O Jerusalem (30 page)

“Good day, O my mother,” I said to her. “We have come for the mules and the … things,” I ended weakly. She nodded, but her eyes had the expectant look of someone who does not comprehend. Holmes intervened.

“My mother, a few days past we left our possessions here with your son.” She nodded. “And two days ago some men came here and took two of the mules and most of the bags.” She nodded. “Where is the remaining mule?”

She nodded.

Holmes and I set out to find our transportation, food, and bedding, followed by the amiable old woman and half a dozen equally amiable dogs. There were no outbuildings near the house, but a path led through the bush, and there were the prints of shod hoofs on it. At the end of the path we found one mule and two sacks filled with food, blankets, and water, precisely what Ali and Mahmoud had agreed to leave for us. We loaded up under the watchful eye of the woman and her dogs, and went back down the path and past the house to the road. We thanked the woman, and she nodded, then raised her hand with a mighty clatter and rattle of bangles to wave us good-bye. The dogs began to bark as
soon as we crossed an invisible property line and became strangers once again.

“Why do I feel as if I’d just robbed a mental deficient?” I asked Holmes.

He nodded.

W
e stopped at the base of the wadi to share a cup of musty water and a handful of dates. I gazed sourly up the expanse of rough, uphill road that lay between us and the monastery, and drew a deep breath.

“Holmes,” I began. “It is hot. The humidity is debilitating. We have a minimum of food, barely enough water, and there is a group of men somewhere out there who would happily kill us both. It is, in a word, no time for an argument.”

“What do you propose?”

“I will beg you, Holmes. I will go on my knees if you wish, but please, as a favour to me, would you be so good as to let the mule carry you up this hill?” I took care not to add aloud, So I won’t have to when you collapse.

“Since you put it like that,” he said, and to my consternation he actually climbed on the mule’s back behind the rest of the load. And I had thought he was getting better: such easy acquiescence was a worrying sign.

O
nce again we were travelling in the direction of Jerusalem, and once again we were to be turned aside from that goal—although this time, I hoped, it would be only a peaceful and temporary diversion. What could happen to us in a monastery? The road, however, was a place of vulnerability, particularly with its antecedents in mind.

“Holmes, do you know what road this is?”

“Russell, if you are about to tell me the story of Joseph
and Mary with the pregnant Virgin perched on the donkey, I warn you, I shall not ride one step farther.”

“No, no, I was thinking of something much darker than that, although also from the Greek Testament. I believe this is the road where the traveller was set upon by thieves, and rescued by the Good Samaritan after his own people had passed him by.” I paused, and the balmy afternoon suddenly seemed to turn chill. “Did you look to see that Mahmoud had left us one of the pistols?” I asked in a small voice.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Russell,” said Holmes, sounding reassuringly vigorous. “This country is wreaking havoc on your already excessive imagination. Do try to control yourself. And yes,” he added, “we are in possession of both pistol and bullets.”

We climbed up out of the river Jordan plain on the rough road that followed the southern side of the precipitous Wadi Qelt. The heavy, damp air made breathing difficult and a cooling breeze an impossibility, so we sweltered our way up the hill, all three of us ill-tempered and drenched with sweat.

A couple of boys on a scabrous and undernourished donkey passed us at a brisk trot, going uphill. They called out merry jokes until the next corner had swallowed them, and I decided to stop for a breather when we came to a cave-like overhang that might well have been the place where Obadiah hid a hundred prophets from Jezebel. I watered the mule and ourselves, and stood looking out over the Ghor Valley and the northern end of the Dead Sea, brooding and silent and lifeless.

“Herod chose to build his winter palace here,” I said to Holmes. “He enjoyed the climate and the social life.” He did not answer. We went on.

The next party to overtake us was a group of English tourists, too high-spirited and well dressed to qualify as pilgrims despite the presence of Jordan River mud on their horses’ hocks. Two women in silly hats and half a dozen young men in uniform trotted past us on their
sleek mounts, paying us rather less attention than if we had been stray dogs on the road. We plodded on.

At long last, a track that was little more than a footpath branched off into the wadi to the right. It was very steep, in several places evolving into a stairway as it snaked down the sheer wall of the wadi, and in ten minutes we lost most of the altitude we had gained in the past two laborious hours. However, at the bottom of the wadi ran a deliciously cool, sweet stream, and we drank deeply and bathed our faces before starting up the path on the opposite side, towards the monastery that hung from a nearly perpendicular stone face.

If the Greek monastery we had visited at Mar Sabas was the product of mud wasps, I thought, the Russian St George’s had been constructed by cliff swallows. It was a thing of arches and windows balanced on an outcrop of striated rock, and looked as if the slightest earth tremor would flip it whole into the valley below; nonetheless, it was a lovely setting, for there was water here, perennial water, and if the higher reaches of the wadi were the standard mixture of rock and scrub, down here there were trees—not a great number, true, but they were actual, recognisable trees.

The clean air smelt of wet stone and green things, of incense and quiet, of sanctity and—flowers.

“Bees,” said Holmes thoughtfully as we passed a smattering of small, yellow blooms beside the path where the insects were working.

“Beehives,” said Holmes reflectively two hours later as we stood in the gardens with our monastic guide, watching the dusk draw in.

“Candles,” said Holmes happily later that night, when we were led into a small chapel ablaze with the light from half a thousand thin, brown tapers that gave off the strongest honey scent of any beeswax I have ever known. He plucked an unlit candle from a basket, held it to his nose, drew in a deep, slow breath, and went out of the chapel door with it in his hand. Outside on the
dimly lit terrace, watched by our guide (who was by now completely baffled) and by a large cat (who, judging by the state of his ears, had retired to the monastery following a full life), Holmes took a small object from his robe and unwrapped it: Mikhail’s candle stub, which along with everything but his money and his knife had remained intact in his pockets. He worked the wax between his thumb and forefinger to warm it and increase the surface area, and then put it to his face. He smelt it deeply, then did the same to the candle he had just taken from the chapel, and again the stub. His bruised features relaxed into a look of satisfaction, and he turned to the uncomprehending and frankly apprehensive monk.

“I should like to see the abbot, please.”

The bare necessities are basic; luxuries are secondary. Thus, Bedouins are basic, prior to cities and sedentary people
.
Bedouins are clearly nearer to goodness than are sedentary people
.

—THE
Muqaddimah
OF IBN KHALDÛN

bbot Mattias was a true creature of the desert, as hard, prickly, and unyielding as any bit of rock-rooted scrub we had avoided in the past weeks. Holmes took one look at him and abandoned all thought of pretence. The telling of our story, in which I played no individual rôle and which sounded more and more unlikely with each successive twist and turn, appeared to make absolutely no impression on the religious. He sat back in his heavy carved chair with his hands threaded together over the front of his habit, his eyes on Holmes, his only movement the occasional drowsy blink of his eyelids, like a lizard. The two candles on his table burnt down. Holmes talked. I sat. The abbot listened.

Holmes told him more or less everything, omitting only our true names and skirting around the details of what had happened to him at the villa north of
Ram Allah. Eventually he had brought us from England up to the present, to our arrival at the monastery and the confirmation that Mikhail’s candle stub had almost certainly originated here. He then stopped talking. The abbot blinked slowly, waited for a moment as if to be certain that his guest had finished, and then unthreaded his clasped fingers and wrapped his hands instead along the fronts of the arm rests. The seat was transformed into a place of judgement.

“May I see your back, please,” he said.

Whatever Holmes had expected, it was not this. His face grew dark. There was no reading the abbot, absolutely no way of telling if he sought confirmation of Holmes’ story, wished to see if the injuries needed medical attention, or was simply curious. Perhaps he even thought to put Holmes to a test. If the last, he was remarkably perceptive: Holmes was not one to display willingly any signs of weakness or failure. I do not know what Abbot Mattias wanted, and I never asked Holmes how he perceived the request. I believe, however, that he saw it as a challenge, by a man in a superior position, and he responded the only way possible: He stood up and pulled his robe over his head.

I averted my eyes to study an age-dark painting of Virgin and Child, the maternal figure gazing out with the weight of the world’s suffering on her accepting shoulders. After what seemed a very long time, the rustle of Holmes’ clothing ceased and I heard the creak of leather that indicated Holmes’ weight settling back onto his chair. When I looked back at the abbot I had the shock of finding his eyes on me. And very discerning eyes they were.

“What of your companion?” he asked Holmes.

“He—”

“I am a woman,” I said. I thought this came as no surprise to the good father, and indeed, for a brief instant I imagined a gleam in the back of his dark eyes. He leant forward over his knees for a moment, then
pushed himself upright and moved across the room to an ancient, worm-eaten cabinet of time-blackened wood. The moment he moved I realised how much older he was than I had thought. Eighty? Ninety? His voice, speaking English with a light Russian accent, was that of a man half his age.

He opened the cabinet and took out a bottle that had no label and had, judging by the scratches and wear, been re-used any number of times. His gnarled hands eased up the cork and he poured the thick, black-red wine into three squat and equally abraded glasses. One he placed on the desk next to me, the second near Holmes. The third he carried back to his chair and cupped in his hands, looking into it as if consulting an oracle.

“That you were maltreated by a man who uses the methods of our late oppressors, I take as a sign in your favour,” he said without preliminary. “That you were befriended by Dorothy Ruskin, the mad archaeologist of Jericho, I take as another indication of good-will. That you walk with the men known as Ali and Mahmoud Hazr confirms the impression. And last, that you act as champion for Mikhail the Druse, whose death has left this world a lesser place, leaves no question.” He looked up, and his face cracked into a thousand wrinkles that took me a moment to recognise as a wry smile. “A monastery may not be of the world, but it most assuredly is in it. Particularly its abbot. What can I do for you?”