Requiem (8 page)

'Why can't
you just hand them over to the
Ecole
Biblique
?'

David's face reddened. Veins sprang into
prominence on his forehead. 'Those bastards! Over forty years they sat on the
scrolls and refused to let other scholars even get close to them, allowing
through only a trickle of insignificant stuff. Less than a hundred of the five
hundred manuscripts have seen the light of day.' 'But they have to protect them
from handling.' 'Don't be an idiot! Have you never heard of photography? They
won't even let
copies
of the scrolls out of their paws. Only recently,
by complete accident, have photographs of the scrolls leaked out to scholars in
the United States. They've begun publishing, and yet their work is condemned as
theft. For forty years this… committee has sat on the treasures of
civilization like a dragon in a dark cave. When I think of the scholars,
friends of mine, learned men who have died in the interim, deprived by
selfishness and jealousy - and who knows what other motives? - of access to the
secrets of our culture, our civilization, our humanity, I could weep.' He was
trembling with rage. Exhausted by his own fury, he collapsed into a chair.

'There's
something you must understand,' he said, recovering a little. 'It was King
Hussein's government, in what was then Jordanian East Jerusalem, who gave
control of the manuscripts to the scholars at the
Ecole
Biblique
. Of course, even though these were all Jewish
scrolls, they were given to Christian scholars. The team commissioned to
publish the scrolls was exclusively Christian and led by a Dominican monk.'

'Are you suggesting they found things . .
.?'

'Of course
they found things! A few of the scrolls were even written just before, or
during the time of, Jesus Christ. The information would probably undermine the
basis of the Christian Church.'

'That's a big statement.'

'It may be
that the Christian Church is founded on a big lie.'

'I'm a
Christian,' Tom said sourly. 'What makes you think I might want to help
undermine my own Church?'

David
shrugged. 'I think nothing. I see only what I see. And I take you to be a
person who is not afraid of the truth.'

Not
afraid of the truth.
Tom's thoughts
zoomed back to his last day at school: the Head trying to persuade him to stay
on as he gazed out of the rain-lashed window across green playing fields,
hardly listening to what/ Stokes had to say.
'If it's the mere matter of a
few words being chalked on the blackboard. . . let me assure you -

Tom
shook his head. David saw he'd lost him somewhere and softened. 'In any event,
the scrolls are leaking out, despite the best efforts of the cartel now
squatting on them. Look, the fragments in my possession are no more than pieces
in a jigsaw. I won't press the matter with you.'

Irritated,
dissatisfied, Tom walked back to the Old City. He doubted the old man's
fantasies and dismissed his fears. Granted, certain fragments of scrolls might have
fallen into David's possession. There were thousands of scraps of hundreds of
manuscripts, he knew that much, and he couldn't argue with what had been said
about the scholars squatting on the hoard. That was an international scandal.

But
now David was trying to recruit him into some paranoid network, all because
he'd poured him a glass of water one day. And what was he offering? The chance
to make a tiny contribution to confusing further the impossible arguments over
the origins of Christianity? He had sympathy with scholars who felt the
documents were Jewish, but if they were contemporaneous with Jesus, were they
not also Christian documents?

And
did he really care? When enough scholars had pored for long enough over the
Dead Sea Scrolls and made their pronouncements, would life change very much for
anyone? Passing under Damascus Gate on his way to meet Sharon, he resolved not
to see David again.

Sharon
had promised to collect him after work, outside Dung Gate. Heading for the
Wailing Wall, he walked directly past the Temple Mount. The sound emanating
from the El
Aqsa
mosque made him stop and listen.

It
was the
adhan
,
the Muslim afternoon
call to worship. Since the
adhan
was
dedicated five times a day, Tom was growing accustomed to the exotic broadcast.
But today he could tell that the call was offered up by a live voice, not by
the usual tape-recording via a minaret. The voice was different in quality, in
timbre, from any he'd heard previously.

The song of
the unseen
muezzin
was sweet; it soared on the air, as if riding
thermals. It made him look up. A fiery red ball hung over the west of the city.

Allahu
akhbar
. La
ilaha
il'Allah
Muhammadun
rasal
Allah
.

He
knew the litany. These were the first words whispered in the ears of Muslim
babies, and the last words spoken to the dying. They began and ended each day.
God
is great. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.
Today's
sound of the
adhan
chased a disquieting
ripple along the hairs of his arms. Something stooped to breathe on his neck.
The words were unleashed into the sky above the Holy City and went winging like
brown birds into the sun.

Tom prided
himself on a knowledge of religions other than his own, but the moment had
entered him, and he realized with what smugness he pretended sympathy for the
world's other great belief-systems. But for the very brief interval of the
Crusader period, this city had been Muslim for 1,500 years. Now it was as if
the voice of Islam had suddenly uncoiled and flicked at him the tongue of a
beautiful serpent.

For a moment
he was beguiled by both sensations of pleasure and feelings of invasion. He
hurried towards the Wailing Wall, anxious to reach the gate and the New City
beyond, where the mundane sounds of traffic and the engines of technology might
restore a proper sense of order. But his way was blocked by trouble up ahead.

To get
from the El Wad road to the Wailing Wall it was necessary to pass through a
tunnel and a turnstile checkpoint guarded by armed Israeli troops. Tom heard
the clamour of voices and sensed tension in the small crowd blocking the
passage ahead. A man's voice was raised in an incomprehensible cry. Screams
echoed from the brickwork, and there followed the muffled report of two rifle
shots.

The crowd
ahead reared like a wave on the sea, and the people began running towards him.
One man tripped and went sprawling full-length in the dust. Tom couldn't tell
what was happening as the runners bore down on him. A smoking canister landed
in their midst, and he stood watching. Someone bellowed at him in Hebrew or
Arabic, he couldn't tell. Then a young Arab yanked his arm.

'Gas! Don't stand watching! It's
tear-gas!'

Tom,
open-mouthed, watched the young man abandon him. Then he decided to run with
the crowd. People were screaming. He heard the dull thud as another tear-gas
canister dropped somewhere at his heels. The crowd ran back up the El Wad. His
legs began to seize with fear. When a small group of youths peeled off from the
main group of runners into the narrow streets between the El Wad and the walls
of the Temple Mount, he followed them. They quickly outstripped him. He heard
footsteps coming up behind. An Israeli soldier was running at his back. Tom
stopped dead. The soldier bundled him aside and chased the youths further
towards the Temple Mount.

Someone
waved to him from an alley, beckoning him. He couldn't make out who was in the
shadows. Whoever it was gestured urgently at him with a tanned, outstretched
arm, calling him to safety. He ran towards the alley.

He
pulled up short. It was the black-veiled woman. In the dark of the alley, she
clutched her old robes at her neck. Her exposed hands and wrists were as dry
and cracked as old scrolls, but he saw the bright glitter of eyes from behind
the veil. With a trembling, outstretched hand she pointed at something engraved
on the wall. Written on the stone, in smoky yellow lettering a foot high were
the words: DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI.

Tom had only
a moment to take in the scene. Behind him he heard a loud, metallic click. He
turned to face an Israeli soldier with an automatic levelled at his head. The
soldier's face was distorted, rubberized, red and ugly with rage and fear. He
bellowed something. Tom didn't need a translator to know he was screaming at
him to get out of the area. The soldier roared at him again, and Tom ran back
on to the El Wad.

Soldiers
were everywhere. Thin wisps of dirty white smoke hung around the El Wad. He
tried to head back to Damascus Gate, but he was brusquely marshalled into the
Christian quarter, where he joined tourists being pressed down towards the Holy
Sepulchre. From there he was able to get out of the Old City by
Jaffa
Gate.

Soldiers on
the battlements had switched from routine sleepiness to a state of high alert.
They were stepping around the ramparts with their weapons trained on the ground
below.

Whatever
the incident was, the immediate danger seemed to have passed, but the street
outside
Jaffa
Gate was incandescent with rumour.
People huddled in tiny groups, strangers cemented in place by conjecture.
Gossip generated a smell in the air, like ozone after thunder. The walls
rippled with heat and tension, and the blue sky above Jerusalem, for a moment,
seemed to buckle.

Tom leaned
against a wall to recover his breath, to take in what had just happened. He let
a curse pass his lips, side by side with a prayer.

13

They were at a party. It was
thrown by the same teacher at whose soiree they'd first met. Twelve years had
passed, and their host had since escaped teaching. Now he sold life policies and
wore a toupee with a grain like varnished oak. After inviting himself around to
Katie's and Tom's house one day with a leather briefcase and an impressive
lap-top computer, he'd abandoned them to consider a printout and an invitation
to the party. Katie enthused about the party but dismissed the insurance. Tom
suggested the converse, but Katie had her way.

Tom watched Katie
applying lipstick, popping her, lips at the mirror. Under his cool gaze she wriggled
into a tight black dress. The thighs that had once stopped his heart were on
display again. He wondered where his sex drive had gone.

'Bit short,' he remarked.

'Really? Is it too much?'

'No, it's
fine.' He regretted saying anything. It was so easy to knock her confidence
these days.

At
the party, where they'd hoped to see familiar faces from long ago, they knew
hardly anyone. Only the music was the same, more than a decade out of date. Tom
wondered if the bands playing that music also wore oak toupees now. The place
was full. Katie was instantly monopolized by the host. Tom headed for the
kitchen to find beer. It was guarded by a ferocious drunk with a huge foaming,
nicotine-coloured moustache. The drunk was holding forth to three or four
sullen guests.

'It
was a put-up job!' he roared. 'A set-up. A stage show. They'd got it all
stitched up, and it went wrong.' His poached-egg eyes invited someone to argue
with him. No one offered. 'I mean, for
Chrissakes
,
you'd do the fucking same!'

Tom
helped himself and retreated to the lounge. Katie was surrounded by three
suits. He winced. What sort of men went to parties dressed in suits? He escaped
back to the kitchen, where everyone was avoiding eye-contact with the drunk,
who immediately fastened on Tom. 'You're the Messiah, right?' he said.

'Me?'

'Yes.
And you've
gotta
prove it. So you know all the
prophecies, right?'

^‘
I do?'

'Yes,
you do. Because you're a fucking rabbi. Which is what Jesus was, from a long line
of fucking rabbis. So you know the Scriptures inside out, right?' He sucked
happily at the beer foam on his moustache and nodded his head in vigorous
concurrence with his own ramblings.

'I
hate people who talk about religion at parties,' Tom joked to the other men in
the kitchen, drawing a chuckle.

'Me
too,' said the drunk, grabbing his arm. 'Have another beer. Have two. So you
know you've
gotta
fulfil everything in the
prophecies. You hire an ass, right? Pay a claque to sing you into Jerusalem,
all that. You get every detail carefully worked out.' He had a delivery like a
Victorian actor-manager. Tom wanted to get out, but he couldn't tear himself
away. 'You even know they are
gonna
nail you up,
right, because Jerusalem is
awash
with would-be Messiahs, and this is
what they do to them. But here's the bit of magic: you've found a way of
staying alive on the Cross, right? Then-' The drunk looked beadily across Tom's
shoulder. 'Jesus, Mother of God, look at that horny bitch in the black dress.
Thassa
a hot, hot woman. That's what I call God speaking in
tongues. That's-'