Daniel Stein, Interpreter

PART FIVE

1. 1994, Israel

F

ROM NEWSPAPERS

The whole of Israel was shocked by the events of 25 February 1994, on the eve of the Jewish festival of Purim. Many details remain unclear. On the eve of the festival, agreement was reached between the sheikh of the Cave of Makhpelah and Hebron City Council to allow Jews to pray in the Hall of Abraham in the cave.

During the night-time prayers of the festival, a large number of Muslims assembled in the adjoining Hall of Itzhak. The Islamic and Jewish calendars coincided on this occasion, so that the eve of the festival of Purim was simultaneous with the celebration of Ramadan. People were praying in both halls.

A Jewish settler of American origin, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, burst into the Muslim Hall of Itzhak and fired an assault rifle into the crowd of worshippers, killing 29 and injuring about 150.

Goldstein was put to death on the spot by enraged Arabs. Beneath the carpet of the prayer hall, iron bars were found with which Goldstein was killed, and also a large quantity of firearms.

A commission set up by the government to investigate the incident published a report referring to evidence from the intelligence services of preparations for a pogrom of Jews in Hebron. The commission has information that the shooting by Goldstein in the Cave of Makhpelah was a premeditated prophylactic measure. Two settlers from the nearby district, Rabbi Eliyahu Plotkin and Gershon Shimes, were detained as suspects.

Today the report runs to many volumes and the commission does not expect to publish its conclusions in anything less than three months from now. Public opinion in Israel is divided over the crime, and Goldstein himself is viewed in radically different ways by different groups. For some he is a national hero who laid down his life to save the Jewish population of Hebron from a massacre in the making. For others he is a provocateur and maniac. The interrogation of people associated with Goldstein, his friends and fellow thinkers, Rabbi Eliyahu Plotkin and Gershon Shimes, are of considerable interest. So far, however, their statements remain unpublished.

2. 25 February 1994, Hebron

F

ROM THE RECORD OF THE INTERROGATION OF

G

ERSHON

S

HIMES

“Did you drive Baruch Goldstein to the Cave of Makhpelah?”

“Yes.”

“At what time?”

“At about five in the morning.”

“Can you remember more precisely?”

“I remember precisely leaving home at 4:40. I looked at my watch.”

“Who was in the car apart from you?”

“My son Binyomin. Then Baruch arrived.”

“It didn’t surprise you that he was wearing military uniform and carrying an assault rifle?”

“Yes, but he said he was going to the Miluim.”

“When did you agree to give him a lift to Makhpelah?”

“He rang the day before, at around nine in the evening, and we made the arrangement.”

“Did he tell you anything about his intentions?”

“No. We didn’t talk about anything like that.”

“Where did you separate when you arrived at the cave?”

“We went into the Hall of Abraham together. It was the eve of Purim and there were around ten people there. I did not see him leave.”

“What occurred then?”

“About ten minutes later I heard a burst of rifle fire, then another. I realized immediately that the shooting was coming from the Hall of Itzhak. I ran there but there were security people at the entrance and they were not letting anybody in.”

“Did you run there together with your son?”

“Yes. They did not let us through.”

“What did you do after that?”

“My son and I left the hall and went to the car park, but everything was already cordoned off. We stood at the cordon and waited for it to be removed so we could leave.”

“What happened in the square? What did you see?”

“They were carrying out the dead. There were a great many. Many wounded were taken to ambulances.”

“Did you see anybody you knew in the crowd?”

“What do you mean? There were only Arabs there and our soldiers. Today is Ramadan for the Arabs and a lot of people had come to the Hall of Itzhak. There was nobody there I knew.”

“Fine. You are to go now with the officer for identification.”

“What identification?”

“Identification of the body of Baruch Goldstein.”

25 February 1994, Hebron

F

ROM THE RECORD OF THE INTERROGATION OF

B

INYOMIN

S

HIMES

“Did you travel to Makhpelah with Baruch Goldstein in your father’s car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know him well?”

“Of course. He is a doctor and he often came to see us. Sometimes when we were ill, sometimes just to visit. My parents were friends with him.”

“At what time did you leave home?”

“About five in the morning.”

“Can’t you remember more precisely?”

“No. I wasn’t even fully awake. My father said to go and I washed quickly.”

“Who, apart from you, was in the car?”

“My father and Baruch.”

“It didn’t surprise you that Baruch was wearing military uniform and had an assault rifle?”

“I didn’t notice it.”

“What were you talking about on the way there?”

“I wasn’t listening to them. Like, my father would pick him up on the way back.”

“You can’t remember more precisely? Where exactly? When?”

“Like, Baruch was going to go off somewhere on some business and then intended to come back to the Hall of Abraham. Something like that.”

“Did he say that in the car?”

“I think so.”

“So, you arrived at the cave together and went inside together?”

“Yes.”

“Did Baruch say anything else about his intentions?”

“No. He talked about something with my father, but I was not listening. Nothing about intentions.”

“Where did you separate when you got to the cave?”

“We went into the Hall of Abraham together. I did not see him go out.”

“What happened next?”

“A short time afterwards, I heard a round of rifle fire, then another. I knew immediately that it was from the Hall of Itzhak. My father and I ran there, but everything was already sealed off. Then we went outside to the car park. They wouldn’t let us go anywhere. An incredible number of soldiers arrived and about a thousand Arabs came running. From where we were standing we could see the dead being brought out. A huge amount of blood, and a great many wounded people.”

“Did you see anybody you knew in the crowd?”

“No.”

“Do you know that Baruch Goldstein went into the Hall of Itzhak and shot a great many people there?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know that he was killed on the spot, in the Hall of Itzhak?”

“Yes.”

“You will now have to go and identify the body of Baruch Goldstein.”

3. March 1994, Kfar Shaul

P

SYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

FROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN DEBORAH SHIMES AND DOCTOR

FREIDIN

“We have talked to him, Deborah. He is very unwilling to communicate, and without a desire to communicate on his part, it will be difficult to help him out of this condition. I would like you to tell us about his behavior after all that happened.”

“I have already been questioned.”

“I’m not interested in your political views or the degree to which your husband was involved in what occurred. Why are you looking at me like that? I try to cure illnesses, not political views. From what moment did Binyomin’s behavior strike you as abnormal?”

“Well, I don’t know what should be considered normal or abnormal. When an adolescent boy is taken to identify the mutilated corpse of someone he saw almost every day, can that be regarded as normal? What right did they have to take him there? At the time he wasn’t even sixteen.”

“I would have objected myself if I had been asked, but I wasn’t. So now we need to get the boy back on his feet. As I understand it, he was deeply shocked by that identification?”

“Yes, he was out of his mind. He went up to his room and did not want to see anybody. Not even his younger sister.”

“Did that last for long, his unwillingness to communicate with anyone at all?”

“Long? It is still continuing! He does not want to talk either to me or to his father. He did not come down to dinner, even on Saturday. I took him food and drink to his room and did not once see him eat. When he became so thin that the skin on his face was stretched, I realized he was throwing the food down the toilet.”

“Did his father try to talk to him?”

“At first he did try, one time he yelled at him, but then ceased all attempts to communicate. One time he suggested going to Baruch’s grave. He was buried in Kiriyat Arba, in the Kahane Memorial Park, but Binyomin flatly refused.”

“How does he get on with you?”

“He wouldn’t reply to me either. He turned to the wall. He lay almost all the time facing the wall.”

“Why did you not call a doctor to see him?”

“We simply didn’t have the time. His father considered he was too impressionable and that it was something that would pass. I have seven children and each child has its problems. At precisely this time two younger ones were ill, and then my elder daughter was found to have gastritis. I was constantly taking one or the other to hospital.”

“All this time Binyomin was not going to school?”

“No. He refused, and we did not insist. We thought it was better for him to miss a year than to exercise that much force.”

“Did he express any suicidal intentions?”

“What intentions? He didn’t talk to us at all.”

“Did he talk to anybody? His brothers or friends?”

“He did not want to come out of the room when his friends came to visit.”

“What happened on the day he tried to slit his veins?”

“I left home at seven in the morning and took the youngest to the kindergarten, the others to school, and then went shopping for food. When I came back, water was pouring through the ceiling. Our shower cabin is on the first floor and he had emptied the whole boiler. I rushed upstairs, he was sitting in the shower cabin with his veins slit, but there was not much blood. He was almost unconscious. More in shock, I would say, than having fainted. I picked him up. He made no attempt to resist. I immediately called the ambulance. That is all. But now I would like to take him home if I may.”

“No, in his present state he needs further treatment.”

“Will it take long?”

“I think at least six weeks, possibly more. Until we are sure his life is no longer in danger, we cannot discharge him.”

4. Psychiatrist’s conclusion

DIAGNOSIS: Severe prolonged reactive depression, protest behavior within the context of a youthful affective crisis. Suicide attempt.

ADDITIONALLY: In connection with the extremely negative attitude to treatment prescribed after the suicide attempt, the patient gives serious cause for concern in respect of the possibility of running away and new attempts at suicide. Requires constant observation. Inform staff.

5. Psychiatrist’s conclusion

Anxious attitude. Contact extremely difficult. Taciturn. Negative outlook. Prefers not to respond to questions, only sometimes replying in monosyllables and without looking at the person he is talking to. Refuses to participate in psychological tests. Clearly in need of corrective psychological treatment. In the initial phase methods of non-verbal psychotherapy appropriate.

6. 1994, Kfar Shaul

F

ROM AN INTERNAL MEMORANDUM OF THE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

In connection with the escape on 12 April this year of Binyomin Shimes, a patient in Section 2, Doctor Michael Epshtein and orderlies Taisir Badran and Braha Yosef are reprimanded.

Head of Security Uzi Rafaeli has been dismissed by order of the Director of the clinic.

Eliezer Hanor

Principal Consultant

7. 1994, Kfar Shaul

N

OTE FROM THE

K

FAR

S

HAUL

P

SYCHIATRIC

H

OSPITAL TO THE

I

NVESTIGATIONS

D

EPARTMENT

, M

INISTRY OF

P

OLICE

On 12 April this year a disturbed adolescent, Binyomin Shimes, age 16 years, escaped from Section 2. General characteristics: height 179 cm, red hair, blue eyes, elongated face, irregular teeth, brace on upper jaw, small scar on left upper arm. This adolescent is not dangerous to other people but may harm himself. Please issue a search warrant. Photograph attached.

Eliezer Hanor

Principal Consultant, Kfar Shaul Hospital

8. 1995

F

ROM

H

ILDA’S DIARY

An odd young man came up the mountain to us some time ago. Very thin, looked a complete ragamuffin, but very handsome. Asked in English whether he could stay with us for a few days. Daniel was away at the time conducting tour groups, and in any case I don’t usually ask his permission if somebody needs accommodation. I allowed the boy to stay in the community house. He was very disappointed because he wanted to stay here on the mountain but nevertheless went down with me. I asked his name. He said he had stolen nothing but did not want to give his name. I have had a lot of experience working with children and decided he was a teenage runaway who had fallen out with his parents because they would not pay for ice cream or a Walkman. “No problem, I shall call you Mr. Hyde.”

He laughed and said he’d prefer to be Doctor Jekyll, and after that we were friends.

I took him to Daniel’s little room in the community house and said he could stay there till the incumbent came back. As luck would have it, the pump had broken down and we were having to carry endless quantities of water to wash our old ladies. Mr. Hyde carried water from morning till night without a murmur. He read at nights or did not put the light out in his room. When Daniel arrived three days later, he very politely thanked me, drank a cup of tea with us, and left. Daniel frowned and said I should not have let him go. It was obvious he was in a bad way. Something had happened to the boy.

I was already cursing myself. Although he was well built and very strong, there was something defenseless and distracted about him. I had him on my mind for several days and then forgot about him.

He came back two weeks later, in tattered trainers, completely in rags and very dirty. In the morning I came to the community house and he was sitting in our little garden, either asleep with his eyes open or meditating. I called to him, “Mr. Hyde!”

“Can I stay here?” he asked again.

At that I wondered whether he was a drug addict. I have marvelous people in the city who work with young addicts. I have been in touch with them on more than one occasion when we have had trouble with children in the parish. I asked and he said, “No, of course not. I have no problems with drugs. I have a great aversion to life, without needing any drugs.”

I made coffee, we sat there, talking quietly. I didn’t ask him anything else. He was a likeable boy. I decided he was an American because he spoke American English very fluently.

Then Daniel arrived and Mr. Hyde immediately clammed up. He is slightly crazy of course. I said something he took the wrong way, and he suddenly stopped talking to me and fell silent. But he dug up the whole garden for us, evidently knowing how to work with trees. He’s a very workmanlike lad.

A few more days passed and Daniel sat him in the car and took him off somewhere. I was terribly curious of course, but did not ask, thinking that Daniel would tell me himself. But for the time being he said nothing.

9. 1994

L

ETTER FROM

B

INYOMIN

S

HIMES TO HIS MOTHER

, D

EBORAH

Dear Mama,

Forgive me for running away. I had no choice. Please do not look for me. I am fine. I’m not sure I will come back home. Father told me he left home when he was 16 because he decided to build a life on his own model. I am 16, too, but so far do not know what model I want to build my life on. Certainly not yours. It seems to me that you put too much pressure on me. Please do not worry, I will let you know where I am when I have sorted myself out.

I was not going to write to you but somebody advised me to be kind so that is what I have done.

Binyomin

10. 1994, Haifa

T

ALK BETWEEN

D

ANIEL AND

H

ILDA

DANIEL. I took him to Rafail. It is quiet there. You can think and recuperate. I feel sorry for the boy. On the other hand, his parents … He said he wrote them a letter telling them not to worry. I’m quite sure they’re beside themselves with worry.

He said he had run away from a psychiatric clinic. He is going through a crisis. What do you think?

HILDA. As you’ve taken him to Rafail, he is your responsibility.

DANIEL. So what do you think, should I send him away from us? Is that what you think?

HILDA. I don’t know. If he’s found there, it will cause a lot of fuss.

DANIEL. I suppose it will.

HILDA. But we couldn’t put him out on the street.

DANIEL. I don’t know. Hilda, did you never run away from home when you were a child?

HILDA. I did one time. They found me toward evening and my stepfather gave me a right telling off. How about you?

DANIEL. When I was about the age he is, I ran away from home with my whole family. The Germans were advancing.

HILDA. Let’s take him away from Rafail and move him to some good family. Either to Adam or Josef.

DANIEL. We need to talk to them.

11. 1994

F

ROM A TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE POLICE AND

D

EBORAH

S

HIMES

Is that the Shimes’ apartment? Police station here. We have detained your boy. He won’t make a statement. In fact we can’t get a word out of him. We have no grounds for holding him apart from your statement. It’s not for us to decide whether he should be put in a psychiatric hospital. We have called a psychiatrist and an official from the Ministry of Education, and please come yourselves as soon as possible.

12. 1995

B

ULLETIN BOARD IN THE PARISH HOUSE.

Hurray! We’re going on holiday!

Everybody who can, bring your children and friends. We are going to Kinneret for two days!

The German Mission is allowing us to put up tents on their land!

We will be going swimming, so don’t forget your bathing suits!

We are collecting money for communal meals, everybody give what you can!

Hilda, Zhanna, and Anastasia Nikolayevna will do the shopping.

Great children’s games and fiendish competitions.

At sundown there will be a service, and then a shared meal round the campfire!

The next morning little Simeon and his father, Nikolai, will be baptized.

We will have fun and enjoy ourselves the whole day, and before leaving we will tidy up everything down to the last speck of dust!

Two buses will be at the parish house at 8 am.

Do not be more than 10 minutes late.

Or 15 at the outside!

Hilda

13. 1996, Galilee, Nof a-Galil

F

ROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN

A

VIGDOR

S

TEIN AND

E

WA

M

ANUKYAN

“To tell you the truth, I had never before been on one of their holiday outings. In the first place, Milka had gone to see Ruth in America. Noami brought me two grandchildren for the holidays. She was finishing her doctorate and wanted to sit down and work for three days. Fair enough. In the second place, it was Daniel arranging the trip, and the whole of Israel said he was an incomparable guide. My grandchildren would hear what their great-uncle had to say. I was confident that he would not say anything bad, and when he started waving his Cross about, we would go off to play football or take a boat and go sailing. In any case, he always came to us for Passover and nothing happened. He read the Haggadah better than anybody else in our family. And besides, he was my elder brother. You know, Ewa, I really take no interest in all this religious stuff. Of course, when I was young I was interested in everything, but mainly because of Daniel. When I grew up I found tractors far more interesting. I really did have some good ideas about tractors. If only I had had the time and opportunity I would have designed a small-wheeled tractor which would have been sold all over the world. I will come back to that when I have more free time.

“So anyway, we got on the bus and went to Kinneret.

“We didn’t take the short route, but drove by way of the Jezreel Valley to Afula. There we picked up a woman called Irina and her three daughters and went past Gilboa, past Mount Tabor, and on to Tiberias. What can I say? It was as if I was traveling through these places for the first time because of what Daniel told us about every village, every bush, every donkey we met on the way. What a lecture he gave us about donkeys! I’m not joking. He knows everything about the donkeys and she-donkeys of Israel. How he praised them, especially the one which recognized the angel when its owner, Balaam, failed to recognize it himself. How many stories there were about donkeys which were lost, donkeys which were carrying valuables, to say nothing of the she-donkey which bore Yeshua into Jerusalem. Altogether, the children’s ears were flapping, both the little ones and the older ones. It was a whole treasury of stories. Wherever you looked there was an hour-long story. He told them something about serpents, but I fell asleep at that point and missed the most interesting part.

“We reached Tiberias but he said straight away that we would not stay for long. I have been there a few times but he took us to parts I had never seen before, and talked so interestingly about them, too.

“I have been living here for the whole of my life and do not know this land. Incidentally, he said he had doubts about the ruins of the synagogue there. He thinks it is a Roman temple of a later period, and argued his case like an architect. How does he know these things? My grandchildren were again all ears. Then we got to Tabgha. There is a river there, a swimming pool, a beautiful garden, all on the shores of Lake Kinneret, their Sea of Galilee. A German came and showed us where to put the tents and provided a few rooms for the old women. We went to the shore. There is a jetty there and Daniel turned and said this was the very place Peter and his brother set off in their boat to catch fish. Do you know, Ewa, I believed him. It is true, the fishermen were going out from there to fish.

“He organized everything so well. We sat on the grass, had something to drink, a snack, then they went to the shore on their own business. There is a Cross and they conducted a service on a stone table. I took the grandchildren down to the jetty and made little boats for them to sail. Then the Christians said their prayers and we all sat down at a big table in the orchard with bread, wine, and roast chicken and everyone was happy. All the people were smiling, and they love each other. That is a really special talent my brother had. What a great pedagogue he could have been. He could have taught history, or botany. In fact, he could have taught the Jewish tradition, too. He knew it all inside out.

“The next day a family from Russia came to have their child baptized in the Holy Land. That struck me as a sound idea. If they were going to baptize a child, it was better to do it here than there. In the old days, you know, you would be persecuted, you could lose your job for christening a child, but now there’s no problem. You know, Ewa, when my grandsons were circumcised, they cried, especially Jacob, and my heart sank. Why cut them? It could all be done symbolically.

“In that sense, christening is better, it’s completely painless. The baby was very happy, and I have to say that Daniel performed it very adroitly. I would have been afraid the baby might slip out of my arms.

“Then there was a big party but there was nothing particularly Christian about it. They even had a competition to see who could hit one pebble with another, and who could skip a stone across the water. Well, actually no one can rival me at that. I won hands down.

“You know, he looked after all of them, the grown-ups and the children, like a kindly old grandad and I thought that he really was very good at his job. We Jews don’t need that so much, but for other people having such a good teacher and guide and counselor is splendid. It struck me then that Daniel was a man of God. He never did evil to anyone, only good. He never said a bad word about anybody and never needed anything for himself. Anything at all. If all Christians were like him, Jews would have a very favorable view of them. Ewa, I’m so sad that I never said anything like this to him. I didn’t see him alive again.

“What are you wailing about, my girl? Of course, he should have lived many, many more years.”

14. 1995, Hebron

P

OLICE

R

ECORD OF QUESTIONING OF

D

EBORAH

S

HIMES AFTER THE SUICIDE OF

B

INYOMIN

“I understand your grief, but I must ask you to stop shouting. This is a formality, but we are required to take a statement. Do you think I’m enjoying having to question you? Please, stop shouting or you will have your baby.”

“That’s not your problem.”

“Fine, fine, you’re quite right it’s not my problem. Tell me, who found Binyomin in the attic?”

“Sarra, our daughter.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“What time?”

“At 6:30. I had made coffee and asked Sarra to take a cup to Binyomin.”

“Please stop shouting. Please. We’ll be finished in a minute. It’s not going to take long. Tell me in more detail.”

“Sarra went into his room. Usually he locked himself in but the door was open. He wasn’t there. She put the cup on the table and went to the attic because he would sometimes sit up there.”

“And?”

“She came and said Binyomin’s feet were cold.”

“Take some water. There.”

“I didn’t understand. About ten minutes passed before she said we ought to take him down because he was hanging and not saying anything. At that moment Gershon came in. He had been outside in the yard and ran upstairs. Binyomin was dead. He had done it during the night. It was too late already.”

“Deborah, we know the boy was ill. Tell me, had he quarrelled with you or his father?”

“Yes. He wanted to leave and his father would not let him.”

“He wanted to leave your house?”

“No, he wanted to emigrate to Russia to his grandmother. We were planning to send him to America to my parents and brothers, but he wanted to go to Russia. His father wouldn’t let him. That is what they quarrelled about.”

“When did this occur?”

“It was in the air all the time.”

“Did his father beat him?”

“Leave me alone …”

“Deborah! Are you unwell? Shall I call a doctor?”

“Yes, get a doctor, get a doctor! My contractions have started.”

15. 1995, Hebron

P

OLICE

R

ECORD OF QUESTIONING OF

G

ERSHON

S

HIMES AFTER THE SUICIDE OF

B

INYOMIN

“I understand your grief but this is a requirement. We have to question you.”

“Go on then.”

“Who discovered Binyomin in the attic?”

“My daughter Sarra.”

“And …”

“I was in the courtyard, came into the house, she said we had to take Binyomin down because he didn’t want to himself. I ran to the attic. He had hanged himself in the only place that was possible, attaching a rope to the rafters.”

“Why did you take him down? He was dead, and the rule is that you should call the police.”

“At that moment I was not thinking about police rules.”

“There are items lying here—shorts, a silver chain with a charm in the form of the letter ‘shin’, and a woollen rosary. Are these his possessions?”

“Yes.”

“Why was he holding a rosary?”

“That’s something I would like to know. That’s what I’m most interested in. In April, after the first suicide attempt, he ran away from the hospital and disappeared for a couple of months until the police caught him. He would not say where he had been. I think it was some Christian sect, and they had held him against his will.”

“What makes you think that? Do you have any information?”

“No. He didn’t say anything, but now I shall find everything out. He would be alive but for their interfering.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Absolutely sure. And it is the police who should be looking into this, not me.”

“Have you made a statement to the police?”

“All this time I have been held in prison without being charged with anything. What opportunity have I had to make a statement?”

“Yes, I know that. You were being investigated in connection with the Baruch Goldstein case.”

“Yes. I was being held for no reason whatsoever.”

“Right now we have a different problem. Did you quarrel with your son?”

“Yes. Only I do not consider he was crazy. That is, he was crazy, but not in that sense of the word.”

“I am not concerned with medical problems. Did you quarrel with him shortly before his suicide?”

“Yes. We had a big argument but he got what he wanted. I gave him permission to go to Russia to stay with his grandmother. I have nothing to hide, before that I boxed his ears.”

“He has a fresh scratch on his lip. Was that a consequence of having his ears boxed?”

“Yes, I suppose so. I have nothing to hide. He is my son, and these are our relations, and they are no business of anyone else.”

“Were no business, Gershon. Please now sign the statement. You must understand yourself that in a case like this, the police have to exclude the possibility of murder.”

“What? How dare you say that to me, his father! Do you suspect me of killing my own son? Well I’ll …”

“Stop. Don’t start coming at me with your fists. I do not consider you a murderer, and I will be writing that to the appropriate authority.”

“You bloody fuzz! (The following text is unprintable.) You’re all the same everywhere! (Unprintable text). You’d do better to go looking for those who imprisoned the boy, who dunned this protest against his parents into his head! Your (unprintable text) police only think about keeping the Arabs happy! You don’t give a thought to your own people, you don’t protect your own citizens!

“You only protect your own backsides! You’d do better to search for those monsters who filled my boy’s head with nonsense! You might as well not be here! You can all just (unprintable text). I’ll find them myself! I’ll take my own vengeance! … Your government … your Rabin …”

(The last section was in Russian. Translated by V. Tsypkin.)

16. November 1995, Haifa

F

ROM A LETTER FROM

H

ILDA TO HER MOTHER

Dear Mama,

You must already have heard that Yitzhak Rabin has been assassinated. It is the only thing people are talking about, the newspapers, television, people in shops, and even the parishioners in church. Daniel, too, is very agitated. He was always convinced that only a joint Jewish-Arab state had a realistic chance of survival, and that the creation of two independent states is impossible because the borders are not territorial but in the recesses of people’s minds. If you can heal people’s minds there is a chance of survival. I look on all this as an outsider or, more exactly, from my own standpoint. I am not a Jew or a Palestinian. No matter how much I love Israel, in my heart I have immense sympathy for the Arabs, ordinary civilians whose situation becomes more difficult by the year. I am only freelancing here. I can return to Germany at any time and do there exactly what I am doing here: look after sick old people, work with unfortunate children, and distribute charitable aid.

I don’t remember if I told you the psychiatrists here have introduced a new term, “Jerusalem syndrome.” It is insanity on a religious basis. After the Baruch Goldstein saga the whole country is suffering an acute attack of this ailment. The right-wingers and settlers have become terribly hostile toward left-wingers. Some want peace at any price, others with equal passion thirst for victory over their enemies. The situation is desperately tense and overheated.

I’m planning to take a holiday and Daniel and I have agreed that I will return to Germany for a couple of weeks in early December, so that I can be back home here for Christmas. Well, a few days before, in order to have time to prepare for the festival. I will call you as soon as I know my departure date.

17. 1 December 1995, Jerusalem

F

ROM THE NEWSPAPER

HADASHOT HA’EREV

According to newspaper reports, on 22 June 1995, four months before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, an ancient death curse ceremony, the “Pulsa de-Nura,” was performed in the old cemetery of Rosh Pina in Galilee. Twenty extreme right-wing activists, all bearded men over 40, none of them divorced or widowed, prayed under the guidance of a rabbi that the “angels of destruction” should kill “the sinner Yitzhak Rabin.”

The ritual curse was recited at the grave of Shlomo Ben-Yosef, a member of the Betar ultra-nationalist movement. Ben-Yosef was hanged in Palestine in 1938 for attempting to destroy an Arab bus. Reports of the ceremony appeared in the newspapers even before the murder, but it was only after that tragic event that the public took an interest.

Our correspondent has met a number of people better informed about this event than most. He has managed to put a number of questions to Rabbi Meir Dayan who performed the ceremony. He told us that the Pulsa de-Nura is imposed in exceptional cases on individuals who represent a threat to the integrity of the Torah and can be used only against Jews.

Accordingly, myths that Jewish sages used the curse against Hitler are entirely without foundation. As far as he is aware, in the twentieth century the Pulsa de-Nura has been used only twice, against Trotsky and against Yitzhak Rabin.

As regards Yitzhak Rabin, there is at least a certain logic there. As regards Trotsky, the explanation given by the participants in the ritual appears totally absurd: they held that Trotsky had caused great harm to the whole Jewish people by replacing veneration of the Torah with veneration of an idol, which in his case was social revolution.

A present-day Jewish authority, Rabbi Eliayahu Luriye, the descendant of a great rabbi and kabbalist, has stated categorically and succinctly that if this ritual really was performed, then it was at the hands of semiliterate activists. While the public is still heatedly discussing whether the villainous murder of the Prime Minister was linked to this ancient curse or whether the two events were unconnected, reports have come in of a further nocturnal gathering at Rosh Pina Cemetery. Once again a group of bearded Jews dressed in black, and one dressed in white who performed the ceremony, gathered at the grave of Ben-Yosef.

The cemetery watchman, an involuntary witness of the secret assembly, reported it to his superiors but asked not to be named if the information became public. Although he was in the immediate vicinity of the ceremony, he also declined to reveal the name of the person cursed. The registration number of the minibus in which the nocturnal visitors to Rosh Pina departed was noted while it was in the car park. Our correspondent, Adik Shapiro, has with great ingenuity established that the vehicle is registered in Hebron and that its owner is the notorious extremist settler, implicated in the Baruch Goldstein case, Gershon Shimes.

The Kabbalists pictured this curse as a blow with a fiery spear threaded with rings of fire.

The question now is, who is next in line to be struck this “fiery blow”?

18. 1996, Haifa

F

ROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN

H

ILDA AND

E

WA

M

ANUKYAN

“On the way back we stopped at Mount Tabor and Daniel conducted prayers there. Everybody was already tired and I thought it was unnecessary. He performed a short prayer service and at the end he said, ‘Look at each other! See what ordinary faces we have, not all beautiful, not all young, some even quite indifferent. Then imagine the moment which will come when we shall all have faces radiant with God’s beauty, such as the Lord intended. Look at little Simeon, we shall all be as innocent and beautiful as babes, and perhaps even more so.’

“Nikolai, the father of baby Simeon, who had also been christened that day, kept pestering Daniel the whole journey with theological questions, about the Fall and Original Sin. I didn’t understand all of it, because they spoke in Russian some of the time. I only saw that Daniel was constantly trying to talk to him about the Holy Theophany, the Transfiguration, and was wreathed in smiles, while the other, a dreary individual, was only interested in Original Sin and hell. I know for a fact that Daniel does not believe in hell. He shrugs and says, ‘Christ is risen? What room does that leave for hell? Don’t create one for yourself, and there will be no hell.’

“That night, however, a dreadful evil befell us.”

June 2006

L

ETTER FROM

L

UDMILA

U

LITSKAYA TO

E

LENA

K

OSTIOUKOVITCH

Dear Lyalya,

With God’s help I am coming to the end of this story. It began in August 1992 when Daniel Rufeisen came to my home. I don’t remember whether I told you about this. He was passing through Moscow on his way to Minsk. He sat in a chair, his sandaled feet barely reaching the floor. He was very friendly and very ordinary, but at the same time I could feel something happening. Either the roof had been removed or there was a fireball under the ceiling. I realized afterward that this was a man who lived in the presence of God, and that the presence was so powerful that other people could feel it, too.

We ate, drank, and talked. People asked him questions and he replied. Happily somebody turned on a dictaphone and I was able to replay the whole conversation afterward. Parts of it have been used in this book. Altogether I have used quite a lot of information taken from books written about him: In the Lion’s Den by the American professor Nechama Tec, Daniel Oswald Rufeisen, der Mann aus der Löwengrube by Dieter Corbach, and some others. Everything that has been written about him seemed to me far less than he deserved. I tried myself to write about him, went to Israel after his death, met his brother and many of the people around him. As you know, that came to nothing.

In those years I bore many grudges, not just against the Church so much as against the Lord God himself. All the revelations I had so cherished seemed suddenly dull, grimy rags. Everything about Christianity seemed airless and nauseating.

You atheists have an easier time of it. You measure everything only against your own conscience. In your Catholic Italy the Church is always victorious. In the West the Church is deeply embedded in your culture, while in Russia it is deeply embedded in our lack of culture. How bizarre that cultured Italian atheists like Umberto Eco and a dozen or two others, and you, too, the epitome of Italian womanhood, disdain contemporary Catholicism while remaining fully aware that if it were to be taken away from your amazing culture, there would be nothing left. In Russia the Church’s links with culture are much weaker; its links with primitive paganism are far stronger. At this point every anthropologist in the world will turn against me for deprecating the pagan world, but it would still be interesting, using that principle of subtraction, to see what would be left of Christianity in Russia if we took the paganism away.

Poor Christianity! It can be only poor. Any victorious Church, whether of the West or the East, totally rejects Christ. That is an inescapable fact. Would the Son of Man in his worn sandals and poor raiment accept into his circle that Byzantine pack of greedy and cynical hangers-on at court who today comprise the Church establishment? After all, even an honest Pharisee he viewed with suspicion! And what need do they have of him as they anathematize and excommunicate each other, denouncing erroneous professions of faith. Throughout his life, Daniel moved toward one simple idea: believe whatever you please, that is your private affair, but observe the ten commandments and behave with dignity. Incidentally, in order to do that you don’t even need to be a Christian. You can believe in nothing, you can be a hopeless agnostic or a materialistic atheist. Daniel’s choice, however, was Jesus and he believed that Jesus opens hearts and that people are freed by Him from hatred and malice.

During the Soviet period, the Church in Russia got out of the habit of being victorious. It found that being persecuted and humiliated suited it better. Now see what has happened. With the change of regime our Church has rolled over and started purring to the state. “Love us and we will love you. Let’s thieve together and share the spoils!” The Church community has accepted that arrangement jubilantly. It filled me with revulsion. If only you knew what amazing Christians I met when I was young, men and women of a departed generation, people who returned from emigration and had never been infected by the Soviet corruption: Father Andrey Sergiyenko, Elena Vedernikova, Maria Mikhailovna Muravyova, Nina Bruni. Of the people who stayed in Russia there were all those old ladies who remained steadfast: another Maria Mikhailovna with the unaristocratic surname of Kukushkina, who looked after Alyosha and Petya when they were little while I was celebrating my love in Andrey’s studio; our lift attendant Anastasia Vasilieva, who gave us her touching pictures of cockerels and dogs. And indeed, Father Alexander Men, Father Sergiy Zheludkov, Anatoliy Emmanuilovich Krasnov-Levitin, the Vedernikovs. For me those people were the Church.

I catch myself listing admirable priests of the present time, Fathers Alexander, Vladimir, Georgiy, Viktor (Mamontov). I can think of perhaps another 10 or so. Anyway, who says there have to be a lot of righteous people? Perhaps 36 are enough to save the world.

Daniel was a righteous man. In human terms he suffered defeat. After his death his congregation dispersed and now, just as before, there is no Church of St. James. In a sense, Jesus, too, suffered defeat. First he was not understood or accepted by his own people, then he was accepted by many other peoples but still not understood. If anyone wants to argue that he was understood, where is that new human being, that new history, those new relations between people?

None of my questions have been answered. I have had finally to abandon the cozy clichés I found useful in my life. Daniel just sat in that chair, radiant, and the questions went away. In particular, the Jewish Question went away, that unbridgeable gulf between Judaism and Christianity which Daniel managed to bridge with his own personality. While he was alive, within his life, everything was one. By the effort he made in living his life, that bleeding wound was healed. Not for long, only while he lived.

All these years I have been thinking a great deal about these matters, and coming to a better understanding of things which were closed to me before. Judgment is not always required. You don’t need to have an opinion on every issue. The urge to pronounce judgment is misguided. Christianity inherited from Judaism a fraught relationship between man and God, of which the most vivid image is Jacob’s wrestling all night with the angel. The God inherited from Judaism challenges man to fight. God toys with man like an indulgent father obliging his young son to test his strength, training his soul and, of course, smiling into his metaphysical beard.

Only I cannot understand where those 500 people fit in, the young and old who were shot in the night in Czarna Puszcza while 18-year old Daniel was hiding in the forest. And a few million others.

Whenever I am in Israel, I look around amazed, scandalized, joyful, indignant, admiring. My nose constantly tingles at that inimitable sweet-and-sour Jewish sensitivity to life. It is difficult to live there. The stew is too thick, the air too solid, passions too heated. There is too much pathos and shouting. It is, however, also impossible to turn your back on. This small provincial state, a Jewish village, a homemade state which remains to this day a microcosm of the world.

What does the Lord want? Obedience? Cooperation? Mutual destruction of the peoples? I have completely repudiated value judgments. I’m not up to them. In my heart I feel I lived an important lesson with Daniel, but when I try to define it, I recognize that what you believe doesn’t matter in the slightest. All that matters is how you personally behave.

Pretty profound, eh? But Daniel has placed that right in my heart.

Lyalya, you have been a great help to me all this time. I do not know how I would have emerged from this undertaking without you. I would probably have resurfaced somehow, but the book would have been different. It is foolish to thank you, just as it is foolish to thank someone for their love.

By the time you finish these major books, they have torn out half your soul and leave you staggering about. At the same time, amazing things happen and characters who are partly fictitious do deeds it is impossible to imagine. The community of Daniel Rufeisen has dispersed. The community of Daniel Stein, the hero of my book, half-remembered, half-imagined, has also dispersed. The Church of Elijah by the Spring is in ruins; the community house is boarded up but will soon be back in use because it is a very fine house and its garden is beautiful. The old people’s home has closed its doors. The pastor is gone and the sheep have strayed. The Church of St. James, the Jerusalem community of Jewish Christians, exists no more. And yet the light shines.

Lyalya, I am sending you the last episodes. I am mortally weary of all the letters and documents, reference books, and encyclopedias. You should see the mountains of them piled high in my study. The rest is text.

L.

19. December 1995, Jerusalem-Haifa

The engine didn’t start the first time he turned the ignition key, or the second. Daniel took the key out and closed his eyes. He prayed that he should get back home while also thinking that tomorrow he really must go and see Ahmed the garage mechanic in the Lower Town. Somewhere deep in his consciousness the thought stirred that the car was eighteen years old and it was time to lay it to rest. He turned the key one more time and the engine started. Most likely it would not break down on the journey now. The main thing was not to let it stall. It was after eight in the evening on the seventeenth of December.

Neuhaus was going to die in a few days’ time, perhaps even tonight. How magnanimous and wonderful it was of him to take his farewell of his friends like that. Daniel, too, had been honored. This morning the professor’s son had phoned to say his father was very ill and wanted to say good-bye.

Daniel had got in the car and driven to Jerusalem. The son, in a crocheted skullcap and a black jacket shiny with age, took him to his father’s study. “I need to warn you that some years ago my father was fitted with a pacemaker. They hesitated for a long time because his heart was worn out and it was very risky, but Father told them to do it anyway. That was nine years ago. Now the pacemaker has failed. He has constant fibrillation. During the night we phoned for an ambulance and Father asked how much time he had left. The doctors said very little, so he refused to go to intensive care. He has heart pains now. When they lessen a little he asks for someone to go in.”

Daniel waited forty minutes in the study until the professor’s wife, Gerda, called him through. She was a tiny woman, a doll who had been acknowledged the prettiest girl in Vienna in the late 1920s, before people knew that a woman can be beautiful only if she is over 1 meter 80 centimeters tall.

“Five minutes,” she whispered, and Daniel nodded.

The old man was sitting on a chaise longue, his back supported by large white pillows, but his hair and he himself were even whiter.

“It is good you have come,” the old man said, nodding. “Gerda told me you had been on television, but she couldn’t remember what the broadcast was about.”

“It was about the war. They were asking me about working as an interpreter for the Germans,” Daniel said.

“Ah yes, I wanted to ask you: did you not have to go with them to the bathhouse?”

“I did just once. There was a lot of steam and they noticed nothing. It contracted so much from fear, they didn’t see, but I was expecting to be exposed,” Daniel admitted.

“Yes. I wanted to say good-bye to you. You see, I am leaving.” A smile spread over his clever face with its big nose, and he closed his eyes. “I am going to see my Teacher, your God.”

The professor’s son was already standing at the door. Gerda, who had turned away to the window, was intently examining a large acacia. She saw Daniel downstairs, thanked him, and shook his hand.

It was said that when Neuhaus met his wife, a golden halo gleamed above her head and he knew she was destined for him. It was said that one time their children, a son and daughter, caught meningitis and almost died. Neuhaus negotiated with God to let them live. They survived, but had no children of their own. All their lives they worked with other people’s, the son as headmaster of a school for retarded children, and the daughter teaching deaf and dumb children to speak. It was said that when Neuhaus had his heart operation, one of his rich friends vowed that if the patient survived, he would give away all his wealth to the poor, and Neuhaus bankrupted him. It was said that during one of his lectures, Neuhaus took off his skullcap, waved it over his head, and put it down on the table. “This is cloth! You see, it is cloth. It bears no relation to the problems of faith. If you have come to my lecture to learn faith, you have come to the wrong door. I can teach you to think. Not all of you, though!”

There were as many stories and parables told about him as about Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. It was a pity Hilda attended his classes for only two semesters. Something had prevented her. Yes, they had organized a kindergarten in the community and she wasn’t able to drive to Jerusalem so often.

The engine was running sweetly and without laboring and Daniel passed Latrun. On the other side of the valley was Emmaus. It was probably at just this time, in the short twilight after the evening meal, that two travelers had come together there with a third. They spoke to him but did not recognize him. Now there is a small monastery there, vines and olives are grown, and the produce is labeled “Emmaus.”

Darkness fell. Emmaus was left behind and he drove on toward Tel Aviv. He knew the road well. He would pass through Tel Aviv and ten kilometers before Haifa would turn off to the kibbutz of Beit Oren. This was a wonderful region, with the best mountain views in Israel. Already he could see Mount Carmel. Another twenty kilometers and he would be at the monastery. Evening prayers. Four hours of sleep. Would Neuhaus be alive when he woke in the morning or would he already have departed to “my Teacher, your God,” as he put it? What a splendid way to go, surrounded by family, friends, and pupils. What a wife he had been sent. Did I see that golden halo above Marysia’s head? Of course I did. Not a halo, but the radiance of my own love directed toward her.

Hilda shone with the same light of femininity and spiritual innocence. How many marvelous women there were in the world. Were none of them for him? There had been no Marysia prepared for him, no Hilda, no Gerda. Their hair braided in a plait or gathered in a bun, or in curls down to their shoulders; their necks, shoulders, fingers, breasts, and bellies. How good it would be to live with a woman, a wife, being one flesh like Professor Neuhaus and his Gerda. Even crazy Efim and Teresa consoled themselves one in the other. And I with You, Lord. Glory be to You …

The road was almost empty. It was a weekday evening and people had already come home from work. The strands and clusters of lights had been replaced by darkness transected by the probing needles of headlamps.

What infinite experience of death! There is no counting how many people have died or been killed in front of my eyes. I have dug graves, closed eyelids, collected parts of bodies which had been blown to bits, heard confessions, given the last rites, held hands, kissed the dying, comforted relatives, and conducted funeral service after funeral service after funeral service. Thousands of dead people.

Two deaths I have never forgotten, those two standing to the right and left of me. That great lean forester and the half-witted lad I sent to their deaths by firing squad in 1942. “These,” I said, bearing false witness. Twenty healthy young peasant men were saved, a traitor was shot, and along with him the guiltless village idiot. What did I do? What was it that I did then? I made one more saint for the Lord.

And in all that time I have never known an easier farewell than with Neuhaus. Natural, like friends parting for a time who know they will meet again soon. Great Neuhaus! He laughed at the idea of salvation. First you need to practice here on earth, to learn to cope with local unpleasantnesses like mosquitoes, indigestion, the wrath of superiors, a querulous wife, naughty children, loud music played by neighbors. If you can manage that in this life, there is some hope you will manage it in the next.

Who have I been fighting all my life? What for? What against? I seem to have brought a lot of passion to it, a lot that was personal to me. Perhaps I am jealous beyond all reason. Perhaps I am too much a Jew. I know better than everybody else? No, no. Honestly, no! It is just that I could see clearly where You are and where You are not. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

The steady hum of the engine, the familiar murmur of prayers, the flash of oncoming lights responding to his headlights, and even the alternation of light and darkness combined wonderfully together. Everything had its rhythm in harmony with all the other sounds, noises, and movements, and even the beating of his own heart seemed to have its place in the overall orchestral score. It was probably the feeling jockeys have, hunters, and pilots who become welded into a single unit with a creation of a different nature.

He thought once more of Neuhaus. The whole world so beautifully in harmony and only his heart faltering, forgetful of the sacred order of systole and diastole, the unseen driver in the sinoatrial node having lost its sense of timing and the rhythmic wave no longer driving stimulation through the atrium to the ventricles. Something ceases to occur which has taken place for many years, minute by minute, deeply hidden from the person who carries the heart in their chest and gives never a thought to this beating which never ceases throughout a lifetime.

He had long passed Tel Aviv and took the sharp turn uphill toward Beit Oren. It was a narrow, one-track road and even though there were no oncoming vehicles, he lowered his speed. This slightly disrupted the even rhythm because the engine labored with lower notes. On a steep incline it strained and sneezed and all but stalled, but it did not stall, and the vehicle crawled on. The small mountain pass was very near and now revealed itself as a dark space with distant lights and a coastal rim with a double chain of streetlights. Then the road fell away, fairly flat but with many curves. Daniel held back, braking slightly, but suddenly felt the brake was not complying. He pressed it down to the floor, but the car continued to accelerate downhill.

The road twisted, he took the bend skilfully, and engaged first gear but the car was gathering speed and he was unable to control it at the next bend. Breaking through the barrier as if it were a twig, the vehicle flew 10 meters downward and crashed into the rocky slope. Flame branched upwards in two broad tongues, the car overturned slowly, found the only opening between two rocky outcrops, and hurtled downward, trailing a red veil behind it. A fiery track ran from where it hit the ground up to the roadway. The dry grass burst into flames and in an instant the fire reached the road. It could move only sideways, the road forming a barrier beyond which was a cliff on which no grass was growing. The fire spread in both directions beneath the roadway, a beautiful and terrible sight.

Hilda woke in the middle of the night as if the alarm had told her it was time to get up. She looked at her watch. It was 1:30. She was wide awake. She went outside and sat in a chair in the orchard. She had a strange sensation, a chill sense of anticipation as if something terrible and magnificent must be about to happen. Someone had left a box of matches out on the plastic table. She struck one, watched the cone of blue flame as it took light, and suddenly regretted not being a smoker. The match went out, almost burning her fingers. Her anxiety did not lessen, but nothing happened.

She went to the wall of the tiny garden and gasped. In the distance Carmel was in flames. A wedge of fire, crimson, bright and living, was running over the mountain from the crest downward. Hilda went back inside to phone the fire service. The number was engaged. Evidently somebody was already calling them, she decided, and guessed it must have been the fire which had wakened her. She lay back down on the narrow camp bed and fell asleep immediately.

20. December 1995, Haifa

C

HURCH OF

E

LIJAH BY THE

S

PRING

FROM CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO BROTHER DANIEL STEIN

5 December 1995

T

O

F

ATHER

D

ANIEL

S

TEIN

FROM THE GENERAL OF THE ORDER OF BAREFOOT CARMELITES

In accordance with a decision of the General of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, Member of the Order Priest Daniel Stein is hereby banned from further service. By 31 December of this year he is required to surrender all documentation relating to the renting and exploitation of the Church of Elijah by the Spring to a commission consisting of a representative of the Order of Carmelites, a representative of the Roman Curia, and a representative of the Jerusalem Patriarchate.

GENERAL OF THE ORDER OF BAREFOOT CARMELITES

This letter was delivered after the death of the addressee in a car crash on 17 December 1995.

21. 14 December 1995

E

NVIRONS OF

Q

UMRAN.

C

HURCH OF

E

LIJAH BY THE

S

PRING

Above a cave entrance blocked by stones, Fyodor carved a small cross and beneath it in Hebrew letters, but from left to right, the name ABUN, and beneath it a small ‘φ’ in Cyrillic script. He finally felt at ease. This sense of ease and a soaring feeling told him he had done everything properly. He bade farewell to the grave and climbed down the mountain.

He walked along the road. Several times cars stopped to offer him a lift and then he turned off and walked as far as possible through the hills. When a path came to an end or led off in the wrong direction, he returned to the road, moving northwards until he reached Jericho. He walked part of his way through the Jordan valley and at Jiftlik turned west toward Samaria, which he crossed unhurriedly until he reached the sea at Netanya. He took pleasure in the walking and slept at night wherever he found a place to lie down. Sometimes this was a pile of dry twigs, sometimes a bench in the children’s playground of some nameless village. One time some men who’d had a bit to drink bought him a meal in a café, another time an Arab shopkeeper gave him pita bread. In the fields he could forage for grapes.

Fyodor had long been used to eating very little and was barely sensible of hunger. His black cassock was bleached by the sun, a rucksack containing three books and a bottle of water bounced up and down on his back. It also held a censer and a small supply of incense. His dry hands clutched a long woollen rosary.

From Netanya he walked toward Haifa, in the footsteps of crusaders and pilgrims.

He knew now the full extent of the deceit. The Jews had tricked the whole world by tossing it the bauble of Christianity but keeping back for themselves the great mystery and the true faith. There is no God in the world other than the Jewish God, and they would keep Him to themselves until the secret was taken from them by force. This little Jew who pretended to be a Christian knew the secret. Abun had said they had secret knowledge. They possessed God. God listened to them. For all that, what mattered most was not the secret knowledge they had gained but their theft. They had stolen our God, and tossed the world a bauble. Abun understood it all: they had let us have colored pictures, a fairy-tale Virgin, saints’ calendars, and thousands of abstruse books, but God they had kept for themselves.

Fyodor stumbled and the strap of his sandal came away from the sole. He threw it aside and went on, wearing just one. A breeze was blowing from the sea but the shore, unlike the shore at Athos, was flat and inexpressive and the sea had not the same intoxicating smell of spirits that it had in Greece. He spent a night and half a day at the archeological remains at Caesarea, feeling suddenly lethargic in the morning. He lay in the shade of an ancient wall and dozed until noon. Then he walked on. On the third day he approached Haifa. Now it was no distance at all.

He climbed up to the Church of Elijah by the Spring in the evening. There was nobody there but the watchman, an Arab called Yusuf, a distant relative of Musa and like him also a gardener. Hilda had employed him eight years earlier. Yusuf was deaf and Daniel joked that Hilda had a special talent for finding help. She had a deaf watchman, a lame courier, and it would be best if Daniel washed the dishes himself because she would be sure to hire a dishwasher with one arm.

Fyodor lay down behind the arbor and fell asleep. When he woke it was already dark. He went to the church. He needed to examine the books in there to see if he could find the ones he needed, the ones with the secret. The church was locked so Fyodor went to a window, took off his cassock, folded it in quarters, and deftly pushed the glass out. In no hurry, he put the cassock back on, looked around, found a candle, and lit it. He immediately intuited the internal layout of the building and moved through to the extension, pushing the door. It opened. The desk and cupboard were locked.

He had a knife in his belt and the rigid sheath had been digging into his stomach all the way there. He grasped the sheath and pulled the knife out. It was an Arab knife with a black horn handle and a bronze insert between the horn and the blade. It was not a knife for slaughtering livestock. The book cupboard opened as soon as he touched it. Fyodor laid the books in neat piles and began leafing through them.

What an idiot I am, he chided himself as he read the spines. He recognized the Greek Typikon, the Slavonic Psalter, and several books in Polish, but everything else was in languages of which Fyodor had no knowledge: Hebrew, Latin, Italian. Even if the secret was writ large in them, there was no way he would be able to read it.

He set the books to one side and started on the desk. The middle drawer was double locked and the bolt did not yield. Fyodor picked at the faceplate with his knife, trying to remove it and with it the lock. He did not hear Yusuf come into the room. Yusuf had seen light in the window and decided that Hilda or Daniel must have come back unnoticed. Seeing the burglar, Yusuf cried out and seized him from behind. Fyodor twisted round. The knife was in his hand and before he could think, he had slashed the watchman’s neck. Blood spurted everywhere. There was a strange gurgling.

Fyodor immediately saw that all was lost. Now he would be unable to coerce the Jews’ secret out of Daniel. He had needed the knife not for murder but only for extracting the great secret. The lifeless watchman lying in an excessively large pool of blood had spoiled everything. Fyodor would now never learn that thrice accursed secret of the Jews. Ever. A great rage seized him. He threw the books aside and went out into the church itself and smashed everything that could be broken. The force of his madness was so great that he demolished the altar which had been put together from heavy stones by four strong lads. He trashed the benches and lecterns, wrecked the collection box at the entrance, and smashed his fist into Mother Ioanna’s last icon which, in anticipation of the move to its ultimate home in Moscow, was hanging in accordance with her wishes in the Church of Elijah by the Spring.

Fyodor suddenly became placid and squatted down by the outer wall of the church. Nobody came that day because they were at Daniel’s funeral service in the Arab church where he had once officiated. The service was conducted by Roman, with whom Daniel had once fallen out over plots in the cemetery.

The dreadful occurrence became known only the day after the funeral, early in the morning when Hilda came to the church. Fyodor was still sitting on his heels by the wall. Hilda called the police and the men in white coats. As a disciplined Westerner, she did not touch anything until the police arrived. “The Jerusalem syndrome,” she thought. Yusuf was buried next to Daniel.

The only thing she did move was the icon, which she took to her car. It was a marvelous depiction of “Praise the Lord the Highest Heavens.” On the icon the sprightly hand of Mother Ioanna had represented Adam with a beard and moustache and Eve with a long pigtail, hares, squirrels, birds, and serpents, and all of creation which had formed a long queue to embark on Noah’s Ark and was now leaping and rejoicing and praising the Lord. The flowers and the leaves gleamed, palms and willows waved their branches. A child’s train crawled along the earth and childish smoke spiraled joyfully from the funnel. A plane flew in the sky, leaving a slender white vapor trail behind it. The old lady had been a genius. She had envisaged all creation praising the Lord: rocks, plants, animals, and even the iron creations of man.

July 2006, Moscow

L

ETTER FROM

L

UDMILA

U

LITSKAYA TO

E

LENA

K

OSTIOUKOVITCH

Dear Lyalya,

I had a strange, wide-ranging, and protracted dream last night. It lasted for an immense time, longer than a night and, as often happens, I didn’t manage to retain everything and bring it back to the light of day. A lot was left unrehearsed and unarticulated.

There was a system of rooms, not an enfilade but a far more complex pattern, with an internal logic which I simply could not crack. There were no people there, but many nonhuman beings, small, attractive, their nature indescribable, like hybrids of angels and animals. Each was the bearer of a word or idea or principle (I am already struggling for words). Among this host of beings and rooms I was looking for one in particular, the only one which could give the answer to my question. Alas, I could not formulate what my question was. I was afraid of missing the one being I so needed in the throng of all the other, similar beings. Two unfamiliar ones compelled me to wander from room to room in a fruitless search.

The rooms were sketchy but their purpose was clear. I gradually realized as I wondered about that they were not for eating, or meeting, or religious purposes. They were for study. Study of what? Study of everything. The world of knowledge. That sounds funny, like the name of a bookshop. In Russia we have shops called World of Footwear, World of Leather, even World of Doors.

We have become used to treating knowledge and the process of acquiring it as something not subject to moral law. Knowledge and morality are seen as coordinates of separate systems, but here this was not the case. These little bearers of knowledge of objects, ideas, and phenomena bore a moral charge. That’s not quite right. Again I can’t convey the thought perfectly. Not moral so much as creative. Creativity, though, correlates with positive morality.

Forgive me, my dear, for writing so opaquely. I cannot put it more clearly because I am myself groping here, falling back on intuition and a kind of internal navigator. To oversimplify disgracefully, the old-fashioned antithesis of science and religion is balderdash. In this place, in my dream, there is no doubt that science and religion grow from the same root.

Anyway, I was wandering through these halls looking for I don’t know whom, but looking very conscientiously. I needed him at all costs. And he came, nuzzled me like a dog, and I immediately knew it was he! A small, compact, soft being suddenly expanded, unfolded, and turned into something vast so that that room and all the others vanished and he himself was larger than any of them. He held a whole world within himself, and I myself was within it. The essence of the world was victory, but in the present continuous tense. It would be better to say, “being victorious.”

At this point I guessed what the question was which had been tormenting me so and why I was looking for this conquering angel. My dear Daniel seemed to have been vanquished, to the extent that in his specific mission (“reestablishment of the Church of St. James in the Holy Land”) he had failed. There had been no such church when he arrived and now again there was no such church. It had lasted the few years he lived there, working as a priest, praising Yeshua in his own language, preaching christianity with a small c, a personal religion of the mercy and love of God and of one’s neighbor, and not the religion of dogmas and authority, power and totalitarianism.

When he died it became evident that his living body had been the sole bridge between Judaism and Christianity. When he died the bridge was gone, something I experienced as a sad defeat.

In my dream, the creature which expanded into a whole world had a sword, and eyes, and a flame, but it also incorporated all of Daniel, not swallowed like Jonah in the whale, but embodied within the substance of that world. I very clearly detected Daniel’s smile, even some semblance of his outward appearance, his little chin, the childlike upward glance, surprised and asking simple questions like, “How is it going, Lyusya?”

As soon as I understood that he had departed unvanquished, I woke up. It was already fairly late in the morning and I was separated from the previous evening not by eight hours of sleep but by the vast temporal expanse of this knowledge which had so undeservedly come to me and which I cannot precisely formulate. I now know something about the nature of victory and defeat which I didn’t know before, about their relativeness, their temporary nature, their mutability, about our complete incompetence to decide such an elementary question as, “Who won?”

Then I dug through the notes from my last trip to Israel. I was taken around by my friends Lika Nutkevich and Seryozha Ruzer. We drove around the Sea of Galilee, through the kibbutz at HaOn where they breed ostriches. On both sides of the road, the poppies and bittercress, which Lika calls wild mustard, were in flower. We passed through Gergesa, the Arab Kursi. In Capernaum we found a monastery with a single monk. The priest comes to officiate every second Saturday. This is the place of the miraculous healing of the man with the palsy. Here, too, Jesus came after the feeding of the 5,000.

We stumbled on the Church of the Apostles. Something is being rebuilt and the jetty is being repaired. The workers were a Greek and a Yugoslav. That church was locked but a Greek monk came, opened it, and talked to us about life. He spoke Russian fairly fluently. They conduct the liturgy in Russian because many Russians come from Tiberias. He does not like Hebrew and other languages being used together in a single service, as is generally accepted now. He is sure the next generation will conduct services entirely in Hebrew because the children will grow up and forget Russian.

Lika and Seryozha and I exchanged glances. Here it was, the Church of St. James. Here, in Israel, Orthodox and Catholic Christians will talk to God in Hebrew. But will there be Jews among them? Is it really what Daniel envisaged? Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Then the monk said that Israel would do better to christianize the Arabs, because Christian Arabs are easier to deal with than Muslim Arabs. “They don’t understand that,” the monk said ruefully. Altogether the state gives Christians a hard time with visas, duration of stay, naturalization, and insurance. He said the Jews do not want peace, but admittedly the Arabs want it even less.

Then the conversation moved on to the selling of church lands, a complicated matter. I stopped listening because one person’s head cannot take in as much as I have learned recently.

That’s it.

Love from

Lyusya