Avraham Azrieli - The Masada Complex

“Answer me!”

Silver felt the bulge of Rajid’s handgun. “Masada, dear, your brother walked his last steps here. He deserves your full attention. You deserve it too.”

She glared at him.

“I know,” Silver said softly, “that you’re angry at me, but it’s only because I tell you the truth. Forget Rabbi Josh and Al Zonshine and the Israelis.” He pointed at the burning fire. “This is a sacred moment.” Before she could say anything, he left her and headed toward the group of kibbutzniks singing a melancholic Israeli ballad.

Galit sat on a broken marble column. He sat beside her and hummed the tune, glancing at her. She had once been his hostage on this mountain, had seen him cry for his fallen son and his failed plan. Silver did not recognize Galit, and she clearly didn’t recognize him-it had been many years, and he had worn a mask the whole time. But he felt an odd kinship with this Israeli kibbutznik-their lives had been transformed by the same disastrous dawn in 1982.

She gestured at Masada, who remained standing on the path where he’d left her. “Is she okay?”

“My dear friend has suffered many disappointments lately.”

Silver sighed. “She’s lost everything and has no prospect of recovery. I’m truly worried about her.”

“First time she’s here. All these years I’ve waited to see her.”

“Were you close to her brother?”

“Srulie was wonderful.” Galit took a deep breath. “They were both exceptional. But Masada was my hero, even before the tragedy.”

“She’s my hero too. What happened-”

“Then you understand.” Galit smiled.

Silver nodded. “It’s still hard for her to discuss what happened to him.” He motioned at the circle of men and women sitting around the fire. “Are they all survivors?”

“Relatives, friends. The kibbutz was never the same afterwards. Especially with all the secrecy surrounding the incident. It was hard to mourn, to heal, while the newspapers criticized us for playing with live ammunition, as if we didn’t know, as if we were dumb farm hands who couldn’t tell a hand grenade from a Roman ballista.” She took his hand and put it on her forehead, at the hairline. “Feel it?”

His finger touched an elongated lump under the skin.

“Still there. A piece of shrapnel.”

“It’s the price we Jews pay for freedom.” He lowered his hand. “But that ludicrous rescue attempt, the commander sending a lone woman to attack-”

“He didn’t send her.” Galit’s face glowed against the flames. “It was her initiative. She was the only one who tried to save us. Those Arabs would have killed us all.”

Silver was offended. “Why do you say that? There was no-” He stopped himself from saying more. This wasn’t the place to proclaim the noble intentions of Arab terrorists, even if he knew those intentions first-hand.

“I’m not angry at her.”

“Why should you be?” He was getting close. “So she acted without orders. What happened to her afterwards?”

Galit turned and pointed at Masada. “Why don’t you ask your friend.”

“This isn’t happening,” Rabbi Josh said. There was an intercom setup by the sliding door of the cable car. He pressed the button. “Get me up to the mountaintop! It’s a matter of life and death!” Through the window he could see the operator glance up indifferently.

He found a glass-fronted box painted with a red flame containing an ax. He broke the glass with his elbow and managed to pull out the ax with his bandaged hands. “Here we go again,” he said, and went to the large window, which now overlooked the terminal below. He swung the ax and hit the window, which cracked loudly. He swung it again while the operator jumped to his feet and started waving frantically. The second hit blasted the window, and large chunks fell to the desert rocks, approximately four stories below.

At that moment, the car jerked and began to descend back to the base.

The operator opened the sliding door and yelled, “Are you crazy?”

“I must reach the top!” Rabbi Josh pointed up at Mount Masada. “Now!”

“The cable car is out of order!”

“Liar!”

The operator turned and walked back to his chair. “Take a hike.”

Rabbi Josh saw a sign: Snake Path. “How long to the top?”

The man drew on a cigarette and made smoke rings, which rose one after the other, melting into the darkness. The rabbi grabbed the lantern and ran to the dirt path. Behind him, the cable-car operator cursed.

Masada watched Professor Silver chatting with Srulie’s childhood friend. His slip about the hostages broke open a dam in her mind, letting out fact after fact. She didn’t move, fearing the flow would cease. Everything that had happened to her since Silver had first showed up with the memory stick suddenly made sense. How could she have been so blind?

Approaching them, Masada heard Silver say to Galit, “You mean, Masada knows who that woman-”

“Levy,” Masada said, “let’s take a walk.”

He hesitated. “We were just talking about you.”

She took his arm and helped him up, leading him away from the fire, toward the cluster of ruins at the northern edge of the mountain. “You and Rabbi Josh make quite a team.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What an irony,” she said. “I lost my only brother here, and now I’m back here to lose my only friend.”

“ Oy vey!” Silver stopped, turning to her. “Don’t say that!”

“What else did our saintly rabbi tell you?” With the fire illuminating only one side of his face, she couldn’t make out Silver’s expression. “That I’m mentally ill? That I’ve never recovered from my brother’s violent death?”

“You don’t have to explain such pain to me. I know it firsthand. Listen to me carefully, meidaleh, as friends we must be open to each other-”

“ Meidaleh, sh’meidaleh. That’s another coincidence, your choice of the same term of endearment my father had used.”

“Wasn’t he approximately my age? I’m fortunate to have lived much longer that your father, but all Jewish men of our generation share a certain vocabulary, right?”

“A verbal coincidence? A lucky break?” Masada pointed. “There’s the Lottery Room, where archeologists found eleven shards of clay the Zealots drew to select those who would help the others die before killing themselves. Now, who’s the lucky one?”

“They were idealists,” Silver said. “Heroic.”

“Heroes don’t slaughter their wives and kids for political reasons.” Masada resumed walking. “I don’t believe in luck. I want logic. ”

“Logic and friendship are life’s twin essentials. Especially for us, the Chosen people.”

“Only logic. No friendships. No coincidences either.”

The professor shook his head.

“You see this square hole in the ground?” Masada turned so that the lens at the end of the pinky-size tube attached to her shoulder strap could capture what she was looking at. “The Zealots dug a mikvah two thousand years ago-a ritual bath in the middle of the desert-so they could come clean with their God. Would you come clean with me?”

“But Masada, I’ve always been straight with you.”

“You’ve had problems with your eyes, but I was the blind one.”

“I don’t understand,” he said plaintively, “why are you doing this?” He stumbled on a rock, and his bag slipped off his shoulder.

“Here are my questions.” Masada helped him up. “What logic caused Sheen to stay with you even though he could afford a hotel? Borrow your car even though he could rent one? Use Al to deliver the money even though Al was certifiably insane? Forget the memory stick in your car even though it contained a video clip of his crime? Can you see the logic in Sheen’s actions?”