One Hundred Philistine Foreskins (45 page)

Temima's communion with the dead carried the pollution of death's aura into the intimate space of the enclosed city in which Baba Fish'l dwelt, contaminating the very air he breathed. Her necromancy, her summoning up of the spirits of the dead with black magic, endangered the forthcoming redemption that he had devoted so many years as a Nazir to bringing about. The Nazir is the Maccabee who reconsecrates. The Nazir Baba Fish'l Sabon would be the soap that cleanses and washes away the impurity of the witch.

Witch!
Makhshefa
! Sorceress! Necromancer! Such slanders and others far more excoriating, calling attention to every part of Temima's body from head to toe—the squirming venomous serpents of her hair, her cloven feet like a demoness, and all the swampy filth and stench in between including the raw nakedness of the tail behind—were found scrawled with paint or marker or chalk on the stones of her quarters in the Street of the Kara'im almost every morning, requiring vigorous scrubbing to remove them by Kol-Isha-Erva supervising a damage-control team. Dumpsters were overturned or set on fire outside her building. Stones were hurled through the windows wrapped in messages tied with string warning that BABA, Swiftly In Our Time, Amen, when the Temple is restored on its Mount, such stones will be cast directly at the softest and tenderest parts of Temima's sinful body in compliance with the sentence of death meted out by the Torah to a sorceress. There were mornings when they opened the door to the street and knocked over slop buckets set down in the night. Excrement smeared over the entryway, used condoms and bloody sanitary napkins deposited in heaps, dead birds, dead cats,
dead rats, such were their daily deliveries, and every now and then, for a festive touch, whole rolls of toilet paper unfurled and hung in streamers from whatever projection they could be affixed to or draped over, which inspired Temima to pronounce the blessing thanking God for having kept her alive and sustaining her to this time, marveling at how far the State of Israel had come since the early pioneer years when quality toilet tissue had been such a precious commodity no one would ever think of using it for decoration or a prank, it was a luxury to be hoarded, to be dispensed sparingly, imported from abroad as she herself had done in a special suitcase when she had first arrived in the Holy Land. Blood was slathered on the doorpost one night, along with instructions in gothic script, A
NGEL OF
D
EATH, DO NOT PASS OVER THIS HOUSE
. Another time an X was slapped across the front door with tape punctuated by a skull and bones and the warning—P
OISON
, P
LAGUE
, B
LACK
D
EATH
.

The tape gave off a grating screech as she tore through it and once again took her life in her hands by stepping out. She went out on her own to check out the scene, ventured beyond the four walls of her house. Urchins leaped into view like imps from every side screaming Lilith! Delilah! Jezebel!—running in front of her, ringing bells as if to alert the citizens of the approach of a leper, crying Impure! Impure! Stones and shoes, rotten vegetables and eggs and other assorted objects were hurled at her but on no account would she allow her persecutors to keep her a prisoner in her own house or prevent her from going wherever her heart led. Through this pelting storm of taunts and missiles Temima floated regally, divinely untouched like the first time she entered the army camp overlooking Hebron and walked between the raindrops. It was as if she hovered above and beyond all that was transpiring in the chaos of her orbit, she its fixed star.

More difficult to bear though was the relentless stalking by Baba Fish'l himself whenever she ventured outside the city walls in search of the solitude she needed for the practice of
hitbodedut
to strengthen herself spiritually. Temima's people urged her to avoid leaving through the Dung Gate, which was the closest to the Western Wall where Baba Fish'l was always on patrol. Like a hawk he would spy her departing and swoop down at once on her trail. But Temima refused to change course in any way that might even implicitly acknowledge this little Baba's power over her. For a mere woman like herself the Dung Gate would serve, she
declared, departing through it was the equivalent of taking out the garbage, egress by the bowel. Beyond it the hills and valleys opened up before her, the purported tomb of the prophet Zekharia, the cone-shaped pinnacle of what legend had it was the burial site of David's wayward and rebellious son, dazzlingly handsome, endowed with such a lavish head of hair it killed him in the end—Absalom.

Like Absalom's grim supporter Shimi ben Gera, Baba Fish'l Sabon came after Temima, he came out through the Dung Gate cursing her the whole way, throwing stones at her and at all of her people to her right and left, he would curse her and say, Get out, get out, you bloody whore, you witch. One of Temima's Bnei Zeruya protectors would demand, Who is this dead dog to curse you? Let me at him and I'll chop off his balls. But Temima would shake her head. Since he is cursing me, said Temima, it must be the case that God intends for me to be cursed. But the day will come when God will recompense me for all the abuse he is heaping on me.

For many months Baba Fish'l Sabon continued to walk alongside Temima and her people unimpeded through the hills and wadis, the valleys of Kidron and Jehosephat, along the brow of the Ofel and by the Gihon Spring, beyond the walls of the Old City, walking and cursing, casting stones in Temima's direction and fistfuls of dirt, until one day Ibn Kadosh came up the flank of the slope from Silwan with a herd of goats and followed along on the ridge beside Temima, taking in the ravings of her oppressor through the shade of the dark velvety richness of his lowered lashes. “Why you let this little rasta lice-head talk to you like this?” he insisted. Temima smiled, pleased to see the lithe form of this beautiful boy again after so long an absence, the glow of his polished mahogany skin. “Never mind,” she said, “in the end all is known.”

The next time Temima went out of the walled city for
hitbodedut
through the Dung Gate Baba Fish'l did not appear. He did not appear the next day either, or in the days after that. At around the same time the daily bombardments she had been subjected to for so long inside the Jewish Quarter subsided until she grew out of the habit of fortifying herself inwardly in anticipation each time she stepped out, and even the memory began to fade so that it was almost impossible to believe it had ever happened, it was as if she had been trapped in a bad dream.

One morning as she was sitting alone in her study reflecting on the strange case of Elazar son of Dordaya of whom it was said that there was not a single whore in the entire world with whom he had not had sexual intercourse at least once, a story recounted in the Talmud open on her table to the tractate Avodah Zara focusing on all forms of idolatry that are the lethal side effects of mixing with the gentiles, she raised her eyes and saw Ibn Kadosh standing in front of her. She had not heard him enter; she could not say if he had slipped in through the door or the window or descended like a stealth angel from the ceiling, so silently and mysteriously did he appear. He stared down at her sitting there at her table over her Gemara and pronounced, “I want for you to raise from the dead someone for me.” Temima's eyes widened in alarm.

Ibn Kadosh let out a dry laugh, decoding her leap. “No, not him, not your little Bob Marley rasta lice-head freak. You think maybe I kill him? Why I want to kill
him
? And if I kill him, why I want to see him again? But not to worry, I already take care of him for you, he don't bother you no more.” And from the sheepskin pouch slung across his chest, Ibn Kadosh extracted some photographs that he fanned out on her table. “I give him one for souvenir. You take too. Present.”

Temima's eyes ranged over them, all copies of the same image—Baba Fish'l Sabon naked except for his yarmulke affixed with a triangular metal clip to his monumental thatch of hair, trussed up like a turkey, an object resembling a large sausage sticking out of his rear end and a rubber ball plugged into his mouth. Towering over him was a formidable female specimen, on her chiseled blond head a Stormtrooper's visored cap with a skull and crossbones insignia, a tight black leather jacket open to reveal pneumatic breasts, a garter belt hoisting sheer black stockings, tall shiny black leather riding boots with spiked heels digging into Baba Fish'l's pasty flesh as he groveled at her feet, one of her gloved hands yanking his head back brutally by its dreadlocks to force him to bare his face to the camera lens, her other hand with the red swastika armband swinging a whip over his back, spongy and white like dough.

“Special whorehouse in Tel Aviv for Hitler S&M freaks,” Ibn Kadosh commented. “Your lice-head is regular customer. When I show him picture he say to me, ‘Big deal, for Nazir like me and Samson no law against fucking any way turn us on—only no wine, no dead bodies, no haircut, that's it, don't say nothing about fucking.' What is this Nazir thing
anyway—some kind of Nazi gig? But one thing for sure, now he leave you alone forever.”

Temima pushed the photos away from her with the squeamish tips of two fingers across the tabletop back toward Ibn Kadosh. Elazar ben Dordaya in the tractate Avodah Zara heard about a prostitute living by the sea whose price was a full purse of dinars. With a purse full of dinars he crossed over seven rivers and came to her. While they were fornicating she passed gas. She said to him, Just as this gas can never return to the place it came out of, so too Elazar ben Dordaya can never return in penance. He cannot be forgiven.

“I get rid of this lice-head for you,” said Ibn Kadosh. “I do you big favor. Now you raise up from the dead for me someone.”

Temima objected, she had never possessed such supernatural powers as had been attributed to her, she protested. He, Ibn Kadosh, should know this better than anyone. He had attended her in childbirth. She was an ordinary woman—she bled, she shat, she cried, she howled in pain. She had been falsely charged and persecuted by this madman with his pathetic fantasies, the dead she prepared for burial never opened their mouths to thank her, it was a hallucination conjured up by her coworkers in an ecstatic state to fill their own void, they were hearing voices.

But Ibn Kadosh refused to accept this. “I want you should raise up for me my mother.”

A vision of Ketura as Jezebel appeared before her inner eye as if on a screen on the back of her lids, Ketura's body turned into dog shit so that no one could say this was Ketura, the shadow of the black wings seared into her face dissolving into the sand. “Your mother is too long dead to be reached. Her spirit is too far away,” Temima said.

“I need her. I need for to ask her a question.”

The answer came in a bass rumble from below. “Enough already, I told you on the mountaintop but you refused to believe me. I did not kill her, it was her own people, an honor killing.”

Temima let out a cry. What were they seeing? An old man, hollow eye sockets, broken bones, his long cloak in tatters, his black flesh shredded, covered all over with dried blood and gravel, a ghost. “What more do you want from me?” the old man growled. “Why do you disturb me now by bringing me up from the depths you have cast me in?”

Ibn Kadosh flung himself on the floor, his body stretched out prone
to hide his eyes from this terrible sight. Temima knelt down beside him and stroked his head and long back. She led him to her bed where she tended him for a week, feeding him milk and honey with a spoon until he regained his strength, neither of them rising to take part in the rites of mourning for Abba Kadosh condemned to wander in the next life seeking his own path to mercy, from them he would not find forgiveness.

Reports of his death were broadcast that evening. According to a press release issued by his chief widow and lawyer, Em-Kol-Hai Kedosha, the martyr Abba Kadosh, za'zal, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, had thrown himself off the mountaintop of the suicide rock of Masada in an heroic sacrifice rather than submit to the Judeo-Romans threatening to seize him and sell him back to slavery in America. His remains when they were discovered had already been picked over by the black birds swooping down from the desert sky, leaving only shredded fragments of one of his striped homespun robes made of hemp, the costume he wore every day except for special occasions, Sabbaths and holidays. Even the signature staff he always carried was nowhere to be found, all of which necessitated a painful delay until he could be definitively identified and properly mourned.

There was a spasm of attention to the violent end of this self-styled Jew, leader of the cultic polygamous sect of outcast blacks in the Judean Desert, and then all interest fizzled out. On the extreme religious right, the notion that this son of Ham who called himself Abba Kadosh like some kind of Christian holy father pope could ever be accepted as a Jew was a joke, not worth pinching your nose to blow some snot down into the gutter. As a small aside it was also noted in this camp that if he had been an authentic Jew he would have known better than to jump from Masada. On Masada you committed suicide by sticking a knife into your heart or you fell on your sword; if you want to be a big hero and kill yourself by jumping, the place to go is up north, to Gamla.

The topic also came up in passing on one of the television news shows when an expert tapped his temple and indulged a speculation as to why anyone in his right mind would even want to become a Jew, and especially a black man—didn't he have enough problems already? It could only be some weird form of masochism. From the ultraliberal far left a buzz of indignation was revived in newspaper commentary around that old
question, Who is a Jew? and its logical corollary, If a person considers her or himself a Jew, who among us has the right to tell her or him that she or he is not a Jew and deny her or him full-fledged Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return? We are all guilty of Abba Kadosh's death. All of us pushed him off the top of Masada. The sheer hypocrisy of excluding this Jewish wannabe from the congregation of Israel is intolerable, it is an ethical outrage. In what way are we, the purported light unto the nations in the immortal words of the prophet Isaiah, any better than the racist thugs of America hooding themselves in sheets muttering mumbo jumbo and burning crosses on the lawns of a black family that moves into your all-white neighborhood?