At the service entrance in the rear of the Knesset building, Elie was directed into the underground garage, through a second security checkpoint, to a long, gray Chevrolet, which was guarded by two men in short-sleeve s.h.i.+rts.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was in the back seat, reviewing a pile of doc.u.ments. He glanced up when Elie got in and returned to his papers, penning brief notations on each doc.u.ment. When he finished, the prime minister lowered the window and handed the doc.u.ment to one of the guards. "So, Weiss," he said, "what bad news do you have for me today?"

"Religious riots against the abortion law."

"My enemies should have my luck." Eshkol sighed. "Abortions! My fellow Yids think we're in Holland. Next thing they'll be planting tulips. Can you believe it? Not a generation since the n.a.z.is killed two million Jewish children, and we talk about abortions. We need babies, not abortions!"

"I think it's more about women, not babies."

"And why now? What's the urgency? The Arabs are gathering again to kill us, and I have to waste my time on abortions? I wish I had time to create such a problem for a pretty woman!"

Elie smiled. The clerical-looking prime minister's only known vice was his young and attractive wife-his third, who had formerly been the Knesset librarian.

"Speaking of pretty, how did you do with Tanya Galinski?"

"It came to nothing," Elie lied. "Now, about the abortion law, can you suspend the legislative process?"

"They won't listen." The prime minister sighed. "I'm under siege. Liberals on my left, Menachem Begin on my right, Dayan behind my back, the religious parties going through my pockets, and Ben Gurion's errand boy, s.h.i.+mon Peres, c.r.a.pping on my head without lowering his pants!"

Elie chuckled.

"It's not funny! The Soviets have delivered enough MiG jets to Na.s.ser that he can line them up and skip from wing to wing all the way from Cairo to Tel Aviv without getting sand between his toes. And the newspapers say I'm unqualified to defend Israel! Why? Did I lose the Old City in 'forty-eight? Did I withdraw from Sinai in 'fifty-six in reliance on the incompetent UN? They think Dayan is better because he looks like a pirate!"

"I can make you popular again."

"Ha! I'm chewing pebbles and pa.s.sing rocks. Popularity is far from my mind."

"I have a plan that will make everyone coalesce around your leaders.h.i.+p."

"Man plans and G.o.d laughs," Eshkol said.

"It's a fail-safe plan."

"And what will it cost me?"

"Appoint me chief of Mossad."

"A summer-night's dream." Eshkol made a dismissive gesture.

"You already have a job-keep those religious hotheads in the box. Or send in the police. They'll beat down those troublesome Talmudic scholars in ten minutes."

"The Gestapo was also capable."

The prime minister's face paled. Like most Israelis, he had lost most of his family in the Holocaust. Even two decades later, the trauma of the Final Solution remained the most dominant force in Israeli politics, a calamity that served as a yardstick against all other dangers. Many believed the Arabs were preparing to finish what the Germans had started and that the Goyim-the Western world-was content to again cluck its collective tongue and watch the Jews die. With the United States bogged down in Vietnam, and France smarting from an Algerian humiliation, Israel's only allies had declined to help. Prime Minister Eshkol's futile pleas to Was.h.i.+ngton and Paris were viewed by the Israeli public as groveling, further decimating his image.

Elie took out a cigarette, but didn't light it. "I've worked with my guy for nearly twenty years to draw to Neturay Karta the most extreme men from every Orthodox community, so that we can watch them in one place. It costs me a lot of money, but it works. Abortion, however, could potentially create an anti-Zionist consensus in the ultra-Orthodox community, not just in Jerusalem, but all over Israel. Neturay Karta will lead, but their protests will draw huge crowds."

"Then put a siege on them for a couple of weeks, until things calm down."

"That's the surest way to disaster."

"Why?"

"Imagine the media photos-policemen with guns and helmets, rolls of barbed wire, and bearded Jews in black hats. Shall we feed them rotten potato skins to complete the picture?"

"A Jewish ghetto."

"In Jerusalem, no less." Elie waited for the image to sink in. "The Jewish world would be outraged. However, if they are caught using weapons against the government, the balance of sympathy would reverse."

A guard put his head in. "They're calling for you upstairs."

"My plan," Elie said, "is to stage an event soon-a pretext-to justify harsh measures. The basic idea is to catch a couple of black hats in the act."

"What act?"

"An armed attack on you."

Eshkol removed his gla.s.ses. "Attack? On me?"

"Two birds with one shot. Not only would it give us a pretext to clamp down on the ultra-Orthodox, but you'll come out a hero. a.s.sa.s.sination attempts are proven to give a shot of popularity even to the most downtrodden politician."

"Especially if they succeed!"

Elie smiled. "There won't be any real risk to your personal safety."

The prime minister gave Elie a long, searching look. "Talk about risk, does your guy on the inside realize what they'll do to him if he's exposed as a mole?"

"My guy," Elie said, "is not an easy man to kill."

Lemmy watched the men return to the synagogue in widebrimmed hats, brushed-up black coats, and pressed white s.h.i.+rts. His father was sitting near the ark, his eyes buried in a book, rocking back and forth. The men sat on the wooden benches, watching him. When everyone was seated, the rabbi got up, kissed the blue curtain over the ark, and faced the silent throng.

"This is a test," he said. "Our G.o.d decided to test us!"

The men murmured their agreement.

"The Zionists want to kill innocent Jewish babies," he continued, his voice rising. "Zionist doctors will take pregnant daughters of Israel into clinics with white walls, lay them on white sheets, and slaughter their unborn babies!"

Men cried out and hit the tables with open hands. Lemmy looked around, astounded at how his father's few words impacted them.

Up on the dais, Rabbi Gerster stood hunched over the lectern, his beard coming down his chest, his white, striped prayer shawl draped around his shoulders. When the cries dwindled, his blue eyes turned upward, his hands clenched, pressed to his chest.

The men watched him.

"The Zionists think they know everything." He spoke very quietly. "They claim that unborn babies feel no pain, that they are nothing but senseless patchworks of flesh and bones. The Zionists claim that, until birth, a baby has no soul with which to rejoice or suffer, with which to serve G.o.d even in prematurity by being the very image of G.o.d, by demonstrating the miracle of G.o.d's creation and His wondrous powers."

A few men yelled, "Amen! Amen!"

"The Zionists think nothing of Torah, of G.o.d's words: I shall make man in my image. They think the unborn is disposable, like a skin-mole to be cut off and thrown away." Rabbi Gerster shook his head. "Not worthy of life." He took a deep breath and cried, "Pure, innocent Jewish souls, butchered inside their mothers' wombs!"

The men wailed.

"A carnage sanctioned by the Zionist state!"

Another wail, louder.

Rabbi Gerster paced across the dais, back and forth. "They say it's a matter of natural law, that the unborn fetus is completely dependent on his mother, a useless organ, which the pregnant mother may cut away." The rabbi stretched his right hand in front of him, raised the left hand, and dropped it on his right elbow like a guillotine, chopping off his own hand. "Slice it off!"

The men s.h.i.+vered with horror.

"The Zionists," he went on, "reject G.o.d for laws created by Goyim like Aristotle, Cicero, and hypocrites like Saint Thomas Aquinas. They ponder the works of so-called philosophers like Baruch Spinoza, who was rightly excommunicated by the rabbis of Amsterdam." Rabbi Gerster hit the lectern with an open hand. "The Zionists argue that dependency makes the fetus expendable. But a one-year-old child is also dependent upon his mother, right?"

His right hand gently caressed the head of an imaginary boy standing next to him.

"If the baby is still inside her, she may go to a doctor, who will insert a sharp steel rod between her thighs." He pierced the air in front of him with his hand. "And stab the baby, stab it and stab it and stab it until it becomes a perforated piece of dead, bloodied fles.h.!.+"

The crowd responded with a fearful groan.

"And what if the baby is born?" His right hand returned to caressing the imaginary boy's head. "A handsome boy, three or four years old, but still dependent on his mother for his survival. By the same logic, she may choose to care for her little boy, or bind him hand and foot and lay him on a table." The rabbi pretended to do so. "And shove her knitting needle through his brain!" He grabbed the imaginary boy and twisted, shouting, "Or break his little neck!"

A terrible howl tore through the air, and many of the men buried their faces in their hands, crying. Lemmy watched them cry to G.o.d through burning throats, beg for His mercy. Even Benjamin was crying, his fists pressed to his eyes.

A memory came to Lemmy's mind, his mother, lying on her bed. He drove the image from his mind, groaned to silence the persistent voice that told him he was the cause for his mother's childlessness. For a brief second he saw her again, trying desperately to pin herself onto his father, only to be shoved away with the same hand, with the same rage with which his father had just twisted the imaginary boy's neck. It was his fault, Lemmy knew. Somehow he had repulsed his father to the point of refusing to have more children, of preferring to live a lie, of depriving Temimah of what she so desperately longed for.

He looked at Benjamin, but his friend was too overwhelmed by the pantomimed killing of the little boy.

After a long time, the men of Neturay Karta fell back onto the wooden benches, exhausted. Only an occasional whimper sounded.

Rabbi Gerster wiped his face with a white handkerchief. "We'll now go to the streets of Jerusalem to proclaim the word of G.o.d: You shall not kill! We'll warn the Zionists not to pursue their abortion law, lest G.o.d's hand comes down to punish them. But we'll do it peacefully and pray for our misguided brothers, because a sinner who repents is more righteous than one who has never sinned."

He kissed the velvet curtain on the ark, his hands on the embroidered golden letters. He descended from the dais and walked through the synagogue, each row draining behind him into the center aisle. He led the column of men through the foyer to the forecourt and down to the gate. Cantor Toiterlich chanted verses from Psalms, which they repeated after him. As the long snake of black hats wriggled its tail against the rusted bars of the gate, Lemmy slipped away.

He entered the quiet apartment and shut the door, leaning against it, panting. On the opposite wall, above the door to his father's study, a square of exposed bricks contrasted with the white walls. Every house in Meah Shearim had a similar unfinished patch to symbolize the dwellers' constant mourning for the destruction of the Temple on Mount Moriah, which had stood in ruins for two thousand years. Roman hands had thrown the torches and catapulted the rocks that had demolished it, but Talmud said that the Temple was destroyed due to hatred among Jews. As he looked up at the naked bricks, Lemmy thought of his father, leading his disciples through the streets of Jerusalem to a certain confrontation with other Jews.

He entered his father's study. The desk was covered with books and papers. The chair had a tall back and padded armrests that ended with carved lion heads. Hundreds of books were lined on wooden shelves all the way to the ceiling.

Lemmy sat in the armchair and clenched the lion heads. He remembered sitting in his father's lap, embraced by the big hands, his own little hands tapping on the desk, the back of his neck tickled by his father's beard.

On the desk was the brown book his father always carried into town, a pencil resting in the crease. When Lemmy opened the book, the pencil fell out, together with a stack of Israeli liras. He turned the book to look at the cover. The t.i.tle had faded with time. Lemmy traced the letters with his finger. THE ZOHAR.

His hands reflexively threw the book back on the desk. It was the book of Kabbalah!

He wanted to put the pencil and money back in the book, but could not bring himself to touch it again. He stumbled out of the study, ran to his room, and closed the door.

"Jerusalem? Is that you?"

He had a.s.sumed his mother was out. Had she seen him enter his father's study? He wished she would just go away.

Temimah entered his bedroom. "Why didn't you go to the demonstration?"

He avoided her eyes, afraid of remembering the way she had looked at the height of pa.s.sion. "I'm not feeling well."

"What's wrong?" She reached the back of her head and tightened the knot on her plain headdress. Her fingers felt around it, ensuring it covered her head. The motion was mechanical, rea.s.suring.

"I'm tired."

"You read too much." Her eyes lingered on the bookshelf, lined with volumes of Talmud.

Suddenly he realized it wasn't Talmud she was referring to. He jumped from the bed and stood between her and the bookshelf.

"I clean your room every day. You think I would miss those books?"

"Don't tell him!"

"Your father has enough to worry about. G.o.d knows what would happen here without him." Anxiety tightened her voice. "You must stop."

"No!"

"But these books are bad for you."

"That's a lie!"

Temimah seemed startled by his anger.

"I can't go back. I can't ignore what I know. I'm not a d.a.m.n horse." He placed his hands by the sides of his face like horse blinders.

"Am I a d.a.m.n horse?"

Her pain tied a knot in his throat. It was his father he was angry at, not her. "I didn't say that."

"You think I don't know what I'm missing? But I also know what I have-a husband, a son, a home, and a G.o.d, who has prescribed this life for me." She approached the bookshelf, inserted her hand behind the set of Talmud volumes, and pulled out The Painted Bird. The small book was wrapped in transparent plastic for protection. The cover ill.u.s.tration showed a bird with a human expression, its feathers red, yellow, and green, its beak crooked, its malicious eyes staring at the reader. A straw basket was strapped to its wings, and in it sat a boy with sad eyes.

"Please," Lemmy said, "put it back."

She opened the book. "Who is Tanya?"

He s.n.a.t.c.hed The Painted Bird from her, shoved it behind the Talmud volumes, and headed to the door.

"Jerusalem!" His mother grabbed his forearm. "She gives you those books, doesn't she?"

He nodded.

"Who is she?"

"Ask your husband!" Lemmy shook off her hand and left the room.

She followed him to the hallway. "I've asked him."

Lemmy paused and turned.