Jerusalem Interlude (Zion Covenant) Read online

  “How will I find her?” he asked, choosing a place beside a tall carob tree where he might cross over.

  “Inside the courtyard there is a room with a small balcony beside an apricot tree. She will not expect you so soon. You must wait until you are certain she is alone.”

  Eli nodded. “It feels so late,” he said again.

  Ibrahim laughed. “I will wait here for you.” Then his voice became solemn. “I trust you with the honor of my sister. Words cannot harm her.”

  “Of course.” Eli was wounded by Ibrahim’s hint that nothing immoral must pass between Victoria and him. “By my life, Ibrahim . . . I would not.”

  “Yes. I believe you. You are a better man than I.” He slapped him on the back and sent him the last fifty feet alone.

  Eli reached for the thick limb of the carob tree and swung out, linking his legs around the branch. He knew this place. Twelve years ago he and Ibrahim had climbed this very wall to steal oranges. They had been caught and taken home in disgrace. That was the last time Eli had stolen anything. It was also the last time he had trespassed into an Arab courtyard.

  The leather of his shoes slipped on the slick bark. The drop to the cobblestones was twenty-five feet. Cautiously he made his way through the tangle of branches. He wondered if Ibrahim remembered the last time they were here together and if the memory made him smile. Eli remembered well the bits of glass in the top of the wall. When he was ten, the barrier had not seemed as formidable as it did now.

  And we climbed down through the branches of an orange tree on the other side.

  Reaching the wall, Eli could easily see the dark balcony with the tree beside it. He was disappointed that she was not there waiting for him. He searched the garden for a place to hide until the appointed time. How long it seems! But how much better to wait here where I can breathe the air she breathes. So close!

  He tore his trouser leg on the glass as he searched for a sturdy old branch of the orange tree. It was heavy with nearly ripe fruit, but tonight Eli had sweeter things in mind. He groped his way through the tangle of waxy green leaves and sharp stems, then dropped the last eight feet to the ground. Can she sense that I am here? He sat down beneath the orange tree, his eyes never leaving the balcony window. Like a watchman waiting for dawn, he waited for her. The anticipation of seeing her again made him feel a little drunk. He forgot he was a Jew. Forgot she was an Arab. He was simply Eli, and she was Victoria.

  Nearly an hour passed before there was light in the window. He leaned forward, ready to call to her, and then he remembered Ibrahim’s sharp warning. He must wait until he was sure. If he was caught here, they would do much more to him than send him home in disgrace.

  A shadow, a delicate shadow, moved back and forth before the light. The sight of it made Eli’s heart beat faster. He wanted to toss a pebble or run across the courtyard and stand beneath her balcony and call her name. But he dared not move until he was certain.

  The French doors opened slowly. Victoria stood for a minute, framed in the doorway, silhouetted by the light. Her dark hair was loose and tumbled down over her shoulders. She wore a long white cotton shift that moved slightly in the soft autumn breeze and seemed to caress her body. Have I ever seen beauty before tonight? Eli ached at the sight of her. Still, he dared not move. Perhaps her friend was in the room behind her.

  She leaned her cheek against the frame and gazed out on the dark and desolate garden. Her eyes mirrored sadness, longing.

  Ah, she feels the pain of it too.

  She sighed. It was not the wind in the leaves. He heard it. He felt it. Her face seemed to speak, although she said nothing after the sigh. Was she alone? Eli started forward only one step and then he heard her voice—gentle, a whisper, filled with hope.

  “Who has made this rule? Is this the way it must be in Jerusalem? The English gentlemen are always off to this café or that with Arab girls. Why must it be so hard for us?”

  Eli sank back to his place beneath the tree. She was speaking her heart to someone—to her friend, perhaps? She stepped out onto the balcony. The breeze made the cotton shift cling to her and ruffled her hair.

  If only I could be the wind. To caress her so . . . Eli drew a long breath. Be patient, Eli. Do not be a fool, or she will be the last thing of beauty your eyes will ever see.

  She leaned against the railing. Her eyes still searched the garden. Was she alone? Did she speak to herself? Eli had to be sure.

  Again she whispered, “Are not all women built the same by Allah? Breasts for nursing children? A body for the pleasure of a man? I see no difference between me and the English girls or the Jewish girls—”

  Eli stood suddenly and called, “Except you are more beautiful!”

  Victoria gasped. She looked around fearfully. “Shhhhh! You will be heard!”

  “I could not help it.” He stumbled from the overgrown path.

  “Shhhhh!” she said again. “They will kill you if they catch you!” She leaned far over the banister.

  “And I will die if I do not speak to you now.”

  “But if you die, then I will die, dear Eli . . . please!”

  “If we both die, then perhaps the Eternal will have mercy on us and let us have some small corner of Paradise where there are no garden walls to climb. Where I can love you.” He moved to the trunk of the apricot tree and whispered as he climbed up toward her. “And where everyone has forgotten the names of Arab and Jew.”

  She glanced nervously around. “Ibrahim has brought you too early.”

  “It felt very late.” The climb up was easy. Her face, sweet and perfect, was framed through the branches. He reached out, and she reached down. Their fingertips touched.

  “Then tell me what time you would have it be, Eli. The hour strikes when our fingers touch. It would be merciful if we could die together.” Her voice was a whisper—soft, like the breeze.

  He was near enough to lean over the balcony. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him eagerly. “We must stop the clock. Let the night stay forever, and I will perch here in this apricot tree to taste the sweetness of your lips.”

  Her hair brushed his face. Her breath was like flowers. With every kiss he inched nearer along the branch until the balcony was an easy step. He started to climb over, forgetting his promise to Ibrahim. Suddenly Victoria pushed him away and stepped back out of his reach. Breathless, but in control, she smoothed her hair and managed a smile. Her teeth were as perfect and white as the cotton shift. He reached for her in a gesture that begged for mercy.

  She took yet another step back. Her hand rose to touch her collar as if she might quiet the racing of her heart. “You will think I have . . . that I have given you my heart too fast, Eli,” she breathed.

  He still reached out for her, but he did not step onto the balcony. “Come. Put your hand on my heart and feel how fast it beats for you.”

  She did not move toward him. She knew the danger, felt the power that might sweep them both away. “My heart answers yours, but from a distance. Please. Let our hearts beat slower so we can decide what must be done so that our hearts are not broken.”

  “To look at you and not hold you . . . that breaks my heart.”

  “A lifetime of holding me will mend it again, Eli. I . . . cannot . . . give you satisfaction tonight.”

  “Then satisfy me with this promise, my love. Victoria, come away with me. Be my wife. Come unto my people, and I swear to you by the stars . . .”

  “Romeo!” She laughed. “You fit the part well, my Romeo. And I, your Juliet, await you on the balcony.”

  She drew close to him as she spoke. She reached out and put a finger to his lips. “Do not swear by the stars. They are so cold, and their brightness fades with morning. So might your love—”

  “Never!” He embraced her again, kissing her face and her throat until once more she pushed away from him.

  “And . . . if your people will not accept an Arab as the wife of a learned rabbi?” Fear shone in her eyes. />
  “But you will no longer be an Arab, don’t you see? It will not matter. I will teach you what you do not know. I will teach you . . . everything . . . you need to make me a good wife.”

  She closed her eyes as the meaning of his words sank in. To go to him would mean denial of her people and her own faith. And yet how could she live without him? When her heart beat slower she would think. Not now. Not tonight in the dark with only a step between her and surrender.

  “A good wife is a woman of self-control. So my mother has taught me. And someday I hope to teach my daughters the same.” She managed a smile and blew a kiss good night to him.

  “But when?” Pain welled up in his eyes and crept into his voice.

  “I will find a way. I will send Ibrahim for you.” She placed her hand on the door latch as if it might hold her back from him. “And now . . . good night, sweet Eli. We have so much to think about. So many things. We cannot be like other couples in love. Be careful on your way back to the Jewish Quarter.”

  “Send for me soon. The nights are a torment to me without you,” he pleaded.

  “Then sleep well tonight, Eli. You take my heart with you.”

  With those words she slipped into her room and closed the door behind her. For a fraction of an instant, Eli considered following. But only for an instant.

  He shinnied down the apricot tree and crept back across the garden. He heard the urgent whisper of Ibrahim as he climbed back up the orange tree. “Pssssst! Hurry, you idiot! The moon is rising! You will be seen!”

  “It is worth it for even a moment more with her.”

  Ibrahim grabbed his friend by the shirt and tugged him upward the last few inches over the wall. “You will not think anything is worth it if we are caught! You are late!” he scowled.

  “It feels early,” Eli said.

  “I was watching from the wall. It is a good thing you did not go any further, or I would have killed you myself!”

  “Then did you hear?”

  “I heard nothing but the endless smacking of lips.” Ibrahim was half angry.

  “I asked Victoria to marry me.”

  The anger melted. Ibrahim stopped beneath the carob tree and embraced him with a laugh. “Brother! I knew it must be! Always my heart has known it was so! My father will have a place for you. Employment. We will work side by side.”

  “I asked her to come with me to the Jewish Quarter. I had no thought of leaving my people. My family. My training.”

  The words stung Ibrahim. Then he shook it off. “Ah, you will come to your senses. You cannot live without Victoria. I am certain of it.”

  Eli did not reply. A heaviness filled him again. He pointed toward the light of the rising moon. “We must hurry. They will kill me if they find me in the Muslim Quarter.”

  ***

  At the sound of footsteps on his roof, Rabbi Shlomo Lebowitz turned his eyes to the ceiling and whispered, “An angel you have sent to this old man tonight, Lord?”

  He waited as the footsteps scurried from south to north, scrambling on to yet another room. The old rabbi shrugged. “So. Maybe not an angel. Or maybe an angel who landed on the wrong roof.” He sniffed slightly in disappointment. He would have liked an angelic visit tonight to brighten the cloud of loneliness that had enveloped him. “You couldn’t stay here a while? Keep an old rabbi company, Lord?”

  He lowered his eyes to the photographs laid out on his bed like the cards in a game of solitaire. The silent faces of his family smiled up at him. “Tonight, my angels, I am thinking of you once again.” He lifted each photograph to the light of his kerosene lamp. He recited each name like a hallowed prayer.

  “Etta.” He gazed lovingly at the face of his daughter. “Listen to the wind tonight. Your papa sends you blessings.” He closed his eyes and held the picture against his heart as he recited a prayer for little Etta as if she were still a child and not grown up with a family of her own.

  It was only a photograph, to be sure, but her clear blue eyes radiated warmth and happiness into his tiny apartment. A kiss, and then he replaced Etta on the quilt and picked up the wedding picture of Etta and Aaron. How young they were, and how very much in love they had been that evening in Jerusalem when they had stood beneath the canopy!

  “A long time ago,” the old man mused. His wife, Etta’s mother, had been alive to rejoice on that day. They had not known then how little time she had left on this earth. “My Rachel,” Rabbi Lebowitz caressed the name as he spoke it. “Perhaps you in heaven are nearer to Etta and Aaron and the children than I am here in Jerusalem, nu?” He sighed. “Can you travel anytime you like to Warsaw, Rachel? Have you leaned over the cradle of the little girl they named for you? Have you watched her grow into a beauty like her mother? Yes? Oy! How I envy you that. You have seen the grandsons? You have heard their voices and watched them wrestle on the floor while Aaron laughs above them?” Tears came to his eyes. He pictured his wife there with them all. They were all together while he remained here in Jerusalem. Here in the shadow of Solomon’s Wall.

  He paused and listened, wishing that the footsteps would return. Or wishing that he too could leave his frail body and fly up to catch a wind to Warsaw.

  “Can you hear me, my love?” He spoke louder and the loneliness threatened to choke him. “You must help me. Please, you must help me bring Etta and Aaron and the little ones here to Jerusalem! Whisper to them, my angel! Tell them Grandfather longs to hold them once more.” He lowered his head. “Before I am gone. Ahhhhh. Lord? Are you listening also? Then just a small request, nu? My family, you see. Bring them here from Warsaw.”

  3

  Watchmen on the Walls

  Tonight it was as it had always been. There were watchmen on the walls of Zion.

  British soldiers, rifles slung over their shoulders, patrolled the ramparts of the citadel. From the Tower of David, eyes scanned the light and shadow of the city for some sign of unnatural movement in the streets.

  October 1938 in Jerusalem represented only a few more nights among three thousand years. Again, as long ago, watchmen stood lonely vigil against the Unnamed Darkness that desired to possess Zion above any other city on earth.

  Two thousand years before, the Darkness had whispered from the pinnacle of a crenelated tower: “All this will I give to you if you will bow down and worship me!”

  Before that time and since, the kings and princes of this world had coveted Jerusalem from far away. They had listened to the whisper. They had believed the lie, and they had bowed down and worshiped the Darkness.

  The ramparts of Jerusalem had fallen again and again throughout the centuries until now; these watchmen paced their stations on a wall rebuilt countless times. The stones were hewn by a hundred different generations of stone cutters.

  From Assyria and Babylon and Rome, generals and kings had encircled the wall and heeded the whisper of Darkness: “All this will I give to you if you will bow down and worship me.”

  From the north, Christian knights and pilgrims had come to slaughter and rape and profane the name of the One they claimed to follow. “Bow down! Bow down and worship me and Jerusalem will be yours!”

  The Turks had joined the butchery for seven hundred years. “Bow down and worship me!”

  The kaiser of Germany had entered through the gates on a white steed. “All this will I give to you if you will . . .”

  Centuries of time had blown over these walls of Zion, turning watchmen and kings alike to dust. “All this will I give to you,” the Darkness had promised. The dust remained and the stones remained, and tonight there were British watchmen on the walls.

  Jerusalem, City of the Covenant, was a desolate reminder of a battle more ancient than the ramparts where these shadows now paced.

  Within and above and below these stones, the Prince of Darkness and the King of Light still clashed. And the watchmen on the ramparts heard the whispers: “Bow down! Bow down and worship me!”

  ***

  Tonight the voice of Darkness called
out to the people in a new way. Over the wireless radio the president of the Arab Council in Cairo announced resolutions that amounted to a call to war in the British Mandate of Palestine:

  “We demand the immediate ceasing of all Jewish immigration! We pronounce the Balfour Declaration to the Jewish people as null and void in the eyes of all Muslims!”

  Captain Samuel Orde picked up his Bible from beside the radio and left the small stone room that served as his office in the city wall.

  “We pledge resistance to the British Palestinian Partition scheme by all means available to Arabs!”

  Orde took his jacket from the hook beside the door and locked the massive wooden door behind him.

  “We demand a general amnesty of all Arab political prisoners and to those living in exile!”

  “Where you goin’, Captain?” asked Wendell Terry from behind the duty desk.

  “Up on the wall. Take a look around.”

  “The natives are restless after the broadcast, eh, Captain?”

  “We further state that these resolutions constitute the only solution of the . . .”

  “Restless?” Orde’s face was grim as he took a rifle from the rack. “Prime Minister Chamberlain has given them lessons on how to get whatever they want from the English, Terry. Point a gun. Throw a bomb or two. Blame it on the other chap and then make a threat. That’s all it takes. Look what Hitler’s got.” His words were bitter. “Yes. Chamberlain has given the Arabs lessons.”

  Terry blinked at him in amazement. The captain had never been so blunt about His Majesty’s government before. The young soldier pulled his earlobe nervously. “Yes sir, Cap’n Orde. Except this ain’t Czechoslovakia.”

  Orde pocketed his Bible and pushed the door open, looking to the right and left inside the dark area that led to the steps of the wall. His men were at their stations. He could make each one of them out even in the dim light. He inhaled slowly, drinking in the cool night air of Jerusalem. No scent of gunpowder. Not yet anyway. He looked back over his shoulder at Terry. “Not Czechoslovakia, eh?” He grinned. “You would be surprised how close it is.”