The Jerusalem Diamond (26 page)

“Rohov Chevrat Tehillim,” she said reluctantly. “Number Twenty-eight.”

“Thank you. What part of the city is that?”

“It is in Mea She'arim,” she said.

More than a century ago, a group of Lithuanian and Polish Hasids broke away from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. Outside the Old
City they built a walled neighborhood said to contain exactly one hundred dwelling units, so that it came to be known as “the hundred gates” or Mea She'arim. Today most of the original wall is gone. Overpopulated by generations to whom birth control was a sin, Mea She'arim has become a teeming slum and spilled across its boundaries and around it have grown similar neighborhoods of pietists.

As Harry searched for Chevrat Tehillim, the Street of the Psalm Society, examples of religious guardianship were in plain evidence. On a wall a large sign, printed in English, Hebrew and Yiddish, proclaimed:

JEWISH DAUGHTER!
T
HE
T
ORAH OBLIGATES YOU
TO DRESS WITH MODESTY
.
W
E DO NOT TOLERATE
PEOPLE PASSING
THROUGH OUR STREETS
IMMODESTLY DRESSED
.

—
Committee for Guarding Modesty

On the next block another multilingual sign attacked the Israeli government for allowing human bodies, created by the Most High, to be desecrated by autopsies and post mortems.

There were no street signs. One street looked like every other, crooked stone buildings with shops on the ground floor below storeys of apartments. Harry looked around helplessly. Two boys played a furious game of tag, their earlocks flapping wildly as they ran. A young woman walked past him burdened with a bundle of wash, but she avoided his eyes. In the shade of a nearby building sat an old man in a black caftan and a
streimel
. He gave good directions, but when Harry finally found Chevrat Tehillim, the buildings were unnumbered.

He entered a shop that sold religious objects, intending only to ask for directions, but his eyes were captured by some beautifully embroidered skullcaps and he spent a few minutes choosing several for Jeff's bar mitzvah. The proprietor told him Number Twenty-eight was the building next to the shop. “Who is it you want there?”

“Professor Leslau.”

The man looked at him curiously. “On the third floor. The apartment on the left.”

The stairway of Number Twenty-eight was narrow and dark. Somebody had been cooking fish. When he reached the door to the left of the third stairwell he knocked, seeing no doorbell. There was a long silence; just as he knocked for the second time, a woman's voice asked who was there.

“I must see Professor Leslau.”

A moment later Leslau stood at the open door. “Hopeman. How did you know to find me here?”

Harry told him about the man in the store.

“He told you this apartment?” Leslau's lips thinned. “The dirty bastard.”

Behind him Harry saw the woman, perhaps in her forties. Her head was bound in a cloth and her lank body was shapeless in a loose brown housedress with long sleeves.

“This is Mrs. Silitsky. Mr. Hopeman.”

She acknowledged the introduction gravely. She wore no makeup. She had a sparrowlike, angular face and a sharp nose. “Let the gentleman come in,” she said.

“I'll take him to my own apartment,” Leslau said.

“As you wish.”

“But I'll see you later, Rakhel?”

She nodded. “A good day, Mr. Hopeman.”

“A good day, Mrs. Silitsky.”

He followed Leslau down one flight and then through the door on the right. “I don't understand. Why would he purposely send me to the wrong apartment?”

“It's complicated.” Leslau waved his hand as if brushing away an annoyance. “What can I do for you?”

The cynicism in the veiled brown eyes slowly disappeared as Leslau listened. It was replaced by dawning interest and then an almost unwilling excitement. “ ‘A guardian of gold.' What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word ‘guardian'?”

“The golden cherubs that guarded the Tabernacle.”

“Damned right you do,” Leslau said softly. “Let's take a ride to Ein Gedi.”

They had to walk five blocks to his Volkswagen.

“Why don't you park it closer?”

“I used to. Somebody slashed the tires.”

The proprietor of the shop where Harry had bought the
yarmulkahs
passed them. Leslau said nothing but the man turned in the street and spat an epithet. Harry heard the word clearly. He had called Leslau
noef
, a whoremaster.

When they reached Ein Gedi they drove slowly over the main highway, back and forth, searching for a pair of hills that fit the description in the scroll. Then they took the secondary roads through the kibbutz and past the field school.

“The ancient town would have been close to the fresh water,” Leslau said. “The hills we want will be to the east of the springs.”

There were two hills to the northwest. A clump of hills clustered to the northeast, stretching toward the low mountains in a pattern so irregular that Harry was immediately worried; it appeared impossible to separate any two hills from the rest. But Leslau shook his head and pointed.

“There they are.”

They had to leave the car and walk perhaps a third of a mile to the base of the smaller hill. The larger of the elevations was about fourteen hundred feet lower. The ground looked virgin and unremarkable.

“It could be here,” Leslau said. “If only one cherub could be found! I would begin right away to look for the other. Hidden somewhere between them is
aron hakodesh
, the Ark of the Covenant.”

Intoxicated by possibilities, they almost neglected to have lunch; but on the trip back to Jerusalem, Harry became aware of his hunger. They ate in a small Arab café, speaking sparingly at first, each busy with his own thoughts and dreams.

But over coffee, Harry looked at Leslau curiously.

“Why does a professor at the Reform seminary live in Mea She'arim?”

Leslau made a face. “When I came to Israel it seemed an inspired idea. I wanted to absorb the richness and bring it back to my students.”

“American-born students couldn't fully comprehend it.”

Leslau nodded. “Religion in Mea She'arim is handed down like a family heirloom, in exactly the same condition it was received. They even wear precisely what their ancestors wore in Europe. Their prayers never alter, even in inflection. Neither does their terrible code.”

“That's what makes the quarter quaint and charming,” Harry said mildly. “They have a right to live as they choose.”

“But in Mea She'arim, everybody must live as they choose.”

“There isn't a law of man or God that says you can't tell a religious Jew, a
frumer Yid
, to go to hell. It's the chemistry between Orthodoxy and the free thinkers that keeps Judaism bubbling.”

“Mrs. Silitsky and I have a relationship.”

“So? That's your business, David,” he said gently.

“It's Mea She'arim's business.” The archeologist was pale. “She's an
agunah
, a tied woman.”

“An
agunah
?” A married woman whose husband is missing but cannot be proven dead. Harry felt as though he were being slowly sucked into a Yiddish serial on the pages of the
Jewish Daily Forward
.

“Her husband Pessah went off two years ago. She can't locate him. Under Talmudic law, without his consent she can't be divorced or remarried for seven years.”

“Hire a lawyer. Scream to the authorities, the way you would in Cleveland.”

“In Israel, divorce isn't granted by civil authorities. Rakhel is
persona non grata
with the religious leaders she once followed. They wrote her off before I met her.”

“What did she do?”

“Mea She'arim is controlled by sects like the
Naturei Karta
, the Guardians of the City. They believe God will create the true Jewish State only after sending the true Messiah. They condemn man-made Israel as spurious. So they don't pay taxes or send their kids to state-supported schools. And they don't vote. In 1973, Golda Meir's government was in desperate trouble and she appealed for a vote of confidence in her labor coalition. Rakhel cast a ballot for the first time in her life.

“She and Pessah Silitsky fought bitterly over that and other things. She had begun to buy newspapers and read them when her husband wasn't home. Painfully, and against her will, she had started to think in new and frightening ways.”

Leslau allowed himself to smile. “But you might say he left her because of her cholent. She makes marvelous cholent, the old way. Since it's forbidden to kindle or put out fire during the Sabbath, on Friday afternoon she puts meat and vegetables in a pot. Everything simmers slowly over a spirit lamp all through Friday night and Saturday, to make a lovely meal by the end of the
Shabbat
One Friday night, as she was going to bed, a leg of the kitchen table collapsed and the cholent was dumped. Worse, flaming methylated spirit spilled over the rug, the wall and her kitchen curtains. Her husband came from their bedroom to find her beating out the flames.”

“So?”

“It's forbidden to extinguish flame on the Sabbath.” Leslau shrugged. “The next day their
rebbe
came. He asked whether her life had been in danger. She said she didn't know. In that case, he said, she had committed a grievous sin. Furthermore, he had been informed that she had shopped for food in stores outside their neighborhood. He himself had certified the stores in Mea She'arim as
glat kosher
, impeccably clean. Since she had bought her food elsewhere, from stores the
rebbe
had not personally inspected, he couldn't assure Pessah Silitsky that his wife hadn't served him
trayfs
, unkosher food, in his own home.

“That afternoon Pessah came home from work early. He packed a few things of value and left the house. She never saw him again.”

They looked at one another. “I didn't know things like that still happen,” Harry said.

Leslau pushed back his chair. “They do in quaint and charming Mea She'arim.”

“You're welcome to join in the dig,” Leslau said uncomfortably as he brought the Volkswagen to a stop in front of the hotel. Harry shook his head and then tried not to resent the relief in the other man's eyes. Leslau grasped his hand.

He knew the archeologist was expressing gratitude. It embarrassed him. “
Shalom
, David. I'll stay in touch.”

He had a solitary dinner in the hotel dining room. When he went upstairs, his room no longer seemed such a luxurious haven. He lay on the bed and thought about fat, middle-aged Leslau and his Orthodox Mrs. Silitsky. An unlikely Romeo and Juliet. Yet their affair had unleashed
feelings that surprised him. He was more aware of being alone than ever before in his life.

On impulse he placed a call to his wife.

There was no answer. It was midmorning in New York; perhaps Della was shopping. Or perhaps she was with somebody else, in an apartment he had never seen. He tested the thought as if probing a sick tooth with his tongue. He would have felt better if there had been pain.

In a while he went to the Jerusalem telephone directory and found the listing for Strauss, Tamar.

She sounded surprised to hear from him.

“May I come to see you?”

“I'm working, getting ready to return to my job tomorrow.”

“Your vacation isn't over.”

“I'm of no use to you at the moment. Why should I use up my vacation time?”

“Take a trip with me. Show me Israel.”

“Oh?” She hesitated. “I don't think I want to.”

“That means you're not certain you don't want to. Let me come over. We can talk about it.”

She agreed almost indifferently.

In the middle of the night he awoke to find that their bodies fitted against one another like two spoons. He anchored himself to the earth by slipping his hand beneath a weighty breast.

She stirred. “What?” Then she lay without speaking.

“Will you do something for me?”

She started to oblige sleepily and he laughed. “Not that. I want you to ask them to find a man named Pessah Silitsky.”

She sat up and looked at him. “It couldn't wait until morning?”

“I just happened to think of it.”

“My God.”

He got up and went to the bathroom. When he came back, she had moved away from his side of the bed and was making a soft little sound, not exactly a snore.

He liked her mattress. It took him no time at all to get back to sleep.

16

A RIDE ON A BUS

What he had in mind was a comfortable resort, perhaps with a good beach, but Tamar put some things into a knapsack and went with him to his hotel so he could do the same. She told him to pack the kind of clothes he had worn on Masada.

“Where are we going?” he asked.