The Jerusalem Diamond (29 page)

He put on his running pants and track shoes, then he wrapped his laundry and addressed it to Della. Tamar continued to sleep as he let himself out of the room. When he had mailed the package to New York, he stood blinking in the sun at a youth selling pretzels outside the post office. “
Chaver
, where can I find a place where they polish stones? You know, for jewelry?”

“There's a shop outside the Old City. Makes things of Eilat stone. Near the Jaffa Gate.”

“
Todah rabah
.” He jogged away. Running in Jerusalem was different than in Westchester. On the sidewalks he wove through a broken field of priests, old Jews, kids, a fat Arab trundling a barrow of rocks. He slowed to a crawl while crossing streets; even when a traffic light protected him, he had learned to be terrified of Jerusalem drivers.

It was already hot. By the time he found the shop he had a beautiful sweat. The proprietor was setting out trays of rings and bracelets.

“You came from the Olympics to buy my things?”

“Will you sell me some carborundum powder?”

“What do you want with carborundum?”

“I polish stones, a hobby.”

“A hobby! Bring in the stone, I'll polish it cheap.”

“I want to polish it myself.”

“I don't use powder, I use carborundum cloth.”

“Better yet, if you have some to spare. And I need acetic acid.”

“I only have oxalic.”

“Fine. Levigated alumina, for the finish?”

“Look here, it's dearer than dear. I don't have much, and I have to go to Tel Aviv to get it. I sell jewelry, not supplies.”

“I'll only need a little. I'll pay whatever you ask.”

The man shrugged and got the things. He wrote some figures, then totaled them and shoved the paper toward Harry.

“It's fine. I appreciate it.” Harry paid him in dollars. “First sale of the day.”

The man pushed the cash register key. “That's a sale?” he said.

He thought she was still asleep when he let himself back in.

He applied a few drops of acid to the garnet. When it had had a chance to work, he began to rub the stone hard with the carborundum cloth.

“What are you doing?”

“Polishing.”

She got up and put on his robe. Then she took her clothes and her toothbrush into the bathroom. He sat and polished while the shower ran.

“Keep the robe,” he said when she came out. “It looks much better on you than on me.”

She frowned. “Don't be silly.” She hung it in his closet. “Could that really have been a biblical stone?”

“Without evidence it doesn't matter.”

“If it
was
—how would it have been used?”

“It might have been part of the Temple treasury or belonged to one of the kings. The only stone described in the Bible that matches its color is the emerald of the Breastplate.”

“That isn't an emerald.”

He chuckled. “No, but their classifications were usually wrong. The stone of the tribe of Levi probably looked very much like this.”

“Oh. I would enjoy thinking this was the Levi stone. My family are Levites.”

“Mine, too.”

“Really?” She sat next to him. She smelled of his soap. “Isn't that extraordinary? See how dark my skin is next to yours.”

“Yes.”

“We speak different languages. We have different customs. Yet apparently, thousands of years ago, our families sprang from the same tribe.”

He got up and let the water run over the stone in the sink. The acid had helped to remove some of the gritty outer layer. “I'll make you a brooch,” he said, holding it up.

She sat still. “Harry, I don't want your robe. Or a brooch.”

“I want to give you things.”

“And I don't want anything from you.”

He knew what she was telling him. He touched her hair. “You do sometimes.”

She flushed. “That's different.” The long brown fingers held his arm. “It isn't you. I won't open myself to anyone that way again. I can't risk the pain.”

It was time to retreat. He was beginning to understand her, to tune in on her fear. “I can't even buy you breakfast?”

She looked relieved. “You can buy me breakfast, please.”

“It's still early. I'm sorry I woke you.”

“No, I have been up. I talked with Ze'ev on the telephone. They found that man you asked me about, Silitsky.”

“Hah, Pessah Silitsky! Where is he?”

“In Kiryat-Shemona.”

“I think I'd better tell David Leslau,” Harry said.

“Please, Harry,” Leslau said nervously. “You must do it for me.”

They were sitting on camp chairs in a scruffy tent at the bottom of the smaller of the two hills near Ein Gedi. He could hear the digging going on outside, in a series of shallow trenches that checkered the lower slope. The camp disappointed him; the men in the trenches could have been laying sewer pipe. Leslau had told him that so far they had uncovered absolutely nothing of archeological interest.

“You should go to Kiryat-Shemona yourself. You're the one who wants to marry Mrs. Silitsky.”

“That's just it. Her husband will resent me. I won't be able to make him change his mind about giving her a divorce. Anything I say to the authorities will be suspect because I'm not a disinterested party.” He took his notebook and wrote in it. “Here's the number at the field school of the Society for the Preservation of Nature. I can stay close to their telephone all afternoon.”

He was waiting anxiously.

Harry sighed and held out his hand for the number.

“I'll never forget this,” Leslau said.

Mount Hermon took ghostly shape on the northwest horizon as the car neared the Hula Valley. It was fortunate the road was straight; he kept his eyes on the snow-covered peak growing larger against the Gauguin sky.

Kiryat-Shemona proved to be small and agricultural, new apartment buildings and shabby old houses. He stopped a man who was crossing the street.

“
Sleekhah
. Can you tell me where to find a rabbi?”

“Ashkenazi rabbi or Sephardic rabbi?”

“Ashkenazi.”

“Rabbi Goldenberg. Two streets down, go left. Third house from the end, on the right.”

It was a small house with peeling green paint. The man who answered his knock was young and large, with a glossy brown beard.

“Rabbi Goldenberg? My name is Harry Hopeman.”

The rabbi's hand wrapped around his. “Come in, come in. American?”

“New York. You?”

“I was given
smicha
at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. It's in Flatbush.”

Harry nodded. “I studied for a while at Yeshiva Torat Moshe in Brownsville.”

“Rabbi Yitzhak Netscher's yeshiva! When did you leave?”

“Years ago. I only lasted a few months.”

“Ah, a dropout. And where did you drop to?”

“Columbia.”

Rabbi Goldenberg grinned. “A larger place but a weaker faculty.” He motioned Harry into a chair. “What are you doing in Kiryat-Shemona?”

“Looking for justice,” Harry said.

“Got a lamp?”

“I mean it. I have a friend who's an
agunah
.”

The grin faded. “A very good friend?”

“No. She and a friend of mine are very good friends.”

“I see.” The rabbi's fingers began to search through his brown beard. “Was her husband a soldier? Is he missing in action?”

“No, he just ran away.”

The rabbi sighed. “There can be no divorce unless he institutes it. It's one of the few flaws in a beautiful set of ancient laws. Unless you can locate him, there's nothing I can do.”

“We think he's in Kiryat-Shemona. His name is Pessah Silitsky.”

“Silitsky?” He raised his voice. “Channah-Leah!”

A young woman came to the doorway, feeding a bottle to a baby. Her housedress showed damp stains on the shoulder, where the baby had spit up, and despite the heat her head was bound in a kerchief. She didn't look at Harry.

“You know somebody named Pessah Silitsky?” the rabbi asked her in Yiddish.

“Here, Herschel?”

“Yes, here.”

She shrugged. “Peretz, at the Municipal Office would know.”

“Yes. Peretz will know. So will you call him for me?”

She nodded and moved away.

“Peretz knows everybody.” He moved to his bookcase. “In the meantime, let us see what Maimonides had to say about this kind of a
tsimmes
.”

“Good, I like him. He was in my business.”

The young rabbi peered at him. “Doctor, lawyer or philosopher?”

“Diamonds.”

“Ah, diamonds. Hopeman's? On Fifth Avenue?”

Harry nodded.

“So.” He turned back to the volumes. “Here it is,
The Book of Women
.” He sat and began to turn pages, humming. Not a Hebrew
melody. Harry recognized the tune eventually, “Hard Day's Night.”

In a few minutes his wife came back. “Peretz says he is a bookkeeper in the office of the dairy.”

Rabbi Goldenberg nodded. “Ah, the office of the dairy. Let's go and see him,” he said.

The dairy office turned out to be small and crowded. At one of the desks, a woman sat and worked in an open ledger. At the other, a slender and ordinary-looking man sorted a pile of forms. There was the beginning of baldness under his
yarmulkah
, but his blond beard was still full. He looked younger than Mrs. Silitsky; Harry wondered if that was the case or if Rakhel Silitsky's Orthodox style of dressing had caused him to think her older than she was.

“You are Pessah Silitsky?” Rabbi Goldenberg asked in Yiddish.

The man nodded. A dairyman came in from the next room for a moment and placed more forms on the counter. While the door was open, the little office was filled with the clanking of cream separators.

“I am Rabbi Goldenberg. This is Mr. Hopeman.”

“How are you?” Silitsky said.

“In good health, thank the Holy One.”

“Blessed be His name.”

The Rabbi glanced at the woman working at the other desk. “Is it possible for us to speak outside? Concerning a personal matter.”

Silitsky's face became wary, but he stood and nodded. He followed them through the door.

The three men walked away from the dairy. “It's about your wife,” Rabbi Goldenberg said.

Silitsky nodded without surprise.

“This man says you made her an
agunah
.”

Silitsky looked at Harry. They were coming to a bench in the shade of a pine. “Let's sit,” Harry suggested. He ended up in the middle, an uncomfortable place.

“It's a terrible thing to make a woman an
agunah
,” the rabbi said. “Sinful.”

“You are the American professor?”

Harry realized the man had him confused with David Leslau. “No, no. A friend of his.”

Silitsky shrugged. “I, too, have friends. They tell me things.”

Rabbi Goldenberg began to twist his beard around his finger. “When did you go away from her?”

“It is two years now. About that.”

“You send her money?”

The man shook his head.

“So,” the rabbi said softly, “how does she survive?”

Silitsky was silent.

“I believe she works in a bakery,” Harry said.

Rabbi Goldenberg sighed. “The sages say a man should honor his wife more than his own self.”

“People laughed because I couldn't control her,” Silitsky said slowly. “The sages also say a wife should honor her husband exceedingly, hold him in awe. Isn't it so?”

“Ah, you have knowledge of the law?” the rabbi said.

Silitsky shrugged.

“Then you may know that when a man marries, Jewish law obligates him to give his wife ten things. Seven of these are ordained by the scribes. But the Torah—
the Torah!
—says a husband owes his wife her food, her clothing and her sexual life.” He leaned past Harry. “Do you wish to return to her bed as a husband?”

Silitsky shook his head.

“Then, untie her,” the rabbi said.

Silitsky studied his shoes. “I am willing.”

“You are not a
Kohen
, by any chance?”

“Yes, I am a
Kohen
.”

“Ah. You know that once a
Kohen
has renounced a wife, he is not allowed to remarry her?”

“Of course I know that.”

The rabbi nodded. “The next session of the rabbinical court will be on this Thursday afternoon. Will you appear before the
Beth Din
at two o'clock to divorce her?”

“Yes.”

“Once before you ran away. Will you, then, be a person this time and not run?”

Silitsky looked at him steadily. “I never intended to let it go so long. At first I was very angry, and then …” He shrugged.

The rabbi nodded. “The rabbinical court will meet in my synagogue. You know where it is?”

“Yes. I attend Rabbi Heller's synagogue, the little Polish
shul
.”

Rabbi Goldenberg smiled. “But Thursday, you will attend mine?”

“I will be at your
shul
.” Silitsky stood, obviously relieved. He shook hands with both of them.

Harry watched him walk away. “That's all there is to it?” His palms were wet.

“Hardly. He has agreed. There is still the matter of the divorce.”

“Will it be granted?”

“Most certainly.”

“His
rebbe
in Mea She'arim …”

Rabbi Goldenberg's fingers scrabbled irritably in his brown beard. “Mr. Hopeman, do we have a pope? His
rebbe
is a rabbi, as I and my colleagues are rabbis. She will receive a
get
, a certificate of divorce, from an authorized
Beth Din
, and ninety-one days after that she may remarry.”

They walked back to the car. “Want to hear something crazy, Rabbi? The man I'm representing—Mrs. Silitsky's friend? A few weeks ago I didn't know him. What am I doing here?”