West Jerusalem Noir, page 13
I felt dizzy. I no longer had the courage to go near that house. I rushed back to my coastal town.
“What a coincidence,” the professor’s image said on my computer screen that night, “water and mountain.” She seemed to care only about the literary aspect of it all, not about the folder or the phone call. She was almost bored. She jotted down everything I remembered from the police officer’s speech, enjoying the shorthand.
Toward the end of the conversation, I tried to tell her that I’d go pick up those sketches sometime soon, but she was already distracted. “I’m going away next week to get some rest and write the introduction to the book,” she said. “I’ll call you from there, from a landline.”
* * *
I counted seven days exactly, then emailed a few words of comfort and a request to the architect’s inbox, which seemed like it might be shared by him and his wife, and collapsed into a fretful sleep. At dawn, a truck honked outside my window. Eyes wide open, I dragged myself over to the computer. My inbox contained seven files, photographed sloppily by a cell phone’s camera. I was familiar with most of the images—rough maps, archeological cross sections, a shabby sketch of Jerusalem on the Madaba Map. But the last file contained two images I’d never seen before: a two-page spread from a research book, on the corner of which the architect had written Monk in thick pencil. Each page featured a near square with a map of Jerusalem. On the left page, Jerusalem was transposed over a topographic image, like an enormous and complex fingerprint, with a caption that read: Gordon’s map of Jerusalem, showing the figure of Christ in the contour intervals of the terrain. The right page featured a much simpler map, four or five thin lines composing a shape topped by a cross, with a tiny headlike form atop the cross, along with the word Golgotha. The caption read, Gordon’s sketch of the human figure superimposed upon the map of Jerusalem. I was only vaguely familiar with modern attempts to place Golgotha and with traditions comparing the shape of Jerusalem to the human form, as if it was not only the heart of the world, but an actual physical heart. I couldn’t figure out what the architect was trying to tell me. I stared at the maps until my eyes burned. On the edges of the right map I suddenly noticed another form, something reminiscent of an anthill, a mold stain, or a tunnel, as if marked by powder. In the heart of the wormlike shape I read, in English, the words Mount of Olives.
* * *
Then the lamb died.
* * *
The second task the professor gave me, in a broken phone call from her summer house on the West Coast, was to document a ritual sacrifice. The timing was perfect. I made two phone calls, and nine days later I was already temporarily attached to a group of tourists who had come to donate a shekel or two for the cause of the Third Temple. Their hosts put on a whole show for them. We were standing on the Mount of Olives, our backs to the camels draped with red rugs, carriers of tourism, facing the golden dome, countless graves stretching under our chins. It was only May and already sweltering, and the lamb was curled up in a plastic pail on the ground, right by the railing. Someone said they’d bought a five-thousand-shekel butcher’s knife at a home goods store in Mamila and that it was on its way over by taxi. Since the Jews didn’t have a temple yet, only a gentile was allowed to perform the ritual, the rabbi explained once I’d introduced myself. “So we’re just playing here, but we’re like kids—we play very seriously.”
He sent a Palestinian laborer who happened to walk by to grab a rock or two, and a whisper ran through the small crowd, growing into a cracked cry. Our gentile had overslept.
A man in dirty white linen stepped forward, his hands together in a prayer shape in front of his chest, and said, “I’m a gentile, and a butcher too.”
I thought, There is no man that has not his hour.
The new gentile removed his shoes and swayed back and forth, mumbling to himself, as if in encouragement. Then he picked up the lamb and caressed him (yes, caressed him), and spoke of the fire of God, of shame, of the earth being a whore, of his hands soon to be stained with blood. Behind us, a procession of coughing speakers sounded, Oseh shalom bimromav, and all that, and a class of bar and bat mitzvah kids followed the noise, white and blue and silver balloons trailing above them.
I tried to understand something about symbols (knife, lamb, rock), but failed. Instead I thought about everyday matters (camels, balloons, taxis). I tried to dedicate my gaze to the lamb. The architect had commanded me to look, and so did my conscience. There were more cameras than people between me and the lamb, and yet I watched very, very hard, thinking, There, just like the architect, now the lamb’s going to die. The blood was bright, almost orange, not exactly real. I watched intently, but its sullied eye remained sealed shut. There is no thing that has not its place.
On the walk back to the Dung Gate through Hakohanim Way, I looked at my feet, trying to let the sun burn the back of my neck as much as possible, leaving my eyes under the shadow of my hat, keeping my horizon narrow, going blind. The rabbi slowly moved up to the front of the line, lingering next to me for a moment to ask, “So, is there going to be a temple?”
Eyes on the ground, I said, “Who knows.”
There was utter silence, and a pause, the kind that happens when you come up with a new idea.
I stopped and looked up.
He met my eyes with a clear gaze and said, “Everybody knows.”
* * *
Back home, I called the professor. She picked up but kept her camera off the whole time. I spoke enthusiastically to the gray square that displayed her name, gesticulating, describing the sacrifice with utter devotion, saying even the things that sounded deranged. I wanted all of it, everything I’d seen, to be hers. As I spoke, my eyes wandered to the square where I appeared. I noticed the fresh tan line across my forehead, the pale skin that had been previously covered by the hat, the hair sticky with sweat. There was a black smear above my right eyebrow, dirt and congealed blood under my fingernails. I’d forgotten I’d touched things. That things had touched me. I’d forgotten I’d watched an animal turn into meat, that I’d let meat be a thing that touched me, a thing I lived alongside of. I hadn’t eaten a bite of it—it was forbidden. What had happened was much worse: the sacrifice had entered my body through the epidermis. I think the professor noticed it too. I could hear it in her voice. The nodding attentiveness of the first few minutes of conversation dwindled into a long “Mm-hmm” that contained a question mark.
“I think that’s enough for now,” she finally said. “I think you should get some rest.” Then she added something about budgets, something about nonfiction, how we might want to approach it from a different angle, not sure how academic any of this was, it was unnecessary as research at the moment.
I ended the call winded, suddenly limp, like a parachute that had fallen to the ground. I knew I wouldn’t be speaking to her again. The third task was one I gave myself.
* * *
Finally, I died.
* * *
I became sick from the light. I think I should have obeyed from the start: only in the dark, only underground. Instead, I just went up and higher.
* * *
After my last conversation with the professor, I wandered my own home like a guest, making sure not to leave any trace. In the mornings I looked into the round magnifying mirror that reached toward me on a metal arm from the bathroom wall. My face was exhausted, torn, like the face of a character witnessing something horrendous in a film, but the pupils glowed a constant, generous, all-consuming black. I looked at her, she looked at me. It was as if I was under the influence. One mustn’t look into a mirror like that. The mutual gaze transforms into a devouring. We looked at each other, we devoured each other, together, again and again.
* * *
I knew I’d go back up. I had no choice. Rosh Hashanah was approaching. I booked a room at the Ein Karem convent. I spent the days sitting at the foot of the open-armed Virgin Mary, so small, or on benches, or on the stone path across from the thickening mountainous landscape, envisioning golden stalactites through the black bars, ancient domes in every direction. I wandered the paths of small gardens, looked at the graves of children with a morose expression, leaned against cool stone walls for long moments, breathed inside every space. At night, I lay on the thin mattress, buried books inside the nook in the wall (I didn’t care about the contents, only about the material, the paper), along with my phone, no charger, letting it slowly die.
One morning, an older nun asked where I was from. We spoke a little, attentively and hesitantly. She had old words, it was like speaking to the origins of Hebrew. I’m not sure what I was trying to become there, then; what I was trying to mimic in spirit or in flesh. The days at Ein Karem were suspended. I barely left the convent gates and yet my soul stormed. I barely ate during those days, only bread from the corner store and olive oil, only very early in the morning, and then long fasts of perseverance until the next dawn.
* * *
I headed out before sunrise on Rosh Hashanah Eve. The mountain opens at seven o’clock during summer months, and I walked out of the convent gates at five. I expected the sun to intensify, but instead it seemed as if behind a blue slide, resembling an old photograph of the sun. I lingered at the Western Wall Plaza, hesitating for just a moment. An older woman pulled me by the arm. I fished some coins from my pocket, and she quickly wrapped a red string around my wrist (when I was younger the strings used to be thinner, and the red had been pure scarlet, not so glowing). After that I seemed to have no choice. I had to cling to the wall, forehead rubbing against the rock, white dust. I tried to hold onto science, what plants are those, memorize and focus, here’s a caper bush hanging like a canopy over me, there’s a golden henbane. All of a sudden the sun hit me, I lost my balance. As I fell to the ground, I still managed to grab onto the flowers and pull out a few stems. I’m well familiar with fainting, I always faint. Nobody noticed. I managed to fall into a leaning position. As I got up, I twisted the stems into a small bundle and slipped it into my pocket. I walked through the mountain gates into a relatively small crowd. They let us through in groups, introductions made without eye contact but half shouted over hats that covered heads upon heads. At the top, I was gripped with a new urge, not to move closer, but as far as possible, to cling to the outer routes. I recalled what the professor had tried to teach me: to watch, only to watch, to stay close to the walls, as if I were a plant.
* * *
I circled the mountain again and again. I spotted things at the edge of my vision. Lips forcefully mumbling prayers behind the backs of police officers; two children playing with a large, tattered foam ball across the plaza; an old woman sitting on a plastic stool and cleaning fava beans, her granddaughter digging through the pile of skins. The sky grayed slowly; first came the chirping of crickets. I heard them behind me and thought I was imagining it, that they were just flashes from my nights in the convent, but they were really there, the chirping growing louder. I saw the old lady turning her head this way and that. On the large, tiled plaza I saw the sudden shadows of birds in flight. I looked up. Enormous flocks were crossing the sky, and the sky was no longer so far away. It was a thick layer of air, so close, as if it had fallen toward us. The children stopped playing when they heard the wild beating of wings whose rhythm changed constantly. The lips of worshippers kept moving, and now I heard a young boy telling his friend, “Do not be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them.” The passage moved from one mouth to the next, from one person to the next.
And yet the sky continued to darken, and all at once three, four, ten jackals raced onto the path that flanked the mountain, their howling circling around us. The moon grew nearer, closing the distance, and the sun was blocked. I knew this, and yet I peered up at the burning ring in the sky, staring at it until the edges of my vision were colored black, and when I turned to look around the mountain again, I saw people gathering bags that had fallen in confusion and hush, parents reaching out to cover their children’s eyes, police officers running, weapons drawn, as if the heavenly bodies were subjected to sovereignty, and platoons in oversized helmets and armor storming from the Chain Gate. I saw the praying boy ducking down at the base of an olive tree. I blinked, confused, here is a great fire, here everything is painted a mustard smog, the tumult of death. I shoved my hand into my pocket, then into my mouth, the golden henbane clinging to the roof of my mouth; a haze fell upon me.
PART III
STONES
ARSON
BY ILAN RUBIN FIELDS
French Hill
Peace Park was on fire. By the time Chief Moshe Lozovsky showed up, all that remained of the trees that flanked the garden were charred stumps. The flames had melted the plastic off the jungle gym up until the firefighters turned their hoses on it. A stench that Lozovsky was familiar with from previous incidents in the Me’ah Shearim and Shu’afat neighborhoods kept curious onlookers away. A week later, when he watched the security footage, he’d remember how he thought he’d be finished on French Hill in a matter of hours.
The park’s name was so ironic that no one even bothered to joke about it. It overlooked the homes of the Palestinian town of Anata that had sprouted up on the other side of the wall. Before the fire, there was a climbing structure for children made of a combination of metal and plastic, a circle of swings, and a large lawn, as well as several benches and water fountains. Across the way, in Anata, were half-finished buildings with black barrels collecting water on the roofs. There was no peace, and now there was no park, either. Darkness descended and the streetlights did not go on.
“Should we go?” Cathy asked.
Lozovsky nodded. “Let’s go.”
* * *
He waited for a report from the fire department to confirm it was arson, and debated whether or not to go through the trouble of checking the cameras that were always aimed at the walls—perhaps they’d caught something. There were no casualties, and the police had no leads, so there was no reason to investigate any further. Six days later, when he finally spotted a suspect in the security footage, that word—reason—would pop back into his mind. He wanted to believe there was a reason someone would set fire to the park, a reason someone would investigate the arson, a reason to arrest the person who had done it, a reason to try him and lock him up. But even if the security footage offered evidence, there was no real reason to make the effort. No true reason; no reason that would be acceptable to this city. In Jerusalem, fires happen because Jerusalemites call for them to happen.
Cathy walked into the room just before he roused himself from his reveries. The smile on her face told him the plot had thickened.
“What?”
“You know the post office by Peace Park?”
“Yes?”
“Well, there was a fight there between some Arabs who’d come to collect their social security checks and an American guy who lives nearby. He came to tell them it wasn’t cool that they’d set the park on fire.”
“He just went to the post office to tell them that?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s funny.”
“Until we get the official report on the fire, want to check and see if the American was right?”
“I’ll drive.”
The brothers Sajad and Amar Abu Jalus didn’t have Israeli passports. They did have an alibi for the time of the fire—they were on a renovation job in Givataim. Lozovsky left the assailants to the border police, then turned to the nearby ambulance, inside of which Jeremy Rodenstein was holding a cotton ball to his broken nose.
“Mr.… Rodenstein? I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Jeremy Rodenstein nodded.
“Hebrew or English?”
“Is that your first question? My Hebrew is excellent.”
“Okay. Did you have reason to believe the two Arab men you spoke to at the post office were the ones who’d set fire to the park?”
“I didn’t talk to them.”
“Who did, then?”
“My son, Idan.”
“And where’s he?”
“He ran away after I defended him.”
Lozovsky couldn’t help but smile. He pictured Idan Rodenstein as a younger, more arrogant, yet more fearful version of his father.
The conversation was soon over. Cathy gathered a photo of Idan as well as his phone number. They got into the squad car and Cathy sighed. “Rodenstein’s wife says Idan took her wallet and her car. Falafel?”
Lozovsky started the engine, drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, and confirmed, “Falafel.” The French Hill falafel stands were a pilgrimage destination for northeastern Jerusalem’s police force.
The nearest one had a long line of English-speaking students waiting outside, so they walked over to the next falafel stand. While Cathy placed their order, Lozovsky looked around, searching for any clues about the fire and the fight that had taken place just a few blocks away. Nobody seemed to care.
* * *
The next day was uneventful. Idan Rodenstein had yet to show up, and neither did any suspected arsonists. Lozovsky didn’t want to leave the station, and certainly didn’t want to go to French Hill. Something there had annoyed him, and he could only assume it was the residents. He knew how to handle Arabs, orthodox Jews, and right-wingers. But when faced with the bourgeoisie of French Hill, he felt like a caricature of a police officer. In their eyes, he recognized the combination of loathing for the police and an expectation of being nonetheless protected by them when need be. Like everyone else in Jerusalem, they knew a day would come when no one would run to their aid, and so community mattered. In French Hill, community meant culture, not accountability. Not blood.
