Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Rebbe Itzik bade the couple farewell. “Get married,” he said, still unwilling to look at Ilana directly.

Ilana answered, “On one thing you were wrong. We took Safad.”

The Vodzher Rebbe smiled. “God’s miracle did it. Well … miracle plus natural force.”

“You mean the rain?” Ilana asked.

“No,” the rebbe replied. “That God should come down to aid His Jews in the rainstorm was natural. The miracle was that so many Jews could fight together in a common cause.”

“We shall see you again,” Ilana said. “In Israel.”

“Then we shall begin the real battle,” the rebbe said. “For the soul of Israel.”

That night Teddy Reich and a group of tested fighters rode out of Safad in a truck to reinforce Jewish troops trying to capture the important Arab stronghold of Acre, and they drove without lights lest they arouse Arab patrols operating between Safad and the coast. All went well until the truck approached the old tell of Makor, which for millennia had guarded this road, and there some Arabs were engaged in an assault on the kibbutz and turned to fire upon the truck. A lively skirmish ensued, at the height of which Mem-Mem Bar-El cried, “They’re running. Knock them out.”

The Jews fanned out across the tell, each shooting at the retreating Arabs, when one of the enemy whipped about and fired rapidly. He hit Ilana Hacohen and she pitched head-first down the far slope of the mound. When Reich got to her she was dead, and he said, “Fetch Gottesmann,” and two fighters overtook the German Jew, who was climbing back up the mound, his self-control restored by the skirmish.

“Over here,” Bar-El’s voice called, and Gottesmann moved through the darkness to where his friends huddled over a fallen body.

“You capture an Arab?” he asked. And when he came to the spot the silent figures separated, allowing him to pass, and he saw that the dead fighter was Ilana Hacohen, her hands still gripping her English rifle.

A terrible cry rose from his throat, involuntarily, a long-drawn wail of anguish. He clutched his chest as if he were a madman and the accumulated passions of ten years broke over him. He rejected the self-discipline he had only just regained and threw himself on the ground beside the stalwart girl who now lay dead. He could not fully comprehend what had happened; the death of Ilana coming so soon after the death of Bagdadi was more than his distraught nervous system could tolerate: a man could bear ten years of war, absorbing one shock after another—family dead, underground partners betrayed, English companions shot by Germans, Jewish refugees drowned off Italy, smiling Bagdadi dead when needed most—a man could stand ten years of that, but not ten years and one day. His convulsive hands reached out to grasp Ilana, the perceptive, the lovable Ilana of Galilee, but all that his fingers could reach was the soil of the mound, the soil from which his ancient people had sprung; and as that earth sifted through his fingers, as he felt its cool impartial existence, he slowly gained strength, and a terrible fury—worse even than his initial wail of despair—possessed him, and he pushed himself up from the soil and turned his back on the dead. Shoving the others aside, impelled by an agonizing vision of the future, tormented and glorious, like the apocalyptic visions that Gomer and the psalmist had known on this mound, he cried, “I’m no longer Isidore Gottesmann. I’m no longer a German Jew. I’ll be the tree that was cut down. My name is Ilan. I’ll be God’s Man. My name is Eliav, and I shall fight for this land …”

Mechanically he started down the steep side of the mound, firing his rifle idiotically, aimlessly, like some mechanized avenging angel gone berserk, and Teddy Reich said with cold calculation, “Let him go. At Acre we can use a hundred like him.”

And so the Jew Ilan Eliav left Makor, blazing in fury and setting his feet upon a trail that would lead not only to Acre, but beyond it to Jerusalem and to definitions he could not then have foreseen, blinded as he was by incoherent pain.

The Tell

Schematic diagram of Tell Makor from the south on the afternoon of Monday, November 30, 1964, at the conclusion of the first year’s dig. Horizontal scale accurate; vertical scale extended. Solid lines indicate certain sites which will be excavated during subsequent campaigns of 2965- 1973 C.E. Observe that the actual distances between levels vary considerably. (For example, as can be seen in the chart on page 867, the distance between Levels XV and XIV is twenty feet, whereas the distance between Levels X and IX is only two feet.) Observe also that the monolith to El, perhaps the most significant of the remains buried in the tell, will be missed by the excavators.

With the approach of November and its threat of rain Cullinane could feel the work at the dig grinding to a halt. His own thoughts were in Chicago, where Vered Bar-El was delivering her series of unnecessary lectures on “The Candlestick of Death.” Paul Zodman airmailed batches of news clippings showing Vered posed with the fatal menorah, accompanied by captions which explained that six of the king’s enemies had been slain and finally the king himself, because, in the timeless words of the Australian journalist, “he was his own worst enemy.” But when Cullinane read the articles he found that Vered had been honest enough to confess that the story was a fake.

Nevertheless, the clippings disturbed Cullinane because they reminded him of how much he loved this delightful woman: when she peered at him from behind the menorah she was positively enchanting and he longed for her return. I’ll propose the minute she gets off the plane, he vowed, but his preoccupation with Vered was interrupted by a newspaper story which altered radically the course of the excavation, not only in 1964 but also for the years ahead.ILAN ELIAV FOR CABINET POST

FOLLOWING KALINSKY RETIREMENTJ’lem Sources Insist Appointment

Certain If Religious Parties Agree

When Cullinane read the news his first reaction was: This is what’s been keeping Eliav and Vered apart. But what the relationship was he could not guess and before he could ask Tabari to untangle it, Schwartz from the kibbutz appeared to ask if Cullinane would see one of the women who worked in the dining hall It was big Zipporah, and Cullinane guessed that she was seeking his help in finding a job somewhere, for she was Rumanian and as such was apt to be ambitious. He doubted that he could be of much help, but against his better judgment he allowed her to enter.

She was a handsome woman of thirty, strong and lively, and he recalled how vigorous she was in the kitchen, how rudely amiable in the serving. When she extended her large hand and smiled he knew he was lost. “What is it, Zipporah?” he asked.

The pleasant woman sat down, pointed to the headline about Eliav and burst into tears, not feminine tactical tears but great sobs of perplexity and grief. “Oh, damn,” he growled so loudly that she heard him.

“I sorry, Dr. Cullinane,” she sobbed. “I needing help.”

“I’m sure you do,” he replied banally and even with sarcasm. But as soon as he said the words he felt ashamed and took a quick look at her arms to see if they were tattooed with German slave numbers. They weren’t. It wasn’t going to be one of those cases, thank God! Relieved, he rose, walked to her side of the desk and offered her his handkerchief. “I’m sorry, Zipporah. Now, what can I do?”

She blew her nose and looked at the door. “Can I closing it?” she asked.

“Of course.” He got to the door before her, then escorted her back to her seat. “Now, tell me what’s happened.”

Without speaking she took from her pocketbook the inevitable sheaf of worn papers that every Jew in Israel seemed to have. He groaned. It was to be one of those cases. An appeal to the American Embassy, no doubt. When she had her papers in a neat pile she asked quietly, “Is it true, Dr. Eliav going to cabinet?”