Vicious Circle (28 page)

“Let’s not cross bridges—”

Sweeney was amazed to see that the prisoner seemed to have turned the tables on his kidnapper. It was the prisoner who was
eager, and Abu Bakr who hung back, obviously ill at ease.

“Knock off the clichés about crossing bridges,” the Rabbi burst out angrily. Then he shouted, “I want you to describe my excarnation.”
He calmed down and elevated a quivering chin and spit whispered words through clenched teeth. “Give me details, for God’s
sake!”

The Doctor scraped his chair closer to the Rabbi. “I do it myself,” he confided.

The Rabbi sighed. “I’m relieved it will be you and not some dirty Palestinian.”

“I can say, speaking from a medical point of view, that if it comes to that—I hope with all my heart it will not, but if it
does—the end will be utterly painless. I insert a small caliber bullet into the lowest part of the brain stem, which regulates
the beating of the heart and the breathing. Death is instantaneous.”

“You’re not trying to comfort me? You’re not saying that so I won’t lose my nerve?”

“Allah is my witness, Isaac. I give you my word as a Muslim.”

Apfulbaum accepted this with a nod. Turning to Sweeney, he said impatiently, “I’m going to tell you something. Hang on my
every word. You can take notes but remember to spell Apfulbaum with an f after the p. As long as you spell my name correctly,
resurrection is guaranteed or I get my money back. Here it is: in another incarnation I could have liked this guy. He’s one
of the chosen; he’s one of us.”

Sweeney looked up, bewildered. “I don’t follow—”

“What Isaac is trying to tell you,” the Doctor picked up where the Rabbi had left off, “is that a sort of affinity has developed
between us during the long and difficult hours we have spent together.”

“It’s not the usual bull shit of the kidnappee falling head over heels in love with the kidnapper,” the Rabbi explained quickly.
“Nothing as banal as that.”

“It is simpler,” the Doctor said, “and at the same time more complex.”

“On this disputed land,” Apfulbaum continued, “we have discovered a common ground besides the no-man’s land of English.”

“Common ground?” Sweeney asked, totally mystified.

“Looking back,” the Rabbi rambled on, “I can see it was more or less inevitable. I mean, there is an abundance of superficial
affinities. We’re both circumcised. We both write from right to left—”

“Without vowels,” the Doctor interjected.

“Without vowels,” Apfulbaum repeated. “We both refuse to eat pork. We both pray to the same God at frequent intervals during
the day, me three times, Ishmael here, five. We both believe that holy scripture is the word of God. But that only scratches
the surface.”

“There is much more to this affinity than meets the eye,” the Doctor agreed. “The quintessence of the Jewish faith is Deuteronomy
6, the
shema
, which is recited in the morning and evening liturgy.” He removed his spectacles and massaged his eyes with his thumb and
third finger as he murmured, “‘
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One
.’ Did I get that right, Isaac?”

“The essence of Islamic faith,” explained the Rabbi, his tongue tripping over the words as they spilled through his dry lips,
“is the recitation of the
shahada
, the witnessing; the testimony that begins with ‘
la ilaha illa ‘llah
,
no god exists but God
.’” Apfulbaum would have come flailing out of his chair if his ankles had not been lashed to it. “For God’s sake, do I have
to write it on the wall in capital letters? You have to be blind to not see it.
We’re both children of Abraham
.”

“This being the case,” Sweeney said, “how can you bring yourself to kill him? And how can you, Rabbi, bring yourself to be
excarnated
without hating the person who
excarnates
you?”

Rolling his head from side to side, the Rabbi snickered. The Doctor chuckled. Soon they were both shaking with quiet laughter.

The Doctor was the first to catch his breath. “He does not comprehend,” he told the Rabbi, “what you and I comprehend, Isaac—that
killing people is not that far removed from curing them. Death and life are two sides of the same coin.” He turned back to
Sweeney. “To be absolutely frank, I hope with all my heart that the Jews will give me something—anything!—so that I will not
be obliged to go
through with my threat and excarnate Isaac here who, like Ibrahim, is a man of pure faith, and no idolater.”

“Thank you for that,” Apfulbaum said with great modesty. “For my part, I hope with all my heart that the Israeli government
will refuse to negotiate and oblige Ishmael to excarnate me. Thanks to Ishmael, I have come to see myself as the modern incarnation
of what our biblical Isaiah referred to as the Suffering Servant, someone who is fated to suffer for the sins of his people
and thereby expiate these sins. If the Jews are destined to be a light unto the nations, I am destined to be a light unto
the Jews. Dead, I will become a symbol for those who are against abandoning the land God promised to Abraham and his seed.
My tomb will become a place of pilgrimage, a rallying point in the struggle against the Arabs. After my death—because of my
death!—our Jewish settlements will continue to grow, the way the fingernails of a corpse grow after death.”

“Fingernails do not grow after death,
ya’ani
. The skin recedes, giving the impression that fingernails grow.”

“Oh. Still, you see what I mean?”

“I do. I do.”

“You’re both off your rockers,” Sweeney moaned.

The Rabbi’s feet danced in their bonds. “They said I was off my rocker when I talked fourteen families into leaving Brooklyn
and setting up shop in some derelict trailers on a craggy hill overlooking Hebron.
For two years we had to shit in a portable toilet!
They said I was off my rocker when I figured out we could grow lettuce in flower pots during the seventh sabbatical year
when the land, according to the Torah, is supposed to lie fallow. I caused the lettuce to be sprayed with insecticides, which
excarnated the worms—we sold the lettuce in the Jerusalem
shouk
for a fortune to religious Jews who didn’t want to run the risk of eating non-kosher meat. The windfall from this put Beit
Avram on the map, financially speaking.”

“Calm yourself, Isaac,” the Doctor pleaded. He reached for the Rabbi’s wrist and checked his pulse, which was racing. “I think
we will cut this session short and give Isaac a rest. I do not like it when he gets too worked up.”

“No, no, Ishmael, I’ll simmer down, I swear it.”

The Doctor slipped the hood back over the Rabbi’s head. “Rest your eyes,
ya’ani
. Take a nap. We will come back in a while.” He shooed Sweeney out of the inner sanctum, but left the door ajar in case the
Rabbi should call out to him. “He is quite a number, is he not?” he said. “Salt of the earth.”

“Can I quote you?” Sweeney asked sarcastically.

“Of course you can quote me.” The static-filled voices of Israeli soldiers reporting in from various corners of the West Bank
burst over Petra’s radio. “For the sake of God, turn that down,” the Doctor barked at her. “Rabbi Apfulbaum is trying to sleep.”

T
HE DOCTOR LIFTED THE HOOD OFF OF THE RABBI’S HEAD AND shook him gently. “Are you up to another session, Isaac?” he asked.
“I promise to keep it as brief as possible.”

As Sweeney looked on, the Fiddler on the Roof stretched his manacled wrists over his head and yawned several times to clear
out the cobwebs, then exercised his jaw, elongating it first to one side, then the other.

“Why don’t you undo his feet and let him walk around the room?” Sweeney asked.

“Kindly don’t lose sight of the fact that I am a prisoner,” the Rabbi answered for him. “At any instant the Israeli Army could
come bursting through the door. For security reasons, it is essential that I remain tied to my chair.” He stood up in his
bonds and hiked his trousers and arranged his testicles and settled down again. “We’re not children playing cops and robbers
here,” he went on. “This is the real McCoy. Isn’t that correct, Ishmael?”

“This is a death and life business,” the Doctor agreed soberly.

“Death and life,” the Rabbi echoed, rolling his head from side to side to exercise his neck muscles. “In that order.”

“You have not had an easy day, Isaac, but if you are not too fatigued, I would appreciate it if you would elaborate on the
theme of the Jewish underground that we have been talking about. You told me during one recent session that you were its spiritual
leader—”

“And proud to be,” Apfulbaum interjected. “I interpret Torah for
them. Even
thou shalt not excarnate
has exceptions.” He corkscrewed his body in his chair and spoke directly to the Doctor, who was standing with his back against
the bricked-in window. “Each of us contributes what he can to the struggle.”

Sweeney suddenly had the impression that he was interviewing two inmates of an insane asylum. “Are you saying your settlement
of Beit Avram is the home of
Keshet Yonatan
, the Jewish underground movement?”

The Rabbi managed an angelic smile. “So where else would they hang their hats?”

“How many members of your settlement belong to
Keshet Yonatan
?”

“Let’s see. Beit Avram has a population of three hundred souls. Of these, one hundred and eighty are adults. I define as an
adult anyone who has reached the age of Bar Mitzvah. Of these hundred and eighty, one hundred and seventy-eight identify with
the program of
Keshet Yonatan
, which can be summed up by the title of my small book,
One Torah, One Land
. The other two adults are laborers imported from Rumania and don’t speak Hebrew. Of the hundred and seventy-eight sympathizers,
twenty-eight or thirty are in the trenches at any given moment.”

“Tell him what you mean by in the trenches,
ya’ani
.”

“Our front-line soldiers are divided into three squads,” Apfulbaum explained patiently. “One squad actively gathers intelligence
on our Palestinian enemies in Judea and Samaria—where they live, who they live with, where they work, what routes they generally
take when they go to work, what make of car they drive, that sort of thing. The second squad is in charge of weapons and explosives—providing
the right equipment for the job. The third squad is the arrow in
Keshet Yonathan
, the bow of Jonathan. Its members are the ones who actually go out and do the dirty work.”

“You want to spell out what you mean by dirty work?” Sweeney asked.

The Doctor answered for the Rabbi. “All you have to do is take a look at the
Jerusalem Post
headlines over the past dozen years. There were letter bombs exploding in the hands of Palestinian
mayors, there were attacks on important individuals, there were excarnations, there were raids on homes or schools to intimidate
Palestinians.”

Apfulbaum stifled a giggle with his fist. “Ha! We would set off bombs in trash bins at night in the middle of an Arab village,
which invariably sent everyone within earshot diving under their beds.”

Sweeney asked, “Did your dirty work accomplish anything?”

“He has to be pulling my leg!” the Rabbi exclaimed. “You have to be pulling my leg. It demonstrated to the Palestinians that
the Jews were in Judea and Samaria to stay, for one thing. And it pushed the more radical movements among the Palestinians
to retaliate. They would retaliate, then we would retaliate for the retaliation. For every Jewish settler knifed while shopping
in an Arab store, more money and more recruits would flow into
Keshet Yonathan
. And more Israelis would turn against the so-called peace movement that wants us to abandon holy land to the Arabs.”

“What he is describing,” the Doctor said, “is a vicious circle.”

“Not only a vicious circle,” the Rabbi said, “but a
vicious
vicious circle.”

“You cannot have a vicious circle,” the Doctor pointed out, “if both sides do not hold up their end.”

“As usual, Ishmael has disambiguated a complex situation,” the Rabbi declared vehemently. “I didn’t really see that part until
he pointed it out to me. Long before our paths crossed, long before this affinity between us developed, we were
collaborating
. Now Ishmael and I are breaking new ground by articulating this complicity for the first time.”

The Doctor came over and sat down facing Apfulbaum. “Let us move on. Do you know the identity of the leader of
Keshet Yonathan
, the famous—or should I say infamous?—Ya’ir?”

Apfulbaum arched his neck; when he spoke, his Adam’s apple throbbed against the soft folds of skin on his throat. “Did Moses
know the identity of the voice coming from the burning bush? Did Pharaoh know the identity of God’s anointed who led the Israelites
out of Egypt?”

“And who is he?”

The Rabbi’s mouth shut with an audible click. His jaw trembled. He squirmed in the chair, but remained silent.

The Doctor addressed Sweeney. “There are puzzles Isaac is not ready to solve. He removes his shoes and tip-toes to the edge
of the Rubicon—but he will not wet his feet, he will not cross over. He is not yet sure enough of me—he is not sure what I
will do with the information.”

“It’s not
that
,” whined Apfulbaum. “Of course I know what you’ll do with the information. You’ll excarnate Ya’ir. You’ll discredit
Keshet Yonathan
in the eyes of the world. So what? That’s the least of it. There will be others ready to step into Ya’ir’s shoes and form
a new underground movement.”

Sweeney looked from one to the other. “Why won’t you tell him, then?”

The Rabbi seemed to grow smaller in his chair. When he finally got around to answering Sweeney’s question, his voice sounded
as if it came from a little boy. “Please,
please
understand—if I give Ishmael all my secrets, he won’t have any reason to come back every night and milk me.” A pained expression
stole over Apfulbaum’s face. “You’re absolutely positive it’s heaven that Efrayim’s shipped out to? The reason I’m asking
is that the clock is ticking, and with each tick we’re getting closer to the second deadline, the Feast of the Breaking of
the Fast. With any luck, I’ll be shipping out next …”