Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

Power calls to power, blood to blood.

David captured the city from the Jebusites in 1000 B.C. It had been conquered and destroyed by everyone from Nebuchadnezzar to Hadrian. There was more bone in this dust than in any other place in the world, and men like Jebediah could put it to use.

Men like him and me.

Israeli flags flew in the Muslim quarter as Jewish Fundamentalist Nationalists gained a foothold by moving into houses in that part of town. The wailing wall comprises the western retaining wall of Solomon's Temple, the only remaining structure still standing from the original shrine. It is the holiest of sites, say the Jews, for it is there where the living God remains.

I could feel the energy throbbing in the stone, but whether from God or from the shrieking faith of misled men, I didn't know.

North of the Haram is the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows, where Jesus dragged the cross into Calvary. It ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, erected by Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, and built over the site of Golgotha, the place of the skull, where Christ and thousands of other men were crucified. To the east of the church is Gethsemane, in which he was kissed by a betrayer and the soldiers came for him while his disciples slept. Jebediah would like the idea that the land itself was tainted with treachery. In his own fashion, he had quite the Christ-complex. So did I.

The bazaars were already busy, the city awake and bustling, selling meat and vegetables, leather, jewelry, pottery, and perfume. The sun was strong and beat down harshly against my fresh pink skin. There was no wind.

Self kept trying to peek under skirts, the heat working on him as well. His thoughts kept veering, circling through the ages, from hell's bedlam to his growing need to lash his tongue against the succulent wound of a torn thigh. My fingers trembled. Nausea swept in low, and within seconds grew so bad that I nearly doubled over.

I said, Stop , and he merely looked at me.

What's that?

Quit dreaming of blood.

Say again?

Of red bellies…

I'm not.

… and ripped knees, the taste of pale-

I'm not , he said, sounding calm and perhaps even concerned. You are .

My fingers kept twitching as the smiles of women turned toward me and then turned away again. A tic in my neck kept going for another minute as sweat coursed through my regrown eyebrows. The nausea finally faded.

You all right? he asked, looking so much like me that I didn't know where I was-here staring at him or over there gazing back at someone just as familiar.

I glanced into my palm and saw that my new hand had a different lifeline that could barely be seen. I wondered how much of this remade body had been born from him.

Come on , I said.

Not the stations of the cross. They're so friggin' boring. And besides, Golgotha calls.

Of course it does .

I walked the Way of the Cross. Scholars argued the actual path-even if the Via Dolorosa wasn't it, enough blood had been spilled here to make Self overjoyed. He dove and rolled in the streets, licking the ancient stone and drinking eras until his drool was as black as the lost epochs. Like a child let loose in a candy shop, he soon grew sick to his stomach.

This place gives me the creeps.

Me too, actually .

I could almost hear the loud, ugly scraping sound of Christ dragging his cross along these stones toward Golgotha, now the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

There seemed to be as many tourists as there were citizens of the OldCity. Heads bowed, hands clasped, their song swelled for a moment and then droned on.

Emperor Constantine the Great had a church erected on this site in A.D. 325. The buildings were destroyed and rebuilt several times through the centuries. Christians-especially Catholics and Greek Orthodox-believed that Christ was crucified on this spot and buried here. Many Protestants conjectured that Jesus was crucified on the hill near the Garden Tomb and buried nearby.

I don't want to go in there.

You just said that Golgotha calls.

It does. For you, not me.

Are you so sure?

I'm gonna get myself a latte.

The church was vast, with many rooms, chapels, murals, and holy areas. I entered the enormous main building, expecting a vast pulse of divine might, or at least a wave of psychic energy, but there wasn't much of either. Perhaps that meant something, or perhaps not. Maybe at its heart this church was no different from any other in the world. I walked along through the chambers and stood before the Chapel of the Nailing on the Cross, also known as the Eleventh Station.

People roamed and whispered. Tourists videotaped the high walls, the altars, and the other faithful as if expecting them to perform in some way. Here were the meeting of the shallow and the mystical, eyes filled with awe and other vacuous gazes. I didn't know what to expect here or what I might be longing for. Perhaps I'd only come because Danielle had spoken of visiting. It was as honest a reason as any.

A woman knelt at the altar in the chapel. I was about to leave when she turned to me and said, "Have you no idea where you are?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then don't you believe you should kneel?"

Many others sat or stood in the chapel and throughout the church, but she'd singled me out. Her voice was soft, without an edge despite the rigid words.

I knelt beside her. It had been a lifetime since I'd truly prayed. Not stating the demands of invocation or the rage of incantations, but offering simple prayer. It felt almost beyond me now. My thoughts were muddled and suddenly my heart began to hammer.

Prayer never gave me any kind of strength. Instead it allowed all my frailty and weaknesses to surface. On my knees was when I wanted the most from God, and when my greed surged inside me and I felt the most neglected. I deserved something for my sacrifices. I had no need for yet another penance-the last ten years of my life had been nothing but one long atonement.

She saw I was having trouble and reached out to grasp my arm. It was a friendly but strong touch. She squeezed once and let go. I clasped my hands together until my knuckles cracked and my fingernails drew blood. I could hear nothing but my own empty pleas, begging for the return of my love and a second chance at redemption.

How could anyone kneel here in the place of the skull, where Christ himself had died in agony at the hands of his enemies, while his screams were ignored by his own father, and somehow expect God to listen to you?

Red bellies, and the pale taste of-

Perhaps it was fear or some other force, but I got off my knees with a savage heave.

"If you don't believe, then why are you here?" she asked.

"I do believe."

"Then it must be your pride that makes you so uncomfortable?"

She spoke with a slight Greek accent. Six Christian communities shared the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Greek Orthodox were the landlords who rented this holy space by the inch. The Egyptians and Syrians leased a small section by the tomb. The Armenians had been here since A.D. 300, and the Catholics since the Crusades. The Ethiopians lived in a small monastery on the roof, and during Easter, while the others pushed and shoved each other here, they would dance and sing up there, without vanity or pride.

I was starting to get a little annoyed. "Why are you asking?"

"In this chapel, you must have no conceit."

"Believe me, lady, if it's one thing I don't have, it's conceit."

"The very fact that you should say such a thing proves you are a slave to it."

She had lengthy black hair held back in a shawl, with cloudy dark eyes carrying the weight of other people's pain. I could imagine she came from a large family that had fought in uncountable wars across endless deserts. She may have buried her brothers or her husband or her father, but someone who had died for his faith.