Джеймс Миченер - The Source

… THE TELL

The archaeologists had rigged a shower in back of the administration building, and when anyone used it he must afterward hurry along a footpath to return to his tent for dressing. One evening as Cullinane was returning, he came upon Dr. Eliav headed toward the shower, and the Irishman said, “When you’re finished, would you clear something up for me?”

The Jew nodded, and after Cullinane had rubbed down and slipped into his shorts and sports shirt he waited on the edge of his bed until Eliav appeared. “The other day,” Cullinane reminded him, “we were speaking at lunch and I described Israel as part of ‘the fertile crescent.’ You started to make some observation but we were interrupted. What did you have in mind?”

Eliav leaned against the tent pole and remarked, “To me the phrase sounds old-fashioned.”

“I picked it up in Chicago. Breasted used it for the land between Mesopotamia and the Nile.”

“It was a useful cliché,” Eliav granted, “but no longer.”

“The land’s still fertile,” Cullinane argued.

“But if you conceive of Israel as being merely passive, the arable fields over which people walked on their way to other arable fields, your thought remains passive. You miss the dynamism of our history.”

“How do you think of the land?”

Eliav took three of Cullinane’s books and laid them casually on the bed, their corners touching and with an empty space in the middle. “Asia, Africa, Europe, and this empty area—the Mediterranean. Leakey’s discoveries in Kenya last year pretty well prove that man originated in Africa at least two million years ago, plus or minus. He wandered into Israel rather late, possibly from Asia, more likely from Africa.”

“I don’t see how this relates to the fertile-crescent concept.”

“Since the area’s a natural highway, it’s always been a focus of forces. Even in geology. We’re a fracture point where continents meet and twist. Many earthquakes and violent storms. You remember what Stekelis found along the River Jordan?”

Cullinane recalled the discovery that had startled the archaeological world some years before: an area where rocks that had once been horizontal was torn apart and tilted vertically in the air. Such fractures were common throughout the world, but imbedded in his tilted areas Stekelis found parts of a skeleton and unmistakable tools of men who had been living before the upper soil had been laid down or the area tilted … say, a million years ago. “Imagine the earthquake those characters went through,” he said.

“Point I’m trying to make,” Eliav insisted, “is that even the first men in this area were caught up in violence. Ever since, it’s been the same way. Down here mighty Egypt. Up here the Mesopotamian powers. As these great forces pressed against each other, the point where they usually met was Israel. When we stand out on the tell, John, we shouldn’t visualize fertile fields but dusty Egyptians thrusting up from the south with mighty armies, and the Mesopotamians swinging down from the north with equal strength. It was in this cauldron, this violent marching of many feet, that Israel was born.”

“You think this has been the permanent characteristic?”

“Yes. Because after the Egypt-Mesopotamia struggle came the Sea Peoples arriving from the west”—with a broad sweep of his hand across the Mediterranean he indicated the coming of the Phoenicians and the Philistines with their chariots and weapons of iron—“opposing the Syrians moving in from the east. More fractures, more violence, then the Greeks from the west locked in mortal combat with the Persians from the east. Then Romans on their way to fight Parthians. And Byzantines thundering against the Arabs. Most dramatic, I suppose, were the Crusades, when Christians from Europe smashed against Muslims from Asia. This was always the battleground, the focus of forces. In recent times we’ve had Napoleon here battling the Turks in Acre, and lately the Germans of Rommel trying to capture Jerusalem and Damascus.”

“You think the focus-of-forces concept more meaningful than the old fertile-crescent idea?”

“Yes, because it reminds us of the conflict and the intellectual confrontation we’ve witnessed.”

The manner in which Cullinane sat on his bed caused his left hand to represent the armies of the west and his right the east. Bringing them together with a bang over Israel, he recalled the struggles Eliav had summarized: Egypt versus Babylonia; Greece crashing against Persia; Rome vanquishing the east; Crusader fighting infidel; and finally Jew battling Arab. “All right,” he conceded, “this is where violence met violence. What am I supposed to conclude?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Eliav confessed. Then tentatively he added, “But I do know that if you visualize Israel merely as a stopping place along a fertile crescent where placid farmers rested on their way to Egypt, you miss the whole point. It wasn’t like that at all. It was a meeting place of dynamisms. And because we Jews were at the focus of forces we became the most dynamic of all. We had to. To stay alive. We were spun in a terrible vortex, but because we were Jews we loved it. On the faces of our kids at the kibbutz, don’t you sense a kind of radiance? ‘We stand where the fires are hottest. We’re at the focus of forces.’ John, don’t you sometimes see it on their faces?”

He stopped, embarrassed by his unusual display of vehemence, and replaced the books, but as he did so he saw Schwartz climbing down from the tell, where he had been inspecting the day’s dig. “Eh, Schwartz!” he called, and when the dark-skinned secretary entered the tent, Eliav asked, “From here, how far north to the enemy border?”

“Ten miles.”

“East to the Syrians?”

“Twenty-three.”

“West to where Egypt tried to invade us?”

“Eight.”

“With the enemy so close? The threats you hear them make over the radio? Aren’t you scared?”

The tough Israeli snorted. “Since I’m living in Israel no week passes without at least one story in the newspaper how Egypt is going to wipe us out with rockets made by their German scientists. Or Syria massacre us. Or some Arab army push us into the sea.” He thrust his jaw at Cullinane and said dispassionately, “If I scared easy I wouldn’t be here. I feel a lot more relaxed right now than I ever did in Germany.”

• • •

The customary procedure when a man had lain for seven days and seven nights with one of the ritual prostitutes—for that is what Libamah was, no matter how often she was termed a priestess—was for him to go back to his regular wives and forget the girl, who often became pregnant with a child which was upon birth sacrificed to the fires of Melak; but this year the outcome was to be different, for Urbaal left the temple at the end of his performance inflamed with a permanent infatuation for the priestess. He had found her an enchanting, ingenuous girl who enjoyed telling in broken accents of her life in the north and of the manner in which her crafty father had defrauded the men of his region. She had a gift of mimicry and pantomimed the soldiers who had captured her in the various battles leading to her slavery, and with intriguing insight summarized their attempts to seduce her while others were not looking. She was especially amusing when she described in a husky voice, which Urbaal relished, how the local priests had coached her to look shy: “Keep your fingertips close to your knees and your eyes lowered. When you look sideways try to press your chin into your shoulder.” She also demonstrated how they had taught the erotic dances, and Urbaal found her capable both in her evaluations and in her love-making. It was not surprising that he became infatuated with her.