Vicious Circle (21 page)

Across the room the Rabbi’s secretary, dozing restlessly under his leather hood, shuddered so violently that he almost tipped
over his chair. “I can’t swim,” he cried in the high pitched voice of a frightened child caught up in a vivid nightmare. He
stretched his neck like a swan and gulped for air. “For the love of God, throw me a buoy before I drown.”

“You’re supposed to be a consenting adult,” the Rabbi, irritated by the interruption, taunted his secretary. “Sink or swim,
but for God’s sake, Efrayim, do it discreetly.” Scratching a nostril on his slit
sleeve, Apfulbaum turned back to his interrogator. “Excuse the interruption. Where was I? Ah, I remember. As for slaughtering
the Palestinians who resist, Moses ben Maimon, a twelfth century
mensch
if there ever was one, taught that an individual may be killed—
must
be killed!—if killing him will prevent Jews from being harmed. This principle is known as
din rodef
, the judgment of the pursuer; the
rodef
or pursuer with a knapsack stuffed with plastic explosives can be killed by a righteous Jew before the pursuer uses the explosives
to kill a Jew. In the inimitable words of Maimonides, his blood is permitted. You are too shrewd not to see what I’m driving
at—someone like Ya’ir is justified in attacking Palestinians to prevent the Palestinians from attacking Jews.”

The Doctor dispelled the smoke with the back of his hand. “Do you believe
din rodef
justifies preemptive strikes against Palestinians wearing knapsacks, or Palestinians in general?”

“The delicious Koran of yours authorizes Muslims to take what they think is theirs by force. Our Torah authorizes us to protect
what is ours by force.” Apfulbaum tittered again. “Push has long since come to shove, but which text will triumph—your Koran
or my Torah?”

“You have not answered my question.”

In his eagerness to reply, the Rabbi ignored the saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “Given the directives of the
Koran and the spin
meshugana
Muslim fundamentalists like you put on them, all Palestinians must be treated as potential carriers of knapsacks.” He cocked
his head and added, “Read Genesis two, fifteen: God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden ‘
to work and guard it
.’ Israel is my Eden, and I am simply obeying God’s injunction to guard it.”

Unfazed, the Doctor sucked at his cigarette. “You are repeating word for word deranged passages from your book,
One Torah, One Land
.”

The Rabbi’s mouth gaped open in satisfaction. “You have read my book!”

“I have had it read to me,
ya’ani
.”

“Aieeeee. Efrayim told me you had a problem with your eyes.”

The Doctor laughed harshly. “You might call it a problem. Tear
ducts normally drain into the nose through the nasolacrimal ducts, but in my case the membranes were clogged at birth, which
caused my eyes to tear permanently. I was born crying and never stopped, and it affected my vision. By the time my parents
noticed that my sight had deteriorated and took me to a doctor, who opened the nasolacrimal ducts, it was too late—I was reduced
to a kind of tunnel vision, which gradually worsened as I grew older. Each time I woke up I found I could see less than the
day before—but, curiously, I understood more. I tell you: people who knew me as a child say they weren’t aware my vision had
been impaired. I developed little tricks—I knew where every object in the house was. I used the tips of my fingers as if they
were antennas. I would pour fruit juice into tumblers and offer them to visitors. My father had a horse, which I rode. When
I was twelve I was dying to go to a riding academy run by a Syrian cavalry officer. I knew that if he discovered I couldn’t
see he wouldn’t let me enter the academy. So I devised a system of taking bearings like a sailor and navigating my way around
dry land. The Syrian instructor never realized I was functionally blind.” The Doctor laughed under his breath. “I am still
taking bearings, and still navigating.”

“On what do you take bearings?”

“On the Creator, the Maker, the Shaper, the All-merciful, the All-compassionate, the All-sublime, the All-mighty. On the one
true God. There is yet another name for God, the Greatest Name, concealed from all but the holiest of men. It is my dream
to one day pronounce it.”

“Me, too, I believe in one God,” the Rabbi said with quiet ardor. “‘
Shema yisro’eyl, adoynoy eloheynu, adoynoy ekh-o-o-o-dddd
… ’” he said, drawing out the last syllable of the word “one.” ‘
Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one
.’ Me, too, I hope to enter the holy of holies in a reconstructed Temple of Solomon and pronounce the unpronounceable name
of God before I kick the bucket.”

“
La ilaha illa ‘llah
,” the Doctor whispered huskily. “‘
No god exists but God
.’” He felt himself being sucked onto a common ground beyond the no-man’s land of English, and scraped back his chair to create
more space between him and his prisoner. Changing the subject
abruptly, he said, “According to my notes you are married.”

The Rabbi responded reluctantly. “I have a wife. In America she was called Janet. In Israel she has taken the Hebrew name
Devora.”

“At what age did you fall in love with her?”

“I never fell in love with her. I married in order to procreate. She was … suitable.” He leaned forward. “God created the
female of the species on the sixth day but He neglected to say, as He did when He was contemplating His handiwork on days
one to five, that it was good.” The Rabbi nodded to convey that he was making an important point.

The Doctor appeared interested. “Have you ever been in love?”

His ankles straining against the lengths of cloth binding them to the legs of the chairs, Apfulbaum lowered his voice to a
hoarse whisper. The last thing in the world he wanted was for Efrayim to hear what he was going to say. “Once, when I was
studying to become a Rabbi, I danced with a girl at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn. It was summer. There was no back to
her dress. I remember feeling the vertebrae of her naked spine under my finger tips. I got … excited. The girl laughed and
pressed herself into my … excitement.” Apfulbaum was suddenly defensive. “So what about you—have you ever been smitten? Come
clean: Have you ever ached to caress the female body with all its perfections and imperfections? Are you blind or indifferent
to all those young ladies with brassiere straps slipping off their bronzed shoulders or bare navels with earrings in their
belly buttons? I’m not talking platonic friendship, I’m talking permanent erection, I’m talking coitus un-interruptus. You
are obviously a control freak. What I’m really getting at is, have you ever lost control?”

The Doctor cleared his throat. “My answer will surprise you. As a matter of fact, yes. I am not ashamed to admit it was love
at first sight. Only remembering it now takes my breath away. The touch of her vertebrae left the tips of my fingers tingling.
I wanted to drink her in, penetrate to her most secret parts, surrender myself to her, become one with her. It was my profoundest
wish to die in her bare arms.”

“What became of her?”

“She is still alive and well and aging nicely, thank you.” The Doctor actually smiled. “The name of my beloved is Jerusalem.
You must understand the difference between the secular Muslims who direct the Palestinian Authority and Islamists like me.
The secular Muslims are only interested in a nation-state; the Authority’s functionaries, little men from refugee camps in
Tunis, sit behind large desks and drink Turkish coffee and accept envelopes stuffed with cash in return for favors. Me, I
am crazy about the
land
. I tell you frankly,
ya’ani
, when I walk in the hills above Jerusalem, I wear sandals and never wash the dust off my feet until I go to the mosque to
pray.”

The Rabbi lowered his eyes, acknowledging that he was in the presence of a pious man. “I know, I know. With me it’s exactly
the same.” He buffed his lips with his knuckles as he recited words he had memorized as a young man and never forgotten. “When
a man plasters his house, let him leave a small area unplastered to remind him of Jerusalem. Let a man prepare everything
for a meal; then let him leave a small thing undone to remind him of Jerusalem. For it is said: ‘
If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning
.’”

The Doctor said emotionally, “I never dreamed I would come across another human being, let alone a Jew, who loved this city
as I do.”

“The first time I set foot in Jerusalem,” the Rabbi, almost giddy with bliss, ranted on, “oy, I must have been sixteen at
the time, I wound up, like every Jew visiting the Holy Land, praying at the Wailing Wall. And suddenly it hit me that I wasn’t
praying, I was actually talking to God! I beat my head against what was left of the Second Temple until I had bruised my forehead.
When I pressed my ear to the cold stone, I swear to you I heard voices and the clash of swords and shields. I heard Canaanites
and Hyksos and Egyptians and Philistines, I heard Hebrews and Babylonians and Persians and Syrians and Greeks and Romans,
I heard the Muslim warriors from Arabia and the Christian crusaders from Anjou, I heard the Turks and the British. Oh, I tell
you I had taken a mountain climber’s grip on the Wailing Wall, working my fingers into its crevices as if I intended to scale
it; they had to pry my hands loose from the stones,
they had to drag me away. I was in a trance, I was in another world. I was home.”

“You are a fossilized Jew,” the Doctor said, not without sympathy. “Your spiritual home is the Isra’il of Kings and Judges
and burning bushes and rams’ horns bringing down the walls of cities.”

“You are a fossilized Muslim,” Apfulbaum retorted with an agitated laugh. “You would be more comfortable if a time capsule
whisked you back thirteen centuries to the golden age of Islam, if you could eavesdrop on the angel Gabriel whispering verses
of the Koran into the ear of the Messenger.”

“I would go back further,” the Doctor admitted. “I would return to the dawn of time when Ibrahim left the land of Ur; when
his Egyptian bondwoman, Hagar, bore him a first-born son named Isma’il; when Isma’il helped his father build the Kaaba at
Mecca, the first shrine to the one true God, with the nail in the floor the ancients believed to be the navel of the world;
I would watch Ibrahim raise the sacrificial knife to the throat of his son Isma’il on the black stone at its heart only to
have God stay his arm at the last instant. When Ibrahim came out of Ur,
ya’ani
, the religion of Islam already existed. It is written:
Ibrahim was not a Jew, nor was he a Christian. He was a Muslim, a man of pure faith
. This pure faith, this
Islam
of Ibrahim, this submission to God, is the straight path. It tells us all we need to know about human affairs—it tells us
how to run a government, how to wash when there is no water available, how to pray and fast, how to dress, how to buy and
sell, how to make love to our wives, how to eat and drink and defecate. In the Messenger’s scheme of things there is no place
for
bid’a
, for innovation. Thus said the Prophet: ‘
The most truthful communication is the Book of God, the best guidance is that of Muhammad, and the worst of all things are
innovations: every innovation is heresy, every heresy is error, and every error leads to hell
.’”

“Amen again,” muttered the Rabbi. “I invite you to lecture on the subject of innovation to my Torah students in Beit Avram.”

Petra came up behind the Doctor. “If we are going to be there and back before first light, we must leave now.”

“Is everything prepared?” the Doctor asked her.

“It is.”

The Doctor rose stiffly to his feet and slipped the leather hood over the Rabbi’s head with unaccustomed gentleness. Then
he pulled something from the pocket of his robe and dropped it into Apfulbaum’s palm. “During the twelve years I was imprisoned
by the Isra’ilis, these helped me to keep my sanity.”

The Rabbi’s fingers closed around a set of worn silver worry beads. A feeling of gratefulness, of affinity even, surged in
his breast as he began to work them through his fingers. “You’re coming back, right?”

“
Inshallah
,” the Doctor said. “God willing.”

T
HE BEAT-UP SILVER
S
UZUKI WITH
I
SRAELI LICENSE PLATES
crawled along the dirt road and drew to a stop next to the back door of a fruit and vegetable warehouse on the outskirts
of Ramallah, eight miles north of Jerusalem. A cat in heat, patrolling the tin roof of the warehouse, screeched with an almost
human voice as Petra pulled the scarf from her head and used it to unscrew the naked electric bulb in the socket over the
door. In the darkness, the Doctor got out of the car and slipped into the warehouse. He kept the tips of his fingers on Petra’s
shoulder and followed her through the maze of aisles formed by shoulder-high stacks of crates. Overhead, shafts of silvery
moonlight pierced the rain-streaked panes of the skylights, strewing the cement floor with slippery shadows. From every side
came the fragrant scents of oranges and apples and carrots and parsley. A fat woman materialized in the aisle. She sank with
difficulty to her knees, caught the hem of the Doctor’s robe in her thick fingers and brought it to her lips. “I ask you,
I beg you, in the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” she whimpered. “Spare the life of my husband for his family’s
sake.” A young man loomed behind the fat woman. “For my father’s life,” he said, his voice a muffled moan of dread, “in accordance
with Islamic law, we offer
diyah
—”

“It is not a question of blood money, but justice,” the Doctor snapped. He stepped around the two and continued on behind
Petra. Under a large skylight in the heart of the warehouse they came upon Mr. Hajji, bound hand and feet to a stanchion.
“A monumental error
has been made,” Mr. Hajji whispered when the two figures came up to him. He spoke as if he were letting them in on a secret.
“There is absolutely no grain of truth—”