The Jerusalem Diamond (41 page)

The boy spoke again to Mehdi. “We knew you would not come. You would not last hours.”

“Be quiet. You animal! Nine young men dead. And why? Not a fool of you was born when I left Egypt.”

“Our fathers remember you well,” the youth said.

He would say nothing more to them.

“Where was the security?” Harry asked the major as they walked out of the prison compound.

“We got there very quickly.”

“That's not security. If we had been in the back seat …”

The major shrugged. “You were fortunate. Anybody who says security can stop bullets is a liar.”

When the major was finished with them he asked if they wanted to be taken by helicopter to Hadassah Hospital. Mehdi shook his head vigorously.

“No,” Harry said.

An army doctor gave each of them them two five-milligram tranquilizer tablets. “I don't need it,” Harry said.

The doctor put them in his hand. “It's free,” he said.

They were driven in a staff car up the road to a motel in Dimona. It was almost two
A.M.
when they got there, and the streets were empty. He was glad to see a motorized military patrol.

Finally alone in the room, Harry began to tremble. He tried to stop, but it wasn't anything he could control. He took one of the pills and began to undress. Then he took the other one and lay on the bed in his underwear, waiting for them to take effect.

In the morning he and Mehdi ordered large breakfasts and ate guiltily.

“The body,” Mehdi said. “I have to get the authorities to release it.” He toyed with his eggs. “My poor Tresca. I have telephoned Bardyl.”

“Were they relatives?”

“Closer. Friends.”

“It's all changed for you, hasn't it?”

“They will never let me back. Well. In the job the government had agreed to give me, I should have been little more than a civil servant. Doubtless I would have tired of it.” He sighed and abandoned the eggs.

“The irony,” Harry said, “is that they were trying to kill you for fear that you would sell me the Kaaba Diamond. Yet you don't own the Kaaba Diamond.”

Mehdi made a face.

“It's the truth.”

“I do not wish to insult you, my friend. But …”

“I tell you, the Kaaba is flawed! It has a serious blemish. There must be a way for you to confirm that.”

The Egyptian regarded him narrowly. “There are voluminous records in the Mosque at Acre. Perhaps there is a description there of the diamond that once adorned the
Maksura
. But, understand … if such a description does not mention a flaw, there is no flaw.”

“Can you have someone get to those records?”

Mehdi shrugged. “To a believer, all is possible,” he said.

Mehdi worked very fast. He telephoned Harry just before ten
P.M.
and they met again in the coffee shop.

“You had the records checked?”

The Egyptian nodded. “It is as you said,” he said slowly.

Harry felt a bit light-headed.

“The Kaaba has a large flaw. The diamond I possess is not the stone taken from the Acre Mosque by Crusaders.”

“Then … you are free to sell it?”

“I am no longer constrained by religious reasons. It is not a relic. If we can agree on terms, I shall sell it to you.”

He was careful not to take the deep breath he wanted. “As you say, it's not a relic. I can pay only what it's worth as a gem,” he said carefully.

“It is worth a great deal. As we both know.”

“Its quality isn't that good. But its size saves it.”

Mehdi waited.

“One million one.”

Mehdi nodded.

“I wish you the best of luck with the diamond, Mr. Hopeman.” He thrust out his hand.

Harry gripped it, hard.

“
Mazel un brocha
, Bardissi Pasha,” he said.

Whenever he bought a diamond he thought of the gold Maimonides had had to carry, making him vulnerable to bandits as he traveled. Technology had eased that burden. Next morning in the Chase Manhattan Bank, at Saul Netscher's request, a specialist played the right buttons. He fed into a computer numerals that represented a letter of credit for which Netscher had arranged, then he added a coded message and the identification number of an account held by Mehdi in Credit Suisse of Zurich, and the money was electronically transferred from New York into the Swiss account. In Dimona, Harry had written out a bill of sale and purchase, which both he and Mehdi signed.

It was simple and neat. But he still shared with Maimonides the problem of getting the purchased diamond home.

It was almost noon when he let himself into his hotel room in Jerusalem.

He saw the note almost at once. She was a very practical person, she had taped it to the bathroom door.

Dearest Harry
,

Forgive me for waiting until your back was turned
.

I have known for a while it wouldn't work, but I'm a terrible coward about scenes
.

I was strongly tempted to try, because you are a lovable man, but it would have been over in a year. I prefer the memory
.

If you felt what I felt, don't try to see me. I wish you long years full of other joys
.

T
.

He sat and called her number, but no one answered. At the museum they told him that Mrs. Strauss had extended her vacation.

No, they didn't know where she was.

He had a good idea where he would find her. But when he hung up he sat for twenty minutes and willed himself to be calm.

Very methodically, he went about the things that had to be done. He drove the English Ford to the carrental agency and settled his bill. He wrapped his laundry and mailed it and stopped at the airline office in the lobby to buy two seats on a flight leaving Ben Gurion Airport late that afternoon. It left little time, but he packed quickly and checked out of the hotel.

Then he got into a taxi and told the driver to take him to Rosh Ha'ayin.

The little girl was sitting in the dust of the street, the way she had been when he had first seen her. Harry asked the driver to stop the taxi.

He went to the child and knelt by her.

“
Shalom
, Habiba. Remember me?”

She stared at him blankly.

“Is Auntie Tamar here?”

The girl pointed toward her grandmother's house.

When he got there, he knocked at the screen door and the two people inside looked at him.

“Enter if you will,”
ya umma
said. She was standing with her back to the wall.
Ya abba
sat at the table and drank arak.

“I want to talk with Tamar,” Harry said. Nobody answered him. Behind the closed door to the other room, someone giggled. He heard Tamar say something short and intense, and the giggling stopped.

Ya abba
shook his head. “She doesn't wish,” he said in English.

“The hell with that,” Harry said. “Let her tell me herself.”

“Three things I do not understand,”
ya abba
said in Hebrew. “Yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.” He finished his drink and poured arak from a bottle and water from a pitcher. They all watched the colorless liquids merge in the glass and turn milky.

Harry went to the closed door and knocked. “Tamar,” he said.

It was very quiet.

“Look,” he said, “at least we can talk about it.”

She didn't answer.

“I have to leave the country right away, this afternoon. I've got a plane ticket for you.” He waited.

“Jesus, talk to me. Are you like this every time you have your period?”

He heard the scrape of a chair and then something hit him. When he turned,
ya abba
was about to punch him again. “Hey!” The old man was strong. Harry hoped his cheekbone wasn't broken. But he was drunk and Harry held him off at arm's length. “Get him away,” he said.
Ya umma
began to ululate like an Arab woman in mourning. “Get him away from me.”

Outside, the cab driver sounded his horn as
ya abba
was led back to his chair.

“Damn you, can't you understand? I love you!” Harry shouted at the closed door.

It opened.

Tamar's sister slipped through as quickly as her pregnant belly allowed. Yaffa's face was pleasured with excitement. She thrust a note at him, and he unfolded it and sighed.

Harry will never do anything to hurt me
.

He looked up to see Yaffa watching him with an interested sympathy that bothered him more than the pain in his cheek.

“
Shalom
,”
ya umma
whispered as he went out the door.

Three Yemenite women stood with their heads together and murmured as they followed him with their eyes. The kid was still sitting in the dirt. There was a fly on her cheek again, and he brushed it away before he got into the cab and asked the driver to take him to the airport.

27

THE FLAW

It was as if for years he had been unaware of membranes over his eyes and ears and they had fallen away since his return, so that for the first time he saw and heard America very clearly, in Westchester the fields and woods around the house, the peepers, the drumming of grouse, the snarl of a faraway chain saw, in Manhattan the shape and height of buildings, the traffic sounds outside the shop that were more savage than the street noises of Jerusalem but almost comforting because they were a piece that belonged in his puzzle.

The flesh bloomed magenta where
ya abba
had struck him over the cheekbone and he massaged the bruise gingerly with cold cream.

Della stared at it when they met for lunch but asked no questions. “I've met somebody, Harry.”

“Is it … a serious thing, Della?” He felt indecent, as if he were prying.

“We want to get married.” She was pale.

“I'm glad for you.” He was, but it didn't come out right. It was amazing: he was just a bit stricken.

The three of them had dinner the following week, civilized and very
uncomfortable. The man's name was Walter Lieberman. He was a securities analyst on Wall Street. Divorced. His income was good and his hair was thin. His face habitually wore a somewhat anxious expression, like John Chancellor's, and he was gentle and steady. Under other circumstances Harry might have liked him.

It was very simple. She would file and Harry wouldn't contest.

“I'd like to keep the house,” he said.

She loved the place too, but she nodded gamely and made a big thing over Walter's consideration and tact in deciding not to attend the bar mitzvah.

The bar mitzvah pervaded their lives. Della had done everything: the temple function hall had been reserved, the caterer had been hired, the menu had been chosen. All was ready but Jeffrey Martin Hopeman, who stumbled over the haftorah as if he would never learn the trope, the musical symbols with which the scroll was scored. Harry saw guiltily that while he had been far away, chasing strange gods, his son had needed him. They began to work on the haftorah together. It was a special reading chanted only when a Sabbath falls during Sukkot, the harvest festival. The portion describes the War of Gog and Magog, and Jeff found even the English translation incomprehensible.

“Who was Gog?”

“The leader of an enemy army that invaded Israel from the North,” Harry told him.

“Who was Magog?”

“What, not who. Magog was the country Gog came from. It may not even have been a real country. Maybe it just represents all of Israel's enemies.”

“They're not even sure what my portion is about?”

“A lot of the meaning has been lost through the centuries, it's a mystery,” Harry said. “It's too old. That's the real fun, isn't it? Telling a story that's been passed on for so long.”

Jeff grunted.

But he liked the skullcaps Harry had bought in Mea She'arim and chose a blue one embroidered with pastel flowers.

“Did you buy him a
tallit
?” Della asked.

“I didn't think of it,” he admitted.

She sighed. “You've got to get him a
tallit
”.

So he went to a Jewish bookstore on the Lower East Side and bought his son a prayer shawl, made in Israel.

What Jeff wanted as a bar mitzvah gift was obvious. In various places Harry came upon pages torn from outdoor magazines and left for him to discover, four-color advertisements singing the praises of the .243 6-mm. Remington, the .250-3000 Savage, the .257 Roberts.

“I won't get you a deer rifle,” Harry told him.

“Why not? If we don't weed out the deer, they'll starve in the winter.”

“Predators are making a comeback. They do a better job of weeding.”

“Lots of good people hunt.”

“Some of them need the meat. I approve of that. If you want to hunt for sport, wait till I'm not responsible for your actions.”