The Jerusalem Diamond (34 page)

In the morning she went running with him in her Masada shorts and an old sweat shirt. The sleeves had been ripped from the sweat shirt and it bore stenciled Hebrew letters that he translated with delight: Property of Department of Physical Education. She wouldn't tell him who had given her the shirt. She had good wind, she didn't suffer when she ran; and she laughed a lot, the wonderful white teeth lighting up her dark face. He had to concentrate on running without watching her. She was so healthy-looking, and when she ran everything moved; her hair streamed and bounced, her breasts rose and fell like the tides, her long legs pumped, pumped, pumped as she dodged with him through traffic, in and out of crowds, past jeering kids, shocked old Jews, incredulous Arabs, bemused quarreling shopkeepers, leering street hawkers and assorted unfortunate clerics who would never know even ordinary women, never mind the glory that was Tamar Strauss.

Finally they ran into a little park and collapsed in the shade of some tall cacti.

She wiped the moisture from her face with a sleeveless arm. “Listen,” she said. “I said last night everything should be pleasant, no more quarrels. But there is something I must say.”

Harry lay back and closed his eyes. “Mmmm?”

“I am not a whore.”

He opened his eyes. “Who said you were a whore?”

“You did the night you made me so angry.”

“No. You're mistaken.”

She rested her face in her hand. “About one thing you were right. Since I lost my husband I have been afraid to let myself … have
feelings. I think I must face that. And eventually do something about it.”

“I'm glad.”

“But I'm a widow, twenty-six years old. Do you expect me to live like a maiden?”

“God forbid,” he said.

“I am serious. American men lead sex-obsessed lives, yet deep down you want your women to be virgins.”

He held up his hand. “All I said was—”

“You said that probably I have experienced too many men. For someone like you,' I think was the way you put it.”

“We're all becoming goddam sexual automatons. There's no longer passion in our passion, let alone love. Just lots of mechanical humping.”

“I think you are right,” she said calmly. “But …” The brown eyes held him. “How do you know there have been more men in my life than there have been women in yours?”

He looked at her.

“Think about it,” she said.

She left him to go to her apartment and pick up some things. There were messages when he got back to the hotel. David Leslau had called twice but had left no number and would call again. Monsignor Peter Harrington had telephoned from Rome.

He returned Peter's call at once, but when he reached the Vatican Museum he was told Monsignor Harrington would be gone for the afternoon.

He got out the pyrote garnet and spent almost two hours polishing it. It was beginning to gleam like an oversized drop of dark blood. When the phone rang he was trying to decide whether to give it to her unset before he left or mail it to her as a finished brooch.

It was Leslau.

“What news, David?”

“Good news and bad news.”

“Have you found the
genizah
?”

“That's the bad news.”

“Shit. What's left to be good?”

“Rakhel just received her
get
, she's a divorced lady. We're going to be married as soon as it's legal, in about ninety days.”

“Damned if that isn't good news.
Mazel Tov
.”

“Thank you. Will you join us for dinner? Help us celebrate?”

“I'll bring a woman,” he said.

Rakhel Silitsky's Orthodoxy had survived her troubles. Because of her, they ate at a kosher restaurant where jars of yellow unborn eggs lined a countertop behind which men prepared the food. Soon the four of them were talking with the ease of friends.

Leslau heard about the diamond transaction philosophically. “The dig's a bust, too. We haven't found a trace of what we're looking for.” .

“Could it simply not be there?” Rakhel asked.

Leslau covered her hand in his. “It's there, my love, I can almost feel it. Hidden so long ago. Hidden so well by those clever
momsers
, we simply can't find it.”

“Maybe we're overlooking something in the scroll,” Harry said. “A key that unlocks all the passages. There are so many numbers—measurements, quantities of objects. Could they have been playing with
gematria
?”

“What is
gematria
?” Tamar asked.

“An ancient method of Jewish cryptography,” Harry said. “Each letter in the alphabet is given a numerical value—
aleph
is one,
bet
is two,
gimel
is three, and so on, with larger values assigned to combinations of letters. Scholars invented
gematria
to make mystical interpretations of biblical passages, and they did unbelievably complex things with it. We used to play with simple exercises all the time at the yeshiva. For example, take your name,” he said to Tamar. “The numerical value of its letters is 640. We might look up the 640th verse of the Bible to see if it has a special message for you.”

They laughed at her expression.

“To give you a better example—the Book of Genesis has exactly 1,534 verses. At the yeshiva, we used to remember that fact by memorizing the phrase
Ach ladhashem
. But Unto the Lord, since the letters of the phrase have a numerical total of 1,534.

“Or, take the Hebrew word for pregnancy,
herayon
. It has a numerical value of 270. It takes nine months to bear a child, right? And there
are thirty days to a solar month. So, thirty times nine equal
herayon
, a pregnancy.”

“There's no
gematria
in the Copper Scroll,” Leslau growled. “
Gematria
wasn't effectively used until the time of the Cabalists, hundreds of years after the Temple treasures were hidden.”

“Sometimes, to detect art forgeries, people make the tests too complicated,” Tamar said. “Are you doing the same thing? Could the answer be a very simple one?”

“They were such clever, tricky men,” Harry said. “Look at the way they arranged the two hidings at Achor, with the
genizah
containing the yellow diamond placed shallowly and the religious objects buried very deep. Maybe here they just reversed all the directions. The scroll passage said the
genizah
is located near the base of the lesser of the two hills. Maybe it was actually near the base of the higher hill.”

“We tried digging there. There's nothing. Sometimes I walk out of my tent,” Leslau said, “and I talk into the desert to those guys who hid the things. I say, ‘What the hell's the matter with you? I know you had to hide them well. But are you playing a game? Don't you want us ever to find them?'”

Nobody smiled.

“Is this an engagement celebration,” Harry said, “or a funeral?”

Leslau's face cleared. “It's an engagement celebration. There's no doubt about that.” He kissed Rakhel on the cheek.

Harry pushed his chair back. “Then let's go celebrate,” he said.

The telephone was ringing as his key turned in the lock, but it stopped before he opened the door.

They both slipped off their shoes.

“Ah,” Tamar said.

They had gone to a night club. They had danced and drunk lots of wine. The nostalgia craze had struck Israel in the form of a Yiddish revival, and they had sung Yiddish songs for hours with some soldiers, songs he had forgotten he knew.

“Helluva party.”

“Helluva,” she agreed. “They are nice, those two.”

“Lucky to have found one another.”

“Yes.”

He watched her sit before the mirror and begin to brush her hair.

“I want you.”

She was stifling a yawn. “All right,” she said affably.

He went to stand behind her and looked into the glass, at her eyes. “Permanently.”

“Harry. It's the wine.”

“No.”

“Forget it. Neither of us will be embarrassed in the morning.”

“Have you ever wanted something so much you couldn't face the thought of being without it?”

“Yes,” she said.

He touched her neck. “You don't want me the same way.”

She shook her head. “But …” She reached up and took his hand. “I have been thinking that there will be so much less joy in life when you go away. You have made me … come alive.”

“Then why should I leave you?”

“How could it work? You and me?
Ya Allah!
From different planets,” she said.

The telephone rang.

It was Peter Harrington. “Harry?”

He didn't want to interrupt this conversation to talk with Peter Harrington. But she blew him a kiss and went to take her shower.

“Hello, Peter.”

“You're still there. Which means you've beaten me, doesn't it?”

“No, damn it. It just means you wasted less time than I did.”

“Too bad, Harry … What a hypocrite I am. Do you hear me trying to keep the gladness out of my voice?”

He smiled. “Don't feel guilty. Even monsignors are human. You're definitely out of it?”

“I wasn't ever really in it.”

“Peter, I get the impression that neither was I.”

“It's still stolen goods, Harry.”

“It was stolen goods during the Inquisition,” he said angrily. He was tired of arguing.

So was Peter, evidently. “If you couldn't buy it, who am I to feel inadequate? Come to Rome, Harry. I'll take you to the new restaurants.”

“I'll try to come soon. Am I still on Cardinal Pesenti's hit list?”

“He's calmer. But he's very interested in what's happening there.”

“Tell his Eminence nothing's happening. It looks lousy. When I know definitely, I'll give you a call.”

Peter hesitated. “God bless you, Harry.”

It was as close as he could come to offering a handshake on the telephone, and Harry accepted it gratefully. “
Ciao
, good buddy priest.”

He replaced the receiver. He picked up the hotel Bible and began to leaf through it, jotting down the number of verses in each chapter of
Genesis
.

The 640th verse was Chapter 24, Verse 48. It was a definite disappointment:
And I bowed my head and prostrated myself before the Lord, and blessed the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has led me in the right way to take my master's brother's daughter for his son
.

What could that have to do with Tamar? So much for
gematria
.

Verse number 650 would have been nice:
And they called Rebekah, and said unto her: “Wilt thou go with this man?” And she said: “I will go
.”

But verse 650 was not verse 640, and he put away the Bible, feeling cheated.

She came out of the bathroom, toweling. She was wet and slippery and her mouth tasted of cold water and American toothpaste. “Could it work?” she said. Her brown Yemenite eyes were shining.

He had to be as honest as she was. “I don't know.” He took the towel and began to rub her down.

“I am certain of one thing.” She put her arms around him. “Harry will never do anything to hurt me,” she said.

21

ROSH HA'AYIN

It was like waking up when he was a child, lying there feeling marvelous without knowing why and then remembering that school had let out yesterday.

They were casual. On the surface, it felt the same as the other mornings they had been together.

Reading the
Jerusalem Post
over his breakfast coffee, he saw a story quoting a cabinet minister named Kagan, who was criticizing corruption in
Mifleget Ha'avoda
, the labor party.

“This politician has the same name as your friend Ze'ev.”

Tamar glanced at the paper. “It's his father.”

“A cabinet member? Could he be prime minister some day?”

“There is no chance. He's made far too many political enemies. He is one of the old Irgun leaders in
Likud
, the Unity party.” She buttered her toast. “Ze'ev could be prime minister some day, I think.”

Harry smiled. “Ze'ev is just a field grade officer in the army.”

“He's already on the lowest rung of the ladder. His predecessor became Minister of Police. Once a cabinet member, it is up to the
individual. And his father has many friends as well as enemies. It is not out of the question,” she said.

Neither of them mentioned what had been discussed the night before.

They drove in the rented English Ford down the old Tel Aviv highway to Beit Jimal, where she knew of a monastery of Salesian Brothers who made and sold wine. Walking through the vineyards where monks worked in the sun, he found himself wondering what there was in his sensual and Jewish soul that enjoyed the stark environments of monastic life.