Hadassah Covenant, The (38 page)

Did I even
want
to enter into a covenant with this kind of god? A deity who would let this sort of thing happen to His people?

Then, almost like a dialogue, a reply to that thought came to me in the form of a question.
Who left whom
? Didn’t He warn Israel of the consequences if she continued to abandon Him and chase after foreign gods and the pleasures of sin? And didn’t she ignore Him, time after time after time—as all humans are prone to do?

And wasn’t Jerusalem waiting for us to come back? A sob choked in my throat at the thought of it—at the mental image Mordecai had nurtured within me, that of a pile of stones in some forgotten desert, its dusty air thick with the longing of a distant, far-flung people. Weren’t G-d’s promises lying unclaimed, simply waiting for us to return?

In another lightning flash, I thought I caught a moment of G-d’s heart on the matter. A stabbing twinge of profound sadness and regret—not for himself but for us. For His children’s foolish and fatal choices through the centuries. For our—my—endless ability to forget all He had done for us.

Was I crazy? What about the incredible deeds He had wrought on His people’s behalf during my very own lifetime? Miracles brought to life through me. Did I have no memory? Was I incapable of recalling even my own life?

Suddenly the thought of my own covenant with Him seemed like a greater priority than anything else I could think of.

Without forethought, I spoke out loud. “O YHWH, if you show me the way to a meaningful rest of my days, I will follow it in your strength—no matter what.”

And, Leah, I have never meant anything more in my whole life.

Chapter Forty-two

P
RIME
M
INISTER’S
R
ESIDENCE—LATE EVENING

H
adassah? Would you
put down that old manuscript for just a second and look at this?”

Even more urgently than the volume of his exclamation, there was something in Jacob’s voice—a thin edge of shock and fear—that compelled her to break away from her reading. She laid down the document on the bedspread and looked into the face of their opposition party leader, oversized in the florid colors of their bedroom’s plasma-screen television. Even with the monitor’s exaggerated hues, his cheeks seemed flushed. The Prime Minister held out a remote control, jabbed his finger down, and the volume rose. The man onscreen was angry.

“After learning of these matters, it is now clear that Jacob ben Yuda is not fit to lead the government of Israel. In fact, the question we should be asking ourselves is whether he should be allowed to walk the streets in freedom—or be arrested at once. These disclosures are absolutely scandalous.”

“What disclosures?” Hadassah asked her husband.

Without turning aside, he put his fingers to his lips in an urgent bid for silence.

The broadcast had cut to a correspondent standing before the London Embassy’s gates.

“. . . the First Lady’s presence in London. According to confidential embassy sources, Mrs. ben Yuda flew into Luton on a secret military flight and was rushed to the Israeli Embassy under armed cover. There she met Mr. al-Khalid and an unnamed relative.”

“Oh, brother,” Hadassah muttered, “I am going to kill somebody.”

Jacob made no acknowledgment.

“Now here’s where the various reports differ,” the correspondent continued. “One embassy official stated unequivocally that Mrs. ben Yuda greeted Mr. al-Khalid as an old relative, although other reports indicate that the meeting was hardly cordial. In any event, all sources agree that shortly after the encounter, doctors were summoned to the embassy complex to treat an elderly gentleman in severe cardiac distress.”

Hadassah jumped at the slap of her husband’s hand on the headboard behind her.

“I knew I shouldn’t have done this,” Jacob fumed.

“Preliminary research does seem to support these accounts, as bizarre as they seem. According to British municipal documents, Mr. al-Khalid was married in the 1950s to a Rivke Kesselman, which is, of course, the maiden name of First Lady ben Yuda.”

Jacob’s lips were pressed tightly together, and he held up the remote as if to turn the program off, but his political adversary reappeared, and the Prime Minister stood as if cast in stone.

“Tomorrow morning, I will introduce a motion before the Knesset for a vote of no-confidence against Mr. ben Yuda’s leadership. I am certain we will have a new government by week’s end. One who will level honestly with the Israeli people.”

A desk anchor now joined the fray.

“And what does the Prime Minister or his wife say on the matter? Government spokesmen only say that the couple are both in transit and remain unavailable for comment.”

“
Enough!!”

A balled-up sock flew from Jacob’s hand across the room to strike the politician’s televised face head-on. The screen went blank with a small click of the remote in his other hand.

Hadassah turned to her husband with an anguished expression. “I’m so sorry, honey. I never imagined this all would come out—at least
this way, or that your enemies would go to such lengths about it.”

“I should have known,” Jacob said with a somber shake of his head. “It’s nothing new—things that should remain secret being leaked for political purposes. And I won’t be the worst victim.”

He glanced at her, then looked down to the floor, his face reddening, jaw muscles clenching, and pounded his fist into his palm. “But it’s our people back in Iraq who will pay the price. Complete innocents. Women and children.” He sighed heavily, the entire burden for their fate clearly at his door.

The telephone on the night table beside him startled them both. He picked it up and made a small grunt in lieu of a greeting, then several more as he attempted to break in to the conversation.

“I know this is going to sound strange to you,” he said at last, “but the most important security goal of this nation is to find an ancient scroll proving that the Mordecai of the
Tanach
married and fathered a son of the bloodline of David—three-thousand-some-odd years ago. Now, I don’t care whether you’re a cabinet secretary or a military general or dogcatcher, I need sleuths right now. I need literary and historical detectives. Unless we find, translate, and disseminate such a document today, dozens of our people will be murdered, the leadership of Iraq will likely be toppled, and our hopes for peace will be in shambles. Do you understand?”

He hung up the receiver with a bang and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.

“We’re in trouble, big trouble,” he muttered, his voice muffled by his cupped hands over his mouth. “No one is willing to believe the truth. The truth is just too bizarre. Too unbelievable.”

“What can I do?” Hadassah asked in a small voice.

“Well, first of all, I need you to take a break from that old journal and get your mind in the twenty-first century.” His tone fell just short of sarcastic.

Hadassah breathed in deeply, attempting to quench her irritation, for she knew that the frustration behind it was richly justified.

“Jacob,” she replied, “those old journals may not have contained the exact data we were looking for, but”—she exhaled carefully now, anxious to avoid the tears she could feel behind her eyes—“they’ve helped me. She may have lived three thousand years ago, but there’s
something uncanny about how closely her problems match everything I’ve been living through lately. Her plight, her words—they’ve been like a close friend I wish I had in real life. Like a sympathetic shoulder that can relate to every single one of my emotions. If nothing more, that has been her contribution to this crisis. She’s rescued me.”

Jacob reached across the bedspread and took Hadassah’s hand into his own. The calm on his face made it clear that his anger had been soothed by his wife’s poignant response.

“I’m sorry, my love,” he said almost inaudibly. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been wiser. Better able to . . . respond to you. I just haven’t known how.”

She smiled crookedly and squeezed his hand. “It’s all right, Jacob. Sometimes a woman just needs another woman friend. And it seems like G-d sent me a kindred heart from across the centuries.”

He glanced quickly at her for the first time in the conversation, looking surprised. They both knew he had never heard her mention G-d in such a positive way before.

“That’s great. It really is, Hadassah. It’s just that as a man, I tend to want hard-nosed solutions. So I wish He,” he said, pointing heavenward, “would also send us more of the story, along with the outcome we need. Because I’m in trouble, as of tonight. Real trouble.”

Jacob kissed her on the forehead and left the room for his traditional nightly document review in an adjacent office. As she picked up once more the now-infamous document, Hadassah forced a chuckle.

“Join the club. Ancient Esther and I are both at the lowest point in our lives. But I suspect she may be about to point the way for the two of us. . . . ”

And so, my dear Leah, you ask—what happened? Did I receive a reply? How long did it take?

The first thing I experienced was a small awakening within. I find it hard to describe, especially without resorting to overly familiar and sentimental words. But a small nugget—I suppose of hope—somehow took shape deep within me. It started to grow, slowly and
gradually. It was not much, yet it was everything—to know that it was even remotely possible for something great and good to lie in wait for me again.

Nor did this future’s precise form come to me immediately, as some finished work. In fact, my writing to you is a large part of its culmination.

I suppose I look at its unfolding as a tapestry, woven of threads that curled my way one at a time.

The first thread arrived less than a week later in the form of a faint sound, carried on the wind.

That morning I awoke with a strong desire to venture out into the gardens as I had once done, and spend some time in prayer. Even the wish came to me as a blessing, for I had not even mustered the vigor to attempt this until that day. And so I took one of my finest woven tunics, wrapped it around my clothes, and walked out, playfully pretending to sneak as I had done so many years before—even though the need for secrecy was now long past. I breathed in deeply of fresh, cool wind, closed my eyes in bliss, and smiled into the dawn.

Then I looked around. It was that tender hour before the sun appears, when it has merely announced its coming through a deep reddish glow upon the mountains and a general lightening of the air. Its breeze bore the slightest hint of the coming autumn’s chill.

And it bore something else, so faint that it took my ears several moments to even apprehend.

The gentle sound of sobbing.

Now is the time to sneak for real
, I told myself. Knowing the palace grounds as well as I do, I realized that the noise had carried from somewhere near the Eastern Gate. With a knowing smile I remembered that this was the same place I had sneaked to on my first morning as a concubine to try and see Mordecai for what I had thought would be the final time.

I lightened my step and took care to tread silently upon the gardens’ carpet of brittle leaves, marble squares, and earth.
Walk like a spy
, I reminded myself, grinning wryly at my old admonition. Gradually I approached, using the trunks of the lemon trees to shield my silhouette. Peering around the last one, I focused my gaze and finally caught sight of the one in tears.