The Jerusalem Diamond (37 page)

“Supporting you.”

“I can support myself.”

She moved her foot but he followed it with his. “It gives me pleasure to support you.” His toes previewed, barely stroking her sole. “We could live six months here, six months at home.”

“That takes a great deal of money. You have more than you need?”

“Yes. That bothers you?”

“Hardly. I would enjoy spending money. Only …”

“What?”

“You always buy too much of everything,” she said shrewdly. “Too much wine, too much cheese, too many grapes, too many apples.”

“Not too many apples.” He got up and brought the basket to the bed. He spread her legs and began to place apples all around her, outlining her with
hmer
and
sfer
.

He put the yellow grapes on her dark thatch, a garnish. “They're shaped like your breasts and
takhat
. I wish we had pears, they're the most erotic. Is there a Hebrew word for someone queer for pears?”

“We call him
pri
, a fruit,” she said. Her laughter bubbled into his mouth. She kissed him fiercely and he saved the grapes.

Each of them became very serious and hardworking. She touched him tenderly, as if feeling for damages. The muscles in her calves began to tighten, her nipples were like Hermon, her eyes became the barest of slits.

“
Akhshav
,” she said, but the Hebrew word didn't register and he kept on doing what he was doing.

She bit him, hard. “Let my beloved come into the garden.”

Not bad, a part of him was able to think admiringly: Biblical sex play. “I will climb up into the palm tree,” he said, his eyes locking into the warm eyes in the brown face. They both hung back, motionless. Then, each time, an apple or two fell from the bed. Bump. Bump. Bump-bump. Bump. And rolled to form a free design all over the floor.

Later they fed each other grapes and he had a red apple, she a yellow. The room smelled of her and fruit as well as the new pine.

“I have to stay here, in this country,” she said.

“Without you, Israel will fail?”

“One might say.”

“You'll have to explain. I lose my sense of humor, after.”

“Israel can become like those quail that drop to the beach at el-Arish. The struggle can exhaust it, leave it defenseless.”

“From what I've seen, Israel isn't defenseless,” he said drily.

“Bad housing and shabby clothing can do what bullets couldn't, Harry. More people are running away than are coming in.”

It was growing dark. He leaned over and turned on the lamp, and she left the bed and pulled down the window shade. She put on her robe and came back to him. He had been sweating from the lovemaking but now it was cold. He opened the robe and pressed against her but there wasn't enough robe to cover them both.

There was a tiny pulse he hadn't noticed before, beating in her neck.

“Live with me here,” she said.

They looked at one another. “Don't say yes or no, just think about it,” she said. “Living will be very hard in Israel,” she said scrupulously. “If you live here, some people in America will call you an oppressor.”

“I wouldn't give a damn about that.”

“It's a hard thing to bear. The whole world knew the early settlers were heroes so
they
knew it too. It gave them courage to fight, even the old men and the children. Ze'ev's father came here a twelve-year-old orphan and at that age he fought.”

“Why do you keep mentioning Ze'ev?”

“I don't.”

“Do me a favor? I don't want to talk about Ze'ev Kagan. Not about his hobbies, not of his political hopes and ambitions, or about his father.”

“Do
me
a favor. Go to hell. Or go to New York.” She closed her eyes. They lay without speaking.

She warmed his front, the robe came over his side and there was gooseflesh on his behind. “I'm going to take a shower,” he said finally. Both the hot and cold faucets in the bathroom gave cold water. He
stood under the spray and shivered as the last of any good feeling drained away.

When he came out she was on her hands and knees, picking up the apples.

“Let them stay where they are.”

“They are food.”

He helped her pick them up. “We won't waste them.” It took him a while to become aware that she was crying.

“Tamar.”

She looked up at him. “Why did you have to start with me?” she said bitterly.

During the night he awoke and lay there gripped by love of such intensity that he was surprised. It was different from the feeling he had for her; he had long since acknowledged to himself that he loved her.

Israel.

Why not?

He was still young. He could be a part of this.

He read his life like a blueprint on the dark ceiling. He would earn his living somehow at the diamond exchange in Ramat Gan. Perhaps they could get a piece of land near here, where he could see Mount Hermon and raise the Turkish apple.

The pulse in her neck struggled under his brushing lips, and she stirred.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered in Hebrew.

23

THE WELL AT GHÀJAR

In the morning they awoke to the sound of shelling in Lebanon. They left Neve Ativ early and drove down the mountain to Ghàjar, where they breakfasted in an outdoor café and watched what appeared to be the entire population. A few of the people watched them back, but most of them kept their eyes on the village well, into which a man had been lowered.

The café owner explained that the workman was clearing accumulated silt from the bottom, so the well would hold as much water as possible from the next spring's runoff. By the time they were on their coffee, the pails being hauled from the well contained muddy water instead of muck, and the onlookers were beaming and nodding in approval.

“They are Alaouites, very nice people,” Tamar said.

“Moslems?”

“An offshoot. They venerate Ali, Mohammed's son-in-law.” She explained some of the tenets of the religion.

“What are you watching so intently?”

“You would think me a fool,” she said.

“Learn to trust me.”

She smiled. “Very well. Look at that child.”

Between emptyings of the pail used to cleanse the well, a boy was building dirt piles. Not every pailful of muddy water hit one of his piles, but because he placed them where the pails would be emptied, now and again to his great delight a minor deluge wiped out one of his mounds.

“Suppose, a long time ago, the lesser of the two hills at David Leslau's dig was washed away?”

“There are still two hills there, not one,” he reminded her.

“This country is full of tells. Artificial mounds that rose as successive generations built on the rubble of the people who had lived there before. David's dig is just east of the spring, where it would have been natural for that kind of continued settlement to take place. Suppose the hill the scroll mentions has been washed away. And he has been digging near a tell that rose nearby.” Her eyes shone. “What do you think?”

“I don't think you're a fool. But …”

She sighed and poured more coffee as the people at the well raised the man from the bottom, a mud-smeared youth who seemed happy to emerge into the world. “You will take me to Ein Gedi, won't you?” she said. “I want to talk with David Leslau.”

“No.”

“If you will take me, I shall make you very happy later,” she said wickedly. “Anything you want. Watermelons. Pomegranates. Two kinds of citrus.”

“Israeli humor is hilarious.”

“Ah, Harry.”

“I can't. My amateur zeal's already cost David time and lots of money. Anyway, you'll make me very happy later because I'll make you very happy.”

He took her hand but she drew it away. “Alaouites don't like a woman to be touched in public.”

“Pity.”

“You will take me to Ein Gedi.” She sat there, beautiful and healthy
in the morning sun, laughing at him gently. “You will take me because you love me,” she said.

Little was left of the dig. Leslau's own tent stood, but the other two were gone. The archeologist told them he had sent two men back to Jerusalem with the truck containing most of the equipment. His remaining helpers, an English graduate student and two Arab laborers, were shoveling rocky earth back into ditches that had been excavated at the bottom of the smaller hill.

“Leave it the way you found it, right?” Leslau said.

“David,” Tamar said.

He listened, puffing on his pipe, as she explained why they had come.

“It isn't a goddam mountain, I'll grant you that,” he said, looking up at the smaller of the hills. “But why should we suppose it's a tell?”

“That would be an easy thing to find out, would it not, David?” she said.

“My dear Tamar, it wouldn't be terribly hard. But I admit that discouragement has brought with it a lack of enthusiasm for long shots.” He sighed. “Well, hell, let's be foolish one more time.”

They followed him over the broken ground. Harry was sweating, angry for having allowed her to persuade him. “Sorry, David,” he murmured.

“I understand,” Leslau said.

They stumbled after him. Harry was beginning to feel dizzy. The line about mad dogs and Englishmen was absolutely accurate, he thought. “Wild goose chase.”

“What?” Leslau said.

“Goddam wild goose chase.”

“Oh,” Leslau said absently. He had stopped and begun to pick up rocks, examine them and then drop them to pick up others.

He stared at Tamar oddly.

“Let's go,” Harry grumbled.

“Harry?” Leslau said.

“What?”

“
Schweig
.”

They followed him another hundred feet.

“Do you know what we're standing in?” Leslau said.

“No,” Harry said, trying not to sound sulky.

“A wadi bed,” she said.

“Yes, a wadi bed.” He led them back to where he had picked up the rocks. “Do you see?” he said to Harry.

He tried to see, but it looked exactly like the rest of the desert. He shook his head.

“The wadi used to flow here, a long time ago,” Leslau picked up a rock and showed it to them.

“All I can see is a piece of limestone,” Harry said. “In the middle of a desert of limestone. What can a piece of limestone tell you?”

“Actually, quite a bit,” the archeologist said. “Most of the limestone in these hills is Cenomian or Turonian, formed about a hundred and thirty million years ago in the Cretaceous age. Hard as hell, very durable. Even your untrained eye can see how much softer this limestone is, if you compare. This was probably formed about fifty-five million years ago, in the Eocene period. Or maybe in the Senonian, exactly when doesn't matter. What's important is that winter water, flowing century after century against a hill of this limestone, destroyed it easily. It's all spread out here where the water left it, very plain to read.”

Harry blinked sweat from his eyes. “Are you for Christ's sake telling me she's right?”

Leslau looked at Tamar. “No.”

“Well, what the devil
are
you saying?”

“Only that—once—another hill indeed stood here. Which could mean that originally there were three hills here and not two, and we've been at the wrong site all along. But …” He drew a deep breath. “ … That small hill up there could prove to be a tell.” He took both of Tamar's hands in his. “And if it's a tell, then you're superbly right,” he said. “Magnificently right. And I may be closer than I have ever been before.”

They waited in the tent. At first, after the onslaught of the sun, the interior was like a cool green cave.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

She kissed him.

“How could you watch a kid playing in the mud and … ?”

“It's what happens in my work. I don't come up with it. It comes up with me.” She hesitated. “Anyway, we're not certain yet that I was right, are we?”