The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

"The cave's over there," said Afif, pointing to the mound. "The opening's on the other side."

He aimed the jeep at the flock, came to a halt several meters from the goats, and turned off the engine.

Two Bedouins, a boy and a man, stood next to the canvas-topped truck, flanked by Border Patrolmen. The rest of the nomads had returned to their tents. Only the males were visible, men and boys sitting cross-legged on piles of brightly colored blankets, silent and still, as if tranquilized by inertia. But Daniel knew the women were there, too, veiled and tattooed. Peeking from behind goatskin partitions, in the rear section of the tent, called haramluk, where they huddled among the wood stoves and the cooking implements until beckoned for service.

A single vulture circled overhead and flew north. The goats gave a collective shudder, then quieted in response to a bark from the shepherd.

Daniel followed Afif as the Druze pushed his way through the herd, the animals yielding passively to the intruders, then closing ranks behind them, settling into a mewling, snorting pudding of hair and horns.

"The family is Jussef Ibn Umar," said Afif as they approached the pair. "The father is Khalid; the boy, Hussein."

He handed their identification cards to Daniel, walked up to the Bedouins, and performed the introductions, calling Daniel the Chief Officer and making it clear he was someone to be respected. Khalid Jussef Ibn Umar responded with an appropriate bow, cuffed his son until the boy bowed too. Daniel greeted them formally and nodded at Afif. The Druze left and began instructing his men.

Daniel inspected the ID cards, made notes, and looked at the Bedouins. The boy was ten, small for his age, with a round, serious face, curious eyes, and hair cropped close to the skull. His father's head was wrapped with wide strips of white cloth held in place by a goat-hair cord. Both wore loose, heavy robes of coarse dark wool. Their feet were blackened and dusty in open sandals, the nails cracked and yellow. The smallest toe on the boy's left foot was missing.

Up close, both of them gave off the ripe odor of curdled milk and goat flesh.

"Thank you for your help," he told Ibn Umar the el-der. The man bowed again. He was thin, stooped, sparsely bearded, and undersized, with dry, tough skin and one eye filmed by a slimy gray cataract. His face had the collapsed look of toothlessness and his hands were twisted and criss-crossed with keloid scars. According to the card he was thirty-nine, but he looked sixty. Stunted and damaged, like to many of them, by malnutrition, disease, inbreeding, the ravages of desert living.

At forty, it was said, a Bedouin was old, approaching uselessness. Not exactly T.E. Lawrence's noble desert con-queror. thought Daniel, looking at Khalid, but then again, most of what the Englishman had written was nonsense-in high school he and his friends had laughed at the Hebrew translation of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom until their sides ached.

The boy stared at the ground, then looked up, catching Daniel's eye. Daniel smiled at him and his head snapped back down.

Clear eyes, clear complexion, a bright-looking kid. The short stature within the range of normalcy. Compared to his father, the picture of health. The result, no doubt, of ten summer weeks camped outside the Ramot. Forays by social workers, tutors, mobile health units, immunizations, nutritional supplements. The despised ways of the city dweller

"Show me the cave," he said.

Khalid Jussef Ibn Umar led him to the other side of the ragged limestone mound. Hussein followed at his heels. When they reached the mouth of the cave, Daniel told them to wait.

He stepped back, took a look at the mound. A nondescript eruption, fringed with scrub. The limestone was striated horizontally and pitted, a decaying layer cake. Ancient waters had run down the north wall for centuries and sculpted it into a snail-shell spiral. The mouth of the shell was slitlike, shaped like a bow hole. Daniel's first impression was that it was it was too narrow for a man to enter. But as he came closer, he could see it was an optical illusion: The outer lip extended far enough to conceal a hollow in the stone, a dishlike depression that afforded more than enough space for passage. He slipped through easily, motioned the Bedouins in after him.

The interior of the cave was cool, the air stagnant and heavy with some musky, feral perfume.

He'd expected dimness, was greeted by mellow light. Looking upward he found the source: At the apex of the spiral was an open twist. Through it shot an oblique ray of sunshine, softened by refraction and dancing with dust specks.

The light was focused, as surely as if it had been a hand-held torch, spotlighting the center of a low, flat loaf of rock about two meters long, half as wide, then tapering to blackness in all directions.

On the rock was a rusty stain-a stone guitar. A woman-shaped stain. The outer contours of a female body, vacant at the center and delineated by reddish-greenish borders that ended in starburst fringes in some places, spreading in others to the edge of the rock and over. Fanning and flowing in lazy dribbles.

A silhouette of human sacrifice, stretched out on some altar. Etched in relief, as if by some lost-wax process.

He wanted to go closer, take a better look, but he knew he had to wait for Forensics and contented himself with observing from a distance.

The legs of the outline were slightly apart, the arms positioned close to the trunk.

Etched. The lost-blood process.

Blood deteriorated fast. Exposure to the elements could turn it gray, green, blue, a variety of nonsanguinary colors.

But Daniel had seen enough of it to know what this was.

He glanced at the Bedouins, knew they would have recognized it too. They slaughtered their own animals, got blood on their clothes all the time; when water was lacking they went weeks without washing. Even the boy would have known.

Khalid shifted his weight. His eyes were restless with uncertainty.

Daniel turned his attention back to the rock. The outline was headless, ending at the neck. He visualized a body splayed out helplessly, the head tilted back, the neck slashed open. Draining.

He thought he saw something-a patch of white-stuck to the upper edge of the rock, but the light evaded that part of the altar and it was too dark to be sure.

He scanned the rest of the cave. The ceiling was low and curved, arched as if by design. On the side of one wall he saw some spots that could also have been blood. There were footprints near the rock/altar. In one corner he made but a jumble of detritus: balls of dried dung, broken twigs, crushed rock.

'How did you find this?" he asked Khalid. 'My son found it."

He asked Hussein: "How did you find this cave?"

The boy was silent. His father squinted down at the top of his head, poked the back of his neck, and told him to speak.

Hussein mumbled something.

"Speak up!" ordered the father.

"I was… herding the animals."

"I see," said Daniel. "And then what happened?"

"One of the young ones ran loose, into the cave."

"One of the goats?"

"A baby. A ewe." Hussein looked at his father: "The white one with the brown spot on the head. She likes to run."

"What did you do then?" asked Daniel.

"I followed it." The boy's lower lip trembled. He looked terrified.

Just a kid, Daniel reminded himself. He smiled and squatted so that he and Hussein were at eye level.

"You're doing very well. It's brave of you to tell me these things."

The boy hung his head. His father took hold of his jaw and whispered fiercely in his ear.

"I went inside," said Hussein. "I saw the table."

"The table?"

"The rock," said Khalid Jussef Ibn Umar. "He calls it a table."