The Jerusalem Diamond (28 page)

“What is it?” he asked, just as Oved the Guide announced that the looming structure was the Monastery of Santa Katerina. It looked more like a stone fortress or prison at, literally, the end of the road. They sat in the bus for an uncomfortably long time. “Why don't we go in?” Harry called.

“There is only one gate, which is kept locked from noon to one o'clock and from three-thirty to six-thirty, while the monks rest and pray,” Oved said. “It has been the custom here for hundreds of years.”

At six thirty-two an anonymous brown arm opened the wicket, and they left the bus and walked through the small door single file. Oved led them into a courtyard and up a flight of stairs to show them the only other way to enter or leave the monastery, a rope hoist that dangled from the high stone walls. A monk in a brown cowl floated past without acknowledging their presence.

“Have they vowed silence?” Tamar asked.

Oved shook his head. “But only a few of them speak Hebrew or
English. They are accustomed to the occasional presence of tourists, whom they do not consider their greatest blessing.” He told them the Monastery had been built by Justinian I in the fifth century, at the foot of the mountain the Arabs called Jebel Moussa, on the site believed to be where God had revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush. Its library contained some ten thousand volumes, many of which were ancient manuscripts, including a copy of the famed
Codex Sinaiticus
.

“What's that?” asked someone in the rear.

Oved looked uncomfortable. “It has to do with the New Testament. A commentary, I believe.”

“No,” Harry said, “it's the Old Testament written in Greek.”

“Why did they copy the Old Testament?” Tamar asked.

He saw no graceful way to avoid answering, though the guide waited in obvious resentment. “There was no New Testament as yet. But the early Christians wanted to make their services different from the Jews'. Instead of using scrolls, they folded leaves of papyrus or vellum and stitched the folds. The codices were the beginning of books as we know them.”

Oved cast him a black look and resumed his lecture. “The original
Codex Sinaiticus
was taken from Santa Katerina in 1844 and placed in the Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg. In 1933 an English group bought it from the Soviet government for one hundred thousand pounds, half of which was donated by school children, and it went to the London Museum.”

“Can we see the copy that is kept here?” Harry asked.

“Impossible,” the guide said with satisfaction. He led them downstairs to a small room reminiscent of a tool shed; but instead of tools some shelves held row upon row of human skulls while others held stacks of bones, sorted and neatly piled: thighs and shins here, ribs here, spines and the small bones of the hands and feet over there.

The girl named Ruthie gasped and ran, followed by some of the others. “The one assembled skeleton here is that of St. Stephen,” Oved said. “The other bones are the remains of the monks who have served this place for fifteen hundred years. When a Santa Katerina monk dies, he is buried until his flesh decomposes. Then his bones are dug up and cleansed and placed with those of his predecessors.”

Tamar took his hand and they left the charnel house. In the courtyard,
Avi the Driver was trying to sell pale young Americans on a supper of crackers and the rest of the greasy sausage they had been served for yesterday's lunch. He said sleeping would be in two dormitories, one for women, one for men. “A rule of the Monastery. Anyway, we will only sleep a few hours, so we can reach the top of the mountain by sunrise.”

Harry and Tamar took their sack of oranges and wandered to the roof. It became very dark. The overblown full moon they had met on Masada was a high silver sliver. They made love the first time with clutching despair, still haunted by the bones. The second time was better, they were very solicitous of each other's pleasure. But his mind raced, busy with things he didn't want to think about. Despite Tamar's best efforts, God never put His hand on his shoulder and said, Fuck you, Harry Hopeman.

For him, the booted toe exploring his side settled it, the guide had been hired by someone who hated tourists.

“Get up. If you're going with us to see the sunrise, come now.”

Tamar woke as soon as he touched her face. Gummy-eyed, they fumbled with their shoes and then felt their way down the stairway.

The tourists were assembled in the courtyard.

“Anybody here own an electric torch?” Oved asked.

Nobody spoke up.

“Oh, well. That means we have only the two. I shall lead with one of them and Avi shall be at the end of the line with the other. We're off, then.”

They followed his light like sleepy moths. The ground was mostly large rocks lodged between huge rocks. Eventually, Harry turned an ankle. “For Christ's sake!” he snarled at Oved. “Slow down, people are falling behind.”

“We're almost to the stairs. There the going is easier,” the guide said.

Stone slabs had been set into the mountainside, one above the other. Oved told them monks had spent their lives making two trails on the lower slope, an ascent of 1,700 steps and a descent of 3,400 steps. It was a stairway out of a cardiologist's nightmare. They climbed interminably.

He was a runner but she wasn't, and it was all uphill. They agreed to take their time and to hell with the sunrise.

The guide pulled far ahead. The college kids tore by, running up the mountain, and others passed like ghosts. After a while it occurred to him that one of the figures had carried a flashlight, and he worried about the fact that Avi had decided not to watch out for stragglers.

It was still black when they reached the end of the steps. The upper trail was wider, and the sky started to lighten; as soon as they could see where they were going, they made better time. Despite his disclaimer, he discovered he wanted to see the sunrise from the highest place. He held Tamar's hand for the last mile, urging her forward.

The mountaintop was a stone plateau covering perhaps half an acre, surrounded by other peaks. Harry knew they were old, worndown mountains. But all he could see was a succession of craggy stone tors, lonely, windswept and awesomely beautiful. It wasn't hard to imagine that they were inhabited by God.

“Thank you for making me come.”

She kissed him.

The wind slapped at them as they went to the others. No one spoke, for the sun had begun to rise. The light was beautiful, but it paled next to the place.

He realized the smallness of their group. “Where is everyone?”

“We're the ones who made it,” Shimon said.

Harry went to Oved. “You'd better go back down. You've got tourists scattered for miles.”

“Some of them always turn back,” Oved said comfortably. “They'll find their ways to the Monastery.”

Harry looked at him.

“I think we'd better go. This bastard will make trouble,” Avi the Driver said in Hebrew.

“That would be wise,” Harry said, also in Hebrew. The two men started slowly down the trail.

“I'm going, too,” he told Tamar. She went with him. A few hundred yards down, they met the guide and the driver helping a middle-aged couple toward the crest.

“They say they're the last. All the others have gone back to Santa Katerina,” Avi said.

“I'll go down a bit farther. Just in case.”

There seemed to him to be nobody else. But Tamar touched his arm. “There. A good ways. Do you see?”

They hurried down the trail.

It was the elderly Israeli woman, seated on a rock. Tamar stopped. “She's a proud old thing. I think only one of us should help.”

He nodded. “You wait here.”

When he reached the old woman, she was pale.

“Everything all right,
chavera
?”

She glared at him, struggled to her feet. “I was only resting, on my way to the top.”

“Of course. May I walk with you?” After two steps she was leaning on him heavily. By the time they neared the top he was panting like a beast of burden.

She pushed him away. It was possible to see her marshall her strength. She walked briskly to where the others waited, casting back no word of thanks.

When they returned to the Monastery, Tamar went to the dormitory cot she had spurned the night before. He wasn't sleepy.

In the courtyard, a monk raked. There were no fallen leaves, no stones, no trash. He was making wavy patterns in the dirt, like the lines in the sand of a Japanese garden.

“Do you speak English?”

“A bit.”

“Would it be possible for me to see the library?”

“It happens I am the librarian. I am Pater Haralambos.” His English was excellent.

“
Haralambos
. ‘Shines with joy.' I am Harry Hopeman, Pater.”

“You know Greek?”

“
Poli oligon
, not enough to matter.”

The monk set down the rake and led him to one of the heavy doors that all looked alike. Inside, white plaster walls were lined with volumes.

“May I inspect the copy of the
Codex Sinaiticus
?”

Pater Haralambos took it from a cabinet and set it on the table. Harry opened it carefully. It was exactly as he remembered seeing the original in London, uncial Greek letters hand drawn on vellum in
brown ink. The first lines translated like an Old Testament just issued by the Jewish Publication Society:
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth
…

He looked up to see the monk contemplating him.

“You have been here a long time, Pater?”

“A long time.”

Haralambos had a narrow, hungerless face. Harry thought there was power in the lustrous brown eyes; then he realized it was profound serenity. He wondered if he might have achieved a similar tranquillity if he had not left the yeshiva. “Do you ever yearn for the outside world?” he asked impulsively.

The monk smiled. “It is not one of my temptations. I do not like what comes to us from the outside.”

“For example?”

“This morning on the roof we found birth-control devices. What kind of persons behave that way—in a place such as this?”

“Persons who do not believe it was wrong, Pater.” He looked away, to the
Codex
.

“I think it must have been the way the Romans behaved before their civilization fell. And my Greeks and your Hebrews. Do you see parallels?”

“I try not to,” Harry said.

As he waited outside the walls to board the bus, the old woman wordlessly thrust into his hand the piece of brain coral she had taken from the Red Sea. He started to protest, but Tamar placed her hand on his arm.

“You must accept it,” she said.

Exhausted, they sat dully as the bus took them back. When they reached the coast, a breeze blew through the open windows, adding sand to their discomfort. It was late afternoon when Avi pulled the bus into a Paz station for fuel. While others made for the rest rooms, Harry used the telephone.

There was no letter from Mehdi. The clerk at the American Express office said Mr. Hopeman had no mail at all.

When they arrived in Tel Aviv several hours later, they fled their prison, the blue bus with its silly balloon tires.

“I have never been so tired,” she said in the taxi that took them to Jerusalem.

“Neither have I.”

“My fault.”

“Damn right.”

They laughed for a long time.

“Ah, Harry. You're fun.”

At the hotel he felt the same heightened appreciation of luxury he had experienced after leaving Masada, but this time it was better.

They took an endless hot shower, washing each other. She was horrified when he responded to the warm soapy cloth. He hastened to reassure her; the flesh was willing, but the spirit was weak. She wore his robe during dinner. He saw with satisfaction that the room-service waiter couldn't keep his eyes away from her.

They were too sleepy to finish dessert.

Some time before morning he awoke and lay very still, thinking about a lot of things. He became uneasily aware of a stench that he traced to his bag. The coral the old woman had given him obviously contained tiny animals that were taking their revenge. He thrust it outside onto the ledge where it could bother only the birds, and then closed the window.

She lay naked, the sheet tangled between her legs. He knew suddenly what he wanted to do with the red garnet, and he went to the bureau drawer and found it, underneath his shirts.

He would polish it. Set it simply. Hang it on a gold chain …

There.

“Leave me alone,” she said in Hebrew.

She brushed the stone from where he had placed it between her breasts and it fell to the carpeted floor and rolled.

Harry sank into a chair and watched the growing light playing on her body. It was a sight that moved him more than the sunrise had on Mount Sinai.

17

THE YOUNG RABBI