Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (35 page)

Itamar's eyes suddenly lost their glimmer as
he said, "Not good at all. Something's missing here."

"I've decided not to renew the apartment
lease. Tim was the sole lessee, and he's obviously no longer able
to complete his contract. Since I'm not a cosigner, maybe I can
break it early."

Itamar glanced to his right, admiring her
silhouette in the candlelight. "I was thinking of selling my own
house. But since I've met you, I haven't taken any steps in that
department. I'm still thinking that someday you'll come and stay in
my daughter's bedroom."

She put her hand on his arm and squeezed with
affection, saying nothing more until two waiters came with broiled
bass marinated in a creamy Tuscan sauce. After the pair had
rearranged silverware for the fish, she said, "I don't look forward
to cleaning up the mess at the apartment. I'm thinking of having
movers send everything but my books directly to Tim's family in
Massachusetts. No sense saving
tchotkes
to
elicit sad memories. Whatever I don't send to the States should go
to a charity. One simple move with as little angst as
possible."

"Sounds like a plan to me," he said. "Got a
timetable in mind?"

"As soon as I return. I know it will take
time to work things out with the lease, but if I continue to pay
rent, the landlord shouldn't care, especially if I let him show the
apartment to prospective tenants in the meantime."

"How about coming to my home? There's more
than enough room."

She let her eyes remain upon his, just
looking.

"Yes?" he inquired.

She woke from her reverie to say, "Let's
think about that, Iti. I worry about your position. Once people
learn I'm staying with you, its bound to stimulate
l'shon ha-rah
, rumors. Neither one of us needs that.
Besides, I wouldn't want to get in your way."

His eyes fell over his plate.

She read the disappointment on his face and
said, "Iti, let's not talk about it now. It's so perfect here, I
don't want to spoil anything. I wish this holiday would never
end."

After dinner in the deserted public room,
they curled up together on a couch before a simmering fire. She
removed her shoes and tucked her toes under his thigh. He dropped
his lips beside her neck and, from time to time, touched but did
not kiss her flesh. The two bottles of wine they had consumed put
them to sleep and they were awakened by a hotel employee snuffing
out the fire before bedtime. Reluctantly, they drew themselves from
the couch to walk arm in arm to her room. A physical hug and a
series of light kisses ended this day in paradise.

After breakfast and a walk through the
hillside village the following morning, they returned to Gabby's
room. While they were gone, servants had already taken the
opportunity to clean and remake the bed with fresh linens, closing
the window shutters when they left. Itamar opened them to let in
bright Tuscan sunlight.

It started with an embrace on one of the
upholstered chairs, but quickly moved to the bed. Despite many
reservations, their bodies were ready for each other. Exploration
of new flesh was exhilarating. Were there surprises? Or just the
confirmation of appealing opposites? Both could remember previous
loves when wild fire drove their bodies to couple. But at their
ages, the heat of youth had tamed. In their lovemaking, the sweaty
passion of the past succumbed to a mellow tenderness. Gabby found
that the firmness of Itamar's muscles soon eclipsed her familiarity
with Tim's flesh. She wondered if he was experiencing a similar
transition from Becky. Later, they lay naked together on impeccably
laundered white cotton sheets, letting their eyes and lips speak
the language of new lovers.

Their Tuscan holiday ended abruptly the next
evening while having dinner at a small outdoor restaurant on the
Palazzo Casali in Cortona. The call to Itamar’s cell phone he was
expecting cut into their pasta course. He took it, stepping away
from the table and returning several minutes later to say that
early the following morning, he would have to drive back to Rome
for additional consultations at the Vatican. The only thing wrong
with dinner was that it ended too soon. Back at the relais, they
packed for an early morning getaway, then fell into each others
arms to resume their earlier passion, even before making it to
Gabby's bed.

The following afternoon, he dropped her off
at the Hotel de la Minerve in Rome before circling back in the
direction of Vatican City.

***

Two weeks later, movers showed up at 28
Ussishkin Street. Due to space limitations inside the apartment,
they assembled four large containers on the pavement outside: one
for Tim's personal belongings being shipped to Massachusetts; one
for his scholarly books, bequeathed to the Oriental Museum Library
at the University of Chicago; another for furniture, appliances,
and household items his family agreed to donate to the Jewish
Agency for distribution among immigrant families; and a far smaller
container for Gabby's personal possessions, headed for temporary
storage in Itamar's home.

Major Zabronski sent an armed policeman,
reasoning that whoever had trashed the apartment might think this
was his last opportunity to find what he was looking for. Another
detective demanded to see the identity cards and identification
badges of the movers. Three of the five men assigned to the job
happened to be Russian immigrants, which, under the circumstances,
didn't give Gabby a warm and wooly feeling. She instructed the
detective to watch them carefully, then stationed herself near the
front door to inspect everything that left the apartment, placing
color-coded decals on each item for proper placement in containers
on the street. Itamar, who had returned from Rome five days after
her, seething with contempt for what he called the Vatican's
criminal bureaucracy, dedicated part of his workday to providing
support for what he knew would be an emotionally trying task.

By day's end, the apartment was nearly empty,
looking tired, worn, scuffed, and in sore need of fresh paint. The
landlord dropped by to make a list of damages requiring attention.
Only then would he consider returning the security deposit.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The day she vacated her apartment, Gabby
moved into Itamar's home in Katamon and was greeted by a Circassian
housekeeper who cleaned twice a week. Originally constructed in the
late 1800s when Turks ruled Palestine, this large, single-family
home—nowadays rather rare in crowded Jerusalem—was surrounded by a
garden of flowering sunflowers and azaleas. The housekeeper had
opened the windows in the guestroom to greet Gabby with dazzling
sunlight.

It took five more days before she got around
to opening seven cartons sent from the Ussishkin Street apartment.
When she finally overcame a reluctance to face memorabilia from her
life with Tim and unpack, she first tackled her clothing, arranging
them in an armoire that still reeked from the presence of Itamar's
daughter, then transferred books that had occupied the lower shelf
in Tim's study to an empty bookcase. It had been weeks since she
had done more than worry about her graduate thesis, or her pledge
to communicate with Dr. Cross. Now, settling into a new venue
inspired her to get back to work. Discovery of the school at Ein
Arugot, followed by a roster of students and a curriculum for the
instruction there, substantiated what she had long been struggling
to prove. The unpublished material reviewed by Itamar's colleagues
at the Antiquities Authority confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that
becoming a prophetic spokesperson for God in the ancient world was
more about study, discipline, and spiritual preparation than the
common view that God somehow selected individuals in an unknown
process, then co-opted them as His spokesmen. She liked to describe
this theory in a simple sentence: God didn't choose His prophets;
they
chose Him.

While shelving her books in the alphabetical
order she had used in Tim's apartment, she took hold of her prized
Kittel Bible. What she had learned from the Qumran fragments moved
her to review textual confirmation in the Book of Isaiah. The
Kittel was large and, due to its thick paper, quite heavy,
encouraging her to sit with the volume on her knees. She shuffled
through the Five Books of Moses at the front, eventually working
her way into the midsection reserved for the books of prophecy.
Once in the Isaiah narrative, the pages appeared to open by
themselves to the forty-second chapter, exactly where she was
headed! How, she asked herself, could this book have known her
intention? She wasn't prone to thinking in terms of miracles, and
immediately concluded that someone, perhaps herself, must have
turned previously to Chapter 42. That proved true because whoever
it was had tucked a plastic envelope between the thick pages.

It was not one of Tim's Ziploc sandwich bags,
like what he had left in his Hyundai, but similar—a transparent,
airtight plastic food storage container with a re-sealable sliding
mechanism along the top lip. She brought the envelope to the
sunlight streaming through the bedroom window to observe what
looked to be a fragment of parchment, much like the digital words
she had assembled with Rabbi Schreiber. But unlike those scanned
photocopies, this scrap of decayed animal skin appeared to be an
original. The scribe's handwriting seemed similar, but not
identical, to the script found on Tim's DVD disks. This new text
consisted of no more than three words.

The first letter of the first word was a
"yod", followed by a "shin," then a "vav," which at the end of a
word might be either a vowel or a consonant. She read the word
aloud. YESHU, the Hebrew name for Jesus, the same that appeared so
frequently in the Gospels, Epistles, and Revelations, but never in
the Old Testament. And, more importantly from the perspective of
early Christian history, never reported by anyone who lived during
Jesus' lifetime. What had always seemed important to her was that
records of Jesus' life and his extraordinary religious ministry
were circulated by people who never actually knew him in his own
time, but by disciples who lived at least a full generation later.
That Mark, the earliest and perhaps most influential of the
gospels, was a member of a succeeding generation, a half-century
after the Preacher's death, led scholars to conclude that
everything known about the Christ came into the modern world
secondhand. Even the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, who
mentioned a messianic figure thought by many to be Jesus, both
lived and wrote some thirty years after the Preacher's death.

To be certain it was not a figment of her
imagination, Gabby reread the name. Out loud, she repeatedly
pronounced YESHU to confirm in sound what her eyes witnessed. It
suddenly dawned on her that in her fingers was the earliest
historic confirmation of this most holy man. But what
differentiated it from the multiple stories of Jesus found in the
New Testament, this small document was contemporaneous with other
fragments found in Cave XII, a direct link to Jesus of Nazareth in
his own time! She wondered if Jesus belonged on the roster of
students at the yeshiva of Ein Arugot. And if, somehow, he was
linked to the Prince of Light mentioned in messianic liturgy in
this desert yeshiva.

Questions multiplied in her mind faster than
answers. But if only some of her suspicions were correct, then the
small document in her hand was arguably the most valuable artifact
in Christian history!

While she questioned how this revelatory
fragment had found its way into her Kittel Bible, blood flushed her
cheeks with a hot pulsating heat. Numbness seized her limbs while
the dreaded tremor she routinely experienced in times of stress
returned to her hands. It took all her powers of concentration to
avoid panic. "Get a grip, get a grip," she repeated to herself.
How? When? She kept mulling over the same questions. Then,
suddenly, a glimmer of lost memory edged into her consciousness.
Hadn't Tim visited the apartment to get his anti-cholesterol
medication? And his favorite razor? No doubt it was then that he
stored the fragment into the chapter of Isaiah's messianic vision.
Knowing how he enjoyed sporting with her, she didn't rule out a
practical joke.

But upon reflection, that didn't seem
plausible, for why would he allow himself to become a fugitive for
a scrap of counterfeit text? Or lose his life for a bogus
reproduction? And why would Father Benoit, no amateur when it came
to ancient texts, send goons to ransack her apartment and kidnap
her for a mere forgery? In the end, she was compelled to believe
that Tim had discovered this priceless fragment in Cave XII, put it
in one of his Ziploc bags, then, at some subsequent time,
transferred it from the Ziploc to the airtight envelope, probably
at the Monastery of St. George. More than a quarter hour passed
before she realized there were still two additional words to
translate.

The middle one presented no difficulty. An
Aramaic "bet" followed by a "raish." The Aramaic
bar,
the common designation at the time for "son of,"
identifying paternal lineage.

The last word was composed of another yud,
"y," followed by a vowel for "O," then a sin, "S," after which the
parchment appeared to have decomposed. But the three letters were
sufficient to form the proper name YOSE, missing only a final pey,
"F," to complete the name YOSE[F]!

No surprise there, for the final two words
complemented the first. YESHU BAR YOSEF. Jesus the son of Joseph.
If genuine, this fragment was recorded by a scribe living
contemporaneously with the man Christendom later came to believe
was infused with the Divine spirit.

Holding in her hand a treasure of
unimaginable value, she considered becoming wealthy for life.
Hiding a small fragment that only a handful of people knew about
presented few obstacles. Packed into a pocket, it wouldn't even
show up on a metal detector at the airport. In Chicago, she could
lock it in a safe deposit to wait and see if anyone noticed it was
gone, and during that time, give careful thought to its final
disposition. The Church of Rome or a worthy museum would pay a
king's ransom for it.