Damascus Gate Page 18

  "My poor baby," Zimmer said. "You've become a liberal."

  "Hey, Jan," she said, "I'm a person of color, you know. And sticking up for the Palestinians in this country, who are a despised minority here—that just may be my way of being a good Jew. So if a Jewish underground means what I think it means, no thanks."

  "Let me give you one last piece of friendly advice," Zimmer said. "Stay out of the Gaza Strip."

  "Jesus," Sonia said. "You're off the deep end, aren't you? I worked there, Jan. I may very well work there again."

  "So be it."

  "I'll tell you what," said Sonia. "We'll forget this happened—this conversation. I won't mention it. So we can stay pals."

  "That would be considerate," Janusz Zimmer said. "And I certainly hope we can stay pals. I'm not sure."

  "You know," Sonia said, "they say the truth is one."

  "Is that a fact?" Zimmer asked her. "Yours or mine?"

  21

  FOR WEEKS, on the days that he was well enough, when the spirit upheld his frail body, De Kuff went to the Pool of Bethesda. For years, Bethesda had been a gathering place for a great variety of strange pilgrims and seekers. Anyone passing it in the dawn hours would see scores of foreigners assembled, singly or in groups, most of them appearing to be in the grip of some torment or illumination, watching, mumbling prayers. Some faced toward the medieval church during its early Mass, kneeling as the consecration took place inside. Some of them read their Bibles, either silently or to a small group of companions. A great many simply sat or took the lotus position, palms upturned, listening to the proclamation from the Haram of the oneness, the mercy and compassion of Allah.

  The people who oversaw the area or lived or worked in it had become used to the morning and evening assembly. Since the first dawn De Kuff arrived on the scene, proclaiming the truths of the universe, the attention of this group of religious wanderers had come to focus on him. Also, their numbers increased. The larger crowds and the appearance of this new, radiant, ungainly figure attracted attention from several quarters in that city of impossibly delicate balances.

  The sheikhs of the nearby Haram, the priests of the adjoining churches, Greek and Latin, all became uncomfortably aware of the transformation taking place around Bethesda. Members of small, militant Jewish congregations asserting the sacred nature of the whole city sometimes wandered, armed, down to the Via Dolorosa for a look at De Kuff. The police took note but did not intervene, as long as De Kuff and his hearers remained off the street itself. If his preaching were to be prevented, it would be up to the various institutions that owned sections of the courtyard to complain collectively. And collective legal action was difficult for the divided sects.

  De Kuff became a more and more familiar sight at the Pool, and certain of the eccentric pilgrims became regulars and waited for him every morning.

  As the summer went on, De Kuff's crowds grew larger and larger. One morning, he decided to inform his listeners of the third principle of the universe. He had already preached two. Sonia and Lucas were in the crowd. Raziel had stayed back at Berger's apartment, playing his clarinet to the courtyard.

  "Why is there something rather than nothing?" De Kuff asked the crowd. It fell silent at his words.

  "That which is at the core of the universe utters words," he proclaimed. "The wind takes the words and scatters them. They take a million million forms like snowflakes. But the essential words remain, regardless of their infinity of superficial meanings in a blind world."

  "I like that New Orleans accent," Lucas whispered to Sonia. "Sidney Lanier must have sounded like that, you think?"

  But Sonia was transfixed.

  "If I say everything is Torah," De Kuff declared, "I say that life has myriad forms but only one essence. Its essence is inscribed in imperishable fire. Now the letters, the words, they whirl like leaves. But under the multiple disguise"—he smiled triumphantly—"one essence, one truth."

  It seemed to Lucas that the crowd grew closer to him at the words "one truth." As if it were a cold morning, as if they were cold and he and his words warmed them. Especially the words "one truth."

  De Kuff had a second principle of which to remind them.

  "The varieties and mysteries of the world will now be solved. That which began as imperishable words will become again imperishable words. The End of Days, the world to come, is at hand. In the world to come, the snake sheds its skin, the wool divides from the linen, all things. No more shadows on the wall of a cave. 'For now we see through a glass, darkly,'" he said mischievously, "'but then...'"

  He waited for a reply, and someone in the crowd said, "'Face to face.'"

  "Face to face!" De Kuff shouted in delight. "When everything is Torah. And the Messiah comes. Or Jesus returns. Or the Mahdi. And all know," he said. "And all partake. And there are no shadows."

  "This is far out," Lucas said.

  "No," Sonia said, "it's simple."

  "Maybe it's simple if you've believed in the dialectic," Lucas said. She was lost to him again.

  There were other things, De Kuff said, other things everyone must know. The time was ripe, the fullness of days was come. The pangs of the world being born were being felt.

  The crowd grew excited.

  "Jesus," said Lucas, under his breath.

  And there was more. De Kuff preached Hagar in the desert. When Hagar beheld in the desert the insight at the core of the universe, she could not believe she would not die.

  "Can I see the Lord of Seeing, can I see El Roi, and live?" De Kuff had Hagar ask.

  Then he talked about the Death of the Kiss. Because the new world was being born, because certain things could not be seen, understood, witnessed, without a kind of death, each person had to embrace the Death of the Kiss. In the Death of the Kiss, each died to the world. A kind of death in life must be practiced. It was a death, but it was life more abundant. It was being more alive to something else.

  "In the beginning," De Kuff said, "is the end. In the end is the beginning is the end. In the beginning..."

  Lucas saw Sonia fingering the ouroboros at her throat.

  "He's exhausted," she said. "He'll never come down."

  And indeed, De Kuff, his face glowing with mad enthusiasm and drawn with fatigue, went lurching across the courtyard. Some of the more enthusiastic of his regular following made as though to follow him. An old woman in black. A few weeping Russians. Some young European hippie types. Lucas thought he spotted the German majnoon from the previous Easter. Suddenly De Kuff stopped in his tracks.

  "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!"

  22

  ONE 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."