Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“You’re wrong,” Cullinane said as he probed into the area where the goats slept. “Here’s a Danish beer bottle.”

“Suppose you dug that up,” Tabari continued. “You’d swear it was an inappropriate intrusion.” He gave the old man three pounds and said, “Get yourself some more beer.”

As they descended to the jeep Eliav said, “This is what we meant about your report, John. Within a few miles in modern Israel we find a 1964 house, a 1920, a 1300, and a cave dating back to who knows when? Yet side by side they exist, and it takes all four to represent our civilization. Don’t you think that in King David’s time Makor must have been equally varied?”

“I’m not sure your reasoning’s good,” Cullinane said cautiously. “Today we have so many more levels that might be held over from the past. After all, King David could have seen houses from only four or five different levels at most.”

“Granted. But the homogeneity you write about probably didn’t exist.”

“Point’s made,” Cullinane admitted. Standing in the road he tried to summarize the trip. “In Akko, the new house …”

Tabari interrupted. “On our first day you oriented yourself by pointing west to Akko. Do you always start that way?”

The Irishman considered this for a moment, then said, “In Israel, yes.”

“Why?” Tabari asked.

“I don’t know,” Cullinane replied. After a moment he offered tentatively, “As a child I’d heard a good deal about Jesus,” and he pointed back over his shoulder to Galilee. “But the Holy Land never became real for me until I read about the Crusades. For weeks I went around making believe I was in the boat that brought Richard the Lion Heart to Acre.”

“Interesting,” Tabari said. “You visualized yourself coming ashore to save the Holy Land, so you’ve always moved from west to east.”

“For me, that’s the way Israel is.”

“Most curious,” Eliav said with restrained enthusiasm. “I’ve always seen it lying north to south. I’m Abraham wandering out of the north and seeing this marvelous land for the first time. Or I’m a Jew of King Solomon’s age, stationed up here and looking south toward Jerusalem.” He hesitated, then added, “I first saw Israel from the north, and its wonderful hills invited me southward as they must have done Abraham. It never occurred to me until just now that you could visualize it any other way.”

Tabari said, “During the War of 1948 I met an Arab from across the Jordan and he told me how excited he was when his unit invaded Palestine. Coming out of the desert and seeing our explosive richness … the greenness. His company had merely to march westward to the ocean and the land was theirs.”

“How do you see it?” Cullinane asked.

“Me?” Tabari asked in surprise. He had never considered the question before. Cautiously he continued, “I see it as if it had always been here, with me standing on it. No west, no east, no south. Just the land as far back as my family can remember. I could probably live in any of the four spots we’ve been in today and be reasonably happy.”

“Even in the cave?” Cullinane asked.

“I’d get rid of the goats.”

And the three scientists, each with such a different view of the land they were excavating, returned to Makor.

• • •

Gershom was a singer of the hills, a man who had tended his father-in-law’s sheep in the upland valleys where he had killed a man and had fled, leaving his family and his wife behind. He wore the plain sheepskin garment of a countryman and he arrived in Makor with no trade, no spare clothing, no tools and no money. He carried a small seven-stringed lyre made of fir wood trimmed with antique bronze and strung with twisted sheep’s gut, which now hung slack across the sounding board. He came seeking sanctuary from the brothers of the man he had slain and it had been his hope to reach the anonymity of Aecho, but his strength had given out and his pursuers were bearing down upon him, for they rode donkeys while he had to make his way on foot.

He stumbled past the guards, gasping merely, “Sanctuary.” They pointed toward where the temple lay, then ran to inform the governor, who appeared in time to see the shepherd hurrying down the main street. As he disappeared to the left three dusty men on donkeys rode up the ramp and demanded entrance. “If you’re looking for the other one,” the governor said, “he reached the temple.”

The men were disgusted, and their sense of urgency vanished. Stiffly they dismounted, kicked their donkeys free to find their own shade, and followed the governor as he showed them the way to the temple. The building was intentionally kept small to avoid giving the priestly leadership of Jerusalem competition; it was built of a reddish uncut field stone and was quite plain, lacking even columns or imposing steps. Its two doors were of olive wood—thin strips nailed together with little art—and when the governor pushed them aside their stone hinges groaned. Inside was darkness, for the temple held no blazing windows or perpetual fires, but a few simple oil lamps did show the built-up levels, one after the other, terminating in a raised section upon which stood an altar of black basalt, well carved and decorated with the head of a bull which represented the sacrifices that were traditionally associated with such altars, though no animals had been offered in Makor for many years, that function being reserved for Jerusalem. The outstanding feature of the altar was a series of four horns which projected upward from each corner; through the centuries these had undergone such modification that except for their name, few in Makor would have known they represented horns, for they had become merely rounded corners of rock, but they had always held a special significance, and now as the murderer knelt on the topmost platform, his sheepskin falling carelessly about him and his kin-nor thrown to one side, he clutched two of these horns.

“He’s taken sanctuary,” the governor said, pointing to the altar.

“We’ll wait,” the brothers said.

“We’re obligated to feed him,” the governor warned. “As long as he stays by the altar.”

“We’ll wait,” the brothers repeated.

“Not here,” the governor ordered.

“We’ll go outside.”

“Not within fifty cubits. King David established the law, not me.”

The three brothers said they understood and left the temple without speaking to the man who had murdered their brother. When they were gone the governor asked the fugitive what crime had been committed, and the man with the lyre replied casually, “Angry words … over nothing.”

“For that you killed a man?”

The kneeling man dropped one hand from the altar and pointed to a scar across his neck, a long, livid welt that had not yet healed. “For that I killed a man,” he repeated.

“What will you do?” the governor asked, indicating the three watchers outside. They had retired the stipulated fifty cubits and were asking townspeople for water.

“They’re hot-tempered,” the murderer said. “If they could catch me now, they’d kill me. In three days they’ll see how foolish this is and go home.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“They saw their brother cut me. I think they may even be pleased that I found sanctuary. Gives them the excuse they need.”

The governor was surprised at the cynical realism of the exhausted man, and with some doubts stationed four guards at the temple, charging them with the preservation of the fugitive’s life so long as he could grasp even one horn of the altar. This was a custom which the Hebrews of the desert had had to adopt when they moved into settled land, for blood feuds had ravaged the tribes, continuing through generations and causing the loss of many men who were needed as herdsmen and husbands. Moses himself had proposed a system whereby cities of refuge would be established to which accidental murderers could flee, achieving sanctuary merely by entering the city gates, but nothing had so far been accomplished in this respect. In the meantime, in any town, refuge was assured those who succeeded in grasping the horns of the altar, as Gershom now did.