Gospel (88 page)

“The world is a fool to think you can stop him,” he said politely. “I think not even the Jews can stop him. He is a hero.”

“He's a monster, you know.”

“You know what your government tells you, the CIA…” But the driver was too smart to be satisfied with the delusional rhetoric Palestinians are so expert in. “No, he is very bad. But so is Shamir. Saddam may liberate the West Bank and destroy Israel. He is the hope in the world for the Palestinians—do you not see?”

Shamir and the Likud stiff-necks will never
really
negotiate with the Palestinians, unless it's for a very lopsided peace. Do not doubt it, O'Hanrahan told himself: many Palestinians, reported the morning
Jerusalem Times,
will go to Baghdad to die for Saddam Hussein since his pledge to use chemical weapons on Israel if any trouble started. This kind of evil they cheer.

“We are being followed,” said the driver, just as lightly.

O'Hanrahan turned quickly to see a black Mercedes trailing behind them.

“You're sure?”

“Oh yes.”

The cab driver turned into a narrow street marked for pedestrians only. His window was down and he nodded laughingly to all the people he inconvenienced in this narrow alley; Palestinian women and children took to the doorways, breathing in to let the car go by, perhaps, thought O'Hanrahan, familiar with this maneuver. The cab driver recognized three men sitting in a coffee shop. They waved, laughed, mock-insulted each other. A boy held three chickens, squawking and trying to release themselves from the twine that tied their feet together. O'Hanrahan glanced over his shoulder and indeed the black Mercedes had not attempted to follow.

The driver turned into an even narrower alley that had an exit onto a main road. A man selling Arabic newspapers, with a big, badly printed Saddam Hussein smiling heroically on the cover of several editions, moved his makeshift wooden stand to let O'Hanrahan's cab scrape through.

“Shukran,”
said O'Hanrahan, who elaborated further praise for the escape in Arabic.

“You are a friend of the Palestinians, yes?” asked the man. “You know the Arab tongue.”

“Yes, I am a friend,” said O'Hanrahan, feeling that did not commit him to PLO terrorist acts. “I am sympathetic.”

“More and more Americans,” he said, stopping the car before the side entrance of the hotel, “are beginning to see how we bleed.”

“That's true,” said O'Hanrahan, not imagining for a moment the hefty taxi driver had seen too much deprivation and hardship in his expensive taxi amid the Israeli prosperity.

He laughed. “Do not let Mossad catch you!”

O'Hanrahan wondered if the black Mercedes was indeed Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. No Mossad agent would stalk a car so obviously … or maybe that is part of modern Israel's strong-arm tactics, and like the old KGB, they opt now for the menacing, malevolent gesture. And Rabbi Hersch had mentioned he himself had endured a visit from some nebulous authorities.

“Shukran,”
said O'Hanrahan.

“Afwan eh ma'asalaama,
my friend.”

Inside the lobby, O'Hanrahan observed things had declined from the 1950s, the glory days of the hotel. Tourists were far less likely to venture into this contested tear-gas zone, though the Palestinian welcome was warmer than Israeli officiousness and indifference, the prices cheaper, and even in some hotels, it was cleaner. A TV was blaring Jordanian news in the corner. There was President Bush mouthing forceful language about Saddam Hussein. There was a smuggled video of Kuwait being invaded, tanks in the street … there was a map and a graphics display of possible deployment of U.N. troops were Saudi Arabia to permit it.

Thought O'Hanrahan glumly: The End Times!

“Patrick, my brother,” cried an aged Mustafa Waswasah, graying at the temples, but still a fit Arab man in an immaculately tailored Western suit.

“Mustafa,” cried O'Hanrahan in return as they hugged and kissed. No, they were not best of friends but they were relics from each other's splendid youth, and so much had happened since those days, so many unaccountable years of wasted, bided time, that the sight of each other returned them for a moment to vigorous manhood. O'Hanrahan fought to not have his eyes fill with tears.

“Come,” said Mustafa, “Come in to my shop…”

Hard times, thought O'Hanrahan. Without the flow of scholars and carefree tourists into East Jerusalem, only the brave ventured to the Hotel El-Khodz, mostly Moslems for whom the Christian ecclesiastical relics and parchments meant nothing. A collection of silver crosses unearthed in Madaba, Jordan. A Persian swastika that had eluded the Rockefeller Museum's collection from Hisham's Palace in Jericho. Alas, despaired Waswasah, it is a tough time, some of these treasures would be in these display cases at his death. Ah, but there were some profoundly important Roman coins in this case here, he asserted, pulling O'Hanrahan to the display—

“How long were these in your toilet?” the professor asked.

Waswasah raised his eyebrows, about to take offense, but then realized he had confessed his trade secret to O'Hanrahan a long time ago. The men laughed then, rich, roaring laughs. “How well you know me!” said Waswasah, making his way to a storeroom excitedly. “I have for you a present, Patrick,” he added with a gleam. From the back room he produced a dusty green bottle. “Arak of Damascus. For you.”

O'Hanrahan had taken the pledge for today, but then again—

“You are pleased?” Waswasah asked.

But of course the sin of pride is a
worse
sin than drinking, O'Hanrahan considered jesuitically. Could I really insult my friend? “Just one glass, perhaps, Mustafa.”

As they both sipped from small tea glasses, they talked of what all of Jerusalem was talking about.

Mustafa al-Waswasah: “To an Israeli I would say, ‘Let Saddam Hussein sweep over this land and make the changes.' After all, he will not live forever, will he? With the West Bank back in Palestinian hands, it could not easily be taken back by the Israelis, yes?”

Well, thought O'Hanrahan, the Israelis easily took it the first time, in less than a week against three nations' armies!

“But to you, Patrick, I say he is a monster, a madman!”

As Westernized as Waswasah had become, O'Hanrahan wondered what would become of a Palestinian-dominated Holy Land. Arabs who'd prospered and become Israeli might well receive worse than the Jews. Although a master like Waswasah would certainly squirm his way out of trouble no matter what.

O'Hanrahan: “A word about the scroll you sold Rabbi Rosen in 1949…”

“You know my code,” Waswasah announced proudly, as he now without comment poured a little more arak into his tea glass. “I keep my clients and their affairs confidential. It is like a Catholic person and his priest, no?”

This fox would tell anyone anything for money, O'Hanrahan knew full well. “But this was forty years ago, Mustafa, and Rosen is long dead. My friend. Please. Do you recall the circumstances of Rabbi Rosen purchasing the scroll from you?”

“Hebrew University is willing to pay for such information?”

“It is not for Hebrew University. It is for me that I ask.”

Mustafa looked pained. “My memory of something so long ago…”

“But I think some remuneration could be arranged from the University of Chicago…” O'Hanrahan glanced at the shop window and saw that VISA was honored.

“Yes then. I did not ask the man many questions myself. It came from Egypt and the National Museum, which was willing to sell it. They considered it untranslatable, a minor thing in any event.”

“And before it was in Egypt?”

“It was in America.”

O'Hanrahan was floored. “The
Gospel of Matthias
was in America?”

Waswasah looked a bit pleased. “I suspect this American collector came across this scroll after World War Two. Many treasures were stolen then, in North Africa, in the Middle East, in Europe. Much of what I sold in those days was taken by soldiers. Many European dealers would not touch stolen property, but we in this part of the world know the marketplace has no rules but two, those of selling, those of buying. I would tell you more of this man if I knew more. His last name was Merriwether.”

Ah, the circle was closing in. “Now Mustafa, think carefully,” O'Hanrahan pleaded, “is it true that Jacob Rosen, after he bought the gospel, brought the scroll to you to repair?”

The merchant's memory was truly quite sharp; he remembered every detail of a transaction. “He intended to.”

Mustafa Waswasah, among his many talents in antiquities-faking and forgery, was an expert repairman. Many of the fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls were reassembled by his judicious eye, sewn together with ancient thread unraveled from an antique cloth, or pasted together from a fund of old papyrus. His art was inspired by nothing more than the higher price the repaired article would fetch, but he restored nonetheless with the zeal of an artisan.

“Yes, Mr. Rosen called me and said the last segment of the scroll had come loose and that he had separated it from the rest. He proposed an appointment for me to repair it, but he never made the appointment.”

“No?”

“No, a day after he called, he had fallen to his death.”

A dark thought passed through O'Hanrahan's mind: could Rabbi Rosen's call to Mustafa have set off the chain of events that led to his death? Did this Arab trader sell the information to someone, who then knocked the poor man down the stairs and took the scroll? O'Hanrahan swept the thought aside—too complicating of his long-held good opinion of Waswasah.

O'Hanrahan confided, “The scroll has reappeared.”

“So I've heard.”

“The
Gospel of Matthias,
it is now called.”

“A gospel! How wonderful for the Christians! Is Mohammed foretold in it?”

“I wouldn't put anything past this scroll.” O'Hanrahan poured another arak and let the anisette fumes tingle his nose before sipping. “This gospel has reappeared but missing that final chapter. If you hear of anything, my friend,
anything,
concerning this last segment, contact me or Rabbi Mordechai Hersch.”

O'Hanrahan paused.

“No. Better to contact me first,” O'Hanrahan said slowly, feeling disloyal but convinced of his action. “Contact me at the King David. There is more money than you can imagine for the seller of that last chapter.”

Waswasah's eyes glinted in anticipation. “I will take a personal interest in this project,” he said, finishing his last shot of arak.

“Moslems would like it too, for some reason, and some groups I've been in contact with would think nothing of, shall we say, taking it from you without paying your price.”

“Ah,” he said simply.

“Whereas Hebrew University and myself will pay your price.”

“I shall keep that in mind.” Waswasah was distracted by a fat man in an expensive white linen suit who was turning his bulk this way and that and bending over cases, perilously capable of knocking a treasure to the floor. “See me again, my friend,” said Waswasah, “before you leave Jerusalem. With the world as it is, who knows…”

No, he didn't have to finish the sentence. Considering their ages and Saddam Hussein, the Intifada and the crackdown, O'Hanrahan and Waswasah both knew the slim chances of another reunion. O'Hanrahan reached for his gift to discover only a little was left in the bottle. He attempted to leave it for his friend, but Mustafa would have none of this, so they finished the remainder in a quick shot after a toast and exchange of blessings.

O'Hanrahan stepped out into the street and wondered how long he would have to wander in this neighborhood to find a taxi. He could reenter the hotel and get them to call one, and as he turned to do that, he saw the hefty man in the doorway.

“Dr. O'Hanrahan?” he began in a soft German accent. “What a coincidence!”

Had they met before?

“We have not met, but I am acquainted with you fery vell. But we have almost met tvice.”

Something dawned on the professor: this is the German who purchased the
Gospel of Matthias
in March and then let it slip through his fingers. He looked to his right and saw a BMW, white like the gentleman's suit.

The German offered, “Shall I give to you a ride back to New Jerusalem?”

*   *   *

After further wrangling with more shopkeepers and more rude treatment, Lucy finally hailed a taxi cab and requested the Jerusalem Museum. She had to raise her voice to the driver that
No,
she did not want to go to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial with displays of human soap and every ghastly artifact of the Holocaust, she wanted to go to the Shrine of the Book at the Jerusalem Museum. The man insisted that all non-Jews should go to Yad Vashem, that he had relatives at Bergen-Belsen, etc. Finally, she arrived at the Museum—the long way around, she was sure—and they argued over the fare to make their exchange even more unpleasant.

As Lucy listlessly plodded through the wonderful Jerusalem Museum, she considered whether it was anti-Semitic simply not to like the Israelis.

This, she told herself, is not the same thing as hating all Jews, which she didn't. But this country is rude. They're under the gun and anxious understandably, but if you're not Jewish they're not nice to you. Me, an American, Lucy reminded the air, me who subsidizes this country with my tax dollars. I don't expect an engraved thank-you letter but civility and politeness are not too much to ask.

After seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls, as impressive in real life as O'Hanrahan's legendarizing, she stood outside wondering if she could escape going to see Rabbi Hersch. I've had enough Israeli brusqueness for one day, she decided, but she dutifully trudged down and up the valley to arrive at Hebrew University atop the next hill, the Givat Ram campus.