The Covenant (39 page)

They were silent.

“And then we fell over that crate…” Esther said, looking around at the others. Maria began to giggle.

Ariana clapped her hands.
“Oui! La
crate that fell off the German truck!”

Maria howled, covering her mouth with her hand. “And how we pried it open and took out the bottles!”

“What a sight we were, the four of us, standing on that road, skeletons in filthy striped uniforms…” Esther laughed, the tears flowing down her cheeks.

“Four hairless skeletons, drinking the most expensive French champagne, toasting each other” Leah sobbed, tears of laughter sweeping down her cheeks as Maria leaned forward to hug her. Ariana and Esther embraced each other, shaking, their stomachs weak with laughter, as they seached for tissues in their pockets, wiping their eyes on their sleeves.

The cab driver looked at them through the rearview mirror, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the sight of four old ladies in hysterics in his taxi.

“When we get back to the hotel, I’m going to order a bottle of the best champagne in the house,” Esther promised. “And don’t any of you dare complain about your diabetes or your cholesterol, or your diet…” she warned, blowing her nose. “To life!” she toasted them, raising an imaginary glass. The others joined in, laughing.

“L’chaim.”

“Sauté!”

“Jiestem pijany!”

Leah’s hand suddenly trembled.

Esther leaned forward, putting both hands on her friend’s shoulders. “We will take one drink and save the rest of the bottle for when Jon and liana come home,” she promised.

Leah patted her hands, nodding, her eyes wet. “God willing. Let’s pray.”

The ride only took a few minutes, but as they entered the gateway in the stone wall that separated modern Jerusalem from the ancient city of David and Solomon, they felt they had crossed over in time and were seeing with a different set of eyes.

The driver opened the car door with gentlemanly aplomb.
“Kol Hakavod
, four
savtas
who have guts to come. Even Israelis in Tel Aviv are scared,” he said, viewing the old women with genuine admiration.

“Is that true?” Ariana said, looking around nervously.

But the streets belied any sense of danger. They were bustling with life. A group of religious Jewish girls crossed paths with a bevy of their Arab counterparts. How similar they both looked with their long-sleeved, highnecked blouses and midcalf skirts, clutching books and schoolbags, the only visible difference being that the Arab girls covered their hair with scarves, Esther thought. And none of them wore makeup! They watched a bearded Hasidic man stop to buy fragrant, warm pita bread fresh from the oven of an old Arab baker, whose store was tucked inside the stone walls of an ancient building.

It was all totally unexpected, the reality of Jews and Arabs living side by side, a place where peaceful daily intercourse was not the exception—a subject for TV documentaries or news flashes—but the rule. It was simply a way of life. It was a neighborhood, and these were neighbors. With good will, the solution seemed so clear, so simple.

“Jerusalem was King David’s capital, but he never built the Temple. That he left to his son Solomon. It lasted until Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon destroyed the country. That was twenty-five hundred years ago. Saddam Hussein thinks he can do it again!” Leah shook her head. “People don’t understand this about the Jews: we lose and die, yes. But we are also very stubborn. We never give up. We keep coming back here, again and again.”

“Why didn’t they start over someplace else?” Ariana said irritably. “Is it worth all these problems… all this fuss?”

“That’s where the French in you comes out!” Maria scolded. “You let the Germans roll into Paris. You don’t fire a shot. If the Americans hadn’t rescued you, you’d all be speaking German.”

“Never!” Ariana protested, shocked.

“Some things you can’t give in to, no matter what. This is the only place in the world that’s ours.”

The women looked at each other with a flash of recognition.

Survive, and rebuild. Because there is no other choice. No place else to go.

“You see this?” Leah pointed to a sign that said:
BURNT HOUSE
. “The archaeologists found it after ‘sixty-seven. A temple priest once lived there. It was full of ashes—the same ashes from the fires the Romans set when they burned down our temple two thousand years ago. Imagine! They also found the skeleton of a young woman. Maybe his daughter.”

Ashes. Piles of ashes. The burning fires, the fetid smoke. Thousands of young, strong handsome Jewish boys and girls deported in boxcars, starved, murdered, burnt. Because they had no weapons, no country to flee to, no one to protect them.

They watched groups of handsome young men and women in khaki IDF uniforms amble through the square, along with pregnant young Jewish women wheeling baby carriages. Groups of three- and four-year-olds in side curls and knee socks held hands as they walked in twos behind their teacher. Little girls speaking Hebrew rushed across the square, their pony-tails bobbing in the sun.

A place that bubbled with life, a place that grew up over the ashes, the white bones growing young new flesh, like the fulfillment of some Biblical prophecy.

“Come, the Wall is just down here.” Leah guided them.

As they began the long descent down the steps that would lead them to Judaism’s most sacred site, they walked slowly, clutching the handrails. There were hundreds of steps. It was tiring, but fitting, they thought, to reach the Wall only after much effort. A security check, including an airport X-ray machine, screened their bags, and metal-detector wands passed over their bodies before they were allowed to pass through. Then, there it was.

The Wall.

At this level, they realized, the golden Dome of the Rock had all but disappeared from view. They were confronted by the huge ancient stones.

A blank wall. It meant whatever you brought to it. Whatever was in your own soul, Leah thought, wondering what it would mean to these, her dearest friends. Would it be possible for them to connect with this experience at all?

Maria heard the church bells ringing, and then the sound of the muezzin calling the Muslims to prayer. From over the partition separating the men from the women’s section before the Wall came the chanting sounds of a Jewish prayer service.

Mosques and synagogues and churches… And all of them started with Abraham. The fews were the big brother of all the other religions, Jesus was his descendant, Isaac and Ishmael his sons. Judaism and Islam and Christianity all had the same father. The same Father.

As they approached the Wall, a band of lady beggars descended upon them from all corners, their eyes glittering with avarice. “Leave us alone. Let us pray in peace,” Leah complained.

“Isn’t that a bit harsh?” Esther whispered, shocked.

“They turn this place into a business. It’s not a business,” she repeated stubbornly. “Let them
schnorr
someplace else.”

A religious female guard checked them over to see if they were modestly dressed. She offered Esther a scarf to cover her hair.

“No thanks, darling. I come equipped,” Esther said, taking out a large, silk Gucci scarf and tying it around her head.

They took a prayer book out of the pile and made their way one by one to the row of women positioned in touching distance before the gleaming white stones, each searching for and finding a small break in which to squeeze through.

“Out of the depths I cry to you!”
Once more, the same cry to heaven, Leah thought. Once more, He is my dear God, whom I cannot see. Can He see me? Here, in this frightful world, still so full of evil, hatred, danger, she thought. And we and our loved ones had no choice but to walk through it every hour we lived. And it made no difference if you were very rich or very poor; if you moved to the Jews’ ancient homeland in the Middle East or stayed put in Brooklyn.

Miriam, my sweet Miriam!

She wept.

Where was the strength to come from that let us risk rebuilding and loving? She wiped her eyes, looking up. The blue-and-white flag of Israel, with its ancient symbol of the six-cornered Star of David, waved above her. A teenager wore a T-shirt that said:
DON’T WORRY, BE JEWISH
, above a Hasidic-style smiling face with side curls. A beautiful blue-eyed baby sat in a carriage.

“Have mercy on my family, dear God, as You have kept me alive in Your compassion. And whatever happens, give us who live the strength to go on…”
She caressed the stones tenderly, like a beloved face.

Ariana walked up close, eyeing the tiny prayers crammed into every nook and cranny, left behind by the hands of yearning strangers. I don’t know how to pray, she thought, laying her forehead against the smooth, cool surface. I never even decided if there was a God… But if You are up there, I’d like to say this to You: You never gave me a childhood. You never gave me a child. And now I am old. Too old. I am asking You to be fair.
Give me the lives of these children: liana and her tiny brother who fights so hard to live. Let them live. Save them from all pain, all harm, if You are as compassionate as they say. She paused, then exhaled. If someone has to suffer and die, then let it be me. My life is over anyway.

She kissed the stone, now moist with tears, glad that no one could hear her sacrilegious prayer. If there was a God, this was as close as she would ever come to touching Him. Only much later would she remember, with horror, that she had forgotten to include Jonathan in her prayer.

Maria held her cross in the palm of one hand and laid the other flat against the surface. Here I am again, she thought, surrounded by Jewish women, weeping, praying… in their own land, the land God promised them, once again being slaughtered by sickening evil. Oh, people called it politics—as Hitler spoke of German pride and German suffering to excuse his crimes. Jewish politicians fought amongst themselves, blaming each other for the causeless hatred that had come their way. They couldn’t see the grinning dark skull, the devil’s own face, behind it all.

Sparrows rested in the strange, dry shrubs that grew impossibly between the stones. And up above, pigeons marched along the parapets like sentinels, flying easily between mosque and synagogue. The men were loud, but the women’s lips moved silently, their bodies swaying. The mosque gleamed with its painted-on gold; the ancient white stones glistened with the rays of the golden sun. Maria’s lips moved in silent prayer, beseeching salvation.

Esther reached out and touched the weathered surface. Its rough-hewn appearance did not prepare her for its almost silky texture, polished to porcelain smoothness by a million entreating hands. She touched the expensive silk that covered her hair. All she had earned, and stored. Her fortune. But a shroud had no pockets. She would go as she had come, naked, to a God she hardly knew. God, she said voicelessly. Forgive us for all our sins. For raising children who don’t know You; grandchildren that got lost because we didn’t show them the way, because we didn’t know the way ourselves. Have mercy. Bring us back our granddaughters, liana, Elizabeth, she wept. Save Jonathan! And help me use all I have been blessed with for the right things before I die.

They backed away slowly, taking small steps as they had seen other women do, out of respect. One did not turn one’s back on the Wall. As they
withdrew, they had a sense of leaving behind a presence—call it God, or something else—a spirit of holiness, that hovered around them, almost palpable.

“Buy a string against the evil eye?” one of the beggar women pleaded aggressively, accosting them.

Esther stared at the long red strands that dangled from her hand. “Here, give me all of them,” she said impulsively, handing the woman a wad of bills.

The beggar handed them over gleefully, taking the money and hurrying away before Esther could come to her senses.

“What’s gotten into you? This is all silly stuff… idolatry.” Leah pursed her lips in disapproval, scandalized. It was almost pagan, this kabalah nonsense, and they were at the holy Wall.

“Here, take these! Tie them into knots. Remember, Leah, like that night? . . .”

“She’s right. Say the words, Leah!” Ariana demanded.

“Do it, darling.” Maria embraced her. “Come. Sit down here. I’ll be right back.”

There was a low stone wall that faced the Wall. Maria returned with a handful of earth taken from the base of a tree. She dampened it with bottled water

“What do you think you’re doing?” Leah asked them.

“The
Pulse de Noura
, of course. This time, against the terrorists.”

“But it was never real! I made the whole thing up.”

“What!?”

“But you said… the rabbi, the mystic… the kabalah!” Ariana protested.

“Do you think they ever made one in my village? And if they had, do you think they would have let me, a young girl, watch a kabalistic ceremony?! I made it all up, I tell you. Every word. I did it to make you feel better. To give you hope!”

Ariana gasped, then chuckled. “It worked. Something came over me.
Un sentiment
that I had nothing to lose. The idea that once they opened the doors and began to herd us inside
les trains
, it would be
la mort, I’electricite
for all of us. And besides, I always imagined myself a great
actrice.”

“You were magnificent!”

“Amazing!”

Ariana blushed. “It was not so bad.”

“I still remember how I felt when I saw you suddenly barking orders like a
kapo
, telling people to move this way and that way, pushing people out of the way, waving those pages you tore out of my old prayer book over your head, saying that you had orders to take us out because we had a communicable disease and weren’t fit to serve the Reich…” Leah laughed.

“And the way everyone suddenly fell into step, moving out of the way, clearing the doors, letting us go.” Maria held her face in her hands. “To this day, I still see that train loading up, all those women getting on. And then the doors pulling closed and the next train whistling in the distance, pulling in…”