Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“You’re wrong and you’re right,” Eliav said. “You’re wrong in equating the state of Israel and the Jewish religion. No matter what might happen to Israel, Judaism would continue. Just as Catholicism always continued when the territory of the Vatican was held by others. But you’re right that all of us, Catholics, Arabs, Jews, have got to work out some sensible pattern of life for the world, or new alignments will occur so radical that no one here can visualize them.”

“One afternoon,” Cullinane said, “the doctors gave me a shot of something and I had one of those visions … of a Jerusalem that had been agreed upon by all the world as an isolated zone of ghosts in which the Pope had his little Vatican because he was no longer welcome in Italy, and the chief rabbi had the area around the Wailing Wall, because he was no longer acceptable in Israel, and the new prophet of Islam had his territory, because no one in the Muslim countries wanted him, and the Protestants and Hindus and Buddhists each had their corner, because nobody wanted them either, and all the rest of the working world was, as you say, realigned into radical new patterns. And over each gateway to Jerusalem stood an arch with a bold sign which read in sixteen languages: MUSEUM.”

“It was no vision,” Eliav said, “and it’s our job to see that it doesn’t become fact.”

On Friday the cable from Stockholm arrived, and three excited archaeologists gathered in the arcaded building to read the news which would determine whether the human bones imbedded at Level XIX were of crucial importance or not. The Swedish scientists reported:YOUR SAMPLE NINETEEN STOP REPEATED TESTS YIELD SIXTY-EIGHT THOUSAND B.C.E. PLUS-MINUS THREE THOUSAND STOP SOUNDS EXCITING

Tabari cheered. “I’ve got a job here for the next fifteen years, plus-minus five.”

“Were we lucky!” Cullinane said. “Of all the available tells we picked the good one.”

Eliav, always practical, reminded the men, “But to dig out that solid breccia will cost money.” The planners looked up from the cable, and Eliav made it clear that the Israeli government could not advance the funds, exciting though the find promised to be. After the men had explored various alternative avenues Tabari said glumly, “Well, let’s say the ugly word.”

“Zodman?”

“Correct.”

“After the way I gave him hell?” Eliav asked.

“I’d never ask Zodman and Vered for the dough,” Cullinane protested.

“My Uncle Mahmoud,” Tabari said slowly, “once wangled money for the same dig from the chief rabbi in Jerusalem, the Catholic bishop in Damascus, the Muslim imam in Cairo, and the Baptist president of Robert College in Istanbul. His rule was, ‘If you need money, shame has not yet been invented.’ I’ll send Zodman a cable that will break his heart.” He began to play an imaginary violin.

Cullinane advised, “Let’s wait till we get confirmation from Chicago on the carbon dating,” and the three leaders spurred the workmen to close down the dig, but each day one or the other crawled down the tunnel to sit beside the well of Makor where living creatures had crouched two hundred thousand years before. For each of the archaeologists it was a mystic rite, huddling there in the cavern: to Tabari it was a return to the ancient sources of his people; to Eliav it was the spot where man had begun his long wrestling match with the concept of God; to Cullinane it was the beginning of those philosophical analyses with which he would be engaged for the balance of his life; but to all it was the source, the primeval spot where the growth of civilizations had begun. At the end of the week Chicago reported:YOUR LEVEL NINETEEN STOP WE GET A FIRM SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND PLUS-MINUS FOUR STOP CONGRATULATIONS

As soon as he read the confirming report Tabari drafted a hearts-and-flowers cable to Paul Zodman, begging him for money. When Cullinane read it he growled, “It’s repulsive. I forbid you to send it.”

So Tabari prepared an alternative which said that since Cullinane and Eliav were absent in Jerusalem he was forwarding the laboratory reports, and he trusted that a man as generous and as far-seeing as Paul Zodman…“It’s still repulsive,” Eliav grimaced.

“It’s how we handled the British,” Tabari joked.

“You really have no shame, do you?” Cullinane asked with admiration.

“You ever hear about my father, Sir Tewfik, when he was judge at Akko? One night he slipped in to see the litigant in a crucial case and said, ‘Fazl, I know I shouldn’t be here, but I just want to point out that you have three lawyers to choose from: an Arab, a Greek and an Englishman. Be sure you choose right.’ Fazl replied, ‘Ya-effendi, I was going to use the Englishman, but if you say so, I’ll switch to the Arab.’ My father said, ‘You misunderstand. Be sure to use the Englishman, because when he bribes me it’s in pounds sterling.’ I’ll bet my cable gets us another half-million dollars.” Two days later they had their answer:I SEE THAT CULLINANE AND ELIAV DIDN’T HAVE THE GUTS TO CABLE AND AFTER THEIR INSULTING BEHAVIOR NO WONDER STOP BUT YOU HAVE THE GALL TO ASK FOR AN ADDITIONAL HALF MILLION DOLLARS TO COMPLETE EXCAVATION DOWN TO LEVEL TWENTY-FIVE STOP YES STOP YOU HAVE GIVEN VERED AND ME A TREMENDOUS WEDDING PRESENT STOP MILLION THANKS

“A man like that, it’s easy to hate,” Tabari laughed. “I should have asked for a million.”

“He has style,” Eliav granted. “Wedding present!”

Cullinane broke out some champagne and announced, “I’m going to crawl down there and give those old bastards at the well one of the best parties they ever had.” He lugged the bottle down the tunnel shaft and splashed the liquid against the bones protruding from the breccia of Level XIX. “My God, we’re glad to find you,” he whispered. Then he proceeded to the well, where he sprinkled the champagne as if he were a priest. “To all of you. We’ll be back.” And as he made this flippant remark the echo of his voice came back to strike him, and he fell heavily on one of the marble benches set there by Timon Myrmex in the time of Herod. He put the bottle aside and covered his face with his hands. “Vered!” he whispered, and where no one could see him except the ghosts he admitted how forlorn he was, how deep had been his need to marry the little Jewish scholar. He had the vague feeling, at that lonely moment, that he was not going to find a Catholic wife in Chicago, nor would Ilan Eliav find a Jewish bride in Jerusalem; like huge Father Vilspronck they would move about the Holy Land for some years, respected and even loved, but men apart—a Dutchman married to a church, a German Jew married to a state, and an Irishman obsessed by the philosophical analysis of history. “Vered! Vered!” he muttered. “You could have saved me.”

At the surface he reported lightly, “The old reprobates lapped it up. They said that if civilization could produce something as good as champagne they were going to have children like mad so as to speed up the process.”

“How did they communicate those sensible ideas,” Tabari asked, “seeing that when they lived speech hadn’t been invented?”

“To the silent ones,” Cullinane proposed, “deep in the earth.” And that afternoon he took a plane for Chicago.

The last man to go down the tunnel before things were locked up for the year was Han Eliav, who felt regret at leaving the dig just as the exciting years were beginning. Descending to the well he sat in the gloom beside the cool water that had brought life to so many. It surely didn’t start a mere two hundred thousand years ago, he reasoned. Below this must lie the plain where animals had always come to drink, and over there, hiding behind a tree, waited some creature who had wandered up from Africa a million years ago, holding in his hand the first rock of Israel that had ever been formed into a weapon. That had been the beginning, that ancient first, and it would never be known, that hairy hand waiting in the reeds as the animals came to drink; nevertheless, Eliav felt communion with that hunter. At Zefat we Jews held the rock in our hand and damned little else. At Akko and Jerusalem, too. He patted the cool wet earth. And now we’re climbing our way once more. And he started the long crawl back to where Tabari waited.