is it you characters believe?"

"All right," she said. "What do we believe? We believe that everything is Torah. That means—"

"I know what he means by it, Sonia. I heard him. Platonism, it's called."

"We believe that a time of change is here. That a new world is coming."

"That's what your parents believed."

"That's what my parents believed in. And look at me."

"They required a revolution."

"We do too."

"A sort of figurative revolution."

"No, man," she said. "The same revolution. Except it won't require weapons."

"Why not?"

"Because we believe that in our end is our beginning. That we have to stop being in the world the way it is. And if we want to change it, it will change."

"Right," Lucas said. "The Death of the Kiss. I wish that didn't sound so much to me like poisoned Kool-Aid. What else?"

"I think I know the rest," she said. "But I can't say it. Not until he does."

"Of course not."

"I'm sorry, Chris. Sorry if I sound like I'm blowing bubbles. That's me."

"Yes," Lucas said.

"Look at it this way," she said. "We're in Jerusalem. What happens here affects the inner life of the whole world. Isn't that true? Weren't you brought up to believe that? Even if you were brought up Christian, you must have believed that what happened here defined human existence. Doesn't it feel true sometimes? The specialness of our people's story? The teachings that come forth from our experience? I mean, think about it."

"I will," Lucas said. "Now let me ask
you
something. Do you really think there's a thing in the sky that cares whether the passing asshole down below is Jewish or not? It loves one set of little tiny figures down on Earth more than an identical set of little tiny figures? It imposes hundreds of really special, utterly meaningless responsibilities on them? Some ... some eternal, immortal oversized paperweight with a beard and wings who loves his little buddies the Jews?" He made binoculars of his hands and inspected the Spanish carpet. "Hooray. There they go. I mean, come on. This celestial leftover doorstop from the gates of Nineveh, except he's not under the sand, he's up in the sky? Forget it."

"History is history," Sonia said. "This people—ours, Chris—played an irreplaceable role in the moral history of humanity."

"Sonia, the universe does not care whether you're Jewish or not. Paranoids, Nazis care. Professional Jews and anti-Semites, people who need someone to hate. It's an imaginary condition, Sonia—it's in the heads of people who require it. Bigots. Chauvinists. God's own franchise, the cosmic home team? Give me a break."

"I'm sorry," Sonia said. "I don't think you really see it that way. Because then what are you doing here? What are you after?"

"Writing a book," Lucas said.

"I don't know how different we are," she said, "you and me. You try to act like you're content not believing anything, and I don't think I buy it. Me, I've spent my life learning to believe. To believe so it matters. You think I'm deluded. I think somebody has to be pretty deluded to be as without faith as you say you are."

"If I wasn't deluded," Lucas asked, "what would I have faith in?"

"History, maybe? Your own inner consciousness?"

"I don't think I have an inner consciousness," he said. "Just an outer one."

"Really? No inner resources? What do you do when shit gets impossible?"

"I drink. I go nuts."

"I understand," she said. "I used to do drugs."

"Me too."

"Chris," she said, "listen to me a minute. For all of civilization, Jews have been coming forward to speak for change."

"Oh, Sonia," he said, laughing, "don't you think I know the spiel?"

She put up a hand, palm outward, to override his protest. "Sorry. You get the spiel." She went toward him, then shrugged and folded her arms and half turned away, as if to make what she would say not be the spiel. But of course it was. "Because life is shitty, Chris, for most people. So you have Moses, you have Habakkuk, you have Isaiah, Jesus, Sabbatai, Marx, Freud. All these people were saying, Understand and act on it and things will change. What they were saying was true, man. Their lives failed, but
they
didn't fail.

"A hundred years before they burned Giordano Bruno in Venice, they burned a Jew named Solomon Molkho in Mantua. He was a Gnostic, a Sufi, a magus. He said when the change came the Dragon would be destroyed without weapons and everything would be changed. So we believe it's going to happen. Happening."

"'So have I heard,'" Lucas said, "'and do in part believe it.' Except I don't think I do anymore."

"Are you serious? Or do I just get some Shakespeare for my spiel?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "Is it to Raziel you owe all this?"

"Raziel only speaks for the Rev. It all happens inside him."

"
Inside
him?"

"On the level of emanations. Through the souls inside him. He's the one who does the fighting. With Pharaoh. With the Dragon. Hell," she said, "I wish he'd shut up and not go out and do his numbers. But he's suffering so much he can't stand it."