The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TOM STEPPED FROM THE CAR AND ENTERED THE CEMETERY BENEATH a cloudless afternoon. This was a place where the Jews of central Florida had long been laid to rest. Decades ago, Abiram had been instrumental in securing the land and having it consecrated. It sat away from almost everything, among rolling hills, oak hammocks, horse farms, and orange groves.

He hated graveyards.

They were places of the past, and his was best forgotten.

He stared out at the matsevahs, the vertical slabs standing in ill-defined rows, most facing east, each a cut rectangle with modest decorative elements—circles, pitched corners, odd shapes. He recalled his training as a boy. Each stone evidenced the eternal essence of the person lying beneath. Since Alle had been in charge of burial and Abiram had been an uncompromising soul, he assumed she’d strictly adhered to ritual.

Which meant the marker would not have been erected until a year after death. During that time Alle would have kept his memory alive with regular visits and studied other graves, deciding carefully what the epitaph should be. Once convinced, she would have commissioned a carver and erected the matsevah in a simple ceremony.

None of which had involved him.

All he’d received was the deed to the house with a curt explanation from a lawyer that the property now belonged to him. He’d finally visited here one dismal afternoon, six months after Abiram’s death, standing in the rain and remembering their last encounter.

“I’m going to be baptized Christian,” he said.

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“Michele is Christian and she wants our children to be Christian.”

“That doesn’t require you to leave our faith.”

He shrugged. “I don’t believe in any of this. I never have. Judaism is important to you, not me.”

“You were born to Jewish parents. You are a Jew, and always will be.”

“I plan to be baptized Episcopalian. That’s Michele’s church.”

Shock flooded Abiram’s eyes. “If you do that, you and I will be through.”

“You and I were through a long time ago. I’m twenty-five years old, yet you treat me as if I were ten. I’m not one of your students. I’m your son. But if you no longer want me to be that, then that’s the way it’ll be.”

So he’d ceased being a Jew, married, become a Christian, and fathered a child. He and Abiram barely spoke after that. Family gatherings and holidays were the worst. His mother, though devout and respectful of her husband, had not been able to stay away. She’d come to California, but always alone. Never had he and Michele, as a family, visited Florida. Alle stayed with her grandparents for a few weeks every summer, flying back and forth alone. After his mother died those visits became longer. Alle had loved being with her grandfather. Abiram’s resentment of Tom had spilled over to Michele, and their relationship had always been strained. The old man was a proud Jew, and only in the past couple of years had Tom come to understand some of that passion. As he lost the drive for nearly everything in life, he remembered more and more what Abiram had taught him in those years before he turned twenty-five.

When they were still speaking.

He stared at the grave.

A lumpkin shrieked in the distance. The crying bird, one of his uncles had called them because of their humanlike tone.

The first time he’d come the marker had not been here. Alle had done well with its creation. Tall and substantial, much like the man beneath. He bent down and studied its reliefs, running his fingers across the two elegant letters at the top.

Po nikbar. Here lies.

He noticed art at the bottom.

A pitcher, tipped, as if pouring.

More of his early training came to mind.

A felled tree marked those who died young. Books evidenced a learned person. A saw and plane meant craftsman.

Pitchers symbolized that the deceased had been a Levite.

He’d never known that about his father.

According to the Bible, Levites were descendants of the tribe of Levi, the third of Jacob’s twelve sons. Both Moses and Aaron had been Levites. They sang psalms at services during the time of the First and Second Temples and physically maintained those sanctuaries. The Torah specifically commanded that Levites should protect the Temple for the people of Israel. Their usefulness, though, essentially ended when the Temples were destroyed. Because one of their assigned duties had been to cleanse the rabbi’s hands before the service, the pitcher had evolved into their symbol. He knew that Jews still considered themselves divided into three groups. Cohanim, the priestly caste. Levi’im, the Levites. And the Israelim, everyone else. Observances and laws specific to Cohanim and Levi’im were still practiced. Levites existed in synagogues, though their role was little more than honorific.

Was that why the symbol was here?

A recognition of Abiram’s service?

He glanced at his mother’s matsevah.

He’d attended her funeral, and Abiram had been customarily silent toward him. He’d stood right here a year later when the stone was raised but again played no part in its creation. A menorah adorned hers, symbolic of a righteous woman.

And that she’d been.

He heard a sound and turned.

A car eased to where he’d parked a couple of hundred feet away. A small sedan with tinted windows.

No one emerged.

Had Zachariah Simon followed him here?

The drive from his father’s house was only a short few miles, and no one had been behind him.

Yet someone was here.

He faced the intruder and called out, “What do you want?”

No reply.

“I said, what do you want?”

Silence.

With the courage of a man who’d not planned on even being alive at this moment he started forward.

The car wheeled from the graveled lot.

He watched as it drove away.

What in the world?

He turned back to the grave and thought of Alle.

“What in God’s name have you done, old man?”