One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross (15 page)

“How come they haven't got you?”

Yitzchak smiled in great satisfaction. “They can't. I'm married.”

“Yeah? Hey, where—”

“Back in the States. Gentile girl. We're getting a divorce.” He laughed coarsely. “That is, if and when the guy she's living with now decides to marry her.”

“Then you'd let the matchmaker arrange a marriage for you?”

“Sure. Why not? He couldn't do any worse than I did for myself. In college, the dean picks a roommate for you, and usually it works out all right. Same kind of thing when the
shadchen
picks a wife for you. It's like a business contract, and usually both parties are satisfied. When you marry for love, though, it's a different kind of thing altogether. You think she's the only one in the world and she thinks the same about you. Then after a while the spark isn't there and you begin to wonder if maybe it's because she's focusing in another direction, on someone else. Look at Kahn.”

“You mean our Kahn, the secretary? What about him?”

“Married five years or more and no kids. The older men tell him he should get a divorce, but he won't think of it. He's in love with her. You know where he is right now?”

“He wasn't at the desk in the front office. Yossi was there. I figured he was sick, or maybe making the arrangements for the trip to Safed tomorrow.”

“He's not sick, and he may not even go on the Safed
teeyul
. He's home watching his wife, that's where he is and that's what he's doing.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I heard Rabbi Brodny talking with Rabbi Ellsberg. They were joking about it. Their wives—at least Brodny's—socialize with Mrs. Kahn. She got a letter from some guy in America, an old boyfriend, saying he was coming to Jerusalem and would call Sunday—today. Being an American, I suppose he figured it was part of the weekend. So Kahn takes the day off to be home and make sure there's no hanky-panky. That's what marrying for love does for you.”

“How come you hear so much, Yitzchak?”

“Because I like to know what's going on. The teachers here, when they don't want us to know what they're saying, talk in Hebrew. They figure none of us know much of the language beyond what we've learned here. But I went to a Hebrew day school when I was a kid. And when I came here I went to an
ulpan
for six months where you lived in and were not allowed to talk anything but Hebrew, and when we weren't talking we were listening to radio and television. So I'm pretty fluent.”

“You're pretty sharp, Yitzchak. Don't you ever worry about cutting yourself?” Ish-Tov took a last drag on his roach and then tossed it on the concrete and rose to his feet.

“Hey, shred it,” said Yitzchak. “If someone comes up here, I don't want him to know we've been using the place to smoke pot.”

Obediently, Ish-Tov stepped on the stub and ground it to dust. Then he strolled over to the parapet that encircled the roof. “Boy, what a view,” he exclaimed.

“You'd better stand back,” said Yitzchak. “Someone might see you.”

“So what?”

“I don't think we're supposed to be up here. Besides, if it got known, you'd have guys up here all the time, and then where would we go to puff a joint?”

“Right.” Ish-Tov stepped back a pace or two but continued circling the shed now and then, raising the binoculars that dangled from his neck.

“See any birds?” asked Yitzchak.

“Just the kind that live in trees.” He continued to circle, and when he faced the Skinner house, he called out, “Hey, Yitzchak, come and take a look at this.”

Yitzchak joined him and looked in the direction in which he was pointing. “That hole in the ground?”

“Yeah. Looks like a grave.”

“That's no grave. I'll bet that's what Kahn was all worked up about last night. He was hotfooting it down the corridor like his pants were on fire. So naturally when he went in and closed the door, I stopped to listen—”

“Naturally.”

“Look, buster, in any institution or organization, you last longer if you cover your ass. Which means it's a good idea to know what's going on. I figure that when Kahn goes hurrying to see the director and barges in without even knocking, it must be something important.”

“So you stayed outside and listened? Did you bend down to look through the keyhole?”

“And maybe be seen by somebody? Nah.” He grinned. “I went to the door just beyond the director's and slid in there. That's kind of a storage closet with pails and mops and a little sink, and it's separated from the director's office by just a thin plywood partition. I could hear as plain—as plain as I hear you now.”

“So what did you hear?”

“Listen. Kahn had got a call from a former student who works in the Ministry of Education and Culture. The guy next door, Skinner, had phoned the Department of Antiquities—they're part of the Ministry, you know—that he'd discovered an archaeological artifact, and they said they'd come down and look at it in a couple of days.”

“So what's the excitement? They discovered an artifact—”

“Don't you understand? They could start a dig and it could spread to here, the yeshiva land. There's a theory that there must be a tunnel under the wall of the Old City—”

“That's silly.”

“Why is it silly? If you're in a walled city, surrounded by the enemy, and you want to send a messenger to your allies who are holed up in Ramallah, say, how would you do it? Or if you wanted to make a sortie and attack the besieging force from the rear, wouldn't you need a tunnel? But that's not all. Kahn was telling the director that the same thing happened here a few years back. They found an artifact and someone reported it to the Department of Antiquities, and Rabbi Moshe Stern, who was director before Karpis, and who was an activist, ordered the hole to be filled up.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The investigator for the department came and reported back that there was nothing of consequence here. See, he didn't want to get into a hassle with the religious establishment. But Karpis wouldn't do anything like that. He's the kind who would cooperate with the authorities.”

“Well, he's running the show, isn't he?”

“Maybe,” said Yitzchak cryptically. “Here, let me see those glasses for a minute.”

He peered at the trench, and then handing the binoculars back to Ish-Tov, said, “They left a couple of shovels there. Take a look. That shows they are planning on doing some more digging. Tell you what. How about we go down there after dark and fill up that trench.”

“Why should we do it? What's in it for us?”

“Because it would be a good joke on this guy Skinner—”

“But he could get in trouble.”

“All the better. And after a while, when things quiet down, we let it be known that we did it and we'll be bloody heroes here, especially with Kahn, and that could be useful.”

“But there's a big mound on either side of the trench—”

“A half hour's work.”

“And how about Skinner? Won't he see or hear us?”

“He's not home. There's never anybody there Sundays. That's the housekeeper's day off. She's Christian. And Skinner and that Arab usually go off. Usually they don't get home until after eleven, and make a bloody racket when they do. Look, soon as it's dark, I'll show you how to sneak out the back, and you'll go over there and start shoveling the dirt back. Then I'll join you a little while later.”

“Why should I go first? It's your idea.”

“Because it might be a grave site, maybe an ancient cemetery.”

“So?”

“So I'm a Kohane, a descendant of Aaron. I'm not supposed to be in the presence of a dead body, not even of the bones after centuries. Maybe that's what they found there—bones. That could be why Kahn was so excited. He's a Kohane, too. We are polluted by it for a whole year after a single contact. For a whole year we cannot perform a priestly function.”

To Ish-Tov, Yitzchak's religiosity, at such curious variance with his general attitude, was always a source of surprise.

“And it means so much to you?” he asked.

“A special privilege,” said Yitzchak gravely, “carries with it special responsibilities. Once you cover the bottom with a layer of earth and cover any traces of bone, if there are any, I can then come over and help you fill in the rest.”

21

Early Monday morning, as he did every weekday morning, Joseph Kahn descended from the bus and walked to the yeshiva, getting there just in time to join the group in the
shachris
service, after which he had his breakfast in the dining hall, sitting at the head table with the rest of the faculty. This morning, however, breakfast was somewhat hurried, for the big air-conditioned bus that was to take them all on the
teeyul
, a holiday trip to Safed, had already pulled up to the door while they were still engaged in their morning prayers. By half past eight they had boarded and were singing, laughing, joking, and waving at passing cars on the road. It did not often happen, perhaps a couple times a year, but it was, of course, all the more enjoyable for that reason. This outing was through the generosity of one of the wealthy backers of the organization, and the occasion was the completion by the advanced class of the section of the Talmud they had been studying since the beginning of the year.

The trip was a long one, but they would spend the whole day in Safed entertained and fed by members of the organization in Safed and would return late at night tired, exhausted. It was a break from their routine, from the study and the discipline, and they would savor it and talk about it for weeks to come.

At ten o'clock Monday morning, the chambermaid on the seventh floor of the Hotel Excelsior knocked on the door of Room seven-thirteen, waited a moment, knocked again, and then put her ear to the door to hear if there was any sound of movement within. Hearing nothing, she inserted her master key in the lock and opened the door. Noting that the bed was made, the bedcover neat and smooth as she had left it the day before, she went into the bathroom. There, too, all was in order, the towels neatly folded, the soap she had left, dry and untouched. She considered for a moment and then went to the telephone on the night table and phoned the housekeeper.

The housekeeper said, “The room was not occupied? The bed was not slept in? You're sure? All right, lock the door and go on to the next room. And, Yael, don't mention it to anyone.”

The housekeeper notified the manager, who came out of his office and motioned the tall, burly security guard to come to him. “Go up to seven-thirteen, Avi, and have a look around. The room was not occupied last night.”

When Avi returned ten minutes later, he said, “I double-locked the door so his key won't work. He'll have to go to the desk, and I'll open the door for him. His stuff is all there, so he didn't skip out to avoid paying his bill. Shall I call the Shin Bet?”

The manager, who had but recently been transferred from the Tel Aviv unit of the hotel chain, said, “Shin Bet? Why not the police? In Tel Aviv we always call the police.”

“Security is a little tighter here in Jerusalem. If we were to call the police, they'd just call Shin Bet.”

“All right. Call them.”

In the office of the Shin Bet, Israel's national security bureau, Uri Adoumi, chief of the Jerusalem section, sat at his desk, thumbing through the stack of files before him. He would pick up a folder, take a swig of coffee, which his secretary had brought in as soon as he had entered the office, then lean back in his swivel chair, his right foot braced against the open deep drawer against the pressure of the spring. Occasionally he would sit up straight to make a note, in which case he would take a gulp of the coffee before again resuming his recumbent position. He was a blocky, bulky man with grizzled, red hair, what there was left of it, that was rapidly turning a yellowish-white.

An aide, a young man in jeans and T-shirt, opened the door.

Adoumi sat up and said irascibly, “Don't you know you're supposed to knock?”

“Bourgeois formalities. If I knocked, you'd tell me to come in. If you didn't answer, I'd think something was the matter, so I'd come in to take a look. Either way, I'd be in. So why should I knock?”

“In the kibbutz, you never knocked?”

“If the door was locked, you knocked so they should come and open the door, but if it wasn't locked—”

“Suppose Shoshana was in here and we were fooling around?”

“Aw, you wouldn't fool around with Shoshana. Besides, she's sitting at her desk.”

“All right, what do you want?” asked Adoumi wearily.

“We got a call from the Hotel Excelsior, from the security guard. One of their guests is missing.”

“Missing? Since when?”

“Since yesterday, I guess. He didn't come down for breakfast, and his bed hadn't been slept in.”

“The call came from the police, or direct from the security guard?”

“From the security guard. He went up and looked at the room. His clothes were still there, so they called us. You want me to run up there and take a look?”

Adoumi surveyed his assistant, the sweat-stained T-shirt, the worn jeans, the heavy scuffed boots. The Hotel Excelsior was not the most posh hotel, but it was four-star. The guests, probably on a chartered tour, would be respectable middleclass people from whatever country they came from. And the staff would wear clean uniforms, properly pressed. He temporized. “They give you a name?”

“Yeah. An American. A Professor Grenish.”

“Professor Grenish? Seems to me I've come across that name, Grenish. Look, run it through the computer. Maybe I saw it on one of our lists.”

While his assistant was in another office, operating the computer, Adoumi sat upright, his hand drumming the top of the desk as he concentrated, trying to remember where he had seen the name Grenish.