Messi@ (20 page)

Filled with dread, Andrea stood up, but her group seemed to have vanished into the shadows. Andrea lowered her eyes back to the ground, away from the figure that had replaced the Christ image. She saw that she was standing on a circle within a gold twelve-spoke star that announced to the world the birth of the Christian faith. But this wasn't her faith: she was sure that she had none. The world called her a Muslim, but her parents had followed another star altogether, the red star of communism. Of course, she told herself as tears flowed down her cheeks, even if there was
nothing
here, the collective strength of two thousand years of worship would suffice to charge the stones.

“This is the center of the world,” announced Sister Rodica, reappearing. “At Easter a light comes directly from God. It hovers for one minute in the air and heals the sick and lights the candles of those who believe. All on its own, blessed Mother of God. No matches are ever used here.”

“But plenty of fire power,” said Lama Cohen.

Andrea saw that in addition to her group, several Israeli soldiers, mere boys, stood listening to the explications of their guide. Several chewed gum, and at least one looked Andrea up and down with a transparent purpose in mind. They carried enormous machine guns with oversized chambers. Her tears dried as quickly as they had welled up. Thank you, God, for the world, she said to herself. Without it, endless ennui and self-pity would reign.

A Japanese tourist posed his entire brood at the foot of the cross and got busy snapping them. Thank you for Japanese tourists, God. An Armenian monk, his long beard flowing nearly to the ground, hugged a column. A Copt wept into his Bible. An American family huddled close, uncertain of etiquette. And Andrea thanked God for all of them.

“Until Jesus came, Paradise was closed,” the American paterfamilias proclaimed matter-of-factly, as if Paradise were some kind of store.

“Well, thank God it reopened,” said the wife. “Should we go to the icon of the Holy Mother to get some oil now?”

Sister Rodica lifted her eyes again in suffering, but this time her suffering was connected with the gum chewers, the Japanese, the Americans—all the unbelievers. It was her trial to cut through this uncouthness to the ever-bright core of her faith. The oil in question, in which she later dipped her handkerchief, flowed continually from the icon of the Holy Mother at the foot of the cross.

There were other icons of disciples and martyrs who opened and closed their eyes in the dimly lit underground chapels. From the wounds of some flowed heavy-scented myrrh; drops of blood streaked down the smoky images of others. Sister Rodica knew every miraculous wound, every square inch of the mysterious sepulchre. But she lingered longest before those mysteries connected to the Mother of God and Mary Magdalene.

She pointed out to her flock images of the two holy women and, as always, shook her head at the exalted position the prostitute held in the panoply of saints. Pray as hard as she might, she still could not understand why Jesus appeared first to the Magdalene after his resurrection. She imagined the round stone rolled away by God from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and the Magdalene looking deep into the emptiness of the tomb. God help her, Sister Rodica had seen in some of the icons of Mary Migdal more than a passing resemblance to the very earthly Gala Keria!

Just above the small cells of the Ethiopian monks, whence issued a deep murmur as of the earth rumbling, there was an image of the sinner walking meekly behind her donkey. The light-enfolded form of the resurrected Jesus filled the horizon. The woman's downcast eyes did not hide the sensuous turn of her lower lip. Her
familiar
lower lip! Sister Rodica turned and there behind her was the very same lip, drawn in but inescapably sensuous. Sister Rodica clamped her hand over her mouth. First Gala. Now Andrea.

Andrea looked to see what had startled the nun and was confused by the mixture of dread and desire she found in her eyes. Nonetheless, she also felt a strange joy and returned the gaze, just as she had when the lusty soldier had looked at her. The desire of others made her feel (she who had felt nothing for so long)
good
, and she thanked God with all her intense young body.

Sister Rodica reserved her greatest passion for the Stone of Unction, the bed of stone where the body of Christ had been prepared and anointed for burial. The nun fell to her knees and kissed the myrrh-scented stone, putting her lips where tens of thousands of women in search of healing had put theirs. Kneeling nuns were rubbing the stone with holy oil.

Andrea felt drawn to share in all that Sister Rodica took such joy in showing her. She wanted to give in to her feelings, good or bad, sorrowful or joyous. She knelt, this time carefully clutching her knapsack, and set her lips firmly to the stone. She felt the same numbing energy that had flowed from the skull of Adam—this time it was bitter and heavy and spread from her lips through her bones like a strange sleep. She felt drowsy at first, then full of light, but still heavy, as if honey, not blood, flowed through her veins. Over the Stone of Unction stood the Oratory of Saint Mary, where the grief-stricken Mother had cried with the pain of all womankind. Dried rose petals rustled on Christ's stone bed. It is useless, thought Andrea, to search the dried leaves of book knowledge to explain what is happening to me.

Andrea looked around for Father Zahan but couldn't see him. She found instead the round face of Dr. Luna, his black Mayan eyes full of sympathy. It seemed to the girl that his eyes were unfathomably deep, like the wells where virgins were sacrificed to the gods. She was ashamed of the inappropriate image, but Dr. Luna's kind eyes forgave her.

“On this place,” he said softly, “Hadrian ordered the erection of a statue of Venus. She stood here over the tomb of the Nazarene, encouraging the pleasures of the flesh and demanding the sacrifice of virginity. Not for long, though. Soon Rome forgot its heart, and worshiped only Fortuna. The Wheel of Fortune was their
only
game. But following Fortuna destroyed them. The empire lost its strength to soothsayers and charlatans who promised worldly wealth and happiness.”

“Was Fortuna
always
wrong?” Andrea questioned Dr. Luna, who seemed to her very wise.

“No, she was quite often right. But she was only a pointer, a guide to deeper realities. The wheel does not determine what will happen; it merely describes it. I fear that we, like the Romans, have also forgotten this.”

It was a cryptic remark. Andrea did not understand. Did he mean that Christ had died so that people might believe in things other than luck?

Dr. Luna tried to explain. “The Wheel of Fortune was the ancient world's greatest mystery and its greatest downfall. What had been divination became gambling. The divine fled, leaving only despair.”

About despair she knew. And about luck. She supposed that she was lucky to have survived and to have come to this beautiful city. But she had not left her despair behind.

Andrea and Dr. Luna emerged from the church and rejoined Sister Rodica's little band of pilgrims.

From the church of the tomb they backtracked for a short time through the Suk Khan ez-Zeit, stopping a moment to peer at the Gate of Judgement.

“This was the gate through which Christ passed on the way to Calvary,” Sister Rodica informed them matter-of-factly.

The only view of the gate, 5 shekels' worth, was through a hole at the back of a dusty Arab shop. A tiny man crouched in front of the shop, holding a cardboard sign with the words
Gate of Judgment
hand-lettered in five languages.

“An interesting position,” commented Father Hernio. “To have exclusive vantage point to another's religious shrine, and then to charge the infidel for viewing it.”

“But that's not unusual in Jerusalem, Father,” said Lama Cohen. “Every religious site here is built over another, with only so much room left to peep through.” She measured with thumb and forefinger an inch or so. “This city is like a huge pornography shop, the kind of place where you put in coins to watch from behind a window the, er, pardon me …
mysteries
.” Lama Cohen's irony was not disrespectful, but typically Buddhist. To Buddhists, she often explained, the created world was sheer illusion. Her former Jewish self concurred with this worldview.

But if she expected the others to be shocked, she was mistaken. The company under the direction of Sister Rodica was steeped in knowledge and wisdom so vast few things upset it.

“Some cultures consider tumescence the only proper response before the gods!” Mr. Rabindranath offered, winking at Andrea.

“To show the gods that they were potent, fruitful, and were going to multiply,” Dr. Luna said.

“If anybody here is going to talk erections,” said Father Zahan, “it should be me. I wrote the church's official position on wet dreams. Alas, I am past the age where they hold anything but ceremonial interest.”

“What is the church's official position?” enquired Lama Cohen.

“Primarily, a refutation of the previous position, which insinuated that succubi actively tempt sleepers. Our position now assigns no blame. A certain, well,
appetite
is considered quite healthy. Not an excessive appetite.”

“Blessed be the randy, for they shall sup on ash,” concluded Father Hernio, rubbing his tour-weary lower back.

But Sister Rodica had one more errand to attend to. She wanted to buy myrrh, the healing substance that seemed to ooze from every icon in Jerusalem. The only merchant who trafficked in myrrh was a wizened Palestinian named Faisal, who in the past had traded an ounce of the precious liquid for two bags of chestnuts. But nowadays he was charging a pretty shekel.

No one knew exactly how he obtained the stuff. Some speculation had him slipping phantomlike into the Holy Sepulchre through an opening known only to him and milking the holy icons. Others claimed that he had uncovered a cache of ancient vials filled with the holy balm. No one but Faisal knew which was true.

Even more astonishing was that Faisal also dealt in the substance known to the Hindus as soma. Mr. Rabindranath, shrugging apologetically, followed Sister Rodica into the shop and waited patiently while the two haggled. After Faisal wrapped the precious vial of myrrh in a page of Arabic newspaper sporting the face of Yasir Arafat, Mr. Rabindranath stepped forward and launched into his own negotiation. Soma made it possible to communicate with the god Indra, and Mr. Rabindranath, who was normally afraid of Indra, needed the counsel of this powerful trickster god just now.

The trader was amused by his customers' slight embarrassment. Buying their balms and sacraments from a Muslim! He himself felt pure in the transaction. That he was a true follower of Muhammad he had no doubt. But first and foremost he was a trader, exercising the prerogative of his ancient profession. He was a trader, an archetype. There was no older, surer identity. Muhammad had been a trader, too, before Allah revealed his divine wisdom to him. Other religions' avatars had started out as scholars, teachers, disillusioned rich men, or personified elements. Only Muhammad, praised be Allah who had created him, had trade in his blood. Muhammad was a prophet of an age of commerce, a most modern prophet. Faisal stroked his sparse beard and wrapped up the lekiethoi bottle with five drops of soma in it. The world might be ending, but he was in no hurry. Mr. Rabindranath watched him impatiently but respectfully. Faisal looked capable of procuring anything, and one day he might just need
anything
. Hindus were mean traders, too.

They exited the Damascus Gate—on top of which an Israeli soldier with a cannon-sized machine gun briefly appeared, surveying the swarm of Arab boys loitering in the
suk
—and found themselves at the bottom of the hill that followed the wall of the Old City to the Western Wall. A mule laden with gasoline cans came toward them, followed by a Palestinian man with his head wrapped in his kaffiyeh. They crossed his path at the foot of the Via Dolorosa. From that intersection, the panorama of the Holy City unfolded before them: the slopes of the Mount of Olives; the Garden of Gethsemane; the hillsides overlaid with tombstones; the Dome of the Rock, the Omar Mosque covered in gold and glittering with Muhammad's dream of heaven; the Tower of David; the lead roof of the Al Aqsa Mosque; and in the distance, the giant white harmonica that was the new Mormon Temple—yes, even the youngest religion of America was here, waiting, waiting, waiting—and on the horizon, etched like fine hairs, countless construction cranes at work on the ever newer Jerusalem.

On the right, at the top of yet another hill of tombstones, stood the Golden Gate, bricked in and shut down. It was through this gate Jesus first entered the city, and it was said he would return through it. Jews believed that through this same gate the
true
Messiah would one day come to raise the dead from the stones of the city. God had told Ezekiel: “This gate is to be kept shut, and is not to be opened! No one shall enter by it because the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut.”

Throughout the centuries many false messiahs had tried to breach it. The Turks were the last to render the gate impassable, though they, too, awaited the coming of Mahdi, the avatar of Islam.

“It is sealed now, but it will burst open with the power of the True One,” Father Hernio commented.

Andrea suddenly felt a surge of anger.

“The True One?” she repeated bitterly. Her tone surprised the priest.

“Why so bitter, dear?”

Andrea decided, because she had grown to trust the priest and all her friends at the convent, to tell them a story from her past.

“Once when they loaded us on a prison truck, I asked the Serb officer overseeing the transport, ‘What's your name?' We were forbidden to talk to the Serbs; I don't know what I was thinking. Before the war, he would have liked me, but I wouldn't have looked at him. I was from the city, you see, and he was only a peasant! But now he looked back at me like I was a rat, and answered, ‘The True One! I am the True One!' I knew what he meant. He meant that he was my conqueror, and that made him the only true person. So I said, ‘Maybe
I
am the True One.' He hit me with the butt of his rifle, but the blow only landed on my shoulder. It missed my face.”