Sunrise on the Mediterranean (58 page)

“You’re supposed to be quarantined,” N’tan said. “Chavsha was insistent.”

“I was sorry to hear about your wife,” I said.

He looked away.
“Todah.”

“Shouldn’t you be mourning or something? I can take care of myself, I can even quarantine myself,” I said.

“She was not my family,” he said in monotone. “I will not mourn her.”

“Mah?”

“It is the law.”

I was about to rant, but then he looked at me. His narrow, overbred features were pinched, the circles beneath his eyes deep
and gray. “How is your son?”

A faint smile touched the edges of his mouth. “Beautiful, a gift from Shaday.”

“What is his name?” The questions weren’t just polite; I found that I really wanted him to know that I was genuinely sorry
for him and happy for him.

“On the eighth day I’ll name him.”

More customs, more laws. “
G’vret
, you have been exposed to Avgay’el, as was Dadua. You need to be set apart for a few days to make sure you don’t sicken.
This is what your husband says.”

Bubonic plague. That was one scary concept. I’d had European history—but weren’t rats involved? How had Avgay’el been bitten
by a rat? I knew I hadn’t, but if it would make Cheftu feel better, I’d take a few days of vacation. After all the busyness
of the past days and weeks, it would be nice.

But surely Cheftu was wrong about the plague? There were no rats.

“W
HAT CAN BE DONE FOR HER
?”

“I do not know, I have no idea where she got this illness,” Cheftu said, watching as Avgay’el shivered, soothing her burning
brow with wet cloths. “You? How do you fare?” Cheftu couldn’t imagine his pain, losing his wife. Childbirth was a very uncertain
thing. Was he sure he wanted to risk Chloe, her very life, that way?

N’tan shrugged. “You show no fear around this plague,” the prophet said. “Why is that?”

“Nor do you,” Cheftu countered. “
Ach
, well, it has no power over me.”

Cheftu turned to look over his shoulder at the
tzadik.
“How is that possible?”

“Anyone who might come into contact with the Seat, in the course of his serving with the Levim, is purposefully made ill so
that he never gets sick again.” The priest rolled back his sleeve, motioning Cheftu closer. There, barely visible in N’tan’s
hairy armpit, was a scar—a plague scar.

“You know it is deadly?” Cheftu asked, stunned. “
Ken
, which is one of the reasons that only the priests of Levi handle it. Only they are made sick each generation.” He crouched
beside Avgay’el. “She must have stood too close.”

“What can be done for her?” Cheftu asked. “This will be fatal otherwise.”

N’tan’s dark eyes met his. “We can pray, intercede.” How could he still have faith when his own wife just died? Cheftu wondered.
“There are no medicines? No herbs?”

“Keep her fever down.” N’tan’s hand touched one of the bulging, blood-filled buboes on her neck. “She was such a beautiful
woman. What a tragedy.”

What irony, Cheftu thought. This disease obliterated a quarter of the fourteenth-century world, and yet the Levim purposefully
infected their youngsters with it. So they could survive. “What makes the Ark so deadly?” he asked.

N’tan shrugged. “The power of
el ha
Shaday.”

Cheftu bathed Dadua’s wife with icy water, trying to keep her cool. Her hair was falling out in hanks because her temperature
had gotten so high. She coughed up blood, then fell back into her deep sleep, again and again. Though he felt like a grand
inquisitor, he made her drink when she could barely swallow, forced her to keep drinking even when she protested that she
couldn’t take another sip. But she drank, urinated, and drank more. Would it flood the disease out of her body? How had this
happened?

She hadn’t even touched the Ark. The only thing that could have transferred from the Seat to her body were …

Fleas.

I’
VE BEEN IMPRISONED
a few times. The only tangible differences were that now I hadn’t been thrown into this cell, and I was being fed. Other
than that, this stone underground room lit by one measly lamp was the same as the others.

The plague?

I was on my second or third day of nonsensical navel gazing when Dadua joined me. A shot of espresso and a pack of Camels
couldn’t have made me move faster. As it was, I was talking to myself, or rather God, about the absurdity of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. “Are our lives a game?” I asked loudly, blowing off some steam. “We get pulled from time to
time, put in situations where we have no choice but to do what you say!” I stared straight up into the face of the unknown.
“Do we no longer have free will?”

“What language is that,
isha?”

I spun around. The slayer of Goliath, the sweet psalmist of Israel, the however many times removed grandfather of Jesus, stood
not a foot away from me. “My, my …
adon,”
I said quickly, bowing.

“How are you?” He glanced around. “This room is dank enough to be a prison,” he said. “How many more days do we spend here?”

I felt a strange sense of peace steal over me. Did Dadua carry a force field with him? “I don’t know. How is Avgay’el?”

Dadua sighed. “Still in this life, but very ill.”

“I grieve for you.”

“She is a good woman, better than I deserve,” he mused. Leaning against the wall, he slid down onto the straw opposite me.
“What question were you asking Shaday?”

“You, you understood me?” I was shocked. Beyond shocked.

He chuckled. “Not the words,
lo
, but the
nefesh
behind them,
ken.
I recognize the sound of it.” He looked at me, a Rossetti in the raw. “What did you ask?”

Why not ask David? I mean, if anyone really knew God, it was he, right? I licked my lips, fighting hysterical giggles. I was
chatting up the king of Israel while waiting to see if I had the plague. Boy, was life weird. “I wanted to know if I still
had free will.”

“Because you were a slave?”

Instinctively I touched the hole in my ear, the hole I rarely thought of anymore. I almost said, “No,” then realized that
being a time traveler, I really was some form of slave— depending on one’s perspective. “Sometimes,” I said.

“We are all slaves,” he said.

“You are the king, how can you say that?”

“Shall I tell you a story?”

“B’seder.”

“First, I brought some wine.”

He poured and we sat. I was dazzled to be in his company; I guessed that he was worried sick over his wife.

“A king is also a slave,” he said. “When I was no king, indeed I was fleeing the king’s wrath, hiding in the caves of Abdullum,
I mentioned, on a hot day, how I would love to have some water, cool and refreshing, from the well in my father’s yard.”

“Ken?”

“At that time it was behind enemy lines. A dangerous path to get there, an even more dangerous one to return home.”

“Did you not have water?”

“That was it. We did have water. I was longing for the security of home, the refreshment of being with my family, yearning
for the years before all this began. That was the meaning of wanting water specifically from that well.” He sighed. “So then:
Two of my
giborim
slipped through enemy lines, drew the water, then came back.

“It was an expensive trip. They were covered in gore, for they had had to kill several people to get the water.” Dadua licked
his lips. “I was so humbled, so terrified.”

I could understand the humility, but the terror? “Why?”

“I had spoken thoughtlessly. Because of that, they had undertaken this feat that could have lost their lives. Over my frivolity!”

“They were grown men, they made a decision,” I reminded him.

“
Ken
, but they had made it because of my longings. I realized then, for the first time, that I wielded power.” He drained his
cup in one swallow. “Power is as great an enslavement as any ring you’ve ever worn through your ear,
g’vret.”

“What about slavery to God?” I asked. “How do you know you are doing the right thing?”

“The right thing?” he repeated. “If you do not worship idols, if you are faithful to your family, your tribe, Shaday …” He
trailed off. “What other ‘right thing’ is there to do?”

I opened my mouth to retort, but I had no response. Was it really that easy?

“My mother is from the land, a cousin whose father did not go into Egypt,” he said. “They do not have the laws that we, the
tribes, were given. For her, it is very simple. She doesn’t have to worry about the Seat, or cleanliness, or
hal.
Three things Shaday asks of them, because they are not chosen.”

“They are … ?”

“Show justice, love mercy, walk every day humbly with Shaday.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“They are not chosen, so less is required of them.”

“More is required of the tribes because they are chosen? Why is that?”

Dadua sighed, poured himself another cup of wine. “Being chosen is an extreme,
b’seder?”

I sipped my cup, tried to understand. He must have sensed my confusion because he kept talking. “Chosen means you are picked
out, you are no longer just part of the mass, but you are an individual.” He flashed a smile. “Usually, the only reason someone
is selected from a group is for a good end or a bad one. Take, for instance, sacrifice.”

“The sheep and goats?” I asked, thinking of the scapegoat now living in the garbage dump outside the gate.

“
Ken.
They are picked out, selected as the best, because their blood must be shed for us. Selection is for a high holy purpose,
but not so good for the sheep,
nachon?”

I laughed.
“Nachon.”

“Or a group of workmen. The one who is singled out is either the best of the group or the worst,
ken?”

I nodded. “So,” he said with a shrug. “We are singled out, chosen for a purpose. Sometimes it is to be the best, to show how
it is done. Sometimes,
ach
, well, we are the worst example. ‘This is how not to be,’ Shaday tells the other nations. ‘Ignore them now.’ ”

“How does that—”

“Matter to slavery?”

“Ken?”

“Because as the sheep belong to the shepherd and are picked to be eaten or be sacrificed, or as the workmen belong to the
overseer and are selected to be promoted or discharged, so a slave belongs to his owner.” Dadua swigged his cup of wine. “We
are slaves. Shaday is our owner.” He stretched out his hand. “The fields and hills, they are not ours.” He belched. “They
are God’s. Every fifty years, no matter who owns the land, it goes back to the very first owner, from when the first tribesmen
bought land here. That practice serves to remind us that we are tenants.”

He poured wine into my empty cup. “We are here, fed, clothed, housed, and protected through our own wits,
ken
,

but because Shaday allows it. If we break his laws, he will kill us.” Dadua laughed humorlessly. “Obvious,
nachon?”
He shook his head. “The land will vomit us out. We must guard against any transgression, and that is why.”

Avayra goreret avayra
danced through my mind. “Is this selection a blessing or a curse?” I asked.

I’d been allowed to see pivotal moments in history. Was that a blessing or a curse? I was sitting here, discussing theology
with the writer of the Psalms; was that a blessing or a curse?

He chuckled, poured another cup. “When we were in Egypt as kings, it was a blessing. When we were in Egypt as slaves, it was
a curse.”

“So when you are the rulers, it is a blessing?”

“
Lo
, even ruling ourselves at times we have cursed ourselves.
Lo
, the blessing and cursing come from what we believe of Shaday. If he is disciplining us so that we behave properly because
that will bring fruition to us, to the land, then even a curse could be a blessing.”

“I think I’ve drunk too much to understand,” I said, my head spinning. I looked at my cup, staring into its depths, wondering
how badly I was slurring. “So it is a choice, then, to decide if the wine cup is half-full or half-empty?”