The Israel Bond Omnibus (71 page)

“The Trapezoids,” said Feldspar, “flourished millions of years ago and were so named because of their unusual shape. They are now extinct. Because of that shape they were unable to enter restaurant doors and thus perished of starvation. What I am leading up to is that one would have expected these scrolls to have been written in the ideographs of the Mongoloid peoples who came to Japan from the great Asian continent. They are not.”

Dozens of eyebrows rose.

“No, the scrolls are not Oriental. In point of fact, they are written on papyrus.”

Shavin nudged Petersen’s arm. “Papyrus? Hell, that’s Middle Eastern. The Nips use rice paper.”

Feldspar smiled. “Correct. These scrolls are an admixture of Aramaic and Hebrew. They are the work of a diarist named Shimon, who appears to have begun recording his experiences sometime between 800 and 700
B.C.,
about the time the Assyrians were bidding to dominate the known world. In some of the scrolls, which I’ve bypassed for the sake of brevity, Shimon tells of towns being sacked by the armies of Sargon II. I shall begin where Shimon, his wife, Rachel, and their infant son, Zoomgolli, and others of their clan decide to leave the region.

SCROLL FOUR

Shambles! Dispersed by the invader, Israel is no more. Ruben the Soothsayer, seeking a sign from the Lord of Hosts, came to our tent at the instant tiny Zoomgolli spake his first word. It was not the typical cooing attempt at “mother” or “father.” It was distinct—“East.”

Ruben says the divine summons has been sent to us through the child. We shall go east!

SCROLL NINE

Weary of body and soul, stardust and moonglow, wine and roses, we paused to seek shelter in a village of crude huts. The inhabitants, a listless lot, sit in the sun performing some profane invocation to false gods by pressing to their lips tubes of an acrid weed whose tips have been lit by fire, then drawing the smoke into their lungs. Rachel, whose olfactory sense is keen, said, “What a mess o’ pot!”

Feldspar pounded the table. “Gentlemen, can you not see the woman’s random comment, altered a trifle by succeeding generations, has come down to us as... Mesopotamia?”

SCROLL TEN

I am one hundred years old today. To mark the occasion sweet Rachel baked a cheesecake from a secret formula taught her by Sarah and Leah, matriarchs of the tribe of Gad. Someday, I predict, the Sarah-Leah cheesecake will be a delectation to all mankind. Zoomgolli does not share our festivity. He remains a solemn, introspective boy of ten and has not uttered a single word since the one that impelled us onward. Does he await a new command from on high?

SCROLL ELEVEN

The word has come! Zoomgolli cried, “East!” Zebediah the Kohan [high priest] said, “Let it be done.” Tonight we trek east.

“Many did not survive the march through the land of the Medes we know as Iran,” noted Feldspar. “Shimon cites his increasing age; he is now one hundred and fifty, Rachel ten years younger. Zoomgolli, sixty, remains reticent. He cannot hear well, Shimon says, because of his habit of stuffing dead birds in his ears.”

SCROLL NINETEEN

We are in a barren land of scorching deserts, whose denizens are sly of face, sinewy of body. They ride horses and camels like
mishigoyim
, swooping down on our encampment to pillage and murder. On one such raid we lost Ezra the Shoemaker, but heartless Hilda the Harlot mourns him not. “Slow pay and he also made
love
like a shoemaker,” spake the tart tartly. Rachel noticed the women of this place working pointed sticks into sheeps’ wool to make coverings. “Why, they are knitting Afghans!” she said. Zoomgolli broke a fifty-year silence to shout, “East!” We go east.

Bond snapped his long, tapering fingers. “I’m starting to dig this stuff. Rachel’s observation gave us the name Afghanistan.”

A series of scrolls Feldspar touched upon in brief told of the dwindling tribe’s years in Sinkiang and Mongol-ruled territories. Rachel, now 180, was ailing more frequently. “It has been many a moon since she accorded me the benefits of her womanhood,” complained the diarist. Zoomgolli twice cried, “East!” The high priest expired at age 290. Shimon blamed Hilda the Harlot for his death. “She had no right to stimulate a middle-aged man as she would a stripling.”

SCROLL TWENTY-EIGHT

The end is near for sweet Rachel. We have traded the last of our pottery for passage across a great sea in the boat of a merchant, Len Ox of Chee Yi Nah, who was so enthralled by it that he proposes to emulate it and name it both in honor of his country and himself. Rachel was leery of the sailship. “Good husband, you do not expect me to ride in that junk, do you?”

Enrapt at the saga, the Dane’s audience was playing the game to the hilt. “Hey, she coined the name for the Chinese boat!” said
Detroit News
columnist Doc Greene.

SCROLL TWENTY-NINE

Sweet Rachel breathed her last as our boat touched the shores of this lush paradise whose mountains belch smoke and fire. “May the Lord go with thee, Shimon,” she gasped unto me. “It is unfitting for a man to be alone. Press your suit with our last woman, Hilda the Harlot. Purify her in a ritual bath and cleave unto her as a husband.” I was inconsolable. Not even Ruben had a decent sooth worth saying. I went to my flesh and blood, weeping, “Zoomgolli, thy mother is dead. Comfort me.” Zoomgolli said, “East.” I thereupon spake in anger. “My son, hath not the Lord given thee a greater lexicon than the solitary word ‘east’?” My son smiled fatuously and spake: “Lexicon.” With a sinking heart I perceive we have been led, lo, these many years, by one of unsound mind.

SCROLL THIRTY-ONE

Hilda the Harlot will have none of me, disdaining my proposal in a hateful manner. “I need no doddering fool of two hundred and eighty and his idiot son for a family. My preference is Reuben the Soothsayer. He is two hundred and sixty-five and besides he is a professional man.” Zoomgolli brightened and said, “East lexicon.” How gratifying to witness his burgeoning intellect! We are the only people on this island, few in number and lonely. Yet we practice our ancient faith, lighting candles on the Sabbath and striving to recall the all but forgotten litanies. Oh, Lord, where hast Thou brought us?

“I have reached the scrolls containing revelations I still find difficult to believe,” said Igneous Feldspar.

SCROLL THIRTY-SIX

Hosanna! A boat has crashed upon our shores!

From it limped a bedraggled, seasick collection of brownish-yellow, slant-eyed souls from various parts of the great Chee Yi Nah land we traversed, who speak in tongues with which I am conversant. They are pagans who worship crickets and coolie hats. The last of us are endeavoring to teach them our belief in one God Almighty. We have built them an Ark of the Covenant and to hear them repeat the
Sh’ma Israel
gladdens the heart.

Ruben the Soothsayer and Hilda the Harlot were found dead at nightfall. Natural causes.

My loins cry for gratification, yet there is no one to cleave unto. However, one of the newcomers is a maiden, Oshima, fair to behold, whose glances signal the unmistakable message that she, too, wishes cleaving unto. Can such a thing be possible between a man of my hoary years and a maid of fifteen? Under pretext of teaching her to read and write our language I have come close to her often. I shall ask her father for her hand.

SCROLL THIRTY-SEVEN

Consent has been given! How my blood tingles! And Zoomgolli adores her. She cleans out his ears and inserts fresh dead birds every day.

SCROLL THIRTY-EIGHT

We married in the tradition of my faith. Before the ceremony I made her swear to preserve this humble history in a secret place so that in years to come the world may know of the strange destiny that befell one of the lost tribes of Israel.

Our survivors intend to intermarry with the new people as a means of perpetuating our creed. Will we succeed? Or will the pagan ways prevail? Only He knows.

On this last sheet of papyrus I record my thoughts of this promising night. She disrobes before me. I am on fire. It has been decades since Rachel’s demise and I feel like a young groom about to taste the bliss of conjugal union for the first time.

“And that,” the Dane said, “is the last entry of Shimon.”

“Gevaldt!”
Bond cracked his knuckles. “What a yarn and what a place to break it off! What a shame we’ll never know how the old geezer made out.”

The others echoed his sentiment, but Feldspar held up his hand. “I said it was the last thing Shimon ever wrote, but on the bottom of the last scrawl is a short passage, obviously jotted by the maiden. It reads: ‘Old man clove, fall dead just when Oshima starting to cleave unto. Bad old man. Maybe Zoomgolli better. Oshima want cleaving very fast.’”

“Professor, I apologize.” Bouncy blond Regina Tellez of
Look
magazine stood up. “I thought this was going to be one big bomb, but it’s turned out to be a bombshell a thousand times bigger than the trawler incident. Oh, how it’s going to shake up these islands something fierce!”

“What do you mean?” said the
Cleveland
Pres
s’s James Garrett. “Granted it’s a humdinger, great Sunday-supplement stuff, but what’s the big deal?”

Feldspar wore a grave, hesitant look. “Miss Tellez’ analysis coincides with mine. Can you not see the implications? This very spot, Shimonoshima, is doubtless named in honor of the two principals of that doomed marriage, Shimon, an elder of Israel, and Oshima, who may have come from China, Korea, Malaya or any of the other lands that spawned the Oriental race. Shimon speaks of the ‘new people’ as pagans worshiping in an animalistic mode before they were taught monotheism by a highly advanced tribe
who were here first
. The conclusion is dramatic: Though the people of Japan at present practice Shintoism, Buddhism, or variants of either, they are the direct descendants of Jews.”

Bond fell back howling. “Baron Sanka, as the snake said to Mother Eve, ‘How do you like them apples?’ Or should I better say—Sanka
leh
?”

The laughing jag died in his throat when Baron Cockamamiyama Sanka stomped off hissing, and Israel Bond realized he had just said something for which, if there had been no one else around, the Number One of the Japanese Secret Service would have killed him.