The Jerusalem Diamond (38 page)

“No.”

Leslau had studied the surface of the smaller hill carefully. He had taken the graduate student and the two laborers away from filling ditches and had set them to digging at three different sites on the northern slope, each site near a slight hollow. That kind of surface indentation, he explained, could indicate that somewhere below earth had settled next to a solid object or structure.

“Will this take a long time?” Tamar asked.

Leslau shrugged. “Perhaps hours, perhaps days. In a tell, each layer forms over ruins left by humans. Houses may collapse but their material remains. Rain and wind bring refuse and dust into it, and the mixture becomes enriched by a succession of rotting vegetation. When man reoccupies the site, he builds a second layer over the humus that covers the first layer, and so on. The layers vary in thickness. If this small hill's a tell, and the traces of its most recent habitation are covered by a thin layer, we may be lucky enough to find them quickly. If the stratum is very thick where we're digging … It could take a long time.”

Harry and Tamar decided to stay there the rest of the day and watch.

She was able to relax, reading. Tense, he rubbed at the garnet even though it had already been polished, the hard way, into a red beauty. He and Leslau talked occasionally, but no one really felt like conversation. They sat with their camp chairs around the canvas water bag hanging from the tent's ridge pole, like three taciturn New Englanders around a potbellied stove. From time to time one of the diggers, smelling of sweat, came into the tent for a drink and a rest. The graduate student and one of the Arabs were young, but Leslau said the middle-aged Arab was the best worker.

When the older man came in for a rest, Harry told him to stay a while. “I'll take your place.”

“No,” Leslau said sharply. He and Harry looked at one another. “They're used to it and you're not,” Leslau said.

He wasn't sure it was a good idea, either, but he had already brushed
past them and started up the hill. The Arab came outside and sat in the shade of the tent, grinning.

It wasn't bad at first, but he soon became aware he was in trouble.

It had been years since he had used a pick and shovel. Rhythm helped, he remembered. The pick rose and fell.

To begin with, his palms were soft. His breathing wasn't a problem because he had a runner's wind, but running used a different set of muscles.

And the sun made all the difference. Soon when he looked up, the landscape developed a flattened, faded effect, like a bad picture on an old black-and-white television screen.

Eventually, Leslau came up the slope. “Cut out this stupid shit,” he said. He followed Harry into the tent and watched him flop onto the ragged prayer rug, where he lay while his juices dried as fast as they flowed. He felt as if he had been dipped in salt, and blisters like halves of small grapes had bloomed on both palms.

She was watching him, not with concern but with a contemplative interest that he found somehow disturbing.

Leslau had sent most of the supplies away but he still had a couple of cans of chicken and they shared the apples, which the heat already had made mealy.

A commotion on the hill raised their hopes but it was only the graduate student arguing with the Arabs, who wouldn't go back to work after eating unless they could make coffee. The older laborer finally brewed it over a primus stove, in a beautiful battered pot with a gooseneck spout, so old the copper could be seen through the worn nickel plating.

Harry asked the man if he would sell it, and Tamar said something in Arabic.

“What did you tell him?”

“I said it was worth a good deal of money. And I warned him not to sell it too cheaply.”

The man asked in Arabic if Harry would pay enough for him to buy a new house.

“I just want to buy the pot, I don't want to marry his sister.”

Obviously the laborer understood and he spoke at once.

“Like his sister, the pot belonged to his father,” Tamar said. “He says he won't sell either of them.”

The coffee was good and the answer made it better. But shortly after work was resumed, Harry realized it was already late in the afternoon. “I've got to go to Jerusalem,” he said. He looked at Leslau uncomfortably. Something tentative and good between them had been ruined when he had gone up onto the hill.

Leslau pulled a bottle of Scotch from under the cot and held it out.

“A little something before you go?”

Tamar shook her head.

“I'll take some,” Harry said.

“Are you certain you've recovered from the sun?” Tamar said. “Otherwise, it is the worst thing.”

“I'm all right.”

They drank from plastic cups. He
was
all right, but the alcohol hit him hard and at once, perhaps because of the heat. That must be why they drank so little grain whisky here, he thought; that, and the price.

Leslau repoured into both cups and they drank again.

“Men's room,” Harry said.

“I'll come with you.”

The shadows were lengthening.

“You had to try to do that poor laborer's job?” Leslau asked. Partly it was the liquor talking. “You couldn't even let him have his
tiny
experience without trying to make it your own. It's some kind of sickness with you?”

“Not a sickness,” Harry said.

They walked a few hills more and then stood companionably as the urine splashed.

He shook off the last drops carefully. “It's only that sometimes I can't resist being an asshole.”

They looked at one another.

Leslau grinned. “I think there's hope for you.” When they walked back to the tent, it was all right between them again.

But there was a new disturbance on the slope. The other two diggers were kneeling by the younger Arab's excavation.

“What is it?” Leslau called, and they started up the hill in a hurry.

No one answered. Now both Arabs were in the hole and working eagerly, making the dirt fly.

The excavation was more than six feet deep, but Harry couldn't see much of the bottom until the younger man climbed out. The older Arab worked very carefully with the pick, and soon they could see worked rocks, shaped almost like square cobblestones, a top course and beneath it a second course; and below that, the top part of a third row of stones, where somebody's hands once had laid them, still even and true.

It was a wall.

He and Tamar and David walked back out into the desert.

“Think of it,” Leslau said excitedly. “We may be able to find their legacy, after all. Can't you almost see them? With a foreign army approaching fast, they took the most precious things in the Temple—riches like the yellow diamond you're after, Harry, and the most sacred of the holy objects—and hid them away in the earth, and recorded the hiding places on a copper scroll.”

“And twenty-five hundred years later,
you
plucked the scroll out of the ground,” Tamar said.

“Do you think many
genizot
have been violated, David, like the one in the Vale of Achor where the diamond was hidden?” Harry asked.

“Most of the objects are still under earth. I know it, I feel it in my bones. But I'm certain that a number of hidings are in occupied territory. If the world takes a crazy spin, a Palestinian state could be established there, and I will never again be able to dig for our heritage. That's why I've got to dig like hell now, when suddenly, thanks to Tamar, we have a map that will take us to a
genizah
.”

He pointed to where the skeletal rocks of the limestone hill were strewn across the desert. “The water flowed in one direction, and we can follow the detritus back to where it began. Once we know where the bottom of the hill used to be, we'll lay in a good, workable archeological grid. Somewhere down there, twenty-three cubits and then some, is the first of the things I'm looking for.”

He gazed around them at the purple hills. And shook his fist.

“
Hehrt, alte momserim!
Listen, you old bastards!” he shouted. “I'm going to find them after all!” He shook his fists again, at … what?

“David?” Tamar said quietly.

Leslau blinked. He turned and walked back to the tent.

When Harry asked him later if they could be allowed to look at the Copper Scroll in the original, he was puzzled. “It's not necessary now. Give us a chance to do some digging out here.”

Harry shook his head. “This isn't about your work. It's about the diamond. I want to study the passage that describes the
genizah
where the diamond was hidden. Part of it is illegible in the photocopy I've been using.”

Leslau shrugged. “John,” he bawled to the graduate student, “you go back to Jerusalem with these people and see they get what they need. And you tell those other fellas I want that truck back out here in the morning.”

24

TIBERIAS

The Copper Scroll had been beautifully cleansed and burnished. The inscriptions undoubtedly were not as clear as when they were freshly enscribed, but Tamar and Harry could decipher them easily. They stood over the scroll in Leslau's grubby little office as in a place of worship and she read the first passage aloud.

The words of Baruch, the son of Neriah ben Maasiah of the priests that were in Anatoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the commandment to put away the treasures of the Lord has come through Jeremiah the son of Hilkiahu the Kohen, in the days of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth year of his reign
.

When they found the passage about the
genizah
in the Vale of Achor, the short description of the diamond that had not been readable in the photostats was quite legible.

The words describing the diamond were
haya nega
.

“ ‘
Haya nega
.' It means ‘a blemished thing',” she said.

“I know.” He drew a ragged breath, unwilling to concede the obvious. “Can there be a doubt?”

“No, Harry,” she told him. “This describes a diamond that had a serious flaw in it.”

“My God,” he said in despair. “I'm here on a wild goose chase! The diamond Mehdi is offering for sale has no major flaws. And that means Mehdi's diamond isn't the stone described in this scroll—the diamond that was taken from the Temple in Jerusalem and hidden away.”

He found the note waiting for him at the hotel, recognizing the spidery script—taught by a European teacher or governess?—even before he ripped open the envelope.

My dear Mr. Hopeman:

May I ask you to meet me one more time
?

I am keenly aware that it is you who have come repeatedly to me, sometimes at great inconvenience. I assure you that these circumstances were necessary. In the long-term future transactions I hope we shall enjoy, I promise to come to you whenever possible
.

Please be at the bus station in Eilat on Wednesday, at two in the afternoon
.

I remain
,

With kindest personal regards
,

Yosef Mehdi

“Surely you're not going?” Tamar said.

“I think I'd better.”

“If Mehdi's stone isn't the Inquisition Diamond, it is not the diamond you have been commissioned to buy. Why bother to go after it?”

“It's a very valuable yellow diamond. And I'm a diamond merchant. You see?”

She nodded. “But … cheer up, won't you?” she said gently.

Despite her kiss, he saw little to be cheerful about. “I don't think I'm going to get even the wrong stone. I think Mehdi has another buyer.”

“Then why does he want to see you?” Tamar asked.

The note's pointed reference to “long-term future transactions” gave him the discouraging key. “This final meeting isn't to give me another crack at his yellow diamond. It's to allow us to leave each other on a cordial note, so we can do other business, another day. Or year.”

He read the letter again, hoping his initial feeling about it was wrong; but he reacted in the same way. “This means I have to wait five more days.”

“Let's stay in Jerusalem,” she said.

He could feel defeat, and it was a feeling he had never taken gracefully. Witnessing Friday afternoon in Jerusalem helped his spirits—it was like watching America get ready for Christmas. There was a flurry of last-minute shopping. Offices and stores closed early to permit employees to reach their homes by sundown, and people poured through the streets carrying bottles of wine and flowers for the table. It was impressive to see the ancient city racing its gears and then suddenly grinding to a halt. No buses ran and the streets became empty of traffic, as practically everyone had
Shabbat
dinner with friends or family, nonbelievers following a pleasant tradition, the Orthodox getting ready to go to synagogue to greet the Sabbath Queen.

Next morning the businesses remained closed, but Jewish Jerusalem was out in force, promenading; lovers strolled, families took turns pushing baby carriages, older people moved sedately through the sunlight. He and Tamar walked to the Old City, where the Arab shopkeepers carried on business as usual for a heavily Jewish clientele, just as their Jewish counterparts sold to Arabs when Old City businesses closed on Friday, the Moslem sabbath.