In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (18 page)

Isaac, his eyes on the rebbetzin, kneaded his hat.

“Once,” she said softly, “we’d just finished making a batch of potato kugels to give out. I was exhausted, so was he. But now we had a wedding to go to, a nice young man and woman getting married, both of them—what do some call it?—simple-minded. The parents on both sides opposed the marriage. No one was coming to the ceremony. My husband was to be the officiating rabbi, caterer, and also be a guest. I didn’t have any
koyach
left, not one ounce of energy. But if he did—and he was older than I, not a well man!—if he could go, then how could I not? So we went. He married them, took their pictures, danced for this couple the whole night, with such joy.” She smiled, remembering. “I pushed myself to go, not because he asked me but because he thought”—she traced her brow with a light finger—“he thought I was like him.”

He pondered this. “Don’t you miss him?” he asked. Where, after all, were the tears?

She smiled. “Foolish Isaac. There are people who are dead while they’re alive. And people who are alive, even though they’re dead.” She paused. “He’s alive. I can practically hear him talking to me sometimes.”

His chest constricted with pity. Dead is dead. Poor woman.

Isaac continued to preside over the courtyard. But by night his dreams presided over him. In one dream, he saw the rebbe lying in a coffin, wrapped like a Torah inside the holy ark, and then he creakily sat up and pointed a bony accusing finger right between Isaac’s eyes. Another night Isaac dreamed he was standing underneath his wedding canopy with a stick figure dressed all in black. The figure broke in half and turned into Tamar and Mustafa who chased him with brooms and pelted him with garbage, jasmine, and pottery shards. And then another awful dream: pomegranate seeds raining from the sky like red tears. He woke up, shaking in bed, his teeth clenched. He took a cup of Sabbath wine to calm
himself. What did it all mean? Maybe he should have found a way to help Mustafa, appease Tamar. Maybe he should have found a way to rescue the pomegranate. Maybe he should have done a lot of things. Following these nocturnal torments, the courtyard seemed a picnic.

Well, not quite.

One day when there was a lull, a tall black man showed up, a basketball wedged in the crook of his arm. He was huge, and he swung toward the door. Isaac asked, “Excuse me, who do you want to see?”

“Rebbe Yehudah,” he said, in a deep Southern drawl, his hand on the knob.

Isaac coughed into his fist. “Excuse me, when were you last here?”

“I’d say, oh, eight months ago,” came the reply.

“And you could walk in, just like that?”

“Sure. Rebbe Yehudah always said I could.” He gave a little tug to his ear. “Whenever I’m in town. The thing is, he likes to watch me bounce the ball, so I just let him know I’m here, and then I go back out over there”—he jerked his thumb toward the empty dirt area—“and dribble for him. Simple. Name’s Ezekiel.”

“So, Ezekiel. You dribble a ball, for the rebbe …?” Surely Isaac would have remembered meeting him. Had this Ezekiel visited when Isaac had been on his lunch break?

“Well, I would’ve taken a few shots, but there’s no hoops here.” His broad fingers did a tap dance on the ball. “Just ten minutes. He always stays by the window and watches. And you know, my game is always a little better afterward.” He grinned. “Rebbe Yehudah tells me he wishes he could say a blessing with the same power that I bounce the ball.” He shook his head. “Man!”

A few yards away a man with sandy-brown sideburns shook his head and mouthed silently, “Man!” to himself, and scribbled something in a pad.

Isaac put a hand on Ezekiel’s mountain of a shoulder. He would have to be quick. In and out, like an incision. “The rebbe died.”

The shoulder jerked and flung his hand off. “What’re you saying?!”

Isaac nodded. “Just three weeks ago. I’m sorry we couldn’t notify everyone. We didn’t know how to find all the people who visited him.”

“Rebbe Yehudah? That sweet old man?” A sob caught in his thick
throat. He threw the ball with a vicious bounce against the courtyard wall. “That’s not right!”

Before Isaac could offer a word of comfort, before he could even return the ball, Ezekiel bolted out of the courtyard, howling, “Who’s going to watch me dribble now?”

Isaac watched him go.
Ah, Rebbe
, Isaac thought, pressing the ball to his stomach.
I will be lonely for you forever
.

When he returned to the courtyard, the young man with the long sideburns was stealing glances at him while writing in his pad. Isaac had seen him in the courtyard before, but they’d never spoken. Thrusting his pen into a pocket, the young man now strode over with determination. “That’s quite a story, Isaac,” he said, pronouncing his name as if they were old friends. He wiped his pinkish forehead with his plaid arm sleeve. “Here’s this star basketball player—Ezekiel Woods, a convert—thousands of fans, and he needs the rebbe to watch him. Amazing! I’d like to write a feature article about that cool kabbalist, what’s his name? Oh, right, Rebbe Yehudah. May he rest in peace,” he hastily added, catching a look on Isaac’s face. “My name’s Yossi Ben Ami,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“So you’re a reporter.” Isaac dully returned the handshake. “Don’t bother with the story. They might ban visits to rebbes along with taking steroids.”

Yossi threw his head back and let out a yip-yip of laughter. “Okay, forget that story.” He fanned himself with the notepad. “Really, I’d like to write about this whole courtyard, about you, Rebbe Yehudah, all the people here. And what about the kabbalist’s wife, that beautiful old lady with all that light pouring out of her eyes?”

Isaac studied the olive tree, for a moment getting lost in its complicated whorls. Would the rebbe have wanted an article about him, written at best in an amused, ironical tone? Those cute little religious folk and their anachronisms?

“Look, I’m
dati
, a religious guy just like you,” Yossi said. “Except for maybe the black hat. Hey, aren’t you tired of articles that make the black hatters look like throwbacks and jerks? Here’s a chance to hear something positive about the
haredi
.” He moved in closer. A lock of sandy-brown hair fell onto his forehead. “Open your eyes, things are really bad between the secular and religious. Our new man in office is no friend to the
haredi
.”
Isaac stared at the back of his hands. An idea was winging its way through his brain. Just that morning, Shaindel Bracha had cornered him in the rebbe’s study, asking him what he intended to do about the pomegranate. Isaac had foolishly revealed that the rebbe’s last words—for Isaac to follow the pomegranate. Well, whatever he could do, he had already done. But he took another look at this Yossi fellow, at his sideburns, plaid shirt, and knitted yarmulka ringed with purple, yellow, and green flowers. “You work for which papers?” he asked skeptically.

“Mostly
Ma’ariv
and
Ha’aretz
. I freelance.” Yossi pushed some hair off his forehead. “That’s my mission—to tell the story of the religious, the Sephardi, Russians, Ethiopians—all the people who the left-niks, highbrow-niks consider interlopers. Yossi Ben Ami’s the name,” he reminded Isaac. A startled look played out on the reporter’s face. “What, you don’t read these papers?”

“Sorry, not regularly.” Isaac motioned with his hand to the dirt area behind the cottage. “Come here. I have a story for you.” Yossi followed him, tail practically wagging. Isaac tersely relayed the events surrounding the discovery of the pomegranate and how Shani had confiscated it, supposedly to determine its age. “Somehow, I doubt that. How long should it have taken? Who knows, the police officer might even feel it’s his duty to destroy it,” he ended, wiping a fleck of moisture from his eye. Yossi followed the story’s thread, head cocked, eyes growing bigger by degrees.

“You have any documents? A written statement from the archeologist?”

“Yes.” Isaac smiled grimly. The commander had overlooked that vital slip of paper.

Yossi tapped his pen against the cleft of his chin. “This story will make me as a reporter. All hell’s going to break loose, what with the recent elections, and you just know for all the new prime minister’s promises, he’ll trade away the Temple Mount like it’s a piece of swampland.” He cocked a pistol finger at Isaac. “Can I see that statement from the archeologist?”

“I’ll mail it to you.” After they exchanged contact information, Isaac added, “I’d have to see the article before you send it out. Please, nothing too radical. I don’t want to start any Temple Mount takeovers. No provoking the Waqf, please. I just want better supervision up there, so our history doesn’t get destroyed.”

“No one shows a story before it goes out!” The reporter’s eyes creased with amusement. “It goes against journalistic standards. But I can show you every quote, every word that comes out of your mouth.” He lay a freckled hand over his shirt pocket and lifted the other hand, jury-oath style.

“Why did you come to the courtyard?” Isaac asked abruptly. “To get a story?”

The young man blushed and fingered a sideburn. “Actually, I can’t make up my mind about a girl. Driving me nuts. She’s good-looking, smart”—he ticked off her attributes—“has a great job—”

“Do you want her?” Isaac cut in.

The reporter looked up from his splayed fingers. “No,” he uttered. He stared at Isaac. “No, I don’t,” he said more firmly. “I don’t want her.” He smiled, a look of relief on his face, and solemnly shook Isaac’s hand. “Thanks, thanks so much. You just helped me realize what’s inside here.” He patted his gut.

Well, that was easy, Isaac thought after the reporter had left. If only he could be so incisive for himself. He became conscious of a prickly feeling behind his ear and took out a tube of hydrocortisone (extra strength) and discreetly patted it on. Well, he had contacted the press. That was something, he thought. The rebbe could have no complaints against him from the next world. Just then he heard a
vroom-vroom
sound somewhere on Ninveh Street. Thrusting the tube into his pocket, he hurried to the gate, and with clumsy fingers, his chest hammering, unlatched it. His eyes trained up and down the street sweeping every corner. No one there except for the dishwasher from the restaurant who was drinking dreamily from a thermos. Isaac absently scratched his elbow and stared out like a person who enters one room to retrieve something, but once there, forgets what brought him in the first place. Sighing, he walked back, opened the iron gate, and let it shut behind him.

The days of spring stretched out and lengthened, and a parched pale yellow dust settled on all living things. Mustafa was walking down the Magrabeh ramp when he saw the motorcycle girl, Miss Tamar, at the water fountain not far from the Jew wall. These days, it seemed he spotted her often: parking her bike, pushing through the turnstiles, praying at the wall as if it were the best spot on earth, her head swaying from side to side. She looked at him now and nodded, an I-know-you nod. Other Jews stepped back when they saw him, but she—kind girl—she began walking toward him.

Mustafa washed his hands with the dented metal cup attached to the stone fountain so that he shouldn’t smell. She now stood before him—sweet as date honey, with her pretty hair like a sunset.
Helwa
. Pretty. Like the face of Mother Maryam, he thought, and a sense of well-being filled and surrounded him.

“Mustafa,” she said, not quite smiling, but not angry, either. “How are you? How is work?”

Her question made him stop and think. No one had ever asked him such a question before—how is work, how is your day—and it pleased him so much he could not stop smiling. Before he could answer, she said, “I wonder what it’s like to pray up there,” with a wistful glance that climbed higher than the Jew wall, toward the cypress trees and beyond.

“Ah, Miss Tamar, no Jew can go up there,” he said, happy to show off his knowledge of the Torah. He pointed to the sign right next to the Gate of Magrabeh: “According to the Torah, it is forbidden for any person to enter the area of the Temple Mount due to its sacredness.”

“Yeah, I know, Mustafa, I know,” she said with a heavy-hearted sigh. “But maybe one day—who knows?—it will be permitted.”

“Well, Miss Tamar”—he shrugged his good shoulder—“even if the rabbis allowed it, you still couldn’t pray up there.” He had watched the Israeli police together with the Waqf make sure no Jew prayer book ever made its way onto the Noble Sanctuary, or that no Jew or Christian said a single word to their God. To tour, yes, but never to pray. If they did, the Israeli police arrested them and took their prayer book, too. Maybe it was the only time the Waqf and the Israeli police worked together. “The only place you could pray is in a mosque and to Allah.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” she said flatly. “So, tell me. How do you feel up there?”

Feel? He rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “It’s hot up there,” he said. And only getting hotter. The month of June had just begun. It would be at least four months till rain fell.

“I mean,” she made an impatient, clicking noise with her tongue, “aren’t you nervous to be surrounded by all that holiness? I’d be too afraid to breathe or think.”